series. Tonight we're going to be in John chapter 8. I had a change of heart. I know that the bulletin said Romans chapter 6. We are going to hit Romans chapter 6, but as I was looking over my studies, I was studying, I was like, you know what? John chapter 8 is really what I want to hit. And so John chapter 8 verses 28 through 36 will be our base text. And we're going to go through that as well. And then we're also going to hit Romans chapter 6. We're looking at some interesting things here as we started this new series that we call identity. So what I'll do is I'll read verses 28 through 36, and then we'll get into our study. John chapter 8 verse 28. John writes, Then Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of man, Then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself. But as my father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The father has not left me alone. For I always do those things that please him. As he spoke these words, many believed in him. Verse 31. Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed.  They answered him, We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free?  And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. Freedom. That's a big word today, isn't it? Especially in our country.  It's a big word. It's used a lot. I mean, in fact, our first amendment has basically guarantees the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and all of that. And then we look into these things and we're like, you know, there's there's freedom in this country. Now, when we talk about freedom, as far as political freedom, political freedom is a cool thing. It's a good thing. But there's another kind of freedom. This is the freedom that I want to talk about tonight. And that is a spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom is even better than political freedom. Why? Well, because no matter what sort of government you live under, you can always experience freedom. And not only that, but true spiritual freedom lasts forever. The freedom that I'm going to be talking about tonight is not a temporary freedom. It's not something you just experienced while you're on this side of heaven. This is something you're going to experience on this side of heaven and beyond into heaven. It's a freedom that I think it's going to be very beneficial for us tonight. But as we talk about this, as we're talking on the subject on freedom, I mean, if you really think about this, many people today don't understand true freedom. What freedom means, what it means to be free. A lot of people actually, when it comes to freedom or to be free, most people define freedom as being able to do whatever you feel like doing. Right? You hear that all the time. People will say things like, it's a free country. I can do what I want. In fact, I had friends that would say that, if I were to say something to them, hey, don't do that. What do you mean, don't do that? It's a free country. I can do whatever I want. That's kind of like the definition of freedom when it comes to these things here. And freedom is not really like that. And I'm going to explain this here in a moment. But we're all into freedom to express yourself, right? Freedom to just be who you want. That kind of freedom. Freedom to be loud. Freedom to know you, right? People use it all against you. And it's like, you know, that's not really the definition of freedom. When it comes down to real freedom, what does it really mean? Well, that's the way most people actually desire to see freedom.  Everybody wants to be free.  Have you ever said that? Wouldn't it be nice? Or what about this? Or what about, maybe you said this, you know, I wish I was free to spend money and never go into debt. Right? Especially now, right? With Christmas coming. I mean, we all have the desire to be free. And freedom is a basic human desire that people just want to be free. But the definition is not always right. Freedom is a basic human desire, as I just mentioned. And when we look in the Bible, when we see in Scripture about freedom, there's one story that comes to my mind, and that is the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son, in chapter 15 of Luke, defined freedom, this young guy defined freedom exactly the way people did find freedom today. You know the story, and I'm just going to make it real quickly. But he thought of, maybe it was wise to get his inheritance a little early. You know, here's a father who had two sons, the younger one is the one that came to his father. He basically said, Dad, give me the inheritance now. So the father divided his inheritance and gave it to his younger son. And as his son had all this material possessions or whatever it was, he decided to just leave the house. He went out and he left home and he went off and he indulged himself in instant gratification. To him, that was freedom. I'm sure that you have thought of that young person here tonight. Maybe you're still living under your parents house. Like, I can't wait to get out of here. I'm going to be so free. I don't have to worry about coming home at 12. I can come home at two. I don't need to ask my parents for this or that. I'm going to be free. Well, listen, that's exactly what the prodigal son did. Did it work? No. This man, this young guy, he depleted his inheritance. And not only that, he was left in the middle of a cold and cruel world. He lost everything. And when he would not run out of money, the Bible says that there was a famine in the land. And the famine basically was so harsh that he began to get scared. So he had to find a job. So he starts feeding pigs. And he wanted to eat the food of the pigs.  This is getting really weird. And it says that nobody wanted to help him. How did that freedom go for him? It didn't go well, did it? Because that's not the way freedom is to be defined. But to this young man, freedom was defined as, I can just leave the house and do whatever I want. Listen, freedom to do what you want to do is not only unsafe, it's not something God promotes. That's not the kind of freedom God is wanting to promote to his children, to those who are in Christ. When the Bible speaks of freedom, when the Bible speaks of freedom, oftentimes this freedom is focused frequently related to the, basically to the spiritual freedom a person experiences in Christ. Anytime God talks about freedom in the New Testament, it's always pointing to Christ in Christ. It's a freedom that is unique and it's a freedom that is very liberating. And this is what we're going to see here tonight. We're going to see this kind of freedom. What does it mean to be free in Christ? Well, we started this whole new series about our identity. Remember, last Sunday night, we talked about this, that we are in Christ. And why did I start this identity series? Well, I think it's very important that you understand your identity in Christ, because I believe it's critical. It's critical to a fruitful walk in Christ. If you don't know who you are in Jesus, you're going to limit your walk in Christ.  Yes, and Christians are free people. We've been freed. And that's part of our identity in Christ, that you are free. You can say that I'm free. But the question is free from what? What are you free from? If you could say, I am free, which you can, what does that mean? So as we continue this series identity, who are you really? I think it's very, very important for us to understand.  Now you're put on the spot. Well, who are you as a Christian? What is your identity? And this is what we're going to be talking about. Last Sunday night, we talked about the identity that we have that we are new people. We've been made brand new. God did not patch us up. He did not put a couple of bandits on us in those areas that we were hurt. He literally gave us a brand new life because he's imputed in us a new nature. And it's cool because now our new position that we are in Christ as a new person means that we have new desires, new passions, and we have a whole new worldview. You know, one thing that I love doing is talking to brand new Christians. What about you? When I just meet a Christian that just got right with God, maybe a week or two weeks, and you talk to them and they're so excited. They're talking about what they're doing now. And maybe they even say things that, you know, what they used to do before and they're just totally transformed, especially if you knew who they were before they were Christians.  I mean, you are totally different now. And that's pretty cool. I love talking to new Christians because that encourages me because our identity in Christ is something that is to be different. When people see us, we are identified with Christ's. So what does that mean? What does that look like? Well, tonight, we're going to look at this. We're going to be looking at this in Chapter 8. We're going to be looking at it as Jesus said that the truth will set you free. And we're going to look at this more in detail here. So let's look at Chapter 8. Now for context's sake, I'm going to kind of go through the entire chapter, actually not the entire chapter, but kind of give you an aerial view of Chapter 8. And then I'm going to run into Verse 28. But in Chapter 8, if you notice, way back in Verse 1, this whole chapter started here. Jesus, as it says there, that Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. And then in Verse 2, notice it says, then early in the morning, he came again into the temple. And all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them. So this whole chapter starts with Jesus teaching the people in the temple. And it's a very big chapter because there's a lot of things that go on here with Jesus, things that happen to Jesus. Right away we see that they brought in a woman that was caught in the act of adultery. If you notice there, it says there in Verse 4, teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act. Well, then they put Jesus to the test. They wanted to basically find something to condemn him. And of course in Verse 7, notice it says there, that Jesus said to them, he who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first. And then Jesus begins to kind of doodle on the ground. He began to write something. Notice in Verse 8, he says, he stooped down and rode on the ground. We don't know what he wrote there, but whatever he wrote basically pushed these guys away. So this woman was caught in the act of adultery according to these guys. They brought him to Jesus, brought her to Jesus, and then Jesus makes the claim that he is the light of the world. Notice in Verse 12, Jesus said to them, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. So Jesus begins to kind of build on something. He tells them that he is the light of the world. Light is the life of Christ, darkness is sin, evil. And Jesus says that I am the light of the world. I'm the one that brings life to people. I'm the one who basically turns on the light in the dark life. And he begins to kind of go in that direction.  Basically they say that Jesus, your witness is not true. Totally judging Jesus right here. Well, Jesus gets into a very serious conversation or serious conversation with these Pharisees about spiritual matters. And here's where he gets really into them here. And basically, notice there, it says in Verse 13 or Verse 14, Jesus says, if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I'm going. But you do not know where I come from and where I'm going. You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. And yet if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me. It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bears witness of myself and the Father who sent me bears witness of me. So there we see Jesus just telling them, hey, I am a true, I'm true in what I'm saying. And they didn't understand this. And they said, well, who is your father thinking of a fleshly man as earthly father? Who is your father?  Well, who is your father? They were clueless about who Jesus was and where he came from. And then Jesus said to them that he was actually leaving.   He's leaving. He says, you cannot follow me where I'm going. He says, again, all about spiritual things.  Then we come here to verse 28. After all of these things that were going on in this conversation, notice in verse 28, Jesus continues this conversation, and he says, when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I speak these things. And He who sent me is with me, but the Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please Him. He begins to explain his relationship with the Father, a Father and Son. And in verse 31, he makes it very clear there. He says, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. Now, in other words, head knowledge isn't enough. A superficial faith is not enough. Notice he says, if you believe in me, there's something else that has to happen. You can believe in God, generally speaking, but there's got to be some heart knowledge there. There's got to be an acceptance of who Jesus is and what he did on the cross, and there is a superficial faith in a lot of people today. People that don't really, really deeply believe in Christ, they just have a generic kind of view or this general understanding of God. I call them theists, people that just believe in God. Did you guys know people like that? They'll tell you, hey, I believe in God, but the moment you start talking about Jesus, they stop you, right? Why? Because their view of God is different.  And there are people that are like that. They're superficial in their faith, but Jesus says it very clearly that those who abide in him, he says, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. Now that's a big claim there. This is the path to freedom right here. Jesus says, those who abide in me are my disciples. What does that mean? What does it mean to abide? It really means this.  That's the question you need to ask yourself. Is Jesus ruling your life? If Christ isn't ruling your life, then according to Jesus, you're not really a disciple. A disciple is one who submits to the master, to his master, to his teacher. But apart from that, there's a superficial faith that happens if we say, well, I am a believer in God, but I don't allow God to rule my life. Well, we see here that Jesus made it very clear that submitting to who he is brings freedom. It brings freedom to that person. You know, there are hundreds of thousands of people who reject Jesus today without ever really examining the evidence for who Jesus really is. And I think it's very important for us as Christians to let those who reject Jesus clearly understand what they're rejecting, the benefits that come with knowing Christ's. For them to understand that when you reject Jesus, not only are you denying heaven, but you're also denying joy, peace, the power of the Holy Spirit that can come upon you. I mean, all these different things that they actually will deny when they say, I don't want Jesus. I don't care about Jesus. That's good for you, but not for me. It's important for us to understand, or for them to understand, what they're actually rejecting. When Jesus is speaking here to the Jews, to the Pharisees, and the Jews that were surrounding him, when he came to freedom, these guys weren't ignorant about freedom. In fact, slavery was part of their society. They understood this whole thing about slavery, how people were actually basically part of this family, but they were slaves. And there were some good slaves and so bad slaves. The ones that were abused were the ones that were not taking care of well, but there were some slaves that actually voluntarily allowed themselves to submit themselves to their master. They were treated fairly well, but they understood the whole world of slavery. So when Jesus is talking about freedom here, and he's talking about these things, as we're going to be looking at here in a moment, these guys were not ignorant when it came to this whole thing about freedom. You know, when we look in the Old Testament, God actually removed the children of Israel out of that slavery in Egypt, and he gave them freedom. He took them out of there, and they went out in the desert, and they did their thing. But we see here, though, when Jesus is talking to these guys, notice in verse 32, he says, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Right there, with the Jews thinking about this, these guys must have been excited to hear that. To hear Jesus say, the truth shall make you free. That was huge. You know why? Because these guys wanted to be freed from the Roman government. The Roman government oppressed them, and the Jews hated the Roman government, and they were waiting for Messiah to come to basically conquer the Roman government, the Romans, and set them free. So could you imagine what these guys were thinking when Jesus said, and the truth will set you free? I'm sure they're probably thinking like, oh great, this is great, the truth. He knows the truth, that these Romans are actually being mean to us, and he's going to set us free. Absolutely. I want to hear this, Jesus. These guys were probably excited to hear these words from Jesus, but obviously we know that this entire freedom Jesus is going to be talking about here. It's more spiritual than it is physical, but the Jews hated the Roman guards, the Roman government. You know, the Romans were interesting people. If you know the history of the Romans, these guys were not only oppressive, but the Greeks actually influenced their culture. Actually, the Romans had the morals of the Greeks, and the Greeks were very, very immoral, fornicators, so because the Roman religion was made up of different other religions, they really just embraced everything, but the Greeks were the ones that actually influenced their morals. So a lot of this stuff was happening, and the Jews, wanting to serve God, wanting to honor the God that they believed in, well, they wanted to be free from the Roman government, from the rules and regulations, so here we see that Jesus is making a statement that I believe is very, very strong. But let's apply this to our lives today. When Jesus says, the truth shall make you free, what does he mean by that? Well, I'm going to give you tonight two practical ways a Christian is actually set free. What we're free from, two things tonight. Here's the first one that we're going to look at, and I kind of talked a little bit about it last Sunday night, but tonight I'm going to really hit it hard. Freedom from the bondage of sin. That's the very first thing. When you think about leading somebody to Christ, that should be the very first thing that comes to your mind, is that this person is about to be set free from the bondage of sin. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, a major cause of the world's problems, I believe today, is the failure to understand human nature. It's just that lack of understanding of human nature. Did you know that human nature has not really improved since Adam fell? I've never seen man kind of become a little bit better since that time. I mean, right away, we see that once Adam fell, as they got kicked out of the garden, first murder in the Bible from their own children.  What did God do? He says, you know what? The sin, the unrighteousness, the wickedness of the people on this earth has come up to me, he says. It's like there's a stench. He says, I need to wipe them out. And then this global flood happened because of that. I wonder where God is at today with our world. I wonder if he's about to say the same thing he said way back in Genesis chapter six and seven. And he says, you know what? I'm done. I'm fed up with what's going on. And we see here that being set free from the bondage of sin is important because I guess, again, human nature hasn't improved. And there's nothing. I mean, I've had talks with people before that some believe that man is preparing to take this huge leap into becoming good. It's nuts. It's crazy. It doesn't happen. I've talked to people like that and people are really serious. And there are others that people, other people that believe that there's no such thing as a sinful nature. Really? Are you a parent?  That's right. I talk about sin with my four year old. She's very doctrinally sound. But she said to me, Daddy, I'm not a sinner. Really? You just lied right there.  And she's arguing with me. I'm not a sinner. I said, honey, listen, we're born in sin. We're all sinners. Well, we told her that sin is doing things that are not right, things that are bad. But she told me I am not a sinner. My wife and I started laughing. I said, just don't say that when you're 13. Then you'll scare me, you know? I read this article that this group of scientists from Yale and Harvard University, they actually did a study by studying human nature. And they pulled about 2000 people and they asked them questions that led to decisions. And they also studied them in other ways. And these two groups of so called scientists from Yale and Harvard, they came to realize that humans, according to their study, are wired to be good in nature. They must live in a hole. I don't know.  Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean, right now, this is the season to be good, right? You know, you have the Salvation Army outside of the stores with their little bells. You see people like, you know what, this is my time, this is my time for good deed here. Here's a quarter. Thank you. God bless you, right? A lot of people want to do good deeds today. Yeah, there are some people that are moral. They want to do good. They want to feel good. But their nature, their human nature isn't good because we're born in sin. You know, when the Bible talks about sin, sin is represented as a power that rules over a man, is a power that rules over man. Sin is kind of like the monster in scripture. When you see what sin can do to a human being, it's almost like a monster just comes over and takes over that person's life. It's seen as this huge thing. It's seen as this power that's ruling over that person. Jesus actually spoke on the human nature. He talked about that sinful nature in two sections, actually in Mark and then also in Galatians, Paul kind of reiterated some things. But I want to show you real quickly. Turn with me to Mark chapter seven. Let me give you a glimpse on the sinful nature. Mark chapter seven at verse 20, and then we're going to go to Galatians. So Mark chapter seven, listen to what Jesus said in chapter seven, verse 20, it says this, what comes out of a man that defiles a man? He says, for within out of the heart of men, here we go, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within. Did you see that? Now, a person who denies the sinful nature would say, that's not true. Oh, really?  I mean, we see the description here is pretty bad, right? It's almost like reading the paper or watching the news, right? You can easily fill in these here, these descriptions here, the description of the sinful nature. Now go with me to Galatians chapter five. Let me show you this now. This is from Paul, kind of echoing what Jesus said. Galatians chapter five at verse 19. This is the list that Paul left us here in Galatians chapter six, I'm sorry, chapter five. Galatians chapter five at verse 19. This is what he said, 19 through 21. Now the works of the flesh are evidence, which are, here we go again, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, adultery, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath on the freeway, right? Selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like of which I tell you beforehand just as I also told you in the time past that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. I am so glad that heaven will not have those things, aren't you?   I mean, you're just going to be in an amazing environment. Heaven will be a place that will not have sin. I love it, totally love it. But unfortunately, right now on this side of heaven, we have to struggle with this. We have to watch out. We have to be careful. And what we see here, and what I just gave you here, is that this is a reality. Every person that I'm before right now, we all have that tendency to do something bad because of our sinful nature. And Romans 3.23, Paul says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, all, not just some, all. I think it was my four-year-old, okay? All. But Jesus said, notice in chapter eight of John, if you guys go back there, if you're not already there, verse 34, notice what he says there in verse 34. Most of Shirley say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. He says sinners are slaves to their sinful nature. They don't have the freedom to do what is right because they're slaves to their own sin. That's, that's bad, isn't it?  What you did? And how, and the feeling that you had when you did it? There was no real conviction, right? You just make sure that nobody caught you, right? Make sure, no, I don't want to make sure nobody sees what I'm doing. But you did it because you enjoyed doing it. You had no conviction. There was no hesitation.  And it's interesting because as we come into this new life as a Christian before Christ, we were led by our sinful desires. We had no conviction yet now as Christians, as we become born again, Christ removes us from that power that sin had on our lives. Listen to what Paul said in Romans chapter 6, verses 12 and verse 18. He says, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Now, notice in verse 18, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So our spiritual senses are awakened to the reality of sin. You didn't have that before. As a Christian now, you know that when you're in that moment, when you know that you're being tempted, there is that weird feeling in your heart when the Holy Spirit is saying, don't go there, don't do it, don't say that. You're awakened to sin. And there's where you have a chance, or I'm sorry, a choice to either blow through that conviction or say, no, I'm not going to go there. You have that choice now. You've been set free from the power of sin. Before that, you did not have a choice. You just did it because that's what you were prone to do. Now, it's important for us to understand something though. There's a big difference here between that surviving sin and reigning sin. Because when you read a thing like Romans 6, you think, wait a minute, so does that mean I don't sin anymore? I shouldn't sin anymore.  The Bible says that I've been set free. I've been dead. No, listen, there's still surviving sin in your life. That's part of the sinful nature. However, you're not held in bondage to that power anymore. Christ broke it. And when you read Romans 6, Romans 6 basically says this, that you as a Christian have the power, you have the power now to plug it back in. You see what I'm saying? You have the power to plug back in sin in your life. That's why Paul says, don't let it rain in you. Hey, listen, you have the power now in Christ to say no to sin. Isn't that cool? It really is. Think about it. I know this is kind of hard to grasp right away.  But it's a really deep truth that if we were to grasp this, a lot of our reoccurring sins that we struggle with would be stopped right away. Because you're not under the power of sin anymore. You're under the power of Christ's. Christ now has given you that power. Sin is no longer a monster. You can move it out of the way. Do we struggle with it? Absolutely. I'm not saying we don't. Sin no longer rains in us, but it does survive in us. Keep that in mind. And no longer rains in us, but it survives in us. In other words, you can still allow it to rule you if you want to. And that's the thing that we have to be careful. Freedom from the bondage of sin means that sin has no power over you anymore. And we don't have to give in to sin's power, because now we're in Christ's. That is liberating, don't you think? It really is. Because you think twice now. You didn't think twice before. You don't do it anymore. You don't lie. I mean, when you're tempted to lie, you don't just do it.  I don't think I should do that. That's not right. Because the Holy Spirit is saying, don't say it. Don't tell them that. That's a lie. And you struggle with it. That's the Holy Spirit. That's where the Holy Spirit takes over and says, ah, ah, don't go there. And we see here, this is exactly what Paul is saying. And this is what Jesus is saying in John chapter eight, is that the truth of Christ will make you free. And the very first thing that you're freed from is the bondage of sin, the power that sin had in your life. That is huge, that's big, that we have been set free. So that's one thing that we've been set free from. The bondage of sin, the second thing, and this is what we're going to end here with, is that you have been set free from the law. That's important. You've been set free from the law. Now, according to Scripture, law and sin always go together. In fact, the Bible says that the strength of sin is the law. The strength of sin is the law. The law does nothing but make the offense greater. You know, we have laws today in our cities, in our counties, and you have to abide by the law. When you break the law, all it does is just increases that condemnation that you did something wrong. The law is just there. It's a good thing. The moment you cross that red light, your heart pounds, right? Where's a cop? Right? You're like, oh, man. And when you see those lights behind you, you're done, right? Well, that law caught you. You're done. You're in trouble now. But there's nothing wrong with the law. But now, we see, as he says, that the strength of sin is the law. The law kind of reveals sin. Why do we need laws because man is sinful? If we weren't sinful people, we wouldn't need laws. We would all obey laws, right? We'd all stop at a stop sign instead of rolling through it, right? Seriously. I mean, we wouldn't need laws. But because we are sinful people, we need to abide by laws. And when we break laws, then, as the Bible says there, that the strength of sin is the law.  You've broken the law. Now, the Christian must know that he is entirely free from the law, the law of the Old Testament. We've been freed even from my practical law. And what I mean by that is that you must do things. We've been freed from that.  And I'm going to explain this here in a moment. You see, Christ redeemed us from the curse that has been actually brought through the law. Speaking of the Old Testament law, he became a curse for us. We see that in Galatians chapter three, verse 13, but the law in the Old Testament cannot justify or make righteous any person in God's sight. That's why Jesus sent his son, God sent his son to die on the cross for us. He was actually the fulfillment of all the requirements of the Old Testament law. You know, when you read your Old Testament and you see all the laws that these guys were under, all the regulations, man, that was crazy. All the different sacrifices, burn offerings.  You had all these different offerings. You had all these different things that they had to keep. I mean, the book of Leviticus, some of you guys have ever read the book of Leviticus. Raise your hand. If you haven't, read it. Okay? Read it on a full stomach though, because you get hungry with all the barbecue and it goes on in there. But it's an amazing book because the book is basically saying, here is how a holy God can relate to a sinful person through all of these sacrifices, through all of these regulations and laws. Well, listen, Christ fulfilled all those requirements. We've been set free. We have a new way of worshiping God now. It's really amazing when you think about it. You know, we've been set free from the bondage of rules and regulations that are relative to the Old Testament. You know, and that was an issue in the early church. In the early church, one of the issues that they had is that they were trying to bring these new Christians back into law. Let me give you an example. Turn with me to Acts 15. I'm going to give you this example here real quickly. Acts 15. Here's one example of how the new Christians were being brought back into slavery or in bondage to the law. Acts 15 at verse one. And this is something that obviously did not go well with the disciples or the apostles there as they came in and rebuked these guys. But notice what it says in verse 15. He says, a certain man came down from Judea and taught to brethren, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. Wow. Pretty sad, huh? Notice, go to verse 10. It says, now, therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as they. I love that. You know, there are Christians today that kind of make up laws in their walk with Christ's and they impose those laws on other people. I knew, I remember when I used to teach at a Christian school when I lived in New York, I remember I had a young girl, sisters that were in my class, whose dad was a pastor. And I noticed that these young girls had long hair. And they would wear dresses all the time. Now, we did not have any uniforms at the time or any uniform codes. So I just happened to find out, I found out that their father was a pastor. And as I checked into their church and whatnot and their doctrine and stuff, I realized and I found out that they had a rule in their church that all women had to have long hair. And they had to wear dresses. If they didn't, they'd be kicked out of the church. Or God wouldn't be pleased with them. That's a law, isn't it? That's sad. Because now it all clicked when I saw these young girls with long hair and wearing dresses. I'm like, now it makes sense. These young little girls were under that law, a man made law that you don't even see in Scripture. And you have churches, even Christians, individual Christians that will somehow put in laws in their own Christian life, and they're living under the slavery, this bondage of this law, instead of living free in Christ, free to worship Christ, whether you wear a dress or have long hair.  We're free in Christ. And they didn't understand this. And we see here that when we come to Christ, not only are we freed from the bondage of sin, but we're freed from the law, not just the Old Testament law, but even any man made laws that perhaps can be put together to put us in bondage. But we've been set free from under the bondage of rules and regulations relative to the Old Testament, as I said, as well as any other man made laws. We have to be very careful.  You're to worship God on Saturday only. You shouldn't do it on Sunday. That's wrong. All of a sudden, there's a law. All right, everybody will see you Saturday. And people will do stuff like that. And it's really sad when you hear it.  That's freedom, isn't it? That's totally freedom. You know, when Adam and Eve were created, when Adam and Eve were living in the garden, they experienced freedom. God gave them freedom. He had the freedom to name all the animals. That's great. And not only that, but they were perfectly accepted, secured and free. God just said, Listen, there's a tree in the middle. Just stay away from it. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the garden. You know, as he was working, it was an enjoyable kind of work. They actually experienced freedom. They freely submitted to God because they trusted him. And they were free to be ruled by God. They allowed God to rule them. In the fall, they lost their relationship with God and they became slaves to sin. They lost that freedom. And what we have here today, in our life today, Jesus died on the cross to set you and I free. Not only that, but we have the freedom to serve God. We have the freedom to serve God. We have the freedom to worship God. We don't have to be in a building to worship God, although gathering corporately is important for fellowship. But listen, after you're done here, you can continue to worship God on your way home in your car. These guys did not have that. They had to go by a tabernacle. And that was the place that they actually worshiped God. You and I now can worship God in our car, in our room, in the lunch room. Just close the door and let people see you, right? You're free to do that. I guarantee you that the Old Testament saints that are probably looking down on us, probably saying, that's not fair. These guys can worship anywhere. We had to carry through the desert this mobile kind of tabernacle and we had to plan ourselves here and worship God here. Then we move along and we go. I mean, these guys, they did not have the freedom that you and I have today in Christ because of what Jesus did on the cross. And I think this is a freedom that we have to understand because even world religions don't have this freedom. Did you know that? Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, they all abide by rules and regulations.  They kick you out. I mean, Mormons have three different levels of heaven and obviously the ones that are out there in the mission field, riding their bikes, knocking on doors, they're the ones that are going to make it to the highest level. But if you don't go in that route, then you're going to be kind of like either in the middle or the last. The terrestrial, I believe, is the lowest. So you have all these different things. So when you think about it as a Christian, I haven't made because I have a God who's given me freedom. Now, does this mean I can do anything I want? No, absolutely not. There's parameters to this. There's boundaries. We're not talking about freedom so we can go out and live lawlessly. No, there's consequences. But listen, overall, you guys are free, free to worship God, to serve God, to love God, to enjoy God. Christians have been set free for all of this and we're not bound by these regulations and rules. Now, let me close with a few thoughts. You know, we've been set free from continually striving to earn God's favor. And what Jesus did on the cross set us free. I don't have to work for my salvation because I know I'm a sinner saved by God's grace. I don't have to do certain things to say, God, do you accept me now?  Listen, we have been set free from continually striving to earn God's favor. You are now accepted in the beloved tonight. That's cool. Sometimes as Christians, we kind of get works base where we have to do these things like if I read my Bible today, God's going to be like, I like that. Keep it going, you know? I mean, there's nothing wrong with reading our Bible, but I'm just saying that if you think that God is going to like even more because you're in the Bible, you're wrong. He already loves you. He does. This, when we read our Bibles, it's because he knows it's going to cause us to grow spiritually. And he knows it hurts us when we don't read his word or abiding him. But he already loves you. You've already been accepted in the beloved. So we've actually been freed from trying to get God's favor. We already have his favor through Christ. So the fullness which we have in Christ means that we are free to obey God joyfully, to just obey him joyfully, and that we find our life now in who Jesus is rather than what I do or who I am or what I bring to the table. I've been set free. I can love God. I can tell people about God. I've been set free for that. So I'm going to leave you with this. Learn to live in Christ's glorious liberty. Learn to live in his glorious liberty. Then stay on the alert because you don't want to return to captivity. Be very careful.


Hi everyone, it's Rachel Wolfson and I'm here today with Sheila Warren. Sheila is the CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation. Hi Sheila, how are you? Hey, Rachel. It's great to be here. I'm doing well. Yeah. Good to see you. Sheila, so you recently started a new position with the Crypto Council for Innovation. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. So I started in February, which feels like in crypto time, like 10 years, but really kind of very, very quick. And yeah, we're a global alliance of industry leaders focusing on providing evidence-based advocacy. So we work with global policymakers all around the world to make sure that we are enacting sound policy and inclusive regulation to make sure that the benefits of crypto will be available to everybody all around the world. Okay. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? How are you ensuring that the benefits of crypto will be available to everyone? So I think we're at a critical time. I took this role because I felt like the next two to three years, certainly on the outside five years, are going to determine the trajectory of this technology for generations. So the policies I set up here are going to determine what can we do and what can't we do. So when I was thinking about maybe it's time to leave the forum, I looked around and there's so much amazing build and innovation happening. But my concern was if that innovation and build can't be affected, if we get caught off from what we can do, and if you can't offer certain kinds of products and services in certain parts of the world, then kind of what's the point of any of this. And the biggest threat that I saw but also opportunity was in the policy making space. So what we do is we really say that we've been around as an industry long enough. We have the ability to actually create evidence, real evidence using real hard data as to why crypto is beneficial, what the remaining challenges are, what the opportunity is, and to demonstrate how the technology itself can actually help achieve public policy goals that we can all agree are important for society. So how do we do that? We do lots of conversations and lots of education is laborious, painstaking, pretty unsexy work to be really honest. Lots of research, lots of curation of content, lots of really listening frankly. I'd say that the biggest part of my job has always been just listening to people. What is it they're concerned about? What are the challenges that worry them? And how do we demonstrate how the technology can actually help but also what kinds of policies will realize that technology is implications, right? Like how can we leverage the benefit of the accountability, the transparency built into our systems in a way that accomplishes those goals. Got it. Now with the goals, can you elaborate what those goals are? Yes, it's a great question. It depends on the jurisdiction and frankly the person. So part of what I'm doing is really listening very closely to what people are telling me is important to them in these policy positions, right? So is it consumer education or protection? Is it rooting out listed activity? Is it leveling a playing field? Is it equity and access? Like there are all these different public policy goals, most of which I think are quite laudable. But the problem is that people who don't understand the space really well, which is most people besides like a handful of people, right, are really confused about how do we get there? And in some cases, they actually think that technology undermines those goals when in reality it actually can help support those goals. So an example I'll give you is access and equity and financial services. Well, right now, legacy financial systems and institutions, we call them TRADFY in this space, are not serving a lot of people. Crypto can serve those people, but it won't serve those people if we port in the rules from legacy financial over into crypto, because most likely similar guardrails will then emerge that prevent people without wealth privilege from accessing these kinds of services. So right now, we're seeing opportunities for tremendous inclusion in this space. But those are predicated on the right regulations coming in that protect the opportunity for those people, those communities. So in terms of regulations, I'm assuming you're working a lot with regulators in the space. That's right. So can you explain maybe what are their main concerns and how you are allowing those concerns to be overcome? What are you doing to kind of reassure them? Yeah, it's a great question. And again, it depends on the regulator, the policymaker, the elected official, whoever it is. And we're looking globally. So this really has a high variance. So speaking very generically, what I would say is we're trying to identify what are the core concerns or challenges that any particular, really honestly an individual level or agency level are seeing with this technology. Now, a lot of times what this is is about criminal behavior. Kind of the usual talking points that you hear. Criminal behavior, bad actors being able to exploit people, hacks, this kind of stuff. So we're demonstrating with the support of our members who represent some of the industry's global leaders just how those things aren't true. If they aren't true, if in fact they can demonstrably be proven to not be true. In some cases, that's the case. So example is around Russian oligarch sanctions evasion, provably false, provable that that is not a thing that anyone should be really concerned about for all these reasons that we all know well and can articulate. So let's prove that and write the case up. In other cases, it's things like, well, is it really going to provide access and equity to people who are poor? That is a case where we have examples from around the world that's happening, but is the adoption curve slow? It has been slower than we'd like to see. Why is that? We can be honest about that and say here are the things that a policy could do that would spur adoption by these populations. Part of the reason we're seeing slow adoption, especially in the United States, by these communities is because they're not being targeted because there's a lot of concern that the regulation will come down and penalize people for trying to promote that kind of access, right? Because they'll be seen as, I don't know, they'll be seen as, they'll be painted in a bad brush, like exploitation of the vulnerable or not enough education or whatever it is. So it'd be nice, wouldn't it, to have regulatory clarity or policy clarity around if we want to enter some of these communities that are already in droves turning to crypto, how can we do that in a safe way? How can we increase adoption in communities without getting targeted by a regulator and saying that we're doing something that's wrong, right? So these are the kinds of protections that the industry is looking for to say we want to encourage access. We want to create a more equitable system. To do that, we need some certainty. We can't build on quicksand. We got to understand what is going to be considered appropriate behavior, responsible behavior in the ecosystem. We know when we see it, we want to know that regulators and policy makers understand that to also be the case. I see, yeah, that's amazing. And we need that because, you know, I believe that cryptocurrency and digital assets can help so many people in the world, but people are afraid, and I think a lot of that has to do with the regulatory concerns. I think that's exactly right, right? So no one here is trying to create a system that's only for wealthy people. It's not one of us, I mean, maybe there's some people, but not any of us who are real builders in this space. That's not why we're here. We want to make sure that we preserve this opportunity, people that haven't had other opportunities. That's a core tentative, I think, of the entire Web3 ecosystem, right? It's full fair access. But if we can't do that because we're concerned that our company will get shut down or we'll get fined in some crazy way or whatever, we're going to be necessarily cautious. So we have responsibilities to our employees, you know, to those in our ecosystem as well. So how do we get to a place where we have enough clarity that we can, with confidence, engage in this super equitable way that all of us want to see come to fruition? Right. Now, based on what you just said, just a relevant event was the Fidelity 401k with Bitcoin. That's right. That's kind of opening access to a new class of people with Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on that? I love it. I think it's a really amazing opportunity. Fidelity is actually a member of CCI. I think it's an amazing opportunity to kind of say, you should have the opportunity to determine what goes into your retirement portfolio, right? And if you deem this a better asset, it's going to serve your family and individual needs better, you should have that opportunity. I find, you know, Rachel, a lot of the language around disclosures and other things to be a little condescending, frankly, right? And I think the entire frame of consumer protection tends to be a bit condescending as well with the idea that consumers have to be protected from themselves, right? It's not just protection from bad actors. Bad actors exist in this industry, in every industry. We have to just acknowledge that that is the case, certainly the case. There are malicious people who have bad intentions in our world, unfortunately, as the case may be. But we're not protecting them from themselves. The idea that I am not capable, or anyone, forget me, like I have no crypto, but somebody who is not capable of understanding what's best for their family financially, I find that fundamentally kind of offensive. What we want to say is we are arming you and equipping you with accurate information about the choice that you're going to make, how it fits into a broader portfolio, what the risk profile is, what is your risk profile within crypto, right? All these things really matter. And then I honestly feel like we should trust people to make the right choices for themselves. So I love this inclusion. I think it's really exciting. I think that Bitcoin's been around for a long time, you know? I think there's enough proof point here that this can add a lot of value to someone's portfolio. And the idea that you haven't been able to choose that thus far, I think is a shame. And I love to see that this is the direction we're going. Right, so yeah, it's a step in the right direction. I also wanted to get your thoughts on stable coins, the stable coin adoption, because I think stable coins have a lot of potential, especially with what you're doing. So what are your thoughts on that and then the regulatory thoughts behind that? Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack there. So I've always said, I said this at the forum, and I believe this now, that you know, CVDC, stable coins, and crypto, all have a role to play in the financial system. And so the question is, what are the appropriate use cases for each of these? And I do think that those differ a bit, depending on the jurisdiction that you're in, right? So in some cases, a CVDC might make a lot of sense, because you have a kind of contained financial system, you've got a lot of, I don't know, you have appropriate controls, whatever it might be. In most cases, I think, I remain skeptical about the use cases of CVDC beyond interbank settlements and cross-border efficiencies and things like this. I remain personally, and I can be convinced, I remain personally unconvinced of the value of a retail CVDC, the use cases there and how much that's actually going to change anything. I'm just personally not convinced. So we'll see how it plays out. Stable coins, I think, in contrast, I think have tremendous potential to make a lot of things more fluid and easier and provide that programmability of money that is something that I'm not sure the Fed or essential bank is general matter, should be in the business of having to control. I don't know if that's the right thing to task those kinds of bodies with. And again, I go back and forth a bit on this. But stable coins, I feel like, by leveraging the private sector, you're able to provide a lot of the benefits, but still have the accountability that I think some regulators in particular want to see. And I think that's really exciting. So I think that there's a role to play for stable coins that's critically important. I would argue that I think USDC is one of the most important innovations that we're actually seeing in the ecosystem in terms of the bridge it can provide between different kinds of assets, the way it can enable that programmability in smart contracts that can make things very efficient, it can realize the efficiencies we talk about a lot in this ecosystem. So I guess you could say I'm bullish on stables and I kind of want to see how the regulatory environment treats them. That's obviously a really important question for our entire ecosystem. And so that's an open, open, open air, ball in the air kind of question. But certainly I think a lot of education is happening. And I do feel like there's more understanding about stable coins and about pure crypto if you will in the regulatory environment. Right, right, and that's good. Yeah, I think that's good. I'd like it to be parallel and the same knowledge of crypto to be there as well, but I'll take what we got. Right, I mean we'll get there obviously with what you're doing. That's the goal. We're also seeing this trend now kind of a tokenization of everything, a trend. It seems like everything is being tokenized. What are your thoughts on that and are there any regulatory concerns? Again, two different questions. So my thoughts on that are it was somewhat inevitable. You were gonna see people getting super creative and kind of like creating these chains and strings and threads of things that were gonna kind of go into infinity, right? And so it seems to me like there's no limit on like what is being tokenized. I do think this is gonna be a challenge from a regulatory perspective. And I think that what we're, I worry it's gonna raise alarm bells. It shouldn't really be raising. Cause a lot of these things are absolutely not gonna make a lot of sense.  Cause it's like, it sounds fun and kind of kitschy and cool, but like no one's actually, the utility of it is maybe not as exciting as it sounds at first blush, right? So I think a lot of this will wash out. And it's again, it's a kind of an exciting we're very creative ecosystems. So it's not surprising to me this is happening. I do worry there'll be over indexing on this kind of thing by regulators when I don't think that they should. So trying to kind of, I don't want to say right size it but trying to kind of keep it in perspective about what this is in the phase of building that we're in. I think it's gonna be important in any discussions with regulators and others about these topics. Right, definitely. Yeah. Any additional comments or industry trends that you're seeing that you think are important or any regulatory?  I mean, there's not a jurisdiction that I am in touch with, you know, that's not focusing on this big time the next couple of years. It is a time where I personally think this is the most important effort of our time in this ecosystem. And so, you know, I'm really happy to have jumped in to be a full time part of it, but it's a lot.  Right, that's so important. Thank you so much, Sheila. Yeah, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. As always, thanks, Rachel. Thanks.


everybody. Thank you for coming and joining our session. As my colleague said, it's really a short introduction to the topic, just to begin slowly the day, because it's a long day, as you see in its 19 papers. So I'm with Leonard Linder, part of the Prehistoric Conflict Research project at the University in Frankfurt. More exactly Bronze Age fortification between Thomas and Carbassian Mountains, so if you're interested in the topic, you can have a look on our own page. So our earphones meant to be just defensive places, some reflection about the function of earphones. Yeah, earphones are mainly identified through their defensive features and marks of armed conflicts. To illustrate this point, I wanted just to show you some example. Some are very good known. You have in Germany, for example, the Unischenburg, which was excavated from 1983 to 1985. It's 1.5 hectares and the fortification is dated during the late Bronze Age, 10th and 9th century BC. There is three periods that have been identified for that fortification.  The particularity of the Unischenburg is that more than 70% of the Bronze artifacts are weapons. These weapons were located, as you see on the map, in the gate area, so I'm sorry it's a bit small, but all the red dots are all kinds of weapons and it's all concentrated in this gate area and you have a reconstruction of it. Among these weapons there are some fragments of words or are dated to Ashtad D2B3 types, but the archaeologists are thinking that these fragments are not due to the battle, but maybe a ritual destruction. There are at least 11 spearheads, they are all damaged and they found 107 arrowheads and they are all banned. There are also some fire marks on the side, so all these clues let the archaeologists think that it should have been here a battle. Another kind of violence on the side is, for example, the site of Sintana in Romania, where they found a lot of sliding projectiles of clay and they were thinking that they were actually burnt and sent with fire to burn the houses inside, but maybe we will hear later a bit more because someone is presenting about Capes in Basin. And the last one you probably never heard about because it's one I was excavating this summer it's a Zengerspair as well in Germany and on this site we have until now, after three campaigns, 23 arrowheads of bronze, most of them are as well banned and we are also a nice spearhead. Another fact that you probably know is the phenomenon of the vitrify fraud. I'm not telling a lot about this because it's not the point of today, but it's another possibility of violence at the end of the Bronze Age in Europe since a lot of sites are concerned with this fact. Again the Zengerspair where I was excavating which is about 6.7 hectares as a big stone wall of basalt and this basalt as you see on the picture is sometimes completely melted so it looks like a bit like slag. We have another famous example from Germany it's burnt stuff whereas they did also some experimental archaeology and here you have a wood saw rampart which was as well burnt. You can see the burnt clay on the picture. So let's come to the head and focus of our session. We just want to look behind violence and defensive aspects of the hill fraud. What is the role and function of such sites to society in economical networks or within the border landscape? Are these fortifications for protection or just having a symbolic meaning? That's some questions that we can have today and then discuss later. Some possibilities are the case for example of hill forts with plenty of hordes. Some of them are seen as a political center or a sacred area. I just want here to mention the Buddha name awake in Germany which is a huge site more than 30 hectares with a rampart up to 2 meter high preserved when one part of it is made of stone wall. On this site they found 19 hordes and a lot of single finds. Among them you can find wagon pieces or gear, tools, weapon, ornaments. Most of them are related to the late Bronze Age really the final phases so I should be three. You have also gold pieces like hand rings, gold sheet and so on. The next possibility is to have maybe some specialized center with craft man-shaped scales, a center of prediction. As an example I would like to present you briefly the site of Four Hours in France. It's one of our French archaeologists.  It was escalated already at the beginning of the 20th century but then again in the 80s. It has a big occupation of the Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age. It's about seven hectares and has a rampart with a defensive pitch which is around six meter deep. They found on this site a lot of clues about closing manufacture which was apparently very developed since they have 210 spinal walls, a lot of loomway of clay and a lot of needles. They had as well a lot of pottery kilns and all the tools that you can use to decorate a pottery like on the picture you have a pin with a head with cycle, there are comb burnishers, patulas, so all the set is on the site. But adorable they have a really really rich collection of a metallurgical artifact. So all the steps of the chêne opératoire for the metallurgy of the bronze are identified. There are some workshops with ball furnaces or other kind of kiln. There is 173 fragments of stone and clay walls. These walls were for anvil, pins, daggers, swords, spearheads, bracelets, so everything almost. They also found a lot of tools for the metal work like chisels, saws, punches, hammers, whetstone, anvils and as well as a lot of ingots mainly of copper and lead. So they think that the bronze alloy were made directly on site. They found also for this metallurgical step crucibles, lumps and other screw blast types. In total it was 1,252 bronze artifacts, so from ornament to tools and weapons and all these together this density of workshops and the few objects on site if you compare with this lot of molds and so on. Let's say archaeologists think that they were exporting all the production for the pendant. Another interpretation that you may find in the literature as well is to have site on a particular topographical position to control trade routes. For this I'm not taking directly an example from the Bronze Age, but from the Iron Age. In Hessen you have the Glauberk. It has also a small Bronze Age occupation, but it's really good known for the Iron Age. You have a study from Beitinger in 2006 with all trade routes and in Hessen you have two old routes that are well known. It's the Anzandija and the Altusvex, so you have the Callout in red and orange. They're well known in the antiquity and they're probably going back to Iron Age and maybe Bronze Age and I completed a map with two sites. I was excavating in our projects the Kleinberg and Stahlberg and this way the Anzavija is as well running down to this hill, so maybe it could have been also a point why they chose to have a fortification there. So after this really short overview, I'm just reminding some points about the session because Leonhard already presented you a bit, so we have today seven blocks. The first one is about theory and then we are going Parisian clockwise from west to east, from us to the Mediterranean Sea. We have 19 papers and we are talking about 12 countries. About the organization of the day, so as you know we have a coffee break at 10 and one at four and then a lunch break at one and please for the speaker be on time because it's a long day, we have a lot of people to hear, so maximum 15 minutes. We have the marks, we will use them and keep your question for the discussion slots. Yes, thank you. So thank you very much for joining our session.


from theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. Hi, everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of theCUBE and this is our wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's digital think experience for 2020. We're really excited to have Jerry Cuomo on. He's the vice president of blockchain technologies and an IBM fellow and longtime CUBE alum. Jerry, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. I wish we were face-to-face, but this'll do. Good to see you too. Yes, thanks for having me. So we've been talking a lot. I've been talking, I've been running a CEO series. Of course, a lot of the interviews around IBM Think are focused on COVID-19. But I wonder if you could start off by just talking a little bit about blockchain. Why blockchain? Why now? Especially in the context of this pandemic. Dave, it's as if we've been working out in the gym, but not knowing why we needed to be fit. And I know now why we need to be fit. Blockchain is coming just in time with the trust factor and the preserving privacy factor. The way we move forward and the world is now becoming more digital than ever. People working from home, the reliance on online services is critical. And our ability to work as a community of companies to share data is critical. And blockchain brings a magical ingredient and that's the ingredient of trust. In sharing data, if that data and the sources that are providing that data are confirmed, verified and trusted, we're more likely to use that data. And any friction that's caused from fear or trepidation that the data is going to be misused goes back to go away. And when that happens, you speed up an exchange and we need speed, time is of the essence. So blockchain brings a platform for trusted data exchange while preserving privacy. And that provides a foundation to do some amazing things in this time of crisis. Right, and it's not only trust, it's also expediency and cutting out a lot of the red tape. And I want to talk about some of the applications you're heavily involved in the Distributed Ledger project, one of the early leads on that. Talk about some of the ways in which you're applying that Distributed Ledger and let's go into some of the examples. So we're really fortunate to be an early adopter of blockchain and provider of blockchain technology and kind of the fruit of that, as I said, couldn't happen any sooner where we have, I would say over a thousand users using IBM blockchain which is powered by the open source hyperledger fabric. But I'd say over a hundred of those users have reached the level of production networks. And it's been great to see some of the proprietors of those networks now repurpose the networks towards hastening the relief of COVID. And one, a couple of examples that stand out Dave, you've seen what's happening to our supply chain. And I think we got some rebound happening as we speak, but companies all of a sudden woke up one morning and their supply chains were exhausted. So suppliers were out of key goods and the buyers needed very rapidly to expand the suppliers in their supply chain. And there are laws and regulations about what it takes to onboard a new supplier. You want to make sure you're not onboarding bad actors. So in IBM, for example, we have over 20,000 suppliers to our business and it takes 30 to 40 days to validate and verify one of those suppliers. We don't have 30 to 45 days. Like, think about you're a healthcare company or a food company. So working with a partner called ChainYard, we've co-created a network called Trust Your Supplier. And we've been able to repurpose Trust Your Supplier now for companies that are looking around COVID-19 to rapidly expand their supply chain. So if you imagine it taking us 45 days or 40 days to onboard a new supplier, pick a company in our supply chain, Lenovo. That supplier may very well want to go to Lenovo too and provide services to them. Well, guess what? It's going to take 40 days to onboard to Lenovo. But if they're part of the Trust Your Supplier network and they've already onboarded to IBM, they're well on their way to being visible to all of these other buyers that are part of the IBM network, like Lenovo and many others. And instead of taking 40 days, maybe it only takes five days, right? So radically, radically improving the time it takes. And with companies like Ford making ventilators and masks, you're going to be able to onboard Ford into healthcare companies. But we want to be able to do it with speed. So Trust Your Supplier is a great use of blockchain to expand a buyer and supplier's exposure and expand their network to quickly onboard. And with the trust that you get in exchanging data from blockchain with the provenance that, hey, this company information was truly vetted by one of the trusted members of the network. There's no fear or trepidation that somehow these records were tampered with or misused. So that's one example, Dave, of using blockchain. That's a huge example that you gave because you're right. There are thousands and thousands of companies that are pivoting to making, like you said, ventilators and masks. And they're moving so fast and there's got to be a trust involved. I mean, on the one hand, they're moving fast to try to save their businesses or in the case of Ford, helps save the country or the world. On the other hand, there's risks there. So that helps. I want to understand Mipasa because basically, if I understand it, you can privately share information on folks that are asymptomatic but might be carriers of COVID-19. Am I getting that right on? So Mipasa starts as a project from a company called Hasera and their CEO, Jonathan Levy. And among other things, Jonathan Levy is an amazing software developer and he's helped us and the community at large build the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology. That's part of IBM, that powers IBM blockchain. So Jonathan had this idea because what was happening is there were many data sources from the very popular and well-known Johns Hopkins source and we have information coming from the weather company. There are other governments putting out data. Jonathan had this idea of a verified data hub. So how do we bring that information together in a hub where a developer can now get access to not just one feed, but many feeds knowing that both the data is in a normalized format. So that's easy to consume. And if you're consuming 10 different data sources, you don't have to think about 10 different ways to interact it, kind of normalizing it through a fewer like maybe one, but also that we really authentically know that this is the World Health Organization. This is indeed John Hopkins. So we have that trust. So with Mipasa being a data hub for verified information related to the coronavirus, really laying a foundation now for a new class of application that can mash up information to create new insights, perhaps applying artificial intelligence, machine learning to really look not just at any one of those data sources, but now look across data sources and start to make some informed decision, to say operate with the lights on and with certainty that the information is correct. So Mipasa is that foundation and we have a call for code happening that IBM is hosting for developers to come out and bring their best ideas forward and we're exposing Mipasa as a service to the, in this hackathon so that developers can bring some of their best ideas and kind of help those best ideas come alive with Mipasa as a resource. That's great. So we got the supply chain, we just get to share Mipasa. The other one that I think we can all relate to is the secure key authentication, which I love. Maybe you can explain that and talk about the role that blockchain, where blockchain fits. Right, so there is people working from home and this digital identity verification is key. Think about it, you're working remotely, you're using tools like Zoom. There's a huge spike in calls and online requests from telehealth or government benefit programs. So this is all happening and everything behind the scenes is around that is is this user who they say they are? Is this doctor who they say they are, et cetera? And there are gams and frauds out there. So working with speed means working with certainty and what the verified mean network set out to do a couple of years ago. And the beautiful part is, it's ready to go now for this particular usage. It's been using, basically think about it as my identity is my identity and I get to lease out information to different institutions to use it for my benefit, not necessarily just for their benefit. So it's almost like digital rights management, like if you put out a digital piece of art or music, you can control the rights who gets to use it, what's the terms and conditions on your terms. So verified me allows through a mobile app, users to invite institutions to represent and verify them to them. And so I'll allow my department of motor vehicle and my employer to verify me because I want to go back to work sooner. And I want to make sure of my work environment, I'm making this up, I want to make sure of my work environment that people have been tested and vaccinated, but I don't want to necessarily kind of abuse people's privacy. So I'll opt in, I'll share that information, I'll get my doctor and my department of motor vehicle to say, yes, this is Jerry, he's from this address. Yes, he's been vaccinated. And now I can kind of onboard to services much quicker, whether that service is going through TSA to get on an airplane, badging back into my office or signing on to a telemedicine service or government benefits program, et cetera. So verify me is using this self attestation through a mobile application to help speed up the process of knowing that that is truly you and you truly want this service. And you are also calling the shop as to then what happens with your information that it's not spread all over the interweb, it's under your control at all times, right? So I think it's the best of all worlds. When the National Institute for Standards and Technology looked at verified me, they're like, oh my gosh, this is like the perfect storm of goodness for identity. They actually coined it, oh, it has a term, it's called triple blind data exchange. It sounds like a magical act, but triple blind data exchange means the requester doesn't know who the provider is unless the requester allows the provider to know. The provider doesn't know who the requester, requester doesn't know who the provider is that is double blind. And then the network provider doesn't know either, right? But somehow trust is formed and that's the magic of blockchain allowing that to happen. And with that, we can move forward knowing we're sharing information where it matters without the risk of it leaking out to places we don't want it to. So great application of secure key and verified me. Yeah, I love that and the whole concept of being able to control your own data. You hear so much today about testing and contact tracing using mobile technology to do that, but big privacy concerns have always felt like blockchain for so many applications in healthcare or just being able to, as you say, control your own data. I want to better understand the technology behind this. When I think about blockchain, I obviously think about cryptography, you've mentioned developers a number of times, there's software engineering, this concept of a distributed ledger. I mean, there's game theory in the cryptocurrency world. We're not talking about that, but there's the confluence of these technologies. Come on, do that. What's the technology underneath these applications that you're talking about? There is an open source organization called Hyperledger. It's part of the Linux foundation. They're the gold standard and open source, openly governed technology. And early on in 2015, 2016, we got involved, started contributing code and developers to Hyperledger Fabric, which is the industry's first permissioned blockchain technology, permission, meaning members are accountable to the network versus Bitcoin where members are anonymous. And to pass industry regulations, you can't be anonymous, you have to be accountable. And it's not to say that you can't work privately. So you're accountable, but transactions in the network only get shared with those that have a need to know. So the foundation is Hyperledger Fabric and IBM has a commercial offering called the IBM blockchain platform that embodies that kind of is a commercial distribution of Hyperledger Fabric plus a set of advanced tools to make it really easy to work with the open source. All the networks that I talked about are operating their network across the worldwide IBM public cloud. And so cloud technology plays a really big part of blockchain because blockchains are networks. Our technology, IBM blockchain platform runs really well in the IBM cloud, but it also allows you to run anywhere, right? Or like to say where it matters most. So you may have companies running blockchain nodes in the IBM cloud. You may have others running it on their own premises behind their firewall. You might have others running in Amazon or in Microsoft Azure, right? So we use, you may have heard of Red Hat, OpenShift, the container technology so that we can run parts of a blockchain network. Like I said, where they matter most and you get strength in a blockchain network based on the diversity of the operators because if it was all operated by one operator, there would be a chance maybe that there can be some collusion happening. But now if you can run it across different geographies across the IBM cloud. So all those three networks all run on, use this technology, all run on the IBM cloud. And Dave, one more thing. If you look at these applications, they're just modern applications. They're mobile front ends, they're web portals and all of that kind of stuff. The blockchain part of these applications usually is only 20% of the overall endeavor that those companies are going through. The other 80% is business as usual. I'm building a modern cloud application. So what we're doing in IBM with Red Hat, with OpenShift, with our cloud packs which brings various enterprise software across different disciplines and domains like integration, application, data, security. All of those things come together to fill the other 80% above and beyond blockchain. So these three companies like 99 plus others are building applications as modern cloud applications that leverage this blockchain technology. So you don't have to be a cryptographer or a distributed database expert. It's all embodied in this code available on the IBM cloud. 29 cents of CPU hours is approximately the price. So it's quite affordable and that's what we've delivered. Well, the thing about that, that last point about the cloud is it allows organizations, enterprises to experiment very cheaply. And so they can get an MVP out or approve a concept out very quickly, very cheaply and then iterate extremely quickly. That to me is the real benefit of the cloud here and the pricing model. And Dave, as I said when I started, it's like we were working out in a gym but we weren't quite sure why we were so keen on getting fit. And what I see now is this blossoming of users who are looking at, we thought we understood digital transformation, but there's a whole new need to be digitized right now. We're probably not going to be jumping on planes and trains working as more intimately as we were face to face. So the need for new digital applications that link people together, we're seeing so many use cases from trade finance to food safety to proxy voting for stock. All of these applications that were kind of moving along at a normal speed have been hyper accelerated because of the crisis we're in. So blockchain couldn't come any sooner. You know, I want to ask you as a technologist, I've learned over the years there's a lot of ways to skin a cat. Could you do the types of things that you're talking about without blockchain? I'm sure there are ways, but why is blockchain sort of the right path? Dave, you can certainly do things with databases, but if you want the trust, it's as simple as this. A database traditionally has a single administrator that sets the rules up for when a transaction comes in what it takes to commit that transaction. And if the rules are met, the transaction is committed. The database administrator has access to commands like delete and update. So at some level, you can never be 100% sure that that data was the data that was intended in there. With a blockchain, there's multiple administrators to the ledger. So ledger is distributed and shared across multiple administrators. When a transaction is submitted, it is first proposed to those administrators. A process of consent happens, and then and only then when the majority of the group agrees that it's a valid transaction, is it committed? And when it's committed, it's committed in a way that's cryptographically linked to other transactions in the ledger, making it tamper-proof, right? Or very difficult to tamper with. And unlike databases, blockchains are appended only so they don't have update and delete commands. So if you really want that center of trusted data that is attested, that has checks and balances across different organizations, blockchain is the key to do it. So could you do it in a database? Yes, but you have to trust that central organization. And for many applications, that's just fine. But if we want to move quickly, we really want to share systems of record. Sharing a system of record, you have regulatory obligations. You can say, sorry, the record was wrong, but it was put in there by this other company. Well, they'll say, well, nice for the other company, but sorry, you're the one in trouble. So with a blockchain, we have to bring assurances that we can't get into that kind of situation, right? So that shared distributed database that is kind of provides this tamper-resistant audit log becomes the kernel of trust. And then with the privacy preservation that you get from encryption and privacy techniques like we have, like these things called channels, you can transact and be accountable, but also only share transactions with those that have a need to know, right? So you get that level of privacy in there. And that combination of trust and privacy is the secret sauce that makes blockchain unique and quite timely for this. So check it out. I mean, on the IBM cloud, it's effortless to get up and running, building a cloud native application with blockchain. And if you're used to doing things on other clouds or back at the home base, we have the IBM blockchain software, which you can deploy via OpenShift anywhere. So we have what you need in a time of need. And as a technologist, again, you're being really, I think honest and careful about the word tamper, you call it tamper-resistant. And if I understand it that, I mean, obviously you can fish for somebody's credentials. That's one thing. But if I understand it that more than 50% of the peers in the community must agree to tamper in order for the system to be tampered. And that is the beauty of blockchain and the brilliance of blockchain. And for performance reasons, we've created optimizations, like you can set a consensus policy up because maybe one transaction, it's okay just to have a couple of people agree. I say, oh, well, out of the 100 nodes, if three agree, it's good enough. But other policies may be more stringent depending on the nature of the data and the transaction. So you can tune that in based on the class of transactions. So it's kind of good. And that's how we can get performance levels in the thousand plus, in fact, IBM and RBC recently did a series of performance analysis because RBC said, hey, could I use this for some of my bank to bank exchanges? And we need to support over 1,000 transactions per second. They were able in their use case to support over 3,000 transactions per second. So, we were very encouraged by that. I'm glad you clarified that because essentially you're saying you can risk adjust the policies, if you will. You can pile them down. That's great to know. I could go on forever on this topic, but unfortunately, Jerry, we're well over our time, but I want to thank you for coming back on theCUBE and explaining this important topic. I'm thrilled that IBM has taken a leadership position here. And I think, to your point, this pandemic is just going to accelerate a lot of things and blockchain is, in my view anyway, one of them. Thank you, Dave. Oh, great questions and I really appreciate it.  All right, thank you, Jerry. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, our coverage of the IBM Think Digital 2020 event. We'll be right back for this short break.


Hello everyone, this is Amit Dan of amitdan.com today. I'll show you how to set up a practical Work from home workstation, which doesn't cost five ten thousand dollars and you can do everything below six hundred dollars I'll give you a brief rundown of how much these items Cost so let's start with the chair, which is the most vital part of any work from home or workstation Set up so you can spend you know infinite amount money on a chair Basically thousands of dollars, but you don't need that. So the chair you're looking at this is around hundred fifty dollars or lower And you can get it for any stores, you know, which sell chair So I'll just you know count this as hundred fifty dollars But the important part that if you're getting a chair make sure to get a lumber support Which you're looking at and then a cushion support Which you're looking at these are not expensive and they have to be they should be you know orthopedic With the memory foam so each of these item is thirty dollars Which is the cushion support and then here is the lumber support and then if you are coming to the desk and then the basic desk would cost us somewhere around Hundred dollars, but you can definitely spend, you know, thousands of dollars in mechanical desks Which would rise or you can make it lower Mechanically by like you know putting power on but you don't really need that You can get a basic desk for below hundred dollars, but I'll just you know count this as hundred dollars and then You're going to be needing a keyboard and mouse set Wireless would be better that would keep your you know desk or workstation clutter free And it's much easier to handle or work when you have not worse hanging around And or you know getting on your way to move the mouse or keyboard.  So now next thing is the monitor So monitor you can get a fairly you know nice monitor for hundred fifty dollars or lower And this is a 21.5 inch monitor. It just works fine, but You can spend you know thousands of dollars on big monitors or fancy monitors I don't see I don't think you need that for home office setup So just keep it to a basic monitor and you know hundred hundred fifty dollars should be good enough And then if your monitor doesn't you know go up then just definitely get a monitor riser Which would be around $20 and it would lift up the monitor from your desk to you know match it with your eye level and then You can get a lamp lamp or LED desk lamp, which is very cheap About $30 and then you can get a mouse Pad if you wish this is around $20, but you don't have to but I just put it to protect my you know desk so and it gives A good look to the whole environment and then I'm not going to give you the price of the laptop because most likely most of you have a laptop or computer if you're trying to set up a workstation or Work from home a station. So I just excluded the cost of the laptop. So All these if you have them up basically the chair the Monitor the desk and then the keyboard the cushion support lumber support everything Then they come up to below six hundred dollars. So basically that's the cost you're gonna be looking at if you want to set up a basic Workstation or work from home a station. So this workstation actually would work for anyone whether you're working For your office or you either you're working for your own YouTube or website or anything So you don't need to spend, you know, five thousand ten thousand dollars to set up a fancy workstation I just do you know show people and You know, I just put the on YouTube to show people that, you know, you made it or you have you can spend that much money I don't see it's unnecessary. So that's what it what I wanted to Show you today and you know, this workstation setup works perfectly for me and You know, I have no problem I have the support I need and I have the like, you know, instruments and it and I can do everything Around five six hundred dollars excluding the laptop or computer So if you need to set this up, you know, you can get all these items on Computer stores or on Amazon for very cheap. I do not provide any affiliated links because of you know I do not try to make money off you by provide affiliated links or like in a bad diffuse So for that reason, there will not be any affiliated links of these items anywhere But you know, you can easily find all these items on Amazon or staples or any other computer stores or any other just type of stores who sell computer and furniture stops So that's all I wanted to talk today Thank you for watching this video. Forget about subscribing to this channel.  So I'll see you shortly. Thank you