Hello everyone, thanks for tuning in to our talk about our work with the title Let's Take It Offline, boosting brute force attacks on iPhones user authentication through a side channel analysis, which was a collaborative work together with my colleagues at the Ruh University Bochum, namely Olexi Lisowitz, Thorben Most and Amir Muradi. Okay, now, what is the work all about? In today's work, the smartphone became the most important device in our everyday life. We store all our pictures on it, we use it as a credit card, we are monitoring more and more health data with it, and basically all our communication is done and stored on the small device in our pocket. Here, the iPhone is one of the most widespread and popular smartphones with a market share of 14% in the first quarter of 2020. If you don't have one of these, don't one yourself, you will definitely know someone with an iPhone. So, as a result, it is definitely an interesting target for practical security analysis. And although there is vivid research ongoing with software exploits and new vulnerabilities being published quite frequently, there is very little research done on implementation attacks. So, we asked ourselves, what about physical attacks? In particular, side channel attacks, are they feasible on such compact architectures and what benefit can an adversary gain compared to software exploits? As a first step, we needed to figure out what iPhone model we want to consider. For this, we have two main requirements. The first requirement, which is actually a requirement which is necessary in order to perform a power side channel attack, is electrical access to the crypto hardware engine. So basically, we need to be able to communicate with the engine and trigger an arbitrary amount of encryption with chosen data. To do so, we needed to be able to run arbitrary code on the application processor of the iPhone, which can be achieved through software exploits. As we did not want to focus on finding new software exploit, and as it is very hard to come up with new ones, we needed a model where those are publicly available. The other requirement is that, as there is not really related research available in this direction, as a first step, the device should not be protected with advanced countermeasures against power side channel analysis. As we expected Apple to have applied those for newer devices, we decided to go with a rather old iPhone series. For the iPhone 4, both these requirements were fulfilled. As there already exists a public boot ROM exploit, we could leverage to gain electrical access to the crypto engine, which is to be more precise an AES engine. So yeah, we decided to start our research on Apple's iPhone 4. Let's now take a closer look of what hardware-fused, secret keys are stored on the iPhone 4. So what could we try to extract? And the two main relevant keys are the so-called group identifier key. The GID and the use identifier key, the UID, which are both 256-bit keys for the AES engine. The GID key is the same for all processors in the class of devices and is used for software encryption of the system. The UID key, on the other hand, is unique for every device and is used for user authentication and for encrypting and decrypting data. For these are the main two keys we were initially interested to recover. So as we learn, the UID is used for user authentication, so this might be an interesting target to recover. But what exactly do we gain from extracting the UID? To understand this, let's first take a brief look at how the user authentication works for the iPhone. As can be seen here, the user enters her or his passcode, which is then entangled with the UID key to derive another key. This derived key is then used to decrypt or unwrap the so-called class keys, which are in turn used for data decryption. Deriving the key for unwrapping the class key is done by a custom KDF. The important thing here is that the AES engine is invoked recursively with the passcode as an initial input and the UID key as the key for the AES. The described process has two implications. If A binds the passcode search to a single device, and the UID key is burned into a silicon and the UID is unique for every device, and B, as the duration count of how often the AES is invoked, is set to a number such that every passcode guest takes 80 milliseconds on device boot for search of the passcode is slow. For the iPhone 4, this results in an iteration count of 50,000. Note that a further measure to prevent boot for search attacks is an increasing time interval between subsequent passcode inputs. This is a solely software-based restriction, which can already be bypassed by existing software ploys. So extracting the UID key would not have any benefit here. So what would be the advantage of extracting the key? Knowing the UID key effectively decouples the passcode search from the single performance with straight iPhone. Having the key in hand, an adversary can run the passcode search on an arbitrary amount of arbitrary hardware in parallel, which enables the search at much larger scale. So how would an attack scenario look like? The adversary maliciously gains access to the iPhone 4 of the victim. The adversary then downloads the system key back from the device and utilizes existing software exploits to gain overkill access to the AES engine. To extract the 256-bit UID key, a classical CPA is performed. Removing the UID key in hand, the adversary can now perform a bootforce attack of the passcode on a large scale, for example on several GPUs in parallel. Note that the validation of a passcode candidate is done by checking whether unwrapping the class key succeeds or fails, which is basically a former check on the decrypted data. Afterwards, so at the end, the adversary can boot the system regularly and access the iPhone and all its personal data. Let's dive into the details of the attack a bit more, meaning how can the before-described signal steps be performed. So let's assume we already downloaded the system key back from the device and we now want to talk to the AES engine by running code on the application processor. For this, we start the iPhone and DFU mode, which can be entered by pressing a certain button combination during the boot process. After we enter DFU mode, we use the publicly known shatter exploit to disable signature checks in the boot world. Afterwards, we transfer a patched first stage bootloader, where again, signature checks are disabled before we transfer a second stage bootloader, which enables us to jump at the defined address where we can put data over USB. Now, at this address, we can then upload our measurement payload, where we talk to the AES engine and send chosen data. This is the first requirement for performing our CPA to extract the secret UID key. Now we have our measurement payload uploaded to the device. As the first step, and because of the simplicity of the required setup, we decided to perform EM measurements. Hence, we next needed access to the application processor and we needed a trigger that triggers in constant time distance to the encryption. For that purpose, we disassembled the iPhone to expose the CPU and use the volume down button as an interface for the trigger. So we removed the button and connected a wire to have a low latency interface to the CPU's GPIO, which we then could drive through a measurement payload. Eventually, instead of using the battery, we supplied the phone by an external power supply. So what are the crucial functionalities we implement for our measurement payload, which is executed in a second stage bootloader? To sum up, the query encryption and decryption of chosen plaintext or ciphertext, we chose a key slot for the AES. There are actually three slots, a slot for the UID key, a slot for the GID key, and a custom key slot, where we can give a chosen key to the AES engine. And eventually, we drive the exposed GPIO pin to high and low through memory map IO to trigger the measurement of the oscilloscope. So yeah, we basically have everything we need to perform our first measurements for the CPA. So how is the targeted application processor structured? The iPhone 4 uses Apple's A4 SoC, which provides a 32-bit ARM V7A clock at 800 MHz frequency. Luckily, there's already pretty extensive work done on reverse-engineering the CPU structure by Chipworks and iFixit, which can be found when following the link under the shown picture. The important point here is that the RAM is located directly on top of the CPU. In the picture, the CPU is a centered rectangle, and the RAM dies are the two rectangles on top. So removing the packaging to directly access the chip surface is impossible, and the only way to go is to measure on top or in close proximity to the packaged CPU. Of course, this way we do not expect to capture any local emanation of the engine itself, but more like emanations of the overall power distribution network. For collecting our EM traces, we use the Radio Frequency Pro by Langer EMV, which is able to capture frequencies from 30 MHz to 3 GHz. We further amplified the signal by a 30 dB amplifier and finally captured the traces with a Lecroy Rave Runner with 2.5 GHz bandwidth and sampling at 40 GHz per second. So yeah, this is the equipment used for our experiments. So we use this equipment and as a first step collected some EM traces when placing the probe close to the CPU. An overlap of 500 EM traces can be seen in the picture on the left-hand side, where we can directly identify a heavy misalignment of the traces, which complicates any further statistical analysis. This strong misalignment was present although we already established a low latency interface to the CPU for treating the oscilloscope and we configured the measurement mode to run on a single threaded core in bootloader context. This actually implies that the code running on the CPU core does not work synchronously either with the IO co-pressors or with the IO peripherals. As a result, we needed to align the captured traces. Here we identified that the misalignment often appears in groups, meaning there are several traces shifted by the same offset. As a first step, we unified these groups by coarse-align them so the strongest peaks overlap. Afterwards, a more fine-grained alignment to a reference trace was done. Here, the offset was computed by means of the minimal Euclidean distance between two traces. Even after this more fine-grained alignment, we had some outliers in the traces which we needed to filter out losing around 20% of the measured traces. The result, after aligning and filtering, can be seen on the right-hand side of the picture. As a note, we actually did not expect any leakage during the strong peaks, so we adjusted the y-range to gain a better resolution of the points where we expected leakage. The next step was to identify a good power model to compute hypothetical power models for performing a CPA. As we can select the custom key as input to the AES engine, we could try different power models and test them for good correlation between hypothetical power values on the one side and actual power values on the other. We assumed the AES engine to be fast, and it should be possible to change keys frequently. As a consequence, we went for a round-based architecture as it offers a good trade-off between speed and area throughput, which can be seen here. Considering the description was an ad hoc choice, and once we chose it, we went for it during all our experiments. After trying different power models, we identified the best-fitting power model was the hamming distance between two 128-bit round states of the decryption, so the transition occurring at the depicted register. Since we found a good power model for a fixed position of the probe, we wanted to try different positions and test which position works best under the given power model. For this, we performed a scan over the complete CPU by dividing the area into a 25 times 25 grid. And for each point of the grid, collect in 150,000 DM traces. The heat map of the maximum correlation over the grid can be seen in the right-hand picture. Here, we can identify clear peaks, and with this, we were able to identify the best-fitting position for performing our attacks. So now we get to the fun part, namely the actual attack. Of course, the 128-bit model was not the well-fitted model for performing an actual attack, as you would have too much complexity in the key guess. So we need to further reduce the power model and actually found out through further analysis that we could also only consider transitions at byte chunks of the 128-bit round state register while retaining good enough correlation with the actual power values. This enabled us to guess and verify bytes of the last round key individually. As the A4 chip features a 256-bit AS engine, we have to repeat the attack to the previous round transition, meaning from round 13 to 14. After recovering the last 120-bit round key and using this to recover the previous 120-bit round key, again in a byte-wise divide-and-conquer fashion. Having two consecutive round keys, we can simply compute the main key by means of the key schedule. Here we can see the CPA results for exemplary key bytes of the two last 128-bit round keys when the AS runs with a UID key. Each figure shows the graph of the maximum correlation over the number of traces considered and this for every 256 key candidates. The white key candidate is marked in black. As you can see, we need a high number of traces to recover these bytes. For some key bytes, we need 30 million traces and for others, 270 million traces. For the recovery of the last two round keys and hence the whole 256-bit UID was possible with 300 million traces in total. We did also recover the GID key which resulted in similar results and similar numbers of traces needed for recovery. The reason for needing such a large amount of traces is assumed to be due to a bad signal, meaning a low signal aptitude and a high noise level as we could not place the probe close to the CPU surface. They could also be implemented in dedicated countermeasures against side-signal attacks here. As we needed a high number of traces for recovering the UID when using EM traces and we anyway assumed to only capture emanation of the overall power distribution network and no local effects, we wondered whether a classical power measurement would work any better. Here we placed a one old shunt resistor in the VED pass of the core power supply of the A4 processor. The power supply for the CPU is generated on the PCB by a bug converter from the main power supply. We effectively cut the power supply open by removing the inductors of the bug converters as can be seen in the top figure. We then remove the capacitor on the bottom picture which we previously identified as a smoothing capacitor and powered the CPU at 1.35 volt by connecting the three pads to an external power supply. In the same path, we inserted the shunt resistor, removing the DC shifts by means of a DC blocker and amplified the sickness with AC amplifier. The auxiliary board for that purpose can be seen in this figure. Now we were able to measure the AC voltage fluctuation over the CPU. Again, results for two exemplary round keys are shown in the white-hand figures. For recovering the complete key we needed up to 200 million traces which is slightly more effective than the EM measurements but not drastically. Problematic here was that in the captured war traces we could not identify any communication or IO peaks in the traces and we had to perform our analysis hence without any pre-processing in this case. Now that we have extracted the UID key we can perform the offline passcode recovery by means of a group force search. For this we implemented the following steps. First, we passed the system key back. Second, we generated and pre-processed a batch of passcodes. The pre-processing involves taking the arbitrary length passcode and run PVKDF2 to compress it to a sequence of 32 bytes. Third, Apple's custom KDF is executed to derive a batch of keys which are candidates for unwrapping class keys from the system key back. Finally, each key of the batch is validated by trying to unlock the class keys from the system key back following the standard RFC 3394. If unwrapping the class key works we found the bypass code. We implemented the second and the third step to run parallelized on multiple GPUs using a bit-sized implementation of AES for the third step. So what do we gain compared to a non-device brute force search? As already mentioned, the significant advantage of our approach is that once we have the UID key extracted through a CPA we can scale the search to multiple GPUs. On the left hand side you can see our initial results performed on multiple NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Here, for example, for an 11-digit numeric pin a brute force would take several lifetypes on device. Whereas with an offline brute force search on 8 RTX 2080 it takes only roughly a month. Meanwhile, thanks to the HashCAD team the offline brute force search on GPUs could be improved significantly. A 10-digit pin could now be guessed in around 6 hours on 8 Radeon RX Vegaal 64. HashCAD even provided a cool demo of their plugin for offline brute force search which can be found under the given link. Now, as the iPhone 4 is a rather outdated model it is an interesting question when our consideration also can be applied to newer models. And for the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5C our attack can be tried without major modification. For gaining code execution and querying encryption to the AES we could simply use the checkmate exploit instead of the cheddar exploit. From the 5S onwards the situation changes. Here Apple introduced the secure enclave processor, the SAP which has its own AES and UID key and which is used in the authentication process. So we would need code execution not only on the application processor but on the SAP as well. Here for the 5S, the 6, the 6S, the 7, the 8 and the X there already exist known vulnerabilities and for the iPhone 7 there's even a public available tool to gain code execution on the SAP. We like to mention that we already started research on the iPhone 7 and will hopefully soon see whether it is also possible for this series. And was it worth it? We showed that an SCA can be performed in a compact architecture like an Apple iPhone. By extracting the UID key we showed that passcode search can be accelerated dramatically. The only drawback is that the considered iPhone 4 is a rather old model. But the research community can anyway take our work as proof of concept and guidance for analysis of more up-to-date series. Finally, we would like to thank Apple for their support and kind communication during our work. Thanks for following this talk. And yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. You can contact either Olexi, Tom, Amir or me. And yeah, feel free any time to reach out. Thanks.


Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Amy. Good morning, dear. Good. It's Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th. Yeah, I wanted to be the thumbnail. I was going to put up pictures of us and then. I can't remember the name of the character, but they're like the hockey mask on. And then I got worried about DMA strikes. Yeah, never. Oh, what's that? You're wearing your new office swag. Oh, yeah. See what I got doing on that? Well, at least you're wearing it right side front. What are you talking about? Oh, you haven't seen that post? We have a teammate that decided to take a picture with his shirt and. Oh, and we love you. Yes, you put that on Twitter and I just had to realize you're wearing it backwards, right? The tag hitting your throat. We love you, or on your special special. Hey, we've already got a few people online. We got Anthony Bartolo. He's currently in Seattle. So 7 a.m. Good for you, Anthony, to be up that early. Also, Mr. Shockley. That's also at 7 a.m. One man. People get up early in the West Coast. Crazy. And. Rabbit Junior is here and there's probably going to be some more that are going to join us anytime soon. Oh, what did you think about the listing of updates for this week? It's pretty thin, wasn't it?  Oh, yeah, it's kind of hard to find some stuff. I think it's I'm wondering whether or not it has anything to do with the fact that well, it's probably has anything to do with the fact that build is in what, two weeks? And everybody's kind of like sitting on their news waiting to figure out how they were going to put them on on the on the day of or. Oh, your mind. Yeah, I think all the orange comments. Yeah. Oh, Mr. Bender is joining us from LinkedIn. Hey, good morning, Mr. Bender. Yeah, this was my Christmas present by the way, too. It was came in. That's right. That was a little care package from our illustrious leader, Mr. Rick Claus. That and a oh, we had a really nice water bottle. Yeah. Yeah. With the twenty twenty two. Yeah. The hydro flask. Adroflask. Yes. And I had mine for about 10 minutes. Mm hmm. And my daughter is. Ooh, hydro flask gone. Any cool stuff. All my stickers are gone by my 10 year olds. Well, I got a pile of them here if they if she wants more. Sure. They raccoons mean come on. Hey, and that's one thing about in person events slowly starting back is that there's going to be more swag. I am a swag. What's the right term because, you know, you don't want to swag. Enthusiast. Enthusiast. Yes. That's one word for it. I am not. I go to conferences and I I don't I'll go to the booth and I'll talk to the partners and I'll talk to the people there. But I do not typically grab on any of the swag unless they have some really cool shirts. But right. Yeah, I'm with Derek. Everyone loves swag. Well, I yeah, I would have co-workers like you who are like, nah, and then I get something really cool.  I'm like, no, you go stand in line. Get your own. Get your own. Lots of swag for a magic. Lots of swag event. Yeah, because Anthony right now was supposed to present with me at an event we had this week. I tech conference in Toronto. But what is called back to the mothership to help with the Imagine Cup and I believe it's the 20th anniversary of the Imagine Cup, which is a really cool contest worldwide where each city for students University in colleges where they actually make a project leveraging the technology and they have to pitch it and it's actually really cool the way they do it. And then each winner of each country gets to Seattle to compete for for the Imagine Cup. So Anthony is there with the students right now. It should be I'm looking forward to hear from about it and see what the solutions that these people came up with. Yeah, should be cool. Definitely. All right, let's hide this. Well, we don't have a lot of news today, but we do have some so do you want to get going? I guess so. All right. So I believe the first one is mine, which is the Azure Compute Gallery now supports Trusted Launch Virtual Machine. So Trusted Launch Virtual Machines are a it's just a regular VM mostly for Gen 2 of the VMs and they have virtual TPMs. They have secure boots installed. They have like a whole bunch of different technology, which you can deploy on their own, but all together they make this this machine is what we call Trusted Launch. It's to protect form from like root kits and the type of malware that would normally embed itself in like right in the root in the kernel of the machine and that makes that machine a bit more secure. There are some drawbacks though. So there's some services that you can't do like you can't replicate a Trusted Machine as it's running apparently. So they if you'll go to the documentation or if you go to itopstock.com I listed a put a link in today's post about what the requirements are and what the prerequisites and so on. But it's really cool, especially if you're in an environment that requires that level of security. If you're an environment where your workloads are specifically sensitive, then getting a machine that is trusted with the Trusted Launch is a good idea. But now because of that in the gallery you can actually create your own images from a Trusted Launch Machine and use them and share them within your subscription or your tenant so that other people in your group, whether they'd be developers or others or maybe it's just part of a continuous deployment program where instead of having a blank image and then having to install everything you can have your own images made specifically for your workloads and call them up and deploy them at a moment's notice but through the portal through PowerShell or CLI as normal. So I think it's pretty cool. I'm kind of looking forward to the day where all of our machines are trusted the Trusted Launch. I see that as something that should be done by default but I recognize this on limitation in terms of hardware that it has to run on in terms of the virtual TPM chips and so on that allocated to each of those VMs. At least by default we start turning off like PIPs and you know RDP and you have to enable it and you know when you are deploying so we try to encourage. RDP is not turned on but they're not turned off by default and oh okay.  Well yeah because you're using one of our the Microsoft managed and so there's a policy for governance to not expose RDP which is a good thing. Yeah. I have a demo subscription that's outside of MSIT control because sometimes if you want to demo something that is blocked by Corp if we're not owners or because we're not admins of the subscription so they kind of block some stuff out. But this week I had this demo and I set up these machines and Rod I don't know if Rod is looking but is watching but it'll be happy that I was demoing how you can surface all of these machines in AWS and on-prem through Azure Arc and then apply other services so how to make your on-prem your on-prem experience better by using cloud services and I demoed Sentinel and it picked up that one of my machine was being brutally attacked on port on the RDP port through 389 because I had forgotten to turn it off. I just deployed a bunch of machines and then join them and so I could see in Sentinel like and where the attack are coming from. And funny enough they weren't coming from the places that you would normally think they're coming. They were coming from Oregon. Weird. I hear something like 12-year-old in Oregon. Maybe trying to get into a machine that has absolutely nothing on it. It's just an empty VM running. I'm a hacker. I'm hacking Microsoft. Yeah, we're going to fight you. I almost I need to get my Liam Neeson voice. Yeah. And I'm not going to do anything of the time. All right. So what is your item this morning? I believe do I need Oh, you got it. Okay, cool. Generally available now is Azure Arc enabled servers have support for private endpoints. So we already have that private link available where you don't have to go over the interwebs. You know, it's all private and now you can actually create endpoints to connect to as well. So using your VPN or express route, you can securely talk to endpoints and put them on your I think it's per service. If you go to the link in there, it goes over how to, you know, how to deploy it using a VM extension and then how it works. If you have your Azure Arc private link scope, you can connect your private endpoints to an Azure resource. And in this case, it's Azure Arc enabled servers. And then you can looks like. Yeah, the private endpoint in your Vnet allows it to reach Azure Arc enabled server endpoints through private IPs from your network instead of using the public IPs. So that's really cool. So you don't have to go over the main internet. I'm just more security. Yeah, and it's almost like a nice, a nice thing for me that this is happening this week because at the conference that I did and the session that I did on Arc, that was one of the questions. We had a few people in there that were working for government and they're like, okay, so this looks fantastic, but we have a requirement to not connect to cloud services outside of controlled and secure methods. How can we do this? And it just happened that it was the day that morning Thomas Maurer had posted a posting that it had gone GA. So like, yes, actually, you can. Right. Yeah, you go over that backbone versus the internet. Yeah, because that's public internet is public internet. Like it's not a it's not a safe space there at all. Go to Starbucks and type in your passwords on the Wi-Fi. I have several little VPN app installed on my laptop. So when I travel, I'm always make sure to turn one on. Yeah. Yeah. So but it VPN site to site VPN or express routes are both very secure and useful tools. Express route costs a little more, but a little more faster to it's while it depends because you you negotiate your price with your with your telco because it really is just an MPLS segment that's terminated both at your in your data center. So your last mile from your telco and the other end within our data center, it's definitely more robust. Yeah. We're always told to like ask for the biggest pipe and then but start small and then because it's harder to add than take away apparently. I don't know when you get an express route as a customer. Not sure if that's still true. Yeah. Yeah. Site to site VPN is a great option, especially if you're in a like testing environment or if it's something that you are working up to or setting it up through the VPN until you can actually get the express route put in place because it's not because it has that last mile portion to it. It's not like you can just go to the portal and say deploy express route and then it's done. I get that'd be nice. It would be nice. I don't want to call Comcast. Who wants to call itself? I'm looking for houses right now at the houses and more in the country because we're looking like a half acre type lot.  Because I've got like a fiber connects to the house here. Yeah. I'm like, oh, no, I'm not going. I'm not going back down to 50 megs up and down. I can't live like this. I can't live like that. I thought Canada was all country.  Yeah, we get out of the house. We get in the sled and we mush the dogs to the office. It gets to school. Yeah, that's right. That's what Americans think of. The next item on our list is the resource network NAT Gateway health checks are now available in the resource health. And if you haven't seen what the resource health is, is basically there's like three models resource health. I'm having a brain fart. I can't remember. But there's like basically there's a portal that tells you whether or not there are outages with Microsoft or the services. I used to skate to school appeal both ways, appeal both ways. Yeah. And snow up to my knees. No, it didn't skate to school. I put my my snow shoes on and just trek through the woods to the school. No, I'm just kidding. And now you can have your virtual network NAT health. So whether or not you're running out of IPs, if one's not connected, if there are any any kinds of problems whatsoever, it actually gets surfaced up in the resource health, which is a nice kind of great dashboard that allows you to identify and potentially troubleshoot issues that you may have. So figure brain fart. Nice. Oh, my boss is on. We have to be more professional, I guess. Is that where is he? I don't see him. Oh, I see him. Oh, he's working regular IT guy. He kind of changes his name so that we won't know him, but he forgot to change your avatar. So yeah. So the it's just another way of keeping track of your environment in a in a way that is useful for you. Managers love it because it's on. I got nice pretty pictures and kind of dashboard age type of stuff, but it allows you to quickly drill down to where the problems are and troubleshoot them and eventually fix them kind of cool. I have a cool story about our dashboard. Once we I forget what it was like our network was like npm through Cisco and we'd have it on the big screen. So the managers could walk by and be like, oh, it's green. And then one would turn like yellow and what's wrong with that? And then we would just change it to green. Everything's fine. I know I worked with the customer where the screensaver for the machine that was running that big TV with the dashboard was an actual picture of the dashboard when it's all green. So they would just leave it there and then also in the screen same or would kick in and then everybody would walk by and say, oh, we're green and then walk away. Dashboards are great as long as they they're refresh often enough and you don't play games with your management. We do not condone that type of behavior. Got in trouble if someone found out there's something broken before we did. Squirrel. Squirrel. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what Rick is saying, but I think he must have seen real off track because we saw his pick and brain fart noise. I know this this chat room is really going sideways right now. Let's move on to our next item. Yes. From the Red Hat Summit. We now have more updates for Red Hat in our marketplace. So now we can have the Red Hat automation platform is available. It says in North America with global available the global availability coming soon. So you can automate and scale in the cloud. And then also it's like the theme Azure Arc enabled SQL manage instance is now supported on Red Hat OpenShift. So if you need to run your workloads outside of Azure and your own data center, you can throw some arc on it and make it talk to Azure. New game distracted in the easy update. Oh, there you go. It's working. And then rel9 is available May 24th through Azure and then there's also I didn't realize this Azure hybrid benefit for Linux 3.0. So starting May 24th, I always, you know, Linux is free, but I guess Red Hat, you know. Red Hat is not. Yes, you pay licensing so you can bring your licensing or it says being bring your own subscription and get a get some save some money on that. So there's some cool stuff that came out of the Red Hat summit. And I also had a co-worker who used to call it Ansible instead of Ansible. Was he French? No, he was Polish. French people for I was speaking for myself here. We have a tendency to put the emphasis on the wrong syllable and see Blair and see Blair. Yeah, no, I find this very interesting because it's just one more way. I think that Azure is making it possible for organizations to get to the cloud without having to relearn a whole new set of tools have to convert all of their deployment mechanisms to either be bicep arm, CICD, whatever it may be, and to also to use what they've been using, which is in people that are using Red Hat or using Ansible automation to deploy and manage their environments. So by enabling things like that, we're making it possible for them to do this without to take advantage of Azure without having to relearn everything. So it's just your curve, your learning curve to get actually productive on Azure is getting flatter, which I think is a great thing. Yeah, getting closer to the easy button, but not completely. You still got to do some stuff. Yeah, I don't think we're going to get to the easy button any time soon, but somebody at the door, you're still muted. It's 2022. I know I'm muted at purpose. You've learned to bark this year. Thanks, Milo. That's okay. That's okay. Me and UPS guy who's not leaving him a treat. It's mad. UPS truck shows up and they don't leave a treat. He's like heartbroken. They do. They're known for it. He can recognize that truck. We'll chase that truck down the street on a walk. There's the brown truck. It's the brown truck. No, just for a little doggy treat. My dogs are more like my doorbell. If somebody comes to the door, I know. Yeah. All right. That was pretty much it for the event for for the news this weekend. We did have to dig into technical communities blogs for for product announcements that weren't officially on the Azure news or Azure update site. We do have a couple of community events that are coming or one community events that's coming that is like official. We have and I might not completely fit the audience that normally watches a Z update, but it is the first anniversary of Azure static web app. Yeah. I actually use Azure static web app because I find I'm not a developer and for the stuff that I need, it's really really good. Like my my personal website is just I check into GitHub like to change if you mark down files, check it into to get hub and it gets published and it works really well and it's cheap for me for to host that. Yeah, it's a great way to host those websites and I just bam update, you know, did it for a lot of community events as well. Just Azure static web app. Yeah. And so on May 19th, there's going to be a. It says one hour an hour and a half, but I think there's a bit more to it. There's the ancillary kind of broadcast that are going on and apparently our friend Donovan Brown is going to be speaking at that and lots of good people that are going to give us their experience and all of the good stuff about Azure static web apps. And that's not going to be Scott Hanselman and Donovan Brown on learn TV. So some Microsoft MVPs and product team and oh, it's a whole week 30 days of SW a song. Okay, so it starts on May 19th, but the whole week. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Now I have more stuff to work on. Get that badge. Yeah, no, I have other things to do. But it does take us to the learn module of the week. Yeah. And this week I thought since we talked about private link that it would be a great idea to refresh our knowledge on designing and implementing private access to Azure services and that private access is not limited to Azure Arc, but it's one of the services that you can leverage or that you could that leverages private link to connect. But this is really a great way to secure. Let's say your past services so that past stays within the Microsoft the Azure backbone to connect from your your past to your SaaS or your past to your I as environment. So if you have a database running in a VM, but you have a website that's running in past, you can connect it directly without having to basically go out to public internet and back in back in. That's cool. So it's not very long. It's an hour and a half. It's actually a pretty nice module. I'm gone through about half of it by now. Again, I think I did it a long time ago, but now I'm kind of reviewing it in light of some of the new stuff that's coming. Also just to whether or not there's more stuff that I need to ramp up on. Always be learning. Always be learning. So always be closing. Always be and it's cool. Anthony said that students love Azure static web apps. So it's easy way to deploy their ideas to Azure. Yeah, great. I think it's it's something that even though we're not developers, we can use developer tools and develop developer concepts to make our lives as it and operations easier. So and even Jared is saying that he's also looking at ways to have CMS deploy static web page. So if you have a process that can spit out HTML, you could definitely just put it right into that and make it available to everyone. So really cool. I want to see that really good, really good things. Yeah. Oh, it's already been half an hour. Wow.  That is just a bonus. If it's not Oren, it's right. I love him. I love him just in case. Yeah. I'm not of the gender. I'm not allowed to use that. Oh, you can't. You can't.  I'm probably embarrassing him right now. If I yeah, I've been told by my daughter to like not try to do anything like that at all. All right, Amy. So thank you very much for joining us again this week. It's always fun. Yeah. And we will see you at home. Next week. Online or on our Discord server. So see you later. Be good. See you later. Happy Friday, 13th. Oh, yeah. You just jinxed it now. It's what you make of it. All right. Yeah.


Today I had the pleasure speaking with Amanda LeCars from Linus. How are you today Amanda? I'm really well. Thanks Tracey. How are you? I'm fantastic and I just want to start by congratulating you because you recently announced that you've exceeded production targets and earnings And our editor Robin Bromby was crediting this for the spark spark in the rare earth prices that was happening recently similar to 2011 can you tell us more about these results, please? Okay, so actually I don't think I would completely agree with Robin. The result is not price driven. It's actually volume driven so We're very pleased with the quarters results, which we announced on Monday So total total tons produced are up 30% and EPR tons produced are up 36% sales revenues up 37% off the back of a volume increase of 30% so Unfortunately, the prices are nowhere near where they were in 2011 if they were I would be a much more relaxed woman than I am however the results are really the result of You know the the culmination of two years where we have finalized the commissioning of all of our capacity and brought it into state your steady operation and so in quarter three we commissioned the final separation train for our Sx5 unit, which is the unit that separates NDPR from LA and CE products And of course, that's the key value driver in the business because the magnetic materials of the highest value materials in the market at present so In quarter three there was some costs and some reduced volume associated with that in quarter four now We've actually got that operating Okay, so for the investor intel audience they're listening right now We're just talking about the fourth quarter results And basically you lifted sales to a hundred ninety six point one million and you're basically and this is what you're attributing your success to Um, so Look, I think as I said it really is about making sure that we're utilizing the equipment that shareholder funds and and and and Lenders funds have have been invested in Effectively and so now we have a hundred percent of that equipment Commissioned two years ago when I first joined we only had fifty percent of the equipment commissioned so we now have a hundred percent we produce a lot more NDPR and They will we sell a lot more NDPR because it's certainly the one product where we never had any problems selling it Okay, so let me ask you Amanda Are you selling at index or fixed prices as the reported selling prices are much lower than our information on the current market prices? Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? so I think it's always quite difficult when people are trying to track and and Analyze prices in the rarest market and as you would know The rarest market is not a particularly orderly market You know in most markets demand and price are fairly closely correlated and You will actually see the effects of one or the other reasonably quickly the rarest market remains one which is quite Is still quite distorted by speculation at all levels of the market and So in this quarter there was a lot of speculation early in the quarter that the China central government would undertake a New stockpiling program and typically what that does is it puts a floor price For materials and so the price actually did increase if we use The local currency from about 252 up to a 272 remember Early in the quarter, however According to the information that we got out of China the price then dropped back fairly quickly to about 258 remember me and it's come off a little bit more since then After the government and the big six rare earths companies were unable to reach agreement on the price Well, I hope you don't mind. I'm going to take this opportunity to ask you about the overall rare earth market Amanda I'd love to hear what your thoughts are The structure of the market is difficult The whole of the rare earths industry still wears some of the pain from the 2011 bubble you know, some of that is because companies, you know Put too much debt in their businesses because I looked at the bubble I thought this was the way that it was going to keep going So that has actually been a real issue in terms of it. It drives speculative behavior in The investor base, you know, a lot of a lot of in a speculative behavior there and also in the traders and the producers particularly inside China but the more Sustained damage I think to the market really is the fact that at at that time it created a lack of confidence with end formulators and even just last week there was an announcement from Honda and Dido about the production of a first rare earth magnet for a hybrid vehicle Which was or an electric vehicle it might have been which was actually heavy rare earths free Now for us, this is fine because we're a light rare earths company and it actually reinforces demand for the neodymium and precyodymium products But and so we actually see that as a very positive thing because what it does is that it starts to give some of the OEMs the the the end-use formulators more confidence in the supply chain And I think our continued success is an important part of that. I couldn't agree with you more Amanda And I've got a question for you from our writer Jack Lipton He asked what is your strategy going forward in the Japanese market if Toyota to sucho's Projects come into production. Will you compete on price or quality or both? So you would know that in the Japanese market we very strong and Certainly, you know Japanese industry was They probably wouldn't insist to him but quite spooked by the But by the rare earths bubble the automotive industry is still an incredibly important business in in in Japan and it is one of the reasons why Japan by Jogma you know is our senior secured lender and That is really about ensuring that there is an alternative outside China supply chain we have Commercial partners our distributors in Japan as so Jits We work very closely with them. We also work very closely with the End-users and the magnet makers in Japan We have well in excess of 50% market share in that market and we do that by actually working Directly alongside our customers We we still sell for a slight premium in Japan compared to China notwithstanding the WTO ruling last year and We see it as a very positive thing the Japanese industry has chosen to compete on Technology rather than on price and we Asia working very closely alongside to match our activity Well, of course Amanda, you've just passed your two-year anniversary at Linus and I enjoyed a presentation You did where you attributed a lot of your success to operations and running a company. It was actually very inspiring for me Can you tell me what kind of operation mandates are happening now that you've been there for two years? I imagine everything is under control Yeah, everything's under control always. No, that is not the truth even in very very mature industries with very mature technologies Manufacturing operations do not always run up perfectly Right, if they did we wouldn't need people and we wouldn't make need people to make decisions and do all of those sorts of things and so My production team has challenges every day. I am telling you that however Two years on we have now got a hundred percent of our equipment has actually been commissioned So two years ago it was only fifty percent We actually have made nearly three times as much We make nearly three times as much with our four trains as we did with two So that's a combination of increased capacity, but also increased utilization and efficiency of operation So what should we as shareholders anticipates in the next upcoming quarter or two? Okay, so so I guess you know the most important thing for us now is to stabilize and Really lock down the improvements that we've made to date We indicated in our quarterly report that we would seek to run at about 90% of capacity for about six months as we Continue to do some minor de-bottlenecking and then we'll ramp up to the hundred percent So I think that that's that that's in terms of operations I think on the other side as you will have noted we have very positive and and productive relationships with both of our lenders and I think ensuring that our Structures with our lenders as such that they continue to support the success of the business is really important and then For me, you know the question is you know, we've got this beast Which had you know, this this huge factory, you know built and it operates within the rare earth's market Once you've got all of that operating then the question is where to from here How do we now grow this business to be an even better business? And I'm not going to tell you what's in my mind on that today. However, watch this space Well, thank you so much for joining us Amanda. It was a pleasure Thanks, Tracy


So, welcome back. We will pick up from where we stopped. So, we talked about the importance of prophetic ministry. We also said that there are three levels of prophetic ministry that we observe as far as the scriptures are concerned. But the beautiful part is that every believer can be prophetic. We can use what we hear from God in whatever God has called us to do. So, I saw a question from Divya here in the chat where she says, what is the spirit of prophecy referred to in Revelation 19 and verse 10? Worship God for it is the spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus. So, Divya, the spirit of prophecy as we've already said from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit. So, it's part of the Holy Spirit. So, the Holy Spirit, if he is called as the spirit of prophecy, it would mean the same thing, that he carries that ability to bring revelation. Okay? And in this particular verse, the best testimony to Jesus, so revelation about Christ, the Holy Spirit is bringing revelation about Christ. Now, we know that that's one of the responsibilities of the Holy Spirit to bring revelation, to introduce Christ, to glorify Christ. Okay? So, that's how we would understand it. Would that be all right? Okay. Wonderful. Okay. So, then let's go ahead. We said so far that the prophetic ministry is very, it's an incredible blessing. So, here in our notes, we also have a testimony which pastors included from his own life and he talks about how there was a phase when he was in the US where many things were happening and he, you know, he was also many things were happening and it was a very difficult time in his life. And during this one phase, he had the opportunity to go for a spiritual skills course where they had called for a certain prophet to also come and minister in some of the session. So, about the prophet, he did not know what pastor, you know, he did not know what pastor was going for. He went pastor, not shared it with anyone. But when he came, then he began to pray over pastor. Apparently, he started speaking the same things which were in pastor's heart. So, this is what, you know, prophecy looks like. So, he shared this testimony and how that prophetic ministry of that individual was such a blessing to him, you know, he writes about how he did one of the most significant prophecies that he has ever received. And I'm sure, you know, each one of us, we may have our own experiences and, you know, it really thrills us as to how God can speak way ahead of time and reveal his purposes, reveal his plans, even reveal some of the gifts and graces which he has put on people's lives, reveal, you know, some of the opportunities that we are going to walk into. So, so encouraging. And as we saw, one of the key things that God wants to do through the simple gift of prophecy is to edify, to exalt, to comfort his children. So, let's learn, you know, more and more about how God has chosen to share, you know, whatever he desires through the prophetic word. Now, when we look at the word of God, it's very interesting to note that the very first person who is referred to as a prophet is Abraham. So, Genesis 20 verse 7, this is the incident where, you know, there is this king called Abimelech who comes and he is, you know, he wants to take Abraham's wife.  And so, you know, the wombs of the women are shot, the cattle are shot, all that. So, when Abimelech is going through this, God tells Abimelech when he wants to repent, God tells him in Genesis 20 verse 7 about Abraham, he says, he is a prophet and he will pray for you and you shall live. So, few things for us to understand here is Abraham. For us, when we say prophet, immediately we get the image, one person, maybe they are, you know, broad-shouldered and they have a certain kind of style and, you know, hairstyle and everything. And immediately this dust as the Lord, you know, and that's a prophet for us. But look at this, God tells Abimelech, Abraham is a prophet and he will do what? He won't prophesy to you, he will pray for you. Okay, so, we don't ever read about Abraham saying dust as the Lord. So, how is Abraham a prophet? You see, Abraham walked with the revelation of the purposes of God. You know, Abraham is called as the friend of God. Look at the life that he lived. It's not the word that he spoke or, you know, in terms of dust as the Lord. But it's more of Abraham was hearing from God, walking with God, listening to God, understanding the divine purposes. Okay, come on, let me walk with God. This is what God wants to do.  This is the promise of God over my generation. So, Abraham is prophetic because he heard from God. His life was prophetic and no wonder God said Abraham is a prophet. Abimelech, Abraham is a prophet. He will pray for you and you shall live. Now, here is another beautiful thing that we can understand. So, Abraham lived with revelation which made him a prophetic individual. Abraham will pray for you. So, it also shows us that Abraham was in that place of prayer. He was a man of prayer. No wonder God had confidence and said, okay, let this man pray for you. You will live. Abraham, even later on, we see Genesis 18, we see when Sodom and Gomorrah, God had intended for these cities to be destroyed because of sin. You know, he says it was 17, Genesis 18 and it was 17. And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I am going to do, what I am doing. So, God wanted to reveal to Abraham because he's also, you would see in that passage that Abraham starts to function like a prophetic intercessor. He starts to talk to God and say, God, if there are so many righteous people, will you spare the land? If there are so many righteous people, will you spare? What is he actually doing? He heard that Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed but now he is interceding for that sinful city. So, he's a prophetic intercessor. Abraham was a man of prayer and Abraham is an intercessor. So, what is the connection? You see, we can have prayer and intercession without prophecy, which means, okay, today, my prayer list says I have to pray for, you know, I have to pray for the country. Today, my prayer list says I have to pray for my health. Okay, I'll go ahead and pray. But it's like, I'm not necessarily asking God what should I pray for. So, there's no prophetic hearing, no listening from God but there's still prayer and intercession. So, we can have prayer and intercession without prophecy but here's the deal. Prophecy will not flow without prayer and intercession. You see, so one way is possible, prayer and intercession but not prophetic. But prophetic without prayer and intercession, no way. If we have to move in the prophetic, flow in the prophetic, look at the life of Abraham, God said he's a prophet. We see him interceding. He is a man of prayer, a man who spoke to God, a man who interacted with God. So, the prophetic is very strongly connected to prayer. So, unless we are prayerful people, we cannot expect the prophetic to flow freely through our lives. Okay, so that's what we learned from Abraham. Abraham had a prophetic life, point one. Point two, Abraham was a man of prayer and so we know that there is a very strong connection of the prophetic with prayer and intercession. So, I hope you all are doing okay, so far? All fine? All good? Yes. Wonderful. Great. Let's move forward. All right. So now, let's begin to look at what are the other things that we can pick up about prophecy, prophet, prophetic ministry, we have Moses and Aaron, who were sent as representatives of the Israelites to Pharaoh and they had to lead them. They had to lead them out. So, when we read about Moses and Aaron, one of the things that we notice is there is this Hebrew word called Nabi, Nabi which is used. So, Exodus seven was one.  So, Moses came up with all his excuses. He said, No, I can't talk God. I'm not fluent because okay, fine. Don't worry, Moses. I will send Aaron as the spokesperson. Now for that spokesperson, the term Hebrew term which is used is Nabi. Aaron, your brother shall be your prophet. Okay, so that is Nabi and this word Nabi is used 309 times in the Old Testament. So, Nabi simply means one who speaks for another. Okay, so here in India, I think about maybe three decades ago, many of us would read your parents and grandparents talk about who I ought to post. Nowadays, you know, everything's email, WhatsApp, immediate communication is happening. So, very rare for people to write those post letters to one another. But many decades ago, that was the case and we would have these post men, post women, you know, in the khaki clothes coming on the cycle and it's something like that. So, somebody is delivering a message that is prophet. Okay, even today when we prophesy, who are we? We are like those people who deliver the message. And what did God tell Moses? Moses, look, I will send you Aaron. He will be your prophet or he will be Nabi or he will be the one who speaks on your behalf.  In this case, mouthpiece speaking. So, what do we do when we prophesy? I am just a mouthpiece. He speaks. God speaks. I'm here to deliver the message and I have to do my best to deliver the message in a way that God is honored, people are blessed. So, that is how we see God work.  So, that we have understood. Now, let's go on with these Hebrew words and see what else we can gain from this word prophet, you know, wherever it's there. So, going back to or going forward into the times of Samuel, Samuel, the great prophet and you know, Samuel had a lot of other prophets who were training under him in 1 Chronicles 29-29. It says, Now the acts of King David first and last, indeed they are written in the book of Samuel, the seer. You see another word is introduced here, Hebrew word. Okay, but these are all related. We saw the word prophet Nabi. Now, let's see what are these words? Samuel the seer in Hebrew it is Roe, Roe, Roe, Roe, Roe, Roe. In the book of Nathan, the prophet. See interchangeable Nabi, again Nabi. So, Samuel the seer, we know that Samuel was a prophet but Samuel is termed as the seer and Nathan the prophet Nabi. Okay, let's move on. And in the book of Gad the seer, Jose. So, there are three different terms that are used to describe men of God who spoke the message, who were the mouthpiece of God. Why? Because it's just explaining to us the process of receiving the message. All of them receive the message but seemingly in a different way. So, what is this? What is the process? Samuel the seer, Gad the seer, Roe, Jose, Hebrew words. They are telling us that these men had the experience of visualization or seeing something. What could they have seen? They could have seen visions, they could have gazed into the spiritual realm, they could have had spiritual revelations, they could have seen a person. We don't know. There are things they saw, their spiritual man saw and to describe the process, the prophetic process which Samuel and Gad had, they are called as seers. They are prophets but what is their process? Visualization. So, we are understanding more about the prophetic. So, the message from God can be received in the form of visuals. And we see these same words repeated in many other places. So, it tells us that there were a lot of people, prophets who actually saw something. So, that is one of the ways in which God releases the message visually. See, even Amos when God was speaking to Amos, Amos chapter 7 verses 14 and 15, Amos says, I was no prophet.  But I was a sheep breeder and a tender of sycamore fruit. Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock and the Lord said to me, go prophesy to my people Israel. So, so far we saw Samuel, Gad, they are people who saw. Now, when you read other passages of Amos, God, there were times when God said, Amos, what do you see? I see a basket of summer fruit. Amos says, I forget which passage that was. But even Amos saw.  But in this case, in the verse that I just read, Amos, the terms that I use there, prophet, prophet, Nabi, Nabi. What is the meaning? So, we saw one process. One process is the visualization process. Now, why is it that there are some other prophets who are called as Nabi? Everyone must be a seer then, isn't it? Why some are specifically called as Nabi? Well, that term Nabi, we saw that it is a mouthpiece of God. But as you look at the meaning, that Naba is also referring to prophecy. And the understanding which we gain from that word Naba is inspiration. So, here's the second process through which I can hear from God. First one, visualization. So, there were people who saw images and they were able to share a message from God.   Or you would say flow forth. So, as one begins to speak, words are coming. Words are coming. You don't know where they're coming from. You see, they're just bubbling up from inside. There's no, I'm not seeing anything, but I'm able to deliver a message which is not even in my mind. So, that is called as the Naba prophecy, that kind of prophecy. So, here is the second way in which people prophesied. They were inspired. They may not have seen any visuals. So, whenever inspired, what happened? They spoke words. When they were inspired, they spoke sentences. When they were inspired, they spoke phrases. So, a lot of things came out of prophets just like that. It's just bubbling up from within them. So, this is the manner in which we see God working through men and women of God. And we know that in the Old Testament, there were prophets. We will study about it later as well. They were selected people upon whom that prophetic anointing would come. And they would speak the word of God. And even people, they also understood that. So, there were times when people said, Hey, come. Let's go to the seer. Remember the time when Samuel lost his donkeys? What did he decide to do? Let's go to the seer. Maybe God will show the seer where the donkeys are. And so, God's spirit came upon men and women and they used to prophesy in all these ways. Now, here is something more that we want to add. We said that there are two processes of generally that we notice of the way the word comes to us. But after having understood this, we should not box God up and say, Hey, I'm a seer. So, and so is a inspired man, Nabi. Okay, they only bubble up with words. What if, you know, I am generally a seer, but one day I'm praying for someone and I'm not seeing anything, but words are coming up. You see, we must let God work in any way he wants. We shouldn't get stuck in, Hey, this is the only way in which God will speak. So whenever we try to box God up and his process, see understanding his process is not to limit us. It is to expand our thinking and notice that, Okay, wow, God might work in this way and in other ways.  But maybe there are times when God might choose to work in a different way, right, through my life. So we must be open. We must be open to any form of a process. Okay, so are you all with me? Any, any questions so far? Any inputs, experiences, anything you would like to share? Yes, Divya, please go ahead. Thank you, Pastor. Just had a question, actually. So just as you mentioned that in the first session regarding prophesying believer, then the grace gift of prophesying, the office of the Prophet. So all these are these applicable even even in the Old Testament times, even as we are discussing the Old Testament prophets. Can we say that, Oh, they, they operated as in the office of prophecy or something like that. I'm just trying to relate both. Excellent question, Divya. It just shows me that you understood what we were talking about. Well, the answer is no. We can't apply it in the Old Testament times. Because I mean, in the sense that generally what we notice is when people prophesied, it would be prophets. So God would speak through his prophets. Yes, there are occasional instances where, you know, we also read about the donkey speaking or we read about, you know, Saul when he was in the company of the prophets he prophesied, but the anointing on his life was a kingly anointing. Okay. But it was just an occasional thing. So normal believers prophesying and then some others moving in the prophetic ministry realm. We don't see that the Old Testament. We see that in the New Testament because we have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, all of us. That was not possible before the redemptive work of Christ on the cross of Calvary. Okay. So I hope that answers your question. Yes. I just wanted to have a follow up question also. So when we talk about the major prophets or the minor prophets, can we say that they are officially prophets just to put it in those terms? Like they operated as in the office of prophecy. Is it right to say that? Yes, yes, Divya. They were all prophets. See, major and minor prophet classification has to do more with the length, the importance, the impact of their messages. So it doesn't grade them within the section of a prophet. There's only one category we know of which is prophet. They were all prophets. Okay. Okay. So there's no classification in the Old Testament times. Prophet is prophet. That's all. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Divya. Good. Very relevant question. So it's nice. Now we are getting a sense of how God spoke and God, his word, he always desired to speak. You see how he talked about Abraham and he said, how can I do something without revealing it to Abraham? Like God is God. He likes to share what's on his heart. He's not a God who will do things without communicating it to his people. And that's how the work of God is. Now, as we move on, I'm on page 16 in our notes. We see that in the Old Testament, we also have some references that tell us that God loved to share his word. So Amos 3 was a seven in eight. It says, surely the Lord God does nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants, the prophets. So that's how he worked. And we see that in the Old Testament. And what a privilege. In today's times, we in the New Covenant, all of us can hear from God. All of us can flow in the basic gift of prophecy. So we can hear from God and God is willing. God is wanting. God is deciding to reveal his secrets. But of course, we must pursue it as well. And God wants us to have that sort of an intimate relationship with him for us to know more and more from God. And when God speaks, it makes a difference. So in the same passage, Amos 3 was seven, was eight less, a lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesies. So basically, what Amos is saying is, whenever God spoke to the prophets, they knew. The lion, when it roars in the jungle, everyone knows, you know, it brings fear in our hearts. So when God speaks, it's distinct. We are aware. Oh, wow. This is what he's wanting to say. We are aware. Okay. So that's how he communicates that reading further. Jeremiah talks about his experience of hearing the voice of God.  This is Jeremiah 20 verse nine, where he says that sometimes the experience which prophets of old had had is, you know, they have a word in their bones.  You feel a sense of compulsion to share the word because it's in your bones that it's burning the word of God. And you can't keep quiet, but go ahead and release that word. So that's the kind of experience these prophets had been. God was a speaking God. He wanted to reveal his heart to them. Then that when God speaks, we can't contain it. We know that he has spoken.  You know, that's what the prophets are saying. When God spoke for them, it was like, it was like burning in his bones. He had to take the message out and deliver it. Otherwise, you know, he would not be comfortable or at peace. So those were the kinds of experiences that they had. Now, let's continue to talk about the prophetic process. We said, oh, visualization. So what does God do? What does he reveal when he gives us these images? We have certain scriptures that give us insight. So Hosea chapter 12 and verse 10, Hosea said, I have also spoken the prophets and have multiplied visions. I have given symbols through the witness of the prophets. So notice God is speaking to the prophets by multiplying visions. But there is an important word to take notice of. What is that word? I have given symbols through the witness of the prophets. So we'll talk more. We'll talk more about these symbols that God gave the prophets. So now we understood that God gave a word and it was forceful, you know, within the beam of the prophets and they had to release it. Now, in what manner did he give this word? In visualization process, God is saying visions, symbols. Okay, let's look at another passage. He numbers chapter 12 versus five through eight. Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle and called Aaron and Miriam and they both went forward. Then he said, here now my words, if there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a how? Vision. I speak to him in a dream, not so with my servant, Moses. He is faithful in all my house. I speak to him face to face, even plainly and not in dark sayings. And he sees the form of the Lord. Why then? Were you not afraid to speak against my servant, Moses? This is actually a correct word. We're just coming to Aaron and Miriam. But in what God is saying, there are some clues about how he speaks to the prophets. So how does he speak to the prophets? Earlier, what did we see in Hosea 1210? We said, I have multiplied visions and I have given symbols. Okay, so we got that. Now here, God is telling, if there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision. I speak to him in a dream. Okay, and later on, one more thing we can pick up is dark sayings, dark sayings. And of course, he points out there that Moses had this beautiful experience of speaking to God face to face. Now, do we all desire to speak to God face to face? Yes, we do want that. And does God speak that way? Yes, God can speak that way to his people. But here's the common way. Okay, we said our God is a speaking God. So there is a common way in which he speaks generally. Not to say that he'll not speak face to face. We can always desire that. But we must become familiar with the general way in which God speaks. So here he said, visions, dreams, dark sayings. So we saw two terms, visions, dreams we kind of understand and we will talk more about it later as well. But there are two new words that we have come across. One is symbols, another is dark sayings. So what is this? God is not giving the prophets a very direct message. Instead, he is giving them symbols, dark sayings. It simply tells us that once we receive this, there has to be an effort to interpret what we have seen. What are these symbols? They could be parables. Parables are, you know, these are like regular life stories and events that we are familiar with. We could be viewing that but there can be a message in it. So the prophets could have actually received a parable or, you know, they could have received in English language, we say similitudes. It's similar. Like you see a line in your image of a line and then you have to interpret. What does it mean? Because in scripture, if you see, we have the line of Judah, but you also have Satan is like a roaring lion. So the prophet has to now interpret. What does God mean? Because I am seeing symbols. I am seeing dark sayings. It has to be correctly interpreted, you know, as per the Bible and as per the leading of the Holy Spirit. So symbols and dark sayings are all these things which are not a clear cut message. But, you know, there is message inside what we are actually seeing. So it can be a comparison. It can be a riddle. It can be a drama. You know how sometimes you, I always think in these cartoons, it's so weird, isn't it? That let's say a cartoon character is just running and he feels he has to enter his house. He'll suddenly draw a door and the door will open and, you know, he'll go into another space. Like, how does that happen? But in our dreams and visions, sometimes it's like that. And you're like, what is this? But as we think with God, we will be able to get the message of what God is saying. You know, God speaks in parables, riddles, similitudes, comparisons. And from there, you know, we must get the message. Oh, I saw a person. I saw a creature. What does, who does this person portray? What does this creature portray? You know, so that's the way in which God is actually communicating. And that's the way communicated when to the prophets. So all these symbols, and even when we say there are visions and dreams, there can be symbols in the visions and dreams. And so these pictures and this form of communication needed to then be interpreted. Okay, so we will learn more about interpretation and personal prophecy and all of that later on. So now, just going along this prophetic process, there is an example of a prophet called as Balaam in the Word of God. We will look at his example. Now definitely, he was not a prophet to, basically, we say he was a prophet for profit, okay, to make money. He was ready to prophesy against God's people. So that is a greedy prophet we have here. However, when we read about his prophetic process and his prophetic experience, we can gain a lot about the way God spoke to him. So in numbers 24, verses 15 and 16, if anybody has that open in front of you, could you kindly read it? Numbers 24, verses 15 and 16, please. Numbers chapter 24, verses 15 and 16. Then he uttered his oracle, the oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly, the oracle of one who hears the Word of God, who has knowledge from the most high, who sees a vision from the Almighty, who falls prostrate and whose eyes are opened. Great. So just in these two verses, so many different methods of God's communication have been described. So he took up his oracle and said, the utterance of Balaam the son of Beor, the utterance of the man notice whose eyes were opened, the visualization process, the utterance of him who hears the words of God, hearing the listening process and has the knowledge of the most high, meaning information, reception of information. Okay. Now who sees the vision of the Almighty, okay, vision going further, who falls down, who falls down. So there is also an experience of physically laying prostrate in front of God when the message came to Balaam, prostrate with eyes wide open. So his physical eyes were open or we could also say his spiritual eyes were open. So these are all things for us to think about and understand how did Balaam pick up the message of God, what was happening, how was he hearing from God? So let's go with the first point there, the utterance of the man whose eyes are open or utterance is nothing but the words, the message of the man whose eyes were open. So eyes were open. What does this mean? Is it necessarily physicalized? See, primarily this has to do with our spiritual eyes. So the spirit man has senses, we will talk about this as well. So comparable to our human vision, our spirit has vision okay and our spirit can see. So it's telling us that Balaam was able to look into the spirit realm. He was able to see through his spirit man. So his eyes were open are referring to what? Referring to the spirit eyes being open and that's how he was receiving the message of God. Now a parallel would be the time when Elisha, Elisha's servant, you remember? He sends out his servant in 2nd Kings chapter 6 and he has to stand to see and the servant sees, suddenly his human eyes can see armies of God protecting and surrounding and being there for Elisha and the servant and he realizes, oh wow, we are not minority. But in this case, his human eyes, Elisha prayed and said, God open his eyes. So the spiritual eyes were opened and he was able to see through his human eyes the armies that were standing around. So you see, God is not limited. We can gaze into the spirit realm through our spiritual eyes. Now when we look into the spirit realm through our spiritual eyes, our natural eyes may or may not be able to pick up what is going on. So some people say open-eyed visions, shut-eyed visions, so many descriptions and technicalities are there. But let's not worry about all that. When God, there are many instances that we see in scripture when you say Stephen, he saw before he was dying, he looked into heaven. You can ask, how did you look into heaven? The spirit man can see. So the year that King Uzziah died, I saw. Isaiah writes about it. So we can see our spirit man has the capacity to view and pick up imagery. So even Balaam talks about it and he says the utterance of the man whose eyes were opened, eyes open meaning spiritualized. Primarily, second thing, you notice utterance of the man who heard, heard what. So here's what we see in scripture that God speaks. If you recall, Samuel is a classic example, isn't it? So he was in Eli's temple and what happened? He was hearing his name, Samuel, Samuel. He didn't know what to do with it. He did not even know how to recognize the word of God. But a more experienced priest, Eli, taught Samuel, Samuel, you're hearing the voice of God. So you respond. The next time you hear, say, here I am. So somebody had to teach him to be sensitive to the voice of the Lord and also to respond to it. And in this case, it was amazing. We noticed that Samuel was hearing. Eli was not hearing. So sometimes when we hear the voice of God, it generally tends to be to that particular audience. And in this case, Samuel was the audience that God was speaking to. Now does God speak audibly all the time? In our usual experience, we say, we get the words of God, but minus the sound. So we are not saying that you can't hear like audio with sound, the voice. We can, but normally we might pick up a word in our spirit and we'll talk about it. So normal processes, we can hear from God. But when we say I heard the scripture, basically we got that scripture minus the sound. That's how it works. So it's possible to hear the voice of God again. How can we pick it up? The inner man, the spirit man has senses. You can see and it can hear. So the next is receive the knowledge of the Lord. So how do we understand this? Receiving the knowledge of the Lord. See, in our, because we are all computer generation, it's like download. You know, sometimes you have an attached file, you click download. You can even download an entire PDF, a whole book, a whole book comes into your spirit and you have so much in fiction. God just, what, what did he do? He downloaded it. So receiving the knowledge of God is like that. We don't understand how, but it is delivered into our spirit and then, you know, it can well up, it can bubble up and we can keep releasing the word of God. So it can happen in that way. He saw the vision of the Almighty.  I see a basket of summer fruit and all, but it can also be like a movie, like a motion picture, where that's a vision, where we're seeing, oh, this happened and that happened and something else. So we can even see an entire story unfold. Okay, so that is a vision. Now again, about vision, you could say a shut-eye vision, open-eye vision, meaning normalize, humanize. So all that is there. Then last one, he fell down with eyes wide open. That's nothing but something like an experience of a trance. You remember Peter? Peter also, right? He, he was in trance when he had that vision of the tent come down and all the animals, my God said, hey, come on, you can go, you can eat them. So these were the experiences which Balam had to receive the word of the Lord. So anyway, I'm just going to close this morning. I think we've, we are building, you know, little by little we are building and it'll help us flow in the prophetic. So the beautiful thing is that we have a God who speaks. He speaks in creative ways. Okay. He wants to, to refresh our lives.  He will not send us a word to break us down, but he wants to send us a word to build us up, to comfort us, to encourage us. And as God's people, you know, we must heal to what the Lord is doing. He's a God who knows the deep and secret things the book of Daniel says. And he knows what is in the darkness and light dwells within Daniel 2.22. And he's a God, as Daniel said, who reveals secrets, Daniel 2.28. And so we have this beautiful privilege of discovering the message of God, hearing what God wants to say. So I'm excited. I hope you all are excited and let's continue to get better and better at hearing God's voice. So let's just quickly close now. At the end of the class, would somebody please be able to lead and pray? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this beautiful day. We thank you for everything that we learned today, God.  You are the living God. And you have given us this privilege to listen to each and every moment of this life. As you made us your children, you gave us that privilege to hear from you, Lord. We are so thankful. God, help us to open our spiritual eyes and ears and help us to get more deeper into the relationship that we can hear from you so that we'll have a clear guidance so that we can be a blessing to others as we learn. Help us to flow much more in this prophecy, Lord. Be with us and guide us in Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you, everyone. Have a blessed day as you continue on with your classes. See you all next week. Bye for now.


This study investigates the differences between two different strains of mice with a myotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS. The researchers found that one strain had a slower progression rate than the other which was attributed to the ability of the slower progressing strain to maintain muscle mass and function despite nerve damage. They also discovered that this effect was due to the presence of certain molecules in the muscles of the slower progressing strain which helped to promote regeneration of the muscle tissue. These results suggest that understanding the differences between these two strains could lead to better treatments for ALS. This article was authored by Cassandra Margotta, Power for Brisio, Marcos Acanti, and others.


Good morning, everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, coming to you live from TF9 headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. 10 AM Eastern time on Friday, 30 minutes into the trading day. We got markets starting off in pretty substantial negative territory. All the indices down about 1% so far. You get the Dow down 274 points, trading at $25,688. S&Ps down 27 points, trading at $28,28, and the NASDAQ, negative 86 points, trading at $77,52. We'll start things off this morning. Let's take a look at that, VIX, Volatility Index. Getting a little bit of negative action in the market, seeing a spike above 15 for the first time in a while to pull this back even just on a daily basis to see where we are.  We're talking about where were we? March 8th since the last time we climbed, $15,27 on that VIX currently. Going over to some of the markets. We'll start it off with the Dow. So we were coming into the market open, and there is your 940, so there's your 930 opening bell bar. We're trading $25,901 for the high there, currently trading $25,737. NASDAQ 100, spiked to $75,10 right after the opening bell. From there, you trade from $75,10 all the way down in the span of like 25 minutes to $74,42. Talking about $70, NASDAQ 100 points, currently trading $74,57. S&Ps, trade lower off to the opening bell as well. Was up there at $28,50, spiked to a low just a few minutes ago of $28,31, talking about almost 20 S&P points in the span of about 20 minutes. Crude oil, trading a bit lower as well. We were up there hovering around $60. Currently, you have Crude trading at $58,79. Gold contract as you got an acceleration in the market to the downside. Gold getting a little bit of a spike higher. You have Gold trading at $13,367. And Euro US Dollar, trading $1,1304. What else you have happening out there? Pretty interesting when you take a look. So the bond market flashing its biggest recession signal since before the financial crisis. Pretty remarkable. The spread between the three month and the 10 year Treasury note has fallen below 10 basis points. I believe that just went negative too as that happens. So you're able to get a higher interest rate on a three month contract versus a 10 year, an inverted yield curve. Pretty remarkable. Other stocks out there. You got Nike falling back and you got Boeing pulling back as well as they are already losing billions of dollars of orders, let alone the plethora of stories out there. None of them good. Boeing, down about 2%, $366. Nike, down about 5%, $84. Stay tuned. Come back at 10 o'clock with Tom live programming all Friday till four. Have a great day everybody.