Thank you for the introduction. Eric's talk was great because he was introducing his whole idea of using React in WordPress. The fact that we're switching over to Gutenberg means that we're going to have more and more React like code going on into the future. We're going to have more JavaScript generated code in the browser. And this really big shift into communicating over remote API calls is huge. And I'm glad that we got to see some of those with getting the ratings from the WPAPI registering a new endpoint from PHP, calling it, updating it. I'd like to talk today about API design. Without being ready for it, we start to enter a realm of complexity and chaos that we may not anticipate as soon as we start building out these APIs. Because it's not like when we're generating the HTML and the PHP and we have immediate access to all the data in WordPress and so on. So, it's almost impossible not to start with REST API. Who has heard of REST API? Who has built REST API? Who has been guilty to the point where you feel like you should be building REST API? You don't know what that means.  I'm going to address some of the things about like why is REST a thing? Why is it important? Why do we feel that we need to do it? And what do we need to do? So, I've got three slides here specifically framing this talk because I feel like in WordPress as a whole, we have already done a reasonable job of building out things like posts and comments and users and sites in the REST API or the WP API. And with these series of slides and images, I'm wondering if anybody can notice what's the pattern? What, as we compare in the top to the bottom, there's a fundamental difference between each of these pairs, the size, sure. Each pair is related. And the object is what is useful. That's where we're going here. On the top we have things and on the bottom we have processes or actions. It's relatively simple to build an API that provides information about a post. It's much more difficult to build an API that deals with submitting posts. Specifically today, I'm going to talk about processes. Not just posting an update to a post, but talk about processes that can take some time, processes that can be canceled, processes that might fail, processes that are like importing a site into your WordPress installation. For our talk, we're going to be discussing the hypothetical post content analyzer. This is going to be a Gutenberg plugin and what it's going to provide is a new type of block that you can write in and it's going to submit that content to a service that will analyze your own and provide feedback about it and it may even provide additional enhancements. The business model is the free version requires an account to be logged into and there's a premium version that will suggest context-sensitive images.  This is kind of like a rough idea of what we'd like to build. Where you can see on the left, we highlight some problems with the writing in the block and on the block tools on the right, it gives us more detailed information. What kind of backend services are going to be required for this and where are we going to have to build in our plugin to make this happen? We want to provide an additional dashboard in the WP admin that people can go to and we can kind of see trends of our writing over time and see any current operations. It's the dashboard where they're going to provide the login information for their account and where they're going to deal with things if their account's not going to be the standard. Turns out we're going to need a lot of data and a lot of different conditions to check for because, for example, while someone's writing one of our writing in this block, their account may go out. They may aspire their account. They had a monthly subscription and the month is up. And it's up to us to make sure that we don't continue trying to provide that service to them or if their account expires and we're not going to provide it that they don't have their editor crash as a result of it. So this is the kind of code that is like a naive first implementation of this. This is something that you'll see quite common with building these React interfaces. Just then through here, there's a lot of context that I'm not going through so I apologize if it's a lot. We've got some function that gets called that renders are blocking the editor. And we've got all these conditions. Well, first of all, we have to go out and grab the user information from our service. Is this user a real user? Is their account active? Do they have the premium? Is there currently some content that our server is analyzing for them? And if it is, draw something else and if it isn't, if it's got the premium thing, go ahead and grab the extra information. It's very common code. I see a lot of code that looks like this because it's kind of like the most straightforward way of doing it. I just want to highlight here the API calls that are being made in order to get this data. A very simple idea and we already have four different endpoints that we have to write four different kind of return responses that we need to provide and a lot of questions like what happens if I call the endpoint to get the status and user account is expired? What happens if I go to grab the premium things and they switched to a free plan? What happens if between this line and this line something changes or the server on the other end goes down from 8 minutes? I'd like to introduce a new concept, which is what we're going to call a state machine based API. Is anybody here returning a state machine? Good, at least a few people were paying attention because somebody mentioned it in the previous talk. We're going to look at a couple slides and then we're going to build out the concept. This is kind of the same function redone with a state machine based API for modeling that process. This is the API call, the only API call we need to do the same stuff that we did before. We have this new API endpoint that we're going to talk about in a minute. We call it once and as a response to that we have, it doesn't have to be switched to an endpoint, but we have switched it with discrete points in this process that we're going to look at and use as a mental model to simplify what's going on. It's a single endpoint. A single endpoint to maintain, a single endpoint to handle errors for, and it provides a single type of data. So if you look before we're moving things like if the user.is active or if the account.is premium and we have all these different things. I want to step through a couple of example responses that we might see for this Gutenberg post analyzer. This might be the response from that endpoint if somebody is, if our servers are currently analyzing a post that somebody has submitted. It's got a state field, it says processing. It's got a version which is based off of the words in the post so that every time they make a change you can submit a version. It's got a started at field which has some date and time and it's got a canceled property with a URL path to go to which looks like it might cancel that task in some process. This is the API response for an account that expired. It's got a state property that says inactive and it has an expired at property that tells us when the last time the account was active. This is the API response for somebody who never signed up for our service. They have no login credentials. We've never heard of that. And this is the API response after our servers have analyzed the post and responded. It's got a state property called complete. It has a list of string alerts and it has, you finish that property that tells us when the process can be. And then this one is for the account. We'll notice that it now has it. So that's a lot of looking at data. What am I getting at? This is the machine. Everybody's got one. The machine is already running. Everybody already has a running process in their play. This is a tool that engineers and people in business use all the time to model processes, to provide a mental map that's easy to reason about and which separates processes into discrete units of, discrete semantic units. Each state is just a label, but it has its own meaning. It has intrinsic properties that only exist in that form. For example, here in this waiting state which I have said, this is what it means when somebody is logged into an account that they've never submitted a post analysis. It doesn't make sense to try and cancel the analysis here because none has ever been started. It's a meaning of the state. It doesn't make sense to try and get a list of alerts about the post content because none has been submitted. The processing state means that my server is currently analyzing the content that somebody wrote. It also has its own meaning. A complete state we already talked about. It has its own well-defined meaning. You can't cancel a job if it's completed because it's no longer doing anything. And we have the inactive state, which is kind of like a catch pocket for anything that means the service or the account isn't valid. You'll notice there's arrows between these states. We can jump from one to another, and jump from any of them to any of the others. There's certain rules that we can define in English language, business rules that can say, well, once an account is established, we can start processing something. But we can't have an account on our servers that nobody has ever submitted something to and immediately jump into the bottom state where we are finished analyzing something. Unfortunately, a lot of times when we build out API-based components on things like this, we end up assuming that we go from illegal states to one to another. We'll see that later. When I'm talking to somebody on the phone about my plug-in, I can describe to them. I can send them this picture and say, look, here's the four different places somebody can be with our service and I can talk about each one in isolation. It's simple, relatively simple. I mean, the work that we're doing is complicated all around, but this diagram is easy. So why do we have to go and make things so complicated? This is the code we had at the very beginning. Honestly, this is much better than most of the code that we typically find in these circumstances. We tend to build things piecemeal, and we make a change, we add to it, we tap on the code. So this is actually better. When we already discussed, we have four API calls. We have race conditions where we can get into weird states. And the person who developed the alerts endpoint was different than the person who created the users endpoint. So you actually only get an error about account exploration when you call the users endpoint and not the other. Look at all the logic that's occurring inside of the web browser in order to understand what's happening. We're looking at all these different fields that come from different places. And any time, you know, let's take a look at that dashboard. The Gutenberg editor itself and the WPM dashboard both have to know if a user is active and if they're a premium account. So we end up duplicating all these checks in JavaScript in both places. And there's a lot of opportunity to get those out of sync with each other. We end up in big applications with like 30 different functions that are all intending to do that, but they do it in like seven different ways. And then you get a weird bug that says, hey, in my dashboard, it says my account is active, but in the editor, I cannot do anything and it's telling me I have to log in. And probably it's out of date. This is an example of a JavaScript callback from when we click Analyze, how we might typically see this being done. Eric mentioned in his previous talk that, hey, look, I wrote this code. This is not how I'm going to do it in production, but this is easy to see conceptually. And there was something that was kind of like this with the ratings. They submitted the ratings and then we have this like promise callback however we do it. We wait for the API response to return and then we update the reaction state in the render. There's a big problem here in that if we refresh the page during that process, it's gone. If we have, you know, let's say it takes 30 seconds to submit the review that Eric wrote and there's like a little spinner in the meantime. If we reload the page during that 30-second window, it looks like we haven't submitted it at all because it loses traffic. Additionally, this means it's hard to test our interfaces because how are we going to try and fake the browser into this state where we're submitting it? We can't do it. We actually have to make a network call in order to try and test out that loading state. So let's talk about how this changes. What we did is we looked at everything that we were doing and said what does it mean to submit a post-content to analyze and to receive these calls? We classified that process into different steps. We created four steps and we built a single API endpoint that returns one data object that encompasses all of the information about that process, which step it's in, intrinsic properties of that step. And in here, we just rewrote. So here's what we had before, four API calls. Here's our new one. Again, I'm sorry, this is how we changed with the state machine that same callback. So make it wait for the response and update state or the state machine said I'd forget. What we're going to see is that the user interface is no longer a result of a sequence of logical checks and verifications in our code, but instead it's a direct mapping, a one-to-one mapping between this data object and the display. When we submit a post, we're transitioning from one state to the next. When that happens, our UI updates, not because of the transition, but because of the raw data that the server tells us is the current status of what we're doing. Generally, we're going to pull this stuff, you know, we update it every so often, or in the case of submitting a request for something, when that request comes back, it has a new copy of that data object. Since it's all coming from one endpoint, too, all of the error handling information, all of the error bits of information about why it failed is in that standard shape. So all of our UI instantly responds when things change, and we don't have to update that. We don't have to make sure that the dashboard is subtracting what's happening in there. So this is like our dashboard code. One of the things this kind of gives us is since the actual truth of our UI, if you will, the actual design is not code, since code is a liability, we can reason about the code that we write, and we can say, like, is this code fully implementing our design? We have a case statement for each process and then everything else. So we can say, oh, look, if we had forgotten the labeling state, somebody confronted the diagram and said, what does the dashboard do when we're in an active account but we haven't yet submitted it? Well, because it's in the diagram, and we can just, again, one-to-one map it, now we have that case statement there. That's what it does. It doesn't depend on a sequence of checks. Further, at the top where we make the API call, we can end up pulling this out of our code and be hitting this endpoint in the background with some pull, whether it's a second, one second, five seconds in response to events. Our UI rendering code ends up being completely independent of any API calls. What that means is if we want to test the UI in the middle of the process, if we want to see what it looks like when that loading spinner is, all we have to do is manually inject that response object into the app and it will reflect that. We can fake it. So the state machine is a discussion about language. When we are developing software, the entirety, except for a tiny little sliver of what we do is communicating language and intent. Our entire trade is the trade of specification, of trying to understand what it is that we want to build. When we write that in the language of code, it's very noisy, it's very confusing. When we can step back and provide vocabulary and specification to define the processes that we're working with, then we have a much easier model to communicate with other people, people who aren't coders, people who aren't designers. And we get something that's easy to maintain and easy to gauge with. Is this app complete? What percentage of this project is done only? If we go back to the state machine itself, it's like a language bridge. It is the way that we go between domains of knowledge. If we look here, we can see how a designer can take each of these states and provide rough mockups of the UI during those steps of the process. They don't have to know any code, they don't have to say when the user is active, but they're not premium account. We just say, here are the steps for the intrinsic properties that we described in paragraphs and sentences, and this is the way that those translate into visuals. The coders can then take this and say in code, the switch signal is a really close match to this kind of description. We can say for each of these states this is the realization of the UI that the designer gives. Again, it's easy to fake all that. It's easy to test it. It's easy to change it because the change doesn't require scouring 20 different API endpoints and 100 different places in JavaScript. What about the server site? When we started this project, this is the list of endpoints that we had to interact. The client had to know, by saying the client, I mean the JavaScript code in the browser, had to know all these URLs, had to know how to form them, had to know how to interpret the response coming from each of those, and they were all different. Settled on a way to describe this process, we ended up with these three endpoints. The logic is all controlled on the server. It's all controlled in one spawn. There's no duplication. It has enabled us to, it has kind of like encouraged us to be able to write our code in a more modular way than a lot of APIs are written. Our API is actually just going to call the state machine code itself, which lives in our solution. And finally, we actually don't even need the client to know the other URLs. We can pass it all in through that data object itself. If you look at the diagram, the inactive state is kind of off by its own. In many cases, in many processes, we have these kind of global states that live on the site. These are typically error states, authorization permission type issues, waiting states, and this way of writing code really helps us to be consistent in how we provide that data back to the browser. Error handling is notoriously bad in software, and it's really frustrating as a customer to be using something and have it break and have no information. In this case, we can take a look and cone up the rules that we talk about and provide a function that goes through and looks for any condition that invalidates this request. I said the machine is always running, or it's already running. Those users that we've never seen, we don't have to go and check if the user exists. If the user doesn't exist, then in the PHP side, in the server side, we just send back the responses as this account is not inactive. It's inactive. There's no permission to do that. And no matter which action we're doing, whether we're trying to cancel a job in progress, start a new analysis, if anything happens, if anything gets unauthorized during the process, the server is just like checking this stuff and it'll keep that back instead of continuing the process. This is a real pain to manage for like 10 different APIs. I'm going to jump through some of these as we run out of time, and I'm going to give you a basic model of how we write the click on the server and move in through the steps of our process. Each step gets its own domain where we can kind of like forget about everything else. We can immediately toss out API requests that are invalid because they're trying to like start a job on an account that's not active. We don't have to replicate those checks of 30 different processes. And I mentioned our APIs end up becoming very hollow shells. This is the end result of our actual WPAPI code. It does one thing. It checks if the requesting user is authorized to make the API code. And if it does, it returns that data object and if another whichever is in there. What this looks like in reality this single data object governs the entirety of WPAPI. We can communicate different things about abilities without having to update our browser. Without having to update the code or the plugin that they're using. So in this case, we're looking at the state of a process that our servers are currently analyzing the post and we have provided this cancel property that indicates where they can go to to cancel the job. Maybe it gets stuck, I don't know. In this API response that property is gone. Now, why is it gone? Like in our client, if we want to provide the cancel button we just say like does the cancel property exist? And if it does, display it and use this URL path with a post request if somebody wants to cancel it. It's gone here. Why is it gone? Browser doesn't care. Maybe they're not authorized to cancel the job. Maybe they're allowed to see the jobs that are running but they're not allowed to cancel it. Maybe we're running an AB test and five percent of our users are able to cancel and none of the others are. Or maybe the servers on our side that interact with these things is just down, it's broken. The fact that that's gone means clients instantly don't show that UI on it. Don't show that button. That's the end anyway. Again, it's an advanced topic so I apologize if it was dry but when we are programming these things and again which we're going to do more and more with Uber and API based apps and WordPress the proclivity to expand our complexity grows so fast and it's super valuable to keep things simple if we can sit down, model our flows as a process and identify several states and build a single point in the server that produces all that information. We know that these are good candidates for this work if it's long running, if it's cancelable and if different points in the process kind of share similar value conditions permissions and volatility might expire. Do you think there's going to be something like that? Some of those things will intercept a request or will do something to request or modify a request before it runs a method in the API. Is there some kind of plan for doing a formalized way in WordPress or are there lots on that or what's a good way to do those kinds of things? To my knowledge there's a method like that and that has more to do with PHP and WordPress operates through hooks and filters. It's perfectly legitimate when writing your own APIs to do this. It's more of a code structure than anything else. Again, the reason we do a lot of stuff is because these concerns tend to be broken and tend to apply to a wide range of requests. No, I don't expect to see decorators but you're fully at liberty to do this. It's not very workable on WordPress PHP, especially since it still supports PHP 5.24, which does not allow a human and functional programming. But you can see we kind of did that in a dramatic way here. That's what it reminded me of. That's what it was.


I've been able to find a single country in the world where the policies of being advocated for blacks in the United States have lifted any people out of poverty. I've seen many examples around the world of people who began in poverty and ended in affluence. Not one of them has followed any pattern at all like what is being advocated for blacks in the United States. That's the economist and social critic Thomas Sowell critiquing affirmative action back in 1981. In an age in which espousing unpopular ideas can destroy the careers of journalists and academics, Sowell's candor and insistence on following the facts wherever they lead are more worthy of appreciation than ever. Sowell was born in rural North Carolina in 1930 to an uneducated family without electricity or running water. He was orphaned and raised by a great aunt. When he was eight, his family moved to Harlem and at one point he was living in a shelter for homeless boys keeping a knife under his pillow for protection. He didn't finish college until he was 28 and went on to receive his PhD from the University of Chicago before he became internationally celebrated as an intellectual and writer. His upbringing was more than something to be overcome. It profoundly shaped his scholarship, in particular by making him disdainful of elite intellectuals who imposed their ideas on society through government. As Sowell wrote in his memoir, growing up he had daily contact with people who were neither well educated nor particularly genteel but who had practical wisdom far beyond what I had. That gave him a lasting respect for the common sense of ordinary people, a factor routinely ignored by the intellectuals among whom I would later make my career. Sowell's provocative body of work on everything from race to childhood development to charter schools and their enemies is the subject of a new documentary and a forthcoming biography titled Maverick. He's someone who has done something of an intellectual loner throughout his career. Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the author behind the new documentary and biography of Sowell.  Maybe this is a commentary on intellectuals today is that makes him a Maverick. Someone who puts truth above popularity, who doesn't concern himself with being politically correct. He follows the facts where they lead, whether or not a conclusion is a popular one. Riley says that Sowell's genius rests in his unwavering attention to empirical facts and data and policy outcomes, regardless of intentions, a tendency that was sharpened by his PhD training at the University of Chicago under future Nobel prize winners Milton Friedman, George Stigler and Friedrich Hayek. This whole notion that this is the black family has always been disintegrating, that is nonsense, that his studies go up to 1925. The great bulk of black families were intact, two parent families up through 1925 and going all the way back through the era of slavery. So it is now only within our own time that we suddenly see this inevitable tragedy, which the welfare system says it's going to rush into He was thinking like a Chicago economist. Essentially, it's an adherence to empiricism, to facts and logic and putting that ahead of theory. Tom is much more interested in how an idea has panned out what the evidence is for success or failure, rather than simply what the intent is. And I think that is what distinguishes him and much of the Chicago School from their counterparts at MIT or Harvard or other places where there was much more of an emphasis, at least in the field of economics, on on elegant theories and mathematics. When Sol showed up at the University of Chicago for doctoral work, he called himself a Marxist, a designation he ultimately rejected not because of Milton Friedman's lectures, but because of his subsequent job experience in the federal government. I was still a Marxist after taking Milton Friedman's course. But one summer in the government was enough to let me say, no, this government is really not the answer. Milton Friedman didn't cure you, but the federal government did. Federal government did. So what would say the federal government doesn't do anything? One of Sol's most brilliant works is Knowledge and Decisions, published in 1980. He elaborated on Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's insight that information and knowledge are dispersed among people and markets in highly sophisticated, yet unarticulated ways. That's something most intellectuals and planners ignore as they override the expertise and experience of the common man through government fiat. In a 1981 review of the book, published in Reason, Hayek wrote that Sol had not only broadened the application of the ideas and effectively carried the approach into new fields that I never considered, but he also succeeds in translating abstract and theoretical argument into a highly concrete and realistic discussion of the central problems of contemporary economic policy. To the extent that decision making has taken out of the hands of ordinary people and placed in the hands of government bureaucrats and politicians, what you are doing is increasing the distance between the person who makes the decision and the person who has to suffer the consequences of that decision. And one of the reasons Sol wrote that book is because he thought that too much decision making was being put in the hands of government and that we were headed down a bad path by going in this direction. And I think obviously he's been born out by that. In a conflict of visions, which is Sol's favorite of his own books, he identified two fundamental modes of understanding the world. Thinkers ranging from Rousseau to Marx to John Rawls exhibited what Sol calls an unconstrained vision based on the mistaken idea that human beings and society are perfectable. In later books, Sol championed a constrained vision articulated by classical liberals such as Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and America's founding fathers who constructed a system of checks and balances to protect man from his worst tendencies. The constrained vision rejects utopianism and instead holds that social progress comes from acknowledging that there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs. As Burke wrote, we cannot change the nature of things and of men but must act upon them the best we can. Sol's good friend and fellow amateur photographer, Harvard linguist Stephen Pinker, draws a parallel between how cameras work and societies work. Tomlin's commented to me that to be a photographer you have to master trade-offs. All of the little adjustments that you fiddle with in the camera never involve making everything better or everything worse. It's a matter of trading one thing off for another. If you close down the diaphragm, then you get lots and lots of stuff in focus near to far. On the other hand, you're cutting down the amount of light. And a theme in Tom's work on society is that all policies involve trade-offs. And Tom often loses patience at people with sweeping visions. Here's how we can improve society. Here's a solution to a problem. And Tom points out in his political writings, there are no solutions, they're only trade-offs. Sol's life experience and ideological commitments are perhaps most clear in his long-held positions on the centrality of school choice to improving the life prospects for low-income blacks and other minorities. One of his first major works was 1972's Black Education, Myths and Tragedies. And his latest book was 2020's Charter Schools and Their Enemies. I would allow their parents to have a choice of where to send them to school, whether that choice is called a voucher scheme, open enrollment, tuition, tax credit, any kind of scheme of that sort that would put that power in the hands of their parents, mainly because that would mean that the schools would have to be responsive to them. As it is now, the school is a monopoly. They need not be responsive. It is hard for me to understand what harm is going to be done by allowing parents to have a choice as compared to having self-interested bureaucrats have a monopoly. Tom brings this economic empiricism to anything he's writing about. That's something that I've greatly appreciated and then the need for, to be a critical thinker in the way that he has. He wrote about these racial topics almost out of the sense of duty because there were things that needed to be said that too few others were willing to say.  I think we are so much better off for having this body of work out there to draw on that is still so relevant today. If he had spent his entire career writing about intellectual history, John Baptiste and the classical liberals, I'm sure so be remembered as a great scholar, but I am so glad he decided to take the punches he's taken over this other stuff on race and ethnicity and culture because I think for some of us, that's equally important. Despite disavowing utopianism and human perfectability, Seoul has never wavered in a belief that things can and should get better if we put aside ideological priors, assess the facts on the ground and work to give individuals more and better choices. I grew up in an era when people in particularly blacks were a lot poorer than today, faced a lot more discrimination than today and in which the teenage pregnancy rate was a lot lower than today. I don't believe there was a predestined amount of teenage pregnancy, a predestined amount of husband desertion. Today, Seoul is in its 90s and still writing and publishing, though his greatest scholarship is almost certainly behind him. His body of work will continue to have a profound impact on our understanding of the world long after he's gone.


Okay Okay, welcome back everyone for our second lecture on interpreting scripture We we have been talking about some guidance on Interpreting Bible prophecy just you know some some basic understanding We will study on Bible prophecy in future semesters Now, let's just go through some remaining Instructions here alright So we just I just wanted to go over these points here on Interpreting Bible prophecy so One is we follow the normal principles all that we've covered before That means you also understand the history the grammar and all of that When you're dealing with Bible prophecy second You take Bible prophecy the normal Chromatical sense, so you take it literally for what it says. This is what it's saying You consider the literary aspect of it That means if there is figurative or symbolic language then yeah, we have to interpret the Figurative or symbolic language now as we've been talking about Whenever things whenever it's possible to take something in a literal sense, okay, we take it literally When something is literal is impossible illogical then you say it's figurative and then you try to understand what it means and You know all prophecy eventually is pointing us towards Jesus and The unfolding of the purpose of God on the earth So we keep that in mind as we are interpreting and talking about Bible prophecy that okay It's all pointing to Jesus and ultimately the purpose of God is being Established on the earth So number five is recognize the principles of foreshortening that means The the foreshortening means it appears as we say here it appears that You know the the prophecy the way it is given appears that It's going to happen You know one after the other and It's with very little time in between but Actually There is Huge time gap between certain events mentioned in the prophecy So in the presentation of the prophecy there is foreshortening it appears to happen very quickly in the way the prophecies written or spoken to us But Literally, it's going to have a long time in between. So we say give it the classic example of Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 And I was a son is born under us a child is born unto us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulder So it's like that's an example of prophetic foreshortening where he's giving it to us as it's going to happen ABC but actually There's a gap of 2,000 years from the child is born son is given to when the government is going to be on a shoulder so When the prophet is speaking the prophet himself does not know the time gap that is Actually between the events Right because they're just speaking what you're seeing or what the Holy Spirit is giving to them They don't understand it. So when they present it or when it is spoken or written it appears to all happen very quickly but that's called foreshortening but In actuality there is You know time gap in between Right. So be mindful of that second number six Look for God's built-in interpretations like maybe never size it, you know There will be the meaning given in the passage or in the scripture that comes on. So look for that then compare Parallel scriptures and when you study Bible prophecy, it's so fascinating because you know, you see things spoken in Daniel you speak see things poker in Jeremiah in Ezekiel and in In Joel and Zechariah, and then you compare that with you know, what is spoken elsewhere In revelation and so on and you have to put all of this together and you get a beautiful picture of You know how things are going to unfold but That understanding comes when you look at all these related Passages and you study them all together All right. So especially when you're studying Bible prophecy It's very important to put all the scripture side-by-side, you know, put them all together Then you get a beautiful picture. It's almost like a jigsaw puzzle, right? When you have when you have these pieces of the puzzle all scattered everywhere, it's like man, what is this? Well, you got to put them together So when you put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, then you get a beautiful pictures Oh, this looks this looks really nice But you got to put them together then you get the full picture So, you know, when you look at Bible prophecy, you can think imagine it as you know these pieces of jigsaw puzzle By itself, it looks very strange in a brand of what does this mean? But when you put it all together You get a beautiful picture of what is going to unfold Another important part in Bible prophecy, which you will Notice often in which we need to be mindful of years There are things that are spoken about Israel the nation of Israel Which is first fulfilled spiritually in the church and then it is literally fulfilled in Israel in the nation of Israel Okay, so there is a spiritual fulfillment and there is a literal fulfillment This is another important thing to keep in mind when it comes to Bible prophecy and there are You know many examples of this And I've just mentioned it to over here one is about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit so In Joel chapter 2 the prophet Joel says Sorry in the last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh And your sons and your daughters will prophesy your young men will see visions your old men will dream dreams so on Now Joel is speaking He's prophesying to the nation of Israel And the same God is saying in the last days he'll pour out his spirit on all flesh So on the day of Pentecost that is acts chapter 2 The church is birthed This has nothing to do with Israel in the sense other than the fact that the first set of believers are Jewish people The 120 are Jewish people But it's the birth of the church the New Testament church and when the church is born In acts chapter 2 the Apostle Peter stands up and says This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. So wait a minute Joel was prophesying to Israel And he was saying God will pour out his spirit on everyone God is gonna pour a spirit and Hear the church is born and Peter is saying what we are seeing happen here when the church is born is A fulfillment of that prophecy. I mean, it's wonderful, but then what about the nation of Israel Well, the nation of Israel will also experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit But it will come after the church age that means the church, you know We are now in the church age. God is stealing primarily with the church. He is Working for a working through the nation of Israel, but he's also right now is working in the church and then The church ages over like when when goddess, you know brings us all together The nation of Israel also experience outpouring of the Holy Spirit and we see this in Zechariah chapter 12 verse 10 But it says, you know and God will pour out on Israel the spirit of grace and supplication So they're going to experience the nation of Israel is going to experience outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Same thing with Amos chapter 9 you know In Amos Amos chapter 9 Amos the prophet Amos says, you know God is saying In that day, I will rebuild the temple. I will rebuild the tabernacle of David and the you know the Gentiles will come seeking after it and the So we'll overtake the Reaper that means the harvest will be so great Before the Reaper can finish reaping all the harvest. It's sewing time the so was that sewing So this is in Amos 9 11 12 13 Now in Acts chapter 15 we are in the time of the church and James stands up and After the first council in Jerusalem James says well, the prophet Amos said That God will rebuild the tabernacle of David And that's what's happening right now and the Gentiles will come seeking after God. That's what's happening right now Well Amos was speaking about the tabernacle of David, which is Worship happening as it did in David's time But Amos James in Acts 15 is Using that with reference to the church and with reference to Gentiles coming to Christ So what are we saying? Amos spoke about a literal tabernacle of David which God will reestablish but James is using that in a reference of a spiritual fulfillment in the church and Gentiles coming to Christ So These are two examples where something was spoken There is a spiritual fulfillment in the life of the church And there will come a little fulfillment in Israel so Israel will have the tabernacle of David which is worship being restored 24-7 right that will happen but Before that the church is experiencing Spiritual fulfillment of it So we keep some of these things in mind and as you're looking at the New Testament The New Testament will point back to the Old Testament say hey, it's being fulfilled here But keep in mind that when it's in relation to the church It's a spiritual fulfillment. The literal fulfillment will take place concerning Israel in time to come another aspect of Bible prophecy is dual fulfillment, which is And the prophet is speaking There is an immediate fulfillment and there's a future fulfillment So exam Genesis 3 15 God God is speaking he says I will put enmity between you and the serpent between her seed between its seed and her seed In a Yulbrose's heel and he will crush your head So there's immediate fulfillment meaning from then on there was And now to say there was this animosity or hatred between man and snake immediate fulfillment But there's a future fulfillment, which is Jesus Christ the seed of the woman crushed the head of the serpent that is Satan so dual fulfillment so When you come into the Psalms You'll find many prophecies That have dual fulfillment that is that the deal with the situation which the psalmist is facing But then it is quoted is with reference to Christ you know, so You know they cast lots for my garment Not one of my bones was broken The heel of my dearest friend has been lifted up against me and so on you know the prophecies concerning Christ There's something immediate in the context of the psalm but there is a future fulfillment pointing to Jesus Christ and it's quoted and later on and the Lord Jesus himself quotes those psalms right so Keep in mind that is dual fulfillment in Bible prophecy as well last point and then I'll take questions So understand that there are Parts of prophecies that Are fulfilled or being fulfilled and there are prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled parts of it. So Example when Joel was Joel chapter 2 when he was talking about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit If you read the whole passage, he says You know in the last days, I'll put out my spirit the sons and your daughters will prophesy young men will see visions Your men will dream dream dreams and I will show signs in the heavens above and on the earth beneath the sun will be Darkened at the moon will become blood red in that great and terrible day of the Lord And whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So that is the whole prophecy that Joel gave but then In acts to only part of the prophecy was fulfilled which is The I will put out this my spirit and all flesh your sons and daughters and will prophesy on all that But there's nothing up, you know, the moon didn't turn black The I mean the the sun didn't turn black and the moon didn't turn into blood red And there were no signs in heavens above and the earth beneath Which was given in Joel's prophecy so that part of Joel's prophecy Will happen later Then you read about it in Revelation chapter 6 and also in Revelation chapter 8 During the seven year tribulation the first half of the tribulation there is the Seven seals and there's also the seven Trumpets and during one of the seals this will happen The sun will be dark and the moon will be turned red then during one of the trumpets The sun will be dark and the moon been red and there'll be all kinds of Cosmic events that are happening signs in the heavens above and on the earth beneath it will be fulfilled So what we what are we saying? In one part of the prophecy in a prophetic passage Some of it has already been fulfilled or it's being fulfilled and Some of it will be fulfilled in the future So we have to be able to identify that as well Okay, so these are different things we keep in mind when we are studying and dealing with Bible prophecy It's very wonderful to study Bible prophecy, but you know these are things we have to keep in mind Let me pause and see if there are any questions before we go to the next chapter I hope all of you are following me. You've understood these things so far Any questions all clear? I See I see your Comments, I also see a question from Nicholson Zechariah and the question is other request is to look at Zechariah chapter 5 versus 5 through 11 and Let's see if we can explain Zechariah chapter 5 Versus 5 through 11 was and so says Okay, Zechariah chapter 5 versus 5 through 11 Okay Zechariah chapter 5 Versus 5 through 11 Okay, I'm just reading through it and The year is led this lifted up and This is a woman sitting inside the basket This is wickedness Do the leg cover over its mouth? That's a basket between the earth and heaven So I said to the angel who talked to me what are they better? They can must be said to build a house for it in the land of Shinar When it is ready Basket will be set there on its place Okay, so So let me just give you my first impression Nicholson and What I will do is I will also, you know study it further and get back to you but my first impression Is is this Right. So what is happening? What is the context? This is a Zechariah Who's This is a book of Zechariah, so this is the time when The captives the captivity or the captives have come out of Babylon and they have returned to their own land and they're going through the process of Rebuilding the city the temple and the walls and Zero Babel is the governor and Zechariah is one of the Prophets who are prophesying Encouraging the the whole process of rebuilding and restoration that's happening After the people have come back from Babylon. Okay, so that's the context So in that context the Zechariah is having an angel who's speaking to him and He in a chapter 4 Zechariah the prophet brings a message to zero Babel who is the governor About you know finishing the work on the temple and and so on and after he gives that message Now we are coming to chapter 5 Where he is having additional visions and this Vision of this is verses 5 through 11. The angel is showing him a basket so basically very very just in in general is there's this basket and In the basket. He is seeing a Woman But it's not about the woman It's what this woman represents and that's explained for us there in verse 8 because he sees He asks the question, you know, what's going on here or who is this woman and then verse 8 says it is wickedness So basically the basket is a container Full of Wickedness so it's not about the woman but the woman is representing wickedness as explained here in verse 8 and There's a lead cover on its mouth meaning it's sealed and then he sees two birds Another two women coming Who are Who have the wings of a stork meaning they're going to fly they're going to carry this basket somewhere And he says, you know, where are you taking it? Where are you taking this basket? So What is inside the basket wickedness Two women coming so if the first woman inside the basket represents wickedness the women carrying it are likely Wickedness themselves actually representing wickedness But they're you know, they're flying they're carrying it somewhere. Where are you going? And then he says in verse 11 he says I'm going to carry it to build a house for it in the land of shinar and The basket will be set there on its base So when I look cross reference in my notes, I mean my Bible here the word shinar represents the land of Babylon Shinar or Babylon. So basically this in this vision, which are which angel is giving Zechariah So the people have come out of Babylon But what the angel is showing Zechariah is there's wickedness that is going to be established in Babylon Vickerness is going to be carried and thrown there are put there in Babylon. So basically Babylon Is going to become a place of wickedness. Why this basket? There's woman inside the basket represents wickedness the women carrying it Therefore would also represent about wickedness and they're going to take it over there and put it there They're gonna build a house. They're gonna build a habitation and dwelling For wickedness in Babylon. So Babylon is going to become a place of wickedness. So that is in essence Zechariah chapter 5 verses 5 through 11 It's okay Yeah, and which you know, we can see is it was fulfilled because Babylon has become a place of wickedness It's always Associated with wickedness today, of course Babylon is pretty much in ruins But it has become a place was a place of wicked lot of wickedness coming out of today modern-day Babylon would be Iraq as a nation So much of wickedness has come out of it literally and so on. Okay. All right Okay, good any other questions. All right, so we now go into another part aspect of Interpreting scripture, you know, so we've been looking at various aspects of interpreting scripture things that keep in mind and And as you and I learn to apply this as we're reading scripture text It'll help us, you know, be careful to be accurate in interpreting scripture Now one other aspect that we must talk about when we interpreting scripture is The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament and all of us As we read the New Testament You know, many times we will find references to the Old Testament Hey, so right from the Gospel of Matthew on There will be statements like as the Prophet said or as it is written You know, meaning something in the New Testament is referencing back to something in the Old Testament now We want to talk about that In some cases it is Pretty straightforward. It's just saying that what is happening here in the New Testament Is a fulfillment of what was spoken in the Old Testament. Some sometimes it's pretty straightforward But sometimes it's not as simple Because an example would be in some of Paul's writings He references the Old Testament and you know He references it in Bringing out teaching and bringing out doctrine. So he's not just telling us That was spoken it is fulfilled. It's not as simple as that He's saying that was spoken, but this is what it means For us as New Testament believers Or sometimes The Old Testament is referenced to highlight a Change in what God is doing Again, you find it in Paul's writings Especially in dealing with the law Since the law was like this, but Now in the spirit, it's like this So he's trying to emphasize a change That has taken place. We were under the law. We were married to the law Romans after seven, but now you're married to Christ. Oh Yeah, what does this mean?  You're married to Christ Roman seven and giving example, you know, just examples. So like this, you know, so Paul Is pointing back to the Old Testament, but he's teaching something from the Old For us as New Testament believers and that is a little difficult meaning we have to try to understand What was the Old Testament saying and what is the teaching Paul is bringing out for us in the New Testament? So that requires a little bit of study and understanding and Then you would have something like in the book of Hebrews Which is full of references to the Old Testament You know, he right from Chapter two and chapter three. He's referring Moses. He is referring to What the priests would do in the Old Testament? He's referring to the Aaronic priesthood. He's referring to the Melchizedek priesthood He's referring to the things that were done in the tabernacle and then he's always comparing it with the New Testament like, okay, this is the New Testament so the book of Hebrews is full of that and for us to Understand the book of Hebrews We must understand Old Testament only then We can really understand the book of Hebrews, you know, so like this we have Much reference in the New Testament two things in the Old Testament and we just want to talk about some guidance here on How do we handle? Scripture like this where the New Testament is looking back into the Old some guidance on on how do we handle that kind of text? so I'll just share my screen share the PDF and we will talk about it. All right, so The Old Testament in the New Testament So there are number of references in the Old Testament. I'm just using OT and NT to refer to Old Testament New Testament There are number of references in the Of the Old Testament in the New Testament Some are pretty straightforward like we already said Now in most cases We know where they're exactly quoting from almost all cases there may be a few where They it's not quoted exactly the wordings are not quoted So we may not be sure and one example is in John 7 38 when Jesus said, you know, as it is written He was the stealer and come to me and drink We're not sure exactly that reference But most likely is a quoting from or referencing as a 55 one, but he's put it in his own words So some things will be a little difficult When when it is stated in in own words as opposed to the exact quotation But in most cases we can look back to the Old Testament. Okay, this is what they're quoting in the New Testament right now We want to understand why you know, how and why were these quotations used and How sorry how do we you know, how do we handle it? How do we interpret it? Right? So we will just talk about that for some time so Sometimes as we mentioned, it's a pretty straightforward thing the New Testament is saying Okay, what was prophesied in the Old Testament? It has been fulfilled finished pretty simple The prophet said this it has happened as he said finished That's easy to understand and other times It's used to point to a New Testament happening that Is in agreement with an Old Testament principle? Now, of course, we know that we don't live by the Old Testament We are living by the New Testament, but when I say we don't live by the Old Testament, I mean the The mosaic law and all of that we are not following that But there are Principles even in the Old Testament, which continue today Example, you know, God Old Testament says do not murder. Of course, we don't want to murder even in the New Testament Right that principle stays, you know, God, it's not like that's changed We don't murder in the New Testament too, right? Now There are places in the Old in the New Testament that point like this the point back to the Old and say, okay This is a grease this agrees with that So for example Previously we just saw you know when when James was talking about Gentiles coming to faith in Christ That is in Acts 15 verse 15 Gentiles coming to faith in Christ James actually points to Old Testament because remember at that time they only had the Old Testament They didn't have the New Testament scriptures which came on later So James is pointing to the Old Testament to explain Something that's happening right then which is Gentiles coming To faith in Christ So James quotes from Amos chapter 9 verses 11 and 12 which we referenced earlier But he says hey the prophet Amos said that when the tabernacle of David is rebuilt The children of Edom referring to the Gentiles will come seeking after God So he's using an Old Testament passage to explain What is happening here in the New Testament that is Gentiles are coming to seek after God More specifically Gentiles are coming to faith in Christ. So he's using that Old Testament passage To explain this New Testament happening So like that we will have many other examples Let me let me look at Romans 2 there is In Romans chapter 2 verse 23 Yeah He's again referring to dishonoring God And he's referring to what the prophet said in Romans in Romans so 23 24 is basically saying, you know Even God's own people the Jews have dishonored the name of God and because of that the name of God is blasphemed Among the Gentiles and he's quoting from the Old Testament to explain what's happening at that moment. So Many examples like this, you know, we we mentioned for example the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you know It's happening there in Acts chapter 2 but And Peter is quoting from Joel 2 to explain what is happening in the New Testament So To explain a New Testament incident or to explain a point that is given in the Old Testament. So in this case Joel spoke about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit Joel 2 Acts 2 Peter is quoting that in his sermon and he's basically Explaining things that are happening and what he is saying based on Joel chapter 2 because they didn't have New Testament at that time He's quoted from the Old To explain what is happening or what he's preaching there in the New Testament Sometimes it is used to support a point that is being made in the New Testament. So Example, you know, when when we're talking about marriage A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife Okay, so that's quoted for us in the New Testament and the reference of course is back to Genesis chapter 2 where it's mentioned for the first time, right that A man shall leave his father and mother be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh so that's quoted in the New Testament in Mark 10 and Also in Ephesians 5 Talking about one flesh, but he is Referencing Old Testament scripture now that truth has not changed Example, right Genesis to 24 a man and a woman being made one flesh in marriage Has not changed so the New Testament Whether Jesus mentioned it in Matthew 19 Mark 10 or the Apostle Paul mentions it in Ephesians 5 About man and woman being together as one flesh. They are Pointing to an Old Testament scripture to support what they are saying here in the New Testament But that truth has not changed. It's still true. It's still valid so that's it's used that way and Truth New Testament truth is Backed up or is illustrated from the Old Testament Romans and and you'll find many examples like this Romans chapter 10 We're 16. Let me Paul talks about you know, how beautiful are the feet of those who? preach good news who are taking the good news of the gospel and He's quoting from the Old Testament and then he talks about The fact that not everybody is going to believe in the gospel is quoting from the Old Testament but He's giving us New Testament truth New Testament truth is the gospel has to be preached to everybody and not everybody's going to believe the gospel but the gospel has to be preached to everybody and In explaining that New Testament truth in Romans 10 Paul is quoting from Old Testament as a 53 and other places so New Testament truth very interestingly is Being drawn out of Old Testament Scripture Right, so one example is the gospel the news of Christ to be proclaimed to the Gentiles interestingly that's already spoken off in the Old Testament and New Testament text Is quoting that Old Testament scripture and telling us we must go and Bring the news to others and there will be people who do not believe But our responsibility is take the gospel to everybody right, so keep in mind that The New Testament is not a contradiction to the Old Testament The New Testament fulfills the old and amplifies What is given to us in the old for example? When the New Testament is telling us, you know God wants to save the nations It's not a contradiction of the old or the old is only focusing on Jews and suddenly New Testament is saying Take it to it the whole world. No because even in the old especially when you You know from the time God called a Abraham God was speaking about all families of the earth. There's already talking about all families of the earth Now the Old Testament does a lot of has a lot of focus on Israel But in and through all of it. It is still all families of the earth God's is going to reach all families of the earth. So then and the New Testament is being written It is only amplifying that which is already there in the Old Testament Saying God wants all people to know him and he wants the gospel to go out to The whole world and so that's why New Testament truth can be built upon what is already there in the Old Testament and one example is some About the gospel going out to all the nations and so on Right. So like this again, there will be many many passages that we can understand so Another way the Old Testament is used in the New Testament is when you're applying Old Testament to I guess I'm kind of repeating these things here. You're applying the Old Testament to a New Testament incident or truth and a classic example would be Deep asshole lamb, I'm just giving an example that's easy to understand The boss or lamb we all know Exodus the 12th chapter, but then you come into the New Testament in 1st Corinthians 5 And it says Jesus Christ is our Passover lamp So The New Testament is referencing back to the Old Testament But the truth is still in the New Testament. What is the truth? Christ is our Passover lamp But it's applying something from the Old Testament to New Testament incident or truth Christ was crucified, but he is our Passover lamp sometimes Now all tests are all testament concepts are summarized for us in the New Testament We could look at examples of you know 1st Corinthians 10, but it talks about You know the people journeying through the wilderness how they Sinned they murmured they went into idolatry. They vented a sexual immorality and so on and then Paul uses that in 1st Corinthians 10 and he writes to New Testament believers and says, okay, you know Don't do those things Right. So he's drawing from that Old Testament to teach people in the New Testament Yeah, so You know that is I'm just kind of kind of just quickly finish this Old Testament terminology Is again the used in the New Testament? This is yeah Rumanstein and verse 18 And he's talking about Their sound has gone up to all the earth their words to the ends of the world He's talking about the gospel going out to the ends of the earth drawing a parallel between Old Testament incident With with New Testament Romans 11. He's dealing with about God working with Israel actually he's talking about How Israel Has been blinded So they're not able to recognize Christ and he is quoting that from Isaiah 29 Right. He's saying okay, the prophet prophesied, you know that they will Their eyes will be blinded to be like in slumber I will not recognize Christ and he's quoting from Isaiah 29 in Romans 11 to explain why Israel has not recognized Jesus Christ. So he's he's using that explaining what's happening So Then there's several examples here where we see Old Testament being referenced In the New Testament lots of things and being used in many many different ways I've just tried to Summarize our different scenarios in different situations So the key for us is How do we interpret this and how do we handle the Old Testament text? That is being quoted in the New Testament, that's that's what we will do and I think we will pick this up next week And just look at some examples and give us give us some guidelines here on How to handle Old Testament text in New Testament? Okay? Yeah, I've tried to give a list of examples and there are many different Examples Old Testament in the New Testament Let's pause for now over here. We will pick this up next week and Try to explain How do we handle how do we interpret? These kinds of references some guidance to it and how to work with it Okay. All right I want you have one more minute to go Let's pray we will close and we'll dismiss I will pick this tab same chapter up next week I will spend some more time on it and Yeah, we will also get into some questions any questions that you may have Old Testament in the New Testament and we will spend some more time. Okay Let's close in prayer. Just want somebody to pray and then we can dismiss please So we want to thank you for the time of learning We pray your God that we would be able to continue to apply the things that we have learned in Reading the scriptures and understanding what you have meant through each of the scriptures Lord. We thank you for pastor Thank you for enabling him to explain These principles to us Lord Jesus. We thank you for the class Now we pray as we continue to learn you would open our eyes and help us to know more of you Lord in Jesus name we pray All right, thank you everyone Thank you for your patient listening and we'll continue this next week. Okay. I'm a good rest of the day God bless you. Bye now Thank you, buster. Thank you. Thank you, bro. I'm Thank you. Thank you. God bless.  Bye now. Bye God bless. Bye now


At Audiology Associates at Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. I'm currently in Hyman, Kentucky, where cleanup efforts are currently underway following severe flooding Thursday morning. I've lived here for 56 years and this is the largest water I've ever seen in town or county-wide. 19 people are dead, including three people from Hyman, following severe flooding that swept through eastern Kentucky Thursday morning. Since the flooding, community members and businesses have been slowly picking up the pieces of their city. The timeline on this is, you know, it had been raining for a couple of three days and then, of course, the night before, about 11 p.m., we've got pretty steady rainfall and I can't classify it as a flash flood, but it came all at once and there was not really much of a reaction time that we could deal with. With homes and power lines destroyed, many are without power and utilities. As of the recording, the city is working to clear roadways and relocate displaced families. A lot of the community members are displaced. They're not here, the homeowners and so forth, but we are at this particular stage, we are trying to access and clear roadways and debris to where we can get in and check residents. Once we get the roadway and debris removal, then we're going to start the cleanup process, but we're still in the process of clearing roads just to get access to people just due to the mud, not necessarily the water right now. While residents and businesses pick up the pieces of their lives, many are simply happy to be alive. Well, first of all, my family was all safe. They were in life-threatening situations, and that's the name. My law office is completely destroyed. It had a lifetime of memories, everything from my grandfather's old desk to pictures of my boys when they played ball. Lastly, even amidst the destruction, Mayor Niece says he feels like his community is strong enough to rebound. Other than, you know, we're East Kentucky strong. We stick together. During times of need, everybody pulls together and, you know, I relate this back to the disaster in Western Kentucky. It's going to be a long time before we recoup from this, but I feel like we're strong enough that we will rebound. Displaced individuals can visit the Knot County Sportsplex if they're in need of assistance. For food or other supplies, you can donate to the Heinemann First Baptist Church. Reporting from Hyman, Kentucky, for Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Chorjol.


Hey friends, welcome back to another video. Is your brain often working on overdrive and you're overthinking more than you'd like to admit? But what if you're not overthinking and it's self-gaslighting instead? Let's take a look at the differences between the two, overthinking versus self-gaslighting.  Thinking about what could have gone differently, second-guessing your decisions or imagining worst case scenarios about the future. It can be a hard to break habit that can leave you exhausted and even more anxious than before. Self-gaslighting also deals with unwanted, hard to control thoughts, but it's more complex, more ingrained and holds a strong emotional importance. When you're self-gaslighting, you're internalizing emotional abuse and manipulation tactics that you've probably experienced before. When someone is gaslighting you, they're trying to skew your reality and make you question it, making it seem like you're crazy and that things are not how you see them. If you're hearing this often, you may slowly adapt to it and might start self-gaslighting or manipulating yourself. Let's explore a few situations in which the line between overthinking and gaslighting might not be so clear. Number one, intimate relationships. Let's say you have a fight with your partner. Some hurtful things were said and they stormed out of the door before you had a chance to talk it through. Now you're alone in bed, trying to sleep, but your thoughts keep you awake. Are you overthinking? You might be wondering, was I too offensive? Maybe I should have said that. They're probably telling their friends about the fight now. I think they should be on my side. I was right, but was I? Was it worth it? I don't even know anymore. Or are you self-gaslighting?  Of course I was wrong. They would never try to hurt me intentionally. I'm overreacting once again. I know they love me too much. They didn't mean it like that. It's on my fault anyway. Now I better send a text apologizing. This should really be a lesson for me. Number two, social interactions. It's your first day of class or you're starting in a new workplace. You're meeting your new colleagues, you chit-chat and joke around a bit.  Are you overthinking? Oh my God. What did they think of me? Was I talking too much or too little? Was that joke I said totally lame? My hair looked so bad today. I hope they didn't pay attention to it. Or are you self-gaslighting? That went really bad. I'm not surprised. I'm just not a likable person. No wonder nobody liked me in school. I always say the stupidest things. I should just keep to myself next time. Number three, toxic household. Do you often fight with your parents or siblings?   You wanna stand up for yourself. But when you start planning what to say, you're not so sure if that's such a good idea anymore. Are you overthinking? What if I just make it worse? Am I even capable of confronting them? What if they don't take me seriously? What would I even say? They can't tell them they're toxic. Or are you self-gaslighting? Maybe I don't have it so bad. I mean, some people live in far worse conditions than I do. My parents gave me so much in life. I would be ungrateful if I stood up to them. Actually, when I think about it, I really am a bad child, just like they told me so many times. And number four, trusting your judgment. Finally, sometimes our gut feelings about others tell us exactly what we need to hear especially if someone is manipulating us, treating us badly, or using us. We may notice their bad intentions and feel like something's wrong, or at least for a moment. But after that moment, our thoughts about the situation may once again spiral out of control and those people gain even more power over us. Are you overthinking? Are they really being manipulative? I feel like they might be using me. But everyone else thinks they're so nice. Will other people think I'm not being fair? Will they accuse me of being a bad person? Or are you self-gaslighting? I'm overreacting again. It's all in my head. They're a good person. They would never treat anyone badly. I'm the bad person for assuming stuff about them, so I should probably do something nice for them. In short, if you're overthinking, you may overanalyze every little detail about everything and ask yourself a thousand questions. What could go wrong? What could have been better?  You won't need to overthink because you'll already have an answer.  Of course, the first step towards healing is recognizing there's a problem in the first place. If you notice you're overthinking is really self-gaslighting, consider talking to a mental health professional who may help turn yourself gaslighting into self-love. Can you relate to any of these scenarios? Let us know in the comments below. Please like and share this video with others it might help. The references and studies, as always, are listed in the description below. Until next time, take care.