Delighted to welcome you, but on behalf of the Science Center and the Grossman Institute of Neuroscience to the 12th lecture in our 2018-16 lecture series on neuro-ethics. The lecture series that I told you is organized by John Moncel, the director of the Grossman Institute, taking place at the Professor of Neurobiology, and Ed Salvezzi, from the Plain Center. It's my pleasure now to introduce today's speaker, Nipro Soplas. Professor Soplas is a professor of Organizational Biology and Maturity here at the University. He also is chairman of the Computational Neuroscience Graduate Program from 2008 to 2015. Professor Soplas' laboratory funded by the NIH focuses on the neural basis of motor control and learning. He's investigating what features of motor behavior are recorded for and how this information is represented in the collective activity of neurons in the motor cortex. To do this, his team is examining the electrical discharge of many motor and cortical neurons to characterize their single cell properties related to groups of neurons. Today, Professor Soplas will speak to us on the topic you see behind me, contemporary ethical issues of neural interface, technology, and neural optimization. Please join me in giving it a round of applause to Professor Soplas. Well, thank you very much. I am not an ethicist, although I did minor in philosophy when I was in college, and thought about some of these issues. I'm going to be talking to you about the more applied area of my research, which is what's called brain-machine interfaces, or neural prostheses is another term. I like the word brain-machine interface. It just sounds better than neural prosthesis, which kind of reminds me of a wooden leg or someone with a wooden leg. But basically, it's the same thing. The notion of a neural prosthesis is you're adding, the word prosthesis means adding something to the brain, interacting with the brain in some way. I'm going to talk about mainly not so much contemporary issues, but really issues down the line when these devices become more widespread. Because right now, with the exception of a few cases, most of them are still in their research level, just being studied in laboratories and are not readily available to people with various disabilities. What I'm going to do first is start with a history of the field of neural prostheses and then talk about some issues that I've thought about with regard to ethics. So I can't help but start with mentioning, referencing a Greek thinker back 500 BC when people started thinking about where the seat of consciousness and thought was. And at the time, so that's 500 BC around classical Greek time, most people in the various civilizations that existed at the time, whether it was the Persians or the Babylonians or the Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, as well as the Greeks, most of the people thought that the heart was the seat of the mind.  That was his function, just to radiate excessive heat. But there was this individual named Alcamaeon who lived in modern-day Italy, what was called Magna Gracia, it was a colony of ancient Greece. And he proposed that the brain was the organ of perception. And he actually, there's not a lot of writing from him, but other writers at the time talk about his work. And he also claimed that the eye, in the case of visual perception, the eye obviously has fire within for when one is struck this fire flashes out.  And that's sort of the beginnings on some way of neural prostheses or brain-machine interfaces, because in the case of visual prostheses, what one tries to do is not stimulate mechanically the eye, but stimulate some part of the nervous system to create these kind of phosphines, these little spots of light. So that's 500 BC. Perhaps Galvani in the late 1700s was really the beginnings of the, started the beginnings of brain-machine interfaces more substantially, where he documented the evidence of animal electricity, where he found that you could electrically stimulate a part of the nervous system, whether it was the muscles or the nerves, and you could actually get muscle twitches. And so that was a really huge breakthrough. And in fact, he calls it animal electricity to distinguish it from what was at the time considered sort of normal electricity, the electricity you see on a stormy day with lightning. In the end, it turned out animal electricity was the same as lightning, but Galvani talks about a distinction between these two things and found that you could actually evoke movements by electrically stimulating a part of the nervous system. So that's really early, I mean still pretty early, several hundred years ago. Really the birth of modern brain-machine interfaces began in the 60s with the development of the cochlear implant for deafness. So this is a device that stimulates the cochlea, which is in the inner ear, and by electrically stimulating that part of the inner ear, one can evoke auditory percepts. So people with deafness that affects the middle ear or more peripherally, if the rest of the auditory system is intact, one can electrically stimulate the cochlea, which is shown right here, and using a stimulator with either somewhere around 16 to 32 sites, one can actually get functional hearing. And that's going to be a concept that I'm going to come back to again. The idea of functional rehabilitation. So what I mean by that is that people with cochlear implants can understand speech without lip reading, can communicate over the phone. They don't hear, likely do not hear, like we hear, almost certainly they don't. And in fact, some individuals experience problems when they, unpleasantness, when they listen to music. I remember talking to a young kid who had dual cochlear implants, and he just could not appreciate music. In fact, it was painful, and over time he started appreciating music, but it took him some time to adapt to the system. But this is by far the most prevalent and successful BMI brain-machine interface to date. Thousands of these devices have been implanted in the hearing impaired. There's also work being done on visual prostheses, and this is an old image from the 60s called the Brindley stimulator. This is a blind individual here where he, and this is the stimulator at the time. Now this is just a set of electrical stimulators, which now can be shrunk down to a really small size. But in the 60s that's how it looked. And what these electrical impulses were sent to the back of the head, to the visual cortex, to elicit phosphines, these spots of light. And this individual here presumably is reporting the percept of these spots of light. And the notion of a visual prosthetic is that with enough spots of light, you can connect the dots and create an image. That's the basic notion. There are different systems out there, some that target the visual cortex, others that target the retina by stimulating the retinal ganglion cells, and others are targeting sites in between the retina and the visual cortex, namely the thalamus in between those two. And in fact, there's actually work being done here at the University of Chicago, led by Leo Toll in neurology and Phil Troyke, I'm sorry I misspelled his name, Phil Troyke at Illinois Institute of Technology, where they're trying to develop visual prostheses by stimulating the visual cortex. This is actually a cortical visual prosthetic that Dobelle developed years ago, but the notion is you would stimulate the visual cortex by receiving visual input through a tiny little camera that was sitting on the pair of glasses here and evoking an image of some sort. Again, presumably functional seeing, not appreciating the details that we can appreciate with our visual system, simply because you're stimulating, stimulation by, first of all, extremely artificial, and secondly, you're stimulating only a few sites. But at least functional in the sense that you could avoid obstacles and get around in the world to some degree. Another device is the deep-brain stimulator, which is routinely implanted here at the University to treat Parkinson's disease. And this is a device that goes into the center of the head in the basal ganglia, and here's a little video I have of a woman that was implanted with this device and this is before, this is actually after the surgery, but with a stimulator turned off and you'll see characteristic symptoms of Parkinson's disease. So you can see the tremor on her right side. She's also supporting herself because she has a problem with balance and she's kind of generally moving relatively slowly. Now, minutes later you turn on the stimulator and this is what you get. So no tremor can move freely without holding herself and moving relatively quickly and this is actually not the most dramatic video one can find. There are some cases where these individuals cannot move at all and when you put the DBS on they start moving. So it's quite dramatic and quite successful. So all these systems I've shown you so far have applied something onto the brain, electrically stimulated the brain. So provided information into the brain. The work that I'm doing is sort of the reverse. We're trying to read out signals from the brain to decode or understand what the intentions of people are, the movement intentions of people. So the idea is you have, this is the basic structure of the brain machine interface that I work with to treat people with severe motor disabilities. So people with spinal cord injury, people with ALS, perhaps people with severe stroke that leaves them completely paralyzed. So the components begin with an array of some sort of sensor array that records signals from the brain and this is my fingertip right here and this is the array of electrodes that's composed of 100 tiny little electrodes that pick up electrical signals from individual neurons in the motor cortex, the part of the brain that's responsible for voluntary movement. And from that we can now record these signals and these signals look like little tick marks. They're basically very brief electrical pulses called action potentials and we can record from not just one neuron from many neurons, so each row is a different neuron and it's this pattern of pulses that carries information about what the individual is thinking about in terms of movement. We then send this pattern of electrical impulses through a decoding algorithm which is just a piece of software that translates this or decodes it into something useful such as the motion of a device. This could be like the joint angle theta, the velocity of the joint, the forces, tau or torques generated about a device, an arm or a robot. We then send this decoded signal to a device that could be a prosthetic arm. In the case of amputee, it could be a cursor on a computer screen, it could be an autonomous robot, all sorts of different options. And finally, the fourth component is sensory feedback. And this is really something I never really appreciated until about five years ago. The notion that to generate volitional, accurate movements, you need sensory feedback. Now we all know vision plays a big role in guiding our movements, but there are other forms of sensory feedback that are critical, such as kinesthesis and touch. And we know this because we know patients that suffer from nerve damage that leave them basically unable to touch or feel the motion of their limbs are severely motor disabled. If you just go on YouTube and you can find some of these videos, they're quite remarkable. So these people have completely intact motor systems. They can activate their muscles, they can think about moving, no problem, but they're debilitated because they don't have this sense of feedback. So they basically have these limbs that are kind of disembodied from them in some sense. So these are the three issues I'm going to talk about, the ethical considerations. The first is the medical risks. I'll start with that, and then I'll talk about the issues on how these devices could actually affect one's personal identity and then perhaps talk about some social implications. So as far as medical risks, one should also, one should first understand the landscape of these kinds of brain machine interfaces for treating motor disabilities. They can be things like what I'm talking about, which are highly invasive systems, arrays of electrodes that sit in the brain. They're actually implanted into the brain, and those obviously carry a lot of medical risks. You have to open up the skull, it's a major brain surgery. Although if you talk to neurosurgeons, they say, oh, this is no big deal. It's because it's sitting really pretty much on the surface of the brain. So I say, oh, it could be just like an outpatient procedure. But I don't know, at least I've heard from some neurosurgeons. But it's a big deal. On the other hand, you have non-invasive methods such as EEG, which is just a set of electrodes sitting on the scalp, recording gross electrical signals, not from individual neurons, but from large collections of neurons. There are other things like fMRI, which measure blood flow. These systems could be used for brain machine interfaces. They're still at their very early stages. And of course, the big drawback is that you have to be sitting in a magnet. And obviously, this is not something that is mobile. So whereas these EEG caps, you can move around. And it's something that, in principle, although they're kind of ugly, you could be moving around doing things. And in fact, a lot of people are investigating these kinds of systems, including the military. MEG is like EEG by looking at magnetic signals. Those are also quite stationary, large systems, very expensive systems, not something that are portable. So EEG really has very little in terms of medical risk. But obviously, if we're implanting these little chips in the brain, they carry a lot of medical risk. So some things you have to take into consideration and weigh and balance the risks versus the benefits. And I'll show you some videos of what we can do right now with these implantable devices. And still, they're pretty primitive. So whether they're really the benefits outweigh the risks, I actually had a quadriplegic undergraduate that worked in my lab, spinal cord injury. A great guy, actually worked analyzing data. Now how did he do it? He basically used an eye tracker to track the motion of his eyes. So a little camera that he attached to the screen of the monitor of the computer.  He used a click because he could still move his head and he could talk. He just couldn't move his limbs. And with those simple operations of eye movements and head click, he could pretty much use a computer. So I asked him, I said, would you be willing to participate in a clinical trial in planning this chip to try to allow you better control of a device? And he basically said, no. So he said, I'm happy with this very cheap system, non-invasive system. It does what I needed it to do. Now on the other hand, we did this clinical trial, which I'll talk about in a moment. And we implanted one individual with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. And that individual actually was a little bit different. There's very little to treat ALS. And it's a neurodegenerative disease. People get extremely depressed with this. And this really gave a lot of hope to this individual. And the bar is quite somewhat lower for ALS than for spinal cord injury in terms of what constitutes success or good performance of a brain-machine interface. So perhaps depending on the patient population, someone like with ALS, this kind of system might be more viable, at least in the shorter term. We really have to show that these invasive systems really perform much better than what's available today with non-invasive systems before they become widely used by individuals. So here's a non-invasive EEG cap. You can see basically you just put them on your head, on your scalp.  You don't even have to put gel on them anymore. There are dry EEG electrode caps that are being developed, including in the military. So basically you just put it on and you can record these signals. Now these are gross signals. I believe, and at least many of people that I interact with believe that these kinds of systems have limitations. Because they're not recording from individual neurons, they're recording from aggregate signals from many, many thousands of neurons. The ability to control something such as your arm with all the very intricate motions your hand and arm can do, this system won't work. You can do very basic things with such a system, but I think they're inherent limitations with these systems. You really have to go invasive or at least currently with invasive techniques. So here's the invasive technique that we use. Here's a bigger image of the array. It's just basically like a bed of nails. It's made out of silicon and the tips of these electrodes are made out of, are metalized. They have different kinds of metals applied to them. And they're implanted one millimeter or one and a half millimeters into the cortex, the motor cortex. And we pick up signals from individual neurons, electrical signals from the tips of these electrodes. And here's a monkey brain to give you sort of the landscape of where we implant these devices. Right here is the central sulcus, which sort of splits the brain in two halves. And right in front of it is the so-called motor strip where the seat of voluntary movement is initiated. And we implant this typically in the arm area of motor cortex. You can implant it here, which is the face area. We're also doing experiments with face recordings. You can also insert it up here to track leg movements. And here's another array just sitting right in front of it in an area called the premotor area, which is involved in sort of planning the earliest planning of movement before you execute the movement. So here's what the signals look like and sound like, or you can't hear the sound, but basically they sound like Rice Krispies, a little crackle. And each one of these panels represents the signals from one electrode. And they're basically just these very brief, this now zooms on four of these electrodes. And you can see they just look like these, this pulse, electrical pulse lasts about a second, a millisecond and a half. Very brief pulses. And on the left here is an oscilloscope trace at a much broader time scale showing them as just vertical lines. So they're just little pulses of information. There's no information it is believed in the shape or amplitude of these pulses, but really in the timing at which these pulses occur. And it's the timing of these pulses that we use to decode movement intent. So about now, I think it's like 14 years ago we started a company. This is back when I was still a postdoc at Brown University. And we actually, our goal was to do a clinical trial and we got approval, FDA approval to do what's called an IDE, Investigational Device Exemption Trial. So it's just a very limited test trial. We can't sell these devices, but we're just testing them to see if they're safe and functional. And so the trial was limited to people with severe disabilities due to spinal cord injury, ALS, and stroke. And these people were required to be able to speak so they could move their heads and speak. So anything above the neck was still functional. And we did about four patients. And there were really three goals of this trial. The first was to show in these patients that were chronically disabled, we could still record from signals. We could record these pulses from the motor cortex. So the motor cortex was not dead, it was still functioning. And we could record these individual pulses with this device. That was the first goal. The second goal was could these patients think about moving, think about moving their limbs even though they couldn't and thereby changing the timing, the patterns of these pulses. And thirdly, could they use this thinking process to now control a device and namely control a cursor on a computer screen. And we succeeded in all three goals. You can't hear the video but basically this individual, the spinal cord individual, who is moving this computer cursor right here by thinking about moving his arm. So he's basically turned, he opened up an email application, he's checking out his emails. Then he's checking out another email. Then he's going to the exit, he's exiting the email application, he's going to turn on the TV application, turn the power on on the television and then change the channels of the television set which you can't hear but basically he's telling us what he's thinking about doing. So he can be speaking and having a conversation at the same time as he's doing this control. So in some senses that's, and plus he doesn't have to move his head or his eyes to move the cursor. So that in principle allows him to not, unlike these eye tracking systems which require concentration and moving your eyes to particular icons and so forth, you can be moving your eyes anywhere you want, you can be speaking about what you want for lunch but yet controlling the device simultaneously doing something completely different. Now you may have noticed without the sound it's hard to tell but he was telling us at one point I want to change the channel which this is the button to change the channel of the TV but accidentally he moved the cursor over the volume control and the way this device clicks is by just, as soon as you move the cursor over that icon it clicks which is not ideal, right? I mean you, you know if he's controlling his wheelchair for example you don't want to be accidentally going over the accelerator button and accelerate the wheelchair. So you need some kind of not only motion but also click control. So we develop a different system with these patients. This was actually an individual who had a brain stem stroke and left her completely paralyzed and she's now controlling this cursor to move it inside the handle of this pair of scissors but she's also being asked to click and when she clicks, when she thinks about clicking she's, this thing turns blue. Okay so she has to click twice. So she moves the cursor and then she clicks twice and now the experimenter is going to move the scissors up here she has to move the cursor up to that location and then click. Now you'll notice this kind of decoder looks a little different than the first one. It looks almost like the Etch-a-Sketch game where you could only move up and down and left and right so that's basically, yeah it was a different kind of system. At every moment in time there were four possible states the cursor could move into, either move up, left, right and down or not at all. Okay so that's why it looked kind of a little different. Now you might say, well how did she click? She actually didn't think click. What she was trained to do was think about grasping something. So she was actually asked to imagine grasping something with her hand and that led to the click. So we were decoding the click based on the thought of grasping. Okay so we've shown that we can do these, we can, in human patients with severe motor disabilities we can control, we can have them control devices very simple devices such as this cursor. Currently people are having humans control robotic devices and there's a clinical trial happening right now at Pittsburgh and so it's still at the basic research level. So what are some of the other ethical considerations besides the risk of just implanting something in your head? Well in the future as these systems get better and better one might consider how this affects our personal identity. So what do we mean by that? Well the way I think about it is in terms of the notion of embodiment or embodied cognition. There's a field in psychology called embodied cognition and it's the notion that cognition, that is our ability to think doesn't just depend on our brain but it depends on the interactions of our brain with our bodies. It matters that we have a body. A body that can move, a body that can see in a certain way can hear in a certain way but it's not just this disembodied computer and the way we think depends on that on the interactions with a body. So a classic example is when you embody cognition is if you ask subjects to take a pencil and put it between their teeth like that so they're forced to smile actually that affects their cognition in terms of their ability to recognize pleasant senses versus there's a reaction times are faster for pleasant senses in detecting them when they have this constraint that forces them to smile. So that's an example of embodied cognition. With these devices we're now creating embodiment in some sense because these people will ultimately think that the device they're controlling is part of their bodies and in fact we interviewed some of these human patients in the clinical trial and what they told us was really revealing initially they were trained to think about moving their arms to move the cursor but over time they told us, they said you know I'm not thinking about my hand anymore I'm thinking about directly moving the cursor it's almost becoming a part of me it's sort of like when you're learning a foreign language initially you have to translate it into your native language and then with enough practice it becomes you just spit it out without internal translation likewise these individuals thought they were directly controlling the cursor and not doing this intermediate cognitive step of thinking about moving their hand. Now another way to enhance embodiment is obviously the introducing somatosensory feedback so these individuals like the individual I showed you in the movies, the two movies they're moving this cursor but they don't feel it obviously they just can see it you can imagine these patients that are controlling robots they don't feel the robots they're just moving them and they can see them so we think and one of the big challenges right now in the field of brain machine interfaces is to close the loop that is provide this additional somatosensory feedback so that people can feel devices as well as just seeing them so one experiment that we did several years ago was augmenting a brain machine interface with proprioceptive feedback that is kinesthetic feedback the notion that I can... kinesthesia is basically the sense it's a sense you never actually learn about in high school you know like it's not the five primary senses it's the sense that I know where my limb is in space and I know how it's moving and I don't have to see it I can have my eyes shut and in fact you can move my hand in space I don't even have to actively move my hand and I know where it is how do I know that? I know it because there's sensors in the muscles, sensors in the joints and so forth and in the skin and all those sensors tell me where my limb is in space and that's critical for normal movement we know that from these patients that have nerve damage so what we did was an interesting experiment where we had this... I work with monkeys by the way non-human primates and these are... and so we did a monkey experiment where we implanted an array in the motor cortex of this monkey and the job of the monkey was to control a cursor so this is the monkey right here and he's sitting in his chair and his arm is sitting he's holding a joystick and he's first trained to play a video game which is move the joystick to move a cursor and hit a target and if you hit a target you get apple juice and it takes months to do this it's very slow going but you manage to do it and they manage to do it and then what we did was we said okay now... and one other thing is they're not just holding a joystick their arm is sitting on an exoskeletal robot on a wearable robot like Iron Man but not quite as fancy basically so their arm is in this wearable robot that can actually move his arm okay with motors okay so the task is the monkey has to he's first trained up to move the cursor with a joystick then he's trained to move the cursor with his brain directly with a brain machine interface and he does that, no problem and then and then what we do is we said what if we now move his arm to follow the cursor so he can just sit there relax and enjoy the ride while his arm is moving to follow the cursor and by the way he doesn't see his arm his arm is sitting underneath this screen so on the screen, it's a horizontal screen all he sees is the cursor which is the circle and the target and underneath the screen the robot is moving his arm and the question we wanted to ask was would he get better control if we moved his arm to follow the cursor so he's now given additional information about where the cursor is he doesn't just see it but he also feels it he feels where the cursor is in space so here's the task outline so first of all we have to build a brain machine interface and I won't go into the details but basically what we do is we have the animal sit there and watch a video game being played he's not playing it he watches it and his arm is still and we found in a previous study that in fact just by watching a video game the motor cortex starts activating as if he's almost internally simulating as if he's thinking he's playing the game himself I don't know I'm an avid tennis player I sometimes feel when I'm watching a tennis match I almost feel like I'm playing the game along with the person so this is what's called mirroring or mirror neurons you may have heard of that but basically we found that mirror-like responses are also present in the motor cortex so we we first build a brain machine interface by showing of a video game so what I mean by building basically building that algorithm that software that translates spike these pulse patterns into motion after we've done that then we give the brain machine interface the animal and he's now asked to voluntarily move the cursor to hit the target but he's not allowed to move his arm okay so it's kind of tricky for him right because he normally, originally he was trained to move the cursor by moving his arm now he's moving the cursor with his brain and he's trained not to move his arm and the second condition his arm is not disembodied but his arm is being moved to follow the cursor it's moved with this robot okay again his job is just to move the cursor with his brain and the robot is passively moving his arm to follow the cursor and then finally a third condition right here where he's being trained he's controlling the cursor with his brain and the robot is moving his arm in some random fashion so it's not following the cursor okay so that's what I'm trying to depict there so basically what you find to make a long story short is the time it takes him to hit the target when he's playing the video game with his arm is a certain amount of time, forget about the numbers it's a low number but when he's now asked to move the cursor with his brain but his arm has to be still it shoots up now in the red condition when he's moving the cursor with his brain but his arm is now being passively moved to follow the cursor the time goes down and then finally in the fourth condition he's moving the cursor with his brain and his arm is being in some random fashion and it shoots back up again okay so basically the take home is that in this red condition when his arm is being passively moved it's giving him additional information about where the cursor is and the argument for me is potentially in human patients with severe motor disabilities such as spinal cord injury you could actually develop wearable robots that would be controlled from the brain and thereby passively moving the arm giving him a sense of embodiment now many spinal cord injury patients are not completely are not complete spinal cord injury that is they have some residual feedback sensory feedback because most spinal cord injuries are due to a crush injury not to a cut and so you have some residual feedback that you can take advantage of and right now we're working on another experiment with a hand exoskeleton which is shown right here so this is a device that moves the fingers it's actually being used at the rehab institute in Chicago to treat patients to rehabilitate patients with stroke after stroke but the idea in this experiment is we're going to have a monkey control this hand exoskeleton to move it to do a task and the idea is and then we're going to do one more thing is we're going to apply Botox inject Botox into the finger muscles to leave them temporarily paralyzed so now he's now controlling he's moving his fingers by moving the robot through brain control and repeat the same kind of experiment I showed you before now if there's no residual sensation a complete spinal cord injury that leaves with no sense of touch or proprioception there's another approach which we're starting to work on together with Dr. Benzmia here which is the notion that one could electrically stimulate the somatosensory parts of the brain to evoke artificial touch and proprioceptive sensations just like you do with a visual prosthetic but instead of spots of light you'll get this feeling of touch so that's what we're starting to do so now you'd have an array of electrodes sitting right here in this pink area which is the motor area that array would then control the device and then the device would have sensors on it and would send feedback to electrodes sitting right here in the yellow area which would then electrically stimulate sites there and evoke these artificial perceps ok besides the notion of embodiment another interesting area in this field is neural adaptation or plasticity with these brain-machine interfaces one can induce changes and perhaps long-term changes in the brain if you're exposed to this system for long periods of time which is quite fascinating so we've actually begun to do some experiments with humans with monkeys that had an undergone chronic amputation so these were therapeutic amputations so we didn't do it ourselves they were injured and to rescue them they had to amputate and this was a project that was funded to help ultimately help soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with amputations so we worked with these amputated monkeys and we had them control this robot right here so this robot kind of looks it's sort of anthropomorphic not quite but it has a wrist it has three fingers and his job is to move it with the cortex that had previously controlled the limb that's no longer there now that's an important that's a the idea that you're working with amputated animals is very important because after long periods of time the brain actually reorganizes after an injury such as amputation so whether you could even do this after these monkeys had been amputated ten years previous to the time we got them so it was unclear whether we could actually get these animals to reactivate this motor cortex that hadn't been controlling an intact limb for so many years so basically we did it and they were provided with visual feedback only so they could see what they were doing but they were controlling it with their brains and they were provided with visual feedback and reward when they did the task correctly and so and their job was to reach out grasp an object, a ball pull it and then release it so here's a video of the movie of the task so this monkey now is controlling this robot you don't see the monkey in the video but he's controlling it with his brain reaching out, grasping the ball and then pulling it back and then releasing and once he does all those sequence of events of actions he gets rewarded and you could imagine this took months to do so the both monkeys so we worked on two monkeys, monkey Z and monkey K they performed better over time so they were actually learning to do this task better and better just like when you learn to do a new motor skill so this is the time to take them to successfully do time to target basically means the time it takes them to do a successful trial as a function of training days so over the course of these training days both monkeys did better and better that is their time went down now the question is what happened to the brain in that context well let's look under the hood and see exactly how we did this task so what we did was we recorded with this chip that I showed you recorded from a whole bunch of neurons in the motor cortex and we assigned a cluster of neurons shown here depicted here a cluster of 10 to 15 neurons and they were assigned to just doing the just to do the reaching component so just move the robot forward and back like this this cluster here another group of neurons were assigned to just do the grass component just opening and closing it was very simple grass it wasn't individual fingers but just open and close and so that's basically the approach we took and I won't go to the details of how we built the algorithm but basically what we're interested in is looking at over long term exposure what happens to this reach and grass cluster in terms of its connectivity how it's connected neurons are connected to one another you know is there changes in how the neurons are connected synaptically well that's not something we could measure we couldn't actually measure the synapses but what we could do is measure the functional connectivity how neurons were functionally connected and the way we defined that was was basically we had a group of neurons here and these are the spikes the pulses that we recorded from and the analysis we used was to say well can I predict the response of neuron 1 here when considering the past responses of other neurons such as neuron 2 here or neuron n here if I can predict this response in the present more effectively by considering the past responses of these neurons then there's a functional connection between neuron n or neuron 2 to neuron 1 that's the statistical approach we took and what we found was early in training we saw this kind of connectivity where each point of this circle represents a different neuron so a whole bunch of reaching neurons here and a whole bunch of grasping neurons here and they're connected to some degree based on this connectivity measure early in training and then after training we see this kind of connectivity structure so it looks like at least statistically speaking we've changed how the brain works with this long term exposure and I won't go into any more details on that but that's kind of intriguing because you're not only getting subjects down the line once human subjects are exposed to these devices for long periods of time not only do they get better at using them but you're actually changing the brain potentially and that has repercussions I think ethically finally another area which I'm not which I don't focus on in my research is the notion of developing a cognitive prosthetic neuro prosthesis so instead of developing a prosthesis that guides movement or something that creates artificial perception or sensation people are working on systems that actually improve memory for example or the way one thinks so there's actually a group over in California at USC that are trying to develop an artificial hippocampus or at least a part of a hippocampus by by creating a system that chords signals from one part of the hippocampus and then sends electrical pulses to a different part of the hippocampus and creates sort of an artificial circuit so they actually damage the hippocampus this is in rodents they damage the hippocampus and then they then they add this artificial system and they've shown some preliminary data that in fact these these rats I think they're rats after the damages caused their memories are degraded but then you can rescue the memory with this neuro prosthesis so that's coming up in the future so and obviously that will change our personal identity finally the social implications of widespread use of BMI's we're already beginning to see this today in the case of cochlear implants so what's interesting is that some people in the sign language community or culture are concerned that cochlear implants are being encouraged in so deaf parents have let's say deaf children doctors or clinicians might encourage them to have their kids implanted with cochlear implants and the parents are saying well wait a minute we have this wonderful community sign language community I don't want my kids implanted with a cochlear implant so this has what do you do in that situation do you pressure the parent or what's the best approach to dealing with that problem so this is a sign of course that the cochlear implant is quite a success because it's actually being used so extensively there have been thousands of implants and it actually works to some degree that it's creating this problem in the sign language community and then one could imagine in the future when these BMI's are really all the medical risk have been dealt with and they really enhance one's functionality whether it's memory or motor control or vision or what not there might be stigmatization for people who don't have these BMI's because they can't afford them or for whatever reason just like Botox injections perhaps in certain cultures or in certain communities everyone has to get the latest plastic surgery to change their appearance and there's stigmatization if people don't do this so this is something to think about in the future right now it's not a problem but I'll finish up by thinking the members of my lab and I'll take any questions thank you thank you that was fascinating I have so many questions but let me just do one you mentioned a couple of times that the military was also working with some of these BMI's and various techniques and I wonder aside from the rehabilitation of injured soldiers are there other uses that are there any medical questions and if so what are those questions absolutely yeah so what they're trying to do is I was part of a review panel for the army research laboratory what they're trying to do is use EEG dry EEG caps in soldiers and what they found is that there's a signal that you can pick up to detect potential targets to attack and these are signals that you can pick up very quickly and even unconsciously in the EEG signal so the idea is that soldiers are roaming a certain terrain they have like all sorts of images coming in on a set of cameras that have give you sort of a panoramic view these images that are sent very quickly through the visual system of the individual so they're seeing them they're just a bunch of static images that are going one right after the other and they're so quick that the soldier can't even recognize whether there's a potential target but unconsciously there is a signal in the EEG that tells them okay this image has a potential target and then that allows the soldier then to make a decision if this image has a potential target do I shoot it it would influence the dis I mean ultimately it's up to the way I understood it is it's not something that would be automatically triggered by a device by a gun or something it would be the soldier that would then have to look at that image and say okay yeah there may be there's a target there right that's yeah we're absolutely right so then the soldier goes back reviews that image or that point of view in the visual field and says hmm that might be a target my BMI says it's a target but I'm not quite sure but it probably knows what's best shoot for it yeah I mean that's yeah absolutely that's a real serious concern but there people are that's what they're doing right now yeah so thank you you raised the concern that the interventions you're talking about change brain structure so however do antidepressants when used over time even behavioral treatments of obsessive compulsive disorders change brain structures right how in what way do you think this is different the ethical concerns are different no I don't think fundamentally there's any difference it's just that we have direct access to particular brain structures and particular even neurons we could be affecting so the specificity is a little different but yeah pharmaceuticals are doing this to you all the time potentially long term changes actually I like to turn it around and make it kind of positive twist to yeah right well here's a crazy idea that I actually like to try in the lab which is imagine you could use a BMI to improve a motor skill that you want to improve but you don't have the time so here's the classic example you want to improve your golf swing but you don't have time to go out to the green and it takes hours and you know you're a busy person or whatever so you have this golf software with an avatar and it's you're connected to it with a BMI again you have to deal with all the medical issues that I have glossed over and you're basically on the plane when you're going to a business trip or whatever you're practicing your golf swing with this avatar and then you go back to the green weeks later and actually your golf swing has improved that already happens to some degree with sports coaches will tell athletes to imagine doing an action let's say playing basketball in your head or whatever there's some evidence in the literature that actually helps you so this is a different kind of more targeted imagination to a particular task and so I would actually like to try this with my monkeys actually and see if that actually works yeah thanks again very fascinating talk can you tell us a little bit about how the decoding algorithms are actually developed I guess in a human being who's disabled do you sort of try to correlate between the reports of their thoughts and that and secondly is it different in animals and how you would do it tell me a little bit about that and third have you ever considered the possibility of doing this in normal subjects and what sort of ethical questions is that raised so the way we built these decoders I think I mentioned it very briefly but it was kind of very fast so what we do with the humans is we show them a display of action whether it was let's say a cursor on a computer screen or even an avatar of a hand moving and so it was shown to them on the screen and they were just told imagine you're moving this hand imagine this is your hand and it's moving they're just sitting there watching it passively we then what we did was we recorded the brain from the motor cortex while they're watching this display and correlating the neural activity with the motion of that display and we build that mapping that algorithm between this and this then once we built that mapping we then give it to the individual and say okay now you have you have control over the avatar move it and that seems to work very well we do that with our monkeys too we show them displays they're not paralyzed but now the question the same thing could work with amputees as well with our monkeys we tried the same approach with our amputated monkeys we showed them the robot moving in space they were just watching it passively and it didn't activate the motor cortex they had no idea what the hell is this thing because they're not familiar with it and also we couldn't tell the subject we couldn't tell the monkey imagine you're moving it so that didn't work we had to do a different approach now the question about normals right that's a big question there are already devices out there you can go online and buy very simple devices for 150 bucks or whatever and they're all EEG based external and I don't know how well they work some of them actually don't even work with brain signals they work with muscles signals so because your muscles are electrical generators I don't think they've been very successful down the road I don't know I don't know how you deal with my feeling is you really get this very good control you need to get into the brain and access single neurons these small groups of cells and I don't know how you can do that noninvasively there's nothing out there right now that I know of that can do that so until that happens you're left with basically EEG and that's like I said that's what all the commercial devices are out there are EEG based and the military is working in the EEG based systems yeah so there are a number of groups of PhDs that collaborate with the neurosurgeons that record in the context of a deep brain simulation surgery so they actually have the subjects are awake typically and they're off medication so they're and they're asked to make movements or to do something do a task so that's that is being done it's hard to do because you only get you don't get much time with the subject you might get like 20 minutes half an hour another approach that's being done here as well or will be done it's done throughout the country the world is epilepsy patients so they put typically they don't put microelectroids in the brain but they put these what's called ecogrid so these are electrodes sitting on the brain and they give you more EEG signals and they're put in for about two weeks they're used to localize seizure foci before they go in and resect the tissue and there you have about two weeks or something to do experiments so people are doing that in fact I'm planning on doing that right now so a BMI could potentially help me do motor tasks better yes and a BMI could potentially help me do motor tasks better what about a BMI that helps me do moral tasks better moral tasks not steal candy from a baby or not beat my wife or not be racist or you know yeah well sure I guess in principle if you can localize the circuitry that's damaged if there is damaged circuitry with an immoral person like in the cognitive prosthetic I told you about in the hippocampus they were they were basically creating an artificial circuit between the CA3 region and the CA1 region of the hippocampus and they cause damage they damaged it and they created this artificial circuit now if you can localize where the moral center is in the brain and determine its damage you could create an artificial circuit I wouldn't yeah that's yeah I wouldn't do it because of ascending and descending degeneration it seems to me that it is likely you are more successful in amputees than you are say in a stroke and I just wonder if you could comment about like a stroke degeneration is not like in a cortex is going to go all the way to the muscle all the way down so on that basis if there is a little improvement following a stroke because we don't randomize this thing how do we know some of this is not a spontaneous improvement that many people do after a stroke right well I am not sure I mean certainly if I had a stroke I would not implant such a device until I waited from what I understand there is a sort of spontaneous recovery for several months and I would wait before putting anything in I can tell you that one of our patients was a brain stem stroke patient who actually I don't know when she had had the stroke before she got the implant but the implant last was working for her for like I think four or five years so it continued she continued in this study the clinical trial was to focus on one year but this this individual went for five years so I yeah I I are you asking is there degeneration of neurons due to the insult yeah so ALS for example ALS is a motor neuron disease but it's also considered an upper motor neuron disease too it affects motor cortical neurons we implanted I think it was one ALS patient and in that one patient we found basically intact motor cortical cells that could activate by thought but it's true if we had waited long enough perhaps that individual would not have had motor cortical activation any longer because it is degenerative disease yeah so I don't know where I don't know where it stands in terms of ALS whether it really how often it affects the motor cortex and how often it's just limited to the motor neurons any other questions any comment regarding different developmental issues of the brain yeah yeah I mean there this would be a serious ethical consideration we have not worked with any I don't think any of the clinical trials have worked with children I would have a serious concern about that but you know I mean we're you know with these invasive systems we are causing damage to the brain probably I mean for sure we are not probably for sure we are so you have to be very careful before you put a device like that into the brain of a child that might need that part of the cortex in the future so I would be super careful the patients we had were adults they were paralyzed chronically paralyzed there was no chance they were going you know they were going to regain function and we were targeting the motor cortex the arm hand area not the speech area so and they chose they volunteered they consented so children is a different story I think


Today we're in James chapter five. We're gonna look at verses seven through 11 and I took the title of our message from the scripture. The judge is standing at the door. So beginning at verse seven, I'm gonna read verse seven through verse 11 and we'll look at this passage today. The judge is standing at the door. James writes in chapter five, beginning at verse seven, therefore be patient brethren until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another brethren lest you be condemned. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. My brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. Indeed, we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. So as we begin, the judge is standing at the door is the title and it's because the Lord's return is spoken of here. Throughout the Bible, the coming of the Lord is a centerpiece of theology. When I was first saved, it was a teaching that I had never really heard anything about. I'd been raised in a particular faith. I'd taken the various classes and all that helped me to participate in the faith, but I never heard about the coming of the Lord. I never was taught anything about the Lord Jesus Christ returning. And so when I got saved, it was at Calvary Chapel in the Bible studies that I was first introduced to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I was taught not only facts about the Lord returning, but I was also taught to live as if I expected that he would return any day. I was taught to live in anticipation of his return. And because his return was soon, I was also taught to live in a way that was worthy of the gospel, to live as if I really believed, in other words, that Jesus is returning. When you read the Bible, the next prophecy on the prophetic calendar to be fulfilled is the rapture of the church. There's nothing left that needs to take place for that particular prophecy to be fulfilled.  Now that goes along with scripture in 1 John chapter three, verses two and three. John said, dear friends, now we are children of God. And what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. In other words, if we really believe that the Lord is returning, then we wanna walk worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you really believe that he's returning in your lifetime at any moment, John was saying to live in a pure way because he himself is pure.  And the emphasis of our service to the Lord is all based on his imminent return. We believed that he was returning at any moment. Now again, back at that time, there was this anticipation that became almost feverish in some ways. There were books that were written concerning the return of Christ. Anybody here who's of a certain age may remember Hal Lindsey and Hal Lindsey wrote a book called The Late Great Planet Earth. And that was referring to the raptures returning to the end days and all. And it was a bestseller. And so we had books that were written concerning the return of Christ that helped to fuel our anticipation. There were movies that were made concerning the return of Christ. A Thief in the Night was one of those movies. It was actually a series, but that movie, A Thief in the Night and the other movies that came after that drew thousands of people to faith in Jesus Christ. And there were songs that we sang that emphasized the return of Christ. There was a song that was sung by a man by the name of Larry Norman. It was a song I wish we'd all been ready. And that song impacted us as Jesus freaks.  Everyone got trampled on the floor. I wish we'd all been ready. Children died, the days grew cold.  I wish we'd all been ready. There's no time to change your mind. The sun has come and you've been left behind. A man and wife are sleeping in bed. She hears the sound and turns her head. He's gone. I wish we'd all been ready. And so we were raised with that, with books and movies and Bible studies. And we had an anticipation, an expectation that the Lord Jesus Christ was gonna return. And so this anticipation and expectation actually began to provoke certain kinds of responses. Some decided that if Jesus was returning soon, they needed to get married as quickly as possible. And they would meet somebody in a Bible study and they'd look at one another. And I had a friend who did this. His name was Ed and his wife, Linda, because Ed was a single man. Linda was there in the Bible study. And I still remember Ed looking at Linda and they went outside to pray and decided they were gonna get married. And after all, they'd known each other for a couple of weeks. And they got married. And a lot of people were doing that. They said, we wanna get married. I guess they wanted to go through the tribulation, I don't know, but they got married. There were guys who were actually charging up their credit cards to the full because they were expecting Christ to return at any moment and they were gonna leave anti-Christ with the bill. That's a fact. There were some who became so afraid of the thought of the return of Christ that they became extremely legalistic and rigid and they lost all of their joy. And there were others who got involved with what we call today, last day's cults. You know, the children of God and other cults like that. And they ended up just going in the wrong direction. There were others who became impatient. If Jesus said he's gonna return and he hasn't returned and they became impatient because they saw so much pain and because of the imbalance, they became disillusioned and they returned to the world. They saw a continuing injustice and they thought the rapture wasn't going to happen. Well, while James is writing of this at this time and he exhorts them to something, you'll see it in a moment. He exhorts them to be patient. This is because injustice is part of the corrupt world system and he makes it clear as he's been speaking in the previous verses, he makes it clear that the unrighteous rich will receive their judgment for their sins. He made it clear that they would be judged because of their pride and we saw this, their fraudulent dealings, their materialism, their riotous living, their greed, their cruelty to the poor and the oppressed believers were going through hard times. They were suffering through these injustices and because of this, they were impatient. They were waiting for God to intervene on their behalf and he hadn't yet. So James instructs them to wait, wait for God because God will decide when to move. God will decide when to bring justice. You see, when we go through times of struggle and difficulty, it's easy for us to lose heart. That's something that's part of being a human being. It's easy for us to become filled with a sense that perhaps God has abandoned me. He's not gonna move on my behalf. You see this actually penned in the word of Scripture. You see this sentiment in the Bible in Job 13 verse 24.  Or Psalm 13 verse one. How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Psalm 94, three and four. How long will the wicked, oh Lord, how long will the wicked be jubilant?   And you see this over and over again in Scripture where they cry out. They're human beings. They're going through hard times. They begin to wonder if God's even listening, if God's even there. James is encouraging these people to hold fast. Remember, it's always darkest just before the dawn. God hasn't forgotten them. And that's why he says in verse seven, therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. There to be patient, the word patient speaks of bearing the offenses and injuries of others. To be mild and slow in avenging. They're being oppressed by the wicked rich. They're impatient that justice hasn't been served. So he says instead of growing impatient, entrust yourselves to God. God judges fairly and God always moves at exactly the right moment.  In second Peter three, verse nine, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness, but his longsuffering toward us. Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. In first Timothy one, 16, Paul said, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. See, God doesn't move necessarily upon our own timetable. He moves on his own. And in second Peter three, 15, the apostle said, bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation. So instead of desiring vengeance, I'd entrust the Lord because God will do what is right. You see, if an all holy God is patient, they too must be patient and they must trust him. They need to give God room to move instead of constantly desiring to be avenged. In Romans 12, 19, Paul said it like this. He said, beloved, do not avenge yourselves. Rather give place to wrath for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And so he begins in verse seven by simply saying, therefore be patient brethren until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. And so he begins to use the illustration of a farmer. And he says, you need to be patient. Be patient, Jesus will return at any moment. And whether he returns soon or sometime in the future, he says, be prepared. And he continues this thought as he teaches through this passage. He says the coming of the Lord, he speaks of his coming being at hand. He says the judge is standing at the door. So instead of directing their attention to the trouble, he directs them to their future. And he encourages them by reminding them of Jesus's return for the church. Now the return of the Lord Jesus Christ is referred to throughout the New Testament. In the 260 chapters of the New Testament, the return of Christ is mentioned 318 times. That's one verse and every 25 verses specifically mentions the Lord's return. And the only New Testament books that don't mention his return are the books of Galatians and second and third John. As Christians, the anticipation of being with Jesus is what is to motivate us to live for him because his return is to cause us to have an anticipation and a preparation because his return can happen at any moment.  And we're taught that he could return at any moment as mentioned a moment ago. I was taught that from the beginning. And I can still remember, it was February 9th, 1971. I still remember the date. I had gone to a Bible study the night before. I was at Calvary Chapel and the subject had been the return of Christ. And I had gone home, I slept at, I was living at my parents' home at that time and my dad had put a roll out bed in the den. And I still remember I was there on this small bed in the den and I was laying and the house began to shake and began to move. It was one of the most serious earthquakes that we'd had in California at that time. It was a huge earthquake. And I lived in Norwalk at that time. And I still remember the bed, everything was moving. And naturally, I've been through a lot of earthquakes before that and quite a number since. But this was a very severe one and I still remember the house as it was moving. And I mean, it was really shaking and the bed was moving. And then I thought, oh man, you know, I thought the house is gonna fall on me.  I still remember, I was 20 years old. I'm laying there, I said, lifting my hands up, like, okay, take me Jesus, take me.  But I was taught that. I was taught that Jesus is gonna come at any time and be prepared. And the things you're going through, I'd have served to prepare you in terms of anticipation and a desire to serve God. I was taught that from the very beginning. Be prepared, his return can happen any moment. In scripture, his return is often presented as being something that occurs soon. And you'll see that in the writings of Paul. Philippians four, verse five, he says to that church, let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. In 1 Peter chapter four, seven and eight, the apostle Peter said, the end of all things is at hand. Therefore be serious, watchful in your prayers. Above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. So the soon return of Jesus has been the hope of the church from the beginning. The looking forward to seeing Jesus provokes hopeful anticipation and also a holy living. In Titus two, 11 through 13, Paul said the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteousness and godly in the present age. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ. So the return of Christ is to provoke us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust and to live a sober, righteous and godly life today. That's what it's supposed to do. Now James, the book that we're studying is the oldest New Testament letter, yet his return is used as an incentive to remain patient. He's saying Jesus is returning. We need to look to him and not our circumstances as we await him. His soon appearing is intended to motivate us to patient godly living. It's like what it says in Mark 13, 33 through 37. Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when the time is. It's like a man going to a far country who left his house and gave authority to his servants and to each his work and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming in the evening, at midnight, at the groin of the rooster or in the morning, less coming, suddenly he finds you sleeping.  Various writers instructed and exhorted believers by appealing to the return of Christ. In Romans 13, 12 and 13, the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light, let us walk properly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. In 1 Corinthians 1.7, Paul said, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. In chapter seven of 1 Corinthians, verse 29, Paul said, this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on, even those who have wives should be as though as they had none. 1 Corinthians 10, 11, now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. So from the very beginning, Paul was using and Peter was using as an exhortation, the return of Christ for believers to live godly lives. You see, since Jesus was returning soon, such a hope should motivate us to be ready for his return. Our lives are actually to be driven by the hope and this hope that's within us transforms us from within. We don't fill up notebooks with notes on his coming. We live as if he really is. In Revelation chapter three, verse 20, Jesus said, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me. Very often that scripture, Revelation 3.20 is used to illustrate Jesus standing at the door of your heart knocking and all and you need to open up the door so he can come in. But the context of Revelation 3.20 is speaking about his return in judgment. And he's saying, I'm even at the door. You need to get right with me. You need to be prepared for me as I enter in. And so the soon return of Christ you see throughout the New Testament and it's something that's to provoke us. We're to live lives with eager anticipation. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses 24 and 25, let us consider one another in order to stir up loving good works, not forsaken the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. Hebrews 10.37, yet a little while and he who is coming will come and will not tarry. Over and over, I'm just taking a select view to scriptures for you. I want you to see how consistent this cry is that Jesus is returning soon. We need to live as if we really think he's going to. I've known a number of people over the years who've known scripture that pertains to the return of Christ but it's grieved my heart to honestly have to say that some of those whom I've known may have notebooks filled with notes but the heart hasn't been marked by the appearance of Christ. They don't live any differently. They're just able to talk about the events. They're the people who read the newspaper and try and find a Bible verse in there to prove that we're in the last days. But if you're really in the last days then you're really going to live as if you expect to see Jesus anytime and it's going to change the way that you live. And that's what James is exhorting his readers to. He's saying you need to be patient until the coming of the Lord. And this patience believers have is to be directed to a specific goal and that is to be with Jesus Christ. You see, when I got saved there was this, there was this new industry that some of you grew up in and you might think that we've always had this industry but it really began to show itself in the Jesus movement. It was the bumper stickers. And we used to have bumper stickers that we would put on our cars and that the Bible's so good you hate to put it down and things like that. And on my car I had six bumper stickers that I put on my car that when I would drive you'd see all these scripture verses and things like that. We were Jesus freaks and that's the way we lived. And we were taught that Jesus is returning but there was one bumper sticker I didn't like because it said the rapture, the great escape. And that didn't sit right with me then and it doesn't sit right with me now because I don't see the rapture as an escape. I wasn't looking to escape. What I was looking to is to win as many as I could to Christ before that takes place. I was taught that the most selfish person in heaven is the one who goes to heaven alone. And so we were taught to evangelize. We were taught to share. We were taught to go out and tell people about it. That's where the four pillars in this church that people might not even realize we have. We call them the four pillars and a lot of you who are new don't even know these four pillars. And when you walk in through the foyer you look at those doors but if you look up you'll see four pillars. The word worship, witness and witness and the witness is the fourth pillar.  You need to worship God because God wants us to worship in spirit and truth. I was taught that we need to love one another therefore we need to have fellowship. And I was taught to take these words out and to share them with others were to be a witness. And that's where the four pillars came from the word worship, witness and witness. And I was taught that from when I got saved that you're now saved. Bring somebody with you to heaven and that's what motivated me to tell my mom and my dad, my brother, my sisters. That's what motivated me to tell my friends and others that Jesus Christ is Lord and savior because he's gonna return and he's gonna take us. And I didn't want people to be left behind. And that was how it was. And yeah, amen and it's not quite like that anymore. You know when I hear people say well you know I want Jesus to return but I'd like to get married. I say why? Oh I want him to return but I wanna have children. Oh father forgive them, they know not what they say. I want more trouble. Because the one who's married has many troubles. You have children they multiply. You know I was taught and I feel this to this day what could be better than being with Jesus Christ, right? I mean what could be better than to see him? And the rapture I didn't see it as an event. I saw it as my introduction to my savior that I would be taken in the twinkling of an eye be transformed immediately that I wouldn't taste of death and I would be with him. And so I saw that as my opportunity to be with the one that I'd grown to love. Though I had not seen him like Peter says yet I still loved him. And so to be with the Lord and to be taken in the judge is even at the door and the Lord is returning really ought to fill us with daily anticipation. It ought to fuel our hearts to want to be prepared even as a bride prepares herself for her husband. And when the bride will have a nice beautiful gown very often she'll dress herself in the most beautiful way that she can. She buys the dress. Most of the time the bride keeps that dress. It becomes something for her. Whereas men we're not quite like that. We rent a suit that some other victim used last week. But women are different. Women want to have proof I guess. I don't know. They want to have that. And they prepare themselves. And over the years I've done quite a number of weddings and I have just never seen a bride who didn't prepare herself for her groom. I just have never seen one. All the brides have their hair done. They have special makeup done. They dress themselves as beautifully and as attractively as they can because they're about to be joined in marriage to that man they love. And in seeing that Christ is portrayed in scripture as the groom and the church is portrayed as his bride. The bride is to prepare herself to be with the groom. And so it isn't the wedding that you're looking forward to. It's the groom that you're looking forward to. It's being with him. And it's not that wow one of these days will be out of here we're gonna escape. It's gonna be one of these days I will see the one who wept for me in the garden. One of these days I will see the one who took the stripes on his back for me. The one who had the crown of thorns. I will be with him forever. I'll have the opportunity to say thank you face to face. The one whom I've loved yet never seen. Now I get to see face to face. And that's the anticipation. That's what prepares us. Not being able to mark up our Bibles but our lives being marked up by the Bible that we're being transformed and conformed into his image because of an anticipation that he's even at the door. And we ought to be patient as we await. He may not be here today. He may not be here tomorrow. But each day that passes by is one day closer to that moment we'll be with him. And so James is saying be patient and wait. His return is ought to it ought to cause you to be patient. In Hebrews 9, 27 and 28 it says man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment. So Christ was sacrificed once to take away our sins, the sins of many people and he will appear a second time not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are awaiting him. So James says that we're to wait patiently in verse seven. Then he goes on and says see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth. Waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. So to understand this illustration, this patient hope of a farmer, we need to remember something of the promise that God had made to the nation of Israel. The promise is illustrated through what is referred to as the early and the latter rain. The faithful Jew knew that God had given a promise concerning a provision of rain to the Jews in Israel. That particular promise is found in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. We need to remember something of the geography of Egypt and of Israel. Egypt has the mighty, it's called the mighty Nile River. It's a huge river and it's a source of water irrigation, drinking and a variety of things. It's a huge river and it waters Egypt. But Israel has a small river called the Jordan. Some of you have been to Israel and you'll know this. If you go during the summer, you'll especially see this to be true, that the Jordan River is not large at all and some places it's very, its width is very restricted. You can go across it very easily. It's not like the mighty Nile at all. It's a very small river. And so when God was speaking to the children of Israel, he began to speak to them of the land that he was gonna give to them as they were to inherit it. And he says in Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses 10 through 15, God says, the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot as a vegetable garden. But the land which you cross over to possess is the land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.  He's saying I am by grace going to provide water for you. So when you get your early rains and your latter rains, it will be a constant, a perpetual reminder of my gracious provision. You will know that I am giving you rain. And you know to this day in Israel, the Jews do not get angry as a nation, do not get angry when it's a rainy season because they see it as a provision of water because the Jordan cannot provide for them to see a Galilee cannot provide for them enough water for the entire nation unless it's replenished by the rain. And Jesus used it as a symbol of his grace. He said the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. There was a picture of God's grace, how a person may be a believer and it rains, it's an act of grace. A person may not be a believer, it still rains, it doesn't stop at the property line, it still rains which is a symbol of the grace of God. And that's why Jesus said that God causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike because the children of Israel were to be taught to rely on the Lord who provides the water for them because it's God who provides rain for the growth of crops. And so what are they to do? Well, they're to rely on him. And as they rely on him obediently, he provides for their needs. The early rain is necessary for the seed to germinate but the latter rain for the grain to mature. And that reveals to us what James is saying. The Jewish farmer knew that God would keep his promise but his people needed to keep his word. That meant that the farmer's patience was confidence. They were expecting God to keep his promise. The farmer rested in God in between the planting and the harvesting. So James is saying that God has been faithful to Israel by bringing rain and providing his food. And he does it at the right time. And so Jesus will come at the right time for his people. The farmer has to wait. Even when it doesn't seem it will ever rain. Even so we wait, though it seems he may never come. In Romans 13, 11, it says, do this, know in the time, now it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. It's the skeptic, the unbeliever that mocks our hope in the return of Christ. According to Matthew 24, 48, it's the evil servant who says, my master's delaying his coming. The mocking of our hope of Jesus' return began early in the history of the church. Peter spoke of it in 2 Peter 3, 3 and 4 where he wrote, knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lust, saying, where's the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. It's the mockers, it's the evil servant. Say he's never gonna come, everything's remained the same. It's all uniform, nothing has changed at all. While their false teaching serves to undermine the believer's hope for the return of Christ. And so he says in verse eight, you also be patient. Establish your heart for the coming of the Lord is at hand. When he says establish, establish your heart. Establish means to be firm, unwavering. It speaks of holding fast. Do not be moved away. The farmer is patient, so should you also be. He expects the grace of God to provide rain and you will be delivered from your trials. You're going to be cared for, he's saying. Jesus is returning, hold fast. Well, in the meantime, verse nine, do not grumble against one another, brethren. They should be condemned. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. While we wait, be careful to pursue unity with your brothers, love one another. Don't grumble, stop groaning, stop murmuring against one another. You see, when undergoing difficulties, it's easy to blame each other and to turn on one another in view of his return. Lift up your heads with anticipation, be united in him. The Lord is standing at the door. He's ready to come and he's bringing judgment. And so my brother in verse 10, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. Indeed, we count them blessed to endure. You've heard of the perseverance of Job, seeing the end intended by the Lord, that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. My brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example. Think about those in scripture that you've read about or you've been taught about. Think of Moses, who suffered there in the wilderness, went through so many things. The nation of Israel itself, the people he was delivering even turned on him. Think of those things. Think of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was opposed. When you read the book of Jeremiah, you see that he was opposed by kings and princes, by priests and the people of Judah.  He was put in stocks, put in chains. He's placed in a pit and left to die, though he was rescued. He went through severe hardship. Then you see Ezekiel. Ezekiel was taken to Babylon as a captive. Ezekiel went through hardship. But the hardest thing that he dealt with was the death of his own wife, whom the Lord referred to as the desire of his eyes. He went through pain. Look at Isaiah. Isaiah preached repentance to Israel. Nobody listened to him. He was mocked, his message rejected. And tradition holds that he was sawn in two. In Hebrews 11, 36 through 38, the writer said, still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted, slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. So he says, take the prophets as an example. And Jesus spoke of them. In Luke 11, 47 and 48, speaking to lawyers, he said, what do you lawyers? For you build the tombs of the prophets and your fathers killed them.  Stephen, the first martyr, was preaching to those who killed him. And he boldly addressed this. And in Acts 7, 52, Stephen said, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?  And so he's using them as examples in verse 10. My brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. Each one of these mentioned in so many others went through so many hardships. And he said, you need to take them as an example. So take these faithful believers as your examples of suffering and endurance. In verse 11, he says, indeed, we count them blessed to endure. Then he goes on to say, you've heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. You've heard of Job. Now, we count them blessed who endure. We see their example and we speak well of them for their faith to the end. In Matthew 5, 10 through 12, Jesus said, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven for the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Don't be surprised if not everybody likes you. Don't be surprised if you're mocked. Not everybody mocks. Of course, there's some very kind people. I'm not saying everybody is as evil as it potentially could be. But on occasion, you will encounter, if you walk with the Lord long enough, you will walk in such a way that you'll encounter some who are more aggressive, who are aggressively disobedient and hate filled towards your faith. You will encounter that. You may not personally do that, but I see that daily here in the United States just in the onslaught of evil against righteousness. And that's just a common thing that we have to the point that some of us have actually gotten used to that because that's the way it is here in the United States. We like to say we believe in God, but at the same time, we reject him. And that's what happens. And you'll encounter that. But he speaks of somebody I want to speak about for a moment here when he says in verse 11, you have heard of the perseverance of Job. Now that is the epitome of a person who went through difficult times, Job. Job's story is well-known. It's recognized as the greatest model of patient suffering. And when you read the book of Job, and I'm looking to more than likely gonna teach the book of Job after I finished the gospel of John, I've been wanting to teach it again. So when you look at the book of Job, it reveals that genuine faith endures any trial that it's subjected to. The book of Job reveals that the design the Lord had in the trials was to reveal himself more clearly. When you look at the book of Job, remember how it begins. It begins where the Lord is actually speaking to Satan who appeared before him amongst other angels. And God speaks to him and asks him, where have you been? And he says, I've been to and fro throughout the earth. That's another way of saying I've been up to no good. And the way that God is speaking to him, he's actually interrogating him. And the ancient language gives to us the sense that he's not having a conversation, he's interrogating him.  And he says, I've been going to and fro while you think of what Peter says concerning the evil one who goes to and fro throughout the earth seeking whom he may devour. And so what he's doing, he's saying is, I was up to no good. I've been going through the earth and I've been looking for people that I can victimize. And that's when God says to him, have you considered my servant Job? And the word considered speaks about scrutinizing. Look at him closely and determining what his weaknesses are. And he says, yes, I have. I'm aware of him because God says Job is the most righteous man. He says he eschews evil. He's a righteous man. Job, we're told in scripture, is a man who would give offerings on behalf of his children in the event that they might have in their heart cursed God. And so he would actually give sacrifices on their behalf. That's how righteous this man was. So he says, have you considered my servant Job? And immediately he didn't have to say Job Smith or Job Jones. He knew who he was. So he says, well, of course I have. But you have put something around him, put a hedge about him that I can't even touch him. I can't get to him. But he said, if you allowed me to, I can provoke him to curse you to your faith. And God says, you can touch his things but you can't touch him. And that's when the enemy takes everything he has. Livestock destroys his homes, even takes the lives of his children. And he comes back again, chapter two. Same conversation. Have you considered my servant Job? Yeah, well you put your hand on him but you allow me to touch him. Now skin for skin, all that a man has he'll give for his skin. You allow me to touch him.  He says, you're free to act but you cannot take his life.   And he became the song of children that children would mock him. And Job at one point says, I was the man when I would walk in the room that the men all the elders would stand up and show me respect and now I've become the song of children.  She couldn't take it anymore to see her beautiful soulmate or her husband and such severe pain, just die. A woman you speak as a foolish woman shall I not receive good from the hand of the Lord and not evil also? No, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You see the story of Job. I've had people say, oh, I feel like Job. No, no, you're nothing like Job. There's never been anybody outside of Jesus who suffered more than Job to have everything taken from his material to his physical, everything he has taken.  And when you do that, you may have this moment of a sense of God's with me and then you start seeing things happen in your life. You begin to lose things, lose relationships, go through struggles, have difficulty and before you know it, you're crying out like the psalmist that we were quoting a moment ago and you're, God, how long, how long, how long? And you may have a broken heart and broken relationships and broken everything and at one time was your source of joy, it's become your greatest pain and you don't know why and you begin to cry out, not everybody's gone through that. I'll be honest with you, many Christians I know haven't ever said, God, I'll follow you completely. They wanna go to heaven, but they want the pleasures of earth too. But when you get serious with the Lord and you say, you know what, it's all or nothing.  I'm gonna be a follower of Christ. I'm not gonna be one of these people who on a survey say, oh, I'm a Christian, but on Friday and Saturday I go party and on Sunday I go to church. I'm not gonna be that guy. I'm gonna be serious about you, I'm gonna follow you. I'm gonna do whatever it is that I need to do in order to glorify you. Not many people do that, I promise you, that's a fact. And yeah, I want heaven, but I want the world too. I want heaven, but I want pleasures now. I want heaven, but I wanna relax, I don't want the pain. But when you get to the point in your life and you say, God, it's all you or nothing, you will discover the depth of God. That's how it works.  And the pains that you experience are the ones that deepen you. And then you say, God, help me to love people.  Yes, Lord, I wanna love, but you forget what love did. Love went on across, love was beaten, love was crucified, love was rejected. And you're saying I wanna love? You haven't counted the cost, you don't understand.  Some of you know what I'm talking about. Some of you have gone through that. Some of you are there right now and you're wondering, what happened? I wanted to follow you. And Lord, I dedicated my kids, they're not following you. Lord, I thanked you for the job, but they're laying off. Lord, I wanted this house, but it's giving me, you start looking at what you called it one time, your blessings, one by one. And you're realizing that many of the things you thought were blessings have turned out to be pains. Why, God? Why? Why? Why? And God says, because you said you wanted to be like me, didn't you? Didn't you? Well, yeah, but I was thinking of your glory. Well, Isaiah 53 says, I am the wounded healer. I was broken and so will you be. And when everything is taken from you, will you still love me? Will you? When you have nothing else except me, am I enough? That's what Job learned. That's what Job learned. Oh, you go through the book, it's a powerful book. You ought to read it. It's a powerful book. And you see his friends, Job's comforters. And you see them seated there for several days, saying nothing, which was the best advice they could give because once they opened their mouth, they were stupid.  I argued with this man in pain, arguing with him. Oh, you know, as I've been, I've seen that bad things happen to bad people, Job. The reason you're going through all these things is you're bad.  I wish I had a, I would stand before God himself and I would say I'm not guilty. And he goes through that and he, one argument after another, miserable comforters you are, he calls his friends eventually, miserable. But as you go through the book of Job and he's been asking questions, oh, if I could only speak to God, then finally God begins to speak to him. He says, quit yourself like a man. I've got some questions to ask you, Job. And God begins to ask Job questions. Where were you when I, and he begins to speak about telling the sea to go to this point and no further when he put the stars into the sky and all the little mysteries and things that Job had no answers for. And he just gives them question after question that Job cannot respond to. And after God begins to question Job, as Job has been questioning him, the most beautiful part of Job that I think is one of the most special is Job 42, verse five, when Job finally says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. I walked by faith and not by sight. All my offerings and sacrifices and my desires, I never had this personal knowledge of you to this directness and this way.  God, you're everything. And the book of Job in chapter 42 closes his story by telling us that the Lord restored Job's losses. God gave him twice as much as he had before. Bless the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And the book closes with the words, so Job died, old and full of days. It clearly reveals that in the end, God is truly compassionate and merciful. And that's what he's saying here. We count them blessed to endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. Job learned that. Do you want to? Do you want to? From the time I was a young man to where I'm at now, over the years, over the years, next Friday, next Friday, my 49th spiritual birthday, 49 years of walking with Jesus Christ this upcoming Friday. 49 years, 49 years, I have learned one thing. People ask me, what is the most important thing you've ever learned? You've been walking with God for a long time. What is the number one lesson you've learned about God and things? I'll tell you what it is, it's very easy. It all turns out okay. It all turns out okay. When I've been going through things, I've been taught, I'm going through things. I'm not staying there, I'm just passing through.  Have you ever prayed that?    Do you want me to make you like me? Over the years, 49 years next week, I've heard that. One form or another, I've heard the Lord say, do you want to leave? Is my, the way that I am disappointing to you? Have you misunderstood the way I actually perform my work? Have you not understood that there are times when the potter's hands can be not so gentle on the clay that it's forming? Have you not discovered that yet?  Have you not discovered that yet? Here you are thinking that every day would be, just laughter and joy and no tears and no sorrow. Hey, that's what makes heaven what heaven is, son. But you're gonna go through pain and you know why? Because you asked me to teach you to love. Because you asked me to teach you to have compassion. Because you asked me to break your heart with the things that break mine and I'm revealing a little bit at a time to you so that you'll see how merciful and compassionate your God really is. So some of you in here right now, you need to know that. If you're going through some pain right now, this too shall pass. And the refiner's fire is hot. But it burns away the things that you don't want.  And the afflictions and the pain that you endure is something you can share with others and say, been there, done that. My God is good. And he will take you through because the Lord works that way. You'll learn that. You'll learn that. And you don't go through anything that doesn't have a purpose. Everything works for good to those who are the called of God. To those who are living in and serving him because these things work according to his purpose. Never forget that. And every life has the sweet and every life has the bitter. But when you mix it together, it produces you who you are. And the you that is produced is the one God created to be his messenger to share with a broken world that yes, you can be broken, but my God is a healing God. And he will take you through this. And that's what you learn. That's what you learn. So hold on. Don't let go and watch what God will do. And to God, be all the glory because he's making you into the image of his son, Jesus Christ. And you will learn, you will learn that the Lord is compassionate and merciful.