It's DDK and I'm back today with another video. Choose out to everybody tuning in if you want to watch the vlog. Subscribe and give me a thumbs up. Look, I wanna ask you guys a question. Have you guys ever wondered how long it really takes for us to do these orders? We have an overseas order right here. What? Mickey D's, baby. 1.8 miles for $8, we holla. This is gonna be in real time while we're on the grind today in the time. Now I'm gonna continue to see us shine, baby. Look, it's time for us to get busy, baby. It's like a baby line. He's gonna do a baby line right here for y'all, man. I've been just seeing some stuff in the comments section. They say they want us to do it live. So I gotta get prepared. Look, we're testing this out, baby. We're about to go to Mickey D's right now. And if you haven't watched the Door Dance video, the live Door Dance video, well, not live, fake live Door Dance video, you guys wanna make sure you watch that too in the middle of the street right here. What is that, a pillow? Somebody was trying to sleep on this, sleep in the street, sleep in the street. Sleep in the street, baby. So we are not ready to Mickey D's right now. We about to get busy, take the back roads. No? Are you gonna have to do it in real time? If I take the back roads, then I have to go all the way around McDonald's to go through the drive-thru. Oh, see, I ain't thinking about that. She ain't thinking about that. Guess what? I'm trying to move too fast. I'm trying to get this cash. And please don't try me. Y'all saw us with the Draco, baby. Y'all saw us with the Draco. Y'all saw us with OVO. Y'all already know we gonna go. So we put it up to Mickey D's right now. It says only 1.8 miles away. The Door Dance video that we did, it was 1.1 mile away. And we do have a Dunkin' Donuts order that we might do. I don't know. We might make that another video. And I need you guys to comment below. If any of the video, comment below and let me know. If you guys like these type of short videos, short and quick like that. Cause we might switch it up a little bit, baby. We're trying to be a little creative and try some new things. We can't go inside. We had to go through the drive-thru last time because they ain't had this door open. So because they out of pocket. So with the drive-thru right now, we're about to get on here and get, well, we ain't going in here. We're about to go out here and get busy. The number is 288. I'm trying to figure where Dunkin' Donuts is. Right next to Winstuff. Oh, yeah, I forgot what about that Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' Donuts, we about to go nuts. This is the one mile one that you... So if I get it, it says it live about 33. I'm just going to leave it off, man. Cause I know we're going to late for show. Being in the drive-thru is critical. See, this the thing, right? Let me tell you something, guys. This, let me tell you both of y'all something. You and y'all. So this is the reason why I like to put it fast forward.  Yeah, but see, right now you're doing a, how long did it take in real time? So maybe your music is like that. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Like, look, you're waiting. No, that's probably copyrighted. I probably, that's probably copyrighted. They're probably trying to copyright a player. I'm here in Malaya. I was so sultry when we got copyrighted last time. And we couldn't do nothing about it. We had to do something that day. Deliculation, that's who it was. How much time are you? Five minutes and 25 seconds. Guess what's the battery at? 38%. This battery is jammed. Jammed super jammed. The baby lied. So do people, when people do, why don't they take y'all to the house with them and like to drop the food off or, I mean, I know they take me to the house with them. They take me to the door where it's what I mean. Or do they just leave this on right here, go to the door and then come back? I think a lot of them. You know what else? We really don't watch that many gig tours like that because I just don't.  Sometimes you kind of like start trying to be like them or you get motivated about what they're doing and you try to be like, act like them a little bit or you try to do like some of the challenges and stuff that they're doing. So I try not to watch them like that. I don't even, honestly, guys, I don't even watch myself over. I ain't even go out to y'all. I edit the video and I don't even watch it again. I'm just gonna keep you g-rear with you guys. I don't like to keep hearing myself talk. So I just, you know, I just dropped the video and did a comment when y'all comment. That's it. I think it's probably a lot of YouTubers is like that. What you think? I mean, they were there. They lived it. What do they gonna need to watch their video? Yeah, I don't need to watch, re-watch it. I think if you re-watch it, first, okay, two things. One thing, right? If you re-watch your video, you could be trying to critique it and make it better. But also you could be, you know, in love with yourself too much. You just want to watch yourself, you just want to watch yourself all day. You just want to watch yourself all day. So I don't know. I'll be telling y'all this.  Uh, that's all the pain is to be found. Hey, that's all the pain is to be found. That's all the pain is to be found, lady. That's the thing how y'all be feeling. Comment below and let me know if you, if you were ahead of you, feel like that, just let comment below and let me know right now. Now I'm talking about, another thing about this whole fake live stream that we're doing right now, you guys kind of get to find out our area and how long it really takes us to do stuff and how far stuff really is. Because like I'll be explaining to you guys in the other videos, everybody's mouths are different. So some people may think a good order is good and some may think it's bad, but it depends on where you at. You know what I'm talking about? This seems like a long one playing eight miles.  You taking this to the gas station? I'm going to the VP. It'll pay no gains and you will already know my name and don't let me know if you know that song. Comment below and let me know. You know that song? See, you don't even see it.  I guarantee you $20 if somebody know that song. Guarantee, I'm winning the bet you right now. Just from exactly how I said it, they gonna know it. Cause I said, is that how they say it? We are here at the Pizzle, but to get busy, I'm off the hill. Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on, fake live. How you doing, Juan? Here you go, boss. You have a good one. Okay, I'm gonna do my outro right now. I'm just doing a YouTube video. This is my guy, Juan, right here. He own the gas station. Okay, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure you lock in to the next video. I don't know when it's gonna be or what we gonna do, but you know my flow stick like the flu. This took us 11 minutes and like five seconds, baby. I keep leaving the web like Danny Glover. Please don't try me cause I got it under the cover. Bang, bang. I'll see you guys on the next one. We going, we going, we flowing. You already know it, it's DDK and I'm on my way.


If we're doing this really carefully, we'd worry about the particular distribution of possibilities we'd have for our raw data, and we'd be able to convert that into a particular distribution for our possible results for our derived quantity. But we can get a good estimate by calculating this distance here. And that's just the difference between the values we would have got for y if we'd calculate it using the slightly high version of x, x plus delta x, compared to if we'd use just the expected value of x that we'd measured. So let's look at a few cases. Firstly, let's look at a linear multiplier. In other words, what if y is just some multiple of x? Then if we use this formula here, if we expand out this bracket, we're going to get lambda times x and lambda times delta x. And the lambda x is going to cancel with this lambda x, and we're just going to be left with the other term. So that makes sense. If I take 10 times a measurement, then I should multiply the measurement by 10, but I should also amplify my uncertainty by 10 as well. So if I had an uncertainty of a centimeter across a meter stick, then if I was talking about 10 of those, I'd have 10 meters is my average, but I'd also have now 10 centimeters is my uncertainty.


My name is Hailey Richie. I graduated from Carleton with a degree in journalism and I am a daily news reporter at Metro Ottawa. I wouldn't even know the basics of writing if I didn't go to Carleton, so obviously I wouldn't be in this job without Carleton. But I didn't graduate knowing how to do journalism. I'm still learning how to do that every day. But the lessons I learned from the faculty still stay with me, especially the simple lessons. I had one professor who was a professional. She spent a lot of time at CBC. And she let the whole class know she admitted that she still gets nervous occasionally picking up the phone and making cold calls. And that was a really great lesson to learn as a student journalist. It's not that you're not cut out for this because you still have trouble doing the job. It's just that you take that with you and you learn how to do it and you keep doing it every day.


Okay, can you see my screen? Yes. Okay, so also hi from me. I'm Torben, I'm a PhD student of Giovanni Bussi. And since this is our last presentation of today, I will try to stay on time. Everything I would like to present today will be in the context of machine learning in order to improve RNA force fields. And one motivation when working within this framework is that currently RNA is becoming very popular and becomes a more and more relevant target in therapeutics. And here, accurate methods which can predict or design structures and dynamics of RNA are needed to accelerate progress. However, already for small systems and the predictive capability of current force fields is limited. And therefore in the previous years, the works have been focused on taking advantage of experimental data in order to enforce agreement with experiments. A critical issue here is to take into account errors either in experimental data, or in the forward models used to back calculate the experiments from simulations. And at the same time account for overfitting on the training data set. Among frameworks such as Bayesian inference and also in the refinement and other forms of wisdom which allows to enforce agreement with experiments is maximum entropy. And there are limits in this procedure which are that corrections are not transferable to new unknown systems. Alternative transferable procedures which provide more flexibility regarding this. And they have already been introduced and we are trying to extend them. We are writing this down in like a reweighting problem as such here. We can, we are, we can have like arbitrarily chosen correction functions, and which can be adjusted by Lagrangian multipliers. The multipliers themselves are found by minimizing the square difference between observable averages in the current ensemble and the experimental observables. And then the, the observable averages themselves are computed as can be seen here. Let's note that nonlinearity can be present in observables as well as in the corrections, or at the same time. And I would like to close out my talk today with an outlook going also in this direction of, of nonlinearity. One of the challenges for current RNA standard force fields is the UUCG tetraloupe. And the native confirmation of this motive is stabilized by an intricate hydrogen bond network and this network is not represented correctly currently and consequences of this have been published, as in this example here on the right. And that MD is run on the ribosomal L1 stock RNA segment which contains the UUCG loop highlighted in red in these figures. And this L1 stock RNA is involved in the process of translation by guiding tRNA during the translocation step. And it does this in this native con confirmation, which is characterized by a compact fold with multiple tertiary contacts, and then performing standard MD on this system, these tertiary contacts start degrading immediately, such that after some time, one ends up with a non native elongated conformation, and which is just played basically in this second snapshot. And these issues like native confirmations being populated with less than 1% in some cases have not been solved yet, as even titles of recent publications indicate. Because of this, we, or our group collaborates closely with researchers at the Palacki University in the Czech Republic, we're trying to resolve these problems of RNA misrepresentation within force fields. And in the past, they approached this challenge by running simulations with different settings of corrections on hydrogen bond interactions. And these corrections are switching functions based on the distance and they are shown down here in the corner, and a parameter choice which has evidently improved the agreement of simulations to experimental data are the ones shown next to it. And these these basically favor base base interactions, and this favor all interactions between sugar and phosphate oxygens. However, our collaborators up to now only tried to change a small number of parameters at a, at a time and order to still be able to interpret findings. And the effect of the resulting force field changes to make use of all available 12 free parameters we applied a linear force field fitting protocol to allow for more automatic refinement which additionally removes the human bias and this process of selecting certain interactions for correcting. And to avoid overfitting on this uscg motive we included more systems. We added the GA GA tetraloupe as a representative of the GNRA sequence family, to which a great majority of known RNA tetraloupe structures belong. And also the unstructured da cc system, which as shown here on the right the native confirmations are not, or is not a single structure but in an ensemble of structures, which populate at least two, maybe three, three basins. In this plot which is basically the distance from a form helix. And for all these systems that we see here experimental NMR data are available. And the corresponding observables can be back calculated from the simulations when one is using for example forward models like these here. For the NOEs we have this relationship of signal and distance for the J couplings we have the couplers equations which are the relationship of signal to dihedral angles. And for the tetraloops we have the native confirmation which for which we arbitrarily are choosing the ones with ERMSD smaller 0.7 from the NMR solution structure, which effectively carries a lot of information. So now let me give you a quick outline first I would like to start with the details of the first project in which we are refining existing correction functions in an automatic way by fitting simulations to experimental data. And this hopefully touches on the most relevant steps when applying such protocols like regularization cross validation and final validation. And then I have some slides which are giving the outlook for a closely related project on using artificial neural networks within the correction function, but still aiming at force field matching to experiments. So let's go into the first project details. Previous studies have clearly stated that regularization is necessary when one is facing extensive data sets. And we are testing different regularization functions for comparison. And therefore, and the fitting parameters are no longer just a function of the discrepancy to experiments what is called the cost here. So also depends on the penalties and only one of the penalties I'm listing here is used at a time and the strength of a penalty can be tuned using additional hyper parameter which often is called alpha. And the most common regularization function is a to regularization, which targets the magnitude of the fitting parameters. And also targets them but leads to more sparse results. And this can help to identify, maybe the most relevant parameters. Besides these two, their penalties which keep the statistic efficiency after reweighting high, because usually, and others we heard today multiple times, usually a lot of statistical significance is lost to during reweighting. The the inverse of the of the kish size can be used when a higher number of frames with a significant large weight is desired. The relative, the inverse of the relative kish size can be used to reduce the distance of the weights before and after the fitting and the relative entropy or exponential of this and tries to tries the same but uses the Kulbach Leibler divergence for this. And then there are ways to embed such penalties into a protocol. And I want to show you what is a standard procedure for this. This is called cross validation. And this means to split any data set into subsets and then perform fitting on one subset and validation on the other. And this way an average cross validation error can be obtained. And here we see different ways of splitting the data on the right, which is, which are not necessarily standard protocols. And on the trajectory horizontally where we iteratively leave one of the subsets out for validation while trying training on the remaining. And the other option is to split vertically which can be either either be along systems as it's displayed here or along the observables extracted from each of these simulated systems. And in all these cases is to find the best hyper parameter, which can be found by scanning the error function over a certain range of hyper parameters as I try to show here. And the anatomical shape when overfitting is detected looks like here in this region where we have low hyper parameters which corresponds to almost unregularized fitting where the error function of the cross validation increases again and sometimes this exceeds the reference error of the force field. Ideally, one is able to identify a minimum within this scan, however, and we applied these protocols on the real data set. I have here the the first of four figures that are coming in the sub figure we have the error function for the cross validation on trajectory here evaluated on the training data themselves which is, as you can see increasing here on the exercise the hyper parameter is increasing. And this is by construction and for all regularization terms, except the kish size. There will be a legend. This one is the kish size for all other penalties except this the reference error of the force field is recovered. And the reason for this that the kish size is not reaching there is because our reference force field in this one we don't have uniform weights across all visited confirmations. In this sub figure here, we see the error function evaluated on the validation data, and we can see that there's no significant difference for range of low hyper parameter values, meaning overfitting is not an issue in this case, because the trajectories we are using are sufficiently long. And therefore the parameters are transferable when one is interested in just continuing the simulations on the same system that we were training on. Penalcy is again the training error, however, for the cross validation on observable as you can see in the scheme here. And here, the, okay, here nothing qualitatively changes, and we still have the by construction increasing error function. The interesting penalties this this figure D, which, which shows for the first time qualitative differences, because for each regularization function for each penalty, we can identify a specific hyper parameters which are minimizing the error function. And these hyper parameters and the minima represent the best balance between overfitting and predictiveness. However, because of the different nature of the regularization functions, the value of the the error function in the minima should be compared. And here, in this case the the relative kish size at a hyper parameter of around 18 shows the lowest error. And therefore, we treated it as the optimal regularization and all the following results. What we also did was additionally perform cross validation on systems, which is yet another possible protocol, as I mentioned, and this has the purpose of highlighting the contribution of of each system to the error function and also show advantages of regularization in the parameters which I tried to show in the in the right half of this. And this first row, which I'm showing now, it shows the results when GACC as one of the three systems we are training or validating on in this case GACC is the validation system. Always with a hedge background and also some parameters are shown here on the right here this is the parameter set of the three parameters when no regularization is used so hyper parameter equal to zero. And then also with the regularization where we chose, as I mentioned this relative kish size, and we extracted these parameters from the plot here, where you can identify the same style. So, we see, maybe as one first interpretation of these plots here that the UCG system has the highest error contribution, and it can be among the systems and it can be significantly improved when included in the training. When fitting UCG simultaneously the GA GA system improves with respect to its error function. And this is independent of whether it is included or not, as you can see here now GA GA is the validation set and and still the error function experiences a decrease with decreasing hyper parameter and the GACC tetramer always experiences overfitting whenever you UCG is included in the training set. However, the magnitude of this overfitting is within experimental uncertainty, and also the improvements made on this other system here, much larger. When using UCG as the validation system, its error contribution shows an optimum for all regularization penalties, while both remaining systems can be can be improved. However, the improvements for the left out system in this case are significantly lower than when it is included. And this suggests that the native UCG confirmation is stabilized by interactions which are not present in the other two systems. Then generally the relevance of regularization can be seen also from these plots here when taking a look at the error when no regularization is used, which is in all these plots the pink line. So for the training set, the lowest errors are usually achieved. However, in the cross validation in the validation system, you can see that usually the largest error functions are produced. Interestingly, when no regularization is used, the parameters become extremely large in cases where the GACC system is used in the training. Yes, exactly. All these parameters are large, which means that the best balance between overfitting and predictiveness cannot be guaranteed. However, using regularization penalties, the magnitude of these parameters is reduced while maintaining a low error function. And in general, when regularizing the parameters identified are similar independently of which system is left out from the fitting. And even if we perform a minimization on all the systems at the same time, we can see in the corner down here for the regularization that these 12 free parameters favor and disfavor the respective interactions in a similar manner as the ones above. Maybe a possible interpretation why parameters become very large when GACC is included in the training set is that certain interactions here that are extremely large are only present in the GACC non-native structure and therefore are extremely disfavored. Okay, we decided to use the obtained parameters and validate them by running new simulations on equally challenging TetraMERS, CAEU, UUU and again the Tetraloop UUCG. In this table here, we are showing the CAEI square error, the error function and native populations for the training and testing simulations. And in this table, we can see we report both the direct results of the simulation and the results of reweighting those simulations to the optimal parameters identified by cross-validation and later full minimization of the parameters with the ideal hyperparameter. And then for the validations simulations, we report both the direct results of the simulations and the results predicted by reweighting those simulations back to the starting GHB fixed force field. And the improvements made on error function and native population for all systems can be seen clearly. Exception is this GACC TetraMERS system, however, as I said before, the error remains within the range of experimental uncertainty. For all three validation systems of which CAEU and UUU were not included in the training, decrease in the error function is experienced, which was the goal of adding this rigorous regularization protocol. And in order to also have more technical idea on how these parameters, which ultimately lead to transferable force field corrections were obtained, we can follow these steps in this flow chart here. And after performing simulations, which would be the first step, the observables can be extracted. One among many possibilities to extract ERMSD, J-Couplings and NOE distances would be via BANABAR package for Python in which these forward models are already implemented. If you simply recover angles or distances, you might have to define the forward models yourself, which you could see here. And maybe something important is that not only observables for comparing two experiments are relevant, but also the ones which have to be considered for the correction function. And in this case, the switching function I showed earlier has to be evaluated. But since we added GHB fix as a collective variable to a recent climate version, this can be direct output of simulations now. So among these observables here, we can see GHB fix trajectories and as well and down here, we load experiment data. Yes, you have five minutes left. And then using all bias potentials used in the simulations, in case you're having some, the weights can be obtained by using one. And then you might define a cost function, which takes the free parameters as an input. And then, yeah, we decided here to use CUDA mat, which is for most matrix operations, CUDA mat is an open source software package that provides CUDA based matrix class for Python and it makes it easy to perform those matrix operations on a GPU. And in some cases it can offer significant speed ups compared to NumPy or Matlab. And further, you can see here there are some helper functions which have to be defined like compute new weights or this function here. And these basically allow the correction potentials to cause a change to the weights and the average observables and then you compute the error function basically. And the only thing that's missing then are the regularization penalties. If we choose to regularize we can select the different regularization functions and just select the one you want to apply. And finally, we split the data into training and validation set and then we start to minimize the cost function. And we do this with a loop over a range of hyper parameters. And ideally we store the free parameters at every step so you can recover all the quantities you're interested in. We use sci-pi and which functions for minimizing or maximizing objective functions are provided and we chose BFGS B as a solver which is the limited memory version of the quasi Newton BFGS. The solver allows to identify the set of parameters in the minimum in the end. And now this was everything regarding the first project and since I assume I don't have so much time left I will be quick on this because our interest here is that we want to test the possibility to introduce non-linear corrections in the form of artificial neural networks. And one motivation that I can maybe give is like that there are certain minimization problems where only non-linearity offers sufficient flexibility. And an adenosine nucleoside as you can see here in water it can be a model system for such a scenario. And if you would perform some simulations on this system you can identify interesting free energy landscape which basically consists of four states. And then you could pretend to also possess experimental information about which quadrants are populated and decide that we want to enforce that the experiments by reweighting. And when trying to enforce certain cases like upper left, lower right at the same time then you might realize an analogy to the XOR problem which is then the same as this model system linearly inseparable problem. And then when you perform a linear reweighting you actually unsurprisingly find that the results are not ideal in the attempt of enforcing these two quadrants. So why this non-linearity gives some additional flexibility and with such bias simulations you can actually successfully achieve your goal of enforcing such things. So today we are testing these non-linear protocols and we do this on a larger database of all these systems that you can see up here. For them also in an experiment data available and then what changed with respect to the previous project I spent most of my time on is that correction functions here depend not on hydrogen bond interactions but on the different fields and you can maybe from here see that we decided to use sine and cosine up to multiplicity three. And later on we will compare these fitting attempts to linear fitting procedures as I have introduced. But there will be more definite results coming up shortly and I will just quickly conclude here. The main focus was on the extension of existing force field correction procedures showing that it is possible to train in an automatic fashion correction terms and we saw different forms of regularization functions and different protocols that can be used to perform. Only because you are using such rigorous cross validation you are able to identify 12 or whatever free parameters and an advantage here is also that they are interpretable in this case. And in the end, yeah, I mentioned our interest in understanding if non-linear corrections can be suitable or even better than linear ones. So with this, I'm at the end of this talk and thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Virtual clap for you. Okay, so the floor is open for questions. Please feel free to unmute yourself or post the question in the chat. Yeah, I have a more general question and which is partly philosophical. So if I understand this whole fitting force field correction procedure. You correct for the force field of an underlying force field which still has the same, let's say, the wrong electrostatics. So eventually yes, if there is a mistake there then yes, which is which is very likely because of course one is what's missing from the force field is polarization, for example. So, so what's, yeah, what's the thing I mean I'm not criticizing all I'm asking what's the thinking on this so I guess it depends a lot on what one is interested in in computing. But surely these corrections don't, they don't fix that part of the problem, right. So yeah, just curious to hear what your what your thoughts are on this. I mean I would agree that the very basic problems of force fields will not be changed by this however and what these corrections can do is like. Now, like, as you see in the automatic way and eventually quick adjustable way, make your systems of interest behave more the way you would like to sample them, let's say, and you do it on top of dihedral angles eventually as now in the current attempt that we're trying with nonlinearity as well, you try to apply it on maybe one of the last layers of of what is defined in the force field. So you tweak it in one of the last steps which is has also its advantages, then if you want to go into the really basics, maybe this approach will not help. I mean, it's all a criticism I guess it's a one can one can imagine that this this is a another effective way of correcting for the problems and. I mean for practical the practical implication is that if you want to simulate your sometimes very challenging systems because there's some misrepresentation if you if you just want them to run in a specific way in the in the agreement to the experiment way, then this this is maybe straightforward. This is clearly, I agree. Okay. Questions from the audience. Someone has a question also for material. Welcome to pose it now. Okay, no questions. So if there are no questions, I guess we'll end this session. I just wanted to thank all the speakers again for your contributions. I know it's not officially on the program. The gather dot town session is going to happen and we encourage all the speakers to to make your way after this, as well as the participants, so that you can try. So with that, I think we can close today session. So thank you very much.


Chapter 24 of Natalie Page. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Natalie Page by Catherine Haviland Taylor. Chapter 24. What made the chase? In quote SK, it had an entirely sane and logical explanation and it was started by that little fellow who wears wings, carries a quiver, is talked of and felt often, but is never seen, except on Valentine's. And of course you know whom I mean. His name comes from an old monk, which is strange. I think SK said it was not. He said that everybody has their monastery garden where they quite alone make the prettiest rhymes to love. And he explained further that when you try to say them along in the fumbling words of men, they will not echo even half of what is felt. All this discussion came because of the date, which was February 14. Much had happened since Christmas week. And this day we all sat in the living room, reviewing things. And Herbert sat on her foot rest at her feet, muttering things like beautiful hands, or did she prick her sweet finger, which everybody heard, but had to pretend they didn't. That's a funny sentence, but I haven't time to alter it. Amy and Willie were doing a picture puzzle. SK was sitting idle, and I was trying to address postcards to people at home. Personally, I don't like them, but the people to whom I was going to send them did. I could take part in all the talk in as much as I only wrote. Wish you were here. And this is a picture of Grant's tomb or the Woolworth Tower or whatever it was. Of course, it said what the picture was in print, but people always do explain again in writing on postcards. I suppose because it fills up space. Even real writers always use a great deal of explaining to do that. I have noticed. Willie would leave the table now and again to read my messages, all of which were almost the same in a different voice. He made it deeply dramatic or miss Hooper high. And Amy giggled awfully. She laughs at anything he says and he says she has more perception and appreciation of true humor than any woman he has ever met, which is what men always do say when women laugh at their jokes. The fifth time he made a tour to the desk, he picked up a card I had addressed to Colonel Cephas, I, Lemley, who did detective work in Baltimore in 1892. He has been resting since then and his wife takes in sewing. He explained that the business world was not a fit place for a southern gentleman. Willie told about how he acts when he gets drunk. On one occasion, he painted the entire house with apple butter. His wife had just made five clocks and it was in fly season two.  That was really very funny because he has a little goatee which wags when he talks and to see his head top wide primed felt hat and bottom by wiggling fluff to see this sticking through a hole in the door.  His wife was visiting in a new town. When she is at home she tactfully restrains him with a broom, the neighbors say, and it is noticeable that he stands in front of the mansion house. After these attacks instead of occupying one of the rocking chairs which trail all over the porch and have across the sidewalk. But to get back after Willie told him he said he should have been on the job and I agree. No six weeks to find out what started it. If Cephas had humped. He stated surely I nodded for Colonel Lemley's own tales of his achievements. Not homes affairs look as exciting as the world and mats you do in the first year of school. After I wrote for perhaps 15 more minutes I finished my work and went over to sit by SK, who was on the Devon port before the fire. He had a lovely bunch of violets he had sent me and I was enjoying them a lot also the prospect for the evening, which was a theater party which SK was giving because Evelyn and Herbert are engaged. People seem to do things like that for engaged people, quite as if they need cheering up, and I was to wear a new dress which was pink and fluffy, and I must admit becoming. I was going to sit next to me tonight said SK. I said I hoped so and then I was quiet, where I was thinking how very much SK had done to make my New York life happy, and to smooth out and erase my troubles. The bracelet business had made me have sick. It had been so crawling, and it all happened because a little co cat, who was the Spanish girl we saw photographed in Sunday paper, and the one who muttered pretty Spanish admirations over the bracelet. One of the people who stays at the mansion told me of those had made her lover a test. I think she did it in joke, but he took it seriously because he was so very much in love. Of course, he was Vincente Alcón e Rodriguez, and it happened this way. He had met her somewhere on a business trip. I suppose he had letters of introduction, which admitted him almost anywhere since he has a great deal of money and is a great importance in the business world of Cuba. Like a good many Latin men, he fell in love with her immediately and wildly so. He called her orange blossom and white sweetheart of the rose that is in notes. And he threatened to kill himself if she didn't love him, but he didn't. And she didn't love him. She only laughed. That isn't first. I think she was capricious and liked to feel her power for she played with him, one day being kind and the next day scorning as only her race can scorn. SK told me this story and he put in trimmings as he always does, and I'm repeating in part from the tale that he related. Each day this man who had so much money but not the love he wanted more than all of the world would send her mountains of flowers or a strange string of beads or candied fruits from the Orient or candies from our states. He said he was a good lover, and he sounded so. I became very much interested. I did not see how Margarita Angela Blanco, a choppy could help liking it, but sometimes she didn't. One morning she threw all of his flowers out on the street, and then she called to him. He was lurking around on the other side of the way. That way more there than here. And she said the scent and all of its heaviness is weary some and rumors states that he tore his hair. But I think as Kate put that in for a nice touch because he had it clipped so short I don't see how he could get a decent hold. All things went on in that way. She would soften only to harden, and he would become elated only to taste the depth of despair. It was very romantic.   Their pictures were taken together at the Jumel mansion. And so evidently she was a little kinder to him then. On the day she paused before the brace that in said as incomparable Linda E. Lo de sello and she said it with hunger floating on her liquid voice. Would that I could give it to you whispered Vincente Alcón E. Rodriguez. You can give me nothing I want. And after this pleasant speech, the little senior Rita shrugged her shoulders. SK said he clenched his hands clear to head and then said a copy. A good copy there is the angel of heaven. And she said a copy. And her lips curled. I didn't see why he loved her after that. But SK said she stimulated his interest by acting that way. But I wasn't to try it on him since his interest didn't need stimulating. Then Margarita looked mischievous and said the man who would get for me this original. I would give the gift of my love. But it is a poor thing. My little heart and perhaps not worth the effort to get. He said you cast me to the depths. How can I live for this you asked the impossible. And again she shrugged her shoulders. Why ask the possible. She said since that I could get myself. Then SK said Vincente went out, sat down on the green bench that faces the side gate. He held his head in his hands and stared unseemly at the gravel at his feet. He said they both enjoyed acting that way and being miserable as a good many people do. And Margarita laughed in her tinkering way not seeming to care how unhappy she had made him. Just before they started back to the built more he spoke to her again. You meant that he said fiercely. But certainly she replied I said my heart in exchange for that bracelet. And then they all got in motors and started off for lunch. Well, Vincente was determined to get that bracelet and he set out to do it. Somehow he got into communication with Debson offered him $25,000 if he got the bracelet and delivered it into his Vincente Alcone Rodriguez's hands. And then he sailed off on another chase for Margarita and her papa had started home again. So much is simple and the rest is only the result of the start. Debson heard me tell the tale of my bracelet that day I first visited the mansion. Getting the one in the case was not an easier fare for the place as well guarded. And so he naturally decided to get mine. It was he who chased me dodging behind things when I turned and even sitting on the curb at the last with his cup for pennies and telling me that he was blind. He had of course visited the mansion often in different disguise hoping each time to have the opportunity. And of course he began to lurk around our apartment house after he knew what was in my position. He had a brother who worked with him. They had an idea that confusion of evidence made evidence week. And so there were two blind men around the mansion that Sunday and no two people agreed about where they had seen the shambling figure. It wasn't a bad idea for it during the investigation of that particular event. The police had been so tried by different stories of where people had seen this old man that they brushed aside any mention of him and muttered of crowd hysteria. It was the brother of Debson who knocked SK down because he had seen me give the bracelet into SK's keeping. He was he who was the old Italian woman that day and who suddenly shed his shaw and skirts and was again the blind man shuffling up the steps. That was after he stuffed his woman duds in a basket of soil clothes which some neglectful small boy had left for a moment on the sidewalk while he went up to join the crowd around Sammy. That was clever I think for when the wash woman returned the things washed. The Italian guard was probably sent back to her with the word that it did not belong in that particular laundry and she the wash woman was I suppose glad enough to keep the garments and say no more. Meanwhile that same afternoon Debson had seen me give the bracelet to the keeper. Probably he peered through a window or half hid behind a big pillar outside and it was he who attacked him after the crowd had gone out to see what had happened to SK. And he who with tears running down his face called for help since getting away was dangerous. It all seems very simple now and makes us seem great fools. When SK advertised for a servant Debson applied for the position and fortune favored him since I often went to see SK and talk all my troubles over with him. He used a long rod with a hook on top of it to get upstairs since the back influences were too public for his late night visits. And he could come in this way under the dark of the court for people kept their shades down in their court windows. Other windows are too close to do otherwise. He made those tapping noises that night everyone was frightened and Uncle Archie fell over the pedestal and it was only coincidence that made them tap in three in that way. He also made violent love to Jane thinking perhaps that he could get her help or that in that way his visits to our apartment would be accounted for. It was not my bracelet but Evelyn's. She wore that night he took her to the ball. And she wore it because he had talked so much of how greatly a bracelet enhanced the fair roundness of a woman's arm. Jane admitted that statement got her and it must have for she remembered it absolutely correctly. And at that time sometimes substituted her bracelet for mine because the Tiffany mark made her story of its being real alive and she at that time wanted the real one. Jane told me lots about it. She missed that romantic miss. She said to hear a tap and then to lean from the window and to see him coming hand over hand up that there rod with the hook on top. And it used to turn me sick like you think that he might fall but he never did. Worth luck. And then she sniffed. It was a very hard time for I hid my bracelet often and Evelyn took it to and it seemed that every time he called it was out. Of course he'd come up that night that we had the detectives waiting for he thought it was his last chance.  He expected to bag the bracelet easily that night that he was caught. He was going to get it in some way and he had been sure that would be easy. Then lower it to his brother who would if possible take it off if not throw it as he did in the coal cellar. I found out everything and began to believe SK's remark about sanity and logical reasons for all events. I even found out about James blushes and the ice pig. It seemed she used to give Debson suppers when he came up and she gave him a very nice grape juice that on had got for Evelyn. It was that that made her so anxious to speak of thefts as borrowing and again there was coincidence in the hurt hands. All that Debson's had happened from innocent causes is came from my mouse trap. But to throw people off the scent he deliberately broke that steagle glass. Of course I was shattered and followed and it was Debson's brother who pulled me from my mount on Riverside Drive to men who are very intent on getting anything can think lots of ways to get it. And $25,000 is quite an incentive. I felt sorry for the men I couldn't help it. And for Vincente Alcón y Rodriguez, I was afraid Margarita would never marry him. I wrote senior Vincente Alcón y Rodriguez and told him how sorry I was and that I would give him my bracelet. If my mother had not owned and wanted and that I hoped perhaps Sr. Rita Blanco y Javi could get one made like it. And I explained about how nice Evelyn's was. I really wanted to send my bracelet to Sr. Alcón y Rodriguez, but SK who occasionally gives me orders quite as if he had every right to would not permit it. None since he said she's only tearing him out. After he begins to gasp and show signs of giving up, she will pour him in the boat. I know him, which I considered cynical, but she did. Just that very thing happened and I got a piece of wedding cake. They were married January 20th after an engagement of two days. He answered my note most courteously and apologized at length and she added a little line. I have capitulated. She acknowledged in a very shaded elaborate writing. It is useless to allow innocent childs to be stabbed in back because of my light mention of a bracelet. And because of his great urgency, I have achieved for myself the married state. We were happy and wish you the same. And then she said she kissed my feet, which is very polite Spanish and signed herself undyingly and affectionately mine. Sr. Vincente gave SK's words backing when he wrote, I was willing to give up always despair. I vowed I would not request again when low she softened and turned to me the glory of her love. I was glad it ended that way. What are you thinking of? Ask SK that afternoon, on February 14 when we were all together and yet all sort of paired off in the living room. I told him, you like to see people love the people who love them. I said, no Evelyn has answered the right call. And I think Amy is going to push Shaw said SK you don't mean those kids. He didn't finish his sentence but he meant that Amy and Willie weren't old enough to do anything but all the latest walls and fox steps. I'm sure they're going to throw into it. I said, somehow I feel it. They slam each other now and disagree terribly, but he has unexpected moments of patience with her. And when he has those, I can see that he likes her lots. What sort as SK looking at them, they were doing a one step and Amy said Willie did it all wrong. And Willie said no, Northerner could dance. What with the victor and their quarreling we could shout anything and not be heard. I told him, he is trying to explain baseball to her. I said, since you said you'd take us all to all the games.  She saw game last year and that's all she got out of it. And I went on to explain how well Willie played and how he would usually greet that sort of a remark. SK laughed and after a little more watching them agree. Then I went on. I asked her last night whether she was going to marry the broker and she clasped her hands stared ahead and whispered what a child I was. And they laughed some more than he sobered. So he said, you like to see the fellow get the girl. I said I thought everyone was disappointed in books or life if he didn't. Then he mentioned a subject that he hadn't touched for ages and didn't mean to them. I think it slipped out and I found I didn't mind, but really liked it. Do you think he asked in an undertone that this fellow is going to get her. Oh SK I answered as I slipped my hand in his. I know he is and you do too. How can you help it. Dear child said SK my dear child. He said it in that tight way in which people speak when they care very much. And he pressed my hand between both of his. What are you talking of over there. Devlin looking up from her work and I gave an answer which did not surprise her for everyone did talk of them a great deal. If not exactly the sort SK and I had touched that day. We're discussing mystery said I write at a desk looking down at me. And then it came in trembling a T wagon ahead of him. I saw that he had Aunt Penelope's best service on it. Little cakes and paper cases and big pink roses on the mapkins. It looked pretty festive and good. It is day of love said it. We have fancy tea. The end of section 24. End of Natalie page by Catherine have been Taylor.


Hey man, so keep your place there in first Corinthians and we'll get there in a few minutes But first of all, let me give you a little bit of an introduction on what we're going to talk about This morning, so we're going to talk about something this morning that I've been thinking about for the last Several weeks, you know, I don't know. I was looking into some social media things Which is kind of what kind of brought this idea up in my mind But that's not where it's the idea of the sermon is really much bigger than that So this idea that I want to talk about this morning Maybe you're not familiar with its name, but I know that you've been affected by it before I know it's something that affects us every day And you know that we're dealing with in our world that you're probably dealing with in your life But it's this I it's an idea that is something that we can fall into and it's something that we should stay far away from So that's why I think it's deserving of a sermon and the idea that I want to talk to you about this morning Is this idea of something called groupthink Okay, so I want to talk to you about groupthink this morning So I mean basically let me just find it for you before we even get into the sermon But just think about this that you know the idea of even the word groupthink, you know is thinking in groups better You know is thinking as a group better. So what is groupthink? It's an actual thing. It's a definition The definition of groupthink was come up with I think in the early 70s But basically let me just read for you a couple definitions of groupthink and then we'll talk about it And then we'll talk about what the Bible has to say about it. So groupthink What is it? Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group in many cases People will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group The term was first used in 1972 by a social psychologist Irvin Janus another definition from psychology today on groupthink says this groupthink is a is a phenomenon So a phenomenon meaning it's something that just happens when there's a certain basically when there's a certain condition when there's certain Characteristics or there's certain conditions that are in place and there's a number of people that are under these conditions This is something that that happens it comes about this idea of groupthink It's a phenomenon that occurs when a group of now listen to this part here when a group of well-intentioned people makes Irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform or the belief that Descent is impossible does this sound like something that's good something that we would want the problematic or premature Consensus that a characteristic of groupthink may be fueled the problematic or premature consensus that is characteristic of groupthink may be fueled by a particular agenda or It may be due to a due to group members valuing now listen to this valuing harmony and coherence Above critical thought Okay, so it's a bunch of people that maybe they may have an agenda They may have an agenda they're trying to push on people and so they're trying to you know achieve harmony and Coherence above what was above what above critical thought now. What is critical thought so basically groupthink is kind of Antithetical to this thing called critical thought so basically critical thought is where you analyze facts To form a judgment on something a great example of the lack of critical thought was yesterday out soul winning I was soul winning with brother Francisco and brother Frank yesterday and the first three houses that we knocked on It was it was this type of person and if you've been soul winning you know these type of people you ask them Hey, how do you know?  They say oh, yes, I'm sure well what gives you that assurance and they say well You know, what do you think it takes to get to heaven?  The Bible says that salvation is a gift The Bible says that it you know while those are good things to do to go to church to ask for forgiveness Whatever they said, you know The Bible says that actually has nothing to do with salvation that it's a free gift that you don't it's not of works Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly See that is a person who's not capable of Critical thought or maybe they're not it's not that they're not capable if they're not they're not exercising critical thought in their life Because they hold they hold a belief that is that they're contradicting themselves in their own statements and in their own beliefs So they are unable to have you know this they're they're not good at critical thinking Okay, so look group think is important group think is affecting people This is somebody who's likely fallen into group think and they're it's not that they're not capable of critical thought It's kind of like a muscle that you you know, you just haven't exercised in a long time. They're just they're not critically thinking Because they have an irrational they have an illogical Belief system where they believe things they they just told you they believe two things that cannot be believed at the same time So they're not able to critically think so look social media, which is why kind of what brought this up in my mind It tends towards group think Social media tends towards group think why? Why does it because the platforms themselves first of all are pushing for group think the social media platforms are Pushing for it and not only are they pushing for it, but they're engineering it They're engineering group think group think gets people to set aside what remember those those statements that I just read you It gets people to set aside their own personal beliefs You know social media platforms today look they're they're not only getting you to set aside your own personal beliefs They're setting those aside for you They're filtering the message that you see when you're on these social media sites, so they're creating it They're creating what you see they're engineering what you see for you the platform itself is engineered group think Many of these social engineering platforms. They're they're getting people you know They're they're filtering personal beliefs out is what they're doing. Okay, you know free speech is going away by the way I don't know if you noticed Okay, censorship is here front and center, but it's not just censorship is what I'm trying to get across to you It's a framing It's a framing, you know framing the world by the way, that's a brilliant name That framing the world is is I mean, it's a brilliant name You know, so for that's what everyone's trying to do. That's what social media is doing today. They are framing a World view for you. They're showing it. They're they're engineering what they want you to see turn to first Corinthians chapter 11 And verse number eight Look, it's also what we're trying to do We are trying to frame a worldview We are trying to frame a worldview. I think I have the wrong chapter here I'm sorry. Hang on one second first Corinthians chapter No, this is not correct I'm just going to read the verses for you I'm not sure what I labeled wrong here, but the Bible says here It says we are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord Wherefore we labor that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him But we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body According to that he had done whether it be good or bad knowing therefore We're trying to frame a worldview here as well. How do I know because this verse right here knowing therefore the terror of the Lord? We persuade men We persuade men, but we are made manifest unto God and I trust also are made manifest in your consciousness Look, we are trying to do the same thing We are trying to persuade people of our worldview. We are trying to frame a worldview Look, we are trying to persuade people of the Bible. That's what the Bible says. We're doing We're trying to persuade people of the truth and other people are doing the same thing They're trying to persuade people of their view and stop the persuasion of the truth So look group think is a part of this. It's a method that they're using for this. Okay now look Let me just say this note before we get into the sermon, but this is all just for purpose of introduction This is not to be confused with collaborative thinking Okay, collaborative thinking look Collaborative thinking under you know collaborative thinking is where I'm a leader and then I take the opinions of those in my group And I you know, I choose the good ones and I I don't choose the bad ones Okay, now collaborative thinking if done under proper leadership if done under wise leadership is extremely powerful Okay, it's extremely powerful as a leader. You should use collaborative leadership. However Collaborative lead collaborative think collaborative the idea of collaboration under poor leadership can lead to group think Under dictatorial Leadership can lead to group think look.  Yes, you should collaborate with your wife You should listen to your wife and look you are in charge But you should take, you know, the opinions of people in your family You should collaborate with the people in your family and be a wise leader to be able to choose The good and maybe not take the advice in the in the bad directions. Okay, but look it's it's not group think So that's not what I'm talking about But poor leadership can lead to group think even in collaborative environments. Okay, so now You know, I mean think about this in a work environment think about This is an example of poor leadership turning Collaboration into group think okay, think about a boss who's just a dictator and everyone's afraid of him And he just he makes these goals and they're impossible goals They're just it can't be done But everyone's so afraid to say hey, you know We're not gonna be able to meet that goal or whatever and you just end up with all these people who are just yes Men who just tell the boss whatever he wants to hear and you end up with an entire Organization moving in a direction. That's an impossible direction.  Nobody wanted to offend anybody. Nobody wanted to say that wasn't gonna work Nobody said, you know, hey, that's a bad idea.  Okay, so what is the Bible saying? What does this have to do with the Bible? Okay, now we have the idea of group think right? It's this idea that you're just gonna set aside your personal beliefs You're gonna set aside anything that might be divisive anything that could offend anything like this And we're just gonna go with with peace and harmony Nobody has any independent ideas that might go against the group and we're gonna just all gonna get along that's group thing What does the Bible say it turned to Luke chapter 12 enter Jesus? Enter Jesus. Here's the opposite of group think like I said, it's not just a little bit different. It's completely often opposite Look at Luke chapter 12 and verse number 51 Luke chapter 12 and verse number 51 the Bible says suppose you that I am come to give peace on earth I tell you nay, but rather division. Well, that doesn't sound very group-thinky For from henceforth there should be five in one house divided three against two and two against three the father should Be divided against the son the son against the father the mother against the daughter the daughter against the mother the mother-in-law Against her daughter-in-law and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law So let's go back to our definition of group think group think is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus Within a group Jesus here is saying that he brings division to a group So group think is trying to get consensus amongst a group now What's the tightest group you could think of it would be a family unit a father and a son a Daughter, I mean they're they're married. I mean they're they're they're son-in-law their daughter-in-law I mean this is a tight group and Jesus is saying we're gonna divide that group This is the opposite of group think folks group think is trying to bring these groups together it's trying to get these groups together for harmony and coherence Above critical thought these are people striving for peace People I mean I mean the fight here's the funny thing turn to Daniel chapter 9 you say peace. Well, I mean who could argue against peace I mean why in the world?  I mean it's I'm talking about hey peace Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and I must be true whatever I just said But what turned to Matthew or Daniel chapter 9? Here's somebody that's going to be striving for peace. Here's somebody that's going to be claiming peace Here's somebody that's going to be bringing peace Look at Daniel chapter 9 of verse 26 And after three score and two weeks show Messiah be cut off But not for himself and the people of the prince shall come to destroy the city in the sanctuary and the end Thereof should be a flood and unto the end the war the war Desolations are determined. He says he's talking about a prophecy of Daniel's 70th week Daniel's 70 weeks We've gone through that in detail not going to preach that again this morning But this is talking about the antichrist right here and the Bible says in verse 27 and he shall confirm the covenant With many for one week This is the 70th week and in the midst of the week Shall he cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease and for the overspreading of abominations? He shall make it desolate even unto the consummation that determined shall be poured up poured upon the desolate This is talking about how the antichrist is going to bring peace He's going to bring peace. It's going to be this guy that's going to be like He's going to solve all these problems and bring all this peace right before he kills everybody by the way Okay, so I mean be careful about this word peace being thrown around because Jesus never claimed to bring peace Jesus never claimed that that was his you know back in you know Daniel chapter 8 You know was talking about empires, you know, it's talking about empires in these prophecies. They destroyed through peace They destroyed through peace Turn to Matthew chapter 10 Matthew chapter 10 Look at Matthew chapter 10 in verse number 34 Here's Jesus talking about peace Jesus Jesus came to earth and Jesus the loving Jesus that loves everybody no matter what and just loves everything And loves everybody's thoughts and loves all this stuff. What Bible are you reading? The Jesus that's got you know the sheep and all this stuff, you know, look at Daniel Matthew chapter 10 in verse 34 It says think that I am come to send peace on earth You think Jesus came and said I everybody's going to get along now Now look what he said I came not to send peace but a sword kind of sounds like the opposite of peace to me Jesus said I came not to Bring peace but a sword So how does this apply? So we see that you know, there's a lot of opposites from group think to what Jesus actually said Let's look at this idea of the church itself look at go to Matthew chapter 16 You're already in Matthew go to Matthew chapter 16 in verse 18 Let's look at this idea of group think as it as it applies to our church here Let's look at that Because I mean look I mean Jesus said Jesus said in Matthew 16 verse 18 He said this it means it's interesting how far away this mentality of group think is From those structure that the church is actually supposed to be Run under look at Matthew 16 18 Jesus said and I say also into the thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and The gates but then he gives a promise and he says and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it So this verse what this verse tells me what this verse tells me is that if we follow the biblical model for a church Nothing can stop us That's what this verse says that's if you're if you're gonna take away something from this verse That's what the takeaway is the takeaway is hey If it's my church if it's Jesus's church if there's a candlestick here and we run this like the Bible says that we're supposed to Run this church Nothing can stop us. That's what this says the gates of hell the the demons the Satan himself Cannot stop what's going to happen here what we're going to do here if If we follow what we're supposed to do if we follow the model turn to revelation chapter 4 That's why that's why you will never see anything even close to hinting about denominations in the Bible There's no mention of it There's no mention of it look at revelation chapter 4 and verse number 4 So what is the model of the church of? Church as I mean that's well that's I just gave it away first of all I mean it's church as you never hear anything about the universal church You know the church on earth any of this type of thing you hear the church as when Jesus is writing in Revelation chapter 1 in verse number 4 when he's talking to the church. He's not talking to the church He's talking to the specific churches look at look at verse 4 John to the seven churches Which are in Asia grace be unto you and peace from what from him which is and which was which is to come and from the seven Spirit which are before his throne. He doesn't mention you know to the church in Asia He doesn't say you know in any kind of universal Language okay, there's no universal church in the Bible. It is individual churches. There's no denominations There's no mention of it see the problem is you know There's no mention of these presidents or vice presidents or cardinals or popes or CEOs there's no mention of that type of structure when it comes to my church Jesus says There's no mention of that Now of course every denomination claims to be the true church But there's no mention of denominations in in the first place You know so what is the point of what is the doctrine of a denomination? What are they trying to do? What are they trying to do what they're trying to do is they're trying to put people into a group That's what they're doing and that's why it's not According to the biblical model. They're trying to put you in a group. Why so they could control the way that you think That's why They're gonna put you in a group so you think like a group group think denominations are an example of Group think pastors in a denomination. They must tow the line Or they can't be part of the denomination. They must follow the rules. They must set aside those personal convictions The problem with this is not only is it you know, it's not the biblical model We see that but we see that you know the problematic or the pragmatic problem is that corruption spreads faster farther and It's more thorough To corrupt and of course the denomination will say we follow a Bible doctrine You know some some don't even claim that by the way I think there's a lot of denominations today that don't even claim to follow the Bible They have gotten away from even saying that the Bible is the infallible word of God They don't even believe the Bible anymore, but if a denomination goes bad Many churches follow it. That's the problem. It's it's spiritualized Group think is what the denomination system is and here's another thing it creates and so basically The denomination is group think spiritualized That's what it is and that's why we see every you know all these denominations and they're all corrupt Every single one of them But the second thing is this it actually creates an unbiblical structure of power Outside the individual church it creates this structure of power outside the biblical model for the individual church So I mean you have the individual church and then you have this power structure above it And here's the problem with ladders folks People will climb them.  I'm not talking about business organizations. I'm talking about churches Talking about church denominations. Look, it's all fine for secular organizations, but it's not to be found in the biblical church It's not it's not in here. So what is the structure inside the church turn to Ephesians chapter 5? Turn to Ephesians chapter 5 What is the structure inside the biblical church? Look at Ephesians chapter 5 look at verse number 22 The Bible says this it says wives submit yourself under your own husbands as unto the Lord For the husband is the head of the wife Even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body therefore and again as The church is subject unto Christ. I mean it pretty much bypasses Every single rung and all these ladders now. I mean the church is subject to Christ There is no Pope CEO President vice president none of that the church is subject to Christ That's it. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ Let also the wise be subject unto their own husbands in everything look down at verse number 30 for we are members of His body of his flesh of his bones for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined under his wife And they too shall be one flesh.  That's the model It's it's the church is subject to Christ That's it pretty complicated Let's pray. No, we're not done turn to 1st Peter chapter 5 That's the structure for the church. That's who the church is subject to now. Let's look inside the church So we see the church we see the church I need a whiteboard we see the church and it's subject to Christ But now let's look inside the church itself now we're in an individual church. We're not in a denomination It's just the church to Christ. That's it. That's the model But now let's look inside the church. What is that model? Say this is getting complicated. It's really not that complicated It's pretty simple. Look at 1st Peter chapter 5 Look at verse number one The Bible says the elders which are among you I exhort the Bible uses elders pastors and bishops interchangeably So he's talking about pastors which are among you I exhort who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ And also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed And then it tells so it's basically saying that there's this position inside the church Okay, it's this position of an elder or a pastor or it also calls it a bishop In verse number two it tells you the job of this person Peter is exhorting these leaders exhorting these these church leaders these pastors and he says here's your job In verse two he says feed the flock of God which is among you Taking the oversight thereof it's like you are in charge lead that flock of God Not by constraint but willingly whoa That's where you know there we just lost a bunch of pastors right there Not by constraint but willingly not for filthy looker but of a ready mind Neither as being again lords over God's heritage but being examples to the flock And when the chief shepherd shall appear so you're kind of like this shepherd pastor You're a shepherd but there's a chief shepherd coming You shall receive a crown of glory that fade if not away But look so there's these there's these guys and we I'm not going to get into the qualifications of these men But I mean the Bible is very specific on who can be one of these elders pastors or bishops same thing And who's qualified and who's not and what their job is their job is right here It's to feed the flock of God not by but it can't be by force or threat Most problems that you see within a church leadership is a lot of them that comes from the pastor anyways because of this It's the pastor he feels like he's losing grip so I'm going to threaten to take away your salvation today Listen to me if you don't come to church I'm going to take away your salvation You know these people that sat in church for 20 years they sat in church for 20 years And they they stood up in church one day and they're like oh I don't even think I was saved They sat in a Baptist church for 20 years they had the right gospel and they stand up and they say oh I just got saved five seconds ago they're in a church where their pastors threatening their salvation constantly That's the answer to that you're like how could that happen how could somebody it didn't happen They're just threatened they're threatened they're trained to doubt their own salvation So it's a it's a pastor that can't control or you know is losing control of his you know or thinks he has to control or whatever It's a control tactic that's it okay look you don't come to church here yeah that's that you know I hope you come to church But if you don't you know I don't have to chastise you I don't have to chastise you I don't want to I don't have to because God's going to work that out with you With you that's where the you know it can't be a force of threat it can't be what it can't be For filthy lucre it can't be for money anybody who'd do this for money is insane, but I don't know But that's another thing okay, but look it can't be for money and it can't be for force or threat So what I mean look what what are like look at these these huge religions started by men that these false religions What are they after the Mormons all these guys we're they're after money and power They're after money and power so Jesus is basically saying hey look the shepherds The shepherds that are going to sit in my place until I come back he's like it can't be for money or power And if you're going into it for money or power he's like no it can't be for that turn to acts chapter 6 So there's more there's there's more than just the pastor look at acts chapter 6 in acts chapter 6 We see another office that is that is put into the church look at acts chapter 6 and verse number one And we see the purpose of this office in acts chapter 6 look at verse number one So we see that somebody has the oversight of the church a pastor has the oversight of the church He's there to feed the flock of God. He's there to you know willingly Okay, if you don't want to be here, why would you be here? That's why I've said so many times these people that just complain about their church constantly It's the dumbest thing in the world I mean why in the world would you go to a church where you just complain about it You just you know no one's forcing you to be here No one's forcing you to come here I'm not forcing you to come here and I'm never going to force you to come here Look I'm trying to feed the flock of God here Look at acts chapter 6 and verse number one What's the next office and in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews Because their widows were neglected in the daily administration So here we have somebody in the church people aren't being taken care of And the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables Wherefore brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report Full the ghost, holy ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business But we will give ourselves continually to prayer into the ministry of the word And the same pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen A man full of faith and the holy ghost And Philip and Procurus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenes And Nicholas a proselyte of Antioch So here they picked these men to become the first deacons of the church And they're there to help because Peter is basically saying He's saying hey you know should we just leave Should we leave preaching the gospel and go and just make sure all these people are taken care of He's like no we're going to delegate that out So the deacon is there to handle the day to day things So the pastor or the main shepherd can be preaching the word Can be doing the main thing of the church So look that's the whole structure pretty complicated It's pastor led deacons for support that's it That's the biblical model for the church And the church is subject to who? It's not subject to a president or a CEO or somebody somewhere else It's subject to Christ that's it It's very simple Then there's all kinds of qualifications for the pastor Qualifications for the deacons I mean there's all these things that must be met But the pastor is subject to Christ That's who he's subject to Jeremiah chapter 23 Now look he's not subject to a president a pope a CEO or whatever You're saying okay he's subject to nobody No he's subject to Christ He's subject to Christ So will every pastor be good Will every pastor do his job well No So what's going to happen then What's going to happen if you get this pastor Who's in charge of a church And he just starts doing all the wrong things He just starts you know Preaching wrong stuff Add people in whatever Turn to Jeremiah chapter 23 Turn to Jeremiah chapter 23 Look at verse number one This is something that you know if you're going to go into the ministry You probably should memorize this one Jeremiah 23 look at verse number one The Bible says will be under the pastors That destroy and scatter the sheep of my pastor Sayeth the Lord Therefore thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel Against the pastors that feed my people You have scattered my flock And driven them away And have not visited them Behold I will visit upon you the evil Of your doings sayeth the Lord So first of all there's two things here Okay the first thing is If a pastor doesn't do what he's supposed to do This is a warning That God is going to just visit evil God's going to hurt them That's what that means When God says I'm going to do evil That doesn't mean God is like on Satan's side That means you know God's going to hurt them That's not doing what he's doing Well he's scattered the flock of God Well here's the thing How did he scatter the flock Well here's the thing We're not for group think here Every man The head of every man is Christ Guess who the head of you is Christ So you should know the Word of God You should know the Bible And guess what If you end up in a church You end up in a church It's going to be really fast But you get a bunch of group think A bunch of people are just Whatever you say And they don't know the Bible The head of them is a man and not Christ That's how you end up With massive groups of people Heading in the wrong direction Because they're not independent thinkers They're just following This group think mentality Okay so Look that's how the church should be scattered It's another And the leaders of the church Are another protection for the church That you knowing the Word of God Is a protection for the church Because if you sit in many of this I mean many times this has happened To many of you I know it Where you sat in a church And the wrong things were being preached You sat in a church And you know false doctrine Was being preached And what did you do You're not there anymore To think mentality You don't have a group think mentality But even if that does happen Even if that does happen A pastor goes bad Into false doctrine And a bunch of people stay with him And go bad And you know the candlestick is removed As Jesus said that he will do Look then it's just one church That goes down That's another beauty of the model Of the independent church It's just one church Multiple different churches If one man loses his mind Or is a wolf And ends up convincing people To let him whatever Take over a church And all this type of thing It's just one church And then the individual thinkers In that church Can think with their feet Basically So look in conclusion What I'm trying to get you to Understand and this kind of Independent thought must thrive For the gospel to succeed Think about that Independent thought must thrive For the gospel to succeed And I want to explain this to you Why?  Don't be discouraged They have to exist Because if only one is chosen If only one religion Or idea or philosophy Is chosen It will never be the truth That's why they must exist Turn to Luke chapter 13 You say that's interesting You just made that up I'll show you from the Bible Look at Luke chapter 13 In verse number 23 Look when Jesus comes back He's going to fix it all But during this time It all must exist Don't let that discourage you It must exist For the truth to be able to have Is why look at Luke 13 verse 23 Then said one unto him Lord are there few that be saved And he said unto them Strive to enter in at the straight gate For many I say unto you Will seek to enter in And shall not be able In Matthew 7 He says straight is the gate And narrow is the way That leadeth unto life Broad is the way That leadeth unto destruction He said yes We are always going to be The minority out here Always The gospel The true word of God Is never going to be The majority opinion Why turn to Acts 7 Let's look at one of the deacons One of my favorite chapters In the entire Bible Acts chapter 7 I mean think about this The sermon He basically recaps The entire Bible In his sermon And then preaches the gospel Right after that I mean he's filled With the Holy Ghost The Bible says His face was like an angel Can you imagine the speech Can you imagine what it sounded like And what it looked like And people Can you imagine somebody Can you believe it And people must have just got down On their knees crying And getting saved Look what happened Look at verse 54 When they heard these things They were cut to the heart And they gnashed on him With their feet With their teeth But he being full of the Holy Ghost Looked up steadfastly Into heaven And saw the glory of God And filled him for it Look the gospel is never going to be The popular opinion It cuts to the heart It's no different for us Than it is in Jesus' day It's the same thing The best we can hope for Until Jesus comes back Is for independent thinking To thrive Because it protects the church And it protects the gospel Look folks I'm fine with competing In a free market of ideas I'm fine Because we've got the best idea I mean it's like we're out there Selling Ferraris In everybody else's pitching bicycles I mean but the thing is If we go into group think It's never going to be the Ferrari That's chosen It's going to be one of the bikes It's going to be a used rusted bike It doesn't even work It's fine Being out there I mean how many times you've been so winning And you're out there And you're talking to one of these people That they're all wrapped up And mixed up And you're giving them the gospel And they're like that just makes so much sense Like that's so simple Like wow I've never heard anyone I've never heard it explained like this before What are we doing? Do we make up some weird thing? No we're just reading the Bible to them That's it There's a million different false religions There's only two religions in the whole world There's workspace salvation And there's the Bible That's it So I'm fine Because we got the best idea We have the idea Look there's only one idea Where you can believe it And the entire Bible will make sense If you believe these other bicycles Or these other ideas You can't even read the Bible Because you're like oh that sounds weird That doesn't sound like it goes with my idea Not of works I mean that's complicated right That's a complicated phrase Not of works I mean can you imagine believing works And then reading Ephesians too I mean what would you even think? You're like oh man I better just stop reading the Bible And just listen to Padre or whatever You know But that's why they don't read the Bible Because it doesn't make any sense Because if they critically think The Bible doesn't make sense to what they believe So we have the best idea It will never be the idea that's chosen though So until Jesus comes back Just be happy That we have independent thinkers out there Because we have I mean we have the best thing And look Jesus knew this When he said That we persuade men He's like you're going to persuade men Meaning you're going to go out there I'm giving you Look he's like I'm giving you the Ferrari I'm giving you the Ferrari It's shiny It's new People are going to love it It makes sense It's simple It's perfect It makes sense of everything It makes sense of everything in the world It unwraps all people's You know conflicting beliefs That they hold within themselves But he's like It's going to be easy to persuade men But you have to persuade them Because it's never going to be the one That the government of Russia picks Or the government of the United States picks Or the government These governments that picked a state religion You know not that we picked a state religion But it's good that we didn't It's what I'm saying Because we never would have picked the right one We never would have picked the right one So look I just want to help you make sense Of why these outside ideas exist And it's you know We won't And here's another thing Here's another thing You're not going to persuade everyone You know I mean that's why it says You know narrow Straight Straight meaning Like the straight of Hormuz Like it's a narrow pathway Like straight Straight meaning Not many people are going to get through it The opposite of broad You're not going to persuade everybody Look don't let that destroy you I mean Belief I mean look Or look If you let that destroy you You know what you're pushing You're pushing group think If you're like Everybody must believe just like me No They're not going to believe just like you It's not going to happen I wish it would But it's not You know why Because belief is a personal thing Because belief is the only thing That that person Or that other person It's totally theirs You can't force it You can't force it So just remember You know don't let It's the narrow way It's the straight way And look we're out there We're trying to get every single We're trying to ram Every single soul Through that straight gate I mean We're trying to just Just ram as many through As we possibly can But not everybody's going to believe Not everybody is going to accept The truth That's it You know and look It's I used to get When I was in my like mid 20's When I was in my 20's Probably My wife probably Maybe it's longer I don't know I used to get really upset When people didn't agree with me I want to fight a guy Over abortion one time We're at dinner With a bunch of people And I'm arguing this guy's pro choice And I'm like how about we Just go out in the back And work it out Everybody in there Everybody at the dinner table And I wasn't joking But I used to get really upset When people didn't see things my way I'm like you murderer I'm going to take you out back And show you a few things Look that's not Christian Okay It's not Christian Not everyone's going to see it our way We have the best idea Let's push those ideas But just remember If group think thrives The gospel will not Because the gospel will be Remember it's talking about Getting people to compromise their ideas To compromise their personal beliefs The gospel itself will be the idea The first idea that is compromised It will be the first thing That is thrown to the side Why? Because it defies It offends It cuts to the heart You can't have a group think environment Just looking for everyone to be in harmony And have somebody preaching the gospel It's not going to work Because it cuts to the heart They killed Stephen for it They killed Stephen for it It divides people That's what it does Social media The thing that popped this into my head It is a tool for putting people in boxes Is what it is Don't be put in a box Don't be labeled Your independent thinking It will protect you It will protect this church It will serve you in your life This independent thinking will serve you in your life In your family life In your work life It will protect your church Today there are powerful forces At work folks In social media In the media itself They are trying to shut down Individual independent thought In the name of peace In the name of peace In the name of peace They cause violence Open your eyes on what's actually happening In the name of peace they cause violence That's what the antichrist will do In the name of peace He will cause violence In the name of inclusion They exclude In the name of tolerance They're intolerant In the name of harmony They oppress the truth They don't want to hear the truth They are framing the world that you want to see That they want you to see Don't be put in a box Because where group think thrives The gospel dies Let's power heads and have a word of prayer