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The Mind of Christ

Eric Walsh

01 Power of the Mind

02 Dulling of the Mind Part 1

04 Sharpening the Mind

05 Marking the Mind

Chad Kreuzer

Fadia Kreuzer

Overcoming the Media Trap

Natural Healing and the Brain

Restarting Over

03 Dulling of the Mind Part 2

06 The Mind of Christ

This is the dulling of the mind part 1 and we'll do the second part tomorrow night and again a whole lot to discuss so let's get right into this our scripture reading for tonight is taken from Ecclesiastes chapter 7 Ecclesiastes chapter 7 starting at verse 5.

The Bible says, it is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.

It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools.

So our message again tonight, Dulling the Mind Part 1 from our series this week, The Mind of Christ.

Let's pray, Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

We thank you for this opportunity to fellowship, Lord.

I just ask once again, Lord, that you send your Holy Spirit.

Lord, you just fill this time with truth.

Lord, you speak, you illuminate the words, Father, and you stay with the technology as we do this, Lord, so that, Lord, your people might be blessed.

This is our prayer in Jesus's name, amen.

All right, so we're gonna jump to the book of Daniel, chapter 3, and as some background, of course, in Daniel chapter 1, Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys are challenged with eating of the king's meat and drinking his wine and they refuse.

This starts them off in the right direction.

But Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a vision and no 1 can interpret it.

And he is quite impressed with Daniel's ability to not only interpret the dream, but Daniel is able to tell him the dream he cannot, that he cannot remember.

And it is the basis of a lot of our prophecy, with Babylon being the head of gold and Nebuchadnezzar in his vision, where we'll show you, should get more into the image in a second, but he sees this image is given of him of the head of gold and Nebuchadnezzar's head over heels in love.

He loves the idea that his kingdom is so incredible that he eventually goes to make a real life version of this image that he saw in his dream, but he makes the whole thing of gold, a symbol that he is looking to be in power forever.

He wants his kingdom to last forever almost in defiance of what God told him in the vision so Daniel chapter 3 in verse 1 says Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold Whose height was 3 score cubits and the breadth thereof 6 cubits He set it up in the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.

Now that would probably be as high as 90 feet tall, pretty extensive statue.

Even to this day on the plains of Dura, I should have found a picture of it.

There's a rectilinear mound that sits on the plain of Dura to this day.

It is about 25 feet high And it's an exact square of about 46 feet at the base.

And so Heslop says this, but it seems like it would have almost been the pedestal of a colossal statue.

So there's some archaeological, or maybe some archaeological evidence of this statue, actually, when you look at it.

So This is a little picture of Babylonian empire, very powerful empire.

They were battling with the Assyrian empire for a while, but the Assyrian empire was actually taken out by God.

Hezekiah prayed and 1 angel destroyed 180, 000 of their soldiers and that pretty much, they never really recovered from that.

Without Assyria, Babylon rose to incredible dominance.

And they were very intelligent people, sophisticated society, systems of financial trade, interest, investing, Babylon had all of that.

And with it came great riches and power to the Babylonians and of course to the Babylonian king.

And to this day, some of those institutions and ways of money making and economy exist.

And even to this day, the influence even of the false worship systems of Babylon still influenced the world today.

Of course, they had the hanging gardens and they had built many things.

And Babylon was 1 of those places where it was almost mythical to visit the city of Babylon, unless of course you were 1 of the captives.

And the captivity of Judah lasted for 70 years as Jeremiah the prophet predicted.

Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys went in the first siege of Babylon, somewhere around 605 BC.

And you can see that you couldn't just go straight across the desert, take the shortest cut here.

You had to go up and all the way around the Fertile Crescent to Babylon.

And it was, you can only imagine, Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys, of course, were princes.

And it would have been unimaginable the things that they would have had to go through in order to get to Babylon.

It would have been a very difficult thing.

Of course, here's Nebuchadnezzar himself in a form of a bust.

He was a great king And the Bible gives a lot of detail into his life, especially in how he converted over eventually under the influence of the captives, which is 1 of the most phenomenal stories in the Bible, in my opinion.

But of course, the head of gold was Babylon in this vision that he had in Daniel chapter 2.

The arms, shoulder, torso was the Medo-Persian Empire, Greece, the midsection was of bronze, the legs Rome, the feet mixed with iron and clay, went into modern day Europe, and to some extent, really even the rise and power of America which is then of course reflected more in detail in Revelation chapter 13, the rise of America.

And so the story goes Daniel 3, verse 2, then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

He brings all of the leadership, all of the influential people to come to the dedication of this image that Nebuchadnezzar has made.

Verse 3, it says, then the princes, the governors and captains, the judges and treasurers, the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces were gathered together into the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar, the king had set up.

And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

So they got there, they're in the plain of Dura, they're standing before this great image, the sheriffs, the counselors, all the rulers, everyone is there.

In verse 4, then a herald cried aloud, to you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages, that at the time when you hear the sound of the cornet, the flute, the harp, the sack book, the psaltery, the dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king have set up.

Music is instrumental in this process of false worship.

And in verse 6, it says, and whoso falleth not down in worship, shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace so the image is set up the rulers and leaders are there the captives of Israel are there everyone is brought out.

They begin to play music to get people ready to worship.

And the punishment for not worshiping is that you'd be thrown into a fiery furnace.

Now, the Babylonians had a lot of furnaces.

And the reason they had all these furnaces because the stone was not readily available to build within Babylon.

And so the brick was used pretty extensively.

Brick normally would be cured at about a thousand degrees centigrade, but a Babylonian brick kiln might've operated even hotter.

Some scholars think up to 1300 centigrade and it would make a colorful, they put a colorful glaze on it so they could, it was really ornate, really beautiful, really decorative.

To show you how interesting it is, this is an actual stone and Nebuchadnezzar would stamp his name on every stone.

So the buildings basically said Nebuchadnezzar all over them on each individual brick and then the bricks would be colored and they would have beautiful appearance.

So it says here, therefore at the time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music.

All the people, the nations, and the languages fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

If you could imagine the size of this concert, the influence of music to prepare people to bow.

There were people from all over the empire, many of whom already had their gods.

And so this was a new God that they would have to, a new image they would have to bow down to.

And so it's almost as if to prepare their minds to worship, this music was played.

Now, music has an interesting influence on the human brain.

I always say music bypasses the frontal lobe.

It doesn't mean that there's some, the music does something much different than a lot of other forms of sensory input.

What I mean by that is that when you listen to music, multiple parts of the brain have to light up, as you can see here, in order to process music.

Well, And then the frontal lobe has to make sense of it.

So the frontal lobe has like the final work.

But that means that the music is already in.

The message can get in before you get a chance to process it.

So when you play music, it can have powerful influences on people.

Music is a great tool for good or for evil.

And I should have put some slides up on this.

And you have to remember In the spiritual realm, Satan, according to the book of Ezekiel, he is built with pipes and tablets.

Lucifer was a living, breathing musical instrument, the head of the heavenly choirs.

He knows music better than anyone on earth.

Some people think music is just music and it's harmless, but there are a lot of ways that you can tell in simple ways in life, music has great power.

There's a reason Nebuchadnezzar played music before he asked them to worship.

Well, music simultaneously stimulates the left and the right hemisphere of the brain.

It boosts learning and information intake, therefore augmenting cognitive skills.

In fact, when you play music, someone can learn something 5 times better, 5 times more efficiently.

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The Mind of Christ

02 Dulling of the Mind Part 1

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