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Let's look together then at Romans chapter 10 tonight and try to wrap up this great chapter. Now of all the nations ever to occupy the earth, the most privileged nation is Israel. That marvelous privilege that is given to Israel to be God's unique people is especially identified for us in chapter 9 verses 4 and 5. And in those two verses the apostle Paul reminds us of the great benefits given to Israel. First of all, adoption, a divine act by which that nation as a whole became the child of God for blessing and inheritance, became uniquely the heirs of God's grace. And then they received not only the adoption but the glory. That is the presence of God, the Shekinah glory, God in their midst to dwell with them and guide them and lead them. And then they received the covenants. The covenants were those documents, those statements by God through which He established an abiding relationship with His people. We could almost say in substitute for the word "covenants," a relationship with God. And then he says, you received the giving of the law, the revelation of God's will, the path of blessing, the truth, which obeyed, brings great blessing. And then he says you received the service, that is the means of access to God, the system of ceremonies by which they could enter into intimate fellowship with Him. And then the promises which basically are resolved in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, His kingdom, His land and His throne.
And so, God has placed upon this people the greatest of blessings ever given to any nation. Scripture tells us that He chose Israel for three reasons. Reason number one was to witness to the unity of God. The world worshiped many deities, many gods. And God called out one people to affirm in the world that there was only one God. And Israel was that nation to witness to the unity of God. That's what it says in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is one, the Lord our God is one Lord."
Secondly, Israel was chosen to preserve and transmit the Scripture. Not only to witness to the unity of God but to preserve and transmit Scripture. Given unto them, says Romans 3:2, were the oracles of God to preserve and transmit.
Thirdly, Israel was to be the channel for the Messiah. It was through that nation that God would bring the Savior of the world. So, here is a tremendously privileged people, greatly blessed. And as we have been learning in our study in Romans and in our study in Matthew, the sad reality is that Israel, so privileged, is now rejected by God. Israel, so blessed, is now removed from the place of privilege. And that's why things are so exceedingly difficult for that people.
Do I need to remind you of Matthew 23:37? Listen to what it says again, a very important text. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them who are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."
In other words, the Lord Jesus said to them because you would not respond, because you would not believe, because you would not embrace the Savior, you are left to desolation. And that's what happened. And since the time they rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, the history of Israel has been a desolate history. God removed blessing. God took away His protection and let sin and Satan have its course. And, of course, Satan works overtime on Israel because if he can exterminate them he can thwart God's ultimate plan for the kingdom of the Savior, which is a kingdom involving Israel. So Israel then, in rejecting the Messiah brought upon itself an unending holocaust of judgment, which will culminate in the time in the future known as the Great Tribulation.
But during this period of time Israel is blinded, Israel is scattered and Israel is persecuted. These Jews who have been living in unbelief since the time of Christ, except for a remnant that's been called out of each generation, but the nation itself that has been living in unbelief since the time of Christ has wandered all over the earth, scattered and hated and persecuted. And I suppose again we have to ask the question why. And the answer, first of all, as we learned in Matthew 23, is because they rejected the Savior. But then we might ask another question. Why did they reject the Savior? And the answer to that is that they loved their sin more than they loved righteousness. Their deeds are evil, says John 3. And they don't want to come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved. They love darkness rather than light. They loved their sin, they didn't want to give it away.
Now this isn't anything new for Israel. This didn't just happen in the time of Christ. You can go all the way back to Moses and Moses at the very outset of dealing with the nation of Israel said he is dealing with a stiff-necked people. That is to say they were rigid and unbending and unwilling to change and respond. He was continually confronting them about their murmurings and their complainings and their hardness of heart. In fact, in Deuteronomy 9:13 the Scripture says, "I have seen this people and indeed it is a stubborn people." And the command came to them, "Circumcise your hearts and stiffen your necks no more," Deuteronomy 10:16. They were a stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-hearted people.
And you leave the time of Moses. You come, for example, to the time of the judges and you read in that period of time that everyone did what was right in his own eyes. They were a very self-centered, a very self-indulgent people. The most often quoted Old Testament text... I'll say that again, the most often quoted Old Testament text, the one quoted more than any other Old Testament text in the New Testament is Isaiah chapter 6 verse 9. This is the commonest description of Old Testament Israel, and this is what it says, "Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed but understand not, see ye indeed but perceive not, make the heart of this people fat, make their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted and be healed." In other words, the most common description of the people of Israel stated in the New Testament is that they are deaf and blind and hard-hearted and unresponsive. They reject the things of God.
And so it's not anything new we're dealing with in the time of Christ. It's not anything new we're dealing with in the time of Paul. They are a stiff-necked, hard-hearted people. In fact, in that Isaiah passage a very interesting Hebrew word is used. It's the word heshaa. It means to smear over and it describes their blindness as if it were a sticky secretion that has oozed out of their eyes and stuck their lids together. They're a blind people.
You come into the New Testament and that blindness is mentioned again and again and again. And so this hard-hearted, stiff-necked, stubborn, callous, blindness, reaches its zenith in the rejection of Jesus Christ. As centuries and centuries and centuries of stiff-necked, stubborn, hard resistance to God culminates in an inability to discern the Messiah and a rejection of Him. And Jesus on the cross looks out over them and says, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." That's right. They didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know it was the Messiah, they didn't know. They couldn't know. They were blind, so ignorant, so unbelieving, so in love with their sin. And that's why Jesus said to them so often, "I would have gathered but you would not." Self-imposed ignorance.
Now that's the theme of Romans 10, self-imposed ignorance. They were ignorant. It wasn't that they didn't have the truth. It was they rejected the truth. It wasn't that it was not available to them. It was that when it was available they refused to see it. And they cultivated a kind of blindness from which they never could extract themselves.
Now in the tenth chapter of Romans then, Paul is dealing with the whole matter of Israel's blindness. He is dealing with the fact that they have missed the Savior, they have missed the Messiah, they've missed the Lord Jesus Christ and they've done it because of their tremendous ignorance, tremendous ignorance.
Now remember what I told you many times before. Paul has to deal with this in this epistle to the Romans because he can't get by this hurdle. He's presenting justification by grace through faith and somebody's going to say, if this is really the truth, this new covenant, this new message is really the truth, this message which contradicts the old truth, if this is really it, then why doesn't Israel believe it, because they're the people who have always received the Word of God? And it was obvious that they were rejecting it. It was obvious the Jews had rejected Jesus Christ and had Him crucified. If this is the truth from God, how is it that the people of God have rejected it? How can it be? And so Paul, in order to defend his doctrine of justification by grace through faith, has to explain the unbelief of Israel. And that's exactly what he's doing in chapter 10.
In chapter 9 he showed how the unbelief of Israel was already fit into the plan of God, so it didn't surprise God. It didn't thwart God's plan. He already had knew it. He already had planned it into the plan. And now in chapter 10 he describes how it is that they could be so ignorant and why they reject it. Let me give you just a quick review.
First, he says they were ignorant of the person of God. Verse 3 says they were ignorant of God's righteousness. They didn't know how righteous God was. They didn't know how holy He was. They were ignorant of His person. They thought He was less than He was; they thought they were more than they were. And they found a common ground. They pulled God down, pushed themselves up and thought they satisfied Him. It wasn't the true God. They didn't know how righteous He was. They invented a God less righteous that they could come up to His level. So they were ignorant of the person of God.
Secondly, they were ignorant of the provision of Christ. Verse 4, they didn't know that Christ ended...Christ ended a law righteousness for anyone who believed. They didn't realize that Christ made a provision through which salvation came by grace, not works.
Thirdly, they were ignorant of the place of faith. And from verse 5 to 10 he points that out. And it culminates in verse 9, "Confess with thy mouth and believe in thine heart that God hath raised the Lord Jesus from the dead and you will be saved." They didn't understand the place of believing, the place of faith. And we said at the time we looked at that that saving faith is more than merely believing something is true. It's more than believing it's true; it is committing your life to it, committing your life to the sovereign rule and reign of Jesus Christ.
And then fourthly, and this is where we are now, Israel was ignorant of the proportions of salvation. Having affirmed the place of faith in 9 and 10, in verse 11 through 18 then he discusses the proportions of salvation. He says Israel was ignorant of the extent, how far-reaching salvation was. Now let me just give you the key to understanding this section. Many Jews in the past and many Jews in the present reject Christ because of who accepts Christ. Can you understand that? In other words, it's very difficult for Jews to accept Christianity because so many people who are Gentiles have accepted it. And they cannot understand that God would give to them truth through Gentiles, or give it first to Gentiles, as it were, and then to them. In fact, the whole idea that God has a covenant that embraces Gentiles equally with Jews is something they just find unacceptable. And so Paul explains that one of the reasons for their unbelief and their ignorance was they didn't understand the proportions of salvation. They didn't understand, look at verse 11, that the Scripture said in Isaiah 28:16, "Whosoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed."
In other words, "whosoever" is what you want to underline there. They didn't understand that salvation was a whosoever proposition. Verse 12, they didn't understand that there was no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. They didn't understand that the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. And they didn't understand that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved, that's Joel 2:32. They should have understood it because it's in their own Old Testament text. And he quoted twice from it, Isaiah 28:16 and Joel 2:32. But the point was, they didn't understand that. In other words, they wouldn't accept it. It was a willful ignorance, will not tolerate a covenant which embraces Gentiles equally to us. And we talked, didn't we, about Jonah, who found it almost too bitter an assignment to conceive of to go preach salvation to Gentiles in Nineveh and he tried to escape, going the other direction and the Lord had to send him through a fish and back to the shore and back to Nineveh. And when he preached and the whole town repented, he wanted to die because of all those Gentiles who were getting in on God's blessings.
So they had a problem with that and here Paul shows that the proportions of salvation were of great distress to them. Now having established the proportions in verses 11 to 13, he then shows how God sent the message out. You remember verse 14? "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent?" And the whole point here is you can't believe unless you hear a message, you can't hear a message unless somebody gives it, you can't give a message unless you've been sent, you can't get sent unless somebody sends you. And the whole idea is that God sent preachers. In other words, God has sent preachers far beyond Israel. God has sent preachers across the world with a message of salvation to Jew and Gentile. That's what Paul says in Romans 1, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation to (What?) everyone that believes, the Jew first (chronologically), and also to the Gentile." That's chronology not racial priority.
In other words, the gospel always is extended to all. And the crown of his argument here is that the gospel has been sent out by God. God is the sender. And the message is gone everywhere, even beyond Israel. As it is written, verse 15 says, "How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good things." All who have heard the gospel can celebrate the beauty of that message. And he pictures that, of course, from Isaiah, you remember, 52:7 where he borrows that quote and it's saying the gospel has gone out and all who have heard it have said how beautiful are the feet of those that preach it. And that's sort of a euphemism for how wonderful these people are who bring the message to them. So the gospel includes all. That's why Jesus said, "Go into all the world and make disciples," right? Go everywhere. That's why Jesus, in speaking to the disciples, said, "You will receive power after the Holy Spirit comes on you, you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and (What?) the uttermost part of the earth."
And so there's a wide-open call and this was a real problem to the Jew, a real problem. But there's even a greater problem in verse 16, and let's pick it up at that point. In spite of such a wide call, in spite of such an extensive invitation, they have not all obeyed the gospel. That's the problem, disobedience to the saving message. They haven't obeyed it. Again we note here, please, that there's no absolute determinism here. In salvation there must be volition, there's choice on our part. You can't come up with a lopsided theology that puts everything on God's side and does not allow within God's plan and within God's power and within God's sovereign grace for human response. There has to be that. And he says, look, I have sent messengers out who have preached all across the world. The problem is not all have obeyed the gospel. They haven't had a right response. The word to "obey" is hupakou. We get "acoustics" from it. It means "to hear," and hupo means "under," to hear under. To hear under means to get under somebody in submission like a servant, to line up under somebody. They have not heard it submissively with a heart of obedience. It is a rich word, beloved, by the way, and it implies that salvation has inherent in it obedience. It has inherent in it submission to Christ. And that's obvious if you study Scripture. In all the messages of salvation there is a sense of obedience. In other words, it isn't just believing. It is affirming that I will line up under and obey, that I will submit.
In Acts chapter 6, a couple of scriptures just to sort of enforce this point, it says, "And the Word of God increased and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly," of course at the preaching of the apostles and the early deacons, "and a great company of the priests," listen to this, "were obedient to the faith." That is a synonym for salvation. To be saved equals to be obedient to the faith. There is no such thing as salvation apart from obedience, apart from hearing under, apart from submitting oneself to the Lord.
In Romans chapter 1, follow along with me now. This is a very important point. Romans chapter 1 verse 5, Paul says that God, His Holy Spirit, has empowered Paul, and in verse 5 he says, "By whom we have received grace and apostleship." Alright, Paul, you have grace and you have apostleship. In other words, God has graciously sent you out. What for? "For obedience to the faith among all nations." Here's one of those preachers that God sent and He sent him not just to the Jew but to all nations. And He sent him to preach obedience to the faith, obedience to the faith. A very important concept again, that saving faith implies submission...submissive obedience.
In Romans chapter 2 verse 8 there's another description of those who are truly righteous. It says, "Unto them who are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek." And again he says the same message goes to all and to those who do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness. The point is this people, salvation is a step into obedience to the truth. And being unsaved is not to obey the truth. It is not simply believing as if that's all there is to it. Oh yes, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I believe. It is believing and submitting obediently. You can't get around that in the Scripture.
In Romans 6:17 would you notice, "God be thanked that whereas you were servants of sin..." Look how he describes their salvation. "You have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered," is the Greek text. You have obeyed. And in verse 16 he calls it the obedience unto righteousness. And again, salvation is marked out by the term "obedience."
Look at 2 Thessalonians for a moment, chapter 1 verse 8, and here he talks about the coming of Christ who is going to judge the ungodly. He says, "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels," and now verse 8, "in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God," now watch this, "and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." You see, receiving the gospel has inherent in it obedience. In other words, I submit myself to the leadership, the headship, the lordship of Christ. I will obey.
Hebrews chapter 5 verse 9, one of the great sections in all of Scripture, describes Christ and says in verse 9, "He was made perfect and He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that believe." Is that what it says? "Unto all them that (What?) obey," unto all them that obey. That's always the mark, always the mark.
Well, I don't want to take it any further. There are other scriptures. But true faith, saving faith is obedient faith. There's no way around that. That's biblical faith that saves. So the problem back in 10:16 of Romans — let's go back there — the problem is, they have not obeyed the gospel. They're not all genuinely believing because they're not submitting. That's the problem. The gospel went out beyond just the Jew. The prophets in the Old Testament and others took it beyond just the Jew. Jesus took it beyond the Jew. The apostles took it beyond the Jew. It extends to the farthest corners of human life but not all obey. In fact, he quotes from Isaiah 53:1. Look at verse 16: "For Isaiah says, Lord, who hath believed our report?" What a statement. Isaiah says, Lord, we really can't find anybody who believes this. The question implies that most people didn't believe it. The prophet is looking around to see if there's anybody who believes it.
Now, by the way, if you remember Isaiah 53 you remember that Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Christ's death, isn't it? "He was led as a sheep to His slaughter and as a lamb before his shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth," and so forth. "He was bruised for our iniquities," all of that. You see, it's a description of the cross. And the prophet starts that description of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ by saying, "Who's going to believe this? Where are we going to find somebody to believe it?" The prophecy of Isaiah 53 looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, looked forward to the death of Messiah. And this verse indicates that it will require a search to find people who believe it. How sad. The gospel went far; most people refused to believe it.
John 12:37, listen to this, "But though He had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on Him, that the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled which he spoke, 'Lord, who hath believed our report?'" You see, they didn't believe. And Isaiah anticipated that they wouldn't believe. So tragic, so tragic. It's still true today that the message is preached and very few believe.
Paul and Barnabas grew bold, it says in Acts 13:46 and said, "It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing you put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." Said we came to the Jews, you pushed it away, you refused it, you rejected it; you wouldn't believe it. In the sixth verse of the eighteenth chapter of Acts the Jews listened to the message of Christ and when they opposed themselves and blasphemed, he shook his raiment and said to them, "Your blood be on your heads." They opposed the gospel. Paul shook his garment and left.
Now the word "report" in 10:16 simply means message, simply means message. You wouldn't believe the message. And that's the real issue. So the gospel was preached to all, but not believed by all.
Then Paul sums up his idea in verse 17, very, very familiar verse. It reads this way, "So then, faith by hearing," stop there. We'll just take that first part. So then, faith by hearing; in other words, they have to hear the message. We affirm that. Salvation doesn't come by intuition, it doesn't come by meditation, it doesn't come by speculation, it doesn't come by philosophizing, it comes by hearing a message, a message has to be given. That is an essential element in evangelism. We have to communicate the truth. We have to communicate the facts. That's why Acts 20 says Paul gave thorough testimony concerning repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It had to be a thorough diamarturomai, a thorough testimony. We've got to have the information before we can make the commitment. The gospel preacher is to give the message. And he says then, "Faith by hearing and hearing" watch this now "by the Word of Christ," is the proper Greek text.
The Word of Christ, what's that? That's a message about Christ. How do you get saved? Through faith. How do you get the message? It comes by hearing. What is the message? It's preaching about Christ. Salvation then comes to those who hear about Christ and believe. That's all he's saying.
Now it's important for us to remember in evangelism, then, that our object is to present the message, not to manipulate people but to present the message so that they have the proper hearing on which faith can act. They have heard the word about Christ. So knowledge precedes faith and that's obvious to us, although it isn't to many. I see people all the time on television who give invitations after never presenting the gospel, who call people to believe in something they haven't even explained. And so what happens is, people believe in believing and don't know what they believe in. And frankly, don't believe in enough to be saved. That's the message, first of all, the message of Christ, then the faith in that message.
So the message he says is gone out into all the world. It is a message of salvation, a message about Christ. And he closes that thought in verse 18. "But I say, have they not heard?" Have they not heard? "Verily, yes, their sound went into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world." This is a most fascinating verse. I want to show you why. It sums up his point that the message is gone to the whole world. They've all heard it. It went out. But what he does here is quote Psalm 19:4. He quotes it from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew. But nonetheless it's Psalm 19:4 and it's a fascinating use of Psalm 19:4 because it shows the universal proclamation of the gospel. Listen, this is very important, people. People are always saying, "Well how are these people out here going to hear and how are these people over here going to hear and how are these folks over here going to hear? And what if they never hear? What about them?" He says, "Look, the sound of this message is gone into all the earth and the words to the ends of the world."
What message? How can that be? Well he quotes from Psalm 19 and in Psalm 19 do you know what David's talking about? He's talking about the stars and the heavenly bodies. He says, "The heavens (What?) declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Night unto night uttereth knowledge, day unto day speech. Their line is gone out unto all the earth." You know it, it's this very text. And what David is saying in the Psalm is that the stars and all the celestial bodies proclaim to the whole earth that there is a God, right? That's what we call in theology natural revelation. But all of the stellar bodies, all of the glory of space communicates that there is a God. And Paul borrows this verse and says this is a symbol and this is a foreshadowing of how the gospel will extend to all the earth, even as the testimony of the stars and the stellar bodies do. It's a marvelous truth. The testimony of heaven, he says, is like a measuring line that marks out extent. And he uses the term, "their line is gone out," like a guy who marked out the extremities of an area and says the testimony goes to the very limits of the perimeter. And here Paul says that their sound went into all the earth. Their words to the end of the world, same idea, only he says as the stars have touched the earth with natural revelation, the gospel touches the earth with special revelation.
In other words, God has put His knowledge in all the earth. It's just what he said in Romans 1, "That which may be known of God is in them, that which may be known of God is around them so that if they don't believe they are without (What?) excuse," without excuse. And in the same way the whole earth has given...has been given natural revelation, so the whole earth has been given special revelation in the gospel.
Now you say, "Well how is this so?" Well I...all I can tell you is this, that this is what the Bible says, that it's gone out into all the earth. That is to say, I believe, that to the seeking heart and the believing heart, to the open heart, it is available, it is available. To say that it's gone out into all the earth is not necessarily to say the fullness of all the gospel has been exposed to every single individual, but that it is extended in such a way that where there is a seeking heart there will be a message given. And we have to leave that with God. It's something like John 1:9, where it says that Christ is the true light that lights every man that comes into the world. Somehow, some way God communicates His truth beyond what we might understand. In fact, in Matthew 24:14 it says, "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world," preached in all the world.
And so, there is some sense in which the gospel is extended as an available truth, as an available gospel to those who desire to know the truth, to those who desire to find the truth. In Colossians 1:6 Paul says, "The gospel which is come unto you as it is in all the world," interesting. And he may be talking just about the world of his sphere, the world of his environment, but it's still a parallel because even though it was available in his world doesn't mean it had touched every single individual with the fullness of its message, it just was there available. And as they could tap into it in their world, so I believe God is saying that there's no part of His world, that greater world, where a seeking heart cannot find the message of truth.
So, the gospel, Paul is saying, very important here, what he's... Let me sum up verses 11 to 18 and it's a very difficult passage to pull together. Let me sum it up this way. Paul is saying the gospel is not just one more local sect, the gospel is not one more Roman mystery cult, the gospel is not one more local religion, but the gospel is the good news which God has sent over all the world. That's what he's saying. It's a whosoever thing. It goes way beyond Jews to embrace Gentiles. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord. And God showed it by sending His messengers all over the world. Their line and their sound is gone out everywhere. And he's saying to the Jews, as long as you believe that this is unacceptable to you, that you can't take a faith that belongs to others beyond yourself, then you have bound yourself in ignorance because the truth of God extends to the whole world. And sadly, tragically, many Jews rejected the gospel because it involved Gentiles. And many still reject it for that same reason.
There's an interesting parallel to this in the seventh chapter of John. My head is filled with so many different scriptures, I want to pull the salient ones. John 7:45, "Then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees and said unto him, Why have you not brought Him? The officers answered, 'Never..." They were sent to get Jesus, they said, "Never man spoke like this man." And they answered... "Then answered them, the Pharisees, 'Are you also deceived?'" And listen to this, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" That was the issue. Well, you talk about cursed religious leaders. They had such power over the people. This was their defense against Christ, "Do any of the leaders believe on Him? If the leaders don't believe on Him, it can't be so."
Jews today still reject because traditionally the Jewish leaders have rejected Christ. And for them individually to embrace Christ is to go contrary to all their leadership. And one of the reasons the leaders have totally rejected Christ is because they see the gospel and the Christian faith as a Gentile religion. It's nothing new.
When Galileo was summoned before the inquisition to be tried for heresy in declaring the revolving of the earth, you remember, Galileo discovered that? He was brought in to be declared a scientific heretic. What he discovered, of course, was true. But the existing establishment denied it. He said to his judges these words, "I can convince you. Here is my telescope. Look through it and you will see the moons of Jupiter." The historian says they refused to look. They refused to look. They were so convinced the earth did not revolve around the sun no amount of evidence would ever make them change their mind, they wouldn't even look.
That's the way it is with Israel, they won't look. They've made up their mind. Ignorant of the person of God, ignorant of the provision of Christ, ignorant of the place of faith, ignorant of the proportion of salvation. They can't accept something that includes Gentiles equally to themselves.
Finally, Israel was ignorant of the predictions of Scripture, ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. By the way, this point's already been covered all the way through the chapter, hasn't it? And Paul's been laying out Old Testament quotes one after another, one after another, starting back in verses 5 to 10 section. And we've already seen that they really didn't know their Old Testament.
Jesus told them that on several occasions. And we see it here. They were ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. Look at verse 19, "But I say, did not Israel know?" Didn't Israel know? Didn't they know? Didn't they know what? Didn't they know what? Didn't they know the gospel message was a message for the whole world? Didn't they know the gospel message would go beyond the Jew? Didn't they know that? Didn't they know there would be Gentiles included? Sure they knew. Here's why. First, Moses said, and when you quote Moses, folks, you're quoting the supreme authority to a Jew. "First Moses said, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people and by a foolish nation I will anger you."
That's right, he quotes Moses, Deuteronomy 32:21. And what he is saying there is, you knew, Deuteronomy told you that, that the day would come when God would embrace a no people, that's a Gentile people, a foolish nation, that's a Gentile nation, and provoke you to what? A jealousy about His relationship to them. You knew that, that was in Deuteronomy 32:21. And if you read the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy, verse 5 in that chapter marks the unbelief of Israel and verse 20 marks the judgment of God and verse 21 is this verse. I'm going to turn to another people, another nation, non-Jewish, Gentile and bless them and provoke you to jealousy.
You see, as they had given their love to another god, so God gave His love to another people. That's right. And this prediction of Isaiah, by the way, rather of Moses, as we'll see in a moment also Isaiah, but this prediction of Moses could find its fulfillment only in the conversion of the Gentiles through the gospel of Christ. They were the no people brought into intimate relationship with God. And the Jews should have remembered Deuteronomy 32, they should have repented, they should have seen the truth of the gospel as it went to the Gentiles. You see, Jesus made this so clear to them. He kept saying to them. Remember how in chapter 21 and 22 of Matthew He kept saying to them, "Look, I'm going to turn from you to this other people. You don't want to come to the banquet? I'll get some people who will come to the banquet. You don't want to serve Me? I'll find some people who do. You want to kill My servants and kill My Son? I'll give out My vineyard to someone else who is worthy of it." In Luke 14, "You don't want to come to My great supper? You don't want to eat this feast? Then I'll go in the highways and byways and I'll call the lame and the blind and the halt and all the rest of them in here."
In other words, over and over and over had Jesus said in His ministry, if you don't want the kingdom, I'll find somebody who does. And that's what He did. That's exactly what He did. And that's exactly what Moses said would happen in the prophecy of Deuteronomy 32:21. And it provokes them to jealousy.
Then in verse 20 there's a second Old Testament proof text, from Isaiah, so you have the law and the prophets here, Moses representing the law, Isaiah the prophets. Isaiah's very bold and saith, "I was found by them that sought Me not, I was made manifest unto them that asked not after Me." By the way, the words "very bold" mean clear, plain, easily understood. And this is a quote from Isaiah 65:1. And Isaiah said the same thing, that God says I was found by them that sought Me not, that's a Gentile people. Not the Jews who were always seeking God, always seeking God... I was found by some who sought Me not and I was made manifest to them that asked not after Me. You see, the Jews sought God, sought God; that was their whole life. They have a zeal for God, Paul says earlier in the chapter, but not according to what? Knowledge. They sought for God, they sought for God, they asked about God, they asked about God. Never found Him. But there was a people who didn't seek and there was a people that didn't ask and God had a relationship with them.
And then the last verse in the chapter quotes Isaiah 65:2, the next verse, so both those verses come right out of that sixty-fifth chapter. "But to Israel He saith, 'All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and (literally) opposing people." And that's right out of Isaiah 65, really sums it up.
Why did the Lord reject Israel and turn to the Gentiles? Because all day long He stretched forth His hands to a disobedient and opposing people. He couldn't get them to respond. "Disobedient" literally means to refuse to believe, to refuse to believe. They refused to believe Him. "Contrary" or "opposing" literally means to deny or to speak against, antileg, to speak against, to contradict. And so, God says you were ignorant of your Scriptures. If you had known the prophecy of Moses and you had known the prophecy and the words of Isaiah, you would have known that the day would come when Israel would be rebellious and I would reach out to the nations. I would go beyond you to provoke you to jealousy. And when that happened... This is what he's saying: When that happened, when Israel didn't believe and Jesus started reaching to the Gentiles and when the church went out to the Gentiles, a thinking, knowledgeable, believing Jew who understood his Old Testament should have said to himself, "This is that which was spoken by the prophets. It's happening. Therefore this is the Messiah and this is the true message." They should have concluded that. "All day long" means patiently and continually. "Stretched forth My hands" means lovingly to embrace you, to welcome you to intimacy and to security. A loving God has reached out to these people again and again and again and they have resisted in disobedience.
And so, he says you are ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. You should have seen Israel's unbelief, reaching to the Gentiles, provoking to jealousy fulfills the prophecies, this then is the Messiah, this then is the gospel. But you were ignorant of the Scripture.
So it's a profound message in chapter 10. Israel is lost. Israel is set aside. Israel is excluded from salvation as a nation, though as I said, individual Jews in all ages have believed and been God's remnant. And God has gone beyond to touch the church made up of all peoples, tongues and nations. Why was Israel lost? Now listen as I just pull this together. Because they were ignorant of God's person, because they were ignorant of the provision of Christ, they were ignorant of the place of faith, they were ignorant of the proportions of salvation, they didn't want to get into something that wasn't exclusively for them, and they were ignorant of the predictions of Scripture. They should have been able to see that this was it when they charted what happened from their own unbelief. What a tragedy.
Now, is this ignorant unbelief of Israel permanent? Is it? Is it permanent? The answer to that question comes in chapter 11 and the answer is what? No, and we're glad for that.
Let me close with this story. I was reading a book this week by Dr. Charles Fineberg who was my professor in seminary. It's a book called Israel. And in the book he has an interesting little account, I want to read it to you. A minister was preaching on Glasgow Greene in Scotland once when someone asked permission to speak and made his way to the platform. "Friends," he said, responding to the words of the minister, "I do not believe what this man has been talking about. I do not believe in a hell, in a judgment or in a God, for I have never seen any of them."
He continued talking this way for awhile when another voice was heard from the crowd. "May I speak?" The unbeliever sat down and the next man began. "Friends, you say there is a river running not far from this place, the River Clyde. There's no such thing. It's not true. You tell me there are grass and trees growing around me where I now stand. There's no such thing. That's also untrue. You tell me there are a great many people standing here before me and again I say this is not true, there's no one standing here except myself, I'm alone. I suppose you wonder what I'm talking about. Friends, I was born blind. I've never seen any of you. And while I talk it only shows I am blind or I wouldn't say such things. And you, you unbeliever, the more you talk the more it exposes your own blindness."
Good speech, good speech. Israel was blind and went around saying, "It doesn't exist, it isn't so," and showed their own ignorance. I pray God that you don't have ignorance in that regard because the same ignorance that condemned that people will condemn you. Are you ignorant of the righteousness of God? His holy standard? Ignorant of the provision of Christ? The place of faith? The proportions of the gospel call to the world? Are you rejecting Christianity because there's some people that are Christians that you don't like and you won't accept? Are you ignorant of the predictions of Scripture? Have you missed the prophecies that have been fulfilled to demonstrate the truth of the gospel? You see, it's a message that relates to Israel but has wide ramifications. Let's come before the Lord together in prayer.
So many things open to us, Lord, in the Scripture, so many things fly before our minds as we grow in Your Word. And we thank You for the richness. And, Lord, tonight we have mixed emotion. On the one hand it's so fulfilling to understand Your Scripture, so fulfilling to understand history and why things are the way they are, so fulfilling to understand the unbelief of Israel because now we know how it can be that the gospel is true and yet Israel rejected it. It was because of ignorance and that ignorance was self-imposed because of unbelief and that unbelief was self-imposed because they loved their sin so much. And so we know, Lord, that even today people who love their sin more than they love You are going to be unbelieving. And in their unbelief they're not going to want to look through the telescope. They don't want to know the truth, self-imposed ignorance. And how sad that they'll stand and say things aren't so and all they do is show that they can't see, they can't see, for we who know You see so clearly. We understand, we understand the person of God, we understand as best we can how infinitely holy You are, we understand the provision of Christ, we understand that He died on the cross for us. We see the place of faith, we understand the proportions of salvation that it reaches across the earth to touch any and all who believe without regard for any human factor. We understand the predictions of Scripture. We understand the prophecies fulfilled relative to Messiah, relative to Israel, we understand.
And we thank You, Lord, that because You've taken the scales off our eyes and given us sight, we see. We pray that no one would go from this place blind to the truth that condemns. And give us, Lord, a great love for Israel, great compassion, to call them out of blindness into the glorious light of their Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.
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Home Gregory XVII "Siri" The Pope in Red The Coming Great Catholic Monarch St. John Bosco's Dream (Vision) of Hell
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To thee, therefore, my speech is now directed, who, giving up thine own will, takest up the strong and most excellent arms of obedience, to do battle for Christ the Lord, the true King. In the first place, beg of Him by most earnest prayer, that He perfect whatever good thou dost begin, in order that He who hath been pleased to count us in the number of His children, need never be grieved at our evil deeds. For we ought at all times so to serve Him with the good things which He hath given us, that He may not, like an angry father, disinherit his children, nor, like a dread lord, enraged at our evil deeds, hand us over to everlasting punishment as most wicked servants, who would not follow Him to glory. Let us then rise at length, since the Scripture arouseth us, saying: "It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep" (Rom 13:11); and having opened our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with awestruck ears what the divine voice, crying out daily, doth admonish us, saying: "Today, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Ps 94[95]:8). And again: "He that hath ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" (Rev 2:7). And what doth He say? -- "Come, children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord" (Ps 33[34]:12). "Run whilst you have the light of life, that the darkness of death overtake you not" (Jn 12:35). And the Lord seeking His workman in the multitude of the people, to whom He proclaimeth these words, saith again: "Who is the man that desireth life and loveth to see good days" (Ps 33[34]:13)? If hearing this thou answerest, "I am he," God saith to thee: "If thou wilt have true and everlasting life, keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile; turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it" (Ps 33[34]:14-15). And when you shall have done these things, my eyes shall be upon you, and my ears unto your prayers. And before you shall call upon me I will say: "Behold, I am here" (Is 58:9). What, dearest brethren, can be sweeter to us than this voice of the Lord inviting us? See, in His loving kindness, the Lord showeth us the way of life. Therefore, having our loins girt with faith and the performance of good works, let us walk His ways under the guidance of the Gospel, that we may be found worthy of seeing Him who hath called us to His kingdom (cf 1 Thes 2:12). If we desire to dwell in the tabernacle of His kingdom, we cannot reach it in any way, unless we run thither by good works. But let us ask the Lord with the Prophet, saying to Him: "Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle, or who shall rest in Thy holy hill" (Ps 14[15]:1)? After this question, brethren, let us listen to the Lord answering and showing us the way to this tabernacle, saying: "He that walketh without blemish and worketh justice; he that speaketh truth in his heart; who hath not used deceit in his tongue, nor hath done evil to his neighbor, nor hath taken up a reproach against his neighbor" (Ps 14[15]:2-3), who hath brought to naught the foul demon tempting him, casting him out of his heart with his temptation, and hath taken his evil thoughts whilst they were yet weak and hath dashed them against Christ (cf Ps 14[15]:4; Ps 136[137]:9); who fearing the Lord are not puffed up by their goodness of life, but holding that the actual good which is in them cannot be done by themselves, but by the Lord, they praise the Lord working in them (cf Ps 14[15]:4), saying with the Prophet: "Not to us, O Lord, not to us; by to Thy name give glory" (Ps 113[115:1]:9). Thus also the Apostle Paul hath not taken to himself any credit for his preaching, saying: "By the grace of God, I am what I am" (1 Cor 15:10). And again he saith: "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" (2 Cor 10:17). Hence, the Lord also saith in the Gospel: "He that heareth these my words and doeth them, shall be likened to a wise man who built his house upon a rock; the floods came, the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock" (Mt 7:24-25). The Lord fulfilling these words waiteth for us from day to day, that we respond to His holy admonitions by our works. Therefore, our days are lengthened to a truce for the amendment of the misdeeds of our present life; as the Apostle saith: "Knowest thou not that the patience of God leadeth thee to penance" (Rom 2:4)? For the good Lord saith: "I will not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live" (Ezek 33:11). Now, brethren, that we have asked the Lord who it is that shall dwell in His tabernacle, we have heard the conditions for dwelling there; and if we fulfil the duties of tenants, we shall be heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Our hearts and our bodies must, therefore, be ready to do battle under the biddings of holy obedience; and let us ask the Lord that He supply by the help of His grace what is impossible to us by nature. And if, flying from the pains of hell, we desire to reach life everlasting, then, while there is yet time, and we are still in the flesh, and are able during the present life to fulfil all these things, we must make haste to do now what will profit us forever. We are, therefore, about to found a school of the Lord's service, in which we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome. But even if, to correct vices or to preserve charity, sound reason dictateth anything that turneth out somewhat stringent, do not at once fly in dismay from the way of salvation, the beginning of which cannot but be narrow. But as we advance in the religious life and faith, we shall run the way of God's commandments with expanded hearts and unspeakable sweetness of love; so that never departing from His guidance and persevering in the monastery in His doctrine till death, we may by patience share in the sufferings of Christ, and be found worthy to be coheirs with Him of His kingdom. Begin with the...
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© 2024, Dimiliki oleh Langkawi Idaman Suri Sdn Bhd [199701026880(442378 - K)]
Regular price RM49.00 SALE
Consists of: 1 Handbag
Dimension: L 36cm x W 16cm x H 36cm
Strap Length: 23cm
Colour/Pattern: Pink and Blue Mandala
Material: Cotton
Be charmed with Idaman Suri's captivating line of printed handbag which is made out of 100% cotton. With two side buttons and a zipped pocket on the inside, this handbag boosts volume and firmness. Now you can hold all your secrets in one bag! Care Instruction: Hand wash in cold water. Use mild detergent. Do not bleach. Do not use fabric softener. Do not dry under direct sunlight.
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Masse Wreath Christmas Card Floral Portrait
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Bobux are the original soft soled leather baby shoes with the ankle elastic system that ensures they are easy to slip on and they stay on!
Bobux are made from Eco-leather, a soft natural leather, tanned in an environmentally friendly method that is safe for your baby.
Bobux designs face your baby! After all they are the ones wearing them, shouldn't they have the best view of the cool designs.They are recommended by Pediatricians as the perfect footwear for children under two. The soft leather upper and suede leather sole allow the feet to function properly and grow without restrictions.
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Bobux feature a flexible, slip-resistant suede leather sole, ideal for toe gripping babies and toddlers learning to crawl or walk.


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The Case of the Tippy Hippie
September 13, 2004
An attorney representing a do-it-yourself building materials store called and told me that a customer was injured in an accident at a home improvement center. The attorney said the plaintiff, a "reformed hippie," was renovating his "crib." A load of paneling had fallen onto him, and he was suing to recover medical and other expenses. I was retained to investigate the plaintiff's claims and reconstruct the accident.
The plaintiff and his dad had loaded up a flat-bottomed cart with paint and other materials. They then obtained another type of cart to transport paneling and furring strips. This cart had tubular frame members to make up side "pockets" for holding paneling and like materials on the edges of the far-left and far-right sides of the cart. The center pocket had cross bars about waist high for loading smaller, long pieces, such as furring strips or two by fours.
They had placed furring strips in the center pocket and all the panels with the long sides horizontal in one side pocket. The paneling was sufficient to fill the slot, and the plaintiff said he leaned the panels toward the outside rails. In leaning one panel against the other, the innermost panels were raised somewhat from the outermost panels with their bottom edges resting against the inside vertical members of the side pocket.
Investigations at the scene
At the store, I measured the paneling, the subject cart and the accident location at the front of the store. The store's corporate counsel sent cart weight, cart platform height, width and length, and caster wheel locations. I made a scale drawing of the cart and its load to determine the location of the combined center of gravity, and drew a plan view of the accident site that included exit door opening, side walk width, distance to the street surface, and slope.
With this information, I could mentally step into my "way-back" and reconstruct the plaintiff's movements leading to the accident. Using records, testimony, and measurements, I constructed the following scenario: The shoppers pushed the loaded carts to the cashier station, and the father paid for the goods. Telling his son to wait, he went to bring his pickup truck to the store-front loading area. Upon seeing his father heading toward the entrance, the plaintiff proceeded to push the cart with paneling out the door to meet him. The gentle slope of the sidewalk combined with a brisk push on the cart gave it a good forward velocity. The plaintiff walked along the side of the cart, grasping the paneling to accelerate and steer the cart.
Just then, another car left the loading area close to the exit, and the plaintiff's father quickly pulled up and stopped short in the spot. The plaintiff quickly swung the loaded cart in the direction of the truck, pulling on the rear portion of the paneling in the process. The cart began to turn, then tipped and turned over, knocking the plaintiff down and spilling the paneling out, where it came to rest on his legs. He suffered a severe knee injury that required a joint replacement.
High C.G. is the culprit
Using scale drawings and measurements of the cart, sidewalk, street, and pickup truck location, I estimated the turn radius needed to swing the cart tightly towards the pickup truck. I determined that even at walking speeds of one to two mph when turning, the lateral force at the raised C.G. location was sufficient to overturn the cart. Using the load identified in this matter, I modeled different radii and forward speeds while staying within the dimensional limits of the accident site. Within these limits, I determined that the cart would always overturn.
I alerted the attorney that this was a weak defense case. Even taking into account the plaintiff's seriously offset loading method, this appeared to me to be a reasonably foreseeable misuse of the cart. Without disclosing the terms, the attorney later told me that the store had settled the suit out of court. The company subsequently made a design change to the carts that accommodates panels only in the center slots.
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text: The New York State Report Card is an important part of the Board of Regents' effort to create educational equity and raise learning outcomes for all students. Knowledge gained from the report card about a school or district can be used to improve instruction and inform services to students. The report card provides information to the public on school/district staff, students, and measures of school and district performance as required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Fundamentally, New York State's ESSA plan is about creating a set of interlocking strategies to promote educational equity by providing support to districts and schools as they work to ensure that every student succeeds. New York State is committed to ensuring that all students succeed and thrive in school no matter who they are, where they live, where they go to school, or where they come from.


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The SENSEI GSC 3D Texture™ Mixed Tooth Shear brings our amazing soft slide technology to a multi dimensional texture tool. This shear gives you the perfect texture of varied point cutting. Closing this shear on a section will create negative space within a section with no visible point of origin for the negative space. It creates a mix of more and less aggressive point cutting within each cut for an even more dimensional texture. This is essentially what you get from creative point cutting. The difference is this shear does it with a single cut across a section instead of you point cutting 10-15 times into the section. Stylists tell us these shears save them as much as 7 to 10 minutes on each haircut. Not only that, but they also say their clients start calling them a few weeks after their cut to find out what they did differently to make the cut grow out better. The answer is, the texture from this tool is consistent and perfect every time. Point cutting on the other hand, is random at best and it's easy to cut too hard across a section and make a notch that will be the spot that pops out three weeks into a cut and make it look like the cut is falling apart already. Not to mention these can save all the wear and tear on the tips of your shears that come with point cutting. They pay for themselves by reducing your sharpening costs on you cutting shear. See also the 14 and 10 tooth Point Cut Texture™ shear for different forms of texture. It's ideal to have a variety of texture tools at your disposal for different hair thicknesses and types.
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Technical Specification Driver 5.25mm Micro audio drivers Connection 3.5mm Stereo audio jack plug Sensitivity 91 +/- 5 dB at 1k Hz Frequency Range 20 - 20kHz Impedance 18 ohm Cable Length 1.2 meter
Dots Compatability Any Apple iPod Apple iPod Touch Any MP3 Player with a 3.5mm Stereo Jacket socket MP4 Players Laptops, Notebook, Netbooks and Computers Portable DVD players Note: Dots are not compitatable with Apple IPOD Shuffle
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Presidential libraries and museums play an important role in telling the American public the stories of our past Presidents. To tell those stories the best and latest educational techniques and technologies are used to make them vibrant, engrossing, and memorable. And when the tech changes over time, it's important to change with it.
A great example of this is the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Since the site was dedicated in 1990 there have been many technological advances. But you'd be surprised at how some of those advances have an impact.
Throughout the facility, audiovisual displays and interactive exhibits are used to great effect for an immersive educational experience. But one place you might not expect to find AV technological advances is in a space where you don't see any AV tech at all.
That space is a replica of the White House East Room. This room offers the same elegant and refined atmosphere as the real East Room, only on a bigger scale to accommodate large groups. Museum designers wanted an upgrade with AV technology that wouldn't detract from that feeling.
"The visual aesthetics of the East Room were a high priority in the design and to not be in your face until in use," said Timothy Metzger of TM AV Consulting & Integration Inc. "Knowing the Draper screen line very well, and after looking at multiple screen options, we found what was the best fit for the job."
Metzger and AV dealer Production Access Group decided to recess the AV equipment above the ceiling so it can't be seen when it isn't in use. The two 220-inch Ultimate Access XL V screens have closure panels that provide a seamless look when closed, and they open up into the case to let the viewing surface down. The viewing surfaces are industry leading TecVision ambient light-rejecting surfaces, so the elegant lighting in the room doesn't have to be turned off to enjoy projection.
The projector and speakers are mounted to four Scissor Lift SL4s. Each lift has a trim kit to blend in with the surrounding ceiling.
"This installation has been a winner from the first time the screens were lowered at the debut event," said Metzger. "The reaction from the audience who had been in this space before with folding screens held up with sandbags and the 3K lumen projectors, now seeing the screens coming out of the ceiling with 20K Panasonic laser projectors, was tremendous. It has been a total winner."


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nice thread po! keepit up! hehe
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There was a notable rise in oil prices on Monday. This was due to a weaker dollar and supply concerns ahead of the European Union's embargo on Russian oil in December. This offset fears of a global recession that could dampen fuel demand. As of 0330 GMT, Brent crude futures were up 60 cents, or 0.7%, to $91.95 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 39 cents, or 0.5% to $85.50 a barrel on Tuesday. Tuesday is the last day to renew the front-month contract.
A weaker dollar, which came off multi-year highs last week, supported both contracts, which fell more than 1% last week on worries another Fed hike could slow global growth. For holders of other currencies, a weaker U.S. dollar makes dollar-denominated commodities more affordable. A less restrictive COVID-19 policy in China could also provide some optimism, the analysts said. However, more supply disruptions remain a risk.
In spite of concerns over the future of the global economy, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) chief executive said the company's customers still demand the same volumes as before. In accordance with its OPEC quota, the Gulf state currently produces over 2.8 million barrels of oil per day. Similarly, oil loading and exporting operations from Iraq's Basrah oil terminal were back to normal on Saturday following a spill that has now been contained, Basrah Oil Company said.
The Shell Bonga deep-water storage and offloading vessel in Nigeria, which can handle 200,000 barrels per day, will undergo maintenance in October, according to a spokesperson. For the first time in three weeks, U.S. energy companies added oil and gas rigs last week, signaling more supplies from the United States. The oil and gas rig count, a leading indicator of future output, rose four to 763 in the week ended September 16, Baker Hughes Corp said.


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[V.S. RAMACHANDRAN:] The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution—which I speculate on in this essay—is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.
There are many puzzling questions about the evolution of the human mind and brain:
1) The hominid brain reached almost its present size, and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity, about 250,000 years ago. Yet, many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. Why? What was the brain doing during the long "incubation "period? Why did it have all this latent potential for tool use, fire, art, music and perhaps even language—that blossomed only considerably later? How did these latent abilities emerge, given that natural selection can only select expressed abilities, not latent ones? I shall call this "Wallace's problem," after the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who first proposed it.
2) Crude "Oldawan" tools—made by just a few blows to a core stone to create an irregular edge—emerged 2.4 million ago and were probably made by Homo habilis, whose brain size was halfway (700cc) between modern humans (1300) and chimps (400). After another million years of evolutionary stasis, aesthetically pleasing "symmetrical" tools began to appear associated with a standardization of production technique and artifact form. These required switching from a hard hammer to a soft (wooden?) hammer while the tool was being made in order to ensure a smooth, rather than jagged, irregular edge. And lastly, the invention of stereotyped "assembly line" tools (sophisticated symmetrical bifacial tools) that were hafted to a handle, took place only 200,000 years ago. Why was the evolution of the human mind "punctuated" by these relatively sudden upheavals of technological change?
3) Why the sudden explosion (often called the "great leap") in technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings, etc., around 40,000 years ago, even though the brain had achieved its present "modern" size almost a million years earlier?
4) Did language appear completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or did it evolve from a more primitive gestural language that was already in place?
5) Humans are often called the "Machiavellian Primate" referring to our ability to "read minds" in order to predict other people's behavior and outsmart them. Why are apes and humans so good at reading other individuals' intentions? Do higher primates have a specialized brain center or module for generating a "theory of other minds" as proposed by Nick Humphrey and Simon Baron-Cohen? If so, where is this circuit and how and when did it evolve?
The solution to many of these riddles comes from an unlikely source: the study of single neurons in the brains of monkeys. I suggest that the questions become less puzzling when you consider Giaccamo Rizzollati's recent discovery of "mirror neurons" in the ventral premotor area of monkeys. This cluster of neurons, I argue, holds the key to understanding many enigmatic aspects of human evolution. Rizzollati and Arbib have already pointed out the relevance of their discovery to language evolution. But I believe the significance of their findings for understanding other equally important aspects of human evolution has been largely overlooked. This, in my view, is the most important unreported "story" in the last decade.
Unlike many other human traits such as humor, art, dancing or music, the survival value of language is obvious—it helps us communicate our thoughts and intentions. But the question of how such an extraordinary ability might have actually evolved has puzzled biologists, psychologists and philosophers at least since the time of Charles Darwin. The problem is that the human vocal apparatus is vastly more sophisticated than that of any ape, but without the correspondingly sophisticated language areas in the brain, the vocal equipment alone would be useless. So how did these two mechanisms with so many sophisticated interlocking parts evolve in tandem? Following Darwin's lead, I suggest that our vocal equipment and our remarkable ability to modulate voice evolved mainly for producing emotional calls and musical sounds during courtship ("croonin a toon"). Once that evolved then the brain—especially the left hemisphere—could evolve language.
But a bigger puzzle remains. Is language mediated by a sophisticated and highly specialized "language organ" that is unique to humans and emerged completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or was there a more primitive gestural communication system already in place that provided a scaffolding for the emergence of vocal language?
Rizzolatti's discovery can help us solve this age-old puzzle. He recorded from the ventral premotor area of the frontal lobes of monkeys and found that certain cells will fire when a monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, grasping, picking up and putting a peanut in the mouth, etc., different neurons fire in response to different actions. One might be tempted to think that these are motor "command" neurons, making muscles do certain things; however, the astonishing truth is that any given mirror neuron will also fire when the monkey in question observes another monkey (or even the experimenter) performing the same action, e.g., tasting a peanut! With knowledge of these neurons, you have the basis for understanding a host of very enigmatic aspects of the human mind: "mind reading" empathy, imitation learning, and even the evolution of language. Anytime you watch someone else doing something (or even starting to do something), the corresponding mirror neuron might fire in your brain, thereby allowing you to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds." (I suggest, also, that a loss of these mirror neurons may explain autism—a cruel disease that afflicts children. Without these neurons, the child can no longer understand or empathize with other people emotionally and therefore completely withdraws from the world socially.)
Mirror neurons can also enable you to imitate the movements of others, thereby setting the stage for the complex Lamarckian or cultural inheritance that characterizes our species and liberates us from the constraints of a purely gene-based evolution. Moreover, as Rizzolati has noted, these neurons may also enable you to mime—and possibly understand—the lip and tongue movements of others which, in turn, could provide the opportunity for language to evolve. (This is why, when you stick your tongue out at a new born baby it will reciprocate! How ironic and poignant that this little gesture encapsulates a half a million years of primate brain evolution.) Once you have these two abilities in place—the ability to read someone's intentions and the ability to mime their vocalizations—then you have set in motion the evolution of language. You need no longer speak of a unique language organ and the problem doesn't seem quite so mysterious any more.
(Another important piece of the puzzle is Rizzolatti's observation that the ventral premotor area may be a homologue of the "Broca's area"—a brain center associated with the expressive and syntactic aspects of language in humans.)
These arguments do not in any way negate the idea that there are specialized brain areas for language in humans. We are dealing, here, with the question of how such areas may have evolved, not whether they exist or not.
Mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys, but how do we know they exist in the human brain? To find out, we studied patients with a strange disorder called anosognosia. Most patients with a right hemisphere stroke have complete paralysis of the left side of their body and will complain about it, as expected. But about 5% of them will vehemently deny their paralysis even though they are mentally otherwise lucid and intelligent. This is the so-called "denial" syndrome or anosognosia. To our amazement, we found that some of these patients not only denied their own paralysis, but also denied the paralysis of another patient whose inability to move his arm was clearly visible to them and to others. Denying one's paralysis is odd enough, but why would a patient deny another patient's paralysis? We suggest that this bizarre observation is best understood in terms of damage to Rizzolatti's mirror neurons. It's as if anytime you want to make a judgement about someone else's movements you have to run a VR (virtual reality) simulation of the corresponding movements in your own brain and without mirror neurons you cannot do this.
The second piece of evidence comes from studying brain waves (EEG) in humans. When people move their hands, a brain wave called the MU wave gets blocked and disappears completely. Eric Altschuller, Jamie Pineda, and I suggested at the Society for Neurosciences in 1998 that this suppression was caused by Rizzolati's mirror neuron system. Consistent with this theory, we found that such a suppression also occurs when a person watches someone else moving his hand, but not if he watches a similar movement by an inanimate object. (We predict that children with autism should show suppression if they move their own hands, but not if they watch someone else. Our lab now has preliminary hints from one highly functioning autistic child that this might be true (Social Neuroscience Abstracts 2000).
The hominid brain grew at an accelerating pace until it reached its present size of 1500cc about 200,000 years ago. Yet, uniquely human abilities such the invention of highly sophisticated "standardized" multi-part tools, tailored clothes, art, religious belief and perhaps even language are thought to have emerged quite rapidly around 40,000 years ago—a sudden explosion of human mental abilities and culture that is sometimes called the "big bang." If the brain reached its full human potential—or at least size—200,000 years ago why did it remain idle for 150,000 years? Most scholars are convinced that the big bang occurred because of some unknown genetic change in brain structure. For instance, the archeologist Steve Mithen has just written a book in which he claims that before the big bang there were three different brain modules in the human brain that were specialized for "social or Machiavellian intelligence," for "mechanical intelligence" or tool use, and for "natural history" (a propensity to classify). These three modules remained isolated from each other, but around 50,000 years ago some genetic change in the brain suddenly allowed them to communicate with each other, resulting in the enormous flexibility and versatility of human consciousness.
I disagree with Mithen's ingenious suggestion and offer a very different solution to the problem. (This is not incompatible with Mithen's view, but it's a different idea). I suggest that the so-called big bang occurred because certain critical environmental triggers acted on a brain that had already become big for some other reason and was therefore "pre-adapted" for those cultural innovations that make us uniquely human (one of the key pre-adaptations being mirror neurons). Inventions like tool use, art, math and even aspects of language may have been invented "accidentally" in one place and then spread very quickly given the human brain's amazing capacity for imitation learning and mind reading using mirror neurons. Perhaps ANY major "innovation" happens because of a fortuitous coincidence of environmental circumstances—usually at a single place and time. But given our species' remarkable propensity for miming, such an invention would tend to spread very quickly through the population—once it emerged.
Mirror neurons obviously cannot be the only answer to all these riddles of evolution. After all, rhesus monkeys and apes have them, yet they lack the cultural sophistication of humans (although it has recently been shown that chimps at least DO have the rudiments of culture, even in the wild). I would argue, though, that mirror neurons are necessary but not sufficient: their emergence and further development in hominids was a decisive step. The reason is that once you have a certain minimum amount of "imitation learning" and "culture" in place, this culture can, in turn, exert the selection pressure for developing those additional mental traits that make us human. And once this starts happening, you have set in motion the auto-catalytic process that culminated in modern human consciousness.
A second problem with my suggestion is that it doesn't explain why the many human innovations that constitute the big bang occurred during a relatively short period. If it's simply a matter of chance discoveries spreading rapidly, why would all of them have occurred at the same time? There are three answers to this objection. First, the evidence that it all took place at the same time is tenuous. The invention of music, shelters, hafted tools, tailored clothing, writing, speech, etc., may have been spread out between 100K and 5k and the so-called great leap may be a sampling artifact of archeological excavation. Second, any given innovation (e.g., speech or writing or tools) may have served as a catalyst for the others and may have therefore accelerated the pace of culture as a whole. And third, there may indeed have been a genetic change, but it may not have been an increase in the ability to innovate (nor a breakdown of barriers between modules as suggested by Mithen), but rather an increase in the sophistication of the mirror neuron system and therefore in "learnability." The resulting increase in ability to imitate and learn (and teach) would then explain the explosion of cultural change that we call the "great leap forward" or the "big bang" in human evolution. This argument implies that the whole "nature-nurture debate" is largely meaningless as far as humans are concerned. Without the genetically specified learnability that characterizes the human brain, Homo sapiens wouldn't deserve the title "sapiens" (wise), but without being immersed in a culture that can take advantage of this learnability, the title would be equally inappropriate. In this sense, human culture and human brains have co-evolved into obligatory mutual parasites—without either, the result would not be a human being (no more than you can have a cell without its parasitic mitochondria).
My suggestion that these neurons provided the initial impetus for "runaway" brain/ culture co-evolution in humans isn't quite as bizarre as it sounds. Imagine a martian anthropologist was studying human evolution a million years from now. He would be puzzled (like Wallace was) by the relatively sudden emergence of certain mental traits like sophisticated tool use, use of fire, art and "culture," and would try to correlate them (as many anthropologists now do) with purported changes in brain size and anatomy caused by mutations. But unlike them, he would also be puzzled by the enormous upheavals and changes that occurred after (say) the 19th century—what we call the scientific/industrial revolution. This revolution is, in many ways, much more dramatic (e.g., the sudden emergence of nuclear power, automobiles, air travel, and space travel) than the "great leap forward" that happened 40,000 years ago!
He might be tempted to argue that there must have been a genetic change and corresponding change in brain anatomy and behavior to account for this second leap forward (just as many anthropologists today seek a genetic explanation for the first one). Yet we know that present one occurred exclusively because of fortuitous environmental circumstances, because Galileo invented the "experimental method," that, together with royal patronage and the invention of the printing press, kicked off the scientific revolution. His experiments and the earlier invention of a sophisticated new language called mathematics in India in the first millennium AD (based on place value notation, zero and the decimal system) set the stage for Newtonian mechanics and calculus. "The rest is history," as we say.
Now the thing to bear in mind is that none of this need have happened. It certainly did not happen because of a genetic change in human brains during the renaissance. It happened at least partly because of imitation learning and rapid "cultural" transmission of knowledge. (Indeed, one could almost argue that there was a greater behavioral/cognitive difference between pre-18th century and post-20th century humans than between Homo erectus and archaic Homo sapiens. Unless he knew better, our Martian ethologist may conclude that there was a bigger genetic difference between the first two groups than the latter two species!)
Based on this analogy, I suggest further that even the first great leap forward was made possible largely by imitation and emulation. Wallace's question was perfectly sensible; it is very puzzling how a set of extraordinary abilities seemed to emerge "out of the blue." But his solution was wrong...the apparently sudden emergence of things like art or sophisticated tools was not because of God or "divine intervention." I would argue instead that just as a single invention (or two) by Galileo and Gutenberg quickly spread and transformed the surface of the globe (although there was no preceding genetic change), inventions like fire, tailored clothes, "symmetrical tools," and art, etc., may have fortuitously emerged in a single place and then spread very quickly. Such inventions may have been made by earlier hominids too (even chimps and orangs are remarkably inventive...who knows how inventive Homo erectus or Neandertals were), but early hominids simply may not have had an advanced enough mirror neuron system to allow a rapid transmission and dissemination of ideas. So the ideas quickly drop out of the "meme pool." This system of cells, once it became sophisticated enough to be harnessed for "training" in tool use and for reading other hominids minds, may have played the same pivotal role in the emergence of human consciousness (and replacement of Neandertals by Homo sapiens) as the asteroid impact did in the triumph of mammals over reptiles.
So it makes no more sense to ask "Why did sophisticated tool use and art emerge only 40,000 years ago even though the brain had all the required latent ability 100,000 years earlier?"—than to ask "Why did space travel occur only a few decades ago, even though our brains were preadapted for space travel at least as far back Cro Magnons?" The question ignores the important role of contingency or plain old luck in human evolutionary history.
Thus, I regard Rizzolati's discovery—and my purely speculative conjectures on their key role in our evolution—as the most important unreported story of the last decade.