Video first posted: September 19, 2026
Last modified: September 26, 2026
Below is a machine-generated transcript of the Song of songs 3 v6-11 (Part 90) BitChute video, with a few minor manual edits. At the bottom, after the transcript, is a machine-generated summary of the transcript.
| Hello, in this video, we're going to continue our meditation on how the spirit of Solomon was infecting and affecting Paul, who had, as we've said before, been the one who had been the most resistant to it amongst all the apostles. So we've last read | |
| up until verse 12 of Acts chapter 20. And we're going to continue reading from there. We've been looking at Paul's return to Jerusalem. He felt compelled to return to Jerusalem. And that drive to return to Jerusalem was triggered by that refusal that he had in his heart to | |
| let go of the Jews and commit himself fully to the Gentiles. So that's what's driving him towards Jerusalem. And he's kind of going back on the word that he had given first in, I believe it was Antioch. That's described in Acts 13, verse 46, if I remember correctly. | |
| where he made the commitment to, uh, let go of the Jews because they were resistant, um, uh, uh, uh, you, you irreparably, uh, resistant to, to, um, to the Messiah, um, and that he was going to go, uh, going to preach to the Gentiles. Uh, and he also gave that promise again, uh, | |
| motivated by the spirit as described in Acts 18 when he was in Corinth, if I remember correctly. So he's still clinging to this thing of preaching to the Jews. And that was the influence of the spirit of Solomon on him, that spirit of elitism that was trying, making every effort possible to corrupt the church, even from the beginning. | |
| And it was getting its claws into Paul's heart. And was derailing him from what God wanted him to do. So here we're going to start reading from verse 13. We're going to continue. So it says, Acts 20 verse 13. And we went before to ship. | |
| and sailed unto Assos, there intending to take in Paul, for so had he appointed, minding himself to go afoot. So what happened was that he was in Troas, and he had preached to the congregation, to the believers in Troas, and he said, | |
| And then there was a young man who fell from the third floor, fell out the window and Paul resurrected him. And we saw that that's a figure of what God was doing to the Gentiles, that the Jews had the room with all the lights and the Gentiles were out in the darkness. | |
| And Paul heeded God's call to go down to the Gentiles and breathe life into them. Those who had been in darkness were now to be in the light. And then they brought him back up, obviously, to the third floor, I believe. And he was there in the light, again, resurrected. But the thing is that he finished and then he left Troas. And | |
| So it says here that the people who are with Paul, including Luke, who's the one that God had inspired to narrate all of these events, they all went before or ahead of him, I guess, to the ship and sailed onto Assos. They're intending to take in Paul for so he had he appointed, minding himself to go afoot. So it seems like from Troas, | |
| to Assos, Paul went by foot and the rest went by ship. And I don't have full understanding on that, but I know that there's a spiritual significance related to that. And just to give some context, if I can find the maps here. So Troas, as you can see, is up here in northwestern Turkey, modern day Turkey. | |
| on the coast here. So he just went by foot all the way down to Assos. But the brothers who were with him decided to go by ship. So they got there faster, just waited for him to catch up to them. Why did Paul do that? It doesn't say, but it's kind of a mysterious thing that he did, that he decided to go by foot. And | |
| The interesting thing here is the word ship because if you look in the Greek, the word ship here is ployon. And ployon, if you look at its appearances in Scripture, you'll see it appears a great deal of times in the Gospels here. For example, in Matthew, the first time it appears here in chapter 4, verse 21. | |
| And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in a ship, Ployon, with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and he called them. So that's the first time the word ship appears in the Greek text of Scripture. And then it says in verse 22, And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed him. | |
| And I wonder if this is related to what Paul did, that Paul, he chose not to go by ship to Assos. He decided to go by foot. And I wonder if this is connected to what's being described here. Yeah. | |
| where the Lord is calling two men out of his ship to follow him. Um, so you could take that as, as, as meaning, well, Paul is following Jesus and that's why he, um, did not go by ship. But I, I feel like it's not quite that. Um, it, because the, the brothers who were with him, they went by ship. Um, and, but they got off the ship to wait for, for Paul and, | |
| Assos. And so it's as if, if anything, this thing applies to the brothers in the ship, just like it applied to James and John, who were with their father Zebedee. So I'm still not too clear, but there's some significance there to this being the first time that the worst ship appears. And then in verse of chapter eight, verse 23 of Matthew, | |
| It's the third time that ship appears. And when he was entered into a ship. His disciples followed him. So now it's the Lord Jesus going into the ship. And then the disciples going after him. And this is what I feel is more related to what Paul did. That it's like the disciples. It's like the people who are with him. | |
| represented Jesus and they went into the ship but Paul did not follow that's the sense that I'm getting about this but I could be wrong on this but that's the sense that I'm getting even though it says here that when they got into the ship there was a great tempest and the ship was covered with waves but Jesus remained asleep and we know that in this | |
| When this happened. The Lord Jesus. Jesus was waiting for the disciples. To calm the sea. He was waiting for them to do it. And not rely on Jesus. For everything. But they didn't understand it. So Jesus woke up. And well they woke him up. And he calmed the sea. And was angry at them. Saying that they had little faith. So okay. So. | |
| If we keep scrolling down here, we'll see that ship appears a great deal of times. And now we're into Mark. Mark shows it a great deal of times. Then Luke. And we keep scrolling. John also has the word ship a great deal of times. And then all the way up to John 21, verse 6, when the Lord had resurrected and he appeared to the disciples by faith. | |
| by the beach, by the sea. And that's where I believe this is the passage where this last appearance of ship is in the Gospels, the four Gospels. So you see ship appearing, ployon in Greek, appearing a great number of times in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four Gospels. | |
| And then you can see here that there's a great silence from John 21, verse six. The next book is in John has 21 chapters. So that's in the very last chapter of John. You see the word ship. And then suddenly you don't read the word ship at all up until chapter 20 of Acts. So 20 chapters go by in the next book after John, the book of Acts. | |
| until you finally see the word ship, which is in the verse that we're reading right now. And I know that has a lot of significance, especially if you consider the fact that it's not like there's been no ship or no one going by ship anywhere in the book of Acts. Paul has already done two missionary journeys, and actually three, because he's at the end of the third one here. | |
| And you would figure that the word ship would have been mentioned many, many times before chapter 20. Because Paul and the disciples and the apostles, well, actually just Paul and those who were with him, have been traveling a lot. And the main form of transport was by ship, especially, for example, when they went into Europe. They had to go by ship. | |
| And God did not bother to use the word ship when Paul went from Troas into Philippi when he went into Europe. So it's like God is signaling something here that the word ship is very important. It's like he brings it up right now because it is central to what he's going to describe from now on. And we'll see when we go further into the book of Acts that | |
| what that ship represented, that word being introduced right there in this context. And Paul is resisting, you know, getting on the ship, but eventually he does, you know, get on a ship. Okay, so let's go back to reading Acts 20. So we've read Acts 20:13. Oh, but now let's look at the | |
| At the names of the places that are going to be mentioned in the next few verses, because they tell a story. It's like God describing something prophetically. The thing is, when we're reading these verses, we tend to read them like from a historical perspective. So we start to read them with our minds, like a teacher, kind of following a sequence of historical events. | |
| But the important thing is that behind these historical events, there's a prophetic message being said, something emanating in the spirit from the words, the names of the places that are being mentioned here. And that's what we want to talk about a bit. So the first place that is mentioned is Assos here. And | |
| And you could say they're starting in Troas. So we're going to go to the notepad that we have here, and we're going to start typing out the names of the places that are going to be mentioned as Paul is traveling from Troas towards Jerusalem. We'll look at the first few places that will be mentioned in the next few verses. So Troas is where he starts. | |
| And then he goes to Assos. And we saw in the previous video, if I remember correctly, we talked about the meaning of the name Troas. And I might still have it here in one of these tabs. So I think it's right here. Nope, not this one. It's this one. Yeah, so Troas comes from Troy. And Troy, it says here in this website behind the name.com, | |
| It says originally from a surname that denotes a person from the city of Troyes in France, T-R-O-Y-E-S. It is now more likely used in reference to the ancient city of Troy that was besieged by the Greeks in Homer's Iliad. The city's name from Greek, Troya, is said to derive from its mythical founder, Tros, but is more likely of local | |
| Luwian, I'm not sure how to pronounce that, L-U-W-I-A-N, Luwian or Hittite origin. So the meaning is unclear and that even emphasizes the Hittite connection because the meaning is kind of hidden, masked, and the Hittite spirit is the spirit of the invisible, of deception, | |
| of hidden things, of stealth operations, as we share on the Hittites article on the Shema Elam website. And that all is derived from the meaning of the name, as we shared there. So Troas is connected to Hittite deception. That's in a negative sense, because Troas was, in a positive sense, the place from where Paul launched | |
| was launched by God, Paul and Silas were launched into Europe, into the heart of Gentile territory, away from the Jews. But this time Troas has a negative connotation because it's the place from where Paul is kind of regressing from his earlier jump into Europe, if that makes sense, because his heart is just headed for Jerusalem and we'll see what's drawing him. | |
| We know it's the spirit of Solomon, the spirit of elitism, that still wants to differentiate between Jews and Gentiles, and that there's a certain group of people that are a little bit better than the rest, and the rest can catch the overflow of the blessings, but the brunt of the blessings has to go to the elite people. And even though Paul was open to preaching to the Gentiles, he's | |
| He always had that little thing where it's like 51% had to go to the Jews and 49 to the Gentiles. He was willing to give up to 49, but the Jews had to have the majority in some way. And he just could not let go of that. And that's what was driving him away from the Gentiles and back to Jerusalem. So, and some people might say, well, | |
| It says that he was determined in the spirit. But we'll see what that means when we get to another verse later on. Because it does sound from that verse we read, I believe, a little earlier. That it was God prompting him to go to Jerusalem. The spirit of God. And the answer is yes and no. It is a little bit complicated. | |
| And we'll see hopefully what exactly was going on there. But the thing is, he was being driven towards Jerusalem, driven by a deception. And as he was being driven to Jerusalem, he was opening a door for a deception to come into the church. And that's what God is describing here. There's a deception coming. He's being driven by deception into Jerusalem. | |
| And as he's being driven by that, then a door is opening spiritually for deception to come into the church, if that makes sense. So then as this deception is coming, then the first place that Paul arrives at is Assos, and he arrives there by foot. So he establishes a foot linkage. | |
| a land linkage between Troas and Essos, whereas the ones accompanying him decided to leave Troas altogether, get on a ship and go to Essos. Paul decided to go to kind of link them. And I believe that's the main direct reason why God prompted him to go by foot. It's as if to establish that these two go together. | |
| So the question is, what does Assos mean? And when you see what Assos means, I think it becomes a little clearer what God is beginning to say. Assos means approaching. So let's put this here. Hittite deception is approaching. That's what God is saying. When he links Troas and Assos by foot, Paul is like in a performance art | |
| kind of way saying Hittite deception is approaching. And he's opening the door for that, but he's being driven | |
| god to to explain to the world the consequences of his attitude in his heart towards the jews of not letting go of them uh okay so um as you can see i i know this might be uh you might call this a coincidence but um you could say that um it's interesting that both cities have uh the same number of letters and i think uh | |
| Obviously, this is in the Latin alphabet, but I think that applies also in in the Greek alphabet that they have five letters each. So and I think that's not. Yeah, that's more than a coincidence. Five is the number of ministerial grace. So it's almost as if to say there's a ministerial spirit of deception. The minister, you know, that concept of ministers and laymen that the spirit of Solomon promotes. | |
| And it's as if to say the ministers are some people are going to call themselves ministers and and separate themselves from the layman and consider themselves slightly superior, just like the Jews consider themselves slightly superior to the Gentiles. OK, so as so a deception is approaching. | |
| And I feel like there's more that the things we're about to say have a power that goes even beyond just understanding what happened to the church and what was happening to Paul. I believe in my heart that as we release these words, that we can also, all of you who are listening and watching and us here, that we can somehow | |
| expose deception that's approaching in other circumstances, if that makes sense. So people who are opening a door of deception and the deception is approaching, it's coming because of that door being opened. And we pray that as we are sharing these things, that that's going to get exposed in different places, different circumstances in the name of Jesus. | |
| okay so we're going to go back here and keep reading so we've been reading verse 13 and so he arrives Paul he arrives at Assos and then verse 14 and when he met with us at Assos we took him in and came to Mytilene now | |
| We took him in, I wonder what that word is in Greek, ana lambano, we embraced him. Lambano means embrace, and ana means between, I think, or amongst, if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, amongst them, it's like they embraced him into them, to be amongst them. So yeah, that kind of goes with what the phrase in English took him in kind of conveys. | |
| And then he and then came to me to lean if that's how you pronounce it So I'm going to to type it here me to lean me to lean I think it's how it's spelled in English with a Y an I and a Y Metylene or Metylene and if we go look at the meaning of this it says | |
| uh, metalene means, uh, mutilated, which is kind of very peculiar meaning mutilated. And it says that it comes from mutilene, uh, meaning abounding in shellfish. So, uh, so it, it says that it, um, it means mutilated and that it's connected to, uh, abounding in shellfish. Um, now, | |
| I don't have much understanding on what the shellfish might represent, but I get the feeling that, um, the impression in my heart is that, um, uh, shellfish, uh, is a, is a figure of impurity. Um, I believe that, uh, shellfish were part of the, um, kind of, uh, uh, creatures | |
| or animals whatever that you could not eat in the Torah according to the law of Moses that God established through him for the Israelites that they were not that this animal was supposed to be considered unclean I could be wrong on this but that's the impression I get that shellfish is an unclean animal | |
| and uh but spiritually speaking in this context i'm not saying that it's a sin to eat shellfish but what it's representing spiritually that's what we're talking about here again if you feel okay with eating shellfish it's between you and the lord i i have no say in it i i can't eat shellfish because i'm allergic to seafood and that also maybe adds a little bit to my sense that shellfish is um unclean there's something um | |
| Like oysters and clams, things like that. There's something unclean about them in a spiritual sense. But some people can eat them and they're fine with it. But the thing is, it's abounding in something unclean and something that mutilates you, that deforms you. | |
| That that that cripples you that that cuts off cuts you off and prevents you being all that you can be So so what God is saying is that this as this hit type deception is approaching it's going to produce mutilation of of spiritual callings and and uncleanness Abounding in uncleanness. So that's that's what God is | |
| warning about um and then um so let's keep up and let's see if i have i believe i have a um if i can find it um amongst all these tabs um let's go one by one i apologize here um let's see here uh no this is a different one uh different one | |
| Okay. So I don't think I had a yes. So yeah, I think that's all we have to say on, on, on Mitalin. Oh yes. Now I remember. Yeah, it's right here. It's actually, this is the tab that I was, no, this is not the tab. Um, okay. Where was it? I guess we'll have to go look for it, uh, manually. Um, yeah, let's do that. So, um, | |
| We're going to go to Wikipedia and search for Mytilene. They actually spell it with a Y first. Y and then I. But regardless, that's secondary. Mytilene, it says here, it's the first thing that hits me when I read this. It's the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos and its port. | |
| And let's see in the map here. So it's like right off the coast of Turkey, but it's a Greek island. And it's right here. So this is where they were in Mytilene, which is kind of a little island off the western coast of Turkey here, of modern-day Turkey. | |
| And as you can imagine, the thing that hit me was that this is the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos. So the whole island is called Lesbos. And as you know, I don't have to explain too much, but that Lesbos is where you get the name, the word lesbian. That's where it came from. And the question is why is there a connection between this island | |
| and the word lesbian. And, um, I had to do a search on that if I can find it here. Um, let's see, how can I find it quickly? Um, yeah, they, yeah, I'll have to search for something like this. Nope. Oh, and I apologize. It's not in this article. In fact, you have to go to the article on lesbos | |
| There we go. So if we go to Lesbos here, then Lesbos is the name of the island. And if we do a search here on this word. Yes, here. In English and most other European languages, including Greek, the term lesbian is commonly used to refer to homosexual | |
| This use of the term derives from the poems of Sappho, apparently this is a woman, a female poet, who was born in Lesbos and who wrote with powerful emotional content directed toward other women. So it was very passionate, a pathos would be the word in Greek, a lot of pathos, a powerful emotional content directed towards other women. | |
| Um, so, so we can see here that this is, uh, methylene is connected to, to, uh, lesbianism and in a negative sense, spiritually. And what does this all imply? What is lesbianism? It's women trying to be men, uh, uh, and acting as if they don't need men anymore. Uh, | |
| And that's what the spirit of lesbianism conveys. And so you can see that spiritually, this is referring to the rise of the pastoral matriarchy. Because as we've said so many times, pastor and teacher are female ministries. And the pastoral matriarchy consists of these females who | |
| trying to rule over the body of Christ, the body of God's people, the body of believers, as if they were males. And they try to cut out the maleness. It's like we don't need maleness anymore. We don't need men. We can be satisfied without men. We can live without them. | |
| And that's the spirit that the pastoral matriarchy promotes. It's a form of less spiritual lesbianism. What the church practices nowadays is a form of lesbianism. These effeminate, and I say spiritually, in a spiritual sense, these effeminate ministers who stand on the pulpits, at the pulpit and preach, | |
| And preach this message of a feminine pastoral weakness That that is and they pretend like they're like that their spirit in other words that they're male That's a form of lesbianism It the church is practicing spiritual lesbianism and and that's what began to approach as This door was opening | |
| So Hittite deception was coming, was approaching, and it was approaching with a mutilation of the spiritual calling of God's people. And a contamination, a shellfish contamination with lesbianism. In other words, the female ministries trying to act male and rule over the house of God. | |
| Okay, and then the next place that they went to, if we go back here. All right, so verse 15, and we sailed thence, Acts 20 verse 15, and we sailed thence and came the next day over against Kios or Kios, however you want to pronounce it. I would say Kios, which I think is closer to the Greek, I believe. | |
| against Kios and the next day we arrived at Samos and tarried at Trogyllium and the next day we came to Miletus or Miletus however you want to pronounce it and so as you can see they had we had gone slowly you know we started at Troas we slowly went to Assos from Assos we went slowly into Mytilene but then we we hit verse | |
| 15 and then suddenly uh boom boom boom boom of four places are named in succession um so it's like okay the hittite deception is coming troas uh it's approaching assos uh and then uh that deception as his approaches comes to mutilate uh and and and to uh make the believers abound in impurity and to uh promote | |
| Spiritual lesbianism where the pastor and teacher ministries become the dominant ones the female ministries become the dominant ones and once that is Once that is in place then boom boom boom boom four things happen very quickly So, um, the next place that was mentioned was Chios and then the verse mentions samos and then troll | |
| gillium i think it's how you spell it and then uh meletus or my leaders so now the question is what do these uh names represent um and and we'll see that it's kind of like a mixed bag of things so uh uh so let's look at the first name uh Chios so Chios uh means um let's click here it means | |
| uh, snowy. I'm sorry. I apologize. Um, so, um, uh, so let's go to, um, uh, okay. Chios means, um, snowy. All right. So, uh, the interesting thing, uh, with snowy is that, um, | |
| It says here of uncertain derivation, but I found that a little bit intriguing. It's almost like a mistake because they should have linked it to the word for snow, which does appear in scripture and is kind of almost identical to this one. So and I found that by accident, I decided to do a search on snow, the word in English to see if it appears in in in the Greek text of scripture disappear a great deal in in the Hebrew text, as you can see here. | |
| but you have to scroll down. And it's very peculiar that the word snow only appears three times in the Greek text of scripture. In Matthew once, in Mark once, and then in Revelation once. And now the question becomes, is this like, because we're searching in English, so do these words, are these really snow in the Greek? And are they the same in all three verses? | |
| here that we're looking here at the bottom. So let's check. So let's go to the first verse that has snow in it, Matthew 28:3, to see what snow is in the Greek, in the original text. And it's kion. And as you can see, it's almost like kios. So I don't know why they said of uncertain derivation in the entry for kios. But the thing is, kios comes from this word, kion. Clearly, you know, it's almost identical. | |
| So kion means snow, and lo and behold, yes, it is the same word in all three verses that say snow in English. So it was consistently translated as snow, and it's the same word here in all three. But let's look at the three verses very quickly. Matthew 28:3. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow. So this is talking about the Lord. | |
| And given this Matthew 28, it must be when the Lord is narrating what happened after the Lord resurrected. So this is the resurrected Lord appearing to the disciples. His countenance was like lightning and his raiment quite as snow. And then Mark 9:3, it's almost, I think, the same. Well, this is a similar description, but at a different time. | |
| Mark 9:3 says, and his raiment became shining, exceeding white as no, so as no fuller on earth can quite them. And clearly this is talking about what we call the transfiguration when the Lord Jesus transformed and he spoke to Moses and Elijah and three of the disciples were nearby and they saw the whole thing. | |
| So here his raiment was exceeding white as snow, just like it was here in Matthew 23. And then in Revelation 1:14, it says, that's at the start of Revelation, that John says his head and his hairs were white like wool and white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. So obviously all three times that snow is mentioned is in the context of | |
| of the manifestation of the glory of God in the flesh of Yeshua, in his body. So you can say that this snowy word, which points to kion meaning snow, points in turn to snow. | |
| to Matthew 20 Matthew 28 3 Mark 9 3 I think it was Revelation 1 14 and they're all connected to the manifestation of the glory of God in in in the son of man and | |
| So it's God manifesting his glory through us. So this has a positive connotation. I don't see how this could be a negative thing. But you say, oh, well, how can you have a mixture of things here? But we'll see. So let's continue with Samos, the next name. So if we go back to the | |
| The verse, which was Acts 20. Acts 20:15. The next place is Samos. And let's see what it means. Samos means, it says here, a sandy bluff. | |
| So I'll just write it here, but I'll be very frank. When I saw that translation, I just wasn't very convinced. So let's see if we can find something different here that provides a little more detail on what the name could mean, Samos. But just before we do that, | |
| let's look at here i i did a search on what the word bluff is um because when i think of bluff you know it's like when someone is bluffing um in in poker or something but um obviously bluff has a has another meaning as a noun um and here you can see the in this dictionary uh the cambridge dictionary they they say that | |
| Bluff as a noun can mean a cliff or a very steep bank and they have an image of a bluff here. So so that's a bluff. And so supposedly Samos means a sandy bluff or kind of a bluff like this one, only very sandy. But now let's look for what it could possibly mean in a different context. So let's see if I can. | |
| if I can find it. Let's see. I think we'll have to do a search again. So let me type meaning name Samos and we get this. So the Bing Copilot search result here says the name | |
| Samos means height, elevation, or exalted place, reflecting both the island's mountainous terrain and its cultural prominence. The name Samos originates from the Greek island of the same name in the Aegean Sea, with its etymology tracing back to several possible sources. The most widely accepted theory connects it to the Phoenician word sama, meaning height or elevated place, referencing the island's mountainous profile and prominent position in the sea. | |
| Another interpretation links it to the Semitic root sama, meaning to be high or rejoice, which conveys a sense of exaltation or joy. Some scholars also suggest a pre-Greek substrate term associated with hills or elevation. So it's connected to elevation, and some believe that it's connected to the Hebrew word sama, and for some reason I get the Semitic word sama, | |
| And I get this sense that there is a truth to that. And so let's just write it here. So it's connected to Sandy Bluff. It's connected also to height or elevated place. And it's connected to Sama, a Semitic word meaning to rejoice. | |
| Some of you may recall that we've seen a word like this a long, long time ago in this video series on Song of Songs, chapter 3, verses 6-11, and we'll go to it very quickly here. Let's go to the Blue Letter Bible, and let's go back to Song of Songs. I know this series is called Song of Songs, chapter 3, verses 6-11, and we haven't been there for a while, but we've kind of spun off of it. | |
| We've been there spiritually. Not literally. But let's go to Psalms 3 verse 10. I think that's where it is. It's actually verse 11. It says. Go forth. O ye daughters of Zion. And behold. King Solomon with the crown. For with his mother crowned him. In the day of his espousals. And in the day of the gladness of his heart. And the word gladness. Is. Simha. And that's. | |
| connected to the word sama, if I'm not mistaken. So simcha means gladness or they can translate it as joy, mirth or gladness. And let's see, it says here it comes from another word. So I'm clicking on that word and you can see it's samea, it's sama. It's basically the same word that's being mentioned in that Bing search result that we just read. So | |
| And if I click further here, just for absolute certainty and clarity, the word Sama is in Greek. The word Simcha that we see in the day of his gladness is from Sama. So what the Lord is saying here is that what's coming is the day of the gladness of Solomon. | |
| And that's not a good thing, as you may recall if you've been watching all these videos in this series. That day of the gladness of Solomon is referring, when we studied it, when we looked at it in detail, we saw that it's referring to Solomon seeking happiness in this earthly realm. | |
| like living life to be happy or to be glad instead of fulfilling God's purposes. That's what the day of the gladness of Solomon represents. And that's what the spirit of Solomon breathes, or I don't know if that's the word, injects into the church, into the body of Christ, into the body of believers. It injects this idea that, yeah, we are the ministers. | |
| We are the elite. We come in with the spirit of Solomon, of Solomonic elitism. And we are here to kind of give you the spiritual stuff you need so that you can live a happy, contented life where your conscience is more or less satisfied that you're kind of doing religious stuff and kind of pleasing God in some way. | |
| But you can go on with your own secular life. We'll take care of the spiritual stuff for you. And we'll provide you the spiritual tools so that you can lead a happy life. And that's what the church becomes obsessed with. And that's what Samos represents. And it's interesting. I know this is not a coincidence that Samos happens to be the place that is famous for being where Pythagoras... | |
| and another fellow called Epicurus were born. And we'll see that here. If we go to the, if I can find it, if we go to the article on, well, on Samos, I don't think I have it open here, but let's start with Epicurus. This is the Wikipedia article on Epicurus. He was a Greek philosopher. | |
| And he was born, as you can see here, in Samos, in that island. So he's one of two very famous people born in Samos, Epicurus and the other one was Pythagoras. And so it says here, Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded the philosophical school of Epicureanism, which teaches that management of one's desires, removal of unnecessary fears, | |
| Friendship and virtuous living lead to a pleasant life and constant happiness, the highest good. So Epicureanism saw happiness as the highest good. So it's all about living a happy life. So, yeah, it talks about managing one's desires. So it's not like, you know, just pursuing your pleasures. To him, living a pleasant life was not necessarily pursuing one pleasure. | |
| after another in a kind of, in a sort of, | |
| runaway orgy kind of way. But he was against that because he felt that that minimized your happiness in the long term. So it was always about, you know, living a happy life. And virtuous living was, whatever virtuous living you live was so that you could pursue a happy life or achieve a happy life. | |
| And so it seems to have good qualities to it because it's kind of promoting some sort of virtuous living and not just allowing yourself to be overridden by your desires and controlled by them. But it's always geared towards being happy. And we'll see here if we read more about him. | |
| And you say, why are we reading about Epicurus? Epicurus was born in Samos. Paul arrived in Samos on his way back to Jerusalem. And God mentioned Samos for a reason. And God is saying, I want you to understand the spirit of what Samos represents because that's what's coming into the church as Paul is going to Jerusalem. So let's see if I can find it here, more details about his philosophy. | |
| And a lot of it is very good stuff. And you have to remember, this was a Greek philosopher. And I should have checked when he was born. He was born in 341 BC. And thankfully, it says BC here without the blasphemous E that they add sometimes. So he was born in 341 BC. And I'm not sure if that's around the time of Alexander the Great. | |
| I'm not sure, but it feels like it's around that time. But the thing is, he was born way before Christ, 300 plus years before Christ. And a lot of his stuff is very good, you could say. And it's like someone who is close to the truth, but it's kind of got derailed at the end by something, the happiness part. So here it says Epicurus believed in an eternal universe. | |
| anything that comes into being must come from something that exists all that is destroyed does not cease to exist but all that exists always will um so uh so he believed in in something eternal he was not uh like a materialistic person um and and then he talked um and he he believed in atoms and he believed that atoms could occasionally swerve randomly out of their usual path without the swerving motion | |
| atoms would never collide with each other from their parallel trajectory downwards. Epicurus argued that the swerve, which was abstinent in Democritus's earlier atomic theory, was also what accounted for humanity's free will. So it's a bit of a quirky stuff here, but in essence, he believed that the world was made of atoms and that atoms could have this occasionally unexpected swerve, like swerve randomly, and that that | |
| explained humanity's free will so he believed in some randomness some intangible element that produced randomness that led to free will so he didn't believe in determinism like materialistic determinism that just believes that we're all like machines and we're going to do what we're going to do because we're just chemical reactions and those are always deterministic you know exactly what's going to happen | |
| So he didn't believe that he did believe in human and something intangible. And he had explained it away, explained it by talking about this atomic swerve thing. I believe there's something of truth in that spiritually speaking. Like, and there's like, I believe a manifestation of that swerving in the physical world because of our free will, because of the intangible soul and spirit. There is, | |
| a swerve going on in the physical realm because of it. I know it in my being. So he's kind of getting close to spiritual truths here. And he said, Epicurus also believed that senses relied on atoms, which were constantly being emitted from every object. Atoms themselves, which only had size, shape, and weight, did not possess the qualities perceived by the senses. | |
| So just read this and blah, blah, blah. But okay, so let's keep reading here. So he believed to make judgments about the information we receive. There were three criteria of truth. So this man was thinking, what is the truth and how do you get to it? This is the man seeking the truth, a Greek. And that's one of the reasons why God went to the Greeks | |
| That's why God raised up Alexander to prepare the world to understand Greek so that the gospel would be preached in Greek because there was something about the Greeks. They were searching for the truth in a very special way. That's why God reached out to them. That's why God wanted Paul to preach to the Greeks, not to the Jews. But Paul just wasn't getting it. But let's keep reading here. We're not going to focus on criteria of truth that | |
| Epicureus believed in. We just want to get to kind of where things go wrong. And here's where things start going wrong. Epicureus was a hedonist. And I must say that when I studied philosophy at university, I remember that I got ingrained in my head that Epicureanism meant hedonism. | |
| And yes, technically Epicurus was a hedonist and hedonist is, you know, someone who, you know, the word is we connected to someone who seeks pleasure all the time. So, you know, people who believe in orgies and things like that, you know, just just seeking pleasure like a crazy dog. But Epicurus was a hedonist technically because he his philosophy was about about living a pleasant life. | |
| pleasurable life a life you know that that that doesn't have suffering that is comfortable and all that but he it's not that he believed in orgies and things like that so he was a hedonist in a technical term a sense but but not in the sense that we attribute to that word nowadays but I it's interesting in my head I always confused him with hedonism like outright hedonism but but that's not what he he preached necessarily so | |
| Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is the only good and what is painful is the only evil. So it's like shying away from pain. And those of you who've read some of the articles on the website and read or listened to these recordings, I'm pretty sure you know exactly what spirit that is. The spirit that says pain is no good and avoid pain at all costs, that's the Canaanite spirit. | |
| As we've described so many times, the Canaanite spirit is the pastor gone bad. That's why pastors are anti-judgment because judgment causes pain and they don't want pain. So they shy away from judgment. So you can see that there's a Canaanite contamination here. Subtle, but it's there because it's wrapped up in a lot of virtue and a lot of good things, but there's a Canaanite spirit behind the scenes. | |
| because it's a spirit that says, you need to avoid pain. Your goal in life is to have a comfortable, pleasant existence on earth. So then it says here, for his ethical system, you would redefine pleasure as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning untroubledness. So pleasure in the sense of absence, he defined it as a negative. Instead of defining what pleasure is, | |
| He said, pleasure is the opposite of suffering. So if you don't suffer, then you have pleasure. That's what I mean. That's how Epicurus would say it. And so humans were supposed to seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning untroubleness, a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. Okay, so then this contrast with Stoicism and Aristotelianism and Platonism | |
| which considered virtue or virtuous activity the highest good. So see, the thing is, the highest good for him is pleasure. Pleasure means no pain. But to the other guys, the Stoics, the Aristotelians, and the Platonists, the highest good was not pleasure. It was doing the right thing, the virtuous activity. So Epicurus believed in living a virtuous life, but it was in order to avoid pain. | |
| if that makes sense. So it sounds good, but the goal is wrong. So it says, Epicurus took the view, I'm reading here, Epicurus took the view that the virtues rather than being goods in and of themselves are instrumental and essential goods to live a pleasant life. Virtues | |
| a means to an end, not an end in itself. The Lord says, seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things shall be added unto you. So if you live, you seek a life of righteousness, God in the long term will give you the other things, the good life or whatever. In the long term, societies that live righteously | |
| tend to have societies that are more pleasant to live in. You know, look at, for example, black neighborhoods. They have shied away or they've completely gone away from pursuing or preaching a life of righteousness in the young men and women. So they follow hedonism in a lot of these neighborhoods and these black ghettos and all that. | |
| And that's why they smoke so much cannabis and all that, because it's just this pursuit of pleasure for pleasure sake. And then you have all the gun violence, all the murders, all the poverty, all the despair that come with that. So but you go to a white neighborhood and white suburban neighborhood and things are different. You know, life is more peaceful, more calm. Why? Because those groups, those | |
| have chosen to live a more virtuous life. And then the overflow of that is a pleasant neighborhood and all that. So in the long term, if you seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness, all these other things shall be added unto you. But to Epicurus and the church, we're talking about the church. We're not just studying Greek philosophy here. God is pointing in scripture to all of this. | |
| So we would see it and say, hey, this is what the church will become. And it has become that. An Epicurean church. A church where pastors say, let's live a good life. Let's not commit the big sins. And let's just be a little pious and read our Bibles and go to church and | |
| and participate in church activities and all that and be kind of decent citizens. And it's all geared towards living a happy life. And that's what Joseph Prince and Joel Osteen and all these wolves in the church are preaching all the time. And they sincerely believe it. You know, it's not like they're like saying, you know, ha, ha, ha. | |
| we're deceiving all of them. They sincerely believe it, but the spirit that moves in them is a wolf spirit, even though they are not aware of it. And it's that spirit that promotes, that lulls people into a state of seeking pleasure. Just live a good life, live a happy life. And that's why, and then the focus on, yeah, use your faith to minimize your pain. | |
| that's what faith becomes a tool for. Faith is a means to an end, to live a happy life. God wants you to have a happy life and use your faith, pray to God whenever you have a problem, for God to take the problem away from you because that's the goal in life, to live as happily as possible. Okay, and then it says here, Epicureans had a very specific understanding of what the greatest pleasure was. | |
| And the focus of their ethics was on the avoidance of pain rather than the seeking out pleasure, arguing that pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all sources of pain in either mind or body. OK, so again, it's not an outright hedonism. Just seek pleasure like a crazy dog. But but it's a subtle form of accepting that. | |
| You lived your purpose in life is to find pleasure, live a pleasurable life and to avoid pain. And when you start going that route, then you you become a feminized because you become you you're driven away from God's male judgment and male prophetic sacrifice and male evangelistic conquest. Because if you're all you're seeking is a happy life, you're not going to you're not going to go to war. | |
| You know, it's like a like a person says, yeah, I want I want to have a family and this, that, the other. And I don't want to join the army because, you know, that's a very rough life. And so, yeah, I'm just going to live my regular life. And not that there's anything wrong with that in the sense of, you know, if you're not if you're calling from God is not to be in the army, then you shouldn't be there. But the point is spiritually, you are soldier. | |
| And we are to be in God's army. We are to be part of Joel's army. So if all your goals in life are just to be happy and seek pleasure in your life, then you will not go to war. So you become a feminine. You become pastoral and teacher. When we say feminine, we're spiritually referring to the pastor and teacher ministries. You become pastoral. You become teacherly. | |
| Living by teacherly traditions and seeking out pastoral pleasantness. But you won't be doing apostolic judgments. You won't be doing prophetic sacrifice. Or prophetic defiance of paradigms. Of human paradigms. And you won't be doing evangelistic warfare and conquest. The three male ministers will be gone from you. You become effeminized. Okay. And then there's some... | |
| description here of the two types of pleasure, kinetic pleasure and catastrophic pleasure. And I'm sure there's spiritual significance to it, but I feel like, yeah, I guess I'm not, we're not supposed to go into that because the point is not to, to study Epicureanism too much, but just to get a sense of it. Um, | |
| of what God is saying through the word Samos. Samos means, you know, the island that Paul landed in points to Epicureanism. That's a place that had a spirit that promoted the rise of Epicureanism. Or you could say that Epicureus was born 300 years plus before Paul ever showed up. And so the spirit of Epicureus was in the island. | |
| when he was there and, and, and, and, and when he arrived, there's like God saying, this is what's coming into the church as Paul is regressing. Um, and then, um, and Pythagoras, let's just go very quickly to read about Mr. Pythagoras. Uh, and we all know he's famous for, uh, for the Pythagorean theorem. Um, and, uh, but, but he, he, uh, um, | |
| He's actually a philosopher and you think of him because of, you know, in the context of the Pythagorean theorem, but he really was more than that. He was a philosopher. He preached about a whole bunch of stuff. And here he was born in Samos as well in the same island in 570 BC. So that was over 200 years before Epicurus. | |
| And he was, it says here, an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and polymath. And polymath meaning, you know, someone who delves in a whole bunch of stuff. So he delved in philosophy and mathematics and I think sciences and stuff like that. So, and he says here, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Gratia, | |
| you know, in Greece, in the Greek speaking territories, because Greece was not a country, you know, it became a country until much, much, much later in history. Before that, it was just a whole bunch of little city states. But Magna Grecia, I guess, refers to the whole Greek speaking region of, you know, but actually it says here is the historical Greek speaking area of southern Italy. | |
| because the Greeks took over the Southern Italy. That's why a lot of people in Southern Italy and Sicily, their genetic DNA is very consistent with Greek DNA because there was a lot of Greek kind of mixing, mingling, Greeks and Italians in Southern Italy because the Greeks actually had conquered territory in Italy. So, okay. | |
| And so he influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and through them, Western philosophy. So he was very influential. And let's see if we can find something here. What I wanted to read, let's see. Yeah, let's go. | |
| here and then we'll go to the article on pythagoreanism so in early christianity there's a section here uh called in early christianity and we're looking here at the the wikipedia article on pythagoras so it says here many early christians had a deep respect for pythagoras um eusebius uh was a um christian from um living between 260 more or less and 340 a.d | |
| In the third century, third to fourth century, this Eusebius fellow, who was the bishop of Caesarea, praises Pythagoras against Heracles for his rule of science, his frugality, his extraordinary morality, and his wise teachings. In another work, Eusebius compares Pythagoras to Moses, | |
| one of his letters the church father jerome um who was from uh like 347 to to 420 ad so um uh like third of third to sorry um i'm saying the century is wrong i think eusebius was uh late the second half of the third century and into the fourth century jerome was like from the middle of the fourth century into | |
| the fifth century, 347 to 420 AD. This brother Jerome praises Pythagoras for his wisdom. And in another letter, he credits Pythagoras for his belief in the immortality of the soul, which he suggests Christians inherited from him. Kind of a stupid thing to say. Then Augustine of Hippo, who was from around that same time period, | |
| 354 to 430 AD, rejected Pythagoras' teachings of metempsychosis without explicitly naming him, but otherwise expressed admiration for him. This metempsychosis thing I was reading here in this article is the idea that Pythagoras had that first he believed in an eternal soul. You have to think about this. This was a Greek guy in the 6th century B.C., | |
| you know, in the 500s before Christ. And he was aware of, they were, the Greeks had a, like, they were looking for the truth and they were aware that there was a soul in man. And they believed it was eternal. And they call it the psuche, P-S-Y-C-H-E, as we spell it out in English when it's Latinized. So they believed in the psuche, in the, in the, | |
| And this soul that was eternal. Now, where Pythagoras went a little bit astray is that he believed that, you know, when someone died, the soul had to go somewhere. He said, you know, the soul cannot, because it's eternal, it's not destroyed. So he believed the soul lived past the death of the body. But then he had a problem in his head. And he said, where does that soul go? And he just assumed, it just occurred to him, oh, the soul must go to another body. | |
| So basically, you know, another way of saying it is that he believed in reincarnation. But so the thing is that that's what the that's the fancy name here, metempsychosis. But so he criticizes that this Augustine of Hippo rejected Pythagoras's teaching of metempsychosis without explicitly naming him, but otherwise expressed admiration for Pythagoras. | |
| In On the Trinity, that's the name of a book that he wrote, Augustine, this Augustine of Hippo, lauds the fact that Pythagoras was humble enough to call himself a philosophos, or lover of wisdom rather than a sage. In another passage, Augustine defends Pythagoras' reputation, arguing that Pythagoras certainly never taught the doctrine of metempsychosis. | |
| But the point here is that in the early church, the church that was beginning to get very strongly contaminated by the spirit of Solomon, in that church, these people from the 3rd to 4th and 5th centuries, these people were very, very... They found Pythagoras very praiseworthy. | |
| And notice here, Eusebius compares Pythagoras to Moses. So Pythagoras, again, was a person who was seeking the truth, who was seeking morality and righteousness. And that's why he had a lot of teachings that this Eusebius guy called extraordinary morality and wise teachings. And so... | |
| So again, it's that search for kind of a moral life, but without transcending into the spirit, into the realm of the spirit. And so he is like an understanding of morality, but at the soul level. And that's what the church has. The church has a Pythagoras spirit in it. | |
| You know, when they when they teach to live a moral life and don't commit adultery, don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other, be a good citizen. That's that's kind of Pythagoras, the spirit of Pythagoras. But it's all at the soul level. Be good little souls. And. But but and because Pythagoras didn't understand the spirit and didn't really, you know, link up with God. | |
| in the full sense of, you know, of linking up with God, then he had to believe that the souls reincarnated. And let me see if I can find something here. I apologize. | |
| Yes, okay, let me just see if I can find it here. There was something I felt I needed to mention. Oh yes, here it is. So going back to Epicurus, the other guy from the island of Samos, here in the article in Wikipedia on Epicurus, | |
| There's a section that's very, very interesting when I found it. It says here, the Epicurean paradox. The Epicurean paradox is a version of the problem of evil. Lactantius, Lactantius, kind of an odd name. Lactantius attributed this trilemma to Epicurus in his book, The Irade. So this is what Lactantius wrote. And | |
| This is an early Christian author who became an advisor to Roman Emperor Constantine, it says here, Constantine I, guiding his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence, and a tutor to his son Crispus. His most important work is the Institutionist Divini, or something. So this was a Christian guy from the time of Constantine when Constantine was consolidating | |
| the fall of the Christian church into the spirit of Solomon, you know, full blown when it became official. And this is what this fellow wrote. God, he says, either wishes to take away evils and is unable or he's able and is unwilling or he's neither willing nor able or he is both willing and able if he's willing and is unable to | |
| He's feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God. If he's able and unwilling, he's envious, which is equally at variance with God. If he's neither willing nor able, he's both envious and feeble and therefore not God. And if he's both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils or why does he not remove them? It says here, although no extent writings of Epicurus contain this argument, it's possible that | |
| that some form of this argument may have been found in his lost treatise on the gods. However, since Epicurus did believe in the existence of gods, if he really did make some form of this argument, it would have been an argument against divine providence, the idea that gods interfere in the world. So the thing is that Epicurus did believe in divinity, but his understanding was like gods in general. | |
| uh and but the thing is he said they don't enter they don't intervene in the works of man so it's like man is here just to seek his own pleasure in his own life and the gods are elsewhere they're busy with other stuff they're not interested in messing with the things of this world um and then uh so so it's a message of um there there's nothing to fight for just to live | |
| yourself because the god gods are not the gods are not interested in this world so um it's like live as happily as you can uh and then it's interesting here it says epicurus rejected immortality he believed in the soul but he suggested that the soul is mortal and material just like the body um | |
| Epicurus rejected any possibility of an afterlife and contended that it's precisely for this reason that one need not fear death, blah, blah, blah. So the thing is that it's like limiting yourself to this realm. Yes, you know, there's some things higher up there, the gods, quote unquote, in his terminology. But they live in a separate world and you don't worry about them. | |
| And so, and then he said, you die, you die, and that's it. Now, Pythagoras thought that the souls were eternal, but then they would transition to another body. So, but the thing is, in all of that, like the sense that you get is that, how can I say it? Like, that there's something wrong with this world | |
| And you just have to just do as best you can in this world and then hope to leave it someday. And that's kind of what Epicurus and Pythagoras combined, you could say, believed in. So let's say, for example, here, going back to the Pythagoras article or Pythagoras, | |
| It says here, for Pythagoreans, the highest reward humans could attain was for their soul to join in the life of the gods and thus escape the cycle of reincarnation. So, yep, Pythagoras believed in reincarnation, but his thought was, we don't want to keep staying in this world. We want to go leave this world, go to that heavenly place where the gods exist. | |
| So whereas epicure said, you know, it's it's done one and done And and then there's nothing else Pythagoras did believe in this afterlife But it was the after in the afterlife you pursued getting away from this evil world I hope I'm making sense. It's like um | |
| Epicurus didn't believe that the gods interfered in this world because it's like his argument was if they interfered in this world, then then we would see that we would see no evil. So it's like there's a it's almost like what's the word fatalism about this world? This world is bad. It's evil. And, you know, it's it's. | |
| It's nothingness. It's just an unpleasant place to be in. Just try to live as pleasant a life as possible. And then aim and long for the higher pleasure of living outside of this world of so much trouble. And I hope you can see how everything we're saying right now is exactly what the church preaches. That's exactly what it is. | |
| Uh, the church does not believe in fighting to conquer this earth because there's nothing worth conquering. You know, the whole thing is let's get out. I guess let's get a part of my French, get the hell out of here. Uh, let's wait for the rapture spacecraft to get us out of this horrible place so we can be up in heaven forever and ever and ever. Um, that that's what, uh, | |
| uh the christian church preaches it's a mixture of epicureanism and pythagoreanism um it's this idea that you seek to live a happy life on earth and you hope to one day uh find complete happiness in the other world in the spiritual world so the spiritual world is just a place to escape to to be happier and that is part of what is so wrong with christianity | |
| The spirit of Solomon has made all of this happen. Because those who are the elite. The spirit of Solomon is the spirit of elitism. Creates the elite and the not so elite. The elite ministers. They are there to just lull you into a sense of living a happy life. There's nothing else to pursue. And we will guide you as good pastors. | |
| You're the sheep and we're going to guide you through the heartache and difficulties of this lonely world and we'll protect you from pain and suffering. We'll protect you from judgments and heartache as much as we can until we can get to that other greener pasture in the afterlife. That's all that Christianity is. | |
| And that's why the focus is just salvation, you know, get people to repeat the prayer, the salvation prayer. Okay. That guarantees, uh, they are, they won't be suffering in hell. So you, you get them away from one level of suffering. Now, the next thing is live a happy life in this world until you can, yeah, the God will take you out of this unpleasant world and you can be happy in the afterlife in heaven somewhere. So it's all about happiness. | |
| And that's what Samos represents. And that's what was coming in. That Hittite deception that was approaching had all of these elements. It had lesbianism, the mutilation of spiritual callings, the mangling and mutilation of the spiritual callings of God's people because the spiritual lesbianism was going to take over and mutilate the spiritual calling of God's people. | |
| so that they'll just see themselves as souls as female souls you know the soul is female the spirit is the spirit is male and we're talking spiritually uh here not literally uh when we say male and female so the thing is that um that's the mutilation coming in and then and then uh samos it's like this this uh um | |
| Seeking an elevated place away from the heart, the suffering of this world. While you wait, whilst you wait for God to take you to the happier place in the afterlife. And that's not Christianity. That's not what God calls us to live for. To live, to pursue having a happy family and a happy life and a comfortable life without too many diseases or poverty or heartache. | |
| Or we just run out the clock and wait to be taken to the happier place in the afterlife. That's not what God put us on earth for. We're not to pursue the day of the gladness of Solomon. It's all about just pursuing your happiness. But that's what the spirit that came into the church. Was coming into the church that was approaching as Paul was headed to Jerusalem. | |
| And then Trogyllium. And Trogyllium, so we have to go back to Acts 20. So let's hit the back button here. And so we're in Acts 20:15. The next place is Trogyllium. And Trogyllium makes me think of | |
| gilligan for some reason trogyllion gilligan's gilligan's island um trogyllion means uh a cache um it says the name of a town in a promontory of Ionia, not far from the island of Samos, at the foot of Mount My-cale, or "michael", between Ephesus and the mouth of the river Maeander, so it's Trogyllium, it says a cache, um | |
| And just to get a sense of where it is, if we go to the map here, Samos is right here, and then Trogyllium. Well, it's interesting, it's not mentioned here, not shown here in the map. Let's see, I believe we had another map here. Does it show up here? No, not at all, it's even more. | |
| sparse the naming of places here so I guess we'll just have to assume that Trogyllium is somewhere between Samos and Miletus so somewhere in this stretch here so let's okay so it means a cache and when I when I stumbled upon that I said Lord what is that and | |
| what I did was let's see if I have have it here somewhere still I don't think I left it here let me just close this one let me close | |
| this one let's do another search here on or let's use this one here meaning of the name sorry what's the name of it Trogyllium, Trogyllium, okay, so | |
| It says, according to Abarim publications, the name comes from the Greek verb trogo, meaning to consume or to wear holes into. This verb is related to troo and trosso, meaning to wound, and the noun trogle, meaning hole, from which troglodyte is derived. So, yeah, when you call someone a troglodyte, someone who came out of a hole, and I guess that's like a hole or a cave. | |
| So you can see that there's a connotation of a hole or a cave. And. OK, but so after doing that search, I felt prompted to look up, you know, what is a cache? And to be frank, it's like sometimes when I read some of the translations that they have in these strong concordance entries, you could say. | |
| For certain cities and places, I sometimes get a little suspicious because the name just sounds a little odd. So trogyllion means a cache, but if you go look it up separately, you get something that has to do with a cave or a hole. But I believe that there's a reason why. I don't know where they got cache from, but I believe it's not totally incorrect. Like there is a substance there. | |
| So let me go back to where we were a moment ago. I lost it here. I think it's here. Let me do a search on meaning of the word cache. Just the word cache. And that's, you know, when we've used the word, usually when we talk about cache, like with computers, you know, clear the cache. A cache is like a, | |
| It's like a place in memory, in some form of memory where you place stuff to have quick access to it. That's what cache usually refers to. But it's interesting when you look at here, for example, computing, it says an auxiliary memory from which high speed retrieval is possible. | |
| What I found interesting when I did this search is what it says here in number one, a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place. And I said, oh, cave. You know, when you hide a treasure in a cave. So a cache of good gold coins or an arms cache. And you go, yeah, yeah, cash. When you hear it, | |
| a cache used in that way, it has this feeling of something that was hidden, an arms cache, you know, someone stashed a whole bunch of of rifles and guns and all that stuff in some some kind of hidden place, an arms cache. It's almost like the word stash. So so you can see that the connotation is so we'll translate it here as a cache. | |
| It's a cave with a hidden treasure. That's what Trogyllium means. And that sounds like a good thing, you know, a cave with a hidden treasure. And yes, it's good. But we'll leave it at that. And we'll go to the next name. And we'll go back to this one, to Trogyllium. | |
| And to Chios, which we kind of skipped, the one that said snowy, that we saw was connected to a positive thing, the manifestation of the glory of God and the Son of Man. And again, we see something positive here, or at least looks positive, a cache, a place where you stash away a hidden treasure away from unrighteous hands, shall we say. But now let's go to Miletus. | |
| or Miletus or Miletus or however you want to pronounce it. So let's go there to Miletus or Miletus. Miletus. And Miletus means, it says here, pure white fine wool. So Miletus means pure white fine wool. | |
| But when I saw that, I said, I don't know. I just don't get where they get these translations from. And I get especially suspicious when it says here that the word is of uncertain origin. So I go, I don't know. If it's of uncertain origin, where do you get pure white fine wool from? But so because of the suspicion that | |
| grew in my mind. I said, let me just go look it up. And I have it here, meaning of the name Miletus in Bing. And Bing co-pilot returned with the name Miletus, likely derived from the ancient Greek Miltos, meaning red earth. And it's also associated with the mythological founder of the city of Miletus. So it's connected to red earth, | |
| It says here or red ochre. Possibly referring to the reddish soil of the region or the complexion of its early settlers from Crete. And then it says another interpretation links the name to the Greek noun mainly meaning honey, suggesting a symbolic or poetic origin related to sweetness or abundance now. So. | |
| And then it says here, in Greek mythology, Miletus was a legendary figure credited with founding the city of the same name. He's described as a son of Apollo and variously of names such as Aria or Akakalas, depending on the source. Some myths recount that Miletus was hidden in a bed of Smilax, a type of plant, | |
| And the child was named after this plant linking the name to natural elements. So notice the hiding of something. And the connection to Apollo. That Miletus was named after a Greek mythological figure who was a son of Apollo. So let's write it here. So there's a connection to, we saw red earth. | |
| that it could possibly mean red earth. And it also is connected to Miltos, who was the son of Apollo. And I don't know if I can see it here, if I can go back to where we were. But yeah, if we go to here, | |
| I went to do a search on Miletus in BehindTheName.com and noticed that's more or less the same thing that the Bing search result was saying. Possibly related to ancient Greek Myltos, meaning Red Earth, this was the name of a figure in Greek mythology who, according to legend, founded the Greek city of Miletus. In some accounts, he was the son of Apollo and then the father of Byblos and Cornus. | |
| C-A-U-N-U-S. Biblis and Caunus. So Apollo was the father of Biblis and Caunus. Well, I'll leave out Caunus because, to be frank, I have no understanding of what that could mean. So what is here? Miletus, pure white, fine wool. And this is kind of questionable. | |
| I really am not too clear how they got here with this. But if it is valid, the white wool kind of reminds me of Revelation 1:14 that we saw earlier here when looking at Chios. Because as you may recall, if we go to see that verse again, I'll open the Blue Letter Bible and go to Revelation 1:14, you will see that the Lord is described as | |
| having his head and his hairs being like white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire. So it's almost like a subtle reference again to the manifestation of the glory of God in the Son of Man, this pure white fine wool. And the red earth is in the Son of Man. In other words, it's in our red clay that we manifest this | |
| glory of God in the red clay of our earthly flesh, if that makes sense. So that's what I'm seeing, like again pointing to Revelation 1:14. So I'll just put it here. It's Revelation 1:14 being described again. And Miltus, Miltus being the son of Apollo, is the father of | |
| and apollo sounds a lot obviously like the name apollos that person that we saw appear out of nowhere in acts 18 coming out of alexandria appearing showing up in ephesus i think it was um and then um as you may recall we saw how it's like he represented something that that paul had stopped being so um | |
| And we saw that in Acts 19, God starts the chapter by saying, and as Apollo was in Corinth, then all these things happened. As if God was ascribing responsibility to Apollo for the things, the good things that were happening in Acts 19. It's like because of his presence, these things are beginning to happen. And it's like God was describing in Apollo's | |
| someone who was embodying what paul was discarding by holding on to the jews and embracing the spirit of solomon in a very subtle way if that makes sense and and the father of bible biblist you know you you see the word bible is or biblist and obviously it just takes you to the bible the father of | |
| of the of of biblist which is the bible it's like someone who who who brings the the bible back to life because it's been hidden away like like a treasure in a cave and had to be protected in that cave because the spirit of solomon was lurking outside | |
| I hope that makes sense. And that treasure also represents the remnant and the God potential in God's people having to be hidden away. The remnant being hidden away in a cave, protected. And that calling, that remnant spirit, remnant calling being protected so that the spirit of Solomon would not destroy it. That's the message that God is saying here. So as the spirit of Solomon was beginning to take over and Paul was aiding it by succumbing to it, | |
| this Hittite deception was coming, was approaching the church. And it's an, it was a deception, uh, uh, from the enemy that was going to mutilate it and turn it into, uh, and turn it over to spiritual lesbianism, being controlled by the female ministries of pastor and teacher. And then, uh, and big in beginning to abound, therefore in, in a lot of shellfish impurity and contamination. And, uh, but as that was happening, um, | |
| The manifestation of God's glory in the Son of Man, that snowy manifestation was there. It's like it was still there, not destroyed by the mutilation of Mytilene and the lesbianism of Mytilene. And as you may recall, lesbianism came here because Mytilene is the capital | |
| I'll just put it here as a side note, capital of Lesbos. The island of Lesbos, its capital was Mytilene, the place where Paul and the others arrived. So the thing is that as this is happening, the calling, the remnant calling is still there. It's like God's saying it's still there, the Chios calling. | |
| But even as a positive thing is mentioned here in between, then God goes negative again or expressing the negativity. The Samos place that and how shall we say it? If we had to be frank or if we had to ascribe a spirit to Mytilene and Samos, these two negative things that are sandwiching Chios, the snowy | |
| Good thing we would have I'd have to say that this is connecting connected to the Canaanite spirit Mitterly because it's lesbianism and obviously that's very Canaanite in nature Abounding an impurity of shellfish. That's because you hate judgments judgments are what purify you so it's all very Canaanite and Samos This elevated place of gladness and all that seeking | |
| living a good life, a life without too many turmoils and troubles and all that, that all points to the Girgashite spirit. And as we saw, the Girgashite spirit is the spirit of temporality. And Epicurus was so temporal that he believed that the soul disappeared when the body died. So that's how temporal he was. And then Pythagoras did not believe that, but he did believe that | |
| The idea was for the soul to finally get away from this bad, evil world. So it's. It's just. It's another form of the Girgashite spirit is just a little more subtle. But the thing is that so the Chios place is sandwiched in between the Canaanite and the Girgashite spirits. You know, the pastoral matriarchy, because the pastoral matriarchy is pastor and teacher controlling the church. | |
| and the pastor becomes a Canaanite and a teacher becomes a Girgashite. So let's put it like this. Canaanite pastor is Mytilene and Girgashite teacher is Samos. And it's interesting that when you see it that way, that even the translation of Samos as a sandy bluff makes sense because sandy makes you think of sand, obviously, and sand makes you think of dirt. | |
| and dirt makes you think of earth, and earth makes you think of Girgashite, something sandy. The Girgashite spirit is the spirit of dryness, and deserts that are very dry places are almost always or usually sandy places. So that's the thing here. And then it's like God is saying, | |
| As the lesbianism and the spirit of Epicureanism and Pythagoras escapism starts to take hold of the church, God is going to stash away his remnant in a cave. And the true spiritual meaning of scripture is going to be hidden from these men and women and put away in a safe place where they can't misuse it. That's Trogyllium. | |
| the cache, the cave with a hidden treasure. And then, uh, but then eventually that hidden treasure will be exposed, will be taken out. And that's Miletus. Uh, and, and, and then, uh, and it will be taken out, uh, through Apollo, the people with the spirit of Apollos who will re, uh, will, who will restore the true meaning of, of, of the Bible, of the Bible of scripture. | |
| and give it the true spiritual meaning it has. And then the church will be restored. So all these names have a negative kind of message, but they're telling a negative story with a positive hope embedded inside. And it even kind of describes Paul in a way, because Paul was this mixture of someone who was very spiritual, | |
| but at the same time was being taken by the spirit of Solomon in this, in this, uh, you know, journey to Jerusalem when, where he was, you know, re refusing to let go of his love for the Jewish people and his willingness to preach to them. Um, so, okay. So that's all that we, we, we can say from that, uh, those seven places, um, and, um, we'll | |
| um continue reading here you don't have much time left um yeah the next verse would be acts 2016 um it says for paul had determined to sail by ephesus because he would not spend the time in asia for he hasted if it were possible for him to be at jerusalem the day of pentecost so um | |
| and I think we mentioned this in the previous video and I had said I think that we had already read this but I had already read it earlier but I think we had not read it in the videos maybe we had but the thing is that this is we mentioned this in the context of Troas and the kid who Eutychus who died when he fell from the window from the third floor window and we said that he was not by the window because | |
| it was hot because um the the the time the time of the year uh you know does not kind of explain it because uh uh the pentecost is around may in our calendar i believe every year and um all these things were happening in the months prior to may so it was during winter time you could say um and and even in those parts of the world it gets colder you know in in | |
| in December and in the early parts of the year, not cold as New York or, you know, or Finland, but obviously, but it does get colder. And so that's why we were saying that Eutychus was not sitting by the window because it was so hot. And therefore, we can say he was sitting there because he was drawn to the darkness outside. | |
| And that's part of the message there. So as you can see here, when he went through this journey, Paul decided on his way towards Jerusalem to skip Ephesus. So he was in, let's see, just to kind of show where he was. So he was here in Miletus or Miletus. | |
| or Miletus, however you want to pronounce it, who knows. And Ephesus, as you can see here in the map, is up here. Samos is where we were a moment ago. He sailed into Miletus, and so he skipped Ephesus. So he had been in Ephesus earlier. From Ephesus he went up, and then he was going back, back towards Jerusalem, and that's when | |
| But on his way back, he skipped Ephesus. And he didn't want to stay there in Ephesus for too long because he was just yearning to get to Jerusalem by the Pentecost. And it's so ironic because, as you may recall, when he was going on his second journey, I think, when he was missionary journey, when he was on his way to Philippi, | |
| And he wanted to preach in Asia. And God said, don't. Don't preach in Asia. Just keep going. So he just went through Asia and got to Troas. And from Troas, he went into Philippi. And then he went into Europe and preaching to the Gentiles. So it's ironic now that in his heart, | |
| He wanted to preach in Asia, and I'm pretty sure that if he had had his way, he and Silas would have gone south into Asia, and they would have ended up in Ephesus. And yes, God wanted him to be in Ephesus at some point, but not at that point, especially because Ephesus would have distracted him. He would have gotten caught up there, and he might have never gone to Philippi, might have never gone to Europe. | |
| So God had to force him to go through Asia without stopping at places like Ephesus. But it's so interesting that on his way back towards Jerusalem, his heart was leading towards skipping Ephesus. I hope you see that the thing is, when God wanted him to go to the Gentiles, he wanted to linger near Ephesus. | |
| But when God, but when he wanted to go to Jerusalem, he did not want to linger in Ephesus. So it's like, in other words, the Gentiles were not enough of an attraction to Paul to make Ephesus not interesting to stay at. But Jerusalem was. I hope you see the contrast. See, if you want to go to the Gentiles and you're just itching to get there, | |
| Yes, you will be inclined to skip Ephesus because, yeah, I'm on my way to Philippi. But he wasn't. He wasn't itching to get to Philippi in his heart because he was still in his heart leaning towards the Jews. The inclination of his heart was still towards the Jews. And Ephesus had a lot of Jewish people. And it was very Mediterranean, very Middle Eastern. | |
| Turkey was, you could say, part of the Middle East. It's a similar culture and everything. And there were a lot of Jews there. But the thing is, now that he wanted to go to Jerusalem, then God didn't have to convince him to skip Ephesus. He had to when God was calling him towards Philippi. He didn't even know it at that time. He found out that he was going to Philippi when he got to Troas and had the dream. But | |
| um i hope you see what we're trying to explain here uh and you see that and god is just showing the contrast like yeah i i couldn't get paul to be as enthusiastic about the gentiles as he was about the jews all the time i just couldn't get him to share my enthusiasm um and that's what what you see there um | |
| And so he stays in Miletus and skips Ephesus, and then we'll read what happens in the next verses, what happened when he stayed in Miletus before he moved on towards Jerusalem. So, and keep in mind the ship that we talked about at the very beginning, Acts 20:13, I think it was when, | |
| When God mentioned ship for the first time, I think the word was ploy on in Greek for the first time since John 21, since the end of the gospels, the four gospels where ship is mentioned over and over and over and over again. And then suddenly God doesn't mention ship at all until we get to verse 13. And and and so. | |
| um and so keep that in mind as we keep going because the ship is going to show up again um all right so um we are uh i think we're going to stop uh there so we we've basically just advanced um four verses um so uh and by the way here in verse 16 notice that it's saying the spirit of doesn't say the spirit of god uh | |
| made Paul decide to skip Ephesus to sail past Ephesus no it's Paul for Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus because he would not spend time in Asia for he hasted if it were possible for him to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost you can see God is describing Paul's emotions Paul's desires Paul's determination | |
| It was Paul who wanted to go to Jerusalem. And he was so determined to get there that Ephesus was not as alluring as it was when he was on his way to Europe and the Greeks. Okay. All right. So we'll leave it there. And I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus that the words that were said about | |
| The threat that Assos, that all that sequence of names represents, that it did expose things in the spirit and open our hearts to be wary of the spirit of Epicurus and the spirit of Pythagoras, of Pythagoras' escapism and Epicurus' search for happiness and the day of gladness, the day of Samaa. | |
| We pray that that has been exposed. And we pray that as you see these names from now on, you will get the spiritual impact of it. When you see Troas, you see, oh, in the negative sense, in this context, it's Hittite deception. And Assos means approaching. Hittite deception is approaching. And then Mytilene, which means mutilated or abounding in shellfish. And it's the capital of Lesbos. | |
| So the spirit of lesbianism of the pastors and teachers controlling the church is coming in. And it's lesbianism. To call it for what it is, it's spiritual lesbianism. The matriarchal church is spiritual lesbianism. And then when you see Chios, you see the snowy manifestation of God. And when you see Samos, you see the Epicurean spirit and the Pythagorean spirit coming in, trying to... | |
| Distort your understanding. Of the things of the spirit. And then. Trogyllium. Meaning a cache. God reserving a cave. To protect the remnant. And the essence of scripture. From all this mutilation. And then Miletus. Being the place of. Apollos. The spirit of Apollos. That we will talk about. The spirit that Paul let go of. As he. | |
| his heart went towards the Jews. Thank you very much for watching and listening and may the Lord bless you. In the name of Yeshua, amen. |
The meditation begins by examining how the "spirit of Solomon"—a spirit of elitism—was affecting the Apostle Paul. Despite being the most resistant to this influence among the apostles, Paul’s return to Jerusalem was driven by a refusal to fully let go of the Jews to commit himself entirely to the Gentiles. This drive represented a regression from his previous commitment made in Antioch and Corinth to preach to the Gentiles.
Reading from Acts 20:13, the narrative follows Paul as he travels from Troas to Assos. While his companions sailed by ship, Paul chose to go by foot. This choice holds significant spiritual weight.
A deep linguistic analysis of the Greek word for ship, ployon, reveals its prominence in the Gospels. There is a notable silence regarding the word "ship" in the book of Acts from the Gospel of John until this specific passage in Acts 20. This suggests that the introduction of the word "ship" at this juncture is a divine signal, central to the prophetic message God is about to describe.
The journey is not merely a historical sequence of events but a prophetic map. The names of the locations Paul visits reveal a spiritual story regarding the deception entering the Church.
Troas and Assos: Approaching Deception Troas, connected to the ancient city of Troy, carries a negative connotation in this context, linked to Hittite deception (the spirit of the invisible and the hidden). As Paul moves toward Assos, he establishes a land linkage. Assos, meaning "approaching," serves as a warning: Hittite deception is approaching.
The names Troas and Assos both contain five letters, which in this context represents a "ministerial spirit of deception," where ministers separate themselves from the laity to claim a sense of superiority, mirroring the Jewish-Gentile divide.
Mytilene: Mutilation and Spiritual Lesbianism Upon reaching Mytilene, the concept of "mutilation" and "impurity" arises. The name is linked to "abounding in shellfish," which, in a spiritual sense, represents uncleanness.
Furthermore, Mytilene is the capital of the island of Lesbos. The speaker interprets this as a reference to "spiritual lesbianism"—the rise of a pastoral matriarchy. This is described as female ministries (pastors and teachers) attempting to rule the Body of Christ by suppressing "maleness" (apostolic judgment, prophetic sacrifice, and evangelistic conquest).
Kios, Samos, and Trogyllium: The Sandwich of Spirits The journey moves quickly through several locations, creating a "mixed bag" of spiritual truths.
The journey reflects Paul’s own internal struggle: a man who was deeply spiritual yet being pulled by the spirit of Solomon toward Jerusalem.
The irony is noted in Paul's decision to skip Ephesus on his way to Jerusalem. When God called him to the Gentiles, he was eager to stay in places like Ephesus; however, because his heart was now leaning toward the Jews and Jerusalem, he hurried past the very places that once held his missionary focus. The sermon concludes with a prayer that these spiritual truths expose deceptions in the modern church, guarding the remnant from the spirits of elitism, matriarchy, and escapism.