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Day 1472 – One Big Pill – Humor Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1472 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

One Big Pill – Humor Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your Captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1472 of our Trek, and time for a 3-minute mini-trek called Humor Unplugged. Our Thursday podcast will provide a short and clean funny story to help you lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. Something to cheer you and give a bit a levity in your life. We are told in Proverbs 15:30 A cheerful look brings joy to the heart; good news makes for good health. We are also encouraged in Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. Consider this your vitamin supplement of cheer for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s funny which is titled:

One Big Pill

Charles was working hard outside building a new sidewalk with large cement paver bricks. He was making good headway but was growing very weary as he goes back to his pickup truck to carry the final 100-pound paver to put in in place. As Charles picks up the paver from the bed of the truck is slips from his hands and falls on his right foot. He was sure that it was probably broken, and as he took his shoe off, he noticed that his foot was swelling up quickly. Sally, his wife, was not home at the time, so Charles hobbles to the driver seat of his pickup truck and heads to the Emergency Room. After waiting for 30 minutes, the pain was almost more than Charles could stand. Finally, he was called back to a room where Doctor Smith carefully examines Charles’s foot and then took an Xray. Dr. Smith checks the Xray, and there were no broken bones.  Dr. Smith came back and said, well Charles, the good news is that the foot is not broken, but there is damage to some muscles and ligaments.  Dr. Smith hands Charles a pill big enough to choke a horse. He turned to Charles and said, “I’ll send the nurse in with some water.”

Charles waited another 30 minutes with his foot hurting more all the time. He finally loses patience. Charles hobbles out to a nearby drinking fountain, forces the pill down his throat, and slurps down an abundance of water until the pill clears his throat. He hobbles back into the examining room.

Just then, the nurse comes in with a large bucket of warm water, she looks at Charles and says, “Okay, after the tablet dissolves, soak that foot for about 20 minutes.”I hope that brought a smile to your face today. If it did pass your smile onto some else, we all could use a kind smile each day. Our Thursday thought is, “I tripped over a box of Kleenex this morning and thought I had broken my ankle. Thankfully, it was just soft tissue damage.”

Here is our verse for today:

Romans 10:15

And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of messengers who bring good news!”

Just as you enjoy these nuggets of humor, please encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1471 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com.  I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Futuristic Friday!

Day 1471 – God Declares, “There Is None Like Me” – Worldview Wednesday

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Welcome to Day 1471 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

God Declares, “There Is None Like Me” – Worldview Wednesday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1471 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, on our Worldview Wednesday episode, we will continue with our study based on a course I recently completed taught by Dr. Michael Heiser. Our study is titled “Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny” Throughout this multi-week course, we will demonstrate that, in the Old Testament, “sons of God” and “holy ones” refers to supernatural beings whose Father is God and who work with God to carry out His will and that this divine family was present before humanity. By fully engaging with biblical texts such as Psalm 82; Psalm 89, and Deuteronomy 32:8–9, our study will show that this divine family functions as a template for God’s human family. God desires of humans, as His imagers, to participate in His council. This study addresses issues such as polytheism, the nature of the (little ‘g’) “gods,” and the uniqueness of Yahweh. Within this study, we will apply insights to the New Testament texts and shows how the metaphor of being in God’s family informs our sense of identity and mission as believers.

God Declares, “There Is None Like Me”

·      Segment 16: “None Beside Me” (Part 1)

Introduction

I think that we’ve established just by our previous week’s study of elohim that having more than one elohim is not polytheism. We still need to entertain one other question: What about verses that say there is none besides the Lord or where God Himself says, “There is none like me,” “There is none besides me,” “Besides me, there is no other,” something like that?

Not Statements of Denial but Incomparability

These phrases are typically taken as denial statements—in other words, statements that deny the existence of the other elohim. Now, we’ve seen that this is wrongheaded, because if you strip out the reality of these other entities, then God is ruling over nothing. He is comparatively greater than nothing. Again, it’s entirely foreign to the biblical writer’s mindset. The biblical writer is trying to make the point that these other entities do exist, and they are inherently inferior to the God of Israel; He judges them. They are not just contrived, made-up cartoon characters.

What we have here, in these statements about there being “none besides me,” is they are not statements that deny the existence of other elohim. They are statements about the incomparability of Yahweh, His uniqueness.

Deuteronomy as Example

Now, by way of example here, I’m going to take us through a little bit of an exercise in the theology of Deuteronomy because Deuteronomy establishes this point that this is about incomparability, not denying existence. There are passages in Deuteronomy that have these so-called denial statements that also, in the same passage, affirm other elohim.

You can’t have those two things without a contradiction. What I’m saying is there is no contradiction because it’s just about being incomparable, not that one entity exists, and the others don’t.

God Fights Someone

Let’s take a look at Deuteronomy 4:34-35; we read this, “Has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.”

Notice what happens here in this text. Moses is rehearsing for the people what their history has been, and he is pointing out the uniqueness that here you have a God do all these things for you: verse 35, “To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.”You might think, “Oh yeah, well, God did that, and He really didn’t beat any enemies because these other enemies don’t exist because there is no other besides Him. So God really wasn’t fighting anyone.” That’s the conclusion you have to draw, and this is typically how we are taught to think about these things; that this is a statement that the other gods don’t even exist. They, in fact, don’t exist. That sets up a problem, and you have a real contradiction to deal with if you want to take this trajectory, as common as it is.

The Host of Heaven Allotted by Yahweh, Israel His Inheritance

Let’s go back. We’re in Deuteronomy 4; we’re going to go back to Deuteronomy 4:19-20. I’m going to take you through a series of thoughts to show that whoever wrote Deuteronomy 4—let’s say it was Moses—he wasn’t affirming one thing and then denying it a few verses later. We do not have a contradiction here.

So back to Deuteronomy 4:19-20; we read this, “Beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.”

Two things to spot here: we have a reference to the sun and the moon and the stars, the host of heaven, and then this idea that God allotted these things to the other nations, to the peoples under the whole heaven—not to Israel, because Israel was warned against worshiping them, but to the other peoples.

Verse 20 is the other side of that coin: “But the Lord has taken you [Israelites] and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people for his own inheritance, as you are this day.”

So again, we have two sides here: we have the host of heaven that are allotted to the nations (whatever that means), and then we have Israel who was taken out of Egypt to be Yahweh’s own people, His own inheritance.

 Israel Forbidden to Worship Other Gods, Which Yahweh Allotted

If we move through Deuteronomy and read Deuteronomy 17:3, we get a little bit more information about this. Deuteronomy 17:3 has this reading that Israel “has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun, the moon, [or] any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden.”

You know, the writer is saying, “Don’t do this. Don’t go and serve the other guys, you know, like Israel did. Don’t worship them. Don’t worship the sun, the moon, and any host of heaven.” Now you say, “Well, here, this could just be a reference to idols.” We need to keep tracking through Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 29:25-26 picks up this thought. In verse 25, the context is that if Israel gets exiled. It says “because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them.”

Now, this is the same language of Deuteronomy 4:19-20, same context as well: taking Israel out of Egypt, again, the problem of going and serving other gods and worshiping them—gods that the Lord, Yahweh, had not allotted to His own people, to Israel, because He was their God.

This allotment idea referred back to the gods, the host of heaven of the other nations. If we keep going, we hit Deuteronomy 32, and that gives us the key to understanding what this whole allotment language is about. We’ll take a look at Deuteronomy 32:8-9 next, and then bring all this together into how these so-called denial statements actually work.

·      Segment 17: “None besides Me” Part 2

Deuteronomy 32:8–9, a Key Passage

Deuteronomy 32:8–9 is a key passage concerning all of this that we’re talking about right now. We’re trying to track through Deuteronomy to understand what is really being talked about when the sun, moon, and stars, the host of heaven, are allotted to the other nations, and Israel is kept for Yahweh’s own people. That is going to produce here, as we consider Deuteronomy 32:8-9, a theology where the other gods are real, and they were assigned to the nations as a punishment by the true God, by Yahweh of Israel.

Other Gods Sent by Yahweh

It’s actually going to be an affirmation that these other gods are real. They were sent; they obeyed the command of God initially to administer other nations, again, as a punishment to those nations, and then things went poorly. The Israelites had to be prevented, or at least warned against, worshiping them instead of Yahweh.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9

Deuteronomy 32:8–9 says this, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”

Humanity Allotted to the Sons of God

We’re reading the passage here with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that’s very important because of what this describes: at the division of the nations, which we know was the Tower of Babel, God punishes humanity for disobedience by splitting them up and assigning them, allotting them, to other sons of God, other divine beings, sons of God.

Here’s the language again from Psalm 82, from Psalm 89, and Job 1-2, which is the same language here. So they are assigned to the other nations and the other nations to them. This goes back to Deuteronomy 4:19-20 where the Israelites are warned against worshiping these other beings because these other beings were allotted to the nations. This verse is crucial for understanding this because it’s really the Old Testament explanation for why the other nations have their own pantheons. What happened?

Dr. Heiser spends a lot of time in the Unseen Realm talking about this and about these two particular verses, and you can read his book for more details. For our purposes here, we are trying to establish that Deuteronomy affirms the existence of other gods, and then we’re going to take that back and ask the obvious question: “Well, then why does it say, “There is none besides me”? What does that mean?” Because we don’t want to have a contradiction here.

In Deuteronomy 32, a few verses later, we read this: “They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods [elohim there, plural] whom they had not known, new gods that came lately, whom your fathers did not dread.”

So the Israelites fall victim to idolatry, and the beings that they are worshiping are described as elohim. Now, this particular verse is crucial because Paul actually quotes this verse in the New Testament.

Paul’s Reference to Deuteronomy 32:17

In 1 Corinthians 10:21-22, Paul is discussing sacrificing to idols and eating the meat sacrificed to idols. Paul warns the believers in Corinth in these two verses to avoid all of this, to avoid this meat. Why? Because you have to be careful, because if you partake of it, you enter into fellowship with demons.

Paul believed demons were real. He’s quoting Deuteronomy 32:17 and assigning reality to the shedim, to the other elohim from these other nations that the Israelites fell into idolatry with.

So, let’s put all that together. We have a person under inspiration, the apostle Paul, quoting this passage in Deuteronomy 32, affirming that the elohim here were real; they’re real beings. Paul refers to them as demons. These beings were allotted to the other nations. These elohim assigned to the other nations are called the host of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars in Deuteronomy 4.

Deuteronomy, all through the whole book (chapter 4 all the way to 32), assumes the existence, the reality, of these other gods. But it’s in that same chapter, Deuteronomy 4, where all of this starts, where this thread starts, where we have this phrase that “there is none beside me.”

Yahweh’s Incomparability Negates Contradiction

If such statements like that were to telegraph the idea that these entities don’t really exist, then either Deuteronomy 32 is wrong, or Paul is incorrect, or both. We don’t have that problem though, if we just say, “Look, statements like ‘there is none besides me’ just mean that Yahweh is incomparable. These other elohim exist; they are inferior. They are not like Yahweh. He is species unique.” There is no problem theologically if we take the verse and not just this verse, but the whole statement found in other verses and similar statements found in many places in the Old Testament. If we just take them as statements of incomparability, we don’t have a theological contradiction.[1]

That will finish our study for this week’s Worldview Wednesday. Next week we will continue our study of God’s proclamation “None Besides Me.”  We will also consider what is meant by Jesus being the “Only Begotten Son.” Tomorrow we will enjoy our 3-minute Humor nugget that will provide you with a bit of cheer, which will help you to lighten up and live a rich and satisfying life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along with us tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1470 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you Tomorrow!

[1] Heiser, M. S. (2019). Sons and Daughters of God: The Believer’s Identity, Calling, and Destiny. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Day 1470 – Hard Work – Wisdom Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1470 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Hard Work – Wisdom Unplugged

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1470 of our Trek, and it is time for our 3-minute mini trek called Wisdom Unplugged. This short nugget of wisdom includes an inspirational quote with a little bit of additional content for today’s trek. Consider this your vitamin supplement of wisdom for today. So let’s jump right in with today’s nugget:

Today’s quote is from  Helena Rubinstein, and it is:    I believe in hard work. It keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.       

Hard Work

As I have mentioned in previous episodes, I grew up on an apple orchard and small farm. There were 12 of us living in an old farmhouse with one bathroom. We didn’t have much materially and would be considered poor by most modern standards. In spite of that, for the most part, we grew up happy and did not realize that we were poor. My parents taught my nine siblings and me how to love each other, even when you don’t feel like it. We learned how to love others, even when they did not deserve it. We also learned how to work hard in order to survive. You know what? I am so happy that I was able to experience all of that growing up. I do believe in working hard, and not being a victim in life. I never use my childhood as an excuse not to do my very best. As Helena said in our quote for today, hard work has and continues to keep me young. Hard work, indeed, does keep the wrinkles out of my mind and spirit. It allows me to be young of mind and spirit to continue on when others choose to quit.  So work hard. Choose to enjoy what you do and be satisfied with the results.  Hard work rarely, if ever, causes you harm, or will kill you.  Enjoy the journey. The book of Proverbs has several lessons on hard work. Here is one of them.

Proverbs 21:5

Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.

We are also encouraged in:

Romans 12:11

Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.

That’s a wrap for today’s Wisdom Unplugged quote. If you would like free access to my database of over 11,000 inspirational quotes, the link is available on the main page of Wisdom-Trek.com. Just as you enjoy these nuggets of wisdom, encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’ If you would like to listen to any of our past 1469 treks or read the Wisdom Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day’s trek will be downloaded automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow for Worldview Wednesday!

Day 1469 – Bible Study – Attention to Detail – Meditation Monday

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Welcome to Day 1469 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Bible Study – Attention To Detail – Meditation Monday

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1469 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday. Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy. For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection. You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, Meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer. It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body. As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind. 

We are continuing our series this week on Meditation Monday as we focus on Mastering Bible Study through a series of brief insights from Hebrew Scholar, Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Our current insights are focusing on study habits to build a strong foundation. Today let us meditate on:

Bible Study – Attention to Detail

·      Insight Seventeen: The Guidance of the Spirit Is Neither a Remedy nor an Excuse for Lackluster Bible Study

If you’ve watched a baseball or football game on television at some point this century, there’s no doubt you’ve seen players either ask God for success or thank him for it. Athletes today regularly do things like point to the heavens after crossing home plate or finding themselves in the end zone. Some will bow in a short prayer. It’s a nice sentiment and, for many, a testimony that transcends a token gesture.

Let’s be honest. Unless that football player gets in shape and memorizes the playbook, all the pointing to heaven in the world isn’t going to lead to success. You can say a short prayer on the mound or in the batter’s box, but unless you can hit the strike zone or a curveball, you’re going to fail. Pretty badly, in fact.

It’s the same in Bible study. All too often, people who sincerely want the feeling of knowing Scripture aren’t willing to put in the time it takes to get there. Instead, they’ll take short cuts and then expect the Spirit to take up the slack. The assumption seems to be that the promise of the Spirit to guide us into truth means the third person of the Trinity will excuse a lack of effort and give us the answers we need. The analogy that comes to my mind when I hear that is a little disturbing. The Spirit isn’t the kid sitting next to you in high school that lets you cheat off their exam. You must do your own work.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that passages like John 16:13 really aren’t about personal Bible study, the truth is that God expects effort in the pursuit of truth. The Spirit of God works in our hearts and minds, which are the terms Scripture uses for our intellectual faculties (i.e., our brains). He generally makes use of the content you’ve put there (in your mind) in your pursuit of the truths of Scripture. There’s no mental download from heaven coming. Rather than substitute the Spirit for personal effort, my advice is this: as you do the hard work of Bible study, ask the Spirit for insight to expose flawed thinking (your own or whoever you’re reading) and for the right questions to ask about the biblical text. The more of God’s Word you’ve devoted attention to, the more the Spirit can help you recall for understanding.

·      Insight EIghteen: Attention to Detail and Clear Thinking Are Not Antithetical to Loving Jesus

Sometimes people mistake inquisitiveness for criticism. Early in my adult life in my own spiritual journey, I was consumed with knowing Scripture. I’d ask questions, listen to answers, and then follow up with more questions. Sometimes the pastors or Bible teachers were uncomfortable with my inquiries. After all, I was told, the real point of Bible study was learning about Jesus and how to follow him.

I disagreed then and still do. Wanting to know why women who had their periods were considered unclean, what the Urim and Thummim were, or why some English translations of John 5 don’t include verse 4 isn’t about wanting to know more about Jesus. I consider these good questions. Frankly, there are a lot of passages in the Bible that have nothing to do with Jesus. The fact that they are in the Bible means they’re just as inspired as any passage that is about Jesus. We either believe what we are told in 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right,” or we don’t.

You don’t need to repent if you’re not content with someone’s explanation of a passage. It’s not a spiritual flaw to want details and precise answers, especially regarding something as important as the Bible. Saying the goal of Bible study is about being a better disciple misrepresents both Bible study and discipleship. They’re related but not synonyms. Dampening someone’s thirst for knowing Scripture by making them feel less spiritual isn’t part of discipleship. In my experience, it’s more a sign of personal insecurity. We should be thrilled when we encounter someone who just can’t get enough of the Bible.

Bible study is about learning what this book that we say is inspired actually means. Knowing what all its parts mean will give us a deeper appreciation for the plan of God for humanity, the salvation history of God’s people, and the character of God. Jesus is at the core of all that, but there’s more to the Bible than the story of his life, death, and resurrection. If that was all God wanted us to know, he’d have given us only the four Gospels. It’s evident he had more in mind.

Joshua 1:8

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

That is a wrap for today’s Meditation. Next week we will continue our trek on Meditation Monday as we take time to reflect on what is most important in creating our living legacy. On tomorrow’s trek, we will explore another wisdom quote. This 3-minute wisdom supplement will assist you in becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise each day. Thank you for joining me on this trek called life. Encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’  If you would like to listen to any of the past 1468 daily treks or read the daily Journal, they are available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and Journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you tomorrow!

Day 1468 – Flying Cars And Aerial Ridesharing – Ask Gramps

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Welcome to Day 1468 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Flying Cars and Aerial Ridesharing – Ask Gramps

Wisdom – the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1468 of our Trek, and our focus on Fridays is the future technological and societal advances, so we call it Futuristic Fridays. My personality is one that has always been very future-oriented. Since my childhood, I have yearned for the exploration and discovery of new technologies and advancements for the future. I grew up with the original Star Trek series, and even today, as I am now on my 65th revolution around the sun, I still dream of traveling in space. Each week we will explore rapidly converging technologies and advancements, which will radically change our lives. At times, the topics may sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but each area that we explore is already well on its way of becoming a reality over the next couple of decades.

To keep with our theme of “Ask Gramps,” I will put our weekly topics in the form of a question to get us on track. So this week’s question is, Hey Gramps, I have been dreaming about flying cars since the Jetson’s cartoon was released in 1962. It was supposedly set in the year 2062. Do you think we will have flying cars by then, and how will that change car ownership? 

Flying Cars And Aerial Ridesharing

Last week we focused on how Virtual Reality will change everyday life and work. This week we jump into transportation and explore flying cars. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”

In 2019, for the seventh straight year, Los Angeles earned the dubious honor of being the most gridlocked metropolis in the world, where the average driver spends 2.5 working weeks per year trapped in traffic.

Countless cities are close behind. For the average driver, dreams of being elevated above jammed freeways and flying—uninterrupted—to one’s destination seem well out of reach. Yet these visions will soon become realities.

The era of the internal combustion engine car will gradually end. From here on out, the focus will be on electric vehicles, autonomous ridesharing, and flying fleets. The implications for society and the automotive industry are HUGE. 

Death of Car Ownership

During this decade, we will reach a peak for the manufacturing of internal combustion engines. That may sound somewhat premature, but oil demand for transportation is predicted to peak as early as 2025, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and some experts suggest it may have already peaked.

Currently, electric vehicles or EVs displace the need for 350,000 barrels of oil each day. Long term, EVs are projected to disrupt demand of over 58,000,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of the decade, a figure steadily on the rise as EV costs plummet.

Speeding to first place in today’s transit race, EVs are set to win by sheer economic advantage, fast becoming the foundation for autonomous ridesharing fleets of the future. As that happens, it will soon become un-economical and socially unacceptable for you to hold on to that old gas-guzzling car, at least in major metropolitan areas. Next, we will see electric vehicles migrating to the skies in the form of flying vehicles. By mid-2018, over $1 billion had been invested by startups, VCs, and aerospace giants in at least twenty-five different flying car companies. A dozen vehicles are being test-flown, while another dozen are at stages ranging from PowerPoint to prototype.

Let’s explore the next era of transportation and what will change.

The Hardware is Here

In 2019, Uber hosted its third annual flying car conference, Uber Elevate, in Washington, D.C. The event attracted a motley crew of power elites: CEOs, entrepreneurs, architects, designers, technologists, venture capitalists, government officials, and real estate magnates. Over a thousand in total, all gathered to witness the birth of a new industry.

Jeff Holden, Uber’s (former) Chief Product Officer, initiated the conference with quite a vision. This is what he said.

“We’ve come to accept extreme congestion as part of our lives,” says Holden. “In the U.S., we have the honor of being home to ten of the world’s twenty-five most congested cities, costing us approximately $300 billion in lost income and productivity.”

Uber aims to solve urban mobility by offering “aerial ridesharing” solutions, taking advantage of untapped air space just as New York City scaled buildings to the skies to combat increasing congestion on the ground.

Aerial ridesharing might sound like a sci-fi cliché, but Holden has a solid track record of disruptive innovation. In the late 1990s, he followed Jeff Bezos from New York to Seattle and became one of the earliest employees at Amazon, where he spearheaded Amazon Prime.

Next, Holden went to another disruptive startup, Groupon, and then on to Uber, where he’s strung together a series of wins: UberPool, UberEats, and, most recently and radically, Uber’s self-driving car program.

So when Holden proposed an even zanier product line—that Uber aerial ridesharing — what followed was no surprise: the company’s leadership, as well as everybody else, took him seriously.

There is a good reason for this. The theme of the Uber Elevate Summit isn’t actually about flying cars. The cars are already here. Instead, the focus was the path to scale—the more critical point: that path is a lot shorter than many suspect.

As of 2018, over twenty-five different flying car startups have secured upwards of $1 billion in aggregate funding. Larry Page, co-founder, and CEO of Alphabet-Google was among the first to envision the Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle potential, personally funding two companies, Zee-Arrow and Kittyhawk.

Then there are established players like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Bell Helicopter (now just called ‘Bell,’ a reference to the future disappearance of the helicopter itself). They are also in the game. Thus, for the first time in history, we’re past the point of talking about the possibility of flying cars. The cars are here.

Car Ownership Becomes Economically Irrational

“Uber’s goal,” according to Holden, “is to demonstrate flying car capability in 2021 and have aerial ridesharing fully operational in Dallas and LA by 2025.” He goes even further: “Ultimately, we want to make it economically irrational to own and use a car.” How irrational? Let’s look at the numbers.

Today, the marginal cost of car ownership—that is, not the purchase price, but everything else that goes with a car: gas, repairs, insurance, parking, etc.—is 49 cents per passenger mile. For comparison, a helicopter, which has many more problems than just cost, covers a mile for about $8.93.

For their 2021 launch, UberAir wants to reduce that per-mile price to $5.73, then rapidly drive it down to $1.84. But it’s Uber’s long-term target that’s the game-changer—44 cents per mile—or cheaper than the cost of driving.

You get a lot per mile. The specs for Uber’s proposed service are impressive. Their primary interest is in “electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles”—or eVTOLs for short. For an eVTOL to qualify for Uber’s aerial ridesharing program, it must be able to carry one pilot and four passengers at a speed of over 150 mph for three continuous hours of operation.

While they envision 25 miles as their shortest flight (think Malibu to downtown Los Angeles), these requirements allow you to leap from northern San Diego to southern San Francisco in a single bound. Uber now boasts five partners who have committed to delivering eVTOLs that meet these specs, with another five or ten still to come. 

Aerial Freeways

But the vehicles alone don’t make car ownership irrational. So Uber has also partnered with NASA and the FAA to develop the air traffic management system to coordinate their flying fleet.

Beyond government players, Uber has additionally teamed up with architects, designers, and real estate developers to create a string of “mega-skyports” needed for passengers to load and unload and for vehicles to take off and land.

To qualify as Uber-ready, a “mega-skyport” must be able to recharge vehicles, handle 1,000 take-offs and landings per hour (4,000 passengers) and occupy no more than three acres of land—which is small enough to sit atop old parking garages or the roofs of skyscrapers.

And according to Uber’s calculations, a network 40 skyports strong, positioned strategically around a city, should be able to clear a million passengers an hour.

Implications

Put all this together, and by 2030 or shortly after that, you’ll be able to order an on-demand aerial rideshare as easily as you do UberRide, UberPool, or UberEats. If a century’s worth of transportation adoption rates are to be trusted, urban aviation could be a central mode of getting from A to B in a mere decade.

All of this raises a fundamental question: Why now? After dreaming since “The Jetson’s” in 1962, and then Blade Runner hover cars and Back to the Future DeLorean DMC-12s for several decades, how will we be able to accomplish this mission within the next decade?

There are over a hundred different patents on file in the U.S. for “roadable aircraft.” A handful have flown. Most have not. None have delivered on the promise of the Jetsons.

Our frustration at this lack of delivery has become a meme unto itself. At the turn of the last century, in a now-famous IBM commercial, comedian Avery Johnson asked: “It’s the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?”

In 2011, in Peter Thiel’s now-famous manifesto, “What Happened To The Future,” the prominent investor echoed this concern, writing: “We wanted flying cars; instead we got 140 characters.” Yet, as should be clear by now, the wait is over.

The Cars Are Here, and we are rapidly developing them to the point of being economically feasible and accessible to much of the population. The infrastructure is coming fast also. While we were sipping our lattes and checking our Instagram, science fiction became science fact.

As Christ-followers, all of the new technology can and should be a means to further God’s kingdom here on earth as we fill His high-calling. Just like commercial air-travel changed our ability to reach millions with the Gospel of Christ, so will each new technological breakthrough extend our reach. Personal flying vehicles will is yet another tool.

Psalm 55:6

Oh, that I had wings like a dove; then I would fly away and rest!

That is a wrap for today’s question. Join us again next Futuristic Friday as we look at AI, Robots, and Drones on our ‘Ask Gramps’ episode. Our next trek is Meditation Monday, where we will help you reflect on what is most important in life. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along on Monday for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’If you would like to listen to any of the past 1467 daily treks or read the associated journals, they are all available at Wisdom-Trek.com. I encourage you to subscribe to Wisdom-Trek on your favorite podcast player so that each day will be downloaded to you automatically.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most of all, your friend as I serve you in through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek of life together, let us always:

  1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
  2. Love Unconditionally
  3. Listen Intentionally
  4. Learn Continuously
  5. Lend to others Generously
  6. Lead with Integrity
  7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to ’Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday’! See you on Monday!