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Day 1467 – Exhausted! – Humor Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1467 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Exhausted! – 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 1467 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:

Exhausted!

Frank, a CPA, was well known throughout the city for his detailed accounting and auditing skills. He had won several awards and accommodations for his stellar work.  Knowing that he had a full workload for the upcoming week, we went to bed extra early on Sunday. As it turned out, he did not sleep well that night. He finally got out of bed at 6:00 am, got a shower and dressed, and headed down to the kitchen. His wife Jane was busily cooking a nutritious breakfast for him when he sleepily shuffled in and plopped down at the kitchen table. Jane looked at him with a lovingly look and said, “Frank, you look exhausted, but I know you went to bed extra early last night. What is the problem?” Frank looked at Jane through half-opened eyes and complained, “I don’t think I slept a wink last night.”

Jane looked at Frank curiously and replied, “Why didn’t you count sheep?“

Frank replied, “I did, and that’s what got me into trouble. I made a mistake the first hour, and it took until morning to correct it.”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, “My Morning Routine includes 10 minutes of sitting on my bed thinking about how tired I am.”

Here is our verse for today:

Ecclesiastes 5:12

People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich seldom get a good night’s sleep.

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 1466 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 1466 – Elohim In The Divine Council – Worldview Wednesday

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Welcome to Day 1466 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Elohim In The Council – 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 1466 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.

Elohim In The Divine Council

·      Segment 14: Who Is/Are Elohim? (Part 1)

Refers to God of Israel, but Also Other Gods

So, how do biblical writers use the term elohim? Well, the most apparent referent would be the God of Israel. You’ll recall in Psalm 82; the word elohim occurred twice; the first one was undoubtedly singular and, of course, pointing to the God of Israel, later called “the Most High” in verse 6. But in Psalm 82:1, we also had the plural elohim of Yahweh’s council. God takes His stand in the divine assembly, in the midst of the gods, and in the midst of the elohim, He passes judgment. So, the God of Israel, the gods of the divine council, elohim, is also used to refer to the gods of various nations.

For instance, in 1 Kings 11:33, we have the names Ashtoreth, Chemosh, and Milcom (foreign deities), and they are all referred to with the term elohim. Now, if elohim meant to bring with it a unique set of attributes, this verse right here (1 Kings 11:33) would sort of explode that idea all by itself. Here, you have three different foreign deities. Very obviously, they are not going to have a specific set of unique attributes that we would attribute to the God of Israel. So attributes aren’t wrapped up in the term elohim.

Elohim Connected to Territorial Spirits

Further, elohim is used in Deuteronomy 32:17 in juxtaposition with the term shedim, which most English Bibles have translated “demons.” So these are other entities that are referred to as elohim. Specifically, in that verse, the problem is that Israelites were not sacrificing properly to God but had rendered sacrifice to these other elohim who are shedim (“demons”). The term actually means territorial spirits, territorial entities.

But the point is, of course, that we are not talking about the God of Israel when we refer to elohim here, and we are not assigning a specific set of unique attributes to the shedim, to these lesser entities.

Elohim as Disembodied Human Dead

In 1 Samuel 28:13, elohim is used to describe the disembodied human dead. This is the medium at Endor story where Saul comes to her and wants to contact Samuel because God won’t answer his prayers. In the scene, she does whatever she does (we are not actually told what she does), but the result of it is, she is sort of shocked and dismayed because when she sees Samuel, that is sort of a clue that the person asking me to bring Samuel up is probably Saul. What she actually says to Saul is, “I see an elohim coming up out of the ground.” And then Saul asked her, “Well, what does he look like?” Again, he is fixated on one: “What does he look like?” And she describes him, and Saul says, “Sure enough, you know that that’s him; that’s Samuel.” We know from the discussion in this scene that the disembodied spirit of Samuel relates things to Saul that only Samuel would know or that God had told him before.

Elohim as the Angel of the Lord

Lastly, in Genesis 35:1–7, we have a reference to elohim. The reference may or may not refer back to either angels generically … In my view, it probably does not; it probably refers to one specific angel (God in human form) because the episode of Genesis 35:1–7 is linked back to something in Jacob’s life. Jacob is the person involved in that context. So you could have elohim here referring to the angel of Yahweh, the angel of the Lord.

Biblical Writers Not Thinking about Unique Attributes

Regardless of how to identify that last one specifically, what we have here is we have a collection of different entities, all of which are described with the word elohim. Only one of them was the God of Israel, at least as we think of Him. The angel of the Lord could, of course, be identified with the God of Israel, but the other ones that are in the scene are not.

And so, this alone tells us—the biblical usage of the term elohim tells us—that when a biblical writer used this word, he was not thinking of a unique, exclusive set of divine attributes; he wasn’t thinking about this term in Hebrew the way we think of the letters G, O, and D, and that’s really the disconnect.

Elohim as Member of the Supernatural Realm

Now, you might ask at this point, “Well, okay, if it doesn’t mean these other things, what does elohim mean then? If it’s not about attributes, what is the point of it? Why would a biblical writer use this term?”

A biblical writer would use elohim to refer to anything in the spirit world, which is by nature, the disembodied realm, the disembodied spiritual world. If you were a member of that world, you were an elohim. God is a member of that world. Demons or shedim are a member of that world. The gods of the council, angels, the deceased human dead, the disembodied human dead, all of them are members of the same place: the disembodied spirit world, the supernatural realm.

For this reason, I like to describe elohim as really a term that’s about residence or realm or even location. It’s not about a specific set of unique attributes. You would use the word elohim to describe some being in that realm. That’s where they live; that’s where they belong.

That’s all it means. So, in the spiritual world, we can have multiple, many elohim. That isn’t polytheism; that’s just the spirit world. It says nothing about any of these entities being equal or interchangeable, and that’s really at the heart of polytheism. We need to take a little closer look at that thought next.

·      Segment 15: Who Is/Are Elohim? Part 2

Yahweh Is Unique

Now, we just talked about elohim being a place-of-residence term referring to any entity that is, by definition, a member of the disembodied spirit world. Yahweh, of course, the God of Israel, is a member of that world; He is an inhabitant of the spirit world. I like to put the relationship between Him and the other elohim like this: Yahweh, the God of Israel, is an elohim; He is one of many elohim, but no other elohim is Him; no other elohim is Yahweh. Yahweh is, again, maybe an awkward phrase, but I think it’s a good one. Yahweh is species unique. There is only one of Him; there is no other like Him.

Unique Qualities Assigned to Yahweh

Now, what this means in theological terms, and I think by way of practically understanding these theological terms, is that the elohim in biblical thinking, even though there are many, they are not equal and interchangeable. Yahweh is in a class by Himself. Yahweh is, in fact, distinguished by other means. He is described in ways that no other elohim are ever described. So biblical writers would assign unique qualities to Yahweh: things like the God of Israel; Yahweh is all-powerful, for instance (Jeremiah 32:17 and 27 as well).

Yahweh Is Sovereign King and Creator

Yahweh gets described as being the sovereign king over other elohim (Psalm 95:3; Daniel 4:35, for example). No other elohim are ever described in these terms. Yahweh is also described as the creator of the other members of His heavenly host council (Psalm 148:1–5; Nehemiah 9:6). Even the sonship language sort of telegraphs that idea; He is the originator of all the other ones. It never works the other way around.

Only Elohim to Receive Worship

Yahweh is the lone elohim as well, who deserves worship from the other elohim (Psalm 29:1). The other elohim are actually commanded to worship the Lord.

Uniqueness in Nehemiah 9:6

Nehemiah 9:6 I think sort of captures a lot of this. It actually says, “You alone are Yahweh,” again, speaking of the God of Israel. “You alone are Yahweh,” it’s a way in biblical language, biblical terminology, of saying, “You, Yahweh, are unique. There is only one of you.”

Multiple Elohim Does Not Equal Polytheism

So what we have when it comes to divine plurality in the Hebrew Bible (multiple elohim) is not polytheism. A biblical writer—someone who was, if we can use these terms, orthodox in their theology—would never think of Yahweh as though other elohim are on the same level or have the same attributes. That just wasn’t even a question. Yahweh is alone; He is unique; there is none like Him. So this is not polytheism. This is something else. This is what biblical writers believed: multiple entities in the spirit world, but only one of this kind. That is what a biblical writer believed, and so we don’t need to come up with sort of contrived explanations for what the term elohim means in Psalm 82 or any other place.

We don’t have to say things like they’re idols or they’re people. No, they are just other spiritual beings, and Yahweh is supreme and unique among them.[1]

That will finish our study for this week’s Worldview Wednesday. Next week we will study God’s proclamation “None Besides Me.” 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 1465 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 1465 – I Believe – Wisdom Unplugged

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Welcome to Day 1465 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

I Believe – 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 1465 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  Jewish refugee, World War II, Poland, and it is:   I believe in the sun, even when it isn’t shining. I believe in love, even when I am alone. I believe in God, even when He is silent.      

I Believe

In order to function and remain sane in a world of ever-increasing chaos requires that we are grounded in a belief system that is grounded in something, or someone that has complete control over every situation we face in life. When you wake up in the morning, and it is cloudy or stormy out, do you think that the sun has completely vanished? Do you believe that you will never see the sun again? Of course not, you know that it is only a temporary and needed situation for life to be sustained on earth. You have faith that someday in the not too distant future that the sun will shine brightly once again. When you are alone or lonely, do you believe that you will never be loved again in your lifetime? The first principle of love is that you must love yourself properly before you can love others properly. When you love others, then, in turn, they will love you. Even when you are alone, you believe that, indeed, you will feel the love of others soon. When it appears that God is silent in your life, and not providing peace and guidance, you must believe that He has a purpose for this season of silence. It may be that you are holding onto that which cannot provide safety and security in your life. We are told in Hebrews 13:5. Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”

When you cannot see the sun, or feel the love of others, or when God is silent, you must turn to God in faith. It is then that our vision becomes clear, and we can be at peace and understand those difficult times in life.

Hebrews 11:1-3

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.  Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.  By faith, we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.

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 1464 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 1464 – Bible Study – A Variety of Methods – Meditation Monday

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Welcome to Day 1464 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Bible Study – A Variety of Methods – 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 1464 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 – A Variety of Methods

·      Insight Fifteen: Use a Variety of Methods in Bible Study

Variety is the spice of life, so the saying goes. It’s good advice for Bible study. The principle is obvious. While there’s security in routine, it’s nice to mix things up once in a while or try something new. Change invites our problem-solving intelligence to kick in and, consequently, to stimulate our brain.

There are a lot of approaches to Bible study. You might want to try as many as you can discover, or master just a few.

Since most people graduate to Bible study from Bible reading, the verse-by-verse method is often where people start. The technique involves moving through a paragraph or passage looking up cross-references, picking words to study, and figuring out what every sentence means within the larger unit.

Topical Bible study is an entirely different method. Topical Bible study is just what it sounds like—discovering what the Bible says about a given topic. This method would require tools that can get you started in sketching out a topic, like Bible dictionaries. You need to know upfront what the keywords are that relate to a given topic. For example, if you wanted to study Old Testament sacrifices, you wouldn’t just use a concordance to look up the word “sacrifice.” You’d also want to look up words like “offering,” “blood, “sprinkle,” and “atone. Once you have a range of keywords, you’ll discover the key passages.Another method is doing character sketches, also known as biographical Bible study. This approach focuses on a single Bible character, searching for every passage where he or she appears.

In this method, you need to be on the alert for where the character’s name doesn’t appear, too. Sometimes a character is just named by a pronoun (“he” or “she” did this or that). The goal is to build a profile of what that person was like. How did your character react in given circumstances? What can the episodes of his or her life tell you about their personal strengths and weaknesses? How did they relate to God? Sometimes unnamed characters can be the focus of this kind of study. A Bible study on women in the Gospels, named or unnamed, could be quite interesting.

Even this handful of methods can keep you engaged for a long time. Be on the lookout for others, and try something new!

·      Insight Sixteen: Questions Are Not Answers

There’s nothing better for keeping you humble as a Bible teacher than a critique by your spouse or close friends.

Let me present a scenario. Say that I have a habit of leaving questions unanswered when I taught Scripture, I’ll admit that I like to do that. My reason is that people need to know that there’s a lot to think about in the Bible—that they don’t have it down like they think they do. I also want them to keep coming back for more.

While I think my reasons make sense, I also have to admit that being critiqued is valid and essential too. People don’t like to be left in an intellectual and spiritual lurch when it comes to the Bible. Many people desire definitive answers to their Bible questions. Bible scholars thrive on open questions. It’s like releasing a squirrel in front of a dog. I realize that most of us want closure on whatever is being talked about. Those of us who spend a lot of time in Bible study need to remember that, since we’re often the ones who will be teaching others.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. Serious Bible students like pursuing questions too. There’s a certain “thrill of the hunt” feeling that comes with detecting a problem, framing it, and then attacking it. There’s also a compulsion, to be honest. Sometimes conclusions really aren’t available or aren’t clear in our minds. Think of how frustrating it would be if, in the process of doing research, the sources you depended on were ambivalent, never quite coming to a conclusion.

This advice is pertinent to Bible study itself. We should seek conclusions when we study Scripture, especially when a passage is crucial to some point of doctrine. Granted, the Bible is more explicit in some places than others. Still, if your Bible study results in everything being open-ended, there’s a problem with either your method or analysis, and perhaps both. The moral of this story is that you need to land the plane in Bible study, even though you know it’ll take off again. It’s okay to reach tentative conclusions and allow yourself to revisit an issue later. At least come down somewhere, for your sanity and the sanity of others.

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 1463 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 1463 – Virtual Reality – What We Can Expect – Ask Gramps

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Welcome to Day 1463 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Virtual Reality – What We Can Expect – 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 1463 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, while I am on my 64th 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 hear a lot about Virtual Reality recently. Can you share your insight about where the Virtual Reality market is today, and what we can expect over this next decade? 

Virtual Reality – What We Can Expect

Last week we focused on the second part of how exponential technologies are impacting food production. This week we are switching our focus to Virtual Reality and the road from deceptive to disruptive. I am using some of the information mentioned in Peter Diamandis’s blogs and book “The Future is Faster Than You Think.”

In 2016, venture investments in Virtual Reality exceeded  $800 million, while Augmented Reality, which is also referred to as Mixed Reality, received a total of $450 million. Just a year later, investments in AR/MR and VR startups doubled to $3.6 billion.

Today, major players are bringing VR headsets to market that have the power to revolutionize the industry, as well as countless others. Already, VR headset sales volumes are expected to reach 98.4 million by 2023, according to Futuresource Consulting. Beyond headsets themselves, Facebook’s $399 Oculus Quest brought in $5 million in content sales within the first two weeks post-release in the spring of 2019.

With companies like Niantic ($4B valuation), Improbable ($2B valuation), and Unity ($6B valuation) all exceeding a valuation exceeding $1 billion in recent years, the VR space is massively heating up.

Today we will dive into a brief history of VR, recent investment surges, and the future of this revolutionary technology. 

·      Brief History of VR

For all of history, our lives have been limited by the laws of physics and mitigated by the five senses, but Virtual Reality is rewriting those rules. It’s letting us digitize experiences and teleport our senses into a computer-generated world where the limits of imagination become the only brake on reality. Considering all of recorded history, it has taken a while to get here.

Much like Artificial Intelligence, the concept of VR has been around since the 60s. The 1980s saw the first releases of VR when the earliest “consumer-facing” systems began to show up. In 1989, if you had a spare $250,000, you could purchase the EyePhone before the iPhone, a VR system built by Jaron Lanier’s company VPL. It was actually Jaron Lanier who coined the term ‘virtual reality.’

Unfortunately, the computer that powered that system was the size of a dorm room refrigerator. At the same time, the headset it required was bulky, awkward, and only generated about five frames a second—six times slower than the average television of that era.By the early 1990s, the hype had faded, and VR entered a two-decade deceptive phase. Through the 2000s, the convergence of increasingly powerful game engines and AI-image rendering software flipped the script. Suddenly, deceptive became disruptive, and the VR universe opened for business.

·      The Disruptive Phase: Surges in VR Investment

In 2012, Facebook spent $2 billion on Oculus Rift. By 2015, Venture Beat reported that an arena which typically saw only ten new entrants a year, suddenly had 234. In June 2016, HTC announced the release of its ‘Business Edition’ of the Vive VR headset for $1,200, followed six months later by their announcement of a tether-less VR upgrade.

A year later, Samsung cashed in on this shift, selling 4.3 million headsets and turning enough heads that everyone from Apple and Google to Cisco and Microsoft decided to investigate VR. Phone-based VR showed up soon afterward, dropping barriers to entry as low as $5. By 2018, the first wireless adaptors, standalone headsets, and mobile headsets hit the market.

Resolution-wise, 2018 was also when Google and LG doubled their pixels-per-inch count and increased their refresh rate from VPL’s five frames a second to over 120. Around the same time, the systems began targeting more senses than just vision. HEAR360’s “Omni-binaural” microphone suite captures 360 degrees of audio, which means the immersive sound has now caught up to immersive visuals.

Touch has also reached the masses, with haptic gloves, vests, and full-body suits hitting the consumer market. Scent emitters, taste simulators, and every kind of sensor imaginable—including brainwave readers—are all trying to put the “very” into verisimilitude.

The number of virtual explorers continues to mount. In 2017, there were 90 million active users, which nearly doubled to 171 million by 2018. YouTube’s VR channel has over three million subscribers. That number is growing. By the end of 2020, estimates put the VR market at $30 billion, and it’s hard to find a field that will be left untouched.

·      Future of VR: Emotive and Immersive Education

History class, 2030. This week’s lesson: Ancient Egypt. The pharaohs, the queens, the tombs—the full Tut. Sure, you’d love to see the pyramids in person and have your student join you. If you consider the cost of airfare, hotel rooms for the entire class, plus, taking two weeks off from school for the trip, and you quickly realize that this would never be possible. Worse, even if you could go, you couldn’t go. Many of Egypt’s tombs are closed for repairs, and definitely off-limits to a group of teenagers.

There is a solution, and VR solves these problems. In a VR world, you and your class can easily breach Queen Nefertari’s burial chamber, touch the hieroglyphics, even scramble atop her sarcophagus—impossible opportunities in physical reality. You also have a world-class Egyptologist as your guide.

Visiting Egypt, the pyramids, and the tomb doesn’t require waiting until 2030. In 2018, Philip Rosedale and his team at High Fidelity pulled off this exact virtual field trip. First, they 3D-laser scanned every square inch of Queen Nefertari’s tomb. Next, they shot thousands of high-resolution photos of the burial chamber. By stitching together more than ten thousand photos into a single vista, then laying that vista atop their 3D-scanned map, Rosedale created a stunningly accurate virtual tomb. Next, he gave a classroom full of kids HTC Vive VR headsets.

Because High Fidelity is a social VR platform, meaning multiple people can share the same virtual space at the same time, the entire class was able to explore that tomb together. In total, their fully immersive field trip to Egypt required zero travel time, zero travel expenses. VR will not only cover traditional educational content, but also expand our emotional education.

Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, has spent two decades exploring VR’s ability to produce real behavioral change. He’s developed first-person VR experiences of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination.

For example, experiencing what it would be like to be an elderly, homeless, African American woman living on the streets of Baltimore produces real change: A significant shift in empathy and understanding.

“Virtual reality is not a media experience,” explains Bailenson. “When it’s done well, it’s an actual experience. In general, our findings show that VR causes more behavior changes, causes more engagement, causes more influence than other types of traditional media.” Nor is empathy the only emotion VR appears capable of training. In research conducted at USC, psychologist Skip Rizzo has had considerable success using virtual reality to treat PTSD in soldiers. Other scientists have extended this to the full range of anxiety disorders.

VR, especially when combined with AI, has the potential to facilitate a top-shelf traditional education, plus all the empathy and emotional skills that traditional education has long been lacking.

When AI and VR converge with wireless 5G networks, our global education problem moves from the nearly impossible challenge of finding teachers and funding schools for the hundreds of millions in need, to the much more manageable puzzle of building a fantastic digital education system. The educational possibilities are available to millions worldwide for free to anyone with a headset. It’s quality and quantity on demand.

In the workplace, VR will serve as an efficient trainer for new employees. Ten thousand of Walmart’s 1.2 million employees have taken VR-based skills management tests. Learning modules that once took 35 to 45 minutes, now take 3 to 5. The company plans to train 1 million employees using the Oculus VR headset by the end of this year. The upfront costs of VR headsets will ultimately be recovered in labor efficiencies.

·      Multiple Worlds, Multiple Economies

We no longer live in only one place. We have real-world personae and online personae. This delocalized existence is only going to expand. With the rise of AR and VR, we’re introducing more layers to this equation.

You’ll have avatars for work and avatars for play, and all of these versions of ourselves are opportunities for new businesses. Consider the multi-million-dollar economy that sprung up around the very first virtual world, Second Life. People were paying other people to design digital clothes and digital houses for their digital avatars.

Every time we add a new layer to the digital strata, we’re also adding an entire economy built upon that layer, meaning we are now conducting our business in multiple worlds at once. The possible uses for VR are only left to our imagination, and we have yet to begin to scratch the surface.

Just think about the possibilities that we will have to walk where Jesus walked, and never leave your house. To stand on top of Mount Siani where Moses receieved the ten-commandments. To travel the same route that the Apostle Paul traveled. There are unlimited possibilities as we continue to use exponential technologies to build God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. The season of harvest is coming. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1

For everything there is a season,

a time for every activity under heaven.

That is a wrap for today’s question. Join us again next Futuristic Friday as we look at Flying Cars and Aerial Ridesharing 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 1462 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!