Lost Zombies | Dr. Conrad Vine

music and I wish they could just go on and on and on. Uh because as Pastor

Kelly rightfully said, music reaches part of the soul that mere words do not.

I’ve noticed that if if Hollywood produces a movie and they take it to Japan, if it goes to Japan, they may dub

the movie, but they don’t change the music. uh because the music is a universal language.

And so um I stand there, I listen to the music and I’m blessed and God speaks to my soul and he brings me comfort and

encouragement and joy and rebuke all at the same time. And so it’s a privilege to come and share after my friend and

colleague of ministry, Pastor Ron Kelly, and also after friend and colleague of ministry, brother Melenko. And we met

for the first time in Arizona this year in um a camp meeting out there in the high desert. It was an unforgettable

experience uh for many reasons. I didn’t know Arizona was so hot by day and so

cold by night. Um and uh nor did I know that they live in such small houses. I

think we were in 200 foot tiny home or something as but we made it work. It was a blessed experience out there. So uh

tonight um uh I’m speaking tonight and tomorrow in the Sabbath school and again tomorrow afternoon and um I I I had I

took two weeks vacation uh which for me means sitting at home and writing sermons and I so I sat at home for two

weeks just before the GC writing sermons and I was thinking what am I going to talk about in Sandy and um I remember

speaking with Pastor Hansen a number of months ago and he said we need to focus on end time living and preparing for the

coming of Christ and that’s the next crisis coming upon our world and we have responsibility as pastors to prepare

people for what is coming. And so I was thinking about that and I thought I’ll do a three-part series on the close of

probation. And I was praying about it and the Lord didn’t give me any peace in my mind. And

then I thought, well, I’ll switch to another topic. And that was in the book of Revelation. And the Lord didn’t give

me any give me any peace in my mind. And so I was working my way through my vacation on other topics. And thinking,

Lord, what am I going to speak about when I get to Sandy? And eventually the Lord gave me peace with this three-part

series I’ve presented. It’s called um Lost Zombies. So tonight is Lost Zombies 1. Tomorrow morning we’ll be lost

Zombies 2. And um bunch of geniuses here. Tomorrow afternoon will be lost

zombies. Three. All right. So, um tonight we’re going to lay the

foundation. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And tonight we’re

going to talk about um the memory and autobiographical memory. How memories

are formed and how fear and stress can profoundly alter in a negative sense our

autobiographical memory. our sense of who we are, our faith in God, our sense of where we’ve come from in life, our

recognition of God’s actions in our lives. And so, we’re going to be covering that tonight. It lays the foundation. Uh tomorrow morning, uh I’m

going to be talking about uh how indoctrination works and how indoctrination is used to force

populations to do that which they would not otherwise want to do. And tomorrow

afternoon, we’re going to be talking about in the book of Revelation, how we see all these ingredients in the final

crisis. I’m going to be asking the question when the mark of the beast is imposed and some people accept it in

their hands and some people in their heads um some people accept it willingly and some are coerced into it. How do we

retain spiritually healthy thinking so that we can receive the seal of God and we can listen to the voice of the Holy

Spirit? And and when the Holy Spirit says come in Revelation chapter 22, the bride and the spirit say come, how do we

recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit? When the world the voices of this world are united in taking us in a different

direction. So, this is a three-part series and uh part of my uh my goal here, my g my hope, my prayer is that in

this three-part series, I’m I’m trying to um prepare us and equip us so that

before the final crisis comes, we are developing spiritually healthy thought patterns in our minds and our brains and

we are learning to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit. So, that’s the journey we’re going to go on to for

these next uh three sessions together. Uh so uh tonight is lost zombies 1.

Tomorrow morning will be lost zombies 2 and number. Thank you very much. All right. So uh

before we begin invite you to bow your heads and invite the presence of the Holy Spirit. Dear heavenly father Lord I

thank you for the blessing we have here in Portland together. Lord we thank you for this community college and its

leaders. Uh, Father, we pray your blessing upon this college, the staff who labor here, and all the students who

will walk through these doors in a few short weeks. Uh, Father, I pray your blessing upon us here tonight. Lord, as

we’ve heard a message about the love of God and returning to where we we last experienced your goodness and grace and

mercy in our lives. Uh, Lord, I pray that you will speak to us again this evening. Lord, uh I pray that you’ll

speak through me and for me. Lord, I pray that you will forgive me for my sins. That nothing in any of our lives

will be will come between us and you tonight. Lord, I pray that your spirit will whisper into our hearts, this is

the way. Walk ye in it as we share these sessions together. Uh Father, may your spirit be the only spirit that dwells

within these four walls tonight. Lord, do not allow Satan to run interference. protect our homes, our families, our

marriages, our properties, our children, our loved ones, wherever and whoever they may be, that we may focus on you

during these 24 hours of the sacred Sabbath day. So, Father, we give tonight into your hands. In the name of Jesus, I

pray. Amen. All right. So, um this is going to be our journey um this weekend. I’m not

very creative in my titles, as you can see. Um, but Lost Zombies 1 will be

followed by Lost Zombies 2 and then by Lost Zombies 3. And if you want to

understand part of the reason why we have a mental health crisis in our country right now, uh, we’re going to

cover some of those some of those reasons in our journey here uh, this this evening and tomorrow. So, let’s

start out with our um, in introduction here. Um, this is what we’re going to our journey is going to be tonight.

We’re going to look at memory 101 and then we’re going to look at um positive hippocample neurogenesis. That’s quite a

phrase, isn’t it? And if you can remember that, you’ve got a good memory. So then we’re going to look at negative

hippocample neurogenesis before we come to our conclusions tonight. So again, we’re laying the foundation tonight for

what’s going to come before. Um but I’m re the reason I’m talking about this is the battle for your salvation takes

place in the mind and we need to develop healthy patterns of thinking so that we

can recognize the temptations of Satan. We can recognize and discern the will of the Holy Spirit and we can walk in part

walk in in the straight and narrow path that leads to eternal life. So let’s start out by looking at our introduction

here and I’m trying to get this thing here to work. So, um, if I could ask

that gentleman, one gentleman over there, if you could press the down button. Oh, there we are. All right. So,

every tenth button works on this. There we are. All right. So, what is indoctrination? Here’s the definition of

indoctrination. It comes from the Latin word doctrina, which means instruction.

The purpose of indoctrination is to implant an ideological narrative into

people’s brains. a new belief that allows no discussion and no

contradiction. The goal is obedient unthinking conformity.

This means to an end is a controlled selection of information, intensive

propaganda, and psychological manipulation up to coercive measures and threats of punishment.

The definition goes on, the more skin, the more skillful the mental manipulations, the more immune the

implanted ideological thought system becomes to critical arguments and inner doubts. Indoctrination is to be

understood as a vicious attack on our humanity, on our personality, and ultimately on the most precious thing of

all, our freedom of thought. Resisting indoctrination is a lifelong endeavor.

It is a matter of preserving one’s freedom of thought and search for meaning. End quote. It’s quite a

definition of indoctrination there. Soljnitson put it this way. He said, “The simple step of a courageous

individual is not to partake in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the whole

world.” And the irony is is that Soljniten lived in a system where the official newspaper

was called Pravda. And the word praa means truth. But everybody knew if it

was printed in prada, it was not the truth. It was generally a lie. Soljit

went on to talk about this the ind the the ideology that comes from indoctrination

and uh he reflects on the evil in the Soviet Union and he said this. He says to do evil a human being must first of

all believe that what he is doing is good. Ideology that is what gives

evildoing its long sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary

steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his

own and others eyes so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. And so at the

time when Soljnit was writing this and Stalin was wiping out about 12 million

people in Ukraine in the early 1920s Pravda the Soviet newspaper ran an

article on why they were exterminating the the the small farmers known as Kulaks. And what they said there was

they said as individuals the kulaks are guilty of nothing but as a class they’re

guilty of everything. And so ideology allows um people to pursue the path of

evil. So then we also have Schopenhau very famous quote here. He said this

what the herd hates the most is the one who thinks differently. It is not so much the opinion itself but

the audacity of wanting to think for themselves something that they do not know how to do.

And of course um uh zebra if if if you see a herd of zebra running together in

Africa uh they stick together because the lions can’t differentiate between individual zebras when they see all

those bits of black and white going together. But the moment the zebra leaves the herd and on its own it stands out a mile in the on the African

savannah. But when the zebras are all together, it’s almost impossible for line to identify which one to chase. And

Shopenhau is kind of reflecting on that here. Now, in the word of God says something about this as well. Romans

12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your

minds so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. That word

transformed in red is metamorphosis. And uh metamorphosis is like if you see

a beautiful butterfly and you see a caterpillar. If you did not know from your parents or from school that

caterpillars turn into butterflies, you would have no idea that one turned into the other. And so when we are to we are

not to be tr to conform to the ways of this world. We’re not to fall into the patterns of thinking of this world, but

we are to be transformed by the indwelling of Jesus Christ. We’re to be transformed by Christ renewing our mind.

And the the apostle Paul goes on to talk about that elsewhere. He says there, “Finally, beloved, whatsoever is pure,

whatsoever is honorable, whatsoever is just, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if

there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” And that phrase think

about these things is an imperative in the present continuous tense which means

don’t just think about these things and evening vespers or during Sabbath worship time. This is to be a continual

dwelling of your mind on these heavenly themes. That is as we continually dwell on heavenly themes. We are no longer

conformed to the thinking of this world. But God transforms our thinking. We have metamorphosis in the mind when we dwell

on a continual basis on heavenly things. Then the apostle Paul goes on to say, “Keep on doing the things that you have

heard that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me and the God of peace will be with you.” I love that

last phrase there from the Apostle Paul because the Apostle Paul was saying we all need Christian mentors.

We all need people that we can look at in our life and say that is a genuine Christian. That is a man of God. That is

a woman of God. They have walked the true path of life. They have walked with Jesus. And now I see that individual

truly as a living saint. And so we’re not just to think on heavenly themes and what we find in the word of God, but we

are also to model to the next generation what it means to follow Jesus Christ.

And if the next generation wants to know how do we follow Jesus, we need to model in our own lives, in our homes, our own

marriages what it means to follow Jesus. So we can say to our children be imitators of us as we are of Christ.

And uh most succinctly the apostle put it this way. He said let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

And so the battle for the mind, the battle for my salvation and your salvation, it doesn’t take place so much

in the heart. That’s the seat of our emotions we say. But it really takes place in the mind.

And the mind is the battleground. So let’s talk about how memory works, shall we? So memory 101. And if I can

remember how to press this. There we are. So there’s an image of your brain.

Has any of you ever seen a living brain? Yes. It’s the most beautiful thing

you’ll ever see. Uh I was once working in a hospital and I was a hospital manager in a maxfax cancer unit. Max,

max low facialist, head and neck cancers and uh it was um Friday afternoon and it

was Christmas Eve and all the operating theater staff had an acute attack of

Christmas shoppingitis and so the the operating room was just short of operating staff and there was a lady in

there in due to have um frontal lobotomy and so I was sitting at my desk working

away on the Friday afternoon. and I was going to go home for the Sabbath and um I got a phone call from the operating

room and said the surgeon wants to know are you free? I said, “What do you mean am I free?” He says, “Would you please come down to the operating room?” So I

went down to the operating room and said, “You need to scrub up.” So I said, “Well, how do I scrub up?” They showed me how to scrub up. And I went into the

operating room and there was this there was this like this this thing covered in green medical um um uh material and

there was um a shaven scalp sticking out of this this green um green um like bed

sheets and the surgeon says uh I need you to help me with the surgery. I said well I’m not medically qualified. I know

where the head is. I know where the foot is and not much else. And he says don’t worry Mr. Vine. He said, “Under British

law, if you’re acting under my supervision, you can do anything you want in this room.” I said, “Okay.” So I

said, “What are we doing today?” He says, “We’re doing a frontal lobotomy.” I said, “Well, I am not qualified to do a frontal lobotomy.” He says, “Just do

as I tell you.” So anyway, I learned how to do a frontal lobotomy. And if any of

you has a troublesome nephew or niece, come and see me afterwards tonight. So anyway, what I discovered was was that

the surgeon had this nice drill like like a uh I don’t know a power drill and

he drilled four holes and I was surprised how much effort was put into the drilling and and forcing down onto

onto the bone. And then when the bit broke through the the um the skull, it just stopped automatically. And then we

then he threaded with what looked like to me um like um a fishing needle, a

pole, a fishing hook. He put he put some fishing hook in with some filament in and pulled it up the other end through

one of the other four holes. And then he he he the the the filament was covered with with industrial diamonds. Then he

was going like this back and forth and he was he was he was slicing through the skull from the inside out. We did that

on all four corners. We pulled aside the skull and there wasn’t a brain there. So I thought, well, maybe where’s the brain

in there? So the surgeon says, well, you’ve got this level and you’ve got this layer and you got this layer. And eventually he pulled back the cover and

there was one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see. The the human brain when it’s actually functioning is

is is this beautiful like translucent blue color. It wasn’t bloody. It was this translucent blue. It’s a stunning

site and is has a breathtaking beauty about it. So when we see images like this up here, it’s actually closer to

reality uh than than we like to admit. The human brain is an incredible thing.

And the brain is filled with billions of nerve cells, each of which isworked in a

unique way via millions of neural connections. And neurons, as you see on

the screen there, there’s an image of a neuron, are nerve cells that send messages all over your body that allow

you to do everything from walking and eating to um thinking and talking. And

when you have identical twins in the mother’s womb, um they have identical genetical material but they develop

different materalities in life um because um each of us has different experiences in life and that

affects how the neural pathways form within our individual brains. And this process of developing an individuality

and a personality and an autobiograph autobiographical memory where you have a

sense of who you are and this is where I grew up and this was my family and this is how I came to know God for myself and

this is how God speaks to me. Sometimes it’s in the thunderclap, sometimes it’s in the still small voice and this is

your autobiographical memory. Your sense of who you are is entirely driven by these neural connections within your

brain. And so there’s another image there of of a neur of a neuron there, a neural connection in your brain. The

truth of the matter is your brain is not so much um not so much an organ as a

chipboard or a motherboard in a computer. It’s really a select a collection of electrical key um

electrical um switches going back and forth um carrying electrical information you might say. And uh that’s how you

grow in life in your brain that you this is called neuroplasticity. is the basis for lifelong learning and it’s the basis

for your individuality and your creativity. And so for children

um um unstructured play is essential for early learning. It’s a certain it’s

essential for healthy brain development because when children have unstructured playtime um they can develop independent

and healthy personalities. When children have unstructured play they learn about intrinsic interests and competencies.

They learn how to make decisions. They learn how to solve problems. Children learn how to exert self-control. They

learn how to self-regulate. They learn how to follow rules, how to make friends, how to interact in a healthy

manner with others. They learn how to experience and deal with joy and disappointment. So unstructured play

promotes good mental health among children. And it fosters the development of these neural pathways within the

brain. I remember when I was growing up in England, it was a very different world. Uh my mom and dad, we’d come back

from school at about 3:30. We’d walk back a mile and a half from school on this the roads and mom and dad mom would

say, “Okay, kids, it’s time to go out to play and we’ll see you at 5:30 for supper.” And off we went to make

mischief in the local streets and we would climb trees and we’d collect conquers and we’d we’d smash our

neighbors windows with with rugby balls and so forth. Uh for which we received the appropriate punishment. We would

wander into the neighbors fields and uh sometimes we we’d try and make little bonfires there and they were that was

swiftly that habit was swiftly stamped upon. We did all kinds of healthy and unhealthy things, but it was an

extremely happy childhood. We learned to self-regulate. We had learned how to take risks. We would climb on top of

buildings and then my mom would have a fit when she’d see us up there. But she never stopped us going out to play. And

in America at the moment um at the same time that um open-ended unstructured play has significantly decreased among

children in America because they’re also risk averse. You know we don’t have those old climbing frames that we used

to have 30 years ago in our children’s playgrounds. We’ve also witnessed a significant rise in anxiety, depression,

feelings of helplessness, narcissism and suicide ideiation among children, young adults. Now our brains and this is how

our brains learn. Our brains usually learn slowly.

And uh if any of you have learned the a musical instrument, you know what I’m talking about. Um if you’re going to

learn a musical instrument like the violin or the piano, there’s a gentleman there learning the

piano. You know that it takes a lot of repetition. And it takes a lot of repetition because it’s not particularly

exciting at the time. And and you have to kind of form those neural pathways within your brain. But when we

experience experience something that’s really exciting, we remember it immediately and we may never forget it

again. So if you may have a very exciting thought and one moment it’s at the front of your brain and the next

minute it’s gone completely. But when we sense that something is important, we try and hold on to it. Now short-term

memory takes place just behind the frontal lobe of our brains, just behind the decision-making um thinking brow

here. And that’s very very short-term memory consists only of brain waves which are electrical impulses between

your uh nerve cells but nothing is recorded in your long-term memory banks.

You may have a temporary distraction that causes you to lose that thought. And so um you may go through life and uh

has you experienced getting into your car and then driving home and having no conscious recollection of the journey

home? Yes. Or has anybody has your spouse ever said to you, “What did you do today?” And you sort of think for a

few seconds like, “What did I do today?” And you’re desperately trying to reconstruct it. Yes. Yes. Okay. It’s not

an excuse for forgetting marriage anniversaries, but it is it is a it is a mental reality that if it’s like if it’s

in routine mode, it doesn’t stick in our brains. Now, there’s a very very famous surgery that happened in 1953 with this

guy here up on the screen, Henry Moles. uh he was he had epilepsy and his

surgeon decided to remove some scar tissue from the frontal lobe of his brain. So he went under the knife and

when the surgeon opened up his brain he went a bit further and decided he would remove the hippocampus.

Now the the he was going to he was going to focus on this part of the brain here but he decided to delve into the inner

core of the brain and you’ve got two little things here which we collectively call the hippocampus. They’re about the

size of your thumb and they’re shaped like a seahorse. And the word hippocampus is Latin. It means seahorse.

And so the surgeon decided to remove Henry’s hippocampus, those two organs.

So Henry made a full recovery. But without the hippocampus, you have no

autobiographical memory. And after that surgery, Henry Moles

became essentially like a pet rabbit. He was a very pleasant man to be around.

But he didn’t know who he was. He couldn’t memorize anything. He had no past. And without a past, he had no

sense of future. There was nothing in his life to plan around. His sense of self was completely gone. He was very

pleasant to the nursing staff. But with no past and no direction for the future,

he was reduced essentially to being a good-natured pet. because they took out his hippo campus, he lost his

personality, his individuality, his creativity, his memory and his humanity.

When I saw that surgery in Britain and they took out the front right lobe of that individual and I asked the doctor

like why are we taking this out and he said because this person has extremely violent tendencies and I said and will

this help? He said well I hope so. And um the next week I went to visit this

patient and cuz I was kind of curious, you know, I hope they’re still alive. And um it turned out that person was as

dosile as a pet rabbit. I mean, it was it had a remarkable effect on that individual taking out the frontal lobe

of the brain there. I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not something you do at home. So let’s just talk for a minute about

the hippo campus because the hippo campus when we talk about the battle for your salvation takes place in the brain.

It’s really taking place in the hippo campus. Now there are two of these things and they’re buried um beneath the

frontal behind the frontal lobe and beneath the neoortex. And I get another picture there. And you see right there

there’s your hippocampus there. There it is. Right right in the the core of your brain. And there’s your neoortex around

here. And there’s your frontal lobe. And right down here is the hippocampus. And

you may say, well, why are we talking about hippocampus during the Sabbath hours? Well, we are wonderfully and

fearfully made. But the hippo campus is the only organ in your body that has the ability to

permanently remember when and where we experienced or thought anything and how this felt. A healthy hippo campus is

essential to the the development of your sense of self, your development of your sense of individuality, your memories,

your sense of who you are. To have the assurance of salvation requires a healthy hippo campus. Without that hippo

campus, we lose our sense of self. We have no memory of our past and we become

directionless individuals. Now the hippocampus has three key mechanisms by

which it generates memory and there’ll be a test at the end of tonight just to make sure you remember these three

mechanisms. Okay. Now the first of those is emotional selection. Now not

everything we experience can be remembered. Would you agree would you agree with me on that? Yeah. So the

criteria for the the hippo campus to decide whether to remember an event is

whether there was an emotion attached to it. So let me give an example. If you were driving here this evening and at

the traffic lights you saw you you heard a dog barking 100 yards away, you may

have been temporarily for a fleeting second aware of the barking of the dog, but by tonight you’ll have no memory of

that barking dog. However, if you went for a morning walk this morning and your

neighbor um in in his or her wisdom has a pack of pit bulls and you walked by

their front yard and there’s a thin wooden, you know, fence about 3 ft tall and the pit bulls are snarling at you

from the other side of that pit for of that fence. You’re going to remember that experience for the rest of your life.

One barking dog has no emotion attached to it. The other has terror attached to

it and extreme fear. And because fear is attached to the memory, it will make its way into your long-term memory banks.

Daily routines don’t make it into our long-term memory, which is why when we get to bed, we struggle to remember what

we did. And fear is the most powerful emotion that causes us to remember anything that we experience. Now, your

hippocampus is divided into two parts. There’s the gyrus

here. That’s the lower bit there. And then the upper bit is called the corno

ammonus. Now your brain your hippocampus produces what are called neurons.

And in the dentate gyrus this bit here the lower part of your hippocampus that

produces the neurons that remember the when and the where. And they discovered this in 2014. And the scientist won

Nobel Prize for medicine for this discovery. This part of your brain remembers the when and the where. This

part here remembers the what and the how. So when and where is it happened

today on the way to the program. And the what is what I experienced and the how

is how I felt about it. And so if you may have a you may have a dog barking at you, but you if you you have a when and

a where. Yes, you have that. But if you don’t have a what and a how, if there’s no emotion attached to it, it’s not

going to make its way into your long-term memory banks. So you have a when and where in the first part of the

hippocampus and the what and the how what happened and how you felt about it. Um those emotional relationships that’s

going to come in the second part of the hippo campus there. So um the the 2014

Nobel Prize for Medicine as already mentioned was awarded for this the discovery of the place neurons in the

lower part of the hippocampus the when and the where the functionality of time and space in the hippo campus neurons

allows for the generation of coherent memories. If you don’t have when and where neurons in the hippocampus, you’re

not going to remember when things happened and all you’re going to have in your brain is fragments but you can’t make it into a cohesive hole. So if

somebody says to you, tell me the story of how you met your spouse, you need when and where neurons in the

hippocampus that have indexed it in in a cohesive structure. Otherwise, you can’t

remember it. Alzheimer’s patients lose the production of neurons in this part

of the hippocampus. So they have fragmented memories, but they can’t remember the when and the where anymore.

And we have an epidemic of dementia and Alzheimer’s in our western society. We’re going to come across some of the

reasons why in a few moments this evening. Conscience uh when you have a conscious experience during the day,

your frontal lobe interacts with the hippocampus to interact with the daily memories that are stored there. And it

allows us to consider and evaluate options and alternatives for decision-m in our frontal lobe. But each night the

hippocampus moves the new information which is when and where and how and what

when those all those four neurons are firing together in your hippoc campus when you go to bed at night and you

sleep you have memory uploads. Now this is how the scientists would portray it. This is

how I’m going to portray it here tonight. This is how your ideal sleep cycle works. Uh stage one is when you’re

drifting into sleep. Uh stage two, you’re getting into a deeper sleep. Stage three at the bottom here is very

interesting. That’s when you’re producing very slow delta waves in your brain. And um you your sleep maybe you

may be disoriented if you woken up by then. So if you go to sleep on a Sabbath afternoon for an hour and you wake up,

you’re in stage three. You wake up feeling groggy and dis disoriented for the rest of the day because you’ve

interrupted stage three. you’ve interrupted the process of uploading data from the thumb drive that is the

hippocampus to the hard drive that is your neoortex. And stage four is when

the is when the um the when and the where neurons kick into effect. And so the what and the how get uploaded to the

brain in this stage of sleep and the where and the when get uploaded here. This is when you have rapid eye

movement. This is when you have dreams and and your brain is is filing all the memories and turning it into a coherent

hole. And this is when you’re most likely to experience a dreamlike state in your sleep. And this is uh a 90 to

120 minute cycle. So if you’re going to have a sleep, if you want physical relaxation, give yourself a boost. Do a

20 minute sleep. If you want to wake up feeling groggy, set the alarm for 1 hour’s time. If you want to have a

proper cycle, set it for one and a half or two hours. You’re going to get through one complete cycle there. And

so, but in order to file the memories from the hippocampus into the neoortex,

the neoortex is the long-term hard drive in your brain, you’ve got to go through stage three, and then you’ve got to go

through stage four. This is the the how and the what. This is the when and the

where. And uh those it’s a sequential process that takes place when you sleep

at night. And so um in REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, we try to follow our

dreams and experiences in the virtual space created by our brains. And often our eyes will move very rapidly. And in

REM sleep, the new memories are linked to existing content memory. So we often awake with new insights just after

sleeping. And a conscious reliving of your past experiences in life is only possible because the hippocampus stores

the access information to the neoortal um memory fragments in a register. Your

hippocampus has a reg. It’s like the key to your long-term memory. And the t the time and place neurons are called the

index neurons. They remain in the hippocampus throughout your entire life. They anchor, they index, and they make

sense of all the memory fragments in the neoccortical hard drive. So remembering is thus much easier when we recall when

and where something happened. If you can’t remember when something happened or where it happened, it’s very

hard for you to remember what happened and what you felt about it. But if you can remember when and where, it unlocks

the what and the how. And so um the when and the where are have been known from

ancient Greek times from before the time of Christ for being essential for the memory. So a memory trick that the

ancient Roman and Greek rhetorics would teach and they still teach this in rhetoric today is is known as the memory

palace. And speakers from uh two uh a th000 BC in ancient Greece they were taught to

mentally associate key words in a speech with specific locations and then to walk

along a previously stored route during their speech. So they were exploiting without realizing it the hippocampus’s

ability to remember in spatial terms. So today, if you want to do that, if you want to remember a list of things that

say you’re going to give a speech or you want to go, you got to go do some family groceries or whatever, you need to

you’ve got a list you need to work through in your memory. Um, you practice this by by um thinking of let’s say um

every room in your house. Let’s say you’ve got four bedrooms upstairs and you need to do four jobs in the day and

you think we’ve got to do this in the first bedroom, that in the second bedroom, that in the third bedroom, and that in the fourth bedroom. Once you’ve

assigned a a space, a geographical space in your mind to the activity you need to do, then you just walk through the rooms

of your bedroom of your house in your mind and once you’ve you’ve tickled the when neurons, the what and the how come

to mind as well. Is that you’re all following this? Yes. Okay. So, it’s a memory trick. The Greeks taught it, the

Romans taught it. They had no idea about the hippo campus, but this is how it works.

And so, at night, h you need good sleep in order to have um coherent memories.

And you need good sleep in order to have a sense of who you are. And you need good sense good sleep in order to have a

memory make sense of how God has been at work in your life and how you’ve experienced his goodness in your life.

When pastor Kelly was talking earlier about you need to go back to when you fast when you first when you last experienced God’s grace and his love.

You’re going to go back through your neurons here to the last time when the the when and the where and the how and

the what all collided and there was the experience of God’s grace and goodness in your life. So in order to um in order

for this to be healthy, you need positive hippocampus

generation. Now that’s positive hippocampus neurogenesis. There

it is. Okay. Now that that first part of your hippocampus produces thousands of

new time and space neurons every single day that enables us to access the memories in the neoortex hard drive and

that hippocampus neurogenesis or the production of new neurons on a daily basis that happens during REM sleep is

essential for forming new memories and distinguishing old memories. It helps you with Bible memorization. It helps

you with memorizing the fundamental beliefs. It helps you with remembering how God has been present in your life.

This neurogenesis allows us to maintain our autobiographical memories. Our sense

of who we are anchored not just in time and space but in salvation history, each

with our unique histories and personalities. It helps develop our critical thinking skills and is

essential for maintaining healthy emotional resiliency and overcoming depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s and

dementia. So positive hippocample neurogenesis is really important. So what are some of

the things we know promote positive hippocample neurogenesis?

Well, these are some of the top factors here. The first

is this getting enough sleep. Who here gets between seven and eight

hours of sleep a night? Okay. Who here can’t remember the last

time they got seven or eight hours of sleep in the night? Okay, that’s more like myself in my life. If I get maybe

five hours, I’m doing well on a nightly basis. Um, but anyway, uh, sleep is really important. Deep sleep, stage

three andm sleep, stage four, it enables your hippocampus to store and and sort

significant memories in your neoortex and to generate new index neurons. Sleep

inter interruption and sleep deprivation will hinder neurogenesis. It means that

your ability to remember your life and to form new coherent memories is

inhibited and impaired by a lack of sleep. The second thing that really affects positive hypocample neurogenesis

is adequate nutrition. And really important for adequate hippocample neurogenesis is getting sufficient

vitamin D, iodine and omega-3 in your diet. Those three three things are essential for healthy hippocampus

function. So vitamin D we get through walking outside. Yes. In the sun and uh

if we may take supplements particularly during the winter iodine most of us get

sufficient iodine because we have iodized salt without even realizing it. Most salt is iodized and there are

countries in the world that don’t have iodized salt. And um if if you have um

if you don’t have sufficient iodine in the population, you get um ID iodine deficient disorders. So if if it is

endemic, if if if most of the population does not have sufficient iodine in its diet, then the the the mean of

population IQ shifts down one standard deviation with every generation. You literally get populations of stupid

people. Um quite literally. Now, don’t look at your children with new eyes from

tonight on is they’re not stupid. You just haven’t given them enough iodine in their diet.

But um if it’s somebody who has an acute iodine deficiency may have a goita um

and you get populations um in areas where the soil has been leeched of iodine where you get cretinism or

village idiots and you find this in mountain regions around the world where the rain has leeched the iodine out of

the soil. So the children have lower IQ, poor performance at school, slower neuro development. The animals are are smaller

and you get lower milk and milk milk and uh wool yields. Whereas in the valleys where the iodine has been washed down to

the children are more advanced in their IQ developments, their educational development and you have um um larger

and healthier animals. And so when you get mountainous regions and when you get like the Ganges Delta where you get

flooding on a regular basis, this contributes to leeching the iodine out of the soil. So um I’d encourage you to

take plenty of you know iodized salt is really important and omega-3s. Now most

people in America today are deficient in vitamin D, omega-3 but not necessarily

in iodine. And then the next factor that stimulates positive hippocample neurogenesis

is exercise. And the research shows that if you get you need about an hour of aerobic

exercise every day, it grows your hippocampus by about 2% a year. That

means it enhances your memory and your mental resilience and improves your mental health the older that you get. So

exercise is a really big deal. Aerobic exercise for improving neuromple neurogenesis. The fourth factor that

promotes this is a social life. Social isolation,

being in quarantine, being in solitary confinement, being in lockdown,

it destroys social life. When you talk with somebody else, much of the conversation is your brain interacting

with its memories from the past. You’re exercising the hippo campus. your your

frontal lobe is drawing on information from today in the hippocampus or from yesterday and last week in the neoortex.

And so when you have a social life, your brain is active. When you are in isolation, you’re in lockdown and you

don’t have social contact, you’re not engaging in interactions with other people. Um you you lose that that

stimulation for the hippocample neurogenesis and it reduces your hypocample neurogenesis. When you have

regular social contact, it generates positive emotional experiences that

creates new neurons in the hippocampus that you need for your in mental survival. It builds new memories and it

helps overcome diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. And then you have purpose. The fifth thing that scientists realize

affects hippocample neurogenesis is having a purpose in life. Finding a

purpose in life contributes to positive neurogenesis. So, a willingness to learn new ideas and skills, a willingness to

engage in new relationships and to engage in positive experiences. Um, living within a meta narrative that

makes sense of the universe. And that meta narrative is larger than myself and my own perspective on life, such as the

great controversy theme we have as Adventists. It contributes to positive neurogenesis. Having no purpose in life

as many young people have today leads to aimless lives fixated only on the pursuit of entertainment and pleasure.

And our modern philosophies of despair and Darwinian evolution which deny intrinsic purpose in life tends to

reduce hippocample neurogenesis and result in anxiety and depression today

and Alzheimer’s in a generation’s time. So these neuroindex neurons in the

hippocampus are hungry for new experiences which is an expression of human curiosity and the more positive

memories you can create or can recall the more resilient, confident and efficient we can be each day. Positive

hypocample neurogenesis helps to provide psychological resilience to times of stress and crisis. It improves our

mental health outcomes and it enhances our ability to think for ourselves. But in the west today and particularly in

America, we have record levels of physical inactivity. We have chronic sleep deprivation. We

have horrendous nutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. And we have social isolation.

All of these factors in our society leads to reduced hypocample neurogenesis.

In the short term, it leads to a society where people experience widespread mental exhaustion, anxiety, and

depression. And in the long term, it contributes to the wave of Alzheimer’s that’s sweeping the West today, which

happens when the hippocample volume reduces by 5% a year. So your lifestyle

today directly impacts your health later in life. Not just how many pounds you

weigh, but your emotional and mental experience of life. And if you take a look at that list on the screen there,

does any of that sound familiar to Adventists?

You know, I was uh when I was um pastoring in in my church, we did a chip program for many years. And I realized

that the new starch principles of N for nutrition, E for exercise, W for water,

S for sunshine, that’s vitamin D, T for temperance, A for fresh air, R for daily

rest, adequate rest, and T for trusting God. I realized that the new start principles positively impact um our

cardiac health. And then when I started doing depression recovery programs and I

started looking at the new start principles again, I realized that the new start principles all positively

impact mental health. And then when I start looking at hypocample neurogenesis

and why am I talking about this? Well, this directly relates to healthy thinking in times of crisis.

If I want to have healthy thinking in times of crisis, I need to have all those factors in my life today. None of

this costs anything. We can all achieve these in our lives today. It’s a matter of choice and intentionality. The

Adventist health message um is an integral part of the proclamation of the third angel’s message

because if people are going to make a choice for God, they need to be able to have healthy thinking patterns. They

need to have brains that are capable of making significant decisions without giving to into the pressure and the

indoctrination of our world around us today. And so we can start tonight where

where the good news about the Avenous Health message is that wherever you are today, you can always get better tomorrow.

You you there’s no stage where you say there’s nothing I can do now. Regardless of how I have lived my life in the last

50 so years, I can turn a leaf tomorrow and I can start working on one or two of

these things and then next month I’ll add another two or three of these things or I could do all of them together. But that the message that God has given us

in the writings of Sister White on the Adventist health message, it all directly relates to healthy thinking

patterns, not just healthy bodies. So negative hypocample neurogenesis

takes place in a number of ways as well. So when you have acute or unresolved or

chronic stress, this redu this releases glucocorticoids into your bloodstream. I’ve listed them

up on the screen there. These are stress hormones released by the adrenal glands in response to an acutely threatening

situation. Now these hormones stimulate the production or the release of glucose

in into the bloodstream immediately so that we have energy for fight or flight when we face a crisis. And this reaction

is vital in the short term but it’s harmful in the long term if it becomes chronic and unresolved.

The index neurons produced by the neuro genenesis in your hippocampus. When you

face a threat, the neuro the neuroindex neurons evaluate the significance of the

threat by comparing it with your previous memories of similar experiences.

If the new situation is assessed by the hippocampus as being not significant

then the hippocampus rel um al uh redu relie turns these um hormones back to

normal levels through chemical signals. But if we have reduced hippocample

neurogenesis, the hippocampus is no longer efficient in assessing the threat and the stress hormones reduce to their

pre threat level only very very slowly and this leads to a vicious cycle that

many of us experience today. You start out with chronic stress. Some people live with just chronic unresolved

stress. What does that do? It leads to elevated stress hormones. When you have elevated

stress hormones, that leads to chronically inhibited neurogenesis of the index neurons in your hippocampus.

That means the brain is is is harder placed to regulate the stress hormones and that leads to reduced mental and

emotional resiliency. When you have reduced mental and emotional resilience, you’re more likely to prey to chronic

fall victim to chronic stress because if you have healthy mental resilience, then

you can cope with the stresses and you can overcome them. But if you have reduced mental and emotional resiliency,

you’re going to fall victim to this again. And so unresolved chronic stress

puts you in this vicious circle here, this vicious cycle. And so the doctors

recognize this and some people maybe here tonight are taking synthetic anti-depressants known as the selective

serotonin reuptake inhibitor class. And these work by stimulating neurogenesis

of the neurons in your hippocampus, that’s what they do. So when you’re experiencing chronic stress and you’ve

got elevated stress hormones and you have reduced mental and emotional resilience, maybe depression and

anxiety, these um anti-depressants work by stimulating the neurogenesis here in

your hippocampus that allows the brain to reduce those stress hormones, send

signals to reduce that and that leads to improved mental health up here. So we

doctors recognize how this cycle operates and many of the a large class

of anti-depressants today work on this cycle here. Now negative hypocample neurogenesis also impacts your ability

to think for yourself. Now each of our brains has two two operating systems for

decision making. Um, you may think that, you know, a teenage son of yours only has one decision-making process or maybe

no decision-making process, but the fact is our brains have two decision-making

processes at play at any one time. The first of those we’re going to call

system one because I’m not very creative. And this is generally unconscious or subconscious decision-

making. And this deals with the implementation of learned repeated behaviors without having to think things

through on a case-byase basis. So for instance, you may practice all through your childhood years how to do arpeggios

on the piano. And when you’re playing in church and you could recognize there are arpeggios in the music. When you when

you recognize the pattern, you don’t have to consciously think about where the fingers go with every note. You’ve already practiced it so many times, the

brain automatically goes there. If you’re driving home tonight and you want to turn left at the next junction, you

don’t have to tell your fingers to indicate left. You think, I need to go left and the fingers automatically

change the indicators. So, you’re going to go left. So, our brains operate through much of the day on system one

because we have learned behaviors and we can actually go through the day in kind of like zombie mode. We’re not really

making any conscious decisions because our brain is just working on what we’ve known, what we’ve done in the past. This

is always what works. This is my route to go home. This is my daily rat race that I go through. I’m going to go

through it without hardly any conscious thought. And that is how many people live their lives today.

And this is a very efficient way of of decision- making because it allows your frontal lobe decision- making to

initiate and implement appropriate decisions without any conscious thought or decision-making on your part even if

you have very little mental energy. So for instance, at the end of a long day,

if you cross the road and you see a truck right driving very rapidly right at you, you don’t think for a few

minutes, should I jump or should I not even if your brain is tired, your your

um system one thinking says jump and you jump without having to think about it. And so this is system these are system

one decisions. They’re taken without conscious thought. This is a form of you might say zombie decision-making. you’re

not consciously making those decisions. And then you have system two.

And system two is comparative decision- making, conscious decision- making, and

intentional decision- making. When you consider alternate courses of action, and develop better solutions to problems

than your system one template offers you, the hippo campus supplies information to the frontal loes from our

neoccortal cont from our neoortex. So it draws on the memory banks and it enables you when you engage in intentional

decision-m to remember to compare to contrast to evaluate and make informed

decisions based on your brain’s memory of similar prior experiences. System two thinking requires sufficient

memory recollection capacity in the hippocampus for adequate information to be provided. So hippocample neurogenesis

is essential in order for you to literally have the brain power to make conscious decisions. All of this

requires brain energy. Now some of us here today know that after a long day at work, who here comes back and just wants

to be a couch potato when they get home. All right? It’s not because you’re a

moral failure. It’s because you’re experiencing brain depletion.

The hippo campus can only store so much data on a daily basis. And the more

reduced your hippocampus or more inefficient it is at neurocample neurogenesis, the smaller and smaller is

the thumb drive that carries the data from that day. So many people arrive home literally exhausted and uh they

literally go into um uh system one thinking you know they they they return home like you know um like cavemen I

guess really not capable of any meaningful conversations. It’s not because they’re difficult individuals,

the brain is just exhausted for the day. So if you if you’re waiting for your

spouse to come home to have a difficult conversation with them, it’s not a good idea.

Go for a walk with him on Sunday morning after both of you are rested from a good night’s sleep. You’re more likely to get

brain capacity that can actually think about things. But when somebody comes home exhausted from work and the

hippocampus, that little thumb drive has been used up through the day’s memories, there’s not a lot there’s not much left

in the tank to have conscious decision-making or system 2 thinking. Intensive use of system 2 decision-m can

stretch your hippo campus to its limits. And when you have a full hippocampus memory from the day, system 2 is only

available by overwriting your existing index neurons. That means you’re

overriding your previous memories, which isn’t healthy for you either.

So, when people are mentally exhausted or when they’re overwhelmed,

they are often very um they’re very hesitant. They don’t want to have to think complex issues through. They just

go with the flow. And the thing that overrides the hippocampus more than anything else is

fear. that dominant emotion when you have an overload of fear and

chronic stress and fear and chronic stress it overloads the hippocampus. So

you shift from being this kind of thinker to this kind of thinker.

This is how indoctrination works. If the powers that be want to shift you from

this to this, they’ll overload your thinking with fear because it overwhelms

the hippocampus. Your brain is literally exhausted. It is depleted your energy for the day. And at this stage, rather

than having to think things through, you become compliant with whatever mandates come your way from whatever government

you’re living under. When you are just thinking in system one

and your brain is so exhausted or overwhelmed by chronic stress or by fear, when you’re living in that

condition, you become a mentally exhausted, fully compliant population that follows the rules established by

other people. Does any of this sound familiar to us? Yes, it does.

It’s why fear is number one tool in propaganda because it drives you from system two

thinking to system one thinking because your brain is just exhausted. It is overwhelmed by the negative emotions

that are dominating your hippocampo hippocampus. So I’ve spoken tonight about these

things. Why? Because in the great controversy

between Christ and Satan, the battle is played out not in our hearts but in your minds.

Our brains are both the battleground and the prize for Christ and for Satan.

And in our overview this evening of this part this of how the brain works, we’ve seen that having a healthy hippocampus

with strong neurogenesis of those index neurons, the when and the wares, that’s essential for promoting memory and

optimal decision- making. It means that we have a sense of who we are. It means

that we remember our histories. We know where we are in the flow of history. Once you’ve lost a sense of who you are

and where you’ve come from, you have no idea where you’re going tomorrow. And so maintaining healthy thinking

patterns is essential if we’re to live through the final crisis when we will be hated by all men for his name’s sake.

When the hearts of men are failing them for what? Fear for what is coming upon the world.

As we look tomorrow afternoon at how this is played out in the book of Revelation, we’re going to realize how

that mark of the beast is going to work in terms of u people will be forced to do it in their hands because they’re

basically overwhelmed by the indoctrination that’s going on. And how how can we resist that? And how can we

maintain ears that are open to the voice of the Holy Spirit and minds that are actually capable of making decisions

based on truth and responding to the truth of the third angel’s message. I want to encourage you tonight to think

again about your lifestyle factors. I just had my medical exam two weeks ago,

my annual medical, and I hate going in for my annual medical because my doctor’s got an eye of a hawk and she’s

merciless with me. Any of you hate going to your annual medical? Teenagers, this

is something to look forward to later in life. And my doctor said, “You need this blood

test and this blood test and this blood test.” And um I went to had and they couldn’t find the veins at first. They

poked and they prodded and finally they found those veins. And um then the nurse

who was poking and proddding me, he said, “I listened to your sermons pass by.” I thought, “Well, maybe that’s why she’s poking and proddding so much.”

But um I had I had that I had that um I

had that that medical and the doctor said Conrad you need to do X Y and Z. And I knew exactly before I went to see

the doctor I need to do X Y and Z. Um and I am doing X Y and Z and there’s

been positive results already by the by the grace of God. But there is no point

having an Adventist health message if we don’t live the Adventist health message. And the Adventist health message is not

just so that we have healthy physical hearts. And it’s not just that we have healthy minds as we can overcome

depression. It’s so that we can think in the final crisis. We can discern the

voice of the Holy Spirit and we can have system two that is rational, conscious,

deliberate decision-making based on biblical principle rather than system one thinking which is automatic just go

with the flow because we’re too exhausted to think about it. And so the avenous health message, the

new start principles directly promote positive hippocample neurogenesis,

which means we’re better able to withstand Satan’s final attacks.

Negative lifestyle factors such as sleep deprivation or sleep interruption,

having a poor diet, micronutrient deficiencies, social isolation and purposelessness all contribute to

reduced hypocample capacity and inadequate neurogenesis. This leads today to anxiety and depression and it

leads tomorrow to Alzheimer’s. The most powerful emotion associated with any given event to create new memories in

your hippocampus is fear. Primal fear. Fear of unknown consequences, fear of

social rejection and fear of death. This will overwhelm your hippoc campus. And

historically, these fears have been manipulated by those in authority to indoctrinate the population and turn

them into a compliant, unquestioning zombie population. So tomorrow morning we’re going to

examine how indoctrination works through the hippo campus. How indoctrin how

indoctrination techniques were developed by the Chinese in the Korean war. They were perfected in Guantanamo Bay. The

air force produced a volume a manual on this and how those indoctrination techniques were imposed upon the west

during the pandemic. It leds to an emotionally exhausted society with a

mental health crisis which we see on our streets every day. We’ll discuss that tomorrow morning. And then tomorrow

afternoon, we’re going to discuss how can you best protect your mind from this indoctrination.

We’re going to ask how we can understand how in the final crisis when the same mixture of fear, coercion, and

indoctrination will cause multitudes to be lost through receiving the mark of the beast, our ability to hear,

recognize, and be obedient to the convictions of the Holy Spirit upon our conscience is so critical to ensuring

that we survive Satan’s final assault on the mind. These topics are not just for of

academic interest. Fear God and give glory to him assumes

that we can rationally turn and worship God as our creator. Do not receive the mark of the beast

assumes that we know what the mark of the beast is and we can consciously choose to receive the seal of God. But

if we are overwhelmed, if we are overwhelmed by fear and chronic stress,

and we’ve conditioned our thinking so that we are just a zombie population doing whatever the mandates are around

us, it’s going to be very hard for us to resist the mark of the beast in the final crisis.

So look after yourselves. Nobody can do this for you. We can come and hear about

these things, but how you live your life from tonight onwards is a preparation for the final crisis. Amen.

The new start program, the Adventist health message is not just something we proclaim to the world. It’s something

that I want to invite you to live for yourselves so that you can be an example when others people other people’s hearts

are failing them for fear. We can stand tall and have hope and joy in our hearts because we know that our redemption is

drawing nigh. If we’re going to be pillars of hope and messengers of mercy and ambassadors of God’s grace in a

world filled with fear and self-loathing and mental health crisis, then we need

to start living today in a way that God has revealed to us through the spirit of prophecy. May God bless us as we choose

from this night forward to live in the light that God has given us so that others may see the light in our lives

and be drawn to the light of the world who is Jesus himself. invite you to bow your heads for a closing prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that we have the ability to

think and talk about these things. Father, I thank you that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. I thank

you, Father, that a simple choice tonight can lead us to a path of mental and

emotional health and ultimately to where we can hear and respond to the voice and

convicting power of your Holy Spirit. Father, I pray that if your spirit has spoken to anybody here tonight about

lifestyle choices, about how we are living our lives, about the choices we are making from day to day, Father, I

ask that you give us not just that conviction tonight, but from tonight onward, would you give us the courage

and the grace to fulfill that that conviction and that our minds will be renewed that we will not be conformed to

the sicknesses and the indoctrinations of this world, but we will be renewed by the um by the transformation of our

minds so that we will indeed have the mind of Christ. So, Father, as we go

through these Sabbath hours together, I pray that you will grow us. You grow us in truth and in grace and that we can

stand tall for you, knowing that our redemption is drawing nigh. So, Lord, dismiss us now with your blessing. Give

us traveling mercies on the road to our homes. Bring us back tomorrow, Father. And I pray that in all that is said and

done, Jesus will be glorified in our lives. In his holy name we pray. Amen.