Friday, May 8, 2009

Biblical Stories of People Who Hear God

Bearing this in mind and remembering that we need to use our imagination to identify with the experiences we shall be considering, we turn now to six ways in which people are addressed by God within the biblical record:

  • a phenomenon plus a voice
  • a supernatural messenger or an angel
  • dreams and visions
  • an audible voice
  • the human voice
  • the human spirit or the "still small voice"

A phenomenon plus a voice. This first category of divine-human encounter is richly represented in the events of Scripture. God's covenant with Abra­ham, a major foundation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, was solemnized upon just such an occasion. Fire from God passing through the air consumed the sacrifice Abraham had prepared while God intoned the promise to Abraham and his seed (Gen 15:17-18).

Moses received his call to deliver Israel from Egypt by the hand of God. while he stood before the bush that was burning yet unburned and from which God spoke (Ex 3:3-6). The nation of Israel as a whole was called to covenant by God's voice from within a mountain on fire, pulsating with the energy of his presence (Deut 5:23). Ezekiel was addressed in the context of a meteoro­logical display that defies all but poetic description (Ezek 1-2).

At Jesus' baptism the heavens appeared to open up, and the Spirit visibly descended upon him in conjunction with a voice from heaven that said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17). Saul's encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus involved a blinding light from heaven and an audible voice heard not only by Saul but by those with him as well (Acts 9:3-8).

A supernatural messenger or an angel. In his book on angels Mortimer J. Adler, a distinguished philosopher and a historian of ideas, describes the opposition he received from his scholarly colleagues when he wished to include angels among the great ideas of Western humanity in a major publication. There is no doubt whatsoever that in terms of the amount of attention they have received not only in religion but also in art, literature and philosophy-angels deserve the place in Western civilization assigned to them by Adler. And it is certainly not going too far to describe the Bible itself as a book full of angels, from Genesis 16:7 onward.

Strictly speaking, the word angel means nothing more than "emissary" or "messenger;" but it is normally understood that such messengers, while they are persons, are not mere human beings. They are supernatural beings on a divine mission. God addresses humans through them, though they do not always reveal their identity.

Sometimes in the biblical record it is difficult to determine whether an angel or the Lord himself is on the scene. In Genesis 18, for example, we have an account of three men appearing at the door of Abraham's tent. In the middle of this chapter the text casually shifts from "they" and "the men" to "the LORD:' This is then followed by the well-known dialogue between Abraham and the Lord concerning the fate of Sodom.

Strangely at the opening of Genesis 19 only two angels appear to Lot in Sodom to finish off the episode. (The three men of Genesis 18 were appar­ently two angels accompanied by the Lord.) Hebrews 13:2 is taken by some as referring back to this story in Genesis when it exhorts, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it:'

In front of the city of Jericho (Josh 5:13-15) Joshua encounters "a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand;" who has come to help as "commander of the army of the LORD:" He directs Joshua to take off his shoes because the ground he stands on is holy. The "army of the LORD here consists mainly of angels, no doubt the same as the legions that became visible in 2 Kings 6:17, as was discussed in chapter four, and that later stood at the beck and call of our incarnate Lord (Mt 26:53). ("LORD of hosts" becomes a primary name for God as redemptive history progresses through the Old Testament; see for example Ps 24:10; 46:7; 59:5.) A few verses later, at Joshua 6:2, the commander now seems to be the Lord himself, explaining that famous and unorthodox military strategy whereby the walls of Jericho were to be brought down.

Human beings are so commonly addressed by angels in Scripture that I shall list only a few more of the outstanding cases: Balaam (Num 22:22-35), Gideon (Judg 6:11-24), the parents of Samson (Judg 13), Isaiah (Is 6:6-13), Daniel (Dan 9:20-27), Joseph (Mt 1:20-25), Zacharias (Lk 1-20), Mary (Lk 1:26-38), the women at the empty tomb (Mt 28:2-7), Peter (Acts 5:19-20) and Paul (Acts 27:23-26).

We should take note that these people encounter angels in an otherwise normal state of mind, as distinct from encountering them in dreams and visions, although the content of the conversations recorded sometimes sug­gests (as with Gideon, Samson's parents and Zacharias, for example) that the people involved felt things were more than a little strange.

Dreams and visions. These two categories of divine communication­ -dreams and visions-can be treated together here, since our purposes do not require scholarly depth and precision. Sometimes they seem to coincide, perhaps because they often come at night and the recipients may have been unable to tell with certainty whether they were awake or asleep. So it was with Paul: "During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedoniap leading with him and saying, `Come over to Macedonia and help us"' (Acts 16:9; see also Acts 18:9; 2 Cor 12:1). Both visions and dreams involve some degree of a trancelike condition, a certain detachment from the person's actual surroundings, which marks them off from ordinary waking conscious­ness.

On the other hand some visions are clearly not dreams, as with Ananias, to whom the Lord spoke in a vision (Acts 9:10-13), and Peter in his rooftop trance, which is also specifically called a vision (Acts 10:9-19). Many dreams are not visions, as was the case with Jacob (Gen 28:11-17), Joseph (Gen 37:5-9), Joseph's jail mates (Gen 40:5-19), Pharaoh (Gen 41:1-7) and Ne­buchadnezzar (Dan 4:4-18).

Gustave Oehler points out that the difference between a dream and a vision is not sharply marked out in the Bible. But he does concede that the dream is regarded as a lower form of communication from God than a vision. Both are unusual states of consciousness, but the dream characteristically requires greater interpretation, often with considerable difficulty, in a manner that the vision does not.

By the time of Jeremiah the understanding of the ways in which God speaks had progressed to the point where the dreaming prophet was treated with some disdain. The dream is like straw or chaff when compared to the wheat of God's word (Jer 23:25-32). His word is like fire, like a hammer that crushes the rock. The dream has no comparable power.

Oehler sees emerging here "the principle that a clear consciousness when receiving revelation is placed higher than ecstasy or other abnormal states of mind” This is a vital point to keep in mind as we attempt to understand our own experiences of God's communications and the significance of the different ways in which he meets us today.

An audible voice. However we are to understand the mechanisms involved, it is clear that on some occasions God has addressed human beings through what was experienced as an audible voice alone." Something like this, though involv­ing an angel from heaven, seems to have occurred with Abraham on Mount Moriah as he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen 22:11-12, 15-18).

A most touching, informative and profound story is that of the child Samuel as he learns to recognize God's voice, which he clearly experienced as an audible voice (1 Sam 3). As this young boy lay on his pallet in the temple one night, he heard someone calling his name. He rose and ran to his old master, Eli, thinking that it was he who had called. This was during a period in Israel's history when God rarely spoke and gave no visions. Such things as voices and visions were not commonly discussed at that time. Hence, "Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him" (3:7).

The third time Samuel came to Eli, saying, "Here I am, for you called me:' Eli finally recognized what was happening. He told Samuel to go back and lie down, and he said, "If he calls you, you shall say, `Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening"' (3:9-10). And so it happened. With this there began one of the most remarkable careers of any person who has ever lived before the Lord, fully justifying the use of the phrase "conversational relationship:"

That brings us to the two most important ways in which God speaks to us: in conjunction with the language of human beings and through the inner voice of our own thoughts. These two ways are the most suited to God's presence in our lives as a close personal friend, a presence shared by the whole Christian community, and to the development of our individual personalities into his likeness.

The human voice. We have seen that an audible voice coming from no visible speaker was present with the boy Samuel, at the baptism of Jesus and on the road to Damascus. But no means of communication between God and us is more commonly used in the Bible or the history of the church than the voice of a definite, individual human being. In such cases God and the person he uses speak conjointly. It may be that the one spoken to is also the one spoken through. It is frequently so with me. In this case the word is at once the word of God, God's message, and the word of the human being who is also speaking.

The two do not exclude each other any more than humanity and divinity exclude each other in the person of Jesus Christ. We can say that God speaks through us as long as this is not understood as automatically ruling out our speaking with God and even, in an important sense, through God. The relationship must not be understood as an essentially mechanical one with God simply using us as we might use a telephone. No doubt that would be God’s option should he choose, but usually he does not.

Samuel Shoemaker has written this excellent description of our experi­ence of God in this respect.

Something comes into our own energies and capacities and expands them We are laid hold of by Something greater than ourselves. We can face things, create things, accomplish things, that in our own strength would have been impossible.... The Holy Spirit seems to mix and mingle His power with our own, so that what happens is both a heightening of our own powers, and a gift to us from outside. This is as real and definite as attaching an appliance to an electrical outlet, though of course such a mechanical analogy is not altogether satisfactory.

I believe I can say with assurance that God's speaking in union with the human voice and human language is the primary objective way in which God addresses us. That is, of all the ways in which a message comes from outside the mind or personality of the person addressed, it most commonly comes through a human being.

This is best suited to the purposes of God precisely because it most fu engages the faculties of free, intelligent beings who are socially rote with agape love in the work of God as his colaborers and friends. This is obvious from the contents of the Bible. And of course the Bible is itself a case of God's speaking along with human beings-usually so in the process of its delivery to humankind and now always as it continues to speak to us today.

When God speaks conjointly with human beings, it often seems that weaker vessels are purposely chosen. In Moses' encounter with God through the burning bush, Moses' last line of protest against the assignment that God was giving him was that he did not speak well: "0 my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue:' (Ex 4:10). The Lord's reply was that he, after all, had made human mouths and presumably could assist them to accomplish his assignments: "Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak" (4:12).

When Moses still begged God to send someone else, God angrily gave him Aaron as his spokesman: "You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him. Take in your hand this staff, with which you shall perform the signs" (4:15-17).

Some New Testament passages suggest that the apostle Paul was not an eloquent man either. We know from his own statements that whether by choice or necessity, he did not come among the Corinthians "proclaiming ... in lofty words or wisdom"; rather he came "in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God" (1 Cor 2:1-5). His only confidence was in God speaking with him, electrifying his words, as it were, when he spoke.

It is significant, I believe, that those chosen by our Lord to bear his message and carry on his work were for the most part "uneducated and ordinary" people (Acts 4:13). The pattern seems to prove amply that in God's selecting them there would be no mistake as to the source of their words and authority. God would use ordinary human beings and would dignify them by their association with him. But just as this is wholly suitable to his redemptive purposes, so it is wholly appropriate that everyone-and especially the individuals involved-should be clear about the source of the power manifested.

There must be no misallocation of glory not because God is a cosmic egotist, but because it would destroy the order that is in the blessedness of life in Christ. It would direct us away from God. Hence Paul writes, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord" (1 Cor 1:31). The success of the redemptive plan therefore requires that "not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many of you were of noble birth" (1:26). Moses and Paul, two of the people most responsible for the human authorship of the Bible, were accordingly weak with words so that they might have the best chance of clinging constantly to their support in God who spoke in union with them and so that they might unerringly connect their hearers with God.

Does the word of God then literally overpower us? In some parts of the Bible record, those who speak with God seem compelled by force, as we see in the case of Balaam. Balak, king of Moab, offered Balaam great riches and honor if he would curse Israel. He knew that Balaam spoke in unison with God-"whomever you bless is blessed, and whomever you curse is cursed" (Num 22:6). Balaam was obviously greatly tempted by the offer. Even after God told him not to go to Balak and not to curse Israel because Israel was indeed blessed (22:12), Balaam kept toying with the idea. Even­tually he thought that he had God's permission at least to go to Balak (22:20). But even while he was in Balak's camp he was simply unable to curse Israel. He explained to Balak that he did not have any power at all to say anything: "The word God puts into my mouth, that is what I must say" (22:38). When the moment came for him to curse Israel, after elaborate preparations, only a stream of blessings came forth (23:7-10), to the exasperation of Balak.

It would be a great mistake, however, to take these and similar cases to mean that the person who speaks with God, and thus speaks the word of God, literally cannot help speaking. Perhaps this is true in some cases. It is certainly true that people cannot force God to speak with them. But the compulsion upon the individual to speak, though often great, is normally still esistible. Human beings are not mere tools.

Jeremiah's experience in this respect has been replicated innumerable times in the experience of those who understand what it is to speak for and with God. Speaking God's word had made him a laughing stock among those who knew him, and he resolved to speak no more for the Lord:

If I say, "I will not mention him,

or speak any more in his name;'

then within me there is something like a burning fire

shut up in my bones;

I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. (Jer 20:9)

The prophets often treat the word of the Lord as a burden. Later in his sermon against the false prophets, Jeremiah cries,

My heart is crushed within me, all my bones shake;

I have become like a drunkard,

like one overcome by wine, because of the LORD

and because of his holy words. (23:9)

The prophet may also exult in the power he feels surging within him, as Micah did:

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lortn, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression
and to Israel his sin. (Mic 3:8)

Jeremiah also experienced God's word to be of great power, like a fire that scorches and like a hammer that breaks rocks. J. B. Phillips said somewhere that while he was doing his well-known translation of the New Testament, he often felt like an electrician working on the wiring of a house with the power on.

Later in this book we will explore in detail the idea of the word of God as an agency, a substantial power in the cosmos and in human affairs: an agency that could come "to John ... in the wilderness" (Lk 3:2), have dominion over unclean spirits (Lk 4:33-36), be like the finger of God (Lk 11:20), be spirit and life (Jn 6:63, 68), increase (Acts 6:7), grow and multiply (Acts 12:24), not be bound in prison (2 Tun 2:9), function as the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17)-being more dexterous and powerful than any mere two-edged, human sword. It has a life of its own and is so acute that it can dissect thoughts and intentions (Heb 4:12)-and simultaneously hold all of creation together (Col 1:17). This complex picture of the word of God must be examined closely before we conclude our study. For the time being, however, we rest with the fact that that word can and does come to us through the living personalities, minds and bodies of other human beings as they speak to us in unison with God.

The human spirit or the "still small voice." The final means through which God addresses us is our own spirits-our own thoughts and feelings toward ourselves as well as toward events and people around us. This, I believe, is the primary subjective way in which God addresses us. That is, of all the waysin which a message comes from within the experience of the person addressed (such as dreams and visions or other mental states), for those who are living in harmony with God it most commonly comes in the form of their own thoughts and attendant feelings. Of all the possible subjective routes this mode is best suited to the redemptive purposes of God because, once again, it most engages the faculties of free, intelligent beings involved in the work of God as his colaborers and friends.

Thus the familiar King James Version of Proverbs 20:27 says, "The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly." This is possibly better put in the Jerusalem Bible: "Man's spirit is the lamp of Yahweh, searching his deepest self."

In a passage of great importance to our exploration here, the apostle Paul makes a comparison between humans and God with respect to self-knowledge: "For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2:11). Paul then points out that we have received the Spirit of God and concludes that we can therefore search out and know the very mind of God by means of his Spirit in contrast to the proverb quoted above, which empha­sizes the Lord's use of our spirit. After quoting the question from Isaiah 40:13, "Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or as his counselor has instructed him?" the apostle replies, "But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16).

So God uses our self-knowledge or self-awareness, heightened and given a special quality by his presence and direction, to search us out and reveal to us the truth about ourselves and our world. And we are able to use his knowledge of himself-made available to us in Christ and the Scriptures-to understand in some measure his thoughts and intentions toward us and to help us see his workings in our world.

In the union and communion of the believer with God, their two beings are unified and inhabit each other just as Jesus prayed: "I ask ... that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me" (Jn 17:20-21). As we grow in grace, God's laws increasingly form the foundation of our hearts; his love is our love, his faith our faith. Our very awareness of our actions, intentions and surroundings then bears within it the view that God takes, bringing things into the clarity of his vision just as a candle might illuminate what is on our dinner table.

Therefore, the spirit of the individual truly is the "candle of the Lord;' in the light of which we see ourselves and our world as God sees. In this way we are addressed by him, spoken to by him, through our own thoughts. This is something you can and should test by experiment. Those who begin to pray that God will enlighten them as to the nature and meaning of the processes that go on in their own soul will begin to understand. They will begin to see their spirit functioning as the candle of the Lord.

The soul's self-awareness applies to every part of the self: it touches upon one's family, possessions, profession and health; it reaches to one's fear of death, attitudes toward God, sexuality, preoccupation with reputation, con­cern with appearance and countless other areas of one's life. Our spirit, as a candle in the Lord's hands, may shed light on many other things apart from our own internal condition, although the primary point of the passage from Proverbs is the illumination of the inner life. Russ Johnston points out the importance of recurrent thoughts in God's communication with his children:

We would see wonderful results if we would just deal with the thoughts that continue in our minds in a godly manner. But most people don't. ... As thoughts come into your mind and continue, ask God, "Do you really want me (or us) to do this?" Most of us just let those thoughts collapse-and God looks for someone else to stand in the gap.

But are not all our thoughts inherently bad? This well-intended but mistaken teaching about our thoughts has done much harm to the under­standing of hearing God's voice.

The great Puritan minister Thomas Goodwin wrote a powerful discourse on The Vanity of Thoughts,' taking as his text Jeremiah 4:14 (KJV): "How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?" Goodwin is quite careful and helpful in the manner in which he describes these "vain" thoughts, but he leaves an impression, which is widely shared and emphasized, that if a thought is our thought, it could not possibly be trusted. Does God not say in Isaiah 55:8, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts"? And does Jeremiah not tell us that our hearts are desperately wicked, beyond our powers of comprehension (Jer 17:9)?

Of course there is an important point in all of this that stresses the difference between God's view of things and the view of the normal person apart from God. But this point must not obscure the simple fact that God comes to us precisely in and through our thoughts, perceptions and experi­ences and that he can approach our conscious life only through them, for they are the substance of our lives. Therefore, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2). God's gracious incursions into our souls can make our thoughts his thoughts. He will help us learn to distinguish when a thought is ours alone and when it is also his.

Chapter eight will deal at length with the question of how we can know which thoughts are from God. But for now just keep this practical advice in mind: when thoughts recur, always stop prayerfully to consider whether this may be an appearance of the Lord's "candle" or whether the thoughts may have some other significance. Although reoccurring thoughts are not always an indication that God is speaking, they are not to be lightly disregarded.

So the thoughts and feelings in the mind and spirit of one who is surrendered to God should be treated as if God were walking through one's personality with a candle, directing one's attention to things one after the other. As we become used to the idea that God is friendly and helpful, that he desires to straighten, inform and correct us for our good as well as to comfort and encourage, and that he really does love us, then we can begin to pray heartily with the psalmist, "Search me, 0 God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts" (Ps 139:23).

As we do this we are asking God, "Bring the light to bear upon my life, please;" just as we might go to a dentist or doctor and say, "Examine me, please, and see if corrections to my physical condition are needed. Find out what is wrong and repair it:" One's own spirit can then work together with the Almighty God, using one's thoughts and feelings to bring the truth of his word and his understanding to bear upon one's heart, life and world.

Having looked at the major ways in which, according to the biblical record, God addresses the conscious mind and will in order to inform and guide, let us now give some thought to their meaning for our own quest to hear his voice.

God Speaks Today

Perhaps the fast thing to say is that there is no foundation in Scripture, in reason or in the very nature of things why any or all of these types of experience might not be used by God today. No one should be alarmed or automatically thrown into doubt by such experiences coming to them or by reports that other people have experienced them. As always we should simply follow Paul's admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil:'

It is true that the existence and history of the church and the presence of the full written Scripture change the circumstances of and give new dimen­sions to the way in which God deals with human beings. But there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that the biblical modes of God's communication with humans have been superseded or abolished by either the presence of the church or the close of the scriptural canon.

This is simply a fact, just as it is simply a fact that God's children have continued up to the present age to find themselves addressed by God in most of the ways he commonly addressed biblical characters. The testimony of these individuals-where they are generally admitted to be honest, clear­minded and devout and including, as they do, many of the very greatest Christians throughout the ages-should not be discarded in favor of a blank, dogmatic denial. Of course at any time there may be some degree of fakery and confusion, well intended or not. But such a blank denial has no scriptural foundation. Moreover it is often no more than an attempt to substitute safety and deadness for living communications from God, to look to the ponderous scholars or letter-learned scribes for their interpretation of God's word rather than hearing for oneself the voice that is available to people even of the plainest sort or to resign oneself to hear only what God has said in Scripture rather than listen for the specific word he might have for one today.

The close of the scriptural canon marks the point in the (still ongoing) divine-human conversation where the principles and doctrines that form the substance of Christian faith and practice are so adequately stated in human language that nothing more need be said in general. Biblical Christians believe that nothing further will be said by God to extend or contradict those principles. But a biblical Christian is not just someone who holds certain beliefs about the Bible. He or she is also someone who leads the kind of life demonstrated in the Bible: a life of personal, intelligent interaction with God. Anything less than this makes a mockery of the priesthood of the believer.

Surely one of the most damaging things we can do to people's spiritual prospects is to suggest that God will not deal with them specifically, person­ally, intelligibly and consciously or that they cannot count on him to do so as he knows best. Once we have conveyed this idea to them, it makes no sense to attempt to lead them into a personal relationship with God.

Conversing with God

Rosalind Rinker relates how after years of service on the mission field and many fruitless efforts at a satisfactory prayer life, she found herself rebellious and spiritually empty. Then through a serious illness and other grave diffi­culties, "God began to take care of my rebellions through his great love. He began to teach me to listen to his voice:''o

Almost by "chance;" as she was praying with a friend for some of their students, she interrupted her friend's prayer with thanksgiving on a point that was being prayed for. After a moment of awkward silence and after they had sat back and laughed with great relief, they settled down again to prayer but now "with a sense of joy, of lightness, of the Lord's presence very near." They then asked if the Lord was trying to teach them something about prayer. "Should we give Thee more opportunity as we are praying to get Thy ideas through to us? Would that give the Holy Spirit more opportunity to guide us as we pray?" Then Rinker stopped praying and said to her friend, "Do you know what? I believe the Lord taught us something just now! Instead of each of us making a prayer-speech to Him, let's talk things over with Him, including Him in it, as we do when we have a conversation:""

I recall very clearly the effect of her book Prayer: Conversing with God

when it arrived on the scene in the United States. Group after group was brought to life as they learned to listen to God as well as "make prayer-speeches" at him. Their talk of "a life with God" now had real, objectively shareable content.

Silence Is Not an "Answer"

Nowhere is it more important to be in a conversational relationship with God than in our prayer life. Often God does not give us what we ask for, but I believe that he will always answer, always respond to us in some way. It is interesting that we commonly speak of answered prayer only when we are given our requests. When a request is denied, does this then mean that there has been no response?

Some people say that God's silence is an answer in these cases. But I think that if we know how listen, God will normally tell us something when he does not give us our requests. We will hear it and grow through it if we have leamed to recognize and acknowledge his voice.

This was certainly true in the case of Paul's famous "thorn in the flesh;' which he begged the Lord to remove from him three times (2 Cor 12:7-8). God was not silent, even though he turned down Paul's request: "But his answer was: `My grace is all you need; power is most fully seen in weak­ness:"(2 Cor 12:9 REB, italics added).

God is not impassive toward us like an unresponsive pagan idol; he calls us to grow into a life of personal interchange with him that does justice to the idea of our being his children.

Extracted from Hearing God by Dallas Willard

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