Soul and the spirit
There is much confusion in the body of Christ about salvation primarily because most believers do not distinguish between the soul and the spirit. They are certainly NOT the same, nor are they interchangeable.
Hebrews 4:12 points out the distinction, clearly suggesting that if we are to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh, if we are to walk by faith and not by sight, if we are to crucify the flesh, then the soul and the flesh must be divided by the two edged sword of the word of God.
1. Differences and similarities between our soul and our spirits
In order to understand this biblical truth, we also need to have a sense of the differences and similarities between our soul and our spirits. There are quite a few similarities.
Though the body is mortal, the spirit and the soul are both eternal. As the body is finite and material, both the soul and the spirit are invisible and without natural substance.
As the body has five senses, the spirit and the soul have senses also. The spirit is heaven bound.
If it were not for the soul, the spirit would "fly away." The body is earth bound. The two meet and correspond with each other through the activity of the soul.
Soul is mediator between the spirit and the body
So a basic definition of the soul is that the soul is the mediator between the spirit and the body, an interpreter. A control center, if you will, with the brain of the body as its command center. A person who is alive yet brain dead, is one whose spirit is still in his body but his soul has left. A body without a soul is dead so they turn off the plug and the spirit flies away. However, when the spirit leaves and the soul remains in the body, as long as the spirit does not travel too far into "outer space," the soul keeps the body intact and alive. Out of body experiences are called astral travel by occultists. However, every day, the spirit often takes "little trips" through day dreaming and deeper forms of altered states of consciousness.
When the body is asleep, the soul is busy keeping things in order.
For example, when you are sleeping and your body gets the urge to urinate, the spirit will create a toilet in a very imaginary way. The soul tries to "help out" and I see the toilet in the spirit, but something always goes wrong. In a dream, I see myself making the effort, but the sensation in my body continues to increase and my soul continues to try and work things out in my mind, but a mental picture of urinating does not help the situation. So my soul simply wakes up my body and says, "hey Pam, you'd better get your body up before we have an accident in this bed." This little example shows how when you are sleeping, the body is at rest and therefore is at its weakest.
Demons also try to send their messages to the soul
The spirit and the soul often fight for control, at times manifested as a strange dream. Demons also try to send their messages to the soul and God will also communicate in dreams, but only to your spirit. While the spirit operates in the unconscious realm of intuition, the body in the conscious realm of the natural world, the soul functions in both realms. For this reason, the soul and the spirit of a born again, saved person must be divided, for God will only speak to your spirit. Here is the thing. When the Holy Ghost draws us to Jesus, our spirits immediately become "born again." That which is flesh is flesh. Flesh is a mixture of soul with the body. Flesh is also a mixture of soul with the spirit. So when God "saves us," He gives us a NEW SPIRIT. All of the darkness that was in our spirits BEFORE the Holy Ghost translates us out of darkness into God's marvelous light, our spirits were depraved and contaminated with evil. That is why when we slept, we had so many nightmares. The evil that we saw was merely a reflection of our own dark spirits, contending with demons. When our spirits are born again, all things pass away, all things become NEW. We become a "new creation." God's light comes into our spirits and our spirits become the temple of God. Our spirits are ALWAYS eternal, both before salvation and after it. Before the new birth, our spirits are in captivity to Satan. As soon as we say "yes" to the invitation of Jesus, our spirits are immediately changed, justified, sanctified, seated in heavenly places. We are "translated" or brought out of Satan's dark jail into the marvelous light of Jesus Christ. To be sanctified is to be set apart for God's use---a vessel of God.
To be justified is to be treated as though we never sinned
We are washed and cleansed. We are seated in heavenly places immediately, with our prayers having immediate access to the throne of God. I know that rebirth is immediate because the Lord allowed me to actually SEE the process at the moment of the rebirth of my spirit. I was laying on my back on my couch in a birthing position, legs wide open as in labor. Contractions began to occur but they were not in my womb. They were in the chest/belly area, the seat of my spirit. As I lay there, I saw a light, like the hand of God, go into that area, as if it was gently massaging me there. I had about 4 deep "birth pains" and then "voila!" Hard to explain. All I know is that the old gospel song which asks "how did you feel when you come out the wilderness? Did your hands look new and your feet too?" Yes, Lord! I actually felt like I had just been born for the FIRST time. It was like I had no existence before that day on 3/29/1977 at 4pm on a Monday! I was crying and laughing at the same time! What joy unspeakable. I have felt the joy of the Lord many times, but never like the day that my spirit was made new and I was born again. However, the soul said, "Hey, Pam. You are 33 years old. Life goes on. Let's get real, here, okay?" Yep. My un-renewed soul showed up the next day, March 30. It was my favorite aunt's birthday. I'd never missed sending her a card or buying her a gift. So I wanted to call her. The Holy Spirit said "No, Pam. Today is God's day." I struggled real hard that day. The Lord told me to sit and think on nothing but Him for the entire day. Try as I might, it was real rough. I wanted to go see about my aunt. As I sat there, my mind thought of all the things I could be doing. I remember thinking, "the toilet needs to be cleaned." I wanted to get up from being before the Lord to clean my toilet. It was the strangest thing because my flesh is not fond of house cleaning. By sundown, I was a sobbing mess!!!
That is how the Lord showed me that even though my spirit was born again, the salvation of my soul had to be "worked out." How? By the renewing of my mind.
I'm just going by memory here but this is how the salvation of our souls is worked out. We present our bodies----all 3 parts---as a sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God as a reasonable service. Where our soul and our bodies are concerned, we are not to be conformed to this world. Instead, we are to allow ourselves to be "transformed" by THE RENEWING OF OUR MINDS. With a renewed mind, the salvation of our souls is worked out. Why? Because the soul consists of the mind, the intellect, the emotions, the feelings, ie. the individual, human personality that makes each of us different---one from the other. There are no souls that are the same. So the renewal will affect each of us differently.
Each soul is an "I AM." However, God is the I AM THAT I AM."
So the working out of the soul's salvation often involves wrestling not only with principalities and powers but with God Himself. The Holy Ghost, though the Comforter, He is also the taskmaster. He helps us to put to death the deeds of the flesh for we can not work out the salvation of our soul's without the Holy Ghost. He will put us in situations in order to break the "self" aspect of our soul because the soul is "all about self." I can hear your unspoken question. You are thinking, "what if a person's spirit becomes born again, but that person doesn't do a good job of renewing their souls through dying to self?
Will they STILL be saved?
I have both a biblical and a personal answer to this question. Here goes! The answer is if they are born again, "yes, they will be saved, but so as by fire!." Here is the scripture: It is 1 Cor. 3:14 "If any man's work shall be burnt, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." ( suggest you also read the verses connected to it) I saw two recent instances of this in the death of two important women in my life. One was my daughter's grandmother whom everyone called "Sis." Sis was a good, strong, well liked, jovial woman. She was a religious Catholic but she rarely went to church. Sis lived by the beat of her own drum. In other words, she lived her life how she chose, as is typical of Catholicism. One of her vices was smoking. It killed her a week before her 80 birthday. While still above ground, we celebrated her 80th birthday at the cemetery and the wake. When the doctors tried chemo, Sis said, "no, I am going home to die." She did so, in good humor and without fear. Sis was quite the trooper! However, for years, it was clear to me that Sis was not saved. A day came when the doctors said "she'll die today." But Sis lived a few days more, shocking everyone. One morning, the Lord spoke to my daughter in a dream. He said, "Go to your grandmother and say "Jesus" in her ear. She went. Sis was laying on the bed, eyes closed, looking like she was dead already. My daughter got up on her bed, whispered in her ear, "Jesus." Sis's eyes popped wide open. Looked directly into the eyes of her grand daughter. 30 seconds later, she was gone. As a mother in law, Sis and I had had our issues. But one thing the Lord did. At her wake, He made it real clear to me that He took Sis with Him. In 30 seconds. Certainly she suffered loss both here on earth and with her place in the eternal kingdom. But she is saved, since her works are burned, Sis is saved and in heaven. To be saved so as by fire, is a rather "narrow" escape, to say the least. Same thing with another close friend. This woman was strong, demanding, controlling, a matriarch in the truest sense of the word. In life, I'd compare Gladys to Tyler Perry's Madea. However, she was Pentecostal and extremely religious. Gladys went to church every time the doors were opened. A younger woman then Sis, Gladys had just retired. She had big plans. She moved back south and bought a home where she could have her "Madea's Family Reunions." Suddenly, she was stricken with a stroke, completely paralyzed. Seemed like she lost her faith, starved herself and died less than a year after the stroke. However, a day or so before her death, Gladys came to me in my sleep, looking young, strong and happy. Wow! She was sooooo pleasant! In the dream, she made peace with me over a minor disagreement. The next day, she was dead. The entire time I knew her, I believed that she was not born again. Gladys certainly never seemed to renew her soul.
When do I believe God saved her? Probably on her deathbed. I don't know.
What I know is that she is in heaven ---because God revealed it to me. He showed me that Gladys is with Him. Certainly, she suffered loss. She was unable to enjoy the retirement she planned and her family was left feuding and dysfunctional. Yet God provided Gladys a place in his heavenly kingdom, so as by fire! God saves many people at their deathbeds, particularly those who die of debilitating sicknesses and diseases. This is why physical healing is NOT always God's will. I suspect this is the case because when the body weakens, the spirit gets stronger. When I was an organized church pastor, I witnessed this among the sick and dying. The soul weakens, in that it is no longer focusing on "self" and the world. The spirit begins to ascend. This is the true purpose of fasting--to weaken the body in order to strengthen the spirit and thereby increase the spirit's capacity for greater faith. There is a real serious danger to a fast that is not led by God because when the spirit is strengthened, doors are open to BOTH side of the spirit world---Satan as well as God. So through tribulation, trouble, and trials, the Holy Ghost prepares a wilderness for all of us so that the salvation of our souls will be worked out, in fear and trembling. The fear is "the fear of the Lord." I have personally done a lot of trembling. In fact, I trembled much this week. I'll simply say that an ex-husband of mine died on May 9th. I can't go into details about it because of my fear of the Lord. I will simply say that through his death, the Lord sent me a powerful message that helped to transform my soul.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
In spite of the fact that the work of dividing the soul from the spirit is the job of the Holy Ghost, we have a part to play also. The Holy Spirit will not carry out His work without our consent and cooperation.
Briefly summarized, the following are conducive conditions set by our diligence and perseverance:our will must be firmly placed on God's side as the circumstances of life set the stage; the cross of Jesus as set forth in Romans 6:1-14 must be steadily maintained. As we carry out the command NOT to let sin reign in our bodies; when we crucify the affections and lusts, we allow the Holy Ghost to make various adjustments in our likes and dislikes, the selection of the people in our lives, our ambitions and desires, the things in our personalities that we have admired that require change.
Generally, whatever we love about ourselves is what God hates, and what we hate about ourselves, God loves, is the general rule. as we delight in the Lord, He puts His desires in our hearts. It is almost an unconscious thing. One day, we look up and we are desiring what He desires and we often don't know HOW that happened. As Jesus said, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Dying to self loses its sting. To delight in the Lord involves fulfilling these conditions by carrying them out in practice daily. As we become steadily faithful to all that the Holy Ghost has shown us, we will deliberately refuse the soul life and choose to open ourselves to the higher life of Christ in our spirits.
The word of God as the sword of the Spirit is not the bible
Shocked?
Well, the bible was not written when Paul wrote his epistles. Surely the word of God includes the written word but it is not solely the written word. This is yet another subject for yet another mentoring letter. To walk after the spirit is to be able to discern what is spirit from what is soul. More on this in part 2. THE BEST WORK ON THIS SUBJECT CAN BE FOUND IN TWO AUTHORS: Jessie Penn Lewis and Watchman Nee. Watchman wrote many books but he studied the books of Jessie, so I would start with her. She has some little books that you can obtain for a few dollars. They are PRICELESS. One is titled simply "Soul and Spirit." Another is "Dying to Self." Another is "THE CROSS AND CALVARY." Jessie's biography is called "Molded by the Cross." These are books published by OVERCOMER PUBLICATIONS. Because of Jessie, I have written 6 books. My deliverance counseling training program called SEW, is a model based upon spirit, soul and body. SEW stands for Spiritual Empowerment Workshop. If you are interested in taking the training, send me a fb message and I can hook you up.
Hebrews 4:12 points out the distinction, clearly suggesting that if we are to walk in the spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh, if we are to walk by faith and not by sight, if we are to crucify the flesh, then the soul and the flesh must be divided by the two edged sword of the word of God.
1. Differences and similarities between our soul and our spirits
In order to understand this biblical truth, we also need to have a sense of the differences and similarities between our soul and our spirits. There are quite a few similarities.
Though the body is mortal, the spirit and the soul are both eternal. As the body is finite and material, both the soul and the spirit are invisible and without natural substance.
As the body has five senses, the spirit and the soul have senses also. The spirit is heaven bound.
If it were not for the soul, the spirit would "fly away." The body is earth bound. The two meet and correspond with each other through the activity of the soul.
Soul is mediator between the spirit and the body
So a basic definition of the soul is that the soul is the mediator between the spirit and the body, an interpreter. A control center, if you will, with the brain of the body as its command center. A person who is alive yet brain dead, is one whose spirit is still in his body but his soul has left. A body without a soul is dead so they turn off the plug and the spirit flies away. However, when the spirit leaves and the soul remains in the body, as long as the spirit does not travel too far into "outer space," the soul keeps the body intact and alive. Out of body experiences are called astral travel by occultists. However, every day, the spirit often takes "little trips" through day dreaming and deeper forms of altered states of consciousness.
When the body is asleep, the soul is busy keeping things in order.
For example, when you are sleeping and your body gets the urge to urinate, the spirit will create a toilet in a very imaginary way. The soul tries to "help out" and I see the toilet in the spirit, but something always goes wrong. In a dream, I see myself making the effort, but the sensation in my body continues to increase and my soul continues to try and work things out in my mind, but a mental picture of urinating does not help the situation. So my soul simply wakes up my body and says, "hey Pam, you'd better get your body up before we have an accident in this bed." This little example shows how when you are sleeping, the body is at rest and therefore is at its weakest.
Demons also try to send their messages to the soul
The spirit and the soul often fight for control, at times manifested as a strange dream. Demons also try to send their messages to the soul and God will also communicate in dreams, but only to your spirit. While the spirit operates in the unconscious realm of intuition, the body in the conscious realm of the natural world, the soul functions in both realms. For this reason, the soul and the spirit of a born again, saved person must be divided, for God will only speak to your spirit. Here is the thing. When the Holy Ghost draws us to Jesus, our spirits immediately become "born again." That which is flesh is flesh. Flesh is a mixture of soul with the body. Flesh is also a mixture of soul with the spirit. So when God "saves us," He gives us a NEW SPIRIT. All of the darkness that was in our spirits BEFORE the Holy Ghost translates us out of darkness into God's marvelous light, our spirits were depraved and contaminated with evil. That is why when we slept, we had so many nightmares. The evil that we saw was merely a reflection of our own dark spirits, contending with demons. When our spirits are born again, all things pass away, all things become NEW. We become a "new creation." God's light comes into our spirits and our spirits become the temple of God. Our spirits are ALWAYS eternal, both before salvation and after it. Before the new birth, our spirits are in captivity to Satan. As soon as we say "yes" to the invitation of Jesus, our spirits are immediately changed, justified, sanctified, seated in heavenly places. We are "translated" or brought out of Satan's dark jail into the marvelous light of Jesus Christ. To be sanctified is to be set apart for God's use---a vessel of God.
To be justified is to be treated as though we never sinned
We are washed and cleansed. We are seated in heavenly places immediately, with our prayers having immediate access to the throne of God. I know that rebirth is immediate because the Lord allowed me to actually SEE the process at the moment of the rebirth of my spirit. I was laying on my back on my couch in a birthing position, legs wide open as in labor. Contractions began to occur but they were not in my womb. They were in the chest/belly area, the seat of my spirit. As I lay there, I saw a light, like the hand of God, go into that area, as if it was gently massaging me there. I had about 4 deep "birth pains" and then "voila!" Hard to explain. All I know is that the old gospel song which asks "how did you feel when you come out the wilderness? Did your hands look new and your feet too?" Yes, Lord! I actually felt like I had just been born for the FIRST time. It was like I had no existence before that day on 3/29/1977 at 4pm on a Monday! I was crying and laughing at the same time! What joy unspeakable. I have felt the joy of the Lord many times, but never like the day that my spirit was made new and I was born again. However, the soul said, "Hey, Pam. You are 33 years old. Life goes on. Let's get real, here, okay?" Yep. My un-renewed soul showed up the next day, March 30. It was my favorite aunt's birthday. I'd never missed sending her a card or buying her a gift. So I wanted to call her. The Holy Spirit said "No, Pam. Today is God's day." I struggled real hard that day. The Lord told me to sit and think on nothing but Him for the entire day. Try as I might, it was real rough. I wanted to go see about my aunt. As I sat there, my mind thought of all the things I could be doing. I remember thinking, "the toilet needs to be cleaned." I wanted to get up from being before the Lord to clean my toilet. It was the strangest thing because my flesh is not fond of house cleaning. By sundown, I was a sobbing mess!!!
That is how the Lord showed me that even though my spirit was born again, the salvation of my soul had to be "worked out." How? By the renewing of my mind.
I'm just going by memory here but this is how the salvation of our souls is worked out. We present our bodies----all 3 parts---as a sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God as a reasonable service. Where our soul and our bodies are concerned, we are not to be conformed to this world. Instead, we are to allow ourselves to be "transformed" by THE RENEWING OF OUR MINDS. With a renewed mind, the salvation of our souls is worked out. Why? Because the soul consists of the mind, the intellect, the emotions, the feelings, ie. the individual, human personality that makes each of us different---one from the other. There are no souls that are the same. So the renewal will affect each of us differently.
Each soul is an "I AM." However, God is the I AM THAT I AM."
So the working out of the soul's salvation often involves wrestling not only with principalities and powers but with God Himself. The Holy Ghost, though the Comforter, He is also the taskmaster. He helps us to put to death the deeds of the flesh for we can not work out the salvation of our soul's without the Holy Ghost. He will put us in situations in order to break the "self" aspect of our soul because the soul is "all about self." I can hear your unspoken question. You are thinking, "what if a person's spirit becomes born again, but that person doesn't do a good job of renewing their souls through dying to self?
Will they STILL be saved?
I have both a biblical and a personal answer to this question. Here goes! The answer is if they are born again, "yes, they will be saved, but so as by fire!." Here is the scripture: It is 1 Cor. 3:14 "If any man's work shall be burnt, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." ( suggest you also read the verses connected to it) I saw two recent instances of this in the death of two important women in my life. One was my daughter's grandmother whom everyone called "Sis." Sis was a good, strong, well liked, jovial woman. She was a religious Catholic but she rarely went to church. Sis lived by the beat of her own drum. In other words, she lived her life how she chose, as is typical of Catholicism. One of her vices was smoking. It killed her a week before her 80 birthday. While still above ground, we celebrated her 80th birthday at the cemetery and the wake. When the doctors tried chemo, Sis said, "no, I am going home to die." She did so, in good humor and without fear. Sis was quite the trooper! However, for years, it was clear to me that Sis was not saved. A day came when the doctors said "she'll die today." But Sis lived a few days more, shocking everyone. One morning, the Lord spoke to my daughter in a dream. He said, "Go to your grandmother and say "Jesus" in her ear. She went. Sis was laying on the bed, eyes closed, looking like she was dead already. My daughter got up on her bed, whispered in her ear, "Jesus." Sis's eyes popped wide open. Looked directly into the eyes of her grand daughter. 30 seconds later, she was gone. As a mother in law, Sis and I had had our issues. But one thing the Lord did. At her wake, He made it real clear to me that He took Sis with Him. In 30 seconds. Certainly she suffered loss both here on earth and with her place in the eternal kingdom. But she is saved, since her works are burned, Sis is saved and in heaven. To be saved so as by fire, is a rather "narrow" escape, to say the least. Same thing with another close friend. This woman was strong, demanding, controlling, a matriarch in the truest sense of the word. In life, I'd compare Gladys to Tyler Perry's Madea. However, she was Pentecostal and extremely religious. Gladys went to church every time the doors were opened. A younger woman then Sis, Gladys had just retired. She had big plans. She moved back south and bought a home where she could have her "Madea's Family Reunions." Suddenly, she was stricken with a stroke, completely paralyzed. Seemed like she lost her faith, starved herself and died less than a year after the stroke. However, a day or so before her death, Gladys came to me in my sleep, looking young, strong and happy. Wow! She was sooooo pleasant! In the dream, she made peace with me over a minor disagreement. The next day, she was dead. The entire time I knew her, I believed that she was not born again. Gladys certainly never seemed to renew her soul.
When do I believe God saved her? Probably on her deathbed. I don't know.
What I know is that she is in heaven ---because God revealed it to me. He showed me that Gladys is with Him. Certainly, she suffered loss. She was unable to enjoy the retirement she planned and her family was left feuding and dysfunctional. Yet God provided Gladys a place in his heavenly kingdom, so as by fire! God saves many people at their deathbeds, particularly those who die of debilitating sicknesses and diseases. This is why physical healing is NOT always God's will. I suspect this is the case because when the body weakens, the spirit gets stronger. When I was an organized church pastor, I witnessed this among the sick and dying. The soul weakens, in that it is no longer focusing on "self" and the world. The spirit begins to ascend. This is the true purpose of fasting--to weaken the body in order to strengthen the spirit and thereby increase the spirit's capacity for greater faith. There is a real serious danger to a fast that is not led by God because when the spirit is strengthened, doors are open to BOTH side of the spirit world---Satan as well as God. So through tribulation, trouble, and trials, the Holy Ghost prepares a wilderness for all of us so that the salvation of our souls will be worked out, in fear and trembling. The fear is "the fear of the Lord." I have personally done a lot of trembling. In fact, I trembled much this week. I'll simply say that an ex-husband of mine died on May 9th. I can't go into details about it because of my fear of the Lord. I will simply say that through his death, the Lord sent me a powerful message that helped to transform my soul.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
In spite of the fact that the work of dividing the soul from the spirit is the job of the Holy Ghost, we have a part to play also. The Holy Spirit will not carry out His work without our consent and cooperation.
Briefly summarized, the following are conducive conditions set by our diligence and perseverance:our will must be firmly placed on God's side as the circumstances of life set the stage; the cross of Jesus as set forth in Romans 6:1-14 must be steadily maintained. As we carry out the command NOT to let sin reign in our bodies; when we crucify the affections and lusts, we allow the Holy Ghost to make various adjustments in our likes and dislikes, the selection of the people in our lives, our ambitions and desires, the things in our personalities that we have admired that require change.
Generally, whatever we love about ourselves is what God hates, and what we hate about ourselves, God loves, is the general rule. as we delight in the Lord, He puts His desires in our hearts. It is almost an unconscious thing. One day, we look up and we are desiring what He desires and we often don't know HOW that happened. As Jesus said, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Dying to self loses its sting. To delight in the Lord involves fulfilling these conditions by carrying them out in practice daily. As we become steadily faithful to all that the Holy Ghost has shown us, we will deliberately refuse the soul life and choose to open ourselves to the higher life of Christ in our spirits.
The word of God as the sword of the Spirit is not the bible
Shocked?
Well, the bible was not written when Paul wrote his epistles. Surely the word of God includes the written word but it is not solely the written word. This is yet another subject for yet another mentoring letter. To walk after the spirit is to be able to discern what is spirit from what is soul. More on this in part 2. THE BEST WORK ON THIS SUBJECT CAN BE FOUND IN TWO AUTHORS: Jessie Penn Lewis and Watchman Nee. Watchman wrote many books but he studied the books of Jessie, so I would start with her. She has some little books that you can obtain for a few dollars. They are PRICELESS. One is titled simply "Soul and Spirit." Another is "Dying to Self." Another is "THE CROSS AND CALVARY." Jessie's biography is called "Molded by the Cross." These are books published by OVERCOMER PUBLICATIONS. Because of Jessie, I have written 6 books. My deliverance counseling training program called SEW, is a model based upon spirit, soul and body. SEW stands for Spiritual Empowerment Workshop. If you are interested in taking the training, send me a fb message and I can hook you up.
By: Pamela Sheppard
Awe & Reverence Before Him !!!
-------------- BibelSvar: Posts A - Z --------------
Awe & Reverence Before Him !!!
-------------- BibelSvar: Posts A - Z --------------
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