OK, I'm just going to, but while I introduce Paul, I'm going to
just geek out for a minute. So can everyone just say geek
out for a minute? Just say that to the person next
to you. We're going to geek out for a
minute. OK, In in studying about the
Bible and the Christian faith in Britain for some reason,
probably I think in America too, but not in mainland Europe,
there are two branches called biblical studies and theology.
Can everyone say that? Biblical studies and theology.
So biblical studies, people who are into biblical studies have a
very different conversation for some reason to than people in
theology. Yeah.
So biblical studies is when you look closely at the text, you
might be interested in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and you're
really about the Bible. You could be Hebrew Bible, Old
Testament, you could be Jesus, the Gospels, you could be Paul.
What would the Bible project be out of the two biblical studies
and theology? Yeah.
So the Bible project is classic biblical studies.
Then you get a whole branch, a discipline called theology,
which is looking at from that, those first witnesses that were
written down in our New Testament, then the church
fathers and mothers response to them, what we now think about
the nature of God after the Canon or including that, the
completion of the Canon and then afterwards.
So can we think this is a harder question?
I'm not sure you've known the answer.
Can anyone think of anyone who might be more theology than
biblical studies, Hugh? Oh, me.
No, no, no, I'm way more biblical studies.
I find theology systematic theology.
Very. I'm just a real newbie on that.
Wayne Grudem systematic theology.
Yep. Who did you say?
Ravi? Yeah, So I think he was he
apologetics. Go on.
I don't know if this is being recorded.
You know in Sorry, is it being recorded?
Oh, I was going to make a comment about something that I
don't want recorded. OK, OK, just wanted to say that
don't want anyone else to know there's no GDPR in our home.
It's terrible. So most of the teaching people
receive in these kinds of churches that most of us have
been in would be without maybe people realising it through a
biblical studies route. So they're they're engaging with
the text of the Old and the New Testament on the whole.
So a lot of the names and the books and the people that Paul
would have mentioned up front here and also Baxter Kruger
would be mentioning are more from a theology stream, which
most of us are fairly illiterate in.
So I'm going to introduce you to a little book.
Look how thin it is. And it's very big print easy
bedtime reading. It's called it.
This is the gateway drug to theology.
It's called In the Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria, and
it for the introduction alone by CS Lewis on why you should read
original books by people like Plato rather than read what
other people read about them. It's worth its weight in gold.
It's one of the best introductions to anything I've
ever read. So it's On the Incarnation by
Athanasius of Alexandria, and it's got an introduction by CS
Lewis. And that is a great start to
what is called systematic theology, which is how we come
to conclusions about God being Trinity, because that word is
not in the New Testament text, but it became a word that we now
identify as representing what the Godhead is like.
On that happy note, I'm going to introduce Paul and let's pray.
And then are we going to do this talk and then Q&A or straight,
straight into Q&A? Brilliant.
Yeah, that's great. Let's let's just take a few
seconds to quieten our heart in the presence.
Thanks, Alice. We've got another one somewhere
behind me. Oh, down there.
Cool. So we're we, we, we have tonight
really dedicated to Q and AI. Don't think anybody sent in any
queues on the Padlet or did they?
No. So it's just going to be live,
live unscripted. I have no idea what people are
going to ask. Huh.
It's fine. I could do a little magic trick
and write down. I'll write down 5 questions
because I'll do my magic trick. Yeah, it's the same question.
Generally it is, although I'm I understand there's there may be
some quantum curveballs coming from the front table.
If we really no cool Actually on looking at it, I see that it's
one of the longest chapters I wrote in the handbook was for
week 5. That's because the reason being
with the the video, did everyone watch the video for this way?
So the video obviously there's there's less new content in the
talk, but then loads of little tangents open up in the in the
Q&A's. So it's quite, it's quite a good
time to consolidate the really the first four sessions, which I
feel like have the most are the most dense in terms of the
content. And then this one is sort of a
bit of a consolidation and looking at kind of application.
And then as we go on from here, the, the the lectures are more
about application or about, OK, how does this work out in
different contexts and things. So I think I think that's nice,
but what you'll probably find, as I have done, is that the I
mean, I've, I've watched them, you know, a lot of times and I'm
always notice new things and I always think, oh, I'd rewrite
the handbook now, put different emphasis in and, and what have
you. So there's there's a lot more to
kind of draw out, but I think Kate is going to do Carl, Bart
at some point if you want to. Yeah.
Ready to roll? Got some notes on on Carl.
Well, do you want to do you want to start on Carl?
Why don't you start before, before we before we start
chasing rabbits? Yeah.
Well, everyone thinks of that question.
You can. Would you prefer to work out
your questions in your group and then someone from the group ask
a question? Or do you are you happy to just
speak out? Because we don't.
We want everyone to feel happy to do what they can.
I just put a quick hands up of those two options because we
don't want to waste Paul's time. We want to have AQ and a do we
want do we just want a straight Q&A in public like this?
Hands up after Kate does call bots, they have your questions
ready. Do you want to prefer, do you
prefer to have a private conversation than someone
represent your question? Great.
OK, Jane, give your question to Claire.
Great, right? We're just going to do 5 minutes
on Carl Bart. This is definitely theology.
Absolute theological big dog. So I did cheat on this and I
phoned a friend because my younger brother wrote his PhD on
Karl Barn. And actually this is great
because he's recently moved to Germany.
So it was like great. I mean, he loves Karl so much
that he moved to Germany. Actually, no, it was actually
because he met a lovely German girl and married her.
But Karl was like another reason for going there.
And he learnt German so that he could read Karl's church
dogmatics in the original German.
So, you know, like, massive geek fest.
And it was just really great to connect because I'd always felt
a bit guilty that I hadn't read his thesis.
So I got to ask him about it anyway.
So Carl Bart was a Swiss theologian who was born in 1886
and died in 1968. I always find people like that
really interesting, who were essentially Victorian, but then
they lived through like a lot of the 20th century.
So he studied theology in German in Germany and he was a pastor.
This is just a bit of background about his life.
He was a pastor in Switzerland for a bit and then went on to
become a professor of theology in 1934.
Does anyone know what was happening in Germany in 1934?
I think you all do. He wrote something called the
Bahman Declaration, rejecting Nazism and saying that the
Church's allegiance was to 1 Lord Jesus Christ, not Adolf
Hitler. He apparently mailed a copy of
this to Hitler and then got kicked out of Germany for
refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to him, which I
thought was pretty cool. And then he was back in
Switzerland, his home homeland during the war.
And then he was a significant voice calling for like German
penitence and reconciliation across the church in Europe post
war. Very kind of influential.
He was like on the cover of Time magazine once and people said
that his influence really went beyond just the kind of church
and theological spheres. And the other thing to know
about him, because we never liked to pay anyone on a
pedestal. He was married with five kids,
but he basically had a lifelong love affair with his assistant,
which he kind of owned. Like I'm married to this one
person, but I'm actually in love with this other person.
Just thought that was interesting from a theological
gonna be real. Let's be real, from a
theological perspective, this is where Ben came in.
He very much kind of reacted against the 19th century
prevalent Protestant liberal theology characterised by
historical criticism of the Bible and scepticism around
classical metaphysical ideas. Let me just translate that for
you. That's from Ben.
So we agree. So basically my understanding of
that is that 19th century, OK, 1800s talking like the Victorian
times when it was like the Enlightenment and there were
loads of scientific and technological advances and we
were being like pretty smart. Like we were kind of like in
Europe. We were like dominating the
world. It was the big old like colonial
times. And we're still very much like
perceived ourselves as Christian, but there was a lot
of kind of probably like really healthy, like criticism going on
of the Bible. Like for the first time, people
were like, oh, maybe the world wasn't created in seven days and
stuff like that. So all of that was kind of going
on. But also during that time, the
theology of the Trinity kind of got a bit lost because
everything was about like what you can experience and like
cognitively know and what you can kind of scientifically
prove. So I like bigger kind of
metaphysical ideas like the Trinity just kind of got
dropped. Like people just weren't really
interested in them. And Bart basically was, I think
then kind of turn of the century happened and then the First
World War happened. And Ben was describing that
basically the First World War was just like this awful
bloodbath, like European nations, like warring against
each other. And everyone basically realised,
Oh my gosh, like we're not actually civilised.
Like we're not this like amazing, like civilised, like
moral amazing people that we thought we were.
And so a lot of people are asking a lot of questions,
including Carl, sorry, Ben calls him Carl, which I find really
funny, including Bart. And he was basically really
disillusioned that the liberal, his liberal Protestant liberal
theologian teachers had supported this war that he
thought was absolutely awful. And then when kind of war was
brewing again, he really very strongly was like, no to it.
I mean, people like Bonhoeffer were really influenced by Bart
and the Confessing Church. So he would kind of reacted
against that basically and was like, no, we basically put God
in a box. Like God is so much bigger than
our kind of like western liberal ideas.
And he kind of went back and recovered, basically recovered
the doctrine of the Trinity in a way.
Like Ben would say he's like a post like a post liberal
basically because he didn't interestingly, like he didn't go
back to sort of like pre liberal ideas.
Like he was very against what's that word predestination so that
it's like when Calvin and all of that lot thought that God had
already chosen who was going to be saved and who wasn't.
So Carl was like, no, I don't believe in that.
He was really into the Trinity. He was really into God revealing
himself through Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ.
And that he thought basically that the Bible is really
important in in as much as it is like a witness and a testimony
to the person of Jesus Christ points to Jesus and Jesus
reveals the Trinity. So that was his big thing.
Yes, I already said he rejected Calvinist's doctrine of
predestination. And he did get accused of being
a universalist. And he said, quote, I do not
believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ,
reconciler of all. And most famously for me, I
listened to a talk by our friend Jared in our prayer room in
France a few years ago when we were living there.
He was talking about the cross, and he created Carl Bart.
And apparently one of his students once asked him, Doctor
Bart, when were you saved? When was the moment when you
were saved and Carl? Bart replied, I was saved about
3:00 on a Friday afternoon on a hill outside of Jerusalem in 33
AD, and I thought that was really cool.
Thanks. Thanks, Kate.
Well, yeah, great. And I think we didn't.
There's no real space in this book, but we'll often talk about
the two Karls of the 20th century, the Bart being the
Protestant 1 and Karl Rana being the Catholic one, having very
parallel conversations in the in the church.
Karl Rana influencing Vatican 2 very heavily, and Bart kind of
being the the sort of epicentre of good quality modern theology
in in my view. But that was great.
Thanks. Should we get into Q&A?
Who wants to go first? Jane, it's coming down your way.
Right. OK, you, you spoke at church
once and you said there's a bit in the Bible where it says God
sent an evil spirit to I don't know who it was.
And you said I don't believe that was true.
Do you remember so and that I've never heard someone say that
before, which really blew my mind and thought, wow, wow.
So in the Old Testament, when we read or hear what you read,
don't you don't hear them when we read God doing something
vengeance. So we've I'm thinking about lot
and solemn, you know, who was it his wife and that ran away and
she turned to salt. That's like, you know, whether
that's a story or not. But when we're reading that,
would you say that we have to read it from God is good.
Therefore, there has to be another explanation for a God
that would kill. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And and I guess there's a lot that question sort of is a is an
umbrella for a lot of specific points.
We could, you know, go to see you mentioned Lot and his wife,
but you could you got a long list of things you could choose.
I think the one the I don't remember talking about in
church, but I think I know what you mean.
Is it when it talks about an evil spirit from the Lord went
out to Seoul? Was it about King Saul?
Yeah. And, and I probably said, which
is what I believe is that God doesn't send evil spirits
anywhere because they don't come from him.
So yeah. And I guess there are a lot,
there are lots of kind of nuanced, different, you know, we
can kind of categorise acts of divine violence or parts of the
Scripture which appear to paint God as the origin of evil and
these sorts of things. There's nuances to them, but we
could kind of try and group them all into one without sort of
spending weeks teasing out individual ones, which isn't a
bad thing to do. But I think it's more, the more
the question is, what is our hermeneutic lens?
What is our, what is the principle or set of principles
by which we come to read the Scripture?
And to pick up, you know, Kate's quote, Bart's answer to that was
well, as Christ, you know, the Sunday school joke, the person
of Christ is the lens through which we're reading everything
else. So if something doesn't look
like Jesus, then there's a problem.
And we don't immediately know where the problem is.
Maybe the problem's on our side. Maybe there's a problem on the
translation. Maybe there's a problem on the
Texas, but there is a problem. So to be to take sides with
Jesus is commit to saying to saying, well, where we come up
against things that do not look like Jesus, we have to
acknowledge there is a problem. And we kind of need the guidance
of the Holy Spirit to know how to how to process that one out.
And I think that, you know, the the confession of the church in
the Nicene Creed is that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and
giver of life, not the author of death.
So Jesus, Oh no, yeah, Jesus says this John, isn't it?
The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.
I've come that they may have life in all of its fullness.
So let's let's read that literally in the context of 1st
century Jewish people listening to.
Him they have a whole catalogue of the death and destruction and
things that are that's there and he's saying the thief comes to
steal, kill and destroy when he says I've come to give life that
is directly challenging their conceptions of God because will
they believe God gives life and death.
So will we miss that because we're not in that in their
context, hearing it how how extremely challenging that is.
So a a lot of the the first few centuries as the scriptures kind
of getting laid down in in Canon, like what's officially in
and what's out? The question of well, how do we
read it is very central. So, but, but I'm, I'm of the
view that it's also central in the New Testament.
If you come to read the New Testament with this, if, if, if
I, I would suggest it to you like this, assume you're with
the, you're with the apostles in the New Testament and you've had
your entire paradigm about who God is completely blown out of
the water by Christ. You still don't really have a
clue what that means. Like that's evident.
You look at you look at the church, even post the
resurrection, you still don't have a clue what's going on.
They're arguing about all kinds of different things that are
apparently inconsequential. And there's a development of
understanding and theology in in within even the the just the
canonised books of the New Testament.
So they're wrestling with stuff they they have not got it all
sewn up whatsoever. So the idea that now that Jesus
has risen from the dead, we finally got it all figured out.
That's not their story. So come with a come with a
thought. What, what's it look like to
read the works of the New Testament as that the, the
Apostolic witnesses trying to work this stuff out, They're
trying to process out what they have encountered and what its
implication is for how they understand everything else.
We get a lot of that in the this whole discussion of, well, what
does this mean about the Jewish law?
That's that's quite overtly how it plays out in the New
Testament. But actually, if you, if you
keep that in mind, you'll find it's not just there that it
plays out. It plays out in a lot of
different ways in the, in, in kind of the pastoral
application. They're trying to figure all
sorts of things out. Well, how are we supposed to
organise, you know, what, what's this supposed to look like?
And you even have some of that being preempted in the, in the,
in the Gospels where Jesus says things like, look, people are
going to come along and say you're not allowed to get
married. Don't believe that.
But there's anticipations of certain, you know, places where
people are going to fall off, you know, off the wayside with
this stuff. I wrote a paper a little while
ago, maybe last year even, or the year before.
It's a bit of a thought experiment.
Let's what, what do we see if we follow the, we follow the life
and thinking of the apostle Peter, assuming we accept that
Peter wrote the, his, the first epistle of Peter, which I know
is not uncontroversial, but let's just go with tradition.
Assume he wrote that it's part of the, the, you know, the
Petrine witness, Peter's witness.
What is his, Where does he begin and where does he end up?
So I, I, I wrote, I wrote a paper on that because you see,
you see kind of him going 2 steps forward, one step back,
him having a certain perspective of something.
You get this whole thing where he has the vision of the blanket
comes down from heaven and he thinks it's a demon.
He doesn't think it's God. He rebukes it.
You know, he's like, no, Lord, this can't be right.
And so clearly he is going on to have experiences in the Holy
Spirit that are so challenging to him that he thinks it's, he
thinks he might be being demonically deceived.
And they're challenging the theological paradigms that he
had inherited as a good Jewish boy in the, you know, 1st
century AD. So if that's going on with him,
I think we ought to pay more close attention to that when
we're approaching the the the Jewish scriptures.
Because what does Christ do when he appears in the backdrop of
the Jewish scriptures? Well, for the people who were
steeped in the Jewish scriptures and little else, he completely
blew that world apart. So we shouldn't then think we
get an easy ride when we kind of parachute into different parts,
you know, of the of the law prophets or anything and just
think that it will, it will kind of come necessarily fall in a
very straightforward way. So my but, but I am committed to
I'm going to side with Jesus, right.
And I think this is what's going on in the mount of
Transfiguration. You have Moses and Elijah both
appear with Jesus on the mountain.
Moses clearly represents the law.
Elijah clearly represents the prophet.
So this is unambiguous. The they they are the two
witnesses of the the broader portion of the Jewish Canon.
When they appear, Peter tries to venerate all three of them
equally by putting up 3 tabernacles.
As soon as he tries to do that, they're all obscured from view
by a cloud. He hears the voice of the Father
saying this is my son, listen to him.
And then Moses and Elijah have disappeared.
How are we supposed to read that?
I think we can read it statements like Jesus says to
the Pharisees. You think that you search the
scriptures because you believe in the scriptures.
You have life, yet these are the same that testify about me, yet
you fail to come to me to receive life.
So right there Jesus is telling us what's going on in this Canon
of of spiritual, prophetic, religious literature is all
converging on his arrival. Well, when you kind of parachute
into different stories in the Old Testament, if that's not if,
when, if we don't have that in view, we're not reading it with
Jesus as the truth. We can we can read it another,
we might be reading it another way.
Again, it's like the historical critical method or whatever.
We can be be looking at it from all sorts of different angles.
But if we're reading it in a Christian way, which is to say
we believe that there is a prophetic, metaphysical,
supernatural witness that is run coming throughout all of this
that is converging on the arrival of the person of Jesus.
And in in his arrival, all of all other visions die.
All other views are of of God are taken out of the equation
and they must submit to the the headship of Christ and who he
reveals himself and his father in the spirit to be.
Everything else has to has to be worked out.
Now, does that does that create problems for how we read some of
the Old Testament? Yes, it does.
But as you've heard me say many times, show me somebody who
doesn't have problems with something that the Old Testament
says, right? And you're going to have
problems with what's written there because there's a lot
that's problematic written there.
I would suggest you kind of get to choose which category of
problems you want to have. And I think again, I'm going to,
I'm going to side with Jesus on this one.
He, he, he's the life giving spirit.
He's not the author of death. Death is called the enemy that
is the final, the final enemy to be ultimately done away within
the New Testament. It's not that death is an
emergent property of God. And I think that I would argue
you, you go to the Genesis story.
It's conspicuous that in, in the in the, in the, the, the account
of the fall of Adam and Eve, it doesn't say in the day you eat
the fruit I will kill you. It just says in the day you eat
the fruit, you will die, not I will kill you.
Adam then immediately is afraid of God.
He's running from the one who he who he thinks is the source of
the death. And but that's not that's never
even what the curse said. The curse said it was a there
was a this is a consequence of what will happen.
But I'm not the author or the originator of that consequence.
And you see the New Testament wrestles with these ideas.
You know, no one who is tempted should say I'm being tempted by
God because God is neither tempted by evil nor does he
tempt by evil. They have these kind of
statements. So clearly people are wrestling
with us all. How am I supposed to understand
or relate to God? And they're correct.
And they're saying, no, God is not the author of any of that.
Don't, don't ascribe to him something that doesn't belong to
him. OK, well, where, where does it
come from then? Well, that's the problem.
That's called the problem of evil.
I mean, that is the problem. That's everybody's problem.
So, but, but again, I'm going to work that out.
I'm going to side with Jesus on that one, even if that means
taking sides against what I perceive the Bible to be saying
or maybe what it actually is saying.
And again, we can discuss because I don't, I don't always
know. Maybe I've maybe we've misread
it. Maybe it didn't actually say
what we thought it did, or maybe it really did and it was wrong.
I'm OK with that because all visions have to have to submit
to the revelation of God in Christ.
Thanks, Kate. Just to ask like a quick follow
up question, because that was kind of going to be my question
was like, where like how far do we take this?
Like God didn't. As far as we need to.
Yeah, God didn't actually say kill those people, but could you
comment on like from your perspective, like where is the
church on this? Because I feel like there is
this kind of like protectiveness around the word of God, which
probably is like, you know, part of that like comes from really
good intentions of wanting to like honour it.
And but I don't feel like everyone's there.
But then I don't think anyone would like a lot of what you're
saying. Like makes sense.
Like, no, we don't agree with everything in the Old Testament.
So what where do you see the church like broadly is on there?
And is it moving? Is it shifting?
It's definitely shifting. I think that I, I mean, I've,
I've had the, I, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's a
privilege or not. It's just a fact.
I mean, I've been in a lot of backroom conversations over the
years with church denomination church leaders and
denominational leaders, you know, stream leaders who will
candidly admit that they do not believe what the majority of
their denominations believe on certain key issues, but don't
tell anyone because they'll get lynched by the denominations if
they knew, right? I mean, I've, I've been in a lot
of those kind of conversations and I think that against sort of
surveying church history, that anxiety has been there.
You see that in the some of the patristics, they're like, we
don't really want to be too public about saying XYZ or
speculating about these things here because if we do, people
might take it the wrong way and then we'll have chaos on our
hands. You know, we'll have a problem.
So you see throughout church history, this this issue of
those who are whether rightly or wrongly responsible for leading
or decision making within the church community are gatekeeping
certain topics of conversation. And that's happened right from
right from the beginning. Now, what we're talking about
here is nothing new about what we're talking about here.
It's not even anything new in literal terms.
I mean, these kinds of conversations you talk about
bot, I mean, this is early 20th century.
This is not, this isn't like a recent discussion, but for many
people in the church context who've never encountered
theology without going to sort of a specialist institution to
learn it, it's like, wow, OK, I've never kind of considered
these things. But it's not that those things
haven't been there. It's that there's been some sort
of pastoral gatekeeping around. Well, do we like what questions?
What questions are valid questions that are helpful for
people at different stages of their spiritual growth?
Maybe I could put it that way, if I'm putting it kindly.
Not, not everybody needs to agonise about whether or not
Lot's wife really did turn into a pillar of salt.
That for most people, most of the time, that's not really an
important question. Except I think that right now
talking about things shifting, especially in the last 10 years,
the, the mass proliferation of, you know, the, the walls of the
gatekeeping of knowledge has collapsed across all
disciplines. So I don't think anybody can
afford to do that anymore. And hence, hence a course like
this. I mean, you would normally not
be addressing this sort of topic outside of a seminary or an
academic environment. That would be very specialist
saying, OK, we're taking people and we're, this isn't for
everybody. It's a kind of backroom
conversation, but all the backroom conversations are out
in the open. And I think that it's questions
people are asking and, and conversations they're having
anyway. So we, and I think the Holy
Spirit's behind that because I think it, it, it draws us
forward through, through points of spiritual growth.
So things are most definitely shifting, but they're also
shifting in all kinds of directions.
They're not, it's not kind of a shift in One Direction
necessarily, but there are huge shifts across all denominations.
And you know that. And especially as said, the last
10 years, acceleration that's been huge.
So Sam had a hand, then Nikki, then Tim, if I can go that way
around Sam, you, you were up first, right?
I think, I think you did. Was that right?
Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is a slightly long this
question with a run up the little the run up is I was on
I've I've been like and it sort of relates to the to the to the
law, but also just the law as an example of how God chooses
trivial himself. Right.
So was that a had AI had a sermon the other week where
which is talking about eunuchs just for some reason, who knows
why. I think it was talking about the
eunuch. The the main point was like the
eunuch that appears in Acts who's like baptised.
Yeah. And you've got like there were
like 3 reference points that were pulled out.
One was from the law, one's from the prophet Isaiah and one was
there and you have the the in the law, eunuchs are banned from
like the temple grounds, like the Tabernacle, like can't go
in, can't participate. Then in Isaiah, God's like, oh,
well, to the eunuchs, I'm going to give them a name better than
sons and daughters and they're going to be completely part of
the whole thing. And then you have Philip then
like being like teleported to run alongside A chariot and
reveal who Jesus is to this guy who's reading Isaiah and then is
like, oh, well, why don't you baptise me right here, right
now? Because you know, why not?
Why can't I be, you know, and I feel like there's I've, when
I've been trying to navigate like where, how do I, how do I,
how do I find the heart of God? I've thus far been running with
a narrative of God does some sometimes does stuff that God
doesn't really agree with or like wouldn't, wouldn't like
this. Like he's doing something, but
it's not like that thing he's doing is revealing his heart.
And I feel like the law in many respects, like has a whole load
of stuff in it, which is like not designed to reveal the heart
of God, right. But I'd still personally believe
it came from God. But like, but I don't know.
I'm, I'm still trying to place it of like, OK, some stuff can
come from God that doesn't necessarily reveal the heart of
God, which then God addresses in the same, you know, in the same
Old Testament. It's like, well, actually, you
know, I know that this is, you know, been said, but what I
really want is for these people to be my sons and daughters and
then in Christ, where everyone, you know, can be so and
everyone's welcome and doesn't really matter whether you're
welcome the temple or not, you're welcome and you know,
right with a father. So I guess like in I'm one, it's
This is why I'm a long run up because I'm trying to place
things of like, how much room is this still for God doing things
that God's not like fully behind?
Like maybe God turns someone, someone to salt in a moment, But
like that's not like, oh, that we need to study that and that's
going to reveal the heart of God or or, you know, and I guess the
bit this the next question, which is possibly like one for a
future time is, you know, if the Lord did come from God and it
doesn't really reveal God's heart, like what was it?
What was the purpose? Yeah.
Sure.
Well, let me let me there's a there's a great point.
I mean, I think just just to try and answer quickly without, you
know, as again chasing the rabbit.
I think what was the law for? Well, Paul says that he says the
law was for the purpose of increasing sin, not for
revealing the heart I've got it's for the purpose of
increasing sin. Yes, the story is the law comes
from God, but that's not actually what Jesus says.
He says the the law. He said Moses gave you the law.
Now when he said that, is he trying to say Moses is the
originator of it or like what I mean, go, go talk to him about
it, right? Process it.
I think. I think I'll circulate the paper
I did on Peter for everyone, because my argument in the paper
is that by the time you get to Peter's epistles, you have this
very weird, what seems to be a sidetrack into a discussion of
the story of Noah with from Peter, which I've never heard
taught on well, because of the the language in it is very
strange. And you think, what on earth is
he trying to say here when he's talking about it?
And if you're not not familiar with it, it's, I mean, it's a
it's a long passage, but the the headlines are he says, you know,
for this reason, the gospel was also preached to those who are
now dead brackets, those who disobeyed long ago in the time
of Noah. OK, so we've got this.
He throws this foray out there. The gospel was preached to those
who are dead, who died in Noah's time.
Why was it preached to them? He says that that they might be
judged brackets according to man with regard to their flesh, but
live according to God with regard to the spirit.
So what what are you saying? Well, I mean, I'm not I'm not
actually sure it's that difficult if we just take a step
back without the theological bias.
I think Peter is trying to say he's trying to work out this
stuff. And I think the Noah's flood is
the ultimate one. I mean, you could say you could
pick up different, different examples, but Noah's flood is
the big one because it's the whole planet And, and he says.
He says, well, the gospel went to them even though they were
dead, so Jesus went to them. Why?
So that although according to man they died in the flesh, so
they physically died, and then according to man they were
judged. In fact, that's what he's
saying. So to paraphrase it, I think
what Peter is saying is because although in man's opinion they
were judged through physical death, actually in God's opinion
they live by the Spirit, hence why Jesus went down to them.
I think that's what Peter is saying.
I don't actually think there's another sane way to read that.
If you kind of put it together, and I think this is Peter, as
there are a number of points in the New Testament where there
are acknowledgments. If we can't.
I haven't got a logical answer for you about why the Old
Testament says this, but here's what Jesus does.
You get the beginning of Hebrews.
It's the same thing. It quotes the Psalm.
What is man that you're mindful of him, the Son of man, that
you'd even think of him. You made him for a little while
lower than God or lower than the angels, depending on whether
you're reading Greek or Hebrew. You, you, you crowned him with
love and compassion and have set all things under his feet.
And then the writer of the Hebrews says, but we don't see
that. We don't see everything under
the feet of man. It's a mess out there.
Like if you take a look out the window recently and definitely
everything is not under the feet of man.
So what do we do with that Bible verse, this promise about the
status of humanity in God's economy?
And then the writer says, yes, it's true, we don't see that.
But there is something we do see.
And we see Jesus, who is the man and we see he has ascended and
has sat down at the right hand of the Father.
So we actually see all things under his feet.
Now we're not seeing all things under our feet because people
still get sick, they still die. There's they're still suffering,
they're still evil. There's still these things that
shouldn't be there. Yeah.
And he, he or she, the writer of Hebrews doesn't even attempt to
give a rational answer to that, doesn't attempt to explain it.
It says, yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying that stuff isn't going
on, but I'm saying I see Jesus and everything is under him.
And then there's an invitation back to encounter.
So there are, there are these points where again, we, we kind
of skip over them because we're not quite in, I think in the
mind of the of the writer, what it is that they're wrestling
with. So, so I again, I put it in this
paper, I acknowledged I'm making assumptions about Peter's
authorship of these things and I put it together in in a kind of
a rough chronology of key events and things that Peter happened,
had that happened to Peter and that he said ending with the
epistle where he's addressing this question of all right,
well, now how do I, now that I've had this lifetime of
experiences of Christ and the risen Christ?
Well, how do I read this book, all these books, rather, it's
not a book right for them. How do I, how do I interpret
these stories that I've had my whole life?
Well, he's Peter's been through the ringer.
I mean, his worldview has been blown upside down multiple
times. And now he's kind of sitting
down to well, OK, I guess the only way I can process it is.
Yeah. Well, I'm he because he he he
doesn't have a he doesn't have a kind of modern worldview to say,
well, it didn't happen. I mean, he assumes it happened,
like literally it happened a flood, you know, and all the
rest. So he assumes that and he says,
I guess it's man's perspective that they were judged then, but
it's God's perspective that they weren't.
I mean, just plug, just plug it back in.
I mean, you can go see it for yourself.
Read, read the epistle and see, see what you think.
But I think, but, but to me that it's this, this stuff was always
there kind of saying to us, I'm not, I'm not giving you a neat
answer. Like Jesus hasn't given us any
answer. He's given us himself.
And and I think it's within the Apostolic tradition to wrestle
with the Bible that way. And history is also on my side,
because that's also what the patristics do, right?
The early, the early church fathers, they they wrestle with
the Bible in the same way. You know, you have origin of
Alexandria. You know, the the really the
father of biblical interpretation in among the
church fathers. His whole thing is that the the
entire scripture is a kind of allegorical code that's
revealing Jesus to you. And if you haven't seen that,
you haven't read it, right? I mean, he's, he's really strong
on that. So, so I think we, again, we,
we've had, we've inherited an approach to the book that is in
some ways out of sync with the historic Apostolic witness of
the way that we deal with the books, which is not, not, it's
not easy or convenient. It's also, it's not, it's not
great for an alpha course, right?
You know, or you, you get people in, OK, here's the AB CS.
You know, it's not good for AB CS.
So I think that it, it means people might OK pastorally, we
kind of want to avoid that sort of discussion.
Just believe it and get on with it, you know, which I can't do.
And I guess you can't either, otherwise you probably wouldn't
be here. But is that we're going to go to
Nikki, then Tim, then Pete. So I'm, I'm kind of, I'm taking
on what you're saying and you may have answered this, but I
kind of yeah, sure, go for it. My question in my head.
So kind of half listening. And so I've got a kind of, are
we picking and choosing the bits that are easier for us?
I I kind of go Old Testament God little bit kind of difficult
because there's so many things written there that you kind of
you want to brush over you don't, you know, if people ask
you and they're the points that people will ask you, what about
that? What you know, does that sound
good? Is this and I'm I don't yeah, it
just is That's Old Testament God playing up whatever it was that
kind of you kind of brush. Are we picking and choosing the
good bits of God, like the loving good bits?
And I've got a friend who had a term, he'd call it Christianity
Light. So that stuck with me.
I'm like I'm I'm Christianity liar.
I wish your friend was here. He's evangelising around South
America, so I don't know. Yeah, but he's and I've got a
kind of where does, where does heaven and hell sit in the
Trinitarian? Yeah, OK, well, that's an easy
question. Heaven and hell both sit in God
because everything's in God and can't be anywhere else.
So that that's that's a nice easy one.
As for the the the first question, I mean I I.
It's hell. It's hell like the the burning
punishment. It's that kind of kind of sense
of are we, are we going through life with the goal of.
You've given me two, you've given me two, you've given me
two different directions questions there.
Let let me No, that's fine. No, it's absolutely fine.
I'm I'm playing just just on your on your first point are are
we picking and choosing? I mean, depends on the day, you
ask me. Sometimes I want to say, yeah,
just like everybody else's, right?
Everybody picks and chooses you. You go to any any church, we'll
pick and choose scriptures at the expense of others.
Everybody does. Because you you find me any
systematic construction and I will find you verses that blow
holes in it. And I know that because I
memorised large chunks of the scripture before I was 18.
I carried a Bible around with me wherever I went.
Any time I was walking, I was either witnessing to somebody
and giving the Bible away or I was reading it and memorising
it. And as far as picking the
avoiding the Old Testament because it's got the bad bits,
there's plenty of bad bits in the New Testament.
I didn't need don't need to go to like touch the Old Testament
before you find some of the worst bits.
You know that you might find you're going to find that.
So I think it's it's quite to me, it's quite a shallow
critique. And I'm not saying you, but that
they from your friend to say it's Christianity light.
I'm like, honestly, when, when people say that, I feel like,
you know, we're not, we're not all having the same conversation
here. Like honestly, because you, you
don't want me to turn that same methodology on your, on your,
you know, doctrines because they will not stand up.
And I know that because I used to be the one who preached those
harder than anybody else, right. I mean, I was, I have a book
coming out in a couple of weeks, which is my story and it, you
know, it kind of address. Why am I saying what I'm saying
now when I used to spend my Saturday afternoons with a
megaphone in the centre of Bath telling people to turn or burn,
and I used to spend my Friday nights praying as hard as I
could for, you know, souls to get saved and all the way like,
why? Why am I here?
You know, So to me, it's not to me, nothing's off limits in
terms of what, what we're reading and what we're engaging
with. But sometimes I do want to say,
yeah, of course I'm going to pick and choose which bits do
you want to pick and choose instead?
Because I could give you a whole.
But there's, there's as much, there's as much tyranny and
bondage in that book as there is freedom if you want to go
looking for it, you know, but that also brings me back to, but
what do you bring to the table when you read it?
Because you, you never read it by itself and because you always
read it with yourself. What's what's in your heart that
is coming out when you're engaging with the scripture?
What's what, what, what existential fear, what shame,
what dysfunction, what trauma is being brought to the surface
that is then overlaying and being projected onto the page
because you get 2 people read the same book and have very
different reactions to it. Right.
Well, that's not that complicated for us to
understand. But but again, even in the
phrasing of your question, and this isn't, this isn't to kind
of put a gotcha moment on you because I know you didn't mean
it this way, but even even a question like, are we just
picking the good bits of God? God only has good bits, but God
is light in him, there is no darkness at all.
And sometimes when I'm in those kind of circles that are very
fundamentalist kind of circles, and if I get any pushback, I'm
just like, look, I'm just trying to take the Bible literally
everybody when he says I'm light and in me, there's no darkness
at all. I'm actually just trying to
believe that, you know, and I think that it exposes the fact
that people lean towards parts of the Scripture that makes
sense to them and they lean away from those parts that don't.
And that's all. That's not really that
controversial. I think everybody does it.
So again, I want to say I want to lean towards the person of
Jesus Christ and the revelation of God in Christ.
So I'm going to take sides with him because there's all kinds of
other things you can take sides with when you engage with the
Scripture. And no doubt you've seen it all.
And I mean, I've seen it all and people, what people can draw out
and what conclusions they can come to, you can dive into that
and end up almost anywhere depending on how you assemble
the particular verses of Scripture.
So I'm, I'm a little suspicious of anyone who comes with that
methodology uncritically, like who hasn't actually recognised
that same methodology turns back on you if you, if you follow it
through. And that doesn't work for me.
Like I need a gospel that works in every situation, not one that
only works in very controlled kind of environments.
So for me, God is good and he is only good.
He, he's not evil and he's not the author of evil.
You get in some of the particularly some of the
reformed circles, you tend to have this, this thing of, well,
we worship God because he's so powerful and he's so awesome and
he's so incredible and he's just up there and wow, we're so
unworthy, but he's so glorious. And for them that that
gloriousness is it's about power.
Like they like power. Oh God, and I even preach things
like this when I did a lot of evangelism, right, I would, I
would say things like this is the God who could extinguish the
universe in a moment and recreate it again in the in, in
the same moment, like he's got that power.
He could go that, that and that extinguish it and recreate it.
That was the God that made sense to me.
It was the God that I was preaching.
It was about power. Well, that's but Jesus goes to
the cross and says, Father, forgive them.
They don't know what they do. He's not there calling down
legions of angels to annihilate the planet, right.
And so there is a mismatch here between the God at that point
that I'm preaching and that many are preaching in those kind of
circles. What they are attracted to says
more to me about them, which again, it's it's only a
criticism in as much as it's one that I have been fully guilty of
myself and of preaching and teaching for many years myself.
So I also, I understand it from the inside, you know, not from
the outside. And then also, if anyone thinks
what we're saying here is the easy version hasn't understood
it. I got up in Tennessee several
years ago right after the major. There was a one of the one of
the big school shootings in Nashville happened on like the
Friday and I was there on the the Monday.
So there's a within a couple of days.
So I, I thought I would use, and it was a men's conference, you
know, 120 people or something. So I thought I would use my Part
1 of my sessions to address the issue of gun violence in the US.
So I did. And you know, I said, look, the
the gospel does not allow you to have enemies.
If you, if you, if you think that that is an easy version, if
that's Christianity light, the gospel does not permit you to
have enemies. In fact, it says love your
enemies because God does. And love does no harm to its
neighbour, which means God does not harm his enemies.
I'm just being literal here, taking the book literally.
So, so therefore, how do you feel about the shooter who just
shut up the school? Because I know how I feel about
him and it's not very Christian. So that that's not light and
that's not the light and easy, not Lite, you know that kind of
light. But the other side of it is
Jesus says, take my yoke upon you because my yoke is easier
than my burden is light. So my other answer is, well,
what kind of Christianity do you prefer?
Do you prefer heavy and difficult?
I mean, I have 90% of the church is preaching that honestly.
And I called someone out who is now a nationally known figure
for the wrong reason. I called him out, but he
wouldn't respond to me because he posted something about being
a prophet. Oh, I'm a people.
Nobody knows what a burden it is to be a prophet.
You know, God shows you these things.
You have these terrible burdens you have to pray through.
And and this was on a in a group that I subsequently left and I
said, and everyone was posting, Oh yeah, that's right.
You know, right on brother and all that same man.
And I just said, well, I said, whatever happened to my yoke is
easy and my burden is light, right?
What happened to that? Because you've heard me say, if
you've heard me long enough, Jesus yoke is easy and his
burden is light. If the yoke that you're carrying
is not easy and if the burden is not light, I don't know whose it
is, but it's not Jesus. I'll leave you to fill in the
blanks as to whose it might be. So if the if the message that
we're preaching, if the approach to Scripture that we're
preaching is actually weighing people down, then I can't see
that in the person of Christ. And I haven't seen it in my own
experience of Christ because I've had the Holy Spirit speak
to me very directly and correct me on a couple of occasions over
things. It's never felt heavy.
It's only ever lifted me and elevated me.
So that's what God feels like. That's what he tastes like.
That's what he smells like. I think there's way too many
people out there who they have mistaken intellectual critique
for the gift of discernment. They don't actually know what
discernment is. They have an intellectual
exercise and they call it discernment, but that's not
discernment is a spiritual gift. It's not an intellectual
exercise in the New Testament. Doesn't mean that
intellectualism has no place, right?
Of course it has a place. But discernment is a gift of
being able to recognise somebody.
You know, it's like, oh, yeah, I know, I know.
I know what that person's like. I, I know them.
I know them because I know how they've treated me.
I know how they, what they sound like.
I know what they feel like when they're close by.
So therefore, when I'm engaging with the book, I'm looking for
them. When I'm engaging with life, I'm
looking for them. And that's what's helping me to
decide where they are in the midst of all of this stuff.
So, but I often think that those kinds of questions are really
arising from healing issues more than they are from intellectual
issues. I'm very convinced about that.
Where they're where we're kind of struggling to get around this
stuff. It's more than anything else, it
is our our own, our own pain, our own fear, shame.
It's those things that are holding us captive from being
able to come to the light in those areas.
And so it's not it's something for spiritual growth and for,
you know, the one who fears is not yet made perfect in love.
We all have further to go in love.
But but to the idea that it's kind of easy in the sense that
your friend meant it. I mean, it's, it's just
ridiculous. I think that, but, but again, I
would say look, look around if you care to at the state of
churches that preach that way. And again, I say whether it's a
privilege or not, I've been in a lot of backroom conversations
and I've also been involved in a lot of cleanups of Masses in the
church environment. And one of the things that's
very striking is to see how stunted the spiritual growth is
of congregations where people have been sitting there for 30
years and they've made no progress and the message has not
helped them make any progress yet it's been the message that,
you know, so. And I think part of that is
because at the very, the very point at which progress in the
things of the Spirit means the Holy Spirit is guiding us to be
able to recognise the Father, Son and Spirit and people who
are very different from us at that very moment.
There's a certain kind of teaching which will close the
walls down and say, but God isn't there with those people.
So you can't recognise him there.
They're the out crowd. This is one of the reasons I'm
so belligerent on the inclusion issue, because if you have
people who are excluded then that means, well, God isn't in
them and isn't with them. Therefore I have nothing to
recognise. I do not have the authentic
presence of God to recognise in that person, only the potential
and that potential leaves room for me to close the door.
So OK, I've hung out, I've tried that, I've tried that one long
enough. OK, now I'll move over to here.
That one's, they're not, they're not coming with me.
Maybe they're not really elect, or maybe there's some other
problem, but to say I'm resolutely committed to the
presence of the Father, Son, the Spirit in all people, is to say
I don't get to close the door on anybody.
I don't think that sounds like an easy Christianity light.
I do think it sounds like something that levels a very
strong prophetic bazooka at the broader consensus of the
Christian fascism that is brewing in the Western world
right now. I do think it hits that and I've
said that as well publicly and will continue to do so.
So I, yeah, I don't, that's not to say people aren't being just
shallow. There's a lot of shallowness
everywhere. I don't think we're talking
about shallowness here. So, and you asked about, you
asked about the specifically the heaven and health.
And I mean, I just refer back to .1.
What is Jesus like? What when when Jesus acts in a
certain way towards somebody, what is his intention?
He, he's the one who loves his enemies.
Love does no harm to its neighbours.
So whatever way Jesus is acting towards someone is not for the
harm of that person. It can only be for their good
because that's what he says love is.
So we have a lake of fire. Well, what does that?
What, how does that function and what what's it for?
Lots of questions to unpack about that, but.
Again, I'm resolutely committed to God is love, and therefore
everything he does is an extension of his essential
nature. He is loved.
So yes, he's a judge, but what kind of judge is he?
Well, his judgement is an extension of his love.
It's not the antithesis to his love, which is often how it's
preached. And people will say things like,
well, yes, God is loving, but he's also holy.
It's like, well, then you haven't understood holiness.
Holiness is an extension of the love of God, not an opposing
force. Justice is an extension of the
love of God, not an opposing force.
If our versions of justice and holiness do not look like the
love of God, it is us who need to repent.
Metanoia have a change and an upgrade in our thinking.
It's a carnal mind that can't accept that.
Actually, again, all of this is the the book is testifying.
That's right. And the carnal mind could not
accept the things of the spirit. It's very, very rational and
reasonable to have an idea of a retributive, A retributive
punisher that makes sense to the natural mind.
The idea that, you know, you might have a school shooter and
Christ might actually still be in that person and still be
resolutely committed to their restoration with their free
participation, by the way, not not in a coercive manner.
We've had a few conversations about that, resolutely committed
them, and you think, well, how could you possibly spend time?
How could you possibly be anywhere near that devil?
How could you go anywhere near them?
They are. There's not a person on the
planet who loves that, that guy and would not, you know, send
him to the electric chair or whatever.
No one who's really connected to life will support that guy.
Yet here we see Jesus as not just the lamb, but the baby
lamb. That's a picture of holiness
that is desperately difficult for the, the natural mind to get
a hold of. And I think a lot of this stuff
is just natural mind rationality, not really seeing
the, the, the implications of the consequences of what, of
what they're talking about. But for me, I mean, and to
summarise it, God is love. Everything he does is an
extension of his love because that's his essential nature.
So if that means we have to change our understanding of a
whole bunch of things, then yeah, that's called
Christianity. We change our understanding.
That's what church is for. I think it was Tim and then Pete
and Sarah. Thanks.
And I don't know if it's a question so much as more just an
it might be an extension of where where you're going then,
but I wanted to talk a little bit about kind of universal
salvation. I'm kind of getting stuck on
that. Yeah, I know we've talked about
it about almost every week I come to you afterwards, 'cause
I'm getting stuck on it. And I guess I guess firstly,
just to say like, I've loved of this, that's what, four or five
weeks or four or five months it's been.
But the, the, the, the sessions, I, I do feel like my mind has
been blown. I'd say thank you for bringing
this to us. And it's it, it, it has brought
a new kind of beauty to the Trinity.
And it is a beautiful thing, this kind of sense of that, that
character of God being loved. And I think you've illustrated
that really well. And, and it's brought that to
life through this course in a new way for me in, in a new way
for me. So which is, which has been
fantastic. And it feels like the kind of
gospel you'd want to preach more than perhaps one that I've known
historically, but that doesn't make it kind of right.
And I guess I feel like there's some inconsistencies with some
stuff. It doesn't feel like this is
what the the gospel that maybe Jesus preached.
And I've I've picked that a few, I've made note of a few things
and I don't know if I've got a question related to some
challenges to put to it to kind of explore it together.
Maybe if that's alright. It feels like Jesus kind of you
talked a bit about judgement then, but like judgement,
separation and accountability, which kind of feel inconsistent
with a universalist reading. And I kind of get that seeing it
through a different lens. I love that.
That was last week or last month, wasn't it, where we
talked about that like kind of the new lens?
And I've really found that as through my Bible reading since
that session And, and, and I'm now going to do that annoying
thing where I pick out a few verses to back up a particular
point, which, which, but still, I'm going to do it anyway.
In terms of like judgement. There's, there's, I mean,
there's lots I could, could, could pick on, but a few
specifics. When the Son of Man comes to his
glory, he'll separate people one from another.
In Matthew 25, the Father judges no one, but has given all
judgement to the Son. John 5 then goes on to say those
who do evil will rise to condemnation.
Again in John 5, the parallel of the net.
In Matthew 13, the wheat and the weeds.
In Matthew 13, the narrow versus the wide path in Matthew 7.
They're all about separation and then there's accountability.
Unless you repent, you will perish in Luke 13.
I just feel there's like it's inconsistently.
I'm still struggling. To yeah, OK, so I know I've just
picked out yeah, yeah. And and we, we could go through
each one. I don't want to do that, but I
don't actually think, I don't actually think it's the most.
I don't actually think it's the most helpful thing to do to go
through each one. I think that just a just a
couple of observations on those. I mean, I, I will pick on one,
which is, you know, Jesus saying you know, the one about can you
read the one again about the Father, the father in judgement.
Just let me get the wording right.
John 5 was it. The father judge is no one, but
has given all judgement to the son.
John Yeah, right. And this is the same Jesus who
says I judge no one, right. So you have the, you have the,
the judge is the one who hangs on the cross and from the cross
he delivers his judgement. Father, forgive them for they
don't know what they do, which is not a petition because Jesus
doesn't make petitions, right? He is of one mind with the
Father. When he says something, he's
expressing the mind of the Father.
So this is a declaration of absolution.
This is a high priestly prayer. Now that some of the nuances
here, we're used to thinking that salvation means your sins
are forgiven, but the word salvation means to be brought to
complete wholeness, right? In the Greek sozo, to be brought
to wholeness. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, exactly. No, he's judge, right?
But in what way does he judge? And what is the purpose of his
judgement? Yes, he's judge, absolutely so.
But but who does he judge? Well, in that verse in John, it
says those who those who do evil rise to a condemnation, right?
Well, Paul says everyone's work will be tested with fire.
I assume that means the fire of judgement, right?
I don't think anyone's going to probably contest that point.
He's talking to the Christians so and he's saying everyone's
going to the fire. So the he says for each one of
us must receive due recompense from God for the, the the deeds
done in the body, whether good or bad, doesn't exactly sound
like the evangelical message either.
Believe in Jesus and you got your ticket and you're all
right. OK, so, and this is kind of what
I mean, if you, if you, you can navigate your way through proof
text and can end up in almost any conclusion.
So hence for me, the emphasis is on all right, if God is love,
and I think that's a high watermark of Revelation in the
New Testament. In fact, when John says that, I
think that's a high watermark, he doesn't say God is loving.
He says God is love. That's very significant.
If love is the essential nature of God, we therefore then have
to ask questions. What does that mean about the
nature of God's judgement? Because we're not saying God's
not a judge, he's a judge, but what's the nature of that
judgement? What's the purpose of that
judgement? There are lots of rabbit trails
to go down if you want to begin to do things like start to
dissect language, words and all the rest.
There's and there's tonnes of resources and tonnes of
conversation to have about that. Too much, too much to even try
and dive into. But there's a, there's a lot, a
lot that's out there to get into.
I would say to try and summarise on it, I don't think any of
those things are about separation in the sense that
we've been using the word separation, separation meaning
to be absent from God. Even in the Book of Revelation,
it says the lake of fire is in the presence of the Lamb, not in
the absence of the Lamb. It's quite specific.
It says the beast and the false prophet are tormented day and
night in the lake of fire in the presence of the Lamb and his
holy angels, right? Not a nice bit, but it's very
emphatic that it's in the presence, not in the absence.
So what does, what's this concept of separation?
What is it even about? You know, what do we, what do we
mean? Is it an ontological separation
we're talking about here, meaning that the truth of their
being is that they're separated or is there something else going
on? I think that you you have and to
Chris to your point about kind of chronologies, I think this is
one of the one of the ways we can kind of get unstuck in the
New Testament because the New Testament doesn't have this
chronological idea in the way that we do in terms of the same
sequencing of things. You have John's gospel.
Now is the day of salvation. Now the Prince of this a world
stands condemned and I'm when I'm lifted up will draw all to
myself. End of the story and the the and
and then and then you won't look for it anymore because it's
better that the Holy Spirit comes.
So you have in John the moment of the judgement of the world is
the moment of the crucifixion when Christ is lifted up.
That's also the moment of his coronation.
So he's not thinking in this sort of temporal sequence.
We think very much in that sort of light.
OK, well, this follows this follows this like to that that
comment from from Bart, when did I get saved or born again or
wherever he was asked it. And he says, you know, 33 AD,
you know, and TF Torrance, who is the so Baxter Kruger, his PhD
was on the work of TF Torrance. He did it with JB Torrance, TF
Torrance's brother. Torrance is a Baathian scholar.
Torrance was asked the same question and he said, I'll give
you 3 answers. He says, I'll give you the date
and he gives the date. I consciously gave my life to
Jesus, you know, and altar call. And he said 2000 years ago on
the cross. And but yeah, even more than
that before the foundation of the world.
These are, these are working. These are all working in concert
with one another. But it's not really the kind of
the, the sequencing of it is not really the, the, the issue here.
And I have a problem with, say, a reading of Revelation that has
a different Jesus than the Jesus who came the first time.
I have a problem with that. If Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and forever, then how can you tell me that
the Jesus who's coming back is materially going to be different
than the Jesus who came the first time?
That strikes me as being a real major theological flaw, not a
minor point for debate. If he's the same yesterday,
today and forever, when we see him in the Gospels, we are
seeing him as he is. So you know, people have this
well, when he comes back, he's going to come back to judge
world. No, he's judging the world right
now. His very life was an act of
judgement. He's very his incarnation was an
act of judgement. It was a judgement against all
the darkness, all of the sin, all of the evil, all of the
destruction is judged in the incarnation.
It's judged by God saying I see all of this and I refuse to
depart. You cannot make me leave.
You cannot push me so far that my love is separated from you.
I am here present within you irreversibly.
And because I'm present here with you and in you
irreversibly, that is the judgement that that lays the
crisis, the word judgement in New Testament, etymologically,
it's the word crisis. That's the crisis point that
lands at the door saying, well, if, if that's the truth of who I
am and the truth of everything else, something's got to change.
It can't. Things can't stay the way that
they are. It's impossible for them to stay
the way that they are. Now that we've seen that we
can't put that cap back in the bag.
And that is very, in very real terms, the judgement that is in
very real terms, like, Oh my God, what have I done?
I have to put this right. This is the key of saying I need
to pay back, you know, fourfold anyone who I've defrauded.
And Jesus says, well, now salvation has truly come to this
house. It's at that point when he makes
restitution that Jesus says, OK, we see something completed here
because it's actually worked its way through in his in his
actions. So I think that it's possible to
dive into the New Testament, assemble a list of verses, and
end up with eternal conscious torment in literal fire for, for
for eternity, right? It's possible to do that.
It's possible to parachute in, work your way through a
different set of scriptures and come out with will everybody
saved. So you can you can do that.
We're using the same Bible. It wasn't my intention to kind
of I know it's not no, I'm not I understand.
I don't know. I'm just trying to I'm trying to
say from a challenge out with this.
So I think what, what I'm, what I'm trying to emphasise here is
like, do like do the journey with Jesus on this.
Like there's, there's questions you've got to ask him on it and
maybe questions you might not have dared to ask him before.
OK, Jesus, Well, what do you think about XYZ?
I mean, it's so simple. How, how often do actually, or
what do you actually think about that?
The other thing I'll do is, and I'll say, well, Tim, what do you
think about that? The New Testament says you're
going to judge angels. You'll be responsible for
judging angels. Says that right.
So, OK, you've been a Christian a while.
How do you judge you? You've got to know Jesus.
You've got what, how, how would you call it?
What would you consider to be an appropriate standard?
What would you consider to be an appropriate way of dealing with
XYZ person? What, what would you do?
Because you are actually called to do it since that's your
destiny in the future is that you're going to be there talking
about the, you know, the, the completion of the church, 24
elders on the throne like issue sound judgement.
What's your verdict? There's an there's an
invitation. Sorry.
That's going to be tough. Tough, right, Tough.
OK, I think we're all. But why is it going to be tough?
We all had a tough judgement to make today, wouldn't it?
Was pool golf Claudia? It was a close call, wasn't it
earlier, but we made the right judgement.
I don't know. Not just me, was it, I assume
it's a sport reference. Oh, traitors.
OK, so anyway, so, so my, my point is though, like go there
with that conversation because I mean, I, I this this stuff I've
got a problem with right, but it but it can't I mean, I mean,
I've shared it, I have shared it here and I don't want to again
go down. It's a couple more questions as
well. But on the on the school
shooting thing, I mean, I preach this in Tennessee.
I have shared it here, this video of the, of the, of the kid
who was arrested and they leaked the, the, the police
interrogation room and his brother goes in to see him
right. And it's just a very, very, I
have a problem with this video. I have a problem with it because
it, it offends and challenges basically everything about the
way I see the world. And it, it, it creates an
extraordinary amount of dissonance, sets me against
myself because I can look at this and say I hate this kid.
Well, his brother doesn't hate him.
His brother is apparently loving him unconditionally, even in the
midst of him having done extraordinarily evil things.
Now I have a problem. Now I have a judgement on me.
That judgement has come right back onto me.
What do you say about this? I'm like, all right, Jesus, OK,
we have to have a conversation. Well, I know what to do with
that, though. What to do with that is I need
to pray, right? I've got to pray, All right,
Jesus, I need you to enable me to see because I clearly don't
see like you do yet. And that is stirring up within
me a challenge to my own saintliness, right?
Am I what? And then there's a, there's a,
there's a decision should be made.
Will I turn away from that and harden my heart and say, now I'm
not going down there? Or will I say, actually, I, I
need to, I need to sit with that and accept the exposure of the
fire of God's judgement, which is the fire of his love, by the
way, because it can't be any other fire, right?
He only has one fire. He doesn't have multiple
different fires for different days.
That's mad, right? He has one fire and he is fire.
In fact, says he's a consuming fire.
So, and if he is love and he is fire, then that fire must be
loved, loving fire. OK, so that's judgement, right?
So I think that to to actually sit with that and allow that
fire to land on you and to really work with it is it's not,
it's not easy in that sense, you know, from, from, you know,
Nicholas, previous question. It's not easy.
Like you, you get, you get out, you kind of slip through.
Oh, that's good. Yeah.
I dodged a bullet there, guys. So you don't get to dodge the
bullet, but that bullet's coming for you.
And so how, how much better to say, well, we, let's embrace it
now. There's the, there's the
imperative to evangelism. We're saying, look, the fire is
coming. In fact, it's already here.
Embrace it. Now there's No Fear in love.
You're, you're only afraid because you don't know who the,
who it is that you're afraid of. You're afraid of Jesus because
you don't know who he is. It's just like Adam in the
garden. He's afraid of God because he no
longer knows who God is. That's the same problem we all
have. And it's a problem that Jesus
has come to solve us. Forgiveness is not our
fundamental requirement. We do need forgiveness, but we
need forgiveness in that our souls require absolution and the
alleviation of the burden of guilt.
And then we need the freedom to be able to act, to put things
right like we require that we don't need, we don't need
forgiveness in the sense of, well, the books have got to be
balanced. You know, we need the Ledger
straightened out. It's not, it's not a legal
thing. It's relational.
It's about restoring us to the, the mode of being that we were
created to be in and the I think that like camp out with those
thoughts, right? Meditate on those, pray into
those. I mean, this again, we've, we've
been talking about tonnes of books and resources and things
that I can point you to explore the sort of the conceptual side
more. And I'm telling you, I still
have problems, right? I've got problems with this
stuff because but I've come to recognise my problems correspond
to faith problems, not anything else.
Like I'm actually, do I really believe in Jesus here or do I
not? What do I imagine Jesus would do
where he's standing here right now in such and such a
situation? And the Holy Spirit is
continually breaking through to me as the Holy Spirit is for you
and all of us to bear witness to Christ because we're all we're
all making kind of incremental growth, experiencing incremental
growth in all different ways is kind of unique to us.
But but again, that's why the the the, the in many ways,
universalism is a problematic word because as soon as that's
thrown in there immediately it's like the conversations about
this thing over here. Like Bart, he does.
He said, I don't believe in universalism.
I believe in Christ. We don't we're not talking about
an isn't exactly so how how do we pass that out and work it
through. I think personally that at the
very least our vision of Christ should be able to should be able
to give us hope for everybody. At the very least that should be
the case. We should be able to see that
the revelation of God in Christ as we can have we have we have a
a confident and joyful hope for anyone and if there are people
that we don't have that hope for, that's our problem.
We need to pray. OK God, you need to help me see
what I don't see yet. You need to grow me up.
So I'm more like you because you have hope for everyone at the
very least without jumping ahead to make any deterministic
statements about where where things have to lead.
Although again, as I say, if you want to get really head fit over
it. What do you do with then every
initial bow in heaven and earth and under the earth and confess
that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the glory of God the Father.
What do you do with that so. I mean, play with it, right?
Process it and talk to Jesus about it.
But. But these are the right kind of,
these are the right kind of things that it should lead us to
wrestle with. And it should also lead us to
look back on, well, if what, when we've had these kind of
infernalistic tendencies before, What's that been about?
You know, So. Yeah, huge topic.
And I and again, I I'm not dodging any Bible verses, right.
But Pete, I think is next and then Sarah and then there's any.
Yeah. Cheers.
Yeah, that's fine. There we go.
I can do what I want in these shiny shoes.
Hey, OK, I'm going to get there. I realise we haven't got much
time. My question is actually quite
quantum, quite Mystics. You went there.
I went there. Yeah, I let's accept I'm.
I'm more than happy and fully endorsed with the idea that
we're fully in relationship. It's all about relationship.
And I don't care what really what's right or wrong, whatever
Jesus says, that's what's that Bible.
Fine, cool. You know, put me in that camp.
My question kind of I'm a little preamble and then I'll get to a
question is I think we're all in pursuit of life in all its
fullness. Jesus said I come that for life
to give you life in those for us.
We're all trying to hunt for that and we do that through
hunting theology that can help bring about the fruit that
brings us that right in some capacity, right.
I, I think we'd probably all maybe in some way say that and I
think there's that hung which raw into the hunger of the thing
and for me, and I'll speak for you, maybe here you can shut me
down if I'm wrong. We're really magnetised to this
because it feels like there's so much life and freedom and
fullness in this, unlike anything I've heard or felt
before. Really drawn to it, even though
I'm now like the village idiot compared to maybe something I
had a bit more confidence in only before now.
Quantum mysticism. Let's accept we've got we've
rationalised it all. Jesus said great things.
Will you do? He did some pretty amazing stuff
with his life and the people around him did some pretty
amazing stuff. Dave Vaughn, he was a drunk
monk, wasn't he? He came second place in Big
Brother 1 year. But he's, he's a proper Mystic,
or he was at the time. He said, I remember going to a
conference and he said something that blew my mind and he still
does. He goes, if I am, I am in God
and God is in me and God is everywhere, where am I?
So my question goes translocation.
OK, so here I here's my thinking.
Like there are areas of life that we're still, we're
scrapping around the kind of like what's right, what's wrong,
what's in cool, important conversations, But life in all
its fullness, we're missing this spectrum of like what could be
in life if there are things like miracles, diamonds appearing.
And I'm not saying chase the miracle, don't chase the signs,
don't chase the wonders, chase the Jesus, right?
But translocation, you hear Mystics and talk about all this
kind of stuff. Like I haven't quite formulated
a question really. I'm like, can we have more of
those conversations? Because I'm like, we're missing
something. If we're just mulling around, am
I in? Am I out?
I'm I'm bored by it. Like let's do something cool
with this. Like, like how do we have those
conversations where it's just like, and I'm not looking for
the treat code to be like, right, I'm in China, boom, let's
go. I just like if that's part of
what life can be, where's that conversation happening?
And I think this Trinitarian world seems to have these
conversations more than other streams I've heard.
And I, I know that that's probably opening up a much
bigger conversation for another time, but if that's the kind of
the fruit of life in its soul, its fullness, like, you know,
maybe I'm just being a bit weird and like, I'm a bit bored with
my middle class life. I'm.
All for it. Like, yes, you know, I'm all,
I'm all for it, you know Me. Yeah.
You know, I'm from a you know, I was said for years, Grace and I
were the last stop before you really drop off the deep end
with the other other friends in in the kind of mystical
conversations. But I mean, to quote Carl Rana,
he said if you know, if I mentioned him earlier, famous
quote in the 21st century, a devout Christian will either be
a Mystic or nothing at all. So, yeah, this is, this is I'm,
I'm of the belief, the firm, committed belief that there is
no such Christianity other than mystical Christianity.
How that works out, I, I prefer, I prefer a kind of simplicity to
it. You know, for me, the mythism
starts and ends is the image of Mary at the feet of Jesus, Mary
and Martha, you know, so that, that's a really key text for me.
She's found the face of Christ. She's not going anywhere else.
And the face of Christ is everything.
Yeah. You can make contact with
anywhere from there, and we do. Isn't that what prayer is?
I mean, sometimes if I'm praying for somebody, I might be like,
OK, Holy Spirit, I'm making contact with you consciously.
You're always in contact with me, but I'm reciprocating making
contact with you. OK.
How do we make contact with that person and that situation?
Let's hold them. And it does.
Does that mean there's some trans dimensional contact?
Well, I guess, yeah. I mean, you could call it that.
Isn't that what prayer is? So yeah, if I think if it, if it
helps to, if it helps to connect us with faith in the reality of
what we're engaging with, then I'm then I'm totally game.
And I think that my one caveat around having also been around a
lot of those Mystic circles is sometimes there are people who
are, there's a term called spiritual bypassing in
psychology, which is people who've got unresolved trauma or
issues and they can latch onto a spiritual practise as a way to,
rather than address the problem is to, is to bypass the problem.
And this is again, is quite well described.
And I, I've spent a long time in the inner healing space and I've
quite, I've got quite a good sniffer, if you know what I
mean, when I'm around that. So, you know, you just, it's
fine, like people, people where they're at, there's no need for
them. You know, it's not not a just an
observation, right, That sometimes people can gravitate
into those places that are quite phenomenal because that's a kind
of safe refuge for them. But whether that's always the
thing that they need. Sometimes I think I would say I
like mysticism where get your head as far in the clouds as you
want to go, but keep your feet on the ground because there's a
reality here as well. So so that's just my only
caveat. But otherwise, I'm, I'm, I'm
good with it. You know, I mean, Justin
Abrahams and I are friends. You know, obviously Brian
Simmons wrote the one of the forwards for my coming upcoming
book and we've done conferences and things together.
So I mean, I'm, we're, we, we love that.
And I mean, in times past I've majored a lot on it.
I think that why why this? I think because I've found it's
the, the, this is the North Star, right?
You know, my analogy of crossing the, the, the Atlantic, this is
the North Star. You get the revelation of God in
Christ. OK, That stuff will fit in, fit
in around that. And yeah, it's like, like, go
for it. What's in your heart?
If it's healing, if it's miracles, whatever it is like,
let's, let's do it. You know, I'm, I'm there.
And we should, we should be expansive and joyful and open
and, and our theology should help us go there, not hinder us.
Yeah. Good one, Sarah.
I think it's the last, last question to you.
OK, so I wanted to ask a question about spiritual like
protection because I kind of feel like a little while ago
when I was thinking about this, I kind of thought to me, prayer
sort of feels a bit like a protection racket of sort of
like it kind of I was just thinking about prayer and I was
like, I kind of feel like if something goes wrong, when
something goes wrong, I guess my like instinctive response can be
like, oh, I didn't pray hard enough.
I didn't pray enough. I know there's like, I think it
was, was it Seth Wigglesworth who had the kind of more like
the theology where it's like, oh, I've prayed for it once.
OK, now it's prayed for. But also even like sin as well.
Like, you know, kind of if you know, it almost feels like, I
know it's a funny way of looking at it, but it almost feels like
there's some kind of like strings attached with prayer.
And I was like, what is the actual purpose of prayer?
Because it feels, you know, I've definitely felt the impact and
the benefit of prayer. There's no doubting that.
But I, I'm struggling to understand now what, what the
purpose of prayer is. And like, it kind of feels like
some of the prayer that I've experienced has felt very like
forced and very like petitioning and a kind of like AI need to
make sure I pray enough. I need to make sure that I'm
thoroughly covered and I'm absolutely thoroughly covered.
And oops, maybe we weren't thoroughly covered and kind of
almost like it. It doesn't feel very relational
and very sort of Trinitarian, of course.
I just wanted your take on that. Yeah, Well, I mean, again, huge,
but really very, very good question.
I mean, I, I've wrestled, I've wrestled with that sort of thing
for years. I mean, I, I would say I started
in evangelism and intercession. That was, that was my ministry
and intercession for me was the Charles Finney Smith
Wigglesworth style where you pray till you get the
breakthrough. And once you got the
breakthrough, that's the breakthrough.
You know, the breakthrough is that depends on you getting that
bit right. And if you sin on the way, you
might lose the breakthrough or if you confess the wrong thing
or something like that. I mean, I, I'm kind of dead to
all of that because I just can't do it.
I did it for a long time. I just can't do it anymore,
honestly. It's like that, that thing well
and truly burnt out. But I really believe in prayer.
And for me, I think, and I've had lots, I still maintain and
continue to have experiences on in terms of prayer, even with
things like, you know, I was joking with somebody about
spiritual mapping, you know, what's the demonic power of it?
I mean, sometimes I still even bump into it.
I just don't look for any of that stuff.
But but it's not that there isn't some reality there to
engage with and address, but I think in the past we would go
hunting for it. Jesus said, look in this world,
you'll have trouble. Take heart.
I've overcome the world so you can do everything right and
stuff can go wrong. That's one of the hard realities
of this planet, right? And this, this paradigm, this
age, it's part of what we need to be saved from.
Is that that fact? But we have been because in the
cross we see he's already overcome the world.
Take heart, I have overcome. It's like back to Hebrews one.
Ah, we see him. He's already gone there.
And if we can recognise he's gone there, and therefore that's
where we are too, then we realise all spiritual that then
there's the power that's overcome everything.
And when you read Athanasius, you see this is Athanasius
ultimate argument for why the gospel must be true.
His argument is if you, he basically says words to the
effect of if nothing else I've said has persuaded you, if none
of the miracles have persuaded you, if none of this stuff has
done, then my, my, my final answer on the matter is why are
none of our people afraid of death?
And that that is his final argument if the why the gospel
must be true, because he says everybody's afraid of death
except our people. It's like even our kids are not
afraid of death. They go to the lions, you know,
and they they're like singing along the way, filled with with
invincible life. And so, you know, they had a
different attitude. They were tapped into something.
I want to tap into that, right, Or I wanted to tap into me.
I want to engage with that. So I think we, you know, we like
we can come. I'll leave you with a testimony
because I think it's the best thing I can give you to kind of
illustrate it without doing huge thing on prayer and all the
rest. And apart from saying, you know,
I think prayer should be relational and it should be
about we, we need to pray that, that we can see better because
that's what the Apostle Paul always prays for.
I pray that you would have a good revelation.
I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened,
right? That's what he always prays for
them for, not anything else. Pray that you can see the way
things really are. Because if you get that,
everything else falls into place.
But when I was at when I was still at E5, there was a family
there. In fact, he, I think he was
Russian, she was Ukrainian. Obviously, this is years ago
before the war. And they came up to me one day
and their oldest daughter was interpreting because they didn't
speak good English and a little bit of English.
And they're basically saying, look, we need you to cast a
demon out of our younger daughter.
So they have their younger daughter who's maybe like 8 or 9
years old, and she's just off there playing by the side, just
looks like an ordinary girl. And I'm like, OK, what's the
situation? So I'm asking questions and
they're saying, well, she has a she has a demon.
The demon makes a go go into a complete rage.
She destroys everything. It happens at home, it happens
at school. Social services think we're
abusing her. We're not abusing her, but
they're threatening to take her away.
We know it's a demon because the older daughter had it is the one
who's interpreting and she got delivered and the mother had it
and she got delivered and the grandmother had it and she got
delivered. So it's some demon that's passed
down the generations, right? So they're telling me this
story. Anyway, I'm asking questions and
they're like, well, the, the, the husband sits on that side of
the church. The wife sits on this side of
the church. They do not get on right.
They've got major problems in their family.
And they're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, we have big problems
in our family. We don't get on, but they're
standing. But we want, we need you to cast
a demon out of our, our daughter, you know, and I'm
sitting there, the more I'm talking to them, the more I'm
thinking like, my, my gosh, can I put them through 2 1/2 years
of like and multimodal counselling to try and sort
these things out? Like I'm, I'm very much like my,
my scepticism metres through the roof.
And what were you talking about? Demon?
You don't need a freaking demon to be in this environment.
It'll be kicking off. You know, that's, that's what
I'm thinking. So I'm there about 10 minutes,
I'm having this conversation, I'm asking questions.
I'm a little bit like, I'm still at a loss.
Anyway, I said to them, all right, OK, let let's pray then
because they, they would go into the Bible when Jesus casts out
the, the demon from the boy and they say we want you just to do
that. Well, just do that, just do
that. And I'm like, OK, And I said,
should we pray then? And they said, yeah, that's what
we wanted you to do in the 1st place.
So I said, OK, so we just sat and stood there quietly for a
moment and internally I said, Holy Spirit, I have no idea what
to do. To me, this looks like this
looks like a major problem, you know, and how on earth am I
supposed to do anything about that?
And I to me, I'm like, I acknowledge all of that.
So I see all of that. I'm not trying to deny it.
That's how it appears to me. So it's the Holy Spirit.
That's how it appears to me. Now I've acknowledged that I'm
putting that to one side blank slate.
What do you say? And all I had was the thought
that came to me was an old is an old Celtic prayer, which is
called the circling prayer, where they used to walk around
in a circle and pray. So that's all that came to me.
And it was just some I just said to them, OK, I felt I felt like
I should do a circling prowl. I'll walk around you and just
pray. And they do you like that.
They said, yeah, that's good. Let's do it.
So I walked around them and I stopped and I just declared in
Jesus name this done. OK, Nothing.
Fine. They were just happy they went
away. From that day, their daughter
never had another episode, which is just better.
I saw them years later. Even to this day, I've bumped
into them occasionally. They always run up to me.
Oh, it's good. Great to see.
It's great to see. Never another problem with the
daughter again. I have I still to this day don't
know what happened. I don't know.
Was it a demon? Wasn't it a demon?
Like what's the deal? I don't know.
I don't understand about any of those things.
But I do know that you can ask Kylie Spirit, how should I pray?
And you can just kind of go with that.
And I feel like we'd get to do the simple.
He gets to do the hard and again, it comes back to the
question of simplicity and I just find this face and go with
that. I've done the complicated and
the complicated doesn't work. It gets more and more
complicated the more you do it. So I can't do it anymore.
Now if some people are getting life from the complicated and
stuff's working for them, all right, God bless you.
I'm not coming to try to say to you don't do it.
I'm just saying I can't do that stuff.
Maybe you need to pray for me and I'll get something.
I'm also cool with that, right? I've got no, I've got no
problem. But but yeah, for me, I'm like,
I'm, I'm praying for good outcomes.
I believe for good outcomes, but I also recognise that not all
outcomes are good. But it's not the end of the
story because Christ has the final word and he had the final
word the day he rose from the dead.
And that still speaks right now. And so there's an opportunity
there to say, all right, what does this is the victory that
has overcome the world, even our faith.
Not that our faith means that everything suddenly is OK.
No, he's made it OK in the resurrection.
We've seen the end. Now there's therefore should be
no more fear of death. If there is fear of death, it's
still because the one who fears is not yet made perfect in love.
So let's pray along those lines. OK, Father, I need more of a
revelation of your love today because I'm not living out of
it. And it is diverting me to a
lower form of prayer. So can you upgrade that again
for me? That's how I would that's not
how I would. That is how I how I approach it,
but I can't. I did all the all the books, you
know, pray this way, do that thing.
You know, here's here are the 100 keys to dealing with 100
different demons. You know, all of it.
And it is just just leaves me cold.
But yeah, I mean, if it's if it's working for you, cool.
I mean, I'm I'm happy if people are getting free and good stuff
happening. I suspect it will even if it is
working for you, it will probably break down at some
point because that's what happened to me.
It worked for me to an extent for a while and then didn't.
So I think that's probably where it's going.
But I mean, I don't know, I might be wrong.
You like, give me, give me what you got.
You know, that's my take. But we pray to see, we pray for
revelation of, of love, because that's that is what transforms
everything when we recognise that.
And you know, if you, if you feel like you need somebody, lay
hands on you, then do it. And if you feel like you need to
talk to US, one of the one of the Saints in the cloud of
witnesses and do it. You don't have a conversation
with Archangel Raphael. I don't care.
Like just do it in Christ right then you're, you make make
contact with whatever the whatever the vehicle of grace is
for you right now. And it might look different
today than tomorrow. Is that enough?
9:45 Cheers, everyone. Thank you.