So we're it's the penultimate session, so last one next month.
And I think I was talking to Malcolm.
I think I haven't been here for 2.
So last time I was in Italy at the Waiwan base there having a
good time. And then the month before I
think was the month I forgot tried, yeah, tried to tried to
make it work. So I thought tonight the topic
is the Apostolic vision of Christ in John and Paul.
So the Pauline writings, Johanna and writings, and particularly
looking at why it is that the main emphasis begins with Christ
as creator and sustainer. So we can get into that and I
want to get into that, but particularly because I haven't
been here for two months, I'd be quite interested to hear where
everybody's AT and just maybe freewheel it and see where we
end up. And that can be we'll, we can do
stuff specifically on the topic for today.
But I'd also like to begin maybe by just opening it up.
And that's why I've got that other microphone if you're happy
for that to get on the podcast. But before I do that, we do have
the conference next weekend, which is here on Saturday.
It's going to be all day here on Saturday with Baxter and Jason
Clark from the rethinking of with Tacos podcast.
So I'm, I'm about to be up with them in Edinburgh from this
weekend. And then they're, they're coming
down. We've got another event on the
Friday the 29th, but on the 30th we're here.
And as I said, did I just say Baxter will be here Sunday
morning as well? So he's, he's preaching at
church on Sunday morning. I I really could do with two or
three more volunteers for the day, particularly someone who
can do PA systems. I do not have APA operator.
So if anybody is willing to step up and PA operate, that goes for
anyone listening on the podcast as well.
I would appreciate it. But also, if you're not away on
holiday, you really should be here.
I mean, I, I really mean that you should be here.
If you're away, then you're away.
He's in Greece and you can, yeah, come back for it.
But yeah, we've got, we've got 100, about 150 books in already.
Actually, very few people from Hope are booked in.
And I don't know if that's because people from Hope are
going to book in late or because they're just thinking they're
going to turn up or because they don't want to come or I don't
really know. Sorry.
Well, if you've done the course, I'd say that's like a double
reason to want to come. So we'll start at it's 10:10 AM,
start in the morning. We've got sessions that will run
up to 630, but we'll have like an hour after that also for sort
of discussion and connection time with obviously breaks in
the day. So.
So it's a it's a day programme on the Saturday, but basically,
yeah. Yeah.
Just the mic. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you, Esther.
Much appreciated. Grand.
And if anyone's got anyone who does an instrument who wants to
play in the band as well. Grace asked me to say that if
anyone wants to join in for a jam session, when we do worship,
we do jam sessions. Just so you know.
I mean, for anyone who doesn't, Grace and I have, we, we've done
ministry together. In fact, our second date was
running a healing meeting and then we went out for dinner.
So we, we've been doing ministry together forever.
And if when we do, when we do the like the worship stuff,
it's, it's a jam session really. It's not the sort of classic in
the can type thing. So it's, it, it, it's good fun.
So you can turn up with the harp or trumpet or a pair of spoons
and see what interesting spontaneous creative thing comes
out. Well, maybe, maybe you could get
that, that anointing, you know, from who are the two guys?
The first people who it says they were filled with the
spirit. Is it bizarro?
And who's the other guy? The two guys and they were, they
were the creative types, right? So they couldn't do anything.
You get the idea that they, they just can't do anything.
And then they get the Holy Spirit.
Now suddenly they can, they can like go create these incredible
sculptures and things like that. So yeah, if you want, if you
want to claim that one, come on, Malcolm, it's the age of AI.
You should be able to do it. Like, surely
Tuvan throat singing. Tuvan throat singing.
Well, there's Mongolian throat singing as well.
Yeah. There's all these disciplines of
throat singing. Yeah.
Kun Hortu. Any Kun Hortu fans in the room?
So I was. I'm always too aspirational with
these things, you know, Tuvan throat singing.
Not were not for the podcast. I will ask me again after I
finish the recording. And I'll do.
No, I don't know. Oh, was it?
Oh, there we go. OK.
See. Pop culture references.
I think Khun Hrutu are from Mongolia.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you're halfway there. A Cossack of course, on the
recording. At the moment people can only
hear my side of this conversation and just for the
benefit of people listening at home, there is a very random and
hilarious conversation going on. You just have to take my word
for it and laugh. We used to do that Again, those
of you who don't know, I trained as a conference interpreter so
when we we would do interpreting.
Most jokes are untranslatable you know somebody says a joke
how do you translate it? Certainly in the moment, most of
the time you can't. So the trick we always teach
students is if somebody tells a joke, you just say the speaker
right now just told a joke. It was extremely funny.
If you all laugh, you'll do me a good favour and they'll think
they told a good joke. And then everybody laughs and
the speaker thinks that, oh, my joke landed really well.
And it's, it's one of those sleight of hand tricks of the of
the interpreters. That's something an AI
interpreter won't do for you anyway.
So, yeah, next week, just talk to me.
I'll give you details. Can we do?
I'd like, I just like. I'm going to pray while I hand
this mic around for feedback. Hugh is in the middle of telling
an interesting story, so maybe he wants to start.
Yeah. Thanks, Father.
We receive what you have for us tonight.
Thank you for your recalibration, your paradigm
shifts, and your unveiling of the exceedingly good news.
Amen, Hugh. Well, it was simply that we, I
have a friend who lives near London and we just became aware
that we're on a similar sort of journey, same sort of questions.
So we just started connecting once a month, praying for each
other, sending each other little messages and that sort of thing.
And he, I actually read this this morning and I saw this is
one of the ones that I sent to him, which was this is from some
I'm reading, me and Susie both reading John together at the
moment, trying to look at it through this sort of lens.
And this scripture came up this morning, which was from John 12,
verse 24. So this is very truly, I tell
you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it
remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many
seeds. Anyone who loves their life will
lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will
keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow
me, and where I am, my servant also will be.
My Father will honour the one who serves me.
So my reflection was that previously I'd always shrink
away from verses like this, partly because I love to love
life, and anything that taught me that I had to hate my life, I
would kind of think, well, if Jesus is telling me that I don't
want it really. I mean, I think that's probably
a, whether you call it subconscious or whatever.
Do you see what I mean? It's something.
And I suppose if you hold that, then the natural follow on from
that is to say, well, I can't give Jesus my whole self because
it's a bit scary because I have to lose the life that I that I
want. Not that I just that I love, but
I want to love. Does that make sense?
It's about wanting to love life and live life.
So actually, if you read it from the lens of actually, and this
is what I said to my friend in the message was actually I'm
reading it like Jesus wants to give us life and life in all its
fullness. The life that he's offering is
an abundant and overflowing life.
And he's sharing with us that actually a bit like the sermon
that Bill preached the other time.
If you, if we learn how to die now to the life that is
perishing, that is futile and pointless, hopeless and
completely of this world and of nothing else.
If we can learn to die to that now and pick up the life that
Jesus has for us, that isn't hating life, that's loving life
and loving the best life. And that's what Jesus wants to
lead us into. So it's completely recalibrated
verse, that verse, those verses and verses like it for me.
Yeah. So the 20.
Three, just wanted to jump on that because I've been reading
John as well, quite deep a lot and and having the same sort of
experience of like reading things in new ways and finding
scriptures that previously would have felt a bit heavy, feeling a
bit light, lighter, a bit more exciting and had moments where
I've been reflecting with all the people.
And it's it's been fun because I've sometimes been reflecting
with them and they've been like, Oh my gosh, that makes it sound
so much more like a life giving and so much more exciting.
So I think for me, like a lot of the fruit of this journey a week
going on has been the, the scripture is giving me my is
speaking to my heart more and giving me life in a way they did
do before. But it, it, it was a bit more
intermittent and a bit more scattergun as to you know, what
you what you're going to get. I do have a question.
I don't know if now is a good time for a question or do you
want more? Reflection depends if if anyone
if anyone else wants to chime in first, I think they want you to
ask the. Question OK, so my question is
based around Gethsemane because it's the only only like it's the
it's the one part where I'm not not one part, but like it's just
been and it's something that I've come back to and gone.
I don't know why this fits in the story of what we're talking
about, because if Jesus only does what he sees the Father
doing and then prays something that where it's like, father, if
you want this or if, if you're happy to let this happen, can
you let it happen? But then the father obviously
doesn't. Well, there's, there's a,
there's a, the conclusion that Jesus comes to is now I'm going
to the cross. And I do believe that that
wasn't a reluctant decision, that that was for the joy set
before him. And he did, you know, that was
what Jesus wanted to do. I don't think he didn't want to
go to the cross and the father did.
But I still don't really know how to read that conversation
and that interaction and what was going on there.
Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up because evidently this
was a question for the early church, because in, if you
recall, in John's version of the Garden of Gethsemane, he doesn't
say that. He says, and what should I say
now that my hour has come? Should I say let this cup pass
from me? By no means so if we understand
in the church tradition that John wrote the Gospel last, in
fact, perhaps even the last book to be written in the New
Testament was the Gospel of John.
And that he wrote it in part to make some theologic, not exactly
theological correction, but correction to the understanding
that people were taking from the stories that we're circulating
about Jesus beforehand. That this, that's a very
deliberate point that he makes. Equally, he makes the point that
Jesus carried his own cross where you see and, and maybe all
of the others, at least some of the other, I think at least
Matthew, you have Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross
because he falls, he's not able to carry himself.
And John makes the point of saying he carried his own cross
to Golgotha and those the the contradiction, if I put it in
those terms between those was not unknown to anybody.
Like this was very obvious. It's not like a gotcha.
Sometimes you get atheist guys will be like, ah, you see it
contradicts. Well, yeah, we we have always
known that. Actually it's just the
fundamentalists who pretended that these didn't contradict.
But everybody always knew there was a reason why that there are
two two different lights are being like light is being shown
from two different directions on what's happening here.
So I think what you see in Jesus expression in the garden, let
the cut pass from me, It's it's an extension of my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? This is him entering into the
fullness of the Adamic experience.
That's him associating himself fully with our suffering.
He, he doesn't not feel what's going to happen to him.
So he suffers on the cross. He's not impassive.
This was a problem, incidentally, in the whole Aryan
controversy because this idea of, well, God is impassive.
God can't suffer anything because he's so transcendent.
He's so above and beyond, he can't suffer anything.
So here you have Jesus suffering.
So therefore he must be less than God.
So there's this idea that God cannot inhabit or come into
human suffering because that would be less than, it would be
lower than. And hence the Aryan controversy.
This is well, Jesus is a supreme being, but he's not God.
He's a creation, part of that. It's not the only reason, but
it's part of that. So you, you have John coming at
things from another angle. He he is really emphasising the
divinity of Christ throughout this.
So when Jesus carries his own cross, he's making a point of
saying the the existential and epistemic weight of the whole of
human tragedy throughout all history is being carried by him
alone. But in the eyewitness account,
physically he has someone else. He falls as someone else
carries. But that's also part of the
story. He's pushed beyond his limit and
he and he must be pushed beyond his limit because if he's not
pushed beyond the limit, then there still might be a limit
that he hasn't gone to. So I think that again, having
having a window on that helps us to grow up a little bit in how
we understand the Apostolic witness and what's going on
here, rather than thinking about it in again, the the well
meaning but misguided fundamentalism that just says
like a mathematical equation. All of these things add up
literally in the plain black and white text.
And then you, as long as you put them together right, then you
get something that is completely perfect without any and anything
that doesn't sort of seem to fit together.
The New Testament doesn't work like that.
And hopefully we we're comfortable with that as an
idea. But that that certainly is the
case. The the early church was
comfortable with this because they were they were very close
to it. They could read the original
language. Yeah, obviously there are there
are differences in emphasis and in some instances differences in
description, but these are really not even Origin talks
about this directly. He, he addresses it and, and
sort of has a, he takes, he takes a low view of those who
get really get really hung up on or was it 1 Angel or two at the
tomb and all these sorts of things.
And that this is really not the, this isn't the point.
So in, in that sense, we're seeing different, we could, we
could understand we're seeing different sides of the mystery
that is Christ fully man and fully God.
So yes, when he's in the garden, he is expressing the full heart
of the Father. But at that I don't, I think
that what he's trying to show us is he's he's not there in the
garden feeling very happy. He's not there in this sort of
serene, blissful state like I'm about to go to the cross.
That would be kind of anti material.
And particularly John in other parts of of the gospel is very
keen to show that that's not the case.
So he has Jesus eating, cooking and eating fish after his
resurrection to show he's actually physically raised.
He's not just a spirit being or something.
He gets hungry, you know, he gets tired.
So there's, there's a theological thing that's
happening there. Yeah.
If that's sufficient to answer it.
I mean, you notice there are other things in the passion
narrative in John. It's much longer in John than
anywhere else. It's a substantial part of the
gospel is the passion narrative. You get this The part where the
the Roman soldiers and the emissaries from the Sanhedrin
and they all turn up in this massive crowd and three times
they ask him, we seek Jesus of Nazareth and he says I am and
they all draw back and fall to the ground.
You know, they get wiped out and you don't that's not listed in
the other gospels. So it's listed there for a
reason. It's not just an extra detail or
you guys miss this out. This is John again.
We accept the the credible tradition, you know, despite I
think attempts, you know, every all these different critical
Bible scholars try and come up with a different angle to prove
their justify another book. You know, let's argue about why
it wasn't really John or why it was this or why it was that.
Actually the the the church tradition is a pretty solid
church tradition as to how we ended up with something like the
Gospel of John. So I think we can understand
that John is drawing out certain key things to make a spiritual
point, which is what Irenaeus says about it 22 generations on
from John, direct spiritual lineage.
You know, John Polycarp, Irenaeus and Irenaeus is the one
saying This is why John wrote the Gospel.
So you'd have thought he would know because the guy who
mentored him was directly mentored by John.
So you'd have, you'd figure that if there's any integrity to this
tradition at all, he would be a credible source on that one.
Yeah. Thank you.
I really liked the the session 9, the the I think it was the
first one actually that I thought, OK, I kind of I kind of
understood Baxter or got and I got it a bit more, but two
questions. So 1 was so it was the one with
the cups. Yeah, you talked about the three
cups. And so I think I, I think I, I
think I enjoyed it because when I liked it, because I like, I, I
think it felt like all the way he was talking about, you know,
everybody, Jesus being in everybody for me, for me.
Any which way you split kind of separation and hell and all of
those things is there's an element of fear and A and a
difficultness in. In selling that story and, and
it, and it felt like, OK, I, I can see that this is truly a
gospel of grace in the way that he was talking about it.
So I, I was like, I was like, great, I'm, I'm on for that.
But one question was, so he talked, he talked from
Colossians, I think Colossians 29.
And he talked about because I'm guessing, I'm guessing like in
the room here, there would be a lot of us or some of us who
would say, like, I'm on for that idea that Jesus is in everybody
before they've made a decision. And some of us, some people
would say, I'm not on for that. And I'm guessing that one of
one. So Baxter talks about South
Colossians 29 in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in
bodily form and in Christ you have been brought to to
fullness. So he was talking about I think
he he talked about have been like past tense.
So and I guess so first question is, I'm guessing some people
would say, but Colossians is talking to the church.
So he's talking to people who are already in.
So that was question mark. So that's my first question.
And second question was? And second question was he was
asked a question about universalism and it like, I
guess it felt a little bit like you've not fluffed the answer,
but a little bit really. And it, and it so it feels to me
like, so I don't have a problem with that label or that tag, but
it doesn't feel like in these discussions, we're owning that.
And I'm guessing my question is, are we not owning it because
from our evangelical like roots, that word, liberal word are bad
words. You know, we, we, we, we, we, we
see them as not words we can that don't that don't have
integrity as in biblical integrity or so is it 'cause we,
we don't want to like make divide or.
Yeah, well, I can, I can, I can answer that very directly from
three different perspectives. I can answer it from my own.
Like I I'm on the record of having owned that.
I mean, I've been very public in, in debates and things on
various podcasts and different positions, even in my book are
very overt Baxter from I, I look, Charlie's asking about the
concept of universalism and I said, I've been very overt about
owning that and saying, yeah, this is this is the logical
conclusion of the New Testament testimony.
And I've also been very overt about the problems I have with
it. Again, if you've read my book,
you'll know good plug there. But the, as far as this, the
course itself goes, it's not really the, the, that's a,
that's an eschatological question.
So that's about eschatology, right?
Where, what, what's the end direction?
You know, how, how, where does this all end up?
And I think that the, the, the point of this course is to
reframe how we consider these questions and to, to couch them
more properly according to the Apostolic witness and to get
free from some of the baggage we've inherited from the Western
system. It's quite often people want to
fast track to secondary or tertiary sort of downstream
doctrinal conclusions. So eschatology is a downstream
doctrinal conclusion. The creature says he's coming
again to judge the living and the dead.
That's it. There's no, there's going to be
a millennial reign, there's going to be this, there's going
to be that, you know, all of that stuff.
This is all downstream. It's not, it's not there in the
central point. And so the, the purpose of this
course is not primarily to address the issues downstream,
it's to help equip us to be able to address those downstream for
ourselves in our own way. And people might come to
different conclusions on those sorts of questions.
So we sometimes talk about this, this is a Christological
recalibration or a Christological correction.
Then inevitably the question does arise.
So I can say again, Baxter was 3 weeks ago on the, on the podcast
of a mutual friend of ours, which if anybody is particularly
interested in this topic, it's the podcast is called Grace
Saves All the Necessity of Christian Universalism.
And run by a friend of mine in the US who basically has
interviewed and continuing to interview more or less anyone on
the planet scholarship wise, pastorally or anything who is,
is coming from anything in that sort of direction.
And Baxter was on, I've been on a couple of times on that
podcast. I've been on the debate on that
podcast and he, Baxter was on really addressing again, this
question very directly. And then so for the Third Point
is from Baxter's perspective, he and I again will I, I, I agree
with this. The, the point is not like
universalism is another ISM. It also could mean 100 different
things depending on where you're coming from with it.
And so it's not necessarily that useful a word given that you
have no idea what somebody's talking about when they mean it.
One of the points he makes in the in the lecture is, well, if
you believe that all are inheritors of original sin in
Adam, then you are a universalist because you believe
something happened in Adam that universally took everybody, you
know, on the wrong side of the line.
So that that is itself a type of universalism in the sense that
the impact is universal. So the, the bigger issue here,
from my perspective, is the framing of our soteriology has
been in this Western legal, in our innocent guilty mindset.
And that again, that's a downstream doctrine, which is
why we take seven weeks before we get to the subject of the
atonement. So week 7, I know I wasn't here,
but the, or month 7, the, the, the question about the cross,
because there's a lot of this foundational stuff needs to be
put in place before we can then begin to look at the cross.
We've inherited so much baggage from how we begin to, you know,
engage with these things. So I think then the, the issue
with what the word means is a problem.
It's a trigger word for some people and for others it's not.
And then you get into, well, why is it a trigger word for you?
And often the, the, the, the bigger problem there is people
haven't even been able to have a forum to be able to explore
their own issues, dissonances and concerns around the whole
equation, the whole soteriology equation.
Many, many people. Soteriology is what, what is
salvation? How does salvation work?
So a great many people are in that, in that space where it's
not even a conversation that's safe to have.
Because as soon as you start having that conversation in a
lot of churches, immediately people are terrified by it.
And they're probably terrified with it about it because they've
got their own dissonance around the issue too.
I had one pastor, after sitting with a good friend of mine, sat
with him for a couple of hours over lunch one day.
And towards the end, he said, well, you know, if I didn't
believe I was saving people from an eternal hell, I wouldn't be a
pastor. So his whole, his whole frame of
his calling, his ministry and everything, he was honest enough
to say that the way this doctrine has been framed to him
of judgement is ultimately the when you boil it down, it is the
decisive factor as to why he has made the decision to pursue
being a pastor. Now with no I'll intent towards
him at all. He's a he's a good friend of
mine. I understand that.
But how terrifying is that? And then you take he was he was
willing enough to to be honest about it.
How many people are not willing enough to be honest about it or
haven't even been honest about it with their own selves and
they are their pastoring churches, hundreds of them all
over. And I've had a lot of them in my
counselling chair when it all breaks down because the the the
dissonance and the pressure around what I'm supposed to be
preaching a message of the the love of God is something I've
experienced for myself. But actually within this
ecosystem of this, of the message that we're we're
propagating, it kind of doesn't really work, does it?
And then you get the Calvinist thing and you get the Armenian
thing, all these attempts to try and square the circle, which
frankly don't work. They're not, they're not
logically, they're, they're nonsensical.
So this is complex, it's deep waters, it's got lots of layers
and it's very emotional. So I think that the word itself,
for many people, it's just, it's a, it's an inflammatory word.
When I'm travelling around and ministering, sometimes I will
get up, depending on the audience, I will get up and I'll
say, I'm going to, I'm going to preach Hellfire to you tonight.
I'm going to preach judgement. I'll use that language because
it actually relaxes them. They're so, they're so used to
it. If you're not using that, they
start getting, they start worrying.
Oh, what are you saying? Are you saying that it doesn't
matter that we sin? Well, they ask the apostle Paul
that too. So sometimes I say it and it
just relaxes them. I've done it with Jehovah's
Witnesses too. So do Jehovah's Witnesses.
Don't worry, I believe in one God, Jehovah.
I'm a Jehovah's Witness too. I believe in one God, Jehovah.
I just don't come to your organisation, but I believe in
one God. Like, let's pray together.
We'll just pray to Jehovah. Don't worry.
Nobody else. And it relaxes them, It chills
them out. It's the only time I've been
able to actually have really meaningful dialogue.
One of the only times really meaningful dialogue in the
Jehovah's Witness community was by adopting that approach.
Because if I come in and say why believe in the Trinity,
immediately walls are up because Trinity is a trigger word for
that community. So a lot, a lot of this is about
sort of pastoral, you know, handling.
And also by the way, if you look throughout the church fathers,
they had the same conversation. You look at Gregory of Nyssa,
for example, saying very overtly, well, of course, we all
know that Christ is ultimately going to save everyone, but we
can't communicate this to the masses because they will not
know how to handle it. We need to keep it amongst those
of us who are educated and who understand how our
responsibility as, you know, presbyters and pastors within
the church that we're trying to look after people who can't
handle, you know, they, they don't even know how to read.
And if we start getting into this, we could really, we're
afraid it's going to go wrong and they're all going to start
thinking, oh, well, it doesn't matter what we do.
And that's not what we're saying either.
So you actually have this record of the conversation more than
once, different key Saints and figures of the of the early
church key to forming the Nicene faith who who actually have this
very discussion. Again, it's not new.
So and then you have others like origin of Alexandria who say,
look, I'm not coming to preach a doctrine about this, but I am
coming to speculate if we understand this is who Christ is
then, and he says I'm I'm flagging this as speculation.
I might be thinking about this the wrong way, but let me show
you my working. And he goes on to say, well, we
should suppose that all if all things means all things, we
should kind of see this is my paraphrase.
I can't remember the exact wording, but he's saying he says
we should see on the eschatological horizon the
reconstitution of all things, including satanic fallen demonic
spirits, right. Even he he gets into this
discussion in in in his in his writings and an origin basically
is the progenitor of all Bible study.
It comes back to him. You know, he is he is the one
who who's teaching was the amongst the most Seminole of the
early church. I think he's called a doctor of
the church. We weren't even calling them
church fathers at the time. So again, these conversations
are not those conversations could be had within that
environment. A lot of the evangelical space.
The conversation can't be had, even though I know for a fact
because again, I've been around. I was at a conference with, I'll
say he Roger Forster, who's gone to glory now, founder of the
Ichthus Fellowship. Roger and Faith.
First time I met R.E.M., we did quite a bit of work together
some years ago in the China space.
The first time I talked to Roger, he said, what
denomination are you connected? I said, well, I'm an Elim.
He said, what did Elim think about, about the doctrine of
hell? You know, do they believe in
this eternal conscious torment thing or I said, well, I think
they're pretty much in in that direction.
And he said, you know, we sat with the heads of all the major
or the majority of the major Evangelical Alliance
denominations a couple of years ago.
And the question was put to them, does anyone of you in this
room actually believe in an eternal hell in like burning
hell? It's not a single person said
that they did. In fact, they all said, no, we
don't believe in that, but don't tell our denominations because
we'd get lynched. So there's a there's a political
problem here around even having the discussion.
So I think that the, the point Baxter makes in that podcast, I
do recommend listening to is very, very good.
He's very, very articulate on this subject and very clear.
The the podcast is called Grace saves all.
David Ardman is the the podcast host and he's say he's he's
become a good friend of mine and he's it's a really very
comprehensive resource across all sort of dimensions on the
subject. But Baxter makes the points as
we do not preach universalism because it's an ISM, we preach
Christ. And that's to say that none of
this is to be removed from its relational context and placed
into some sort of principle that says this is a philosophical
principle, that everybody is saved.
That's not what we're preaching. We're preaching all are included
in Christ. Now, what are you going to do
about it? Because that demands a response.
This sort of shallow, what's this kind of pop shallow
universalism that gets thrown around that basically says,
well, all dogs go to heaven and everything's basically fine.
It's like evidently everything is not fine.
So this is a, this, this is not how it's articulated to us in
the New Testament. It's not how it's articulated to
us in the, in the Church fathers or really at any point in the,
in the, you know, Orthodox faith.
It's not put in those terms. It's put in terms of, look, God
is a consuming fire and you're in relationship with him,
whether you, whether you like it or not, he's relating to you.
You're in him. You have no life or being apart
from him. So the question then is we'll
project that forward. What does that mean?
And I think if you want to, if you want to take it from the,
the just the back to Bible verses, we want to play the
proof text game. I, I mean, I sometimes say to
people, all right, plug that into every knee shall bow and
every tongue shall confess in heaven and earth and under the
earth, Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Like take that, take that verse and plug it into your framework.
Like, what are you going to do with that?
Because it's possible to work your way through the new Tasman
picking certain verses and end up with a fully universalist
position. Or you can pick verses and end
up with like an annihilation position, or you can pick a
bunch of verses and end up in a everyone's going to burn in
literal fire for eternity conclusion.
So which way you navigate through that, which path you
navigate through the Scripture is going to end up somewhere
completely different. And again, that's also why with
this course, we're trying to encourage you not to do it like
that. Actually, let's take a step
back. What are the first principles
here? The first principles are the
revelation of God in Christ. It's Christological.
Who is Jesus now from, from that point?
It it's, we're not looking for shallow doctrinal agreement or
persuasion about any ideas. We're looking for life and
reality. Well, of course we're using
Scripture. Yeah, of course I'm not saying
abandoned Scripture, but I'm saying don't.
I'm saying we can take an approach to the Scripture that
says we're going to, we're going to sort of take step a stepping
stone pathway through this verse and this verse and this verse
and this verse and this verse. And then we've constructed A
doctrine out of those. That doctrine might be
completely divorced from the revelation of God in Christ, but
it might be completely biblical, like the snake handlers in the
Haitian snake handlers in Brundage.
Sorry. Well, but again, this goes back
to my point about how do we read the Scripture?
The Scripture is the Scripture is multi layered, dynamic.
It's turbulent. It's not this linear.
Here are the ABC's of it's not, it's not a manual, right?
It's not a legal text. What we tend to get in the
fundamentalist space is we say the Bible, or I mean, I don't
people say the Bible is the literal in the literal
infallible inspired word of God, and everything about it in its
original text is completely true in in all, in all ways, and
therefore it is the source of authority and everything.
But that's a statement. I don't want to be too negative
on those guys. They were, they were trying to
do something. This is Princeton theology, you
know, turn of the 20th century. They're trying to put something
down that recovers confidence in the scripture when it had been
completely wiped out in the sort of late stages of post
enlightenment thinking in the 19th century.
So they're trying to recover that.
So I'm not, again, I'm not trying to slam them, but I'm
trying to say that that doesn't really stand up when you subject
it to scrutiny, including the conversation we know we're
having with Sam earlier. Well, did Jesus carry his own
cross or not? Because one guy says he carried
his own cross. One guy said he didn't carry his
own cross. So now if we're standing on, on
the, the doctrine that this must be infallible and the literal
dictated word of God, like like Muslims believe the Quran is a
literal dictated word. If if we treat it in that way,
we have major problems from a faith point of view.
It is, it is reliable, but it's reliable.
But but what does it say about it's reliability again?
And this is where we, it, it, it defies our attempts to find
shallow certainties, right. So you have the Apostle Paul,
who's we know wrote the majority of the New Testament talking
about his own writings. And he says people make a big
deal about having a letter from me, but you are my letter.
So when he asks the questions about what even is the writing
when that's up for debate for him.
And Peter calls Paul's writing scripture, right.
So when when he is even addressing this issue of all
right, we have a written word that gives us an answer.
He says, actually the real writing is in you.
It's personal, it's relational. It's not something that can be
distilled down into black and white pages, you know, ink, ink
on a page. It is it's only seen through the
the, the continuity of the family of God working this stuff
out in the Holy Spirit. And that includes the scripture
is central to that, absolutely central to it.
But if we think that it stands alone by itself, it doesn't
because the Scripture even says of itself the letter kills.
So if we, if we're trying to be really biblical about it, the
Bible itself starts turning the gun back on us, you know, if we
adopt that approach. So to me again, this is this is
a hermeneutic problem. Just go back to the the early
church. They never read it this way.
That was not how they were approaching it.
They they were not under any illusions that it was not a
collection of scriptural writings that that could just be
taken as well. God said it.
I believe that that settles it. It's there.
And again, we see over and over again the story happening in the
New Testament is Jesus addressing this very problem.
And that is alarming to us because we've come from, again,
it's a Western thing. We have this this idea that
objectivity is something out there that we can get a hold of.
Well, as long as it's objectively there in the book,
at least I can say that's true. Maybe I don't understand it, but
it's true and it's there. It's this objective thing and
again, this divorces it from relationship.
This makes it that concepts that ideas and that has no life in
it. And actually a lot of that's
about fear and control. When the Bible itself also says
the one who thinks he knows something doesn't yet know as he
ought to know. Well, what the heck am I
supposed to do with that? I thought the Bible's supposed
to give me the answers to the questions.
Well, if I've got an answer to the question and then I read the
next page and tells me if you think you've got the answer,
that's the very moment you don't have the answer.
Well, OK, I'm screwed then. You've just sunk my battleship.
You've drilled a hole in the hull, put me to the bottom of
the Sea of Galilee. What am I supposed to do with
that? Of course it's supposed.
It defies the shallow certainties.
I think a lot of the conversation in the the kind of
universal space is frankly is just very shallow.
I think that they're a they're a really solid and disturbing in
many ways takes on this disturbing in that it will it
cannot leave you complacent stuff that really upsets the
apple cart from some astonishingly gifted voices in
in George MacDonald being one of them.
So I would say in terms of getting into the broader
conversation around the what our eschatology is, where do we see
all of this headed? I think the best way to do that
is it's a it's a really important question.
It's a great one to be hanging on to, but it's very easy to
just say, well, we've got an answer to that and we put that
answer over there. I don't want that to happen.
It needs to be get into the fire with Jesus.
What does it start to do to you when you begin to see the nature
of how things really are? How does that begin to transform
the way you behave? How does it transform the way
you see people? How does it transform what you
pray for, how you treat them? And what what judgement is that
landing at your door right now? Not what's happening to so and
so down there. So what's happening to you in
the fire of this message? That is like going back to
Hugh's point from the beginning says actually whoever wants to
save his life will lose it. So there's there's something
quite extreme in all of this that is taking place.
So. So I think again, a long answer
to a direct question and people are trying to jump in.
I see lots of lots of people trying to jump in.
So let me, I I said Sam, Hugh and Malcolm all wanted to say
something. As I said, oh, OK, OK.
I try and wants to come back. Yeah, No, it's not on.
I'll answer shorter for the next.
Paul Young would tell me off. He'd say we don't answer, we
respond. Sorry, Paul, if you're
listening. Thanks.
So you mentioned about origin, yeah.
Could you just just describe briefly one of his impact on
early church and who he was in relation to?
Different yeah. Origin of Alexandria, also known
as origin Adamantius, the Iron Man because he was so strong in
his debating ability against the, you know, the heretics,
right. So origin he his main
contributions are hermeneutical method.
So understanding how to read the scripture.
So he would he would effectively I'm again, I'm really
oversimplifying this, but and maybe in another sense, I'm not
oversimplifying it. The point of the scripture is to
reveal Jesus. If it's not revealing Jesus to
you, you're reading it wrong and you're projecting your own
dysfunction into it. So that would be 1 and the other
would be beginning to put down a a coherent mystical Christian
mysticism, you know, as a framework amongst a whole bunch
of other things. But a lot of what we have the
most significant stuff that he wrote, we don't have it doesn't
survive, but he his extensive commentaries on the 1st 6 books
of Genesis are referred to and are are seen really as being
amongst the most influential in I think origin was second
century, middle 2nd century or late 2nd century, if I recall.
So he's, he's quite early, but he he has an extraordinarily
outsized influence on the the formation of early Christian
thought. And any good books too?
So you can get his book on 1st principles, which is quite, you
can get that online for free in translation.
Translation is pretty good. It's reasonably easy to follow.
Some of these ones can be difficult to follow, but that's
quite a good one. And that goes through
effectively. It's his.
You'll see his Christological method is in the first section
and then in the later section he goes into what he calls
speculation, which is where he starts talking about eschatology
and the relationship between angels and demons and all these
other kind of things is in there.
But he's careful to flag that as as a speculation rather than
doctrine and. Just quickly did he did he fall
out of grace with with kind of modern theologians?
What was he? He fell out of grace several 100
years later in there were so again is in the successive
councils over the hundreds of years, particularly following
Nicaea, you get these increasingly nitpicky, in my
opinion, increasingly nitpicky anathematizations of people.
You know, the, the church begins to get it, it, it's, it starts
narrowing and it gets political and you have these anathemas
that are issued against the originists hundreds of years
later. But it's interesting the, the
that's usually held up as an example of how the church in I
forget which council it was, they anathematize that they
declared heresy. The idea that everybody would be
saved is called apocotasasis in the New Testament, the the
restoration of all things into Christ apocotasis.
But particularly it's, it's not, if you actually look at what
they say, the thing that they're condemning is a kind of a form
of pantheism where it says everything is God and God is in
pieces and God is being brought back together.
So, and that's not what origin teaches.
You go and read origin. He doesn't say anything of the
sort. So whatever they're critiquing
is not the origin that we know of or have any record of.
So, but in the hundreds of years in the intermediate space, lots
of stuffs going on and and politics are in in the mix as
well. So yeah, it's the the early
church is by no means a, a nice convenient way to to just kind
of claim something. I mean, in the sense you can,
you can get into the fathers and find almost anything if you look
hard enough. A little bit like the Bible, but
perhaps even worse. Yeah.
Thanks. One of the things that's been, I
guess not weighing on me, but just I guess recurring for me
over the last few months of doing this is kind of where,
where kind of spiritual warfare fits from.
You know, there's a there's AI guess we we're talking about
Christ being in all, all creatures, all of the created
and that he's the first thing everything is created
thereafter, which we've touched on loads of times.
So that that's there's a lot of creatures beyond the physical
realm, you know, of, of many different types of which we
don't have a a lot of scripture about.
But there's there's there's certainly a reference enough
that we can agree there's a there's a pretty significant
spiritual realm of which and there are fairly well documented
kind of fallen creatures of various descriptions from the
watchers of of Genesis pre flood through to, you know.
The watches of First Enoch. Yeah.
But well, all of all of, I mean they can be referred of
referring to of those times pre Noah kind of flood times.
And then you've got whether that's through Babel and
through, you know, right through all of history outside of it.
We've got lots of groups that are worshipping, worshipping the
spiritual realm, which which seems pretty demonic.
Where does that kind of fit where, where does it?
It feels like that's something that's a part of history that
with regardless of where we look at the Bible, we just look at
look at history, look at look at the towers and monuments through
history that have built worshipping all sorts of whether
that's RAR or whatever else. There's something going on with
that in the spiritual realm, influencing thought of people to
worship stuff that feels pretty satanic, pretty demonic of all
in, in different with different masks on where, where does that
fit into our kind of we talk about things like universalism.
Where does that fit into? Where's Where's?
Well now, well, now, well now you're doing what Origin did,
which is get the Christological foundation in.
And then he says, OK, now we've got to speculate.
So that's exactly what he did. And many others have done the
same thing, which is all right. Now, how do we, how do we
navigate the fact that we've got this invisible spiritual world?
How do we process it? How do we fit it into a
cosmology? I think it's conspicuous.
The New Testament doesn't actually give us a cosmology of
these things. It assumes some to a degree.
You have this conversation about that.
He's come to destroy the elemental powers and it talks
about him disarming the Archons, the the powers and
principalities and the the Archons of the the is an idea of
these powerful spiritual beings that are responsible.
They they govern sort of different levels of reality.
And you get these various levels of complexity in the
demonologies and angelologies of the particularly the 2nd 3rd
century BC rabbinic mysticism, which is where first Enoch comes
from. So I said the conversation about
the watchers. But anyway, apologies for those
of you who are complete. We're completely off piece here
in first Enoch. It's a book that's quoted
multiple times in the New Testament.
It's a book that is riffing off of Genesis 6.
This idea of why did the flood happen and So what?
I would just put it into the you, you have all kinds of
different opinions on this from all sorts of different people.
The New Testament takes a really minimalist approach on it.
You have no named demonic powers in the New Testament.
They're just unclean spirits. And there's no attempt to
formulate any kind of systematic hierarchy of demons or powers or
anything. You have Hebrews one says,
what's man? That you're mindful of him, the
Son of man, that you even think of him for you made him a little
while lower than God or lower than the Elohim, lower than the
angelic beings. You have crowned him with glory
and compassion and have sat all things under his feet.
And then it says, yet we do not see all things under the feet of
man. So Hebrews 1 poses this
question. There's this part of the Bible,
it's starting there, part of the Bible that says there's this
whole complex world of powers and all these things, and you've
created man and you've crowned man with glory and compassion,
and you've set him above all of these things.
But actually we don't see that. We're oppressed by demonic
powers left, right and centre. We're oppressed by political
powers. We've got disease, we've got
disaster. We've got all this stuff that's
happening, right. It's the problem of evil.
Yeah, precisely. It's the problem of evil.
And so the right of Hebrews acknowledges the question and
then gives an answer which you might find extraordinarily
frustrating. It's probably supposed to
frustrate you because the writer says, yeah, we don't see that.
We don't see man above everything, he says.
But we do see the man, the son, who for a short time took on a
name that was a little lower than that angelic, but now has
ascended to inherit a name that is higher than them all.
And we see all things under his feet because he is the one to
whom the Father said, Sit at my right hand until I make your
enemies a footstool for your feet.
And then you plug that back into Ephesians where Paul says, and
God raised us up in Christ and seated us in him in the heavenly
places far above all rule and authority, power and
principality in every name that can be named.
So the New Testaments articulation of this is like,
look, however many powers, God's beings or anything that there
may be, whatever probably you might be having with them.
I'm going to remind you of the only thing that matters, which
is crisis already ascended, disarmed, disempowered, all of
that stuff sat up on the throne of the universe and you have
been put into him and sat on that throne as well.
Go stick that in your pipe and smoke it like that's that's the
New Testament's answer. Deal, deal with that.
Like what we get in the a lot of the spiritual warfare
conversation kind of invites us to come down to the level of
phenomena. Well, how do I deal with this
thing? How do I unseat this demon?
How do I cast this thing out? The New Testament, it's really
conspicuous. It's not there.
None of that stuff is there in the in the Apostolic writings at
all. There's never you, you get them
saying angels long to look into these things that you're you get
to, you get to understand like they're they're watching and
marvelling with the gospel that you get to dine out on.
So again, take your pick. You can find anyone who's
attempted to create some sort of angelology, demonology,
cosmological system on this has come up with a different one,
and they all have their own angle on it.
The popular thing at the moment is to make it all about aliens
because that fits the mythology of our current time.
So people would draw from these mythological accounts to try and
make sense of experiences. And I think there are
experiences, there are experiences of spiritual
phenomena. Things behave as if they have a
personality, like money. Jesus calls money mammon.
He gives it a name and it behaves as a, it behaves like a
person. It's not a person, but it
behaves like it has a mind of its own.
So there are these disembodied, you know, psychic,
transpersonal, malevolent entities that are around there.
How do we deal with them? Contemplation of Christ, right?
We see Jesus. It's like turn your attention
right back there. Where are you seated?
What has he done? From that fountainhead flows all
life and for me that life flushes all the turds down the
drain, whatever shape or colour or variety of turd they might
happen to be. So to me it's simple and I had
an experience. I talk about it in my book was
in in Taipei a few years ago with Grace, Taipei City in
Taiwan. And we went to the, the Dragon
Mountain Temple, which is a very active temple in central Taiwan.
When you go in, if you want, you can take a little number to
there's like a ticket tape like in the supermarket to go to the
deli counter. And you're not taking a number
to go to the deli counter. You're taking a number to go and
see the medium, you know, the resident medium who's in, in the
temple if you want your fortune told, right, Very, very active
temple. And so we're just wandering
around and I'm showing Grace around.
She's never been in a in a any kind of place like this, right.
And so anyway, and then we were walking around and at a certain
point I'm standing there and there's a woman and she's
lighting incense and she's kowtowing to the the the the
deity, the idol that's, that's in the temple.
And I'm there and I just start asking the question.
So Jesus, you are everywhere. Where are you here and what are
you doing? Yeah.
So I just, that's my question. So I just begin So and I'm, I'm
listening and I'm watching. What is it?
You're drawing my attention to Holy Spirit, and I can see this
golden statue over there that's lifeless and inert, can do
nothing. Maybe, maybe it's nicely
created. Maybe it's, well, it's pretty
well it's nothing. It's a piece of inner matter.
And then I see over here the woman who's lighting the incense
and praying to this thing. And as I'm looking at her, the
thoughts going through my mind, there's only three reasons why a
person comes to a temple like this and lights incense and
prays the way that she's praying.
So reason #1 she or a member of her family are very sick and she
wants healing. Reason #2 the, the children have
some problem and she's worried about them.
Maybe it's to do with exams. A lot of it's about that they go
because they want success in the exams and they're worried, you
know, that it's not going to go well or #3 they're starting a
business and they need to know if it's the the right time.
So these kind of very real and human, human things, right?
And also you're supposed to go once every 12 years for
astrological reasons. So it might have been for that,
but that's unlikely. It's probably one of those three
things. And as I'm standing there
watching her, I was thinking that here, here you have
whatever's going on for her. And she represents one of
millions of people who's doing something virtually identical to
this in temples all over the, the, particularly the, the, the
Eastern world. And she's here because something
or someone she cares about is in trouble and she can't help them.
She hasn't got an answer. She's there's some desperation
and the only thing she knows to do, because the only thing she's
inherited is you go there and you lie into this.
And they're hoping that there's some kind of answer is going to
be there, right. So now what I'm saying I'm
actually what's happening is I'm the veil is beginning to draw
back and I'm actually seeing her as she is.
I'm not seeing, I'm not just seeing a person.
I'm not seeing a, an idea or a concept.
I'm seeing a real person in a real place at a real moment.
And as I'm seeing at a bang, there's the flow of compassion.
Like, wow, the Holy Spirit. And I got so drunk in the
Spirit, I was whacked in the Holy Spirit.
And I was like, and I went and found grace.
I said, did you just feel that? And she said, yeah, I just felt
it said bang. It's like suddenly the manifest
presence of God. And I said to her, it would be
so easy to start ministering in here.
I said, you want to work, You want to flow in Word of
knowledge, you want to flow in healing.
It would be dead easy in here. Right now.
What you've got is a room, a temple full of people hungering
and thirsting for righteousness. And the Bible says blessed them,
they'll be filled. Of course, if we started doing
that, we would have a riot very quickly.
The same thing that happened in the New Testament.
The riot would happen because it would be so disturbing to the
status quo. It would just be, it would be a
crazy upheaval. So I said to, you know, if we
ever moved to Taiwan, maybe I should volunteer as a medium in
the temple because it would be they're just volunteers.
You know, anybody can volunteer, right?
Well, maybe I should volunteer and I can just like Jesusify
everybody who comes in. And I was think, think of the
publicity. No, no point in history has a
white guy who speaks Chinese sat in any of these things and done
this. And they're doing it like in the
name of Jesus. And people are getting whacked
with this kind of flow of grace. I thought I could see in that
space, I could see how ethicists got turned into a war zone by
the Apostle Paul being there a couple of days and behaving that
way. Now the Taiwanese church won't
touch it with a barge pole. You can't go in there.
There are demons. In fact, we were in Turkey on a
mission trip and we're talking with friends of ours who are,
who are from the Turkish church. They'd been out to Taiwan.
And good friend Ihan, you know, he says, Oh, well, you know,
gosh, he said, man, the temples are so demonic.
He said, we even got near them and I started getting dizzy and
I started getting spun out and all these things.
I was just like this oppressive feeling.
And he said, it's not like here. He said here in in Turkey, if
people come and they want to visit a mosque, we'll take them
to the mosque. It's no problem.
You know, we can we'll show them around.
It's not like that at all. So he tells me, and I'm
thinking, Holy Spirit, I need a word of wisdom, which is like
one of my most common prayers, right?
Word of wisdom. How do I answer that?
So I told him that story. This is let me tell you what I
experienced. I had.
I said, well, this is what happened to me when I was in the
Dragon Spring Temple, which is like, it's a heavy duty temple,
it's not a museum. And I said, and he was like, oh,
he was obviously challenged by the concept.
And he said, well, you know, I do.
I find that I find that really difficult.
You know, OK, you know, I've got to, I've got to think about it.
And I said to him, here's the deal I had.
I said if I had to stay out of any building that was full of
demons, that would exclude 99% of churches.
And he sort of stopped. He goes and then he laughed.
He goes, Oh yeah, he goes, oh, but it's not the same.
It's not the same. I said, I, I know, I know it's
not exactly the same. I'm being a bit naughty, I said,
but on the, on the other side, why is it not the same?
Like people are people. And if we can recognise Christ
everywhere, then what we're going to be able to see is going
to be different. What we, how we frame, what
we're able to see, we'll change everything about the way we
interact with it. And I think This is why the New
Testament does not present a systematic demonology.
It will tell you how do you deal with this demon or that demon or
all these other kind of things, because that actually just
simply re empowers and re engages and agrees again with
the very things that Jesus has come to dissolve and undo.
And I don't even know what they are.
And I had a week long, literally a week long debate whilst
travelling with Baxter and John Crowder on this very subject.
Because, you know, I'm saying, well, are we, what are we
dealing with, you know, personal entities that are created good
that have then become bad? Or are we dealing with kind of
a, a corporate psychic manifestation that has a human
origin that ultimately is like a shadow.
And when the lights turn on, it just disappears because if it's
a thing that has its origin in Christ, it also is included in
Christ. It is not a thing.
It's a shadow. Then it's then when the light
comes on, it disappears because it's not a thing, right.
And I don't know the answer to that question, but I know that
we can just listen to the Holy Spirit and pray.
And again, Athanasius, if you, if you read on the incarnation
in that book, he talks about it, right?
He says it's one of his apologetics.
He's done his whole, you know, reason, OK, This is why we
believe. And he's like, look.
And at the end of the day, if you still don't like what I'm
saying, why is it that whenever we make the sign of the cross,
anyone who's demonised just gets set free?
And if there are any river spirits, he said.
I think it's funny, he says that if there are any river spirits,
they get sent off. And if there's anybody dead,
they just come back to life. Why is it we just make the sign
of the cross and that happens? You know, evidently this guy is
tracking with something that like we're not tracking with
right. And and then his his final
conclusion on that is, and if none of that persuades you, the
bottom line is none of our people are afraid of death.
And that's the most unnatural thing you can imagine.
So that how can they possibly be not afraid of death if Jesus
hasn't risen from the dead? This is his final argument.
You know, in the book why you should be a Christian.
You know, he, he starts with a philosophical theological bit
and then he gets into and yeah, we just make the sign of the
cross. And why?
How could the cross possibly be so powerful to basically solve
any problem when we do it? You know, maybe he's been a bit
hyperbolic, but you get the sense that he's seeing stuff
going on all the time. And then he tracks into and none
of our people are afraid of death or martyrdom or anything
else. They're invincible.
Yeah, it's for the recording. For the recording.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, anyway, so I guess I guess it's like a sorry, yeah, yeah,
I'll pass it. I just wanted to close that one
off. But I think, you know, I, I
spent a long time in the, the deep end of the prophetic
spiritual warfare kind of world for, for years and the inner
healing and the deliverance world, You know, I mean, I
remember being 3:00 in the morning and my friend's caravan
is 16 years old, having him vomit ectoplasm up into a
bucket, you know, for hours. That was like a fun Friday night
for us, right? So I think there's a better way
actually. And more to the point, let's get
the gospel straight. Let's get the vision of Christ
straight. Then we just ask him what to do
when when we come up against things.
As far as the eschatology goes, again, if you really want to get
into that subject, George MacDonald #1 The Unspoken Sermon
is also his book Lilith, which is actually his.
He he even really explores this question of Satan, like what
happens to Satan at the eschatological horizon.
I find George MacDonald completely unimpeachable in his
in his theology, extraordinarily powerful.
And David Bentley Hart, if you want something that is
contemporary but pretty heavy going in terms of you, you need
you need to listen or read slowly.
And he uses a lot of philosophical terms, but again,
unimpeachable from a theological point of view.
So I would I recommend them if you if it's if it's a subject
that you you kind of want to dive into.
But otherwise, you know, I mean, I'm with my friend Bruce Walkup
from Australia. I quite like the way he does
things, you know, and he, he's very been in that very sort of
mystical, you know, prophetic space his whole life and
ministry. And he, he, he's a tropical
disease medicine specialist was going into the, he's been going
to war zones and all these kind of things, really crazy.
It's got a lot of crazy experiences of demonic this and
that and the other. Whenever he does a meeting, he
prays and he invites the powers and principalities to believe in
Christ. I mean, he basically evangelises
the air, right as part of his prayer.
I kind of like that. I'm like, yeah, I'm cool.
I'm cool with that, Bruce. That's a nice way to do it.
Right. So it's an it's an invitation.
It actually the Bible says preach the gospel to every
creature. If there's a creature, it should
have the gospel preach to it. Jane.
And then Sam and Hugh in the queue as well.
But please. Yeah.
Just flick the button up. OK, because it's a bit
confusing, so I don't really want to anyway.
But so you said keep going back to the fire, the fire of God.
Yeah, fine. And my experience is, so this is
a personal thing. I've really grasped the
theology. No, that's not true, but it's
grafted to me now. I now I kind of see it and I've
seen it in action. I really have seen it in action.
Just a bit of a testimony, you know, I go to a Truckers cafe.
This guy, you know, I see him. He's he's not a Christian.
He calls himself an whatever, you know.
Yeah, like a in the woods, you know, a a Pagan Pagan.
So we, we had a great conversation.
But I saw Jesus, God in him because he takes care of widows.
Isn't that interesting? I'm a widow and he takes care of
very difficult widows. And he, he's got a wife and
she's a widow and blah, blah, blah.
And I just like you are Christ in the flesh.
Yeah, you. You really are.
Of course, I didn't say that to him, but we're having a she's
really exciting. So exciting because it.
Well, I know, but it's so exciting.
However, I feel this is just a personal feeling thing.
It's not, you know, I kind of now can just go and the bits I
was reading John and there's bits that contradict and I
think, oh, I'll stuff it. I don't care.
You know, I can really cope with that.
Now that doesn't speak of that is not Speaking of God.
Therefore there must be a problem, but I'm not worried.
So that is really hard. But I really, this is the bit
that instead of love, I find myself flipping jealous, angry,
upset. What's the bloody point?
Sorry, I really do. I feel, I feel the I feel the
uselessness of church. I feel the pointlessness, the
what are we doing feeling? I feel all this feeling
feelings, you know, you know, like, you know, like for years
believe in this rubbish about the Father and all your
experiences tie into that rubbish.
And I think of all those people that have had Christianity,
judgement, Christianity thrown on them.
And I just, I just feel this lost piece of oh, God, what now?
What now? I feel what now?
And yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Jane.
So some years ago this this is maybe it's easier if I speak to
my own story rather rather than to yours like at this point.
And obviously we can continue to talk and pray and all the rest.
But I at a certain point I was like, gosh, what on earth was I
doing for all those years and felt a sense of man.
I made some crazy decisions based on some faulty
assumptions. I think that's a natural place
to come to like the if, if the light that you're getting now is
not causing you to ask questions about where you were before,
then you're not growing right? There's no, where's the
momentum? Like if you've reached the
pinnacle, then you've got it all sorted at that point.
Even this comes up in the, in the, in the lecture, in one of
the questions in the video this week, someone asked us some of
the not exactly the same, but similar.
And Baxter said, well, I've been how why is it taking me 65 years
to figure this out? You know, and he's like, we'll
put it another way, isn't it incredible that it only took you
65 years to figure this out? Imagine how you're gonna feel in
500 years. Can I just stop you there?
Yeah. And that's OK, right?
I don't know Baxter. OK.
We should put that on the recording.
I don't know why you're doing it.
Everyone's going to think Jane's saying something horrific, but
she's not. Just for the sake of the
recording. It's not.
It's not OK, but it's also not on you.
So I think that I think that the point is what we see in the
cross is you have already done the worst thing that you could
ever do, which is crucify Jesus, right?
Anything you did that was bad was not as bad as that.
So if you can own the cross, you can see why Paul can say nothing
can separate us from the love of God, right?
So I just dial right, like go back to the cross, hang on a
second. So it's a, it's a natural
response, like when we've, we've ever mistreated anybody or got
something wrong in any way, we can only do that when we're not
really seeing them for who they are.
We're seeing some facade, you know, some 2 dimensional
invention of the false self. Well, Love's transformative when
we're, when we're actually immersed in that stream of love
that radically transforms how we see everyone.
This is why I say resolutely, we see everyone after the spirit,
not after the flesh, which means to see them in the spirit, which
means to see them in Christ, which is not a pretend thing
because God doesn't ask us to pretend about anything.
He asks us to agree with the truth.
So when we do that, suddenly, how do we see everybody?
And then it's a completely right and understandable thing that at
a certain point we might wake up to, oh, hang on a minute.
That means when I ignored that person or when I said that bad
thing about that person, or when I did this over there, I, I, I
skimmed past that very quickly in my life and I didn't give it
a second thought. But now in the light of what I'm
saying now I'm horrified by it that that's a, that's a good
sign. Like that's not a good place to
finish, right? But that that's a sign of
growth. That's not a sign of regress.
That's not a sign of getting lost.
That's a sign that the, the, the flow of compassion is actually
the dots are joining up and it's beginning to make sense.
Like the whole scheme. And now we see why is the coming
of Christ, the breaking of the entire world?
Because if you start to extrapolate that out, it's when
Jesus says in John, now is the crisis, now is the judgement.
Now the Prince of the world stands condemned and I, when I'm
drifted, lifted up, will draw all to myself.
You start to see that judgement is happening right now in me
like I'm Ground Zero of that. And in that Ground Zero, all
those things are happening at once.
The judgement of the world, the condemnation of the devil, the
Prince of the earth, right is in there in in that scheme.
And the lifting up of Christ, which draws all to him is all
happening in it's it's ever present and presenting itself in
US. And that's what it feels like a
lot of the time. It's like, Oh my gosh, what,
what did we do? How do we direct our energies,
our gifting, our faith to be able to do something about this?
And now we start to see, I think a line between our relative
relatively comfortable Western, you know, existence, some line
between that and the guys in Athanasius this time where he's
like, even the young girls, 5-6 years old go happily to the
lions and sing gloriously to Jesus as they get devoured
because they have this invincibility of the, of the
resurrection life in them. And you think, well, that feels
like 1,000,000 miles away from me.
But actually when you start to track with that stuff, you
realise, but it's not a million miles because you begin to see
the, the, if we recognise the extent to which we are able to
live in and accommodate and operate in love and the extent
to which we're able to recognise that doesn't come from us, that
comes from the person of the Spirit within us, right?
Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.
That is the very manifestation of the presence of God.
Now if we don't recognise that, we won't know how to identify
it. We just kind of carry on.
Oh well, maybe that's just me or whatever.
When we recognise, oh hang on a minute, that is not coming from
me. That is coming from the very
ground of my being, which is also the very ground of the
whole of creation. Now it's OK that that is a that
is a deep, deep sea. That's not a little trickle.
And if I begin to yield to that, and if I yield to that long
enough, what on earth will that do to me?
To back to Hugh's point again, like what begins to happen?
What, what, what does it feel like for the apostle Paul when
he says I would that I myself would cut off from Christ for
the sake of my brethren, that they would know him?
Like, what drives a man to say that, you know, particularly.
Yeah, that's that's a disturbing place to be in, right?
That's not a complacent Christianity.
That is a radical world overturning faith that blasts
through absolutely everything. That's the kind of thing where
you can see Jesus saying I'll build my church and the gates of
hell will not prevail against it, because this is the church
that says we cannot sit on a cloud with a harp when our
brothers and sisters are down there behind those gates and we
have to go in. And this is George MacDonald.
So George MacDonald's position again, how the, the the ones who
are most like Christ, who have become most like Christ in the
way of their being in that heavenly reality are those for
whom the exclusion of any being is the least tolerable.
But the one who's become the most compassionate and like
Jesus is the one who cannot even he, he says who who he talks
about again, I can't get the wedding right.
It's a Florida Victorian English, but you can go and read
it. But he says you know to they
they it talks about them forsaking the glory of heaven to
go down and sit with the the most wretched Judas of his race,
because that's the same love that compelled Christ out of
heaven right to say that he didn't consider equality.
We got something to be maintained made himself nothing
took on flesh and the been found in form of a man.
He came down well, if that if that is the manifestation of the
nature and the character and the person of God and we are growing
to become like that, then what do we do with those who are in
the dark, those who are in the in the prison.
It compels us to go there and it compels us to go there over and
against, especially over and against the ways in which we
weren't compelled to go there before.
It it, it's transformative. But within that there's a need
to remember that that the, the absolution of the cross covers
all of these things. So or we can find that we can
start then measuring ourselves against some sort of an
arbitrary standard. I think part of this part of the
healing of the soul that comes in the gospel is you're not
grading yourself against the standard anymore.
It's not like how well am I doing with prayer or this.
It's actually the the complete abrogation of that way of
thinking altogether. So there is no standard.
It's not the knowledge of good and evil anymore.
How good am I doing? How bad am I doing?
All of that's gone. It's dead, it's disappeared.
That's my old life. It's disappeared.
I can recognise it was left in the grave.
This new creation life that I'm in.
It's OK, I'm I'm, I'm growing. I'm growing in my capacity to
love others and to receive love myself and live in that and
manifest that and walk in it. And I will still be growing in
my capacity to do that in 1000 years.
Because it's a limitless ocean. There is no bottom to the
infinite Trinity. This that is a bottomless ocean.
So by tracking into that, what we're doing is we're embracing
the fire. I was saying I'm not trying to
hide from the fire. I'm not trying to hide from what
the presence of God does to me when I'm because the presence
causes me to be unable to ignore those around me when maybe I
want to ignore them. I'd rather hang out with my
demon drinking buddies, right? I want to go back and hang out
with my demon drinking buddies. Call them up, you know, Hey
Asmodeus from the 7th circle, Do you want to come around and you
know, have a have a cold one and you know we can.
You know, say, and we can hate people and we can be embittered
about them and we can have those who we don't like, we want to
gossip about, you know, or, or not think about or say, well,
it's all their fault. They're in that problem.
What's it got to do with me, right?
Get my demon drinking buddy and you know, get him round.
Like I want to do that sometimes, right?
So we but the presence of God doesn't allow us to do that, not
because of any coercion, but because the lights show the
truth of what already is, reveals the truth of who we are.
And that's why the father often sounds like that's not really
you, is it? The correction from the father
often sounds like that's not really you.
You're right. It's not really me.
Why am I inhabiting it? It's kind of silly, childish in
the wrong way. We're going to grow up.
And I think again, as an editorial on this, one of the
reasons I'm so passionate about this message is not just because
I believe that it's true, but also because having spent many,
many years going around all kinds of churches and seeing
people who've sat for 20-30 years in the same Pew or the
same seat and basically have made no spiritual progress
whatsoever. In that time.
They prayed to prayer, they got baptised and they sat down and
was like, here I am. And that's it.
Like, what's going on? And then they've been, they've
been mis sold an equation that says, well, you got your ticket
to heaven, so you're all right. And then there's nothing else.
And so they're bored is lifeless and there's no danger to it.
And I think that part of the issue is that the theology and
no part of that, I don't think I am, I will categorically state a
big part of the issue is that the theological container cannot
take them any further. They're stuck because they've
been told, told some people are in, some people are out.
So those people you've got a problem with, well, they're
obviously the out people. Well, if you've got that, if
you've got that in your mind, you can't, you can no longer see
them as in, and now they're the very people God's inviting you
to love and growing to kind of connectivity and engagement
with. So all of that is just a very
Christian thing I think that you're describing.
But I would say, Jane, I need you on there.
Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin. You know, it's and it's just to
kind of become aware of just how sick it is as a child, you know,
sin. Sick, but but then we can just
let it go and. It.
Yeah, we're we're at half past, but there was I've asked the
question. Just sorry, quick, quick,
quickly if you, if you want to carry on, I'll carry on.
Anyone who wants to kind of chime in, if they haven't chimed
in already, then you know, I'm I'm happy to do that quickly.
I mean, again, sorry, Sam and Hugh, you guys had your hands up
like an hour ago. But and we we haven't dived into
all of this stuff, but I'll and no one, no one.
Malcolm, you looking at me? No, I think that we need to have
some grown up conversations like this about a lot of the stuff.
My experience of many years in the church is this kind of
conversation has almost never happened.
There's almost no space for it, right?
And that's also why this is important because we have a way
to that enables us to talk about it that doesn't fire off all of
this unresolvable dissonance. Does God really love us or
doesn't he and all these other kind of issues?
So I am again, back to Charlie's point, I'm on the record of
saying like from a, from the, the correct and logical
conclusion of what the, the New Testament and the Apostolic
wince of the church says. I think that the only answer
that makes sense is we're, we're all, we're all going to Jesus.
So he's going to sort that whole thing out.
But I will also readily confess I have a problem with that.
I have a problem with it because I cannot imagine how that is
going to work for person A, person B, person C, you know,
these other kind of issues. But that's the crisis on me,
right? So that so rather than saying,
oh, well, I guess I must be wrong because I can't imagine
how it would work. Instead, it becomes I now have
to follow the invitation of the Spirit, say, or I need to look
at that. I need to see you there, Jesus,
and you need to show me what you need to show me.
I need to grow to be able to accommodate that person and I
need to participate in that to do it.
Like if I hideaway and don't, then I'm not going to grow, but
I want to grow and we want to grow.
That's why we're here. So we want to be able to expand,
to engage more people, be able to embrace more of the world
than we have been able to. So that the that it's not enough
to say that, well, one day in the distant horizon it will be
OK. It becomes not enough to say
that it says no, it needs to be OK right now.
So the love of Christ compels us, as Paul says, right?
So then we have a compulsion and it's something within us.
It's like we have to do this. We have to reach people and
reaching them means bringing the, the, the knowledge of
Christ to them, right? It's not not just taking care of
some external factors. We should do that too, but it's
also coming with the gospel that has the power to deliver the
heart. So there's our evangelism,
there's our mission. We're wrapping up.
All right, we're out of time. We were 5 minutes over.
Cheers everyone.