Ohio Yearly Meeting's Podcast

Conservative Friends Bible Study of The Gospel of John #10

• Henry Jason

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John 4:46-5:29

We examine the multi-layered interpretations of Jesus's parables and teachings, focusing on how true spiritual understanding goes beyond literal meaning to transform hearts and lives.

• Three levels of biblical interpretation explored: literal, ethical, and spiritual-allegorical
• The parable of the sower reveals how God implants divine seed in all humanity, but receptivity determines its growth
• Royal official's healing story demonstrates faith as trust rather than mere belief
• Healing at Bethsaida challenges religious conventions while revealing Jesus's compassion
• Jesus's relationship with the Father shows divine unity working through him
• Spiritual resurrection occurs when the spiritually dead hear Christ's voice within
• Important distinction between the New Testament use of the word "Jews" as an ethnic group versus religious authorities opposing Jesus

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Chip Thomas:

Advice 26. Let your whole conduct and conversation be worthy of disciples of Christ. Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 15, 58. From Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline.

Henry Jason:

This is the OYM Greek Bible Study. We are reading the Gospel according to John. Today is session. We left off in chapter 4 with verse 45. Are there any comments or questions? From last week?

Guest 1:

I was interested in that origin, the Bible commentary. There were like three levels of interpretation the literal, the ethics and the spiritual allegory. I was wondering, like, how do you map between those levels? And especially I'm interested in the middle level, the ethics level. How do you do that?

Henry Jason:

I'm not sure what you mean by map.

Guest 1:

Say we were talking about the sower and the seeds or something like that. Okay, so Jesus is actually on the Sea of Galilee and there's actually trees there. Okay, and there's seeds. The next level would be an ethical level, and then you're going into the metaphor. I mean, like, how do you get between those?

Henry Jason:

I'll see if I can explain it. The way I understand it, the basic level is the literal level, that somatic level. That's where you take it absolutely literal, where Jesus is talking just about a farmer who is sowing seed and what happens to that seed when it falls upon different types of ground. And that's pretty obvious. As we know, if a seed falls on good ground it's going to grow good crops. If it falls on rocks, it may start to wither and die. If it falls among thorns, if it falls on a footpath, where it will get trampled on, there are different things that will happen to that kind of seed get trampled on. There are different things that will happen to that kind of seed, but when it falls on good ground then it may develop into whatever bountiful crop that you hope for. So that's your basic literal level.

Henry Jason:

Now, with that story and since that occurs in all three synoptic gospels Matthew, mark and Luke there's basically the same understanding in all of them I'm not sure I could talk about just the ethical level, the second level with that story, because it really is talking more on a spiritual level, where the farmer, the sower of the seed, is God, the Father, and the different types of ground that the seed falls on are different kinds of people, different kinds of mental apparatus or consciousness or conscience, if we may say, of different people. And God is always sowing the seed. He is always trying to place his seed into these different types of ground, into these different kinds of people. It's there everywhere it's being sown all over all humanity. But what happens to that seed depends on the kind of reception it gets from an individual person.

Henry Jason:

If that person is going to be like stony ground, it's not going to do anything. If it starts growing up among thorns and weeds and other things, it may start growing, but it'll get overwhelmed by the thorny plants or whatever. If that person is receptive to it, if he's the good ground, then that word of God, that word of the kingdom, that expression of Christ within them, that expression of God, will continue to grow, grace upon grace. So that clearly is a spiritual level. Now I don't know if I could talk about there being an individual ethical level between those two. There may or may not be. I think you could just combine it with the spiritual level there in understanding what is being said there by Jesus.

Guest 1:

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

Henry Jason:

That's a very important story. That's a very important parable for Quakers, early friends. They often talk about the seed that is implanted in all of us and that mention of the implanted seed also occurs in Peter. Is it second Peter? I forget. Now he talks about the implanted word. You know these kinds of the kind of language he uses refers to that kind of planting of something inside us. So often we can talk about the seed never going anywhere, that if we are not being the right kind of ground, the right kind of soil, then it's just going to stay there, be ignored and will never develop into anything. Thank you, Anything else? Before we go on, One last thing with that story of the sower of the seed In Mark, the disciples there don't understand the spiritual significance of that.

Henry Jason:

So they ask him to explain what was he talking about. And then he goes on to say in Mark, you know, it's the word that logos, that expression of God, that utterance of God, that is the word, that is the seed. And in the gospel, according to Matthew, it's the word of the kingdom. And if you remember that often in Matthew he's still hesitant in using the word God in many contexts and he'll use the word kingdom in the sense of God, so he says it's the word of the, the word kingdom in the sense of God, so he says it's the word of the kingdom, which is the word of God. And then in Luke it's said to be the word of God. In all cases we're talking about the same thing here, just slightly different language.

Henry Jason:

Let's go on to verse 46 in chapter 4. We'll finish the chapter here. Verse 46 in chapter 4. We'll finish the chapter here. Then he, that is jesus, came again to cana in galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in capernaum. When he heard that jesus had come from judea to galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, where for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The official said to him Sir, come down before my little boy dies. Jesus said to him Go, your son will live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. And as he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover and they said to him yesterday at one in the afternoon, the fever left him. The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him your son will live. So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee, Just in verse 48.

Henry Jason:

Here I have a note that says unless you see signs, signs that you is plural, unless you people see signs and wonders. He's not just referring to this royal official. My translation here says at one o'clock. In the greek it says it's at the seventh hour. But if you recall, the daylight hours start at six o'clock in the morning. So this is the seventh hour counting from that time at six in the morning. So it is one o'clock.

Guest 2:

Henry, I have two observations. Yes, First, one is minor, but it's looking at the description of this official and I see the Greek word is basilikos, which implies that he's not just any officer but he's in the royal household and a couple of my translations here actually say he was in royal service. So I think it ups the ante as to how important this person was and I regret that a couple translations simply say he was an officer. The second, I think, is to me a little more important and it has to do with what I have experienced as the difference between healing and curing, and half of my translations render this verb cure and the others heal. To me we can experience healing without necessarily curing in the sense that the underlying condition is forever abolished. But I wonder if you could say something about the verb here in 47 47 is.

Guest 2:

IOMAI I-A-O-M-A-I.

Henry Jason:

IOMAI. Yes, I know this word well my name Jason. It has the same root in it. Iason means the healer in Greek. So yes, it's not unfamiliar to me. The J-A there is the I-A that you're looking at in the Greek verb Iaomai. It's a verb. My understanding is it basically means cure, but heal also. So let me just look that up and be clear about this. I just've been basically assuming that they are roughly the same meaning in Greek To restore someone to health after a physical malady, to heal, to cure. So that's basically it To heal, restore, thank you. Thanks for bringing up that word.

Henry Jason:

Okay, obviously, the Greek word here for royal is basilikos. The Greek word for king is basileos, and so it means royal, he's of the royal court or whatever you want to say. So he's a very important official of some sort. It doesn't say whose court he was in, herod probably, but that's irrelevant, I think at the moment. It's just that his son, he had such trust in Jesus. Remember, I've been saying over and over again that these two words, the word pistis that usually gets translated as faith or belief the better sense is the word trust or confidence. That's the true meaning of this word and the same thing with the verb related to it, pistel, which we ordinarily translate as believe. Think of it meaning trust, put one's trust in, have confidence in. That's the basic sense of the word to believe, to trust, to put one's trust in what was he saying this in a disapproving way because everybody saw his signs and wonders.

Guest 3:

There was nobody who believed in him who hadn't seen his signs and wonders.

Henry Jason:

Well, obviously, in this case, I think you know this official had heard about Jesus and that this is very recent in Jesus's public ministry, because it says here that this is the second sign that Jesus had performed after coming from Judea to Galilee. So he wouldn't have heard of much of Jesus's healings or anything before this that we know of. But what he did here. He had this assumption that Jesus could help heal his son by being there with him. But in trusting Jesus's words that his son would live, he really accepted that. He's showing a true pistis, a true confidence in Jesus, a true trust and belief in who Jesus was and what he could do.

Guest 4:

It's interesting because I read this that initial response of Jesus and then the turnaround, almost like after the what's it called the Nazareth Manifesto in Luke. And Jesus reads from the scroll from Isaiah and then says oh and here, you guys expect me to do great things for you, but like Elijah and the other one, I'm not just here for you or whatever. I'm not just here to put on a show for you or to do signs and wonders. But then the officer's persistence convinces jesus, right in verse 49.

Henry Jason:

So that's the way I always read that he thinks that Jesus really has to be there with his son to do something that would help his son you know, the physical presence of him, rather than this kind of at distance healing that does take place and that Jesus knows that his son will live and is alive and will live. I don't know if I'd go further than that in terms of trying to pull more out of this particular story here. We got to remember that a lot of the stories we have here in John are from the source that we don't have any of these things said in the other three gospels luke, and luke and matthew are based a lot on mark, but there's just a different line of transmission of stories here about jesus that we have here and it doesn't seem like john really is borrowing much from what the uh, what's said in mark or then in luke, matthew.

Guest 5:

What I'm understanding in this is that Jesus is criticizing those who see signs and wonders or feel like they have to see signs and wonders in order to believe, because to see signs and wonders is to look outside of yourself and see something outside, and I think that this is his way of saying it's not the external things that are convincing. The convincement is to happen within.

Henry Jason:

Well, I'm thinking if you were a pagan, a Greek and you wanted to get healed, you'd go to the Temple of Asclepius and, you know, sleep there or whatever, but you had to be there. I don't think that anything else was possible or thought was possible. There is a deeper understanding here, I think that Pat's alluding to, about this internal kind of trust.

Guest 5:

I think it has to do with words as opposed to you know, hearing as opposed to seeing you hear words. And it's later, in john, when, uh, jesus alienates everybody by saying that you know, I have to drink his blood and eat his flesh, and he says to the disciples you'll go away too from me. And I think Peter says where would we go? You have the words of life. So it's referring to the words that they hear. That is the uh, what draws them to christ.

Guest 5:

And if you think about it, when you hear something, you hear it within, it goes into you, it goes into your ear the sound. But when you see, you look out of yourself to something external. So in hearing the words it finds a place in you, whereas seeing something it's outside of you. So I think that this refers to that distinction. When it says, unless you see signs and wonders, you won't believe. He's saying that he's criticizing them for having to look outside in order to find something that will convince them where it should be the words that they hear that are convincing to them.

Henry Jason:

When I think of the word hear, or hearing and listening, especially hearing that there's a further assumed assumption that there's an understanding after the hearing. Yes, you can just see something, but you don't have to think more about it necessarily or do anything with it. I'm just thinking when you hear a foreign language that you don't know, you're hearing everything, but you're not understanding a single thing. And that kind of thing is so common here in this Gospel according to John, where everyone takes things so literally initially and Jesus is not speaking literally, he is speaking spiritually. You know we are talking about spiritual allegories here and metaphors and all sorts of deeper understandings, although so many people are stuck on that surface level.

Guest 3:

And we also wouldn't necessarily mean word literally, because we would assume that someone who was deaf and mute and not blind would still be able to sense the presence of Christ in this situation.

Henry Jason:

Yeah, are you talking about verse 50?

Guest 3:

I was actually responding to what Pat was saying about our hearing words, rather than it being external signs that the word of God and his spirit would be what should matter to us. But I was just saying that we really don't need the physical word at all.

Henry Jason:

Yeah.

Guest 1:

So we're hearing within ourselves. Christ is speaking in our hearts, not necessarily a booming voice somewhere outside of us.

Henry Jason:

Well, I think in Matthew it says something about hearing. Hearing but not understanding. You know, seeing, but that kind of thing. It's all on the surface but nothing seems to go deeper. That's where we need to go deeper. Okay, shall we go on? All right, let me start now with chapter 5, verse 1. I guess we'll go to 18 or so after this.

Henry Jason:

There was a festival of the jews, and jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, there is a pool called in Hebrew Bethsaitha, which has five porticos. In these lay many invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him Do you want to be made well? The sick man answered him sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me. Jesus said to him stand up, take your mat and walk. At once the man was made well and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured. It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry your mat. But he answered them. The man who made me well said to me take up your mat and walk. They asked him who is the man who said to you take it up and walk? Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later, jesus found him in the temple and said to him see, you have been made well, do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews started persecuting Jesus because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them my father is still working and I also am working. For this reason, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because he was not only breaking the Sabbath but was also calling God his own father, thereby making himself equal to God.

Henry Jason:

I've talked about this before, but it's good to just remember this word. Eudios is the word that means someone who is an ethnic Jew. That's the basic meaning, and the second meaning is this later meaning that developed later on, in the first century, before this particular gospel came to be written as we have it, and that was the jewish authorities and their followers who were opposed to jesus. So you have these two meanings of this word. Unfortunately, in this translation they're both translated the same someone who was jewish. Jesus was jewish. But this word also came to have this meaning among christian jews as those those Jewish authorities and their followers who were opposed to Jesus and wanted him arrested and killed. So you have to keep these two meanings distinct.

Henry Jason:

Whenever you see this word Jew here Now it says here in verse 5, a festival of the Jews. Well, of course that's of all the Jews, of ethnic Jews. But if we go down further, if we look at verse 10, so the Jews said to the man who had been cured, and it goes on then further on and it says later with this word Jews in verse 15, the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Well, the man is Jewish, jesus is Jewish. But who he's telling is the second group, these Jewish authorities and their followers who were opposed to Jesus, who did not see him as Messiah eventually. And so it's not correct to translate it as Jew in the second case. And yet you so often will see that in many translations. That's just an important point to keep in mind.

Guest 2:

This is David Fink again. Do we have a sense of how far back, how early it was that the Christian movement slandered all of Jews and the way that we saw it developing in the medieval period and the pogroms and such that followed? Was this a later development or was there that kind of hostility that we can infer in the earliest?

Henry Jason:

period? That's an important question you have to remember first I mean initially in this these very first generations Christian Jews were being persecuted by non-Christian Jews. So someone like Paul was arresting them when he was still Saul and going out with the authority of the Sanhedrin to arrest some of these Christian Jews. So you could see that these Jews who were Christian were very concerned about their position in society and when they were finally expelled from the synagogues in the middle of the 80s, that was the final break. I mean you could say there were even an earlier break, after the destruction of Jerusalem and Temple in 70, as well as in the second Jewish war in 120, around then.

Henry Jason:

But I think when Christianity became much more of a Greek phenomenon, where there became more Greeks and Romans who were becoming Christians and were persecuted, that at some point is when you saw, maybe the tide turn, where there was a difference. And of course, what friends have always spoken about is the long, dark night of the apostasy. I hope when I do my fundamental start, my fundamental beliefs of conservative friends again later in the month, on the 25th, I may be talking about the peace testimony then and some of the early Christians' understanding of the peace testimony in those very first centuries, some of the remarks we have about them. But that is when you start getting a reverse, I think, as Christianity lost its own peace testimony is when, I think, you found them looking at the jews and, as they came into power after christianity became the religion of the empire, that you started seeing what you're talking about. That's my understanding.

Henry Jason:

There may be something different there. I've not really, you know, looked into that in depth. Okay, um, in verse in my translation here it's now in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, there's a pool called, in Hebrew, bethsaida. Anyone have a different translation than in Hebrew?

Guest 2:

Well, there's a footnote that says that others read Bethsaida.

Henry Jason:

Oh, I'm not talking about that. It's the word in Hebrew. Oh, okay, there are several possibilities there. I'm just going to mention this. This word, hebraisti, is translated to mean in Hebrew, but it's important to remember or to know that this word also means in Aramaic. That's what my Bible says, henry. It means both. The Greek word here does not distinguish between Aramaic and Hebrew. They're both written in the same letters and they are sister languages, but they're not the same. But I'm just commenting on that. I think there's also another term, sematiki, or something which is the same thing in Semitic, meaning both in Hebrew or in Aramaic. So just a small comment there.

Henry Jason:

When we get to where Jesus says, stand up, take your mat and walk, in verse nine, now, that day was a Sabbath, so the Jews, these Jews, were opponents of Jesus. Day was a Sabbath, so the Jews, these Jews, were opponents of Jesus. These authorities and their followers, you know, immediately picked up on the fact that Jesus was telling this man to do something that was against the law of Moses working, doing work on a Sabbath day and picking up your mat would be something that would be considered work. One thing about that. Getting back to verse 2, this pool, the Sheep Gate. By the Sheep Gate there's a pool which has five porticos. Actually, in the 20th century they actually discovered this place with the five porticos in Jerusalem. It's an actual place under I'm sorry, go ahead.

Guest 3:

It would seem sort of shocking to us. I would think that, okay, it's not clear that he was lying there for 38 years. He was just sick for 38 years, right, but presumably had been lying there for a long time. So it's shocking to us that people would be shoving horribly sick invalid out of the way year after year as he was hoping to go down and be healed. Is that really how that society was then? Nobody would help someone in that situation. It seems implausible.

Henry Jason:

I think it's quite plausible. I try to remember something about reading something about Jerusalem and Palestine in the 19th century and all the sick people, not just there but everywhere, that you didn't have any real doctors who could really heal as we do today and that life wasn't quite that genteel among people that this could be quite clearly the case. That people would shout because they had this belief that actually in some manuscripts as it says in my note here in some ancient manuscripts there are a couple of extra verses there, for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well from whatever disease that person had. Now, if there are people thinking that that one person who gets there first might be healed and you have who knows how many dozens waiting to do that I could think of it being quite plausible.

Guest 3:

Okay.

Henry Jason:

Not that you'd want this to be this way, but you know, I'm just thinking of the squalor and you know, even today, and you know cities around the world I mean there are slums and whatever in South America, Asia, africa that this is the way it is.

Guest 5:

In a lot of countries, the people's families become their nursing staff. If you have no family and you're there, you have no one to help you.

Guest 1:

If you go to the hospital, you have to take somebody with you, Otherwise you're kind of there.

Henry Jason:

You might have to feed them, you might have to do all sorts of things. You might want, if you had some money, to bribe any medical officials to give your person more medical attention than someone else. That's happening today in many places in the world. You know, bribes got you somewhere. Okay, I'm just trying to see if there's anything else in this passage.

Henry Jason:

In verse 18, at this time in Judaism, they began to talk about God as Father, and Jesus just consistently speaks of God, the Father, and this understanding here that Jesus is calling God his own Father is something equal to God. I think this has to do with the understanding of John of you know what we're reading in John. You know the son is in the father and the father is in the son, and already at this point we're talking about persecution. My translation in verse 16, therefore, the Jews started persecuting Jesus. Let me just see what that Greek is again. Yeah, he persecuted Because of this. The Jews, these opposing Jews persecuted Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Let me just look up that word. I'm wondering if persecute is too strong a translation in this case. Right here.

Guest 2:

I'm seeing apokeno translated kill, what word? What word is that? A-p-o-k-e-n-o?

Henry Jason:

No, no, that's not what I'm looking at.

Guest 2:

No, okay.

Henry Jason:

Sorry, I just lost my place here. What verse was that in? Oh?

Guest 2:

18.

Henry Jason:

18.

Guest 2:

So to kill him.

Henry Jason:

No, no, no 16. 16. 16. It's Diokon, dioko, dioko. There, it is okay to harass. I wouldn't translate it as persecute at this stage in jesus's ministry, but they were harassing him at this stage you know, harass, it does mean persecute as well, okay, okay, let's go on.

Henry Jason:

Verse 19. Jesus said to them very truly, I tell you, the son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the father doing, for whatever the father does, the son does likewise. The father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him, who sent me, has eternal life and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. Okay, we got this word again judge, and in 22 this is.

Henry Jason:

We've talked about this word and it's a hard word to it. It has this wide variety of meanings, and this is the word krino, k-r-i and, uh, you know, a general sense is consider, evaluate, assess. But then let me get back to the dictionary. We have that sense of judge, our english word critique, to critique something, that same the C-R-I there, that's the same as the K-R-I in the Greek. It has so many of these words, these words in English. I'll just read some of them here as to its meaning To make a decision, to select, to prefer, to pass judgment upon and thereby seek to influence the lives and actions of other people.

Henry Jason:

To judge, pass judgment upon, express an opinion about, then also pass an unfavorable judgment upon. To criticize, find fault with, condemn, fault with condemn. To make a judgment based on taking various factors into account. To judge, think, consider, look upon, to come to a conclusion after a cognitive process, to reach a decision, to decide, to propose, to intend. It also means to engage in a judicial process to judge, decide, hail before a court, to condemn, to hand over for judicial punishment and finally, to ensure justice, for someone to see to it that justice is done. So we have judge and so many of these others, but I'll put down condemn here.

Henry Jason:

I just want to point out that this root and this word occurs in it. How you translate it, I think, is very important in the context and I sometimes think that some translations might use the wrong word for translating it. I'm looking at like about three columns of meanings for this one word in this fairly large book. So judge, condemn Also.

Henry Jason:

Just one comment I'd like to make in looking at what we've just read here. A lot of this, I think, is understanding of these early Christians having had time in the first few decades after the resurrection of Jesus to try to understand how the man Jesus was related to God, the Father, and how God was in him and he was in God. And this is what you're seeing these kinds of expressions about I am in the Father and the Father is in me. And later on we get to the discourses in chapters 16 and 17, we get much more of that kind of wording and those kinds of understanding that the Father that is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, but then the Son is also in us and we are in the Son. It goes. There's all this internal kind of understanding of where that Spirit is and what spirit we are in if we are true Christians.

Guest 4:

I have a question about that. This passage here seems really set up by the verse in 18, so that the problem was that Jesus was making himself equal with God by calling God his own father. Yes, he does all this stuff talking about the relationship. Pardon my ignorance, but how is that distinct from Jewish understandings of God the Father? You said that they were starting to say God the Father, but it was just more impersonal, it was more distant. What do we know about that? Why would this be new and presumably controversial to the audience at the time?

Henry Jason:

I really can't answer that question. All I can recall is reading that at this time Jews were beginning to use more personal understandings in speaking of God as Father, more personal understandings in speaking of God as Father. I can't say where you'll find that, in what Jewish writings the Talmud and other Jewish writings where I think that's where you may see this kind of more personal, rather than impersonal, understandings of God. Although even if you go back to the Psalms, I mean clearly there's a lot of personal I'm not even sure personal is the right word to use here there's a closer emotional feeling towards this God, this God of justice, which was so important for Jews. I'm not sure I can answer that question, chris.

Guest 4:

Thank you, I appreciate it. I don't know it either, but yeah, thanks.

Henry Jason:

Okay, let's see if we can just finish this section. Very truly, I tell you the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the son of man. Do not be astonished at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. Oh, this is maybe a little bit too much here to just speak about in five minutes. These verses here are very important and frequently used in Quaker writings among the early friends and later friends too, writings of the among the early friends and later friends too. And again, looking, thinking of origin too. How do we take these in terms? Do we take them superficially, as literally being the dead, the physically dead okay, that's one thing coming out of their graves, or are we talking about those who are spiritually dead coming out of their spiritual, which seems to be clearly Fox and others understood, would use it to you know, in referring to these verses. And again, the voice of the Son of God is the same thing as listening to the light or hearing the light, as these mixed metaphors you'd find in Quaker writings. You know, you hear the light of Christ. You hear the light of God, the Spirit of God, but you're hearing the light. We can, you know, you hear the light of Christ. You hear the light of God, the spirit of God, but you're hearing the light. We can't literally say we hear a light, but their understanding is beyond that literalist level of understanding, so that when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God, so those who are spiritually dead, they just aren't with it spiritually, and those who hear it will live. So they come out of their graves and, uh, they've changed soils. If we go back to the, to the uh sower of the seed, you know they're no longer uh, the footpath, but they've become uh, the good soil.

Henry Jason:

Of course, son of man. I've explained that the word for man in greek anthropos goes back to the hebrew word adam and adam is the name adam, but in hebrew it means man or mankind, and it's still used in modern hebrew. So the son of man is the son of adam or the son of mankind, and I think we've talked about its use in the book of daniel, that unusual figure there that's son of man, but even here jesus, euphemistically, was referring to himself as the son of man rather than saying I, I myself, because the father is in the son and the son is in the father, he has been given authority to execute judgment. Okay, again, in verse 28, we have do not be astonished at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear the voice and will come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. Elsewhere we have these understandings of the first resurrection and the second resurrection, and I've been somewhat confused in my life in understanding the two. At the moment what I'm understanding is the first resurrection is somewhat like saying being born again, that regeneration out of that grave that we are in prior to being reborn, being regenerated, the new Adam Jesus helps us become a different creature rather than just a physical human being. We are much more a spiritual being and it's only the spiritual being that really matters in the end in terms of life and death, both eternal life and eternal death, as well as physical life and physical death.

Henry Jason:

There is a verse in revelation just from trying to remember where it is, I think it's in chapter two yes, uh, verse 11 in chapter two that anyone who has an ear, listen to what the spirit is saying to the churches, whoever conquers, conquers the world, overcomes worldliness, will not be harmed by the second death. That's eternal death. And elsewhere also in uh, revelation, it speaks of the first resurrection, and I'm blanking out, I think that's. I think it's in the last chapter or two, and I'm just, oh well, here again in verse, in chapter 21, verse 8, verse 7. Those who conquer will inherit these things and I will be their God and they will be my children. Conquer will inherit these things and I will be their god and they will be my children. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death, you know, eternal death, of course, fire. One of the properties of fire is that it can totally extinguish, exterminate, annihilate something, and that's that lake of fire. Of course, the word fire also has that other meaning, not here, but it can mean to separate the pure metal from the dross, from the unwanted residue. Again in verse 14, there I see again, death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. Anyway, we can talk about this more next time. Okay, thank you all.

Henry Jason:

One last thing I just wanted to comment on I'm considering doing another Zoom series, a reading and discussion series. I'm considering doing another Zoom series, a reading and discussion series, on reading a very important book by William Shewan, the True Christian's Faith and Experience. I don't know when I'd begin this. It's not something immediate, but that's something I'm considering the more I think about it. That's a very powerful work in our world today. It's located actually on the OIM website if you go going deeper to readings, and eventually you'll find it under 17th century, early Quaker writings, and it's available in various reprints modern reprints, soft cover and hard cover. I'll put some information on that eventually, whenever we get there. So all right, right. Well, thank you, friends. Have a nice evening.

Chip Thomas:

This podcast has been a production of Ohio Yearly Meeting. It was hosted by Henry Jason and edited by Kim Palmer. The introduction and credits were read by Chip Thomas. The quote in our introduction is from the Queries and Advices section of Ohio Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline. A link to that book can be found in the show notes to this episode. We welcome feedback on this or any of our podcast episodes. We can be contacted through our website, ohioyearlymeetingorg.