In this episode Josh delves into the concept of apocalypse, not as the end of the world, but as a revelation and unveiling of deeper truths. Relating the concept to ancient literary genres and pop culture references, Josh explores the idea that our current world is concealing important realities, particularly in the realm of sexuality.
Drawing parallels between spiritual apocalypses and societal patterns, he emphasizes the need for a revelation to break free from distorted views on sex, procreation, and gender. This exploration is not merely academic; it's a quest that deepens our recognition of Jesus Christ's transformative work within us, empowering us to confront the challenges that distort our self-perception and the way we view those around us.
Join us in this insightful and thought-provoking discussion on why we need apocalypse and its significance in reclaiming sexual integrity.
Want us to talk about a specific topic? Change up the format, or just tell us the podcast rocks! We want your feedback on Becoming Whole. You can leave your feedback here
If you are in the Baltimore Area, Regeneration is happy to invite you to our 2024 Dessert Fundraiser, Spark: One Small Thing Leads to So Much More. This annual gathering is a highlight for so many as we gather for tasty desserts, heartfelt worship, vulnerable and powerful stories, and an opportunity to partner with what Jesus is doing through Regeneration. Click Here for more info or to register.
In this episode Josh delves into the concept of apocalypse, not as the end of the world, but as a revelation and unveiling of deeper truths. Relating the concept to ancient literary genres and pop culture references, Josh explores the idea that our current world is concealing important realities, particularly in the realm of sexuality.
Drawing parallels between spiritual apocalypses and societal patterns, he emphasizes the need for a revelation to break free from distorted views on sex, procreation, and gender. This exploration is not merely academic; it's a quest that deepens our recognition of Jesus Christ's transformative work within us, empowering us to confront the challenges that distort our self-perception and the way we view those around us.
Join us in this insightful and thought-provoking discussion on why we need apocalypse and its significance in reclaiming sexual integrity.
Want us to talk about a specific topic? Change up the format, or just tell us the podcast rocks! We want your feedback on Becoming Whole. You can leave your feedback here
If you are in the Baltimore Area, Regeneration is happy to invite you to our 2024 Dessert Fundraiser, Spark: One Small Thing Leads to So Much More. This annual gathering is a highlight for so many as we gather for tasty desserts, heartfelt worship, vulnerable and powerful stories, and an opportunity to partner with what Jesus is doing through Regeneration. Click Here for more info or to register.
Speaker 1:
Hey friends, we need apocalypse. That may sound stark and end of worldish apocalypse. A lot of us think of the end of the world a great cataclysm, great wars, destruction, things like that. But that's not what I mean when I say we need an apocalypse. What I mean is that we need a revelation. So the word apocalypse comes from the Greek.
Speaker 1:
Apocalypsis means uncovering disclosure. It's an alternative name or a way of thinking about the last book of the Bible, the book of revelation. An apocalypse is an ancient literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic realities to a mortal or to mortal people. The book of Revelation, the end of the Bible, is a form of that ancient literary genre. This is why John, who wrote the book of Revelation, is often called John the Seer, because apocalypsis is, in that unveiling sense, means he was given sight to see, he was given a glimpse into cosmic realities behind the visible, tangible world in which he was living, in which you and I continue to live. You get a sense of the life-changing power of apocalypse when you think about things like the curtain being pulled back on the great and terrible Oz, who ended up just being a guy in a suit pulling some levers, or when that scene in the Truman show, when Truman goes into the building he wasn't supposed to go into and clicks the elevator button, the elevator doors open and he sees these actors and actresses and film crew members just kind of lounging around and then when they see him they kind of scurry off to try to hide from him, kind of blew his world open. The visible, tangible world he was living in was blown open and there was something more. You get also the sense of apocalypse in the 1999 movie, the Matrix, one of my favorite apocalyptic movies, when Neo wakes up and he's got plugs in his arms and head and legs and he learns that he's not living in 1999. He's actually living far in the future and AI has created the world he's known to keep humanity enslaved. These are just many versions of apocalypse, but just kind of painting the picture for you about why I'm saying we need apocalypse now. Because we are living in a world where the visible, tangible world around us is hiding things from us that we actually need in order to live as we are intended to live and, of course, because it's me and we're talking to the becoming whole podcast and it's part of regeneration I'm talking about in the area of sexuality. We need an apocalypse in the area of sexuality.
Speaker 1:
Let me dive a little deeper here, because throughout Scripture and in that ancient literary genre, apocalypses are terrifying. So the vision that Daniel gets in the book of Daniel is a kind of apocalypse, and it is terrifying. And there's a description of these things he saw in the heavens, these real creatures that he had never seen on earth. You and I have never seen the likes of on earth. One that sticks with me is a creature who has eyes all over its body. So whatever way he's sitting or facing, he is looking in every direction all at once.
Speaker 1:
But God's purpose when he brings apocalypse, when he gives revelation, his purpose is not to terrify just for terror's sake. His purpose is to pull back the visible, tangible world, just enough so that we are no longer blinded from the reality that we need to see. God uses apocalypse to save us. That's what the book of Revelation is. When the prophets get a glimpse into the cosmic realities around us, it is for the purpose of salvation. It is to say wake up, because the dream world you're living in is holding you captive to an ideology quote, unquote reality that is not real and that is in fact working against you.
Speaker 1:
It is also properly understood that genre of apocalypse, especially here speaking of the book of Revelation. Properly understood, it's not a story about a one-time event. It is a story of a pattern that humanity moves into over and over again. We are living within time, but bound in that time bound world sits within eternity, which is without time, and so we are in a loop, if you will, of repeating patterns that look different from age to age but are the same kinds of spiritual battles happening again and again. As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun, and so even our current sexual situation in our culture today, as wild as it is from four or five decades ago, it is in the spiritual realm, repeating a pattern that we've been in before. Maybe not the pattern may have not been sexual before, but it is humanity trying to cast off its createdness, its creatureliness, and trying to be and create itself in its own image. This is not new.
Speaker 1:
I was recently just giving another sense of why I'm saying we need apocalypse here. I was recently watching a in some of my binging YouTube videos, which is a habit I'm not proud of, but I have been doing too much of recently I was watching some police body cam footage of an Nebrated college woman who was being arrested because she had just killed two people with her car. She had been drinking and got in her car and started driving. She was so intoxicated that she couldn't grasp the seriousness of what she had done and at one point in the fit in the footage she was even telling the officer she was kind of giddy if she was saying it she was telling the officer how she was excited she was because in a few weeks her mom was taking her to Las Vegas for a graduation present. She was so inebriated she had no clue what was really happening and what her real situation was. She needed apocalypse and in her case, apocalypse came too late.
Speaker 1:
If, just an hour earlier, one of her friends or Someone had grabbed by the shoulder and shaken her and tried to convey to her the terrifying reality that was unfolding in front of her, that was going to unfold if she kept down this path, everything could have been different for her and for the people that she killed and their families. It was actually a horrible video to watch, just so, so troubling haunting really and I'd suggest to you that today the culture that we're living is is holding Fast to versions of human sexuality, a lot like this woman was holding on to her quote-unquote reality Only where she was inebriated with vodka. We are reeling under the spell of some unseen spiritual realities, spiritual powers that are that are really marring and fogging up our collective understanding of what it means to be male and female, what marriage means, what sex is about, what procreation is about. We are living in a world that that is, in fact, a dream world. Just a couple quick examples, and I'm not trying to spell all this out for you. I'm not gonna spell it all out for you in this, but I want to. I want to invite you.
Speaker 1:
The purpose of my, of this podcast, is to Is to invite you to ask Jesus, to be asking Jesus. Lord, rend the veil and show us what is real, show us what is true. So, for example and I've talked about this on this podcast before, and I've talked about it before because it it is to me one of the clearest examples of how we are living in this fog we and I think, well, we are living in a world that has separated, that is, that is dissected sex from procreation, and we no longer see sex and procreation as as belonging together. We see them together, their togetherness is an option, not a an inherent ontological reality. We see them procreation as something that is Either bothersome to sex something that we, you know it's too bad that sex involves procreation or we see it as a desired outcome for some, when in fact, the act of sex between man and woman is, by its very nature, by its very design, intended to create the environment in which new life can be conceived Every time. That's the way that God designed it, and I don't mean that that every time a man and woman have sex they're gonna get pregnant. But the design is that there is a potential, a potential for procreation when a man and woman have sex. And what? Historically? We might look back and say well, what? What changed? That was the legalization and the widespread proliferation and acceptance of contraception. And I would say, sociologically, that is a historical reality. We have seen a shift in, in our kind of collective mindset around sex Because of the legalization of contraception.
Speaker 1:
But the divorce, the incision line between sex and procreation, was not just a sociological happenstance. I am fully convinced it was actually, and will continue to be, something that the enemy of our souls himself. God's enemy wants to divorce our sense, our felt sense, our experiential sense of sex and procreation. Because if he can get us to forget those two, belong together and live in a world in which that togetherness is an option, then he has in fact gutted meaning of sex. And when he guts the meaning of sex, he guts the meaning of our bodies, and so we no longer understand what it is to be a man, what it is to be a woman. And when he has gutted the meaning of our bodies, he then in turn, what is gutted is our own sense of dignity and self-worth as men and as women. And our bodies, as Linda Noble and Linda Stort put it in their book, become accessories to us, just things that we wear, but not a part of who we are, and certainly not something that gives us dignity. So all that to say, all that to say.
Speaker 1:
My hope is that I'm just beginning to scratch the surface a little bit for you and I get kind of a picture of you know, if you buy a lottery ticket and you kind of scratch that little gray stuff off. This is just scratching the surface. There's so much more here and it's not something that we're just going to get cognitively. It's not just a lesson, although if you want to begin to scratch that itch a bit more, I would highly recommend to you that you become a student of what's called the theology of the body. Pick up one of the many books written about theology of the body. Most especially, you might start with Christopher West's work. He's got a relatively new book called Our Bodies Tell God's Story. It's an excellent, excellent place to start, but he's written so much that's so valuable to us in helping to scratch that off.
Speaker 1:
And I am also convinced that we don't just need more information. We actually need revelation. Not just information, but revelation, because we need our heads and our hearts connected to this reality. We need to experience even viscerally, experience, bodily experience something of the truth of who God has made us to be and the darkness that is encroaching our own sense and sensibilities around who we are. And if you are a man or woman who is pursuing sexual integrity in your life, this is going to take you so far.
Speaker 1:
So, lord Jesus, would you grant us apocalypse, or would you grant us a rending of the veil, just a peek behind the veil? Lord, I pray for each man or woman listening that you would begin to open their own senses to some of the deeper reality of who they are as a man or as a woman, lord, that their eyes would be open to the reality of man and woman and the people around them. They would begin to see others, lord, as your image bearers, whose bodies are an outward expression of the true reality of who they are, and they, in turn, lord, would have a greater appreciation for you, lord, jesus Christ, and for all that you've done. Lord. I pray the same for me, lord. Have mercy on us. We've become blind. Open our eyes, we want to see. Pray this in your name, father, son, holy Spirit, amen.