What's The Point Anyway - Hashing Out Differences Over a Glass of Scotch with Nigel Taylor

In this engaging conversation, I sit down with Nigel Taylor to explore the complexities of faith, doubt, and personal belief. 
Nigel and I agree on a lot, but we disagree on lots too and often debate vigorously with each other. We decided that the best way to hash out these differences was over a glass of scotch and some honest conversation.
We discussed Nigel's journey from Christianity to atheism and back, the role of scripture in navigating life's challenges, and the impact of personal experiences on faith. Nigel delves into near-death experiences, the importance of historical context in understanding religious texts, and the growing skepticism towards modern narratives. Throughout, we emphasize the significance of asking questions and seeking truth in a complex world. 
We get into the doctrine of the Trinity, and the implications of these beliefs on Christianity. We discuss the importance of understanding evil and spiritual warfare, the role of angels and demons, and the necessity of sound doctrine in the faith. 

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Chapters

• 1:00 Introduction and Background
• 6:27 Questioning Faith and Beliefs
• 17:59 The Journey from Belief to Atheism
• 32:38 The Tipping Point Back to Faith
• 45:51 Contrarian Views and Scriptural Orthodoxy
• 54:28 Contrarian Views and Spiritual Experiences
• 1:14:32 Covenant Creation and Genesis Interpretation
• 1:25:47 The Future of Full Preterism

Transcript

0:00

I'll say give or take, but. Welcome back to what's the point anyway. My guest tonight is Nigel Taylor, a grumpy old man from Adelaide, South Australia. A little bit of background. I was introduced to Nigel via Nigel, sorry, introduced to Nigel via Rick Welch, previous guest of ours who connected us and we did a video call together. So I've never met Nigel in, in person that we have spoken over the phone before and then we're mates on Facebook now and we argue a lot. So what I thought, what I wanted to get out of tonight's session is show that there's two people that can have very, very similar worldviews, but a lot of difference on the nuance. But I think, you know, yet another example of a way that we can have disagreement, but get on and have a bit of laugh, the laugh in the process. So Nigel and I did agree, as we were sort of discussing this and we were talking about, you know, people debating over, you know, this, that and the other that often if you're sort of in person and had a glass of Scotch or whiskey together, you'd get on much better. So we agreed in this conversation to have a whiskey. So my first question to everyone always is what's the point anyway? But before that, Nigel, I'm gonna ask, what are you drinking tonight? American honey actually, that's yeah. So that's, I've already had a few, so yeah. Perfect, well I'm just going to pour myself one of my better ones, I've a McCallum 21 years. Yeah, my car's broken down at the moment, so I normally get a Glen Fidic, but I just sort of, I only get this, so yeah. Cheers. Absolutely. So tell me mate, what's the point anyway? It's a question I've often asked during my life, during my journey, what's the point? My life led me down many, many tracks I never intended to go down. So yeah, it's been a very interesting, interesting ride. Have you answered it? I've still got many questions I can't answer and I probably will never be able to. And I think being a Christian too, there's certain questions you're not allowed to ask, but I do anyway. It's sort of, yeah. What do you mean by that? What do you think is the question you're allowed to ask? certain metaphysical things. I, mean, you know, a bit of my history, how I departed my Christian faith, which is something I never thought I would have done. I've been, there's no way, but I did. And after trying atheism out for a while and will we when that happens? Well, I'm 68 now, 69 this year. So it was in 2014. So that's yeah, 11, almost 11 years ago now. I was still young back then, know, a young man full of wild dreams. Now I'm grumpy old man. When I parked myself on being agnostic, it was a real freedom, because I was able to explore a lot of things, questions I had as a believer, but I wasn't going to go there because I thought God was going to strike me dead with a lightning bolt for daring to ask certain questions. There's things now I wonder about, because I know what the scripture says about when you die, you either go to one place or another, or if you're a full preterist, there is no other kind of, you there's just, you're dying, that's it. But there's things like near death experiences that fascinate me, deathbed experiences. Like if you see a ghost or a spirit, which... which I have back when I was 14, my deceased great grandmother appeared in front of me all of sudden one day and all of her, I mean, she was there, you know? And the stock standard Christian thing, well, that's a demon impersonating. And I bought into that and I started asking, well, what if it's not? What if it's genuine? What if it is real? And so people have near death experiences which are right across the world. It's not a recent. Phenomena, phenomenon, whatever you call, but it's been recorded in ancient times too. And there's a similarity to it. One of the things I wondered about, because after they've gone through this tunnel and they the light and they meet deceased family members who are not Christians, but they're happy and they're full of love and blah, blah, blah. And I think, what is that? You know, like, and to talk about that, you get met with, that's demonic. You know, that's that sort of thing. But I've sort of, I've got questions around those areas. Like, just what is that, you know? Yeah, because I mean, if you jump onto, you know, and people have gone down different rabbit holes, but, some people, you know, you mentioned near death experience, I've been like, oh yeah, yeah, I've looked into this and others have like, what are you talking about? But I mean, if you jump on YouTube and just type in near death experiences, you know, there's, there's millions of videos and I'm similar to you on it. And I haven't, I haven't gone too deep into it, but there is millions of videos of people that have nearly died or died and been bought back. And there's an, there's an incredible uniformity about what happened to them in that period of time. And it's not a Christian phenomenon by any means, know, people of all different faiths. What do you think's going on? I don't know. One of the questions I've had, one of the questions when I first started questioning things back in the nineties and I stopped myself off, I no, God's going to strike me dead. You know, sort of thing. My question was, okay, there's no salvation outside of Christ, but what about people who've never heard of Christ, never heard the gospel and cause being a Calvinist, can sort of answer that. Well, they're not elect and not chosen. So, but Still, I wondered, even to this day, I wondered. So it's interesting how things worked with me when I'm thinking about things. And I'm actually really praying and asking God for, know, well, what about this and that, you know? And all of a sudden, this thought came to my mind of a particular book I've got by J.C. Ryle called Not-Sung Tides. I learned an interesting, I've had this happen many times. I'll pull out a book and out this one of the... Well, the great J.C. Ryle in a book has this same dilemma. What about those people? And you just said, I don't know. And I think you got to leave it there. I don't know. yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I... My view on a lot of these things is that, and this has helped me a lot with, you know, I mean, I've only been Christian three years. I haven't gone anywhere near the journey that you have. I mean, I've, I mean, I compressed a lot into the, my life before that, let me tell you, but, but in terms of the Christian walk, what's given me a lot of clarity is this idea that the Bible isn't a book about absolutely everything, never intended to be. And I think, I think that scares a lot of Christians to think that they think that every answer to every single thing is in there. And I mean, you can see that from a really basic perspective. And you talk about, know, oh, how am meant to act as a husband and a father? Yeah, pretty cool things. What, you know, what am I meant to do with work? Like, I mean, the Bible's pretty, you know, it gives you a few verses here and there, but it goes into no prescriptive detail whatsoever about how to deal with sort of family disputes and You know, things like this. And so I now have a lot of comfort in knowing that there's a lot of topics that it just doesn't cover. It's not meant to cover. It's talking about sort of our covenant relationship with God and the redemptive history of mankind. there is a, for me, there's a sense of peace that comes with knowing that, there's questions that I don't think we do have the answer to. And I think the search to find the answer to everything can kill people. Yeah. I've had a few marriages and a few divorces under my belt. And I'm like Rick Welch actually, because we're very in that thing. And I've struggled with that because of what Jesus said about divorce and remarriage. But Jesus doesn't cover all the different scenarios that happen. I mean, you've got what Jesus says, but then you've got life that happens to you. And it's like, and you've got to navigate that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I what is the, what is the, I mean, this is a question that gets leveled at Christians a lot. And I mean, I discussed it sort of early days of my faith and my answer was bad because, and I think it was now wrong that, you know, what does the, what does the woman do? Who's got a husband who's physically and sexually abusing her. You know, it says, you you only divorced for, um, you know, adultery. That's the, that's the only clause, you know, so I think the marriages that go on. in these Christian sort of churches where the wife saw, you know, I've just got to stick with the man. know a friend who was a victim of this, you know, the daughter of someone in that who, you know, they kept at the marriage because, you know, in their mind, the Bible said nothing about leaving a husband unless he actually cheats on you. But I don't think that's the case at all. And the more I think about it, I think the real lesson of that was the divorce bill God gave to old covenant Israel, you know, to allow him to marry the bride of Christ. But yeah, I think when we read it as this sort of bone dry book, that's an instruction manual on anything, most Christians, the longer you live, you're more like, well, hang on, what's the answer on this one? Well, the first time I actually raised a real fisticod is that my first marriage ended in 1989. Now we had six children together and that marriage ended in, there's very few people I talked to about what happened. And the end result, the family law court gave me full legal custody of my children and gave her limited access under supervision. Anyway, it's very serious issue. says a bit without going any further into it. Yeah. be given that. So anyway, but when the marriage first in, I was 33. I remember this night very well, I was laying in bed, I'm 33. And I'd always held that marriage divorce for you, that Jesus, like, if you remarry, you're adultery, you do, go to hell sort of thing. But here I was, and I was lying in bed and I said, God, I'm 33 years old. And I'll be honest here. I said, I have a raving sex drive. What am I supposed to do with this? Because if I remarry, I'm going to go to hell because I'm getting adultery. And I said to God, get out of my life, get lost. said, I'm going to go to hell, so what? I'm going to go and have a good time. And I did. mean, but that's the first time because I couldn't. But anyway. were an atheist then, right? The atheist, no, no, no. What happened to me in marriage, I won't say, but it just rocked me. to this day, there's things going on from it all these years later. But anyway, over my years of trying to research this issue, because I mean, I had a real dog in the race now. I've had four marriages and I've had four divorces. I mean, number two was a stupid rebound. Number three, I had red lights going off and I should have not, but I did. But my number four, I thought I had it made and she was, that was forever. And she just out of the blue pulled the pin and to this day I'm thinking, I still don't know. But that was 2014. But all of my reading and researching, the Puritans of all people. I mean, the Puritans. were very pastoral in their, how they handled these things. And they certainly allowed divorces and even for the guilty party like the adulterer after they genuinely repented and blah, blah, blah, allowed them to remarry. They said, it's better to marry than the new alternative. You'll just, and so, yeah. So these are things I've kind of wrestled with in my walk here. Yeah, where where what's your wherever you landed on the divorce and marriage question. I've seen something in 1 Corinthians 7 that no one else has seen or claimed to have seen except good old Albert Barnes in Barnes notes. And I noticed the verse in there where Paul says, I'm calling King James here, you know, are you bound to a wife seek not to be loosed? Are you loosed from a wife, seek not a wife? but if you marry, you've not sinned. It jumped out at me years ago that, and I looked at it in the Greek, what it reads, and it's talking about being loose from a wife. It's the word used in the Greek for tethering an animal to a post. So the animal is bound. And when you untie, it is loose. So this is saying, are you bound to a wife? Which means you've had a wife. Are you loose from a wife? Which means you had a wife, now you don't. So you're divorced. Yeah. And I looked at that and people, I mean, people say, you know, well, Paul wouldn't contradict Jesus, but there's two different audiences here. Paul's not talking to the Jew, he's talking to Gentiles who had probably been married and divorced before they came to Christ anyway. And I think that that's kind of, and I checked out the commentaries and when commentators can see something, they know what it means, they won't touch it and they skip over. Yeah. But good old Barnes, says, hmm, all seems to be saying. So I thought, yeah, someone else has seen it. you knew. Anyway, so that's been part of it. But I mean, at my age now, I mean, it's something that's not on my mind like it used to be. Yeah, you're not gonna go fifth time around. I don't plan it. But it's, yeah, but it's something I've kind of looked at, you know, because I had a dog in the race and the particular church I go to, the pastor's got the views, it's a reformed Baptist church. As far as, I've never talked to him about my situation. He knows I'm divorced, but that's all he knows. But from what I understand, what he teaches is my first wife is my real wife in the sight of God. Yeah. and though she's been married multiple times and divorced, that I should go back to her, like no way. yeah, yeah, yeah. So how have you ended up? Cause you you strike me as a contrarian and you're not squeaky clean Christian, nor am I, nor is anyone. And I think that's the great misconception of what Christianity really is. Like, look at it, my most recent guest was Ward Fenley and. He articulated it really well, this sort of judgmental Christianity and, you know, taking the log out of your own eye before you, you you focus on the, what's it called? What was it in the other person's eye? or the, the spec, yeah. Yeah. And for me, the power of the new covenant is, and this is what I wish I would hear pastors jumping up and down, screaming on the pulpit, is that what the new covenant is, think, Romans 8.1 says it, you there's no condemnation in Christ. Now it's not a license to just go and do what you want to do. You you do it. If you didn't want to be Christian, if you don't want to follow Christ, you've been married four times and divorced. You just go away, you what do you continue? But it's more like, yeah, I've done these things, but God loves me and I love God. You know, and that's the power of it. It's not this, it's not this moralism. during that 10 year period, when I became an atheist and I did it deliberately, I went into it, I really went into it and I became a hard-nosed, angry atheist and I became a really good apologist for atheism. In fact, I actually had a con. were you prettiest before that? Yeah. that's one of the things that pushed me. Because I push everything to us to its logical conclusion. And it was I was looking at Don Preston and Ed Stevens at the time. Yeah. Don Preston did my head in. Ed Stevens, I agreed with him, but I wanted, I couldn't see the evidence, the proof for what the claim of what had happened in that 66, 70 AD period. And I was reading Bart Ehrman at the time, you I read everything that Bart Ehrman had written and I was exploring all of that. And I've still got questions around some of those things that Ehrman talks about, but. There was a particular moment I remember I absolutely said to God, that's it, I don't believe in you anymore. So I'm talking to someone I don't believe in anymore. But I remember exactly, I was the term, that's it, I'm out of here. I don't believe in you anymore. And I became so angry because all over the years I've been a Christian. I've spent untold thousands of dollars on books and all sorts of materials, study materials, and I wasted. And I had a facsimile production, I mean, not just a normal facsimile, of an original first edition 1611 King James. It was a massive, and it was all handmade. It was handmade, all the materials, the original was made, and it was worth a fortune and out of anger. what's that worth? lot of money now, but out of anger, I just, sold it for a song. Get this. And I had so many books. I just threw out and I'm glad I lot of books I didn't throw out. I went for it. I was angry. I've been deceived. I wasted my life, you know? Yeah. What did, so what did, what did you, like there was obviously a few things that tipped you over, but where did you get to? Did you get to that sort of Israel only position where the Bible was just a story about a mythical story about Israel, which is where a lot of it, no. when I, I started out as a partial preterist and my entrance was by Gary DeMar and I absolutely embraced it because I'd seen these time texts since I've been 14 years old. I just noticed them. started noticing them and over the decades I noticed them and I think, and I never swallowed the explanations, we'll see, near soon shortly. doesn't mean this, you know, and all the audience relevance and the this thing. And it really for us. these non-believing Christian scholars go to town on. Yo, is it? I mean, I watched a video recently from a guy who's, don't know if he's a believer or not. I don't think he puts forward his case, but he says, you know, the imminence is clear. But then he says, and then Christianity in the mid, you know, in the second century had to deal with how to create this new religion when the time statements didn't happen. yeah, yeah. I mean, just jump me ahead. mean, there are things that Bart Ehrman hooks onto those. And if you ever heard of Rabbi Tovia Singer, you know, with Jews for Judaism, he knows the New Testament better than most Christians do. And that's where he takes people to look at all these. And as Bart Ehrman said, you know, Jesus failed to appear. And that's the conclusion that I came to that it didn't happen. was a failed event and that the gospels were written after the event and so they're just putting words in Jesus' mouth and all that sort of thing. So I really pushed that to the max and I became convinced that the whole thing never happened and if it never happened then the whole New Testament just completely falls over. Now my wife at the time, she was a really strong Christian. And I remember we were driving up the Sunshine Coast one day, going up there, and she's the first person ever that I started voicing these doubts that I've been having over time, things I was seeing in the scriptures. And she was all ears. She was interested, like it was wow, like, you know, like, and... it, that's not the response you'd expect from a Christian, right? No, but so she saw it all. She actually saw it. Like she was on the seat. So we both become Calvinist before that. And she saw it and said, yeah, she embraced it. And so then when I came into partial preterism and we looked at that together, because I grabbed hold of Gary DeMars DVDs, know, that teaching series on understanding Bible prophecy, we sat down and watch those. She was wowed in the last day's madness and stuff and she saw it. But then when I started just pushing things and like just pushing it, cause I disagreed with Gary DeMar back then. I said, he's being inconsistent. He's not now. I said, he's still trying to have a future, yet future second coming. But I could see that there was only one second coming and there was not, and I saw that. And I knew Gary DeMar would eventually, being who he is, would kind of change on that. But my wife got to the stage, like she was challenging the pastors at church, and they were just fobbing her off. This was a reformed Baptist church up in Brisbane. But in the end, she said to me, I thought I married a Christian, because I kind of jumped ship by then. And she couldn't handle the fact that odd abandoned my faith, though she had said to me that she said that she had many doubts herself. And because now odd forced them that she was starting to voice her doubts that she had, you know, she couldn't handle the fact. But I think she was looking for a way out anyway. was sort of that. That's really what happened. Yeah. But anyway, but yeah. Yeah. So is your position because there's, yeah, there's a bunch of, I mean, a lot of the world just haven't read the gospels and they're like, just believe in basically whatever secular society sort of tells them to do. But then there are a lot of people that are well read on the, on the scriptures and have different positions and There's people that go sort of Israel only to say that this is sort of just a story about Israel and that the Israelites used for themselves. then there's people that say that Jesus was, and this is probably the Bart Ehrman position, a great teacher and a really interesting person who lived and was crucified, whose message was taken out of context and actually it wasn't supernatural or divine. Well, he describes him as a failed apocalyptic prophet. That's where he places him here. And then the next lot of people are the, that pushed the sort of conspiracy bandwagon that essentially he's sort of a Jesus was a Roman, Roman invention and the whole lot was a conspiracy and you got to, and it's interesting. I mean, I love a good conspiracy, I've, I think the lengths you need to go to look at that conspiracy are pretty insane. So then you become an apologist for atheists. What's your worldview at that point in time? Did you have an explanation for things? The thing is, I was fighting against what I could see, because when I was living up in Brisbane, I was living on the bay side. And so, you know, I was going out for 10 kilometer runs every day. And out in the bay was all these islands out there. And if I go up at four in the morning, I used to watch the sunrise coming over the islands and all this. And there was so much evidence that there's something, but I was fighting against that sort of. For a while there, watched, what's his name? He's dead now. Carl, was a Carl, the original Cosmos series way, way back. Sagan, and about how the universe just is. And I thought, made sense, it just is. mean, it's the way it operates, it operates, it just is. And I started looking at this thing called nothingness and it's impossible to have nothing. And I started thinking, if God thought that's it, I've had enough, so God uncreated everything and committed suicide himself, then there's nothing. But nothing is still something, there's still something there. You can't have nothing. And so this idea of the universe just is, I thought that was quite appealing. I thought, yeah, I could look into that. And I didn't know there was a whole science looking at this thing about nothingness, you know, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause you, mean, you're, think you and I both share this personality trait that we have just sort of like a voracious appetite for asking questions and seeking answers and only stopping when we're comfortable with the answers that we're given. How long did you last in atheism? And then when, how'd you end up getting back to Christianity? probably lasted atheism 12, 18 months maybe. And because of where I was living up in Southeast Queensland, and of going up and up into the glasshouse mountains and stuff and you know the sunshine, just the beauty it grabbed me. And I thought there has to be a creator, there has to be. Anyway, this one person who I converted to atheism from Christianity was my only convert ever. And he's the arguer for the existence of God. I said, your argument is really good, but you can't prove that the God of the scriptures is that God. How can you prove that Yahweh is that God? I mean, you're just assuming it is, but that's what you can't prove, you know? And at the time he argued against it. then, anyway, fair while later, after all of our backwards and forwards, he also jumped ship. Yeah, because I think the argument is that, think the same, like I think the idea of trying to argue the existence of Jesus is a bit of a fruitless one. I don't think that's how people find faith. I think faith is something far greater than that. But if I'm having this, if I'm putting on my sort of secular hat and trying to just debate on logic, the easiest starting point is the proof of an intelligent designer. You know, I think, I think if anyone's really pushed you sit down, you can sort of, can see it. This, this idea that nah, you know, everything came from nothing just really doesn't make sense. You see the beauty and perfection in everything. But then the big question is, and this is, this is where I think, you know, you can hear some, listen to Israel only guys and whatever, and they'll make really strong arguments in the negative. But once they start to have to get into positive and explain their position, they sound a whole lot less intelligent. And the question then is, okay, well, there is an intelligence. Well, is that intelligent designer got any interest in revealing themselves to this creation or they just do it for a kick and never presented themselves. So then that for me is when it gets really down to say, well, if that's the case, then there's only a few options in play and the gospels are sort of top of that list. What made you then believe again? So you couldn't get out of your head that they'd been a creator, but what's next? Why'd you then reconsider these scriptures that you'd abandoned? I think in 2016 I remember this. I remember being in my bedroom. and because you know I was on my own then and I've been wrestling with a lot of this stuff in my head. And I just cried out and I said, God, if you are there, you know, and you know what's going on inside of me. And I don't know how to resolve. My big thing I couldn't resolve was the failed second coming of Christ. That's what I couldn't resolve. And you, but you knew, so you knew Don Preston and so forth at this point. So you, you're aware of the full Preterist arguments. Yeah, well, I came into, yeah, so when I flipped, I was watching Morning Musings back in 2013, I think, 14. I was aware of Ed Stevens, because I bought this book on the Rapture back then. I had some DVDs of conferences that Ed Stevens and others had spoken at. So I became full Preterist, and that's what pushed me, that's what. As far as the New Testament goes, that's what caused me to sort of push that to its nth degree. I didn't agree with how Don Preston kind of spiritualized things. But Ed Stevens, I agree with what he was saying. But my big thing is, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence? Because the scripture speaks about, well, Jesus is the second coming. You look at it, just it's going to be visible, loud, noisy. Every eye will see him. this earth shattering event and it was just invisible. mean, that's, and I thought, could God leave us with no evidence, like sort of thing? And I was aware of what Josephus said he saw and others said about, you know, that there's chariots and the soldiers in the sky and all these sorts of things. I thought, yeah, I don't know. Where's the evidence for such a, a, a, a monumentous event such as this? And I thought it's just not there. And Cause I was listening to Bart Ehrman at that time. And I was really, I was hooked into him because I was told, don't read him, don't read him. You'll lose your faith if you read Bart Ehrman. But he made a lot of sense, like, he does. But I, in 2016, I sort of tried to return to my faith. It just didn't last. So I moved back to Adelaide in 2016 and I started going back to church, but all these other questions and stuff was still there and I just couldn't, and I thought, no, I just couldn't do it. I'd made two or three attempts at returning to my faith. I just could not do it. just, I just, in all honesty, I couldn't do it. And I thought the only intellectually honest, position to sit on was to be agnostic. So thought, how can God expect us to know what we can't know? Like, how can we? It's impossible. And I know others have since discovered, many others have asked that same thing. Well, how can God expect us to know what we don't know, what we can't know? Yeah. So then what from like, what next from agnostic? I'm trying to work, I'm trying to work out that tipping point that brings you back in. What's Christianity? Yeah, yeah. Every now and then I would, cause you know, where I live, you know, I live on 24 acres and I walk around here. I walk outside sometimes. I just calling out to God, if you're there, like you just answer me. Like, you know, I need these answers. And I kept on saying, know what the stumbling stone is for me. And it's just, I get what happened. It was in... I think it was. 2023, I forget what happened exactly. But I just, I was wrestling with all these things, thinking about these things. I don't know whether it's something I saw on YouTube or something, but I just found myself, I don't know, just kind of been flipped around. This is very Calvinistic. One thing I've discovered is that as much as I tried to shake God off, I tried to get rid of him, he would not let go of me. Yeah. just wouldn't. Oh no, is a memory back when I was 33. I told him to take a hike. That's it. I'm going to hell. don't care. Leave me alone. So we have nightclubbing. My brother's marriage had ended too. I've never had a nightclub in my life. I got married as a teenager, you know. So we have nightclubbing and stuff like that. I wanted to dance for even a good time and I can't explain this, but like God showed up. I just, his presence. And I remember saying, I thought I told you to leave me alone. But he would not leave me alone. He just wouldn't leave me alone. You know, it's just... And so that was only a year and a half ago that you came back. Well then, I jumped ship again after that. for a brief period, because all these questions kept on coming up. But I just couldn't shake the conviction that I knew that what was in the scriptures was real. So I started just putting some things aside that I couldn't answer. I said, okay, then I can't answer these things at the moment. One of the things I think that kept on bringing my mind back to the scriptures was Romans one. because the way the world is now, it's not a prophecy, it's a description of a people or a culture that tells God to take a hike. And I couldn't deny this. So Romans 1 was kind of nagging at my brain. Probably down all over those years, I could see it. Yeah. Cause what is your, I mean, what is your sort of, you know, saying you're Christian is one thing, but there's lots of Christians and very different worldviews. like, how do you, what's your view on the world? How do you see, how do you see things? How do you approach things? It's something I don't know, because I look out at the world the way it is. And I've often prayed, like, what's it in Second Chronicles, where it spoke about the men of Issachar, they were men of understanding. They understood the times and what Israel should do. And I've often prayed, Lord, know, where are we in history? What's going on out there? I don't know. Okay, the world's largely, you know, the Western nations, you look at what's happening in England at the moment, you look at America, you look at everywhere. Christianity is in serious decline in the West. But there are still faithful believers. And like Abraham, said to God about Sodom and Gomorrah, we've got it down, well if there's still, what's it, 10? And God says, yeah, for 10 people, I won't destroy it. So God does have his faithful people there, and we're probably still the salt that's holding back what God really wants to do. Yeah, yeah, I mean, do you see yourself as a conservative, a progressive? I mean, those terms are a bit, they're getting more and more ridiculous now, because I don't even know what either stand for. Like, where do you sit on it? I do fall on the conservative side. I'm not like a real fundamentalist, I'm not a real fire breathing fundamentalist, but I'm nowhere near the progressive side of things. I think one of my issues I've got with full preterism is that And especially, suppose, the corporate body view side of things. Because what I've just seen online, they've just thrown out too much. It's like the last 2000 years act like what would they have known? So we're standing on the shoulders of giants. Yeah, yeah. I would phrase it a little bit differently, but for the people listening to this that have never met us, this is an area of our great dispute is that we see this individual and I'm sure we'll get into it. But just saying that you're a full preterist can have very, different meanings. Just like saying you're a Christian can have very, different meanings. Well, in fact, the latest work by Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar, those two volume works. I kind of call myself a biblical preterist rather than a full preterist. And that's the way I look at my Calvinism now. I'm a biblical Calvinist rather than a five-point Calvinist. sort of, yeah, I mean, I don't worship the past as far as that goes, but I think people have been to and it's, it's not just just within full preterism on the outside of that. So, so much of the church is sort of as as an unhitched itself from the past. It's like, you know, what would they know, sort of thing. But like when you read, you know, you know, what Calvin's institutes and stuff like that, think, wow, he was 26 years old when he first started that. I mean, What was I doing when I was 26? Man, you think, you know. But these, so what you get when you ask you read these ancient writings, you think these were theological giants. They're like, you don't agree with everything they say, most things. But I think there are a lot of great battles fought, a lot of very important theological battles that were fought back then. was kind of almost like, well, there was at times. There's bloodshed over these things. Like there's a reason that the Trinity is in the Athanasian Creed. I didn't tell this to be a good idea just to write the Trinity. There's a whole history behind it. And I think a lot of people throw things out without understanding those things that, know, why there were these great, like the Council of Nicaea or all these, you know, all these. you know, the very, you know, what do call them? The simmards and stuff like that, where these things were kind of thrashed out. So I think a lot of people don't know what they're talking about when they sort of throw the past out. it's, yeah, I just think there's some, we need to be very, very careful because it's like, it's like saying to the last 2000 years, all that I mean, what was God doing with his church? What was Christ doing with his church? And one of the gifts that are given to us by the Holy Spirit are these teachers. I mean, so these men like Calvin and whoever, mean Luther and blah, blah, blah. I mean, they were great teachers, you know? It doesn't mean you have to agree with everything that they say. But I think a lot of people haven't sort of read those works. They don't know what they were saying. Yeah. Yeah. think, mean, my perspective on it is not so much that they're thrown out. just have, I'm extremely skeptical on recorded history. And I've just seen it too much in recorded history over the last five years, let alone last 20. And then if I start going back centuries and a thousand years, 2000, I, I take a lot of things with a grain of salt. And that's not to dismiss them, I think there's truths within it. But I struggled to build an entire case on any recorded history. I just know, I've just seen too much evidence that I can't see that I can't throw out in terms of how history can be manipulated. Cause I mean, I see this one thing I'm trying to, I'd love to work out. with you seeing sort of the way you engage with things is, yeah, I've seen your posts on things like COVID and climate change and so forth. I'm pretty sure we're pretty heavily aligned on that. And you had that time going off the Christian train and exploring everything. What sort of, you know, how far down every various rabbit hole have you gone down? What's the, what are some of the more like extreme, you know, or contrarian views that you hold on the world? There's something going on in the world. There's something controlling it. There is definitely something going on. Yeah. I'm not one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, but I do hold conspiracy theorists. And I've been looking at this stuff. look, I guess happened back in the seventies when our second child got vaccinated. And we didn't know this was an injury from vaccine. So my son had really bad heat convulsions and it kept on happening. And what he didn't know was the vaccinations. And so he got his next lot of dough and he had really severe, he these convulsions all the time. And I think he almost died once, had to get him more than once, called for an ambulance and stuff like that. Then when our next child, another son, he got his first shot. He was born in 70, I forget, seven or something like that. Yeah. he started having convulsion and I thought, wow, there's something going on here. So our first child is a daughter, so she's born 72, she had hers, fine, nothing. So I think something's going on here, so I thought that's it, no more, no more, no more vaccinations. And we had friends who, That was, so you're an anti-vaxxer. Well, before it was cool to be an anti-vaxxer. yeah, yeah. So we had, we were in the Seventh Day Venice Church at the time. And the couple there we were friends with, he was a chiropractor and his wife was an anthropopath. So well before the internet, so they were giving us books on, we thought, wow, this is really interesting, you know. And so that's when I... had that personal experience yourself. Yeah. And sort of way up the road now, I've got a grandson who's 14, is very autistic. And I've never spoken to my son about that, because they're not anti-vax. And I've never mentioned it, but I suspect that's where that's come from. I have a granddaughter in Melbourne who was airlifted to hospital back when she was little, was vaccinated, she had a really severe reaction to it. I think she nearly died. Yeah. but her, her mother's a nurse and she refused to believe it was, it was the vaccine. So back then, and I had, I had a friend who was a real, real, um, self confess, proud conspiracy theorist and told me about things like, you know, the fake moon landing, all this sort of stuff we'd, we'd talk about. So I kind of got into that stuff back then and all about the, you know, the new world order. But you see all the stuff with, they were talking about then. You seem playing out now, you know, like. yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a lot less controversial to hold any of these positions now. Like, I mean, the rate of change on what would be considered a wild view versus now the average person like, yeah, I can sort of, I mean, you know, what you've just described with your kids and the vaccines. I mean, if you said that in 2018, people like this guy, it's just a complete nut job. By 2023, 20... for, you know, now, you know, yeah, I can buy that, you know, it's sort of that makes sense. So what I'm trying to wrap my head around with in our discussions is you seem to be very comfortable being contrarian in a lot of things, but then when it comes to the scriptures and positions, you really tend to want to hold a comfortable orthodox view. which is hard in full preterism, which Christians understand, yeah. It is. I don't hold the orthodox views just for the sake of holding them. I mean, so I think one of you, like you may have noticed, I came out strongly against what Shade Stone was saying. In fact, was, I think it was me who started the thing. And there are a couple of very, very well known for Preterus who got in touch with me and you know who they were. And they encouraged me go after him. He's teaching heresy. Others, I first stumbled across, I noticed he was, I haven't, I think I've seen one interview with Shadestone. I haven't followed too much more. I've never met him, so I can only say too much. But what's his main position? He's universalist and non Jesus' deity. he was very covertly promoting universalism. He hadn't come right out and said it, but I noticed it. one particular private group I'm in, I just mentioned that I think he's teaching universalism. And so someone else checked out a particular video reference here. I think you're right. You're onto something there. But then he went from that teaching. And what he was teaching on the Trinity, because Back in the early days, when I actually came out of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and I came out of it because of what the scriptures say, and I was in a real dilemma what the Seventh-day Adventist Church was teaching or what the scriptures were teaching. And I saw what the scriptures were teaching were opposite to what the adventures were taking. And I made a real decision back then that it had to be according to the scriptures. The scriptures had to be the standard by which you judge everything, you know, whether something's true or false. Well, back in that time, one of my sisters, she was a Mormon and she lived in America. She was a Mormon missionary and she met her husband in America. she wound up over there for 20 years. And I had dealings with Jehovah's Witnesses and who were teaching against the Trinity. In fact, I actually was in my I actually organized a public meeting back then, you know, and back in before the internet, before any digital. So I to hire a hall, hire a projector, hire the movie, you know, the rules and stuff like that. And it was, it was exposing all some, some of these things. And I became, I'm aware of the arguments that Jehovah's Witnesses and the Christadelphians and others use against the trinities. Yeah. listening to Shade Stone and I'm thinking he's using the same arguments. So on one side of his mouth he says he's not denying the Trinity, but on the other side he is. so, he's using, so, and because I'm familiar with how these cults do this, he's using the same passages, the same verses. We see he's not teaching against the Trinity, but he was. And so, you know, I sort of recognized what he was doing because I was familiar with these other groups who do it. And he's missing out a lot of stuff he could have presented that if you're going to defend the Trinity, you need to look at other passages. And I noticed he was doing the same with the Deity of Jesus. He was using the same arguments that the Jehovah's Witnesses were using. Yes, he is God, but... Yeah. not God as the father is God. So he's like a God with a small G like the J Dub's. And I just recognize what he was doing. others had also, because I'd sort of, I became quite vocal about it. And others were said, they, because then it made them look at look at Shade Stone's teaching videos on YouTube. And they said, you know, that's what he's doing. I think Rick Welch noticed that too, and we had a conversation about that. But others have kind of defended him, and well, that's okay if they want to, but it's my thing on this. I'm not out to convince people. I just sort of put my voice out there. What people do with it is just, that's not my decision. I just put it out there and yeah. Why, cause you like you, you what must have been like nine years away from the faith and you come back in 2023. Do you feel at times, and this is what I think, so what you're, I'm surprised that, and I think, mate, to be honest, I think it's your personality type, which is a, which is a lovable trait as well. So I love it as, you know, I laugh when. you put up a long post saying, I've been quiet on this issue in a while, but here's what, and I was like, mate, you've been quiet for two and a half days. I'm sometimes surprised, like, I would have thought with your journey, you'd maybe sit back a bit and try to understand these positions that you so vehemently disagree with, given that just a year and a half ago, were an atheist after your whole life, is it? is there having been wrong before, and I say that as a positive, not a negative, think having been wrong and moved on from it is a great trade. Why do you end up getting back into these disputes more than sort of taking a bit of a passenger seat and watching them play out a bit more? If I was convinced that the Bible wasn't true, right? If I was convinced that it's not true, I would still believe that it teaches full preterism. It teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ. Even though I say it's not true, it's a load of BS, you know, blah, blah. That is the message of that written story. though it's a work of fiction, it's rubbish. would say it, so it still teaches these things. See, look, I knew that during the time that I was agnostic, if ever I did return to my faith and that was never going to happen, that I would return as a full Preterist and as a five point Calvinist. I mean, I knew that that to me, that was not negotiable because I knew that's what scripture taught. Yeah. So the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, and other things too, even though if I believe the scripture wasn't, it was a work of fiction, I'd say, well, yeah, but that's what it teaches, whether you believe that it's genuine or not, that's what it teaches. And I think if you water down the doctrine of the Trinity, you water down, the most important question is, who is Jesus Christ? Who is he? Yeah. And so Christianity stands alone apart from anything because the unique claim is that Yahweh himself became flesh, was clothed in human flesh. he's not, I mean, the doctrine of the Trinity, nobody can understand it. It's a really mysterious doctrine. But when you boil it down, there is one God. that there are these three persons that are this one God. And though there is a certain rank in the Trinity, but yet they are all equally Yahweh. I mean, the son is not less Yahweh than the father is Yahweh. And you can see this in the Old Testament that this Messiah, like in Micah 5 too, like when Herod asked the Pharisees where the Messiah was going to be born, and they said, and they referred to Micah 5 too. said, know, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though there'll be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come one. But they forgot the bit that says, and his goings forth has been from of old, days of, or from the days of eternity, you know. So there was this. And so if you watered down the doctrine of the Trinity, it affects how you view Jesus. Yeah. So you can't have a watered down view, because then you water down the deity of Christ. Jesus is either fully God as the Father is fully God, and then there's the Holy Spirit too. He either is or he isn't. This is just some exalted human being like Jehovah's Witnesses and their whole do-well. Yeah, well, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I went, cause I'm, I mean, I thrive being contrarian and I think being contrarian, mean, my background for, mean, still now I've always done lots of investing. The best way to invest is just be contrarian against the market. know, there's a great book, the extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. Like if you go against a crowd more often than not, you're going to sons does that. is into investing and he always goes against the trends. against the trend and you'll be right more often than. So pretty much any contrarian position I've looked at. I look really deep, cause you're right, like the Trinity is... It's sort of complicated and it doesn't, no one can really understand it. And I knew that the church had always held to the Trinity. So I went deep looking at, and not that I disbelieved it and not that I believed the others, but I've looked really hard at all the Unitarian arguments. And a lot of them make some good points. And I think a lot of them understand their scripts, same as Israel only. They understand their scriptures better than the average Christian that says it's, it is a Trinity. But time and time again, see there's references particularly in the Old Testament where the Lord is the Redeemer as well. Even Revelation and the Unitarian will often say that the words in red are the Father and that Jesus speaking is the Son, it shouldn't be red. Yeah. there's some clear verses like the Alpha and the Omega is described as the father and of the son. I don't know how you have an Alpha and Omega. I mean, that is a profound title. Well, yeah, well, in Isaiah, what chapter 40 onwards in that, where God said, and this is where Tovia Singer will take you to show, where God says, you know, I am God, there is no other God besides me. I know of none. And that verse that brought Charles Spurgeon to faith when he says, you know, come to me all the ends of the earth and be saved. And so God says, you know, I am the savior. Besides me, there is no savior. Well, in the New Testament, Jesus is the savior. Well, hang on a minute, Yahweh is the savior. And so to water down the doctrine of the trinity, and nobody understands it. mean, it's mystery. But God has revealed himself. Well, you know, but you've got the modalist to say God just appears in different modes, you know? the Father, then the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But there's clearly three divine persons who are all Yahweh. So to me, the most important question is, who is Jesus Christ? Who is he? Is he just an exalted man, or is he Yahweh come in the flesh? In the beginning was the Word. The Word was sworn in the Greek, face to face with God. So he's got that intimate And the word became, you and go down, and the word was God, and then the word became flesh. And you got Hebrews when it speaks about, therefore God, your God. I mean, so God's calling the son Yahweh, like, you know, like, you know, Lord. And so, I mean, you don't have to understand the Trinity to be a genuine Christian. I mean, no one, no one really understands it as far as that, but. the scripture teaches that it teaches it when you sort of put it all the, I've often thought, where is it? I mean, I've often thought about this in Proverbs. You know how when Jesus spoke in parables and the disciples said, why do you speak in parables? Like spit it out, man, know, speak plainly. And he says, you know, to you it's been given to known all these, but to them. I speak in parables. says the most amazing thing, because if they did understand me, they would turn, they'd repent, and they'd be saved. And you think, don't you want them saved? There's a thing in Proverbs 1 here. It speaks about, I've got my contacts in here. Where are we going? Yeah, probably chapter 1 verse 5 on, it says, a wise man will hear and increase learning. So it's only a wise man that'll hear. prison learning and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel. But it says to understand a proverb and, and an enigma, words of the wise and their riddles. The doctrine of the Trinity is a riddle. You don't just find it like in, when the King James or new King James to that one, John five, seven, there were three that bear witness in heaven. I would love that verse to be genuine. I actually think it might be, but that's another story. That's another one I'll look at. I, and you think, okay, the words of the wise and their riddles. So God, it's like he's hidden things. So it's only, you know, says, you know, that it's the wise who will, who will seek wise counsel. And the scripture speaks about here a little and there a little line upon line. And it's like, it's not just laid out in one place. So God intends for us to search for these things diligently and to seek and to so, and so many Christians don't. I mean, it's right across the board. I remember a survey years ago by the Barna Group and it was 95 % of evangelical Christians don't read the Bible. I mean, just don't read it. But of that 5 % that do, you could narrow that down even. And so most Christians don't know what the Bible says. They don't. And I think that's why guys like Bart Ehrman have an absolute field day and become a best seller on the New York Times because they can pull to pieces the average passive Christian and their Bible knowledge. Yeah, yeah. So what's the, no sorry, go on Nigel. This is the thing. mean, you know, the old thing that, you know, a bank teller is never trained what counterfeit money looks like or feels like they're trained in what the real currency looks like and feels like. So when someone passes a counterfeit note, it may look good, but just it doesn't feel right. There's something about it. And so when you, when you do know what the scriptures say, you're very, you do know what they say. And so you'll hear, so like we're talking about shade stone before you're thinking, That doesn't sound right. There's some, we've got to look into that a bit. Or I hear, you know, things, you know, like Steve McGuire says, because I heard, you know, Rick Welsh talk about, you know, that, that latest podcast, or not latest one, he did where he actually bared his soul. Riggs won. It was a bar as a barrier just recently. Yeah, yeah, I'll listen to it. Rick's at this present time beliefs. Yeah. just kind of brought up the Steve McGill thing, Satan or the serpent is a human, like boom, big ball. And even Rick said that he sort of balked at that saying he should have said something. I think it's things like that. And you think that's not right. That's just, know, so the thing is when you know what the scripture says, not just in one place, But you know, the overall scriptures, know, you know the feel of it. So like a bank teller knows, knows what, what, what the real money feels like, what it smells like. And when you hear things, you think that doesn't sound right. It just hasn't got that, that feel of being authentic to it. And that's the import importance of actually knowing what the scriptures say. It doesn't mean you sort of write on everything. I mean, there's lots and lots of things I don't know. Yeah, I was gonna ask what is that? Cause I mean, I hold a different view than you on Stephen. I'm okay with the serpent in the garden not being a snake. If that's a human, that's not a deal breaker for me. Now. snake. think he's some sort of divine being. But I don't think he's like one of those snakes that crawls along the ground. I think whatever the serpent is, like Revelation speaks about that serpent of old who is Satan and the devil. So Revelation identifies who it is. But in what form it was in, it seems to be some sort of divine being. Mmm. Yeah. Cause I mean, you know, you could sort of say the same for as you know, Satan is sort of the word for adversary. And as a preterist, you read it and the adversaries thrown into the lake of fire. you're like, okay, well that, has to be passed. But, but I don't think either of us could possibly sit here now. So there, there, there are adversaries in the world and there, and there seems to be some sort of divine power in the way that these people can operate at times. But whether that means they are a literal divine being or whether there are just spirits operating in the world that are beyond our comprehension, who knows? But you listen to people who've come out of the occult or New Age movement. And my family background, I come out of a family steeped in that stuff. I've had real genuine dark, dark spiritual experiences and there's something there. Yeah. I when I was here, when I was an agnostic, how's this? I went out to get a deck of tarot cards. I was against it as a Christian, know, that's the devil. thought, I know it's fake, but I'm gonna set up a stall somewhere. I'm just gonna make a bit of money. I'm gonna learn how to read these things. I bought a couple of books. I'm gonna learn how to read them and just through reading, charge 70 or 80 bucks. I thought, yes, I just. Okay, others out there doing, I'm just going to do it anyway. So I bought this deck of Tarot cards from the Eastern shop and the woman who sold them to me on the key, she said, Oh, be very careful with these. I said, are they authentic? Oh yeah. She said, be very careful. You really have to be careful with these. Yeah. You know, so I brought them home, opened them up, looked at them and just, yeah. And I'll put them all back in the pack, put them in a drawer and, the books and pretty much forgot about them. Yeah. And I got up one night, it was about one in the morning, I live in the Adelaide Hills, it is pitch black at night, there's no light, just pitch black. So I walk out into the kitchen dining area in the dark, got a drink of water, I'm not scared of the dark at all. And as I was walking back, and I can't explain this, there was this heavy, dark, black, whirling thing. I couldn't see it, I couldn't hear it, but I knew it was whirling, was. It was dark. was, and I thought, what is that? Like it was just, what is that? Like it just freaked me out. you know, next morning I sort of, you know, I went back to bed and I thought, when is this those tarot cards? Anyway, told them I got rid of them. And I was talking to someone else about it and they had had a similar experience with them. But you think, you think, what is that? What is, and you can multiply that sort of thing many, many, times over this. So it's one of the things in preterism has Satan been dispensed with. I there's something there that's, there's definitely something there, you know. So I'll tell you where I'm getting, where I'm landing with it is, so I did an episode recently, I had a few guests all with very different views on what is demonic possession. Now I would take the Michael Miano, I would lean to the Michael Miano position that I think he's right that a lot of scripture is speaking about idol worship in the. and the effects that come with that. But then Kirsten Barton came on the show and she's adamant, you know, and through her own experience as well, that no, there are very real demonic spirits that exist in the world. And the question that I asked was the same around, how do you explain this uniformity of these near death experiences, other, you know, people deep into the occult that have either stayed in the occult or become Christian that will talk about, you know, they'll have things like ayahuasca or whatever, and see and experience the exact same thing. So there's something going on. My current working hypothesis, and also, sorry, after I did the episode, had a couple of people give me comments, and a lot come with their own experience. So they'll say, this stuff is real. You know, I have seen it. There's nothing anyone can tell me that will convince me that it's otherwise. I'm sort of leaning to the position that potentially both can be true. And how I get there is back to the point I made earlier on that the scriptures aren't a book, the Bible is not a book about absolutely everything. I think it's potentially quite... reasonable to say that yeah, there are spirits. I don't think, I don't believe in this idea that they're these sort of fallen angels that are rebelling against God. can't buy that. I don't see the message. I don't see that story in the scriptures. And as a believer in a sovereign God, I really struggle with that concept. But I was reading actually literally today in first Samuel 16, I think it was, you know, where to which you've end or. No, not the witch of Endor, maybe it's not first Samuel 16, but basically where he finds David and then it says, then God sends an evil spirit to Sol, right? Well, who's that? Well, that's not a demonic fallen angel. God sent that spirit, God's in control, but he's also sent him an evil spirit. So I'm beginning to land on the idea that this, I don't like the hyzer idea that I think he's brought into the text from Babylonian literature that there's this sort of cosmic battle going on. And as a full preterist, believe that our accuser is gone. The Satan is no longer true for us. There is no accuser under the law. But that doesn't mean there's not evil spirits. And they can continue to exist beyond. I think it's potentially a case of that the scriptures are silent on the nature of them and what they do and why they exist because it doesn't need to tell us the story of why they do. when God sent an evil spirit, are these evil spirits, they, God sends them because people dabble in things that God forbids you to dabble in. So his judgment upon them, he sends these, have you ever listened to, just before you go on with that, which that position, and this is the nuance that I think is really missed in a lot of these debates, that makes both Mike Miano correct and Kirsten Barton or the person that absolutely is adamant that evil spirit of the truth. Yeah, sure. That's always related to idol worship and the Lord sends them. You know, the person like yourself that says, hey, I'm going to reject you and I'm going to go and buy tarot cards. All right, Nigel, I'm going to send you a whirling black vision. That's, that's me saying that is an evil spirit. That's real. And it's him sending it. And we don't know exactly what the details of it are. Cause we don't need to. If you ever listen to the Haunted Cosmos... rings a bell. don't think I've listened to it. What is it? two, they're two reform pastors, they've been in their thirties and they talk about things like, know, things like Bigfoot and mermaids and fairies and what these things really are. And some of the things they say, cause they say, are these demons? they what? Some of their conclusions, they believe some of these could be angels. They could be like earthbound angels that, and so they're, they're actually from God. They're not, they're not like demons as such, but. Not everything, they sort of... Yeah, think which as it was, one of them, think fairies, they looked into that. What are these things? Because people see them. And they exist all throughout different cultures, different periods of time, and there's again uniformity. So are they so are they earthbound angels like they're just so that's one of the things that these two passes look at all these they've got Michael Heisman away. They look at all these unusual things that that happen right across the world, you know. But again, yeah, but yeah, gone, again, it's another example of nuance. Angels and you know, Zach Davis, I know you agree and disagree with Zach on a lot of things, but I think I like where he's going with it. Like he'll say, you know, angelos, you look up the word and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's messenger of God. And a lot of these, a lot of these times that, think it might be from Micah where it's translated as the messenger and then other times it's angel. Why is the translator chosen angel there and messenger there? And the power of technology today allows us to in two minutes bring up every reference of the word angel throughout the whole Old and New Testament. But Zach will say this and I'd say the same as well. Angel being messenger of God, well it can be many things. It be a human, it can be a... could be a world event. It could be a spirit that's sent. it's not, I think some of these fixed positions that we take where we sit in one camp and throw everything out on the other gets us into trouble. Yeah. But another big problem is all Bible translators have a bias. And so you look at the scriptures and you're reading like, like there's a man here in Australia, you ever heard of him? He's not King James only, but he's a real defender of the Texas receptors. His name's Nick something or other, he lives in Sydney or somewhere like that. He He's done his own translation of the New Testament. And when he got to a part and he sort of put it out there for suggestions, because he said, I hold to the pre-trib rapture view. So how do I translate this? Well, I was thinking, just go with how the Greek reads, forget about your biases, just translate it, you know, according to how the Greek reads. But yeah, that's the problem. There's all these yeah, so the two, we, we, we, we sort of caged in with these biases in our Bibles, which is the word of God. And you think, so yeah, that, presents a problem. What do you think, you know, think we have different, we clearly, you really have issues with the whole covenant creation idea of Genesis. And I leaned towards it now, again, I reckon there's nuance there. I think the incorrect, when I say I think, I mean, this could change, maybe in the end, I completely agree with them. But I think where some of the covenant creation ideas go too far is where, Every single thing, yeah, every instance where animal is mentioned that's referring to human every tree is human I don't think that's it but it but there's absolutely no doubt that animals are used as motifs for humans throughout scriptures in in Genesis and the Old Testament so it's I I think I Think Genesis is telling a story The main focus of the story is is covenant Now I know a lot of people say there's no covenant with Adam. I'm not going to get into that debate now, but even if we don't use the word covenant, we'll say relationship. I think the story is a relationship and establishment of things more than the things themselves, I think is the focus. What the true reading of Genesis is, I'm not sure we'll ever know. actually, mean, we don't even have a true and correct a hundred percent version of the Old Testament manuscripts. They're written in a language that no longer exists, that none of us ever speak. Now, if we're a believer in a sovereign God, we need to work out, how on earth does that happen? And my takeaway from it is that the one thing that has been preserved is the gospels and everything else can be a bit of an intellectual battle more than anything else. What do think you could be wrong on? What are some of the things you're grappling with? not just covenant creation, but other areas where you could see your mind being changed in time. I'm more, I'll put it this way. I'm always willing to be wrong on things. Yes. It's like if If I could be, if it could be proven to me from the scriptures that what say Tim Martin and that are saying, I'd embrace it. But if I could be convinced of that position, are, look, there's a lot of things I don't know. There's a lot of things that I don't know in scripture. And like the older I've become, the more I realize, the more I know, you the less I know. It's like, you know. yeah. More times you've been wrong too. Yeah, I mean, you know, I just get all my theological ducks lined up and all of a sudden, bang, one falls over, another one falls over. Yeah. I look at Genesis like this. If someone had never, never, never heard of the Bible, never heard of Jesus or God, knew nothing and, and, and found the Bible and opened it up and start, and read Genesis chapter one, you think, well, how would they understand that? You think, Yeah, in the beginning, God. I think, so that's the way I approach the scripture. I go with the most natural reading first. So I go to the natural reading first, but I take into account how the Bible uses language, how it uses metaphors and like, you know, the heavens and the earth sort of thing. So I believe in what's going on in Genesis is the account of the literal physical creation. then the scriptures, like through the prophets in that will draw on that language and use it as sort of metaphors. But it doesn't, and I think from what I can understand, it seems that covenant creation, they've kind of back engineered things into the creation account. Mm-hmm. there's a lot I don't know about it. It's just what I hear. Uh, and I think pretty, cause Steve McGill is pretty much out there with a lot of this stuff and his partner with Tim Martin. So I was sort of picking up stuff from him that this is what they, this is what they hold to. But I would never get from a natural reading of Genesis one that the animals were humans. Um, And I'm very well aware of the gap theory. That has been around for a long time. know, pre-odamic race, that idea has been around for a long time. So yeah, but it's, would just take the natural reading. It's the same with First Thessalonians four. And even the futurists understand what that's saying. it's an actual rapture, but future for them. I just. I tend to go with the natural reading first. In some of my books here, I've got lot of Jewish publications and I've got a lot of Kabbalistic stuff too. And they're interesting. They say that there's the surface level meaning, there's the natural reading, but they say there's another four or five layers of meaning under the text. But that's all this Kabbalistic esoteric stuff they look into. It's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What you type? with a natural reading first and I just try and understand how you would understand if you just picked it up and read it like any other book. But taking into account how the Bible uses language, how it uses poetry and metaphors and you yeah. yeah. But I mean, if you did, you know, if you looked at like the natural rating of things, picked up a Bible for the first time and you read the Leviticus, you know, or most of the Old Testament, you'd have absolutely no idea what's going on, you? Yeah. That's my challenge is that we are so removed from the original audience that we really are looking at a lot of these things through a glass darkly. Yeah. which has to tell me that it's not important. And I think, you know, if for the rest of my life, I couldn't study these things and debate these things and try to wrap my head around it, I'd be missing a huge part of my life. I love doing it. But I think we need to be careful getting so caught up on it. My guess is everyone's wrong on it. And you know, and the full Preterist movement of people is, you know, a lot of us are... strong-minded, pig-headed, clever people, you know, that have pushed things to their nth degree. But I still think among us, I don't think anyone's got it right. I think all of us have come into full predatorism with a certain amount of baggage. Though we say we haven't, we do bring baggage into it. But it's like at the moment, like Kim, well, Gary Demar. I mean, know, Mike Sullivan's already declared it, you know. sorry. Getting carried away. We're talking about bros. Sorry, you haven't heard, yeah. It's like, yeah. I'm back. But it's like something, a new insight has come along. And I think Kim Burgess is actually onto something. And that's Spencer, what's his name? Avedar Smith has sort of taken it up. And I think they're onto something. They've seen, like Kim and Gary have seen something there. Mmm. that you've got like now Mike Sullivan is kind of like, no, heresy, no, no, no, no. Yeah. mean, Kim was the one that brought me across the line of full preterism. And I loved his stuff and I continue to be thankful for his stuff. But then it wasn't, as I got there and then I was asking questions, I saw inconsistency from him and Kim, you know, I think it, and I'm not gonna judge Kim. I've had a lot of conversation back and forth with Kim, but I don't know him. Yeah. I don't know what's going on in his life. And I think in these internet discussions, we need to realize that with people. But Kim has had a lot of instances with people where he gets very defensive and very aggressive when they ask questions that he disagrees with. In the end, he blocked me, which was sad, but so be it. I saw that, yeah. So, and that's fine. I hold no grudges against Kim and it, but yeah, again, and Mike came on the show and I agree with Mike a lot. I disagree with Mike on things too. But yeah, now, you know, it's just another intellectual debate between people and that's, and I just wonder, like, it's my, that's my beef with the, with what sort of a lot of full preterist do. And I loved Ward Findley on this. And I know you disagree with Ward on a lot of things, but he was on my most recent episode. And Ward's a passionate guy. And he wears his heart on his sleeve with lot of things, he's the joy of full preterism, full preterist understanding of the scriptures is how much closer it can bring us to Jesus. That he came and he is here and all these promises are here for us. And Ward was just like, If we could just get people to realize that that's really what I want to do. I'm like, we've waste all this time debating nuanced topics among ourselves that really make no difference. I'd love the people within preterism to put their emotion and intellect into the world outside the gates. You know, the city that is in need of healing that have have dismissed Christianity because of a lot of the nonsense futurists. evangelism that they've heard. I think the way full, I think the way full predatorism is going, it's actually going to implode, it's imploding in on itself. Like when Jesus was accused of casting out demons by the power of Satan, like he said, know, a kingdom divided against itself can't stand. And you know, like Rick Welsh was saying on that Bar-Oz-A-Bar-Eah thing, it's like the whole thing is they're at war with each other. It's... And I don't know how you can get the warring parties together. Like in some sort of like council of Nicaea or when what were that council called with the Calvinists and the Armenians, whatever that called again, got together. And I think people need to put their egos aside, their pride aside. It somehow needs to, and if I had a council meeting, it would probably take years. I mean, not just one meeting. be over years. Because if this is the new Reformation, the only way is that all the warring parties have to put their weapons down and they've got to go back to the scriptures. I don't know who you'd get to do this. Obviously you'd have to have, not just people like me there, but people who know their stuff. People like Ed Stevens, like Don Preston. Yeah. Sullivan and others. This is needs to, I can't see it happen. But that's what, because if full preterism remains the way it is, no one's gonna, it's not gonna have an impact on, I've heard recently, or not just, yeah, a few times I've heard, yeah, Mike Sullivan mainly, you know, take pot shots at Jeff Durbin and. Doug Wilson. I know a while he lumped Ed Stevens and Doug Wilson, he called him partial preterist false teachers, you know. And, but look what Jeff Durbin and Jeff Durbin's doing. Look at the impact. Look at it. Okay, he's putting his eschatology into practice. He's going out there and he's actively trying to bring legislation that will stop abortions happening. They're going out there, they're talking to the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons on the streets. You know, look what Doug Wilson does there in Idaho, all the work that they're doing with, you know, building families for the kingdom of God. And the preterists are just having talkfests, that's all they're doing. It's just they're talking, it's just podcasts, they're talking, it's YouTube stuff, it's conferences, and they have their place, but it's like they just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Yeah. the post-millennialists who Mike Sullivan has a problem with. But they're getting out there, they're rolling up their sleeves. And I think I've heard... Do you think that's too much of a generalization though? Like, get it. There is a lot of debate going on, but also look at the biblical story and the redemptive path, the redemptive history. And it is order out of chaos. And I think chaos is important. You see that in nature, you see that in the biblical story. I I sort of thrive in chaos. I love chaos, but people hate it at the time. You know, lot of people hate it at the time because it feels, so I don't know. I'm not too worried about the chaos because I think the world itself is in chaos. The world itself is imploding with sadly many things to futurist Christianity, I think as much as anything else. But you know, I think there's, mean, I've got to know a lot of people that hold to the full preterist view. through these podcasts and others and far out. mean, these guys are doing great workout in the world. So I think it's unfair to say all do, but I think there are some really smart guys that know their stuff, that their personality type puts them as the ones that need to be in debates. And Mike's probably like that. Now, I don't know what else Mike's doing. Mike might be doing great things during the week. I'm sure he is. I don't wanna say, but you know, he's a... Yeah, he said he loves a brawl. I think he's good at it. Now it would definitely appear that he goes probably too far at times with it. I'm sure he's first to admit that as well. But you know, I don't know the verse off the top of my head, it's talking about one of the battles in sort of Old Testament Israel. It's like, send your fighting men out first. I think guys like Mike. that are suited to this and Don would be the same and there'd be others that disagree with them. That some of these guys that are cut out for debates need to be out there doing their debates. sort of, maybe we need that. I liked Tim Martin, he came on the show and he gave the analogy, his background's obviously in regenerative agriculture. And he's like, you know, the Lord God in, you know, as the great farmer in regenerated agriculture, sometimes you need all the plants growing together. You need the weeds to be growing. You need fighting to happen among species for the good stuff. So I do have a level of trust in that. think things will sort itself out. What it looks like, I don't know. Mate, we've been going for a while. I'd love to finish it up with a question. You know, you're well read, you have your strong convictions, you've looked at everything, you've spent your time in agnosticism, you've looked into, read stuff like the Kabbalah and you know how much that influences world society now. What's happening and what do you think happens from here? Like, what is the path of world history over the next decade? Ahem. Cause the criticism against a full preterus is, well you said there's no evil in the world, you know, it's all over. We'll have a look around you. Now you clearly don't believe that, I mean, that's the argument that Sam Frost makes. If this is a new heaven and a earth, well, yeah, great. Yeah. Which is a valid thing. Yeah. It's really interesting. It's that things seem to be really gotten out of hand. Like, you know, the, you know, with the COVID era, it really exposed all the behind the scenes stuff. it just proved all us conspiracy theorists right, what was going on. And it's really interesting when you think, you think that's it, we're done for, we're cooked. You get Donald, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, you get Kennedy comes on the scene and you think, wow. And that's why you see I think, you know, like Trudeau is resigning and people are dropping all over the place because they know that Donald Trump's back. So I think, yeah, things are changing for the better, whether you love Trump or not. It's just, just, sorry. I do actually, yeah. I mean, I don't have to like him as a person, I suppose, but I really like what he's about. He genuinely cares for America and like, you know, make America great again. He genuinely cares for his country. He, I just think he's a great leader. What I liked about originally is he's, he wasn't a politician, he is now, but he was, he's a hard-nosed businessman, good at making deals. I think, I think there's some real hope at the moment. for yeah for you I think now that you know Trump's back back at the helm but I don't know then I look at places like England what's happening over there and you think man this is just you know this is nuts and I already already don't know you look what's happening in Australia with politics and you think I don't know I don't know what I what I do I suppose I think getting back to, think having a correct, having a theology right, your doctrine right, is that we have to have, we have to pass this on to the next generation and we need to hand over intact. And I don't know whether we're this, I don't know whether, whether, whether we're going to do that. I don't know. I don't know. Cause I'm old enough to know that a time back now when The churches used to teach proper doctrine and theology, and the reasons why we believe. And I remember when all this stuff started to be thrown out and the churches started becoming very, very worldly and who cares about doctrine and blah, blah, blah. And I think we've kind of dropped the ball. I think that it's like Christians can rail against same-sex marriage. as much as they want. But we've dropped the ball with marriage. And so we've messed up marriage. we can't complain what we've got, But we need to hand over to the next generation. We need to our act together. Because if we don't, what are we going to hand to them? know? Yeah. And, you know, as a man who's lived, I'll say quote unquote in your, you know, maybe early twenties, a righteous Christian, you know, doing all the right things and then had your journeys of well and truly ups and downs after that. And then almost, almost a decade of agnosticism, atheism. you know, you almost became a tarot card reader. You've, you've tried it all out. Why is where you're at now the way to live life? Or are you still trying to work that one in? There are certain things I'm still trying to work out. There are questions I've got I don't know the answers to. I'm convinced what the scriptures say are true, but the gospels are. I'm just beyond convinced that they're true. It's true in that it is the revelation from the living God. Yeah, and so, yeah. And so, it's not true in the postmodern sense. This is my truth, but something may be your truth, you know. It's either true or it's not true. it's, agree. And that's what I said. I mean, most of my friends aren't Christian. And I'll say that it's binary. There's no, there's no like, I mean, if Jesus is the way the truth in the life, then Jesus is the way the truth in life. No other, there's no other way truth of mind. There can only be one. So you're, you are convinced beyond any doubt that that claim is the true one. Yeah. it's not, mean, who knows? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Who knows? it's, mean, I mean, the Bible is kind of self-authenticating and you can't explain it. It just is. Even Bart Ehrman loves like Ecclesiastes and stuff like that. I mean, why? You know? So do you want to have a final crack at the question? What's the point anyway? What's the point anyway? Well, the point is the aim of is for man to seek after God. But in reality, it's God seeking after us, isn't it? And it's God that gives the ultimate purpose and the point of everything because without God, there's no point. Eat, drink, and drink lots of this stuff and be merry and die. Awesome Nigel. Mate, I've loved you coming on for a chat. I really appreciate it. I'll look forward to sharing it in the group and re-listening myself. And hopefully we can catch up. I think they're gonna do that Sydney conference. I hope I can catch up with you there. Yeah, I'm not pretty not going to be able to come to that. thought I was wanting to. But I'm hoping to go to America later on this year. So being being on the age pension now, I've got my pennies that go as far as they used to. mate, I'm sure the time will come where we're in the same city and we'll catch up then. he'd be great. I forward to it. Yeah, okay. Great talking.