And then I'm going to do as I'm recording this, it has been 16 years since James Cameron's Avatar came out, and I still don't know exactly how I feel about it. I think I like it. I mean, visually, I super like it. That's as cool a visual experience as I have ever had in a movie in my entire life. I saw it opening night in 2009 in 3D. I'd never enjoyed a 3D movie experience ever until that one. And I think I turned around the next day and watched it again in 3D. But it wasn't because of the plot or the characters. I don't know. I liked some of the characters, but it wasn't because of the plot. The plot's just basically space dances with wolves. So I'd already seen that story played out several times. But the environment, Pandora, the imaginary space Eden where all of this plays out was so engrossing and beautiful. I felt like an explorer every time we panned around that world with my 3D glasses on, and I just wanted to get back there. So it's a confusing relationship I have with the movie, I admit that. But something I learned after the fact that's really interesting to me about Avatar is that it was written way before it was made. James Cameron wrote it in the early 90s, well, around the same time that Dances with Wolves was being made, I guess. And he didn't make it for another 15 plus years, and his reason was that the technology wasn't there to realize his vision. There's a very specific thing that he needed to accomplish visually, one, in the environment, to make it so you would feel like I felt when you went to Pandora. It needed to blow your mind. It needed to be a place so beautiful that you as the viewer would want to see it saved. The second thing is that you needed to believe the CGI characters who were going to carry most of the story, especially because some of those CGI characters, the big blue creatures that maybe you've seen, the Navi, they were supposed to be representations of human characters with actors who were famous and who you know. And so it it had to be believable. It had to look good. And I think he pulled it off visually. I think it's just incredible. And if he had tried to make that movie now, would it be as good? Was the sequel as good that came out a few years ago? I don't know. I think it's maybe the best CGI thing I've seen in a long time. But for the most part, I think everybody agrees that CGI has actually gotten worse. It's less believable. It looks more like AI slop too often now. Sort of the golden age of CGI and computer movie effects is the late 2000s, early 2010. So maybe James Cameron knew something the rest of us didn't know, and he really did understand the perfect moment to fire that shot to make that movie look perfect. This is when we can get the right actors. This is when the money is all going to line up just the right way. This is when the audience would be interested enough to support something of this grand a budget. This is when the technology will be good enough and cutting edge enough that we can pull it off, but not so mundane and duplicatable that it tapers off and goes into the law of diminishing returns. Now, 2009, that is the perfect moment, the fullness of time for the movie Avatar to come out. We have this concept, fullness of time, when we look at great achievements in history, like, ah, that one right there, that was the moment. And the Bible, maybe first and foremost, of all the things that we look at, has this concept of the fullness of time. The Bible, according to the writings of the Apostle Paul especially, expresses great confidence that God nailed it in the timing of Jesus showing up. We talked about that some yesterday, and today we're going to talk about why. But first, here's the passage. I'm going to read this from the English Standard Version because it turns the phrase in the famous way that you're used to. This is Galatians 4, 4 through 7. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Alright, I got three categories of reasons for why I agree and think God nailed it, and I'm going to go from least certain to most certain in my mind. Number one, history. The right amount of stuff had happened for the message of Jesus to spread like wildfire if it got dropped into the early going of the Roman Empire. I think that if you drop Jesus into the Babylonian Empire or the Assyrian Empire, there isn't the mindset, there's not the right receptive soil in terms of how people think about faith and religion and empires and philosophy and ethics and all of that for the Jesus thing to spread like wildfire. People were still very much thinking in terms of local regional gods back in the eighth, ninth century BC, or even during the Persian age and the sixth century BC. There wasn't this idea of a global network, a global culture, a global language yet. Now, don't get me wrong, the Achaemenid kings of Persia were trying. That was Cyrus' vision, and it was especially Darius's vision. He carved it into a mountain in the later 500s BC. You can still go see it today if your passport will get you into Iran. But it wasn't realized. And the next conqueror to come down the line in the three hundred forties, three hundred thirties BC, Alexander the Great, he had the same vision. I'm going to Greekify the entire world, and he did a pretty dang good job spreading Greek culture, Greek philosophy, Greek ideas. But he died young, and the generals who followed him in the late three hundreds and into the two hundreds proved not to be quite as competent as Alexander. And while those little mini empires descended from Alexander, the Antigonid, Seleucid, and Ptolemaic empires really did flourish and did pretty well, the real highlight was out west. Two great empires were being raised up. In North Africa, the Carthaginians descended from Tyre and Phoenicia, the old neighbors of the Jewish people in Israel. And to the north, you had Rome on the Italian peninsula. Well, Rome ended up winning that central Mediterranean battle and became obviously the dominant force of everything forever in a lot of ways. Even today it still feels like we're trying to catch up with the glory of old Rome, and that's what we aspire to. So right before Jesus shows up, what you've got is Greek culture and philosophy and ethics and Greek language, which is well designed for carrying very complex theological, abstract concepts. You've got all of this spread all over the entire ancient world. People can handle their business in Greek, but order and structure and infrastructure is provided by the Romans, who've got a pretty handy language themselves, especially one for handling things like logic and legality. The Romans built roads all over the place. They built them right over the top of the old footpaths and everything else that all the little former tribes that had occupied places before Rome had built. There's this network of superhighways that lets you get anywhere. For all intents and purposes, there's a money system that almost allows you to bank between one place and another if you're traveling big time. There is sort of a federal system by which Rome governs everything and allows conquered client king states to have their own ethnic ruler and their own style and everything, where ideas local to one group of people can flourish, but it's still connected to the larger Roman thing. All of that is in place because of the Roman conquest and the newly established Roman Empire. Right before Jesus of Nazareth is born, there's a huge political overhaul in Rome. Julius Caesar died in 44 BC, died, that makes it sound all passive. He got shanked by a bunch of his friends in 44 BC, and then there's a mad scramble for power with players involved in the game who you've heard of, I mean Antony and Cleopatra, Marcus Junius Brutus of A2 Brute, fame from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and then the ultimate winner, Octavian, or Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. That empire, that new approach to Roman governance and Roman dominance, only happened, only came into focus just a few years before Jesus. Well, what's one of the things that a new emperor is going to want to do when he gains control of a big giant thing? He's going to want to figure out what do I actually have my hands on here? So he calls for probably multiple censuses, and one of those is the census that gets referenced in the early going of the book of Luke that moves Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born, fulfilling a bajillion prophecies that Matthew gladly spikes the football about in his first book of the New Testament, to be like, look, see, it's the fullness of time. Everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. With Greek, you've got the language, the culture, the philosophical mindset, the valuing on the life of the mind, to be ready to think theologically in Christian terms in the larger world. Politically, you've got Roman law, you've got Roman order, you've got Roman wealth, you've got Roman roads to allow ideas to spread quickly that are also going to undergird this moment for Jesus to come and for the church to be born. I've got so much more that I want to talk about here about why this is the historical fullness of time moment, but I think you get the gist. And also I said it was only going to be one day, which leads me to my next point. Why do I keep putting these artificial time constraints upon myself? I never get it right. I always think, oh yeah, we can do that in like eight minutes. And it takes double that long because these are big ideas and it just takes a minute. And I'm sorry. Feel anxiety about this, just very tenderhearted and embarrassed right now in front of you. Yeah, guess what? We're gonna do another day. So I am making a little note right here in my notebook. There we go. Boom. We have got reason number one for why I think Jesus' arrival is in the fullness of time articulated. It's the history argument. But we still gotta talk about the Bible argument, and we still gotta talk about what Jesus says about himself, which is also important. So maybe we can get through all of that tomorrow. I don't know, I'm hopeful. We'll see. I'm I I gotta stop promising things. I'm not gonna promise that. Tomorrow we're just gonna try to take more ground on this question of why Jesus showing up at this moment is the fullness of time, why it was the right moment. Okay, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.
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