Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour podcast. And that used to be the name of my YouTube channel. Maybe some of you know that I have a YouTube channel and that I've done the YouTube thing really for quite a while. Maybe some of you did not. And for a long time, I kind of did what I do here now over there, but with videos. And I sit at my desk and I talk about things. I did a whole 90 video series to start out on the book of Acts. It was my first big project on the internet, but it was hard. Because doing 10 minutes, breaking down each little part of the book of Acts, and you got to think of little jokes and stuff, popping up pictures over your shoulder. Editing video takes forever, exporting, publishing. It was just really slow. And when I got done with that, I thought, eh, yeah, maybe this would be better as like a daily audio only thing. And well, that's what you're listening to now. And obviously, we've made a lot more headway and a lot less time doing it like this because no video. It's way easier. But after I got done with the series on acts, I started doing other stuff that I'd been wanting to do. And I got done with my my big long Bible series. I got more free time. And so I started going to churches that are not like my church and asking if whoever runs a place would show me around and tell me about things. And some of the questions I'd asked because I just didn't know the answer to what a given group believed about this or that. Other questions I asked, you know, I kind of had an idea about how that worked, but I'm asking because everybody's there with me and we're all learning together. So why not ask all the questions I can think of? Just like I'm a five-year-old, point at things, ask questions, and learn. And I really like making videos like that. I just put another one of those out here as I'm recording this, you know, whatever, a week or two ago at a Carmelite monastery in Florida, of all things. So there's just so much diversity. There's so many kinds of Christianity to go and learn about and explore. I don't think I'm ever going to get bored of doing those, but I tell you what, those videos are a ton of work. My goodness. From lining them up to actually getting there to filming them, the editing on those, they just are not easy. So, you know, I put them out when I'm able to put them out. But as I've been going around all of these different churches, making all of these different videos, there have been a few things that I've kind of noticed along the way, little patterns and so forth. And I thought I had figured one out a while back. And the pattern that I thought I detected was that Orthodox churches would call themselves Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Church, but I thought you're never going to see a Catholic church do that. Now, I know there's some of you here who've been around Christianity in the Bible for a long time, and you're familiar with the different expressions of Christianity that have evolved over the years. There are others of you who are like, I don't really know how any of that stuff works. I'm just kind of learning about the Bible and having fun here, and it kind of overwhelms me whenever you talk about different kinds of Christianity because it feels like how would you even know if you're doing the right one? Hey, don't worry about that for the time being. That stuff's not nearly as complicated as it might seem from the outside looking in, but I think this is going to make sense. Just hear me out here if you wouldn't mind. The reason that I thought Orthodox churches would call themselves Saint Peter and Paul is, well, one, because I went to an Orthodox church and that was the name of the church in Salt Lake City. It was a great church visit. And they had a picture in there of Paul kissing Peter on the cheek or Peter kissing Paul on the cheek. Actually, they're kind of both like kissing each other a little bit, like on the cheek. It's not as weird as it sounds. I don't know, it kind of works in the icon that they have of the two. But you know, the Eastern Church is a very ancient expression of Christianity. I know adherents to that are very insistent that it's the original expression of Christianity. But for them, it's old enough that surely the tension of which one of these two guys do you follow is a very real question. Do Christians listen to the teachings of Paul or do they listen to the teachings of Peter? Well, in the book of Galatians and in the book of Acts and the New Testament, it looks like, okay, there's a little bit of tension there, and we're going to read more about that as we get a little further into the book of Galatians, but it looks like they were on the same page. I mean, here in Galatians chapter 2, verse 9, it says, James, Peter, and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me, this is Paul writing, and Barnabas, the right hand of fellowship, when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews. So, you know, they had different strengths and weaknesses, they had styles, I don't know, whatever the case. They thought this was strategically shrewd, and they all high-fived over it, and they were all good with the plan. So Peter and Paul, they were not enemies, even though the next thing we read in Galatians 2 is going to be about a point where they did come into conflict, and Paul was right and Peter was wrong, and Peter was cool about being wrong, apparently, and got his act together. But as time went by, Peter, even though both Peter and Paul were martyred under the Emperor Nero in the 60s in Rome, Peter became deeply associated with the Roman Church as kind of the first leader of the Roman Church. And eventually the idea in the Western Catholic Church was that Peter was sort of the first pope and that he received authority uniquely from Jesus as described in Matthew 16, and he handed on that authority to his spiritual successor, who was the overseer of the church in Rome, and then that guy handed it on to the next guy and the next guy and the next guy, all the way down to the Pope today. Now, any fair reading of history would have to acknowledge that there's some pretty serious bumps and bruises along the way. That's not the neatest, tidiest, most flawless chain of custody. But yeah, I mean it's there. I mean, the Western Catholic Church accounts for the bumps and bruises along the way. And some of those bumps and bruises involve really meaningful friction with the Eastern Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, other expressions of Orthodoxy in the East, and even expressions of Christianity in the Far East. So, Mr. Smart YouTuber Guy Me, I go and see a couple of Orthodox churches that are called Saint Peter's and Paul Orthodox Church in different parts of the world. And I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense. Of course, they would want to say that because they're kind of trying to make a statement about how it's all Christianity and there isn't some sort of unique primacy for the church in Rome that follows and is attached to Peter, whereas Paul might be a little more associated with the East because of his missionary journeys that are all around modern-day Turkey and Greece. So, okay, I'm so smart, I see the pattern here, I see what they're doing. And I thought to myself, okay, well, you know, of course the Catholics are gonna have St. Peter's Basilica to really highlight Peter there in Rome and St. Peter's and Paul. That's gonna be an icon that's popular image-wise in the Eastern Church and is a name for the Eastern Church. Well, then I'm in Mancato, Minnesota, of all places. Just driving through, I wasn't even going to Mancato, Minnesota. I was going to speak at a thing at a the Free Lutheran Bible College in St. Paul or Minneapolis. I think it's in St. Paul, one of those two. They're twin cities right next to each other. And so I was just driving through Mancato, and it was kind of a pretty town. They got a river that runs through there. I've never been to Mancato. I had a little extra time, so I just went and I drove around and I saw a church up on the hill that was real pretty, and it was fall time and the leaves were changing. And when I go to towns, my family will tell you, this is what I do. I look for churches that stick up, and then I drive to them, and then I go to them and I see if they're open, or I knock on the door, and I see if people there will talk to me even without a camera on and tell me about their church and what they're doing because I think it's really interesting. And I like to hear what people are doing, and I don't need them to think the same things as I do. I'm just excited that they're Christians and that the gospel is happening in places, and I find it really energizing and really fun. I like to hear the story of their building and the story of the ups and downs of their church, and I like to exhaust these poor people and take up huge chunks of their day when they're probably just trying to get work done, but they're always so nice to me anyway. So I went to this church and it was just open there in Mankato, Minnesota, and I was like, oh, let's go right in. I hadn't even looked at the sign. I get in there and what do I see? Well, there's that image of St. Peter and St. Paul, and they're getting along just fine in that image. And I checked again. I was like, oh, this is St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Mankato, Minnesota. That was really cool. I filmed some stuff in there. I didn't find anybody. Nobody was there at all. Maybe I'll publish the video from what I filmed now just because I'm bringing it up here. But here's my point. I think it's awesome that there are churches that have that name because, like we talked about last time, what they're doing by having that name is leaning right into some of that tension that the New Testament doesn't even bother to try to hide. It acknowledges that the tension was there. It acknowledges that Peter and Paul could have fractured and represented two totally different traditions of authority or traditions of the gospel or rival versions of Christianity. They were huge personalities, very influential. People were super loyal to them. They both had big, dramatic, violent, meaningful, tragic deaths in the same town, in the same persecution, under the same ruthless Roman emperor. But instead, Christianity doesn't pit them against each other. Instead, the tension that we see in the book of Galatians and early on in the history of Christianity in the Bible, nope, Christians navigated it. The unifying message of the gospel of Christ that both Peter and Paul independently received from Christ himself, they both grew up into this huge, amazing, beautiful, diverse Christian family tree. And I just love whenever I see the name Saint Peter and Paul, such and such church, because it's a reminder that this thing was a powder keg, that if there had been a cult of celebrity or a click economy, cult of influence, fame, fascination, obsession kind of thing, celebrity culture kind of thing, that this all could have gone to the four winds, and you and I never even would have heard of it. The New Testament never would have made its way to us. The gospel would have gone into the gutter and been sacrificed on the altar of cults of personality, but instead the gospel was bigger than the influence of any of these people. Paul himself goes out of his way to graciously say about other people, other Christian leaders who were popular back then, like, hey, you know, it's we all participated. Like somebody planted the seeds in the garden, somebody else came along and watered it and took care of it. It's all God, ultimately, who made this amazing thing go. And Peter is very gracious toward Paul in the letters that Peter writes that make up part of the later New Testament. So just like Paul says here in Galatians chapter two, Peter and Paul are on the same team. They both got the message from Jesus. They're both huge personalities. It would have been easy for this to fracture, but it didn't. Instead, boom, right hand of fellowship. Why don't you go do this? I'm gonna go do this. Let's both remember the poor cow. High five, or maybe a little smooch on the cheek. I don't know. I guess that's how they did it back then. And away they go. It's a huge win where there could have been huge tension and huge problems. And I love that there are churches that acknowledge that it's a huge win instead of a huge problem with the name that they pick by having both of these guys in it. All of that is said to set up what we're going to talk about next time around, which is a moment where Peter and Paul did have a legitimate tension, and in the end it all worked out for the best. But that little bit of tension could have been something that the agitators, who were the bad guys in the book of Galatians, could have tried to exploit to drive a wedge between Paul and the Galatian churches, between the true gospel and the Galatian churches. So Paul's going to speak to it in very direct terms. But we've got to remember these two are on the same team. They weren't enemies. And I mean, for crying out loud, we had churches with both of their names on it. It worked out. All right, more on that next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.