You're listening to the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, it's best time free daily deep night Bible, and right now we're talking about Galatians.
SPEAKER_00Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are working our way up to the Book of Galatians. And to do that, we have been doing a quick overview of the Book of Acts, which is a part of the New Testament that tells the story of what generations one, two, and three of Christianity did after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And so this is the story of the church. This is a story of how all of that came together. And it's a pretty glowing story of all of that, but also it's a very honest story that acknowledges the points of tension along the way, like you would expect. I mean, it's to a lot of people is a brand new thing that came out of left field. Now, to the attentive reader, it's the completion and fulfillment of everything about the Old Testament. But, you know, you expect that something that comes on the scene this dramatically and that changes the world so much is going to have a few bumps and hiccups and points of tension and predictable places, and it does. And that's a lot of what we're getting in the book of Acts. But Acts is also a book that is unapologetically set against the backdrop of history, actual history. And we're not talking about kind of era that we looked at in the last couple of seasons of this podcast when we were in the Persian era of the Bible, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Back then you just don't have a lot of sources. There are only a few to work with. When we're talking about the Persian age of the Bible, we're talking about like the 500s and the 400s BC. That is a very long time ago. And I know this is going to sound weird, but hear me out on this. Now we're talking about the first century AD, and that really isn't that long ago. I get it, it's 2,000 years, but also I think I could off the top of my head here reel off a chain of cultural custody over a countable number of generations from the stuff we're looking at here with Paul and Luke and Jesus and Peter and John and all that. I think we could just count it off and really pretty neatly in one episode go from then to right now. We are directly descended from Rome stuff. We're directly descended from Greece stuff. The world we live in is still in conversation with the world of the first century A.D. It isn't that long ago. And as a result, when we talk about this moment in history, there are just tons of extra-biblical sources. There's so much more that we know about the characters who make brief appearances in the Bible. There's so much more that we know about the pressures and the political realities going on behind the scenes, you know, going on in the news as all of the Bible stuff is unfolding in the New Testament. And we get one little glimpse at that right here at the end of Acts chapter 11. And I knew that at some point here in our run-up to the book of Galatians, we were gonna slow down for a couple of days and talk about the political situation, the historical situation in the 40s and 50s A.D., where it looks like the book of Galatians is set and where the book of Acts is happening here in Acts chapter 11, Acts Chapter 12, etc. And apparently, this is when we're gonna do it. And here are the verses that I am going to use as a shameless excuse to do history things for a little while. Acts 11, 27. This is right after we meet the new Christians in Antioch, and we discover that a ton of those Christians apparently are not obviously from the center part of the family tree of Christianity. We learn that they're not even Jewish. We get the impression that maybe they're gonna do things a tiny bit differently than the Christians in Jerusalem back at the home office. Yet it is the Christians in Antioch, not the Christians back at the home office in Jerusalem, who are for the first time ever called Christians. All very interesting. The very next thing that happens here is, again, my excuse for us for talking about history, Acts 11, 27. During this time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. Now, down is we it's a weird geographical term here because for you and I, when we talk about up, down, back, and out, that all follows the cardinal directions, right? If I say I'm going to Canada and I live in the United States, I wouldn't say I'm going down to Canada. I would say I'm going up to Canada. I wouldn't say I'm going up to Mexico from the Black Hills of South Dakota. No, I would go down to Mexico. And I wouldn't say I'm going out east because of the unfolding of the frontier story of America, how America unfolded, how you know America reads historically right to left, like Hebrew. Because of that, you go back east, back to where things started, and you go out west. Well, crazy thing, not everybody does it like we do it here in America. And for anybody who was around early Christianity or Judaism, you always went up to Jerusalem on the Holy Mount, and you went down from Jerusalem. So even though you're going north when you go from Jerusalem to Antioch, you are still going down in terms of altitude, in terms of elevation, but you're also going down in terms of coming down from the place where God lived among his people, down to the other places that are more vulgar and mundane. So even in that simple descriptive verse that we just read during that time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, you're still getting theology. You're still getting a little sense of the theological assumption that was just baked into people's brains at this time in the history of the early church. So these prophets, one of them named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted the severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. Agabus is going to make another appearance later on. This dude is pretty good. We really don't hear much about him, but he's the kind of prophet I like, the kind that says a thing is going to happen and then it happens just like that. I'm not as impressed with the prophets who have become popular in certain pockets of Christianity in the last 50 years, 100 years, where they just sort of say crap and like lots of crap. And if one of them happens to hit, then it's like, whoa, see? And if they don't happen to hit, it's well, it's because you people didn't do your thing. It can be a weird racket, the sort of modern prophet thing. And maybe there are people today who God empowers to know stuff they shouldn't be able to know or know things about the future. And theoretically, that should always be the kind of thing you can test. Like if a prophet said a thing is gonna be a certain way and then it's not, don't listen to them anymore. This Agabus guy apparently had quite the reputation, and it looks like the Holy Spirit who was doing a lot of miraculous things to confirm what was going on in this time in the history of the church. Looks like this is one of the guys who was doing miraculous things through, and it's wild that we only hear from him, I think, twice. He does this prophecy, and maybe there's a third time, but the only other one that comes to mind is he has a prophecy right at the end of Paul's life before Paul goes back to Jerusalem, which also turns out to be true. So I think it's crazy that this guy is such a big deal and clearly is doing miraculous stuff, and yet the things we're getting in acts are such an even bigger deal that this Agabus business is like, you know, normal Tuesday night or whatever. So he predicts, accurately, I might add, that there's gonna be a severe famine over the whole Roman world. And then it says in parentheses here, Luke gives us this note this happened during the reign of Claudius. And this is why I gotta do the history thing. I just can't not. It's sitting right there. It's Claudius, it's Roman stuff. We have to talk about it, right? We gotta take at least a day, like tomorrow, just tomorrow. Maybe a little bit more than tomorrow. We'll see. I don't know. The podcast just happens the way the podcast happens. We're gonna cover Roman stuff for a little bit. And I know, I know, I know that there are some of you who are like, ah, the history stuff is a little bit overwhelming. I don't know, I'll try. Thank you in advance for trying. I love the history stuff. It makes all the Bible things come to life. The fact that the Bible and history lay over the top of each other so beautifully and so neatly has a ton to do with why I am a Christian, why I do think God is behind this document. So I get excited about this stuff, and I love to try to paint the picture, the context of all of this, because I think it makes it just pop and come to life. This is the teaser version of what you need to know about Claudius. Claudius is a Roman emperor who represents this long age of stability, if ruthless stability, in between a psychopath and another psychopath. Claudius is preceded by a guy named Caligula. I'll tell you a little bit about him tomorrow, but he's nuts. And then he is succeeded by Nero, the guy who famously persecuted all the Christians, and among those Christians he persecuted, he, according to tradition, killed Peter by having him crucified upside down on the site of what is now the Vatican. At the time it was Nero's horse track, and he took the head of Paul at the Trefontana, the Three Fountains Abbey outside the walls of Rome. So compared to those two tumultuous reigns, Claudius looks really pretty good. And in terms of the time frame of the New Testament, you've got a whole bunch of the first emperor of Rome, that's Augustus, but most of the time that the New Testament covers where Augustus was in charge is just kind of skipped over, you know, Luke 2.52, and then Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. That's kind of all you get about Jesus' growing up years, other than a little anecdote or two over in the book of John. So all of the Augustus years are kind of passed over after the birth narrative of Jesus. Then after that, you get Tiberius, who was a competent administrator, but who kind of got bored with ruling and moved to his pleasure island off the coast of Naples, down on, I guess, what they now call the Amalfi coast. And he just did things down there at his pleasure island and outsourced leadership of the Empire to some buddies who kind of stabbed him in the back. Pontius Pilate is caught up and mingled up in all of those tumultuous days. So Tiberius was okay. And then you get Caligula, who I mentioned who was a nightmare, and then you get Claudius, who is, I mean, he's emperor for a huge chunk of the New Testament. And then after that you get Nero. And we'll break down all of that more tomorrow, but just take this with you. Claudius was ambitious, but ruthless as any Roman emperor in the first century would be. But this represents an age of stability, but despite all of Claudius' claims to being a competent administrator and bureaucrat and economic game manager, there's still this thing that he couldn't control, and that was nature and harvests. And there's a huge chunk of the early reign of Claudius that is dominated by his inability to cope with this gigantic famine that causes problems empire wide for him, that thwarts his expansionist efforts militarily up in Britain. And Claudius couldn't see it coming. For all of his wisdom, being a, you know, the Romans believed the emperors were god men, he couldn't see it coming, but Agabus could. And that's a very interesting contrast that I don't think Luke would be so bold as to point out more explicitly than he does, because Romans would read this and they were persecuting government toward Christians, but there it is, just subtly right there. Some guy named Agabus, he could see that coming. But Claudius the Godman, he couldn't see the famine coming. More on Claudius and all of this era of Roman politics next time around. Thank you so much for being patient and indulging me when we go on these little history kicks. I'm not doing it just for fun. It's gonna pay off and make the whole thing make more sense as we get to where we're actually going in the book of Galatians real soon. Theoretically, as I'm recording this this weekend, you should get to see the first video in my Through the Bible video series, this new big giant project that I'm so excited about that I'm launching on the main YouTube channel. There's a link down below to that YouTube channel. But you, I mean, you're smart, you know how the internet works, you know what to do. If you want to get behind a video or a project and you really want to make it go, uh you like, you comment, you share, whatever. If you watch the video and it's not your thing, I'm still, even if you don't want to do any of that other stuff, I'm still just so grateful that you even took the time to go and check it out. So thanks in advance for that. All right, more history roam stuff next time around. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.