I used to go and teach classes in Zambia, which is in sort of Central Africa, South Central Africa, I guess. There's a college there that was just getting started when I used to teach there, and I would fly over a couple times a year. It was kind of like a mission trip sort of deal, kind of. But then I would go and I would be a professor at this college, and I would teach world history, history of thought, things like that. And it was way out in the bush and Zambia. It was just a very cool experience. I got a bunch of cool stories about that, including crazy wildlife stories. That was just a wonderful time in my life when I was making those trips. Another cool thing about those trips, a secondary cool thing about those trips, was that because of the nature of the travel, I always got to pick somewhere to stop off on my way home as kind of a decompression reward for going and teaching this super intense modular class. I would go to some cool history place on the way back that otherwise I could never afford to go and see. And on one of those trips, my buddy Aaron and I went to Greece and we rented a car and we went as hard as we could all day long, trying to ingest as much of the country of Greece and the history of Greece as we could. And in our travels there, we got to make our way to the ultra-ancient city of Mycenae. Now, when you think of Greece, you think of Athens and Sparta, of course. You know, there's a bunch of these towns that are kind of like the golden age of Greece that we picture. But before that, Mycenae was this ancient town that lent its name to a whole era of Greek culture. And the Mycenaeans, of course, got into it with the Trojans, and that's what all the Trojan War business is about. And there's epic poems about them. Agamemnon was from Mycenae. Don't worry about it if you happen to not know that name. But I got to Mycenae, and it's just different than anywhere I've ever visited, ever, still to this day. You walk up, and there's just kind of one entrance to the ruins to what's left of the city. And there's a gate right there that you walk through called the Lion's Gate. I think we've talked about this before, but I have to believe that the Hollywood film studio is. I mean, it's got to be named after the Lions Gate there, right? But also along the side of that boulevard, there's this gigantic wall with hewn stones that are like the size of Volkswagens. They're gigantic. And the nickname of that wall is the Cyclopian Wall. Like Cyclopses. That's really stuck with me. The idea being that no man would be strong enough to lift these and put them in place. But the Mycenaeans were clever enough that they could capture and subject the monsters that were the Cyclopses and made them build their walls for them. Cool. I mean, they were really big. I don't know how else they got those bricks up there. Perseus of Clash of the Titans fame is supposed to be there. At any rate, Mycenae is awesome to me because it's a town that sits right on the seam between history, as sort of you and I think of it in a very ancient sense, and myth, Cyclops, Perseus, these legendary kings, epic poems. But it was a real town and it was a real place. It just it all mushes together there. And I think that's enchanting. Well, likewise, I kind of think Philemon is the mycenae of the Bible, not because it stands on the boundary between real things that happened and myth, but because it's this book at the end of the New Testament that has one foot in Bible history, authoritative, vetted, everybody agrees on it. That's the stuff that happened. It's in the Bible. I mean, come on, there's something very unique about how we regard history that is recorded in the Bible. It has one foot there in the same way that Mycenae has one foot in one era of history. So Philemon has one foot in that era of biblical history, but in the same way that Mycenae has its other foot in a totally different era of history, so Philemon has its other foot in very early extra-biblical church history. Philemon can almost be represented by just a great big giant question mark, not because we don't know anything about it, but because we do have to work extra hard, as you've probably noticed after over the last several months. We've you got to work extra hard to cobble together the context of what the heck is going on here and who are these people. But also, Philemon doesn't give you any resolution, and there's no more Bible after this. I mean, there is in terms of, you know, just pages afterwards because of the way the Bible is organized, but you don't really get a lot more Bible history after this, just a few more hints within the Bible here and there about what happened after the book of Philemon. So it leaves this big question mark out there about what happened to the characters involved, what happened to the church and colossae, how did the church start to respond to questions that come up in the text? The obvious one being, you know, slavery and what do you do when slaves become Christians, and the stuff that Paul says about breaking down the walls between all the social classes and everything. But also there's just the very practical question raised in Philemon of church authority. Paul talks like he could just tell Philemon what to do. Well, that raises a really interesting question, Mark, about how the church will evolve and unfold. So for you and I to be into Philemon, and indeed we are well into Philemon, and we're kind of entering the final chapter of our stay in this book with this next little push that I plan to do right through the text. As we do that, it sort of serves as a cap on the New Testament. It gives us a sense of like, all right, generation one pretty much has already come and gone by this point. And now we're into what you might call generation two, or really sort of generation three, of Christianity. Philemon and its twinzy book, Colossians, sort of give us a glimpse into what it looks like when church happens and nobody in the Bible or no meaningful character in the Bible founded it. It's it's kind of like generation four of Christianity in that regard. I mean, everybody thinks of the book of Acts being, you know, containing within itself the resolution to the ark of the book of Acts. You know, Acts 1.8. You know, Jesus says, You're going to be my witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And the common thinking is that Luke organized the rest of the book of Acts so that you get to the end of that book and you're like, there, you know, Paul's preaching freely in Rome, even though he's under house arrest. So there it went to the ends of the earth. But in a way, the existence of the twin books of Colossians and Philemon kind of they also really contribute to that idea that this went to the ends of the earth because no one founded the church at Colossae. And by no one, I mean somebody did, uh Paphras did, but Paul didn't, Peter didn't, James didn't, none of the disciples did, Timothy didn't, Titus didn't. This is kind of an independent creature that grew out of what was happening through the teaching of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit in a completely separate town. That's fascinating. And it raises questions once again about ecclesial authority. And so if if Colossae wasn't founded by Paul, do they answer to Paul? Does Philemon answer to Paul? Well, Paul seems to think so. But again, those are questions that sort of get sorted out after the Bible, if you will. So lately I've been just really into that question. You know, what happened after the Bible and kind of before you get into church history as we think of church history? What happened in that little window of time where you've got all these loose ends that are still out there, unfinished stories and story arcs coming out of the New Testament. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about how did all of those things work out and how much can we know? And we did a little epilogue last season on Galatians, chasing down some of those questions, you know, trying to, if you will, develop a historical inquiry process for how you and I might work through that tiny little window of time where there are still loose ends from the Bible that aren't resolved that get worked out in very fresh extra-biblical history. So as we turn to the actual text of Philemon over the next whatever few days, couple weeks, I never know. I don't even know why I say timelines anymore. I have no idea how long anything is going to take on this program. But as we turn our attention toward the actual text of Philemon and just break it down verse by verse and track down some of the questions that come up there, I think the exercise is as follows. One, you and I have already done the work. I just front-loaded it. That seemed the most natural to me. We've already done the work to understand Colossae and Philemon and Onesimus and the slavery question and all of the tension that is there. I think we've done an admirable job of putting in the energy to work that out. But as you'll see that as I tear into the text of the letter itself over the next little bit, I'm not going to be rehashing the question of, you know, what's Paul's request, what's going on with the slavery question. I'm going to direct my attention more toward the church nature of this letter, the discipleship nature of this letter, the central theme of this letter, which I think is reconciliation and relationships in light of the values of the kingdom, in light of the gospel, in light of Christ. And I think is a fun bonus byproduct of all of that, this quick run through the 25 verses of Philemon that we're doing here. I think it's also going to help us put a bit of a bow on the New Testament. That is, I think the natural questions flowing directly from the text will help us to get a sense of the final New Testament generation of Christians, who was doing what, and where were they? And I think it'll help us land the plane on a lot of things that the Bible lands the plane on, and it'll help us frame the questions for what happened after a little more clearly. Those guys are sawing hard. I really respect the effort out there. If you can't hear it at all, I mean, that's just a wonder of technology because I hear it so loudly. In conclusion, if you ever have a chance to go to Mycenae, you should go there, both because it's awesome and it's beautiful, and there's all kinds of enchanting things to see. But also, if you ever go, think about that thing I'm saying. How this is a place that stands with one foot on either side of a historical divide. It's half history as we think of it, and half the myths of super ancient time immemorial. And likewise, Philemon is a book that has a foot in two historical worlds, one being the stuff that is in the Bible and tells the story of what is contained in there, but the other foot is squarely in the same era you and I are in, the age of the after Bible church. And starting tomorrow, we'll do a quick cruise through verse by verse to see what else we find here. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.