Theology Hot Topics with Elijah Lamb | Ep. 008

In this episode of In the Arena, Jason Warman sits down with Elijah Lamb for a wide-ranging, Bible-driven conversation that feels more like a theological roundtable than a typical podcast.

Together, they tackle some of the church’s most pressing theology hot topics—starting with the purpose of the Church and why gathering together matters more than ever as we approach the return of Christ. From there, they dive into charismatic theology, unpacking tongues, spiritual gifts, and the difference between God’s omnipresence and His manifest presence.

The conversation also explores eschatology and how different theological systems shape our mission today, before addressing the growing trend of pitting Jesus against Paul—and why that misunderstanding weakens the unity of Scripture. The episode wraps up with a candid “In the Arena” segment, where theological pet peeves are laid on the table.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Only when we're together are we being the temple, then you can't create this like just me, myself, and my Bible, Christianity doesn't work that way, because you'll never be the temple.

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

From the moment of the arrival of Jesus Christ, eschatology has begun. Like right there. We are living in an eschatological age of God's kingdom breaking into our world.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

We have a personal salvation, but we have corporate calling. We're actually here to reestablish the reign and rule of God on the earth today. And occupy like occupy till he comes.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to In the Arena Podcast with Jason Warman.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Hey, welcome to In the Arena. So glad that you're with us. Thanks for being on the journey with me. It's a it's a new venture, and we're so excited, glad that you're with us. And again, love love to hear from you. Thank you for all the comments. Thank you for everybody that's sharing. Thank you for everybody that sent a message or talked to me and said that you're enjoying the content. I hope it's helpful and it's in the arena because we get into some stuff that I think are conversations that we need to have, get in there, mix it up a little bit. And today's gonna be fun because we're gonna have, you know, I think it might end up just being a Bible study, and I'm completely okay with that. Uh and uh it's gonna kind of be a Bible study version of in the arena. There's some stuff I want to lean into, and I'm really excited, really thankful to I'm I'm calling this the the sequel because we've got a guest that was on the very first episode back with us. We have a student conference going this week, and he's here speaking to our students. I'm so glad he's here and give I don't know, give a warm welcome. I don't know how you do that on a podcast to Elijah Lamb. So glad you're here. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Hey, just uh I'm gonna go off topic real quick. Like, you would you describe yourself as a theologian? Is that there's no no like No, I would never tell anyone that I don't want that responsibility. Like this is always fun when you have to do your own bio. Yeah. Like what's like you write a book, what you put into the bio of the book.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Um that's a really good question. I don't know ever. I you know, I make AI write my bios when people ask me. I go like look up Elijah Lamb on Instagram and write a bio for him. That's not a joke. I do it all the time. And you'd think I would just like keep whatever one I send, but I just forget them. I never have them anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

You always have chat.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yeah. I mean it would be Yeah, just do it again. Just make AI do it again. Um I am a I'm passionate about teaching the Bible. I guess people would call me like a traveling evangelist for the most part, um, but aspiring scholar of the Bible. We'll see if I tough it out and get there something. Um but that's what I'm really, really passionate about.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Well, I'm glad you I'm glad you're here. Uh respect your voice and what you bring to the table and just admire the heck out of not only what you studied, but your brain to retain stuff is incredible. And I you know, I was thinking about what to get into today, and uh I wanna I want to start with just the purpose of the church. Uh there is there is almost uh it's it's beyond a lack of appreciation for the local church. And I mean I'm a I'm a pastor, so it kind of you know, obviously I'm pro-local church and it kind of sounds self-serving or whatever when I talk about the necessity of the church, but there's a there's a really big fundamental under misunderstanding of the church and the world. But then there's another uh layer of that that uh affects Christians. And I you know, back in uh the the COVID days w I had friends that were in one of the states that um you know some states deemed church essential and some states didn't deem, you know, when all the shutdown stuff happened and it was it was interesting because they were they were trying to make the case to their governor to um to to make the church essential and he he wouldn't do it and when they were trying to make the case he goes uh we we don't need churches, we already have social workers. That was his that was his perception of the church. And it's like there's uh there's an idea that people are okay with the church if it's if it's kind of the synonymous with the soup kitchen, nothing against feeding the hungry, or if it's like a food pantry, basically if it's a humanitarian cause, like the you know, people can see some value in it. And when I when I look at the church, like I I think probably one of the biggest things, and I want to uh I want to get your voice on it, but I want to just kind of land on some things and then uh get your thoughts on it. To me, like one one of the main purposes of the church is Jesus. Like it's his church, like it's his those are his songs, that's his word, those are his offerings, like we're his people, like it's the ministry to Jesus is the primary thing, which I think uh in in a lot of the strategies of how we've built church over the past 20 years or however that I mean probably longer than that, like the purpose of the church kind of missed the the main purpose of the church, which was uh like we're gonna gather and we're gonna sing songs to Jesus. Like we're gonna worship Jesus, we're gonna minister the word. Uh we're gonna we're gonna like that's his fellowship, that's that's all of his. The second one was you know, the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, how do we resource people, how do we equip people? Um the one that kind of became the main purpose of the church, which I still think um, you know, I don't ever want to lose the passion for it, and that's the evangelist evangelizing the lost. Like that that became a a primary and it still should be significant, but it almost took the place of some other things. And then the the the other one, and I you know, that's important, but I think it got it got elevated to the point where people are confused about what church is, and that is outreach. It's like um, you know, like we we need to serve the the poor, we need to feed the hungry, we need to do the things that the church has done for two thousand years. And uh I just kicked your foot. We'll just let that go in the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Play a little footsies. I don't mind. I got a tad of your anointing just now.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

So help us, like w in in in your thought, when you see the church, like what what do you think are the primary purposes and what do you think what do you think are the misunderstandings around what church is or what people think church is right now?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah. Okay. That was great. So much there that I want to like tap into and and and unpack. So there's a few things. Uh I think when people, secular people, especially people who are maybe left of center, um, when they think about the church, they're willing to like admire churches that have humanitarian branches or basically charities. Yeah. Um, and I am happy that they appreciate that about the church. I think benevolence is like a big part of what the church exists to do and how the first century, second century, third century church changed the world around them was through that, through what we might call like mercy ministry or something like that. And I think of where Paul met with the apostles and he describes his meeting with them in the book of Galatians, and their only request to him was that he remember the poor. Yeah. Uh that's it. I mean, they're like, and they uh while doing that are in approval of his spirit-led ministry, the message that he's preaching, his theology, um, all of that, and they say, like, just do this one thing for us, don't forget the poor. And so this is a critical part of how the church witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Uh is that we see the world differently and we're willing to give away and give away and give away because we're seeking first the kingdom of God. So absolutely, the church needs to be able to work together to serve those who are outside the boundaries of the church. Now, that that that servitude first applies according to Jesus, his references to sheep and and to goats in Matthew chapter 25, highly contested and politicized passage of scripture, first applies to the needy within the church. So the church has a first and foremost a duty to its own widows and orphans, et cetera. But we extend that to the world around us. And so I'm very happy, especially as someone who lives in a city like Los Angeles, to see Christians who are passionate about ministry to like the homeless. Because I think it's some people have to care about that. I don't like when people look at uh churches, like organizations with 501c3 status, whatever, and they look and go, like, oh, you're not doing enough socially. Right. Well, it's like, hold on. Like, why does the why does the pastor need to be running the soup kitchen? Why can't there be a believer or groups of believers in a church who are really passionate about that, who do something together, who are an arm of of what that church is doing and are empowered and enabled and perturbed with that church? You know what I mean? Yeah. I think too often Christians take this so leftist, we'd say, or left-of-center social critique of the church and go, you don't do enough, and they go, Yeah, my church should be doing more. Right. It's like, well, if you feel that burden from the spirit, think how can you be a representative of your local congregation by building something like that out? So that's that's one of the things I would think. But when you bring up like the COVID example, the reason why we can't stop the church there and think of that as like the most essential component of the church's existence is because we have a different anthropology. So where people who might be materialists or or maybe maybe not full on, like hard materialists, and by that I don't mean like people who really, really love money. Right, right. No, I didn't know. It happens to work out that way. But philosophically materialist in that they believe that the only thing that's real is the stuff that we can see, touch, measure, uh things that we can scientifically observe and prove. So the soul is highly contested. Our emotions are not real reflections of anything spiritual inside of us. They're probably just brain soup. They're just yesterday's lunch, you know what I mean? And uh so God is not real, angels and demons are not real, you know, nothing spiritual is really happening. Maybe some like won't go that far, they'll still have their rocks or whatever, whatever it is, you know, crystals. They'll be open to some level of spirituality. But for the most part, they're looking and going, ultimately, human need stops at social justice. Right. And that is the like modern Western uh sort of progressive gospel that got formed out of these mainline denominations that departed from like true creedal Christianity, which when it got partnered with like the civil rights movement and stuff like that, it was just like the church is a a form of it's God's stamp of approval on a certain kind of activism, and the church is nothing more than that. Well, that reduces humanity down to men and women have needs only concerning their place in society and their physical bodies, yeah. Their ease of access to economic growth and to basic necessities like food and housing, and like humans do need those things, and that absolutely is true. But the church is a comes with a basic recognition that actually our most fundamental need comes before that. Right. And the reason we recognize the dignity of those things that humans need those things is because we recognize as beings made in the image of God who have souls, who have spiritual value, spiritual moral value that goes beyond just like their tangible needs. And so the church looks and goes, no, we are we are essential because people have souls, people have spiritual lives. They need to be shepherded and helped and uplifted and built up. So actually, we do more than just mercy ministry, and our first and foremost responsibility is to be sort of what you've described is a kingdom of priests who are ministering to God. Yeah. And as we receive the Spirit ministering to one another and building one another up and offering people real spiritual hope, not just material assistance. So the church is much bigger than that. Like we believe that the church is the touch point between heaven and earth. Yeah. The evidence of that is not just the multiplication of fish and loaves, though that's though that's part of it. It's it's God's kingdom breaking through and and we are loving one another and we are ministering in the spirit, and there's miraculous power coming through us and boldness in our presentation of the message of the gospel. Like there's so much more than just what do we do to people in need? Because all people are in need. They're in need of forgiveness and of hope and of the joy and the fruit of the spirit and the gifts of the spirit. Like people are desperately in need of all those things. And so the church goes well beyond just the lines of filling people's stomachs. As a matter of fact, the historic conviction of the church is that the main thing that we feed people is what you pointed out, is Christ. Right. And this is no no more like heavily noted than at the table of communion, where we're going, like, this is what people really need. Right. This is what they need. This is why in other traditions, priests, Catholic and Protestant, like you can think of like Anglican priests, are going and presenting people on their deathbed with communion. It's like, here's what you most fundamentally need. Your soul needs to be fed with the life of God that you receive here. So people need that first and uh and foremost. So I I reject, first of all, the materialist view of the world which says that people don't have souls. That's actually what I'm most concerned about. And my concern for that uh evolves into a concern for people's physical bodies.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Um Yeah, you know, when Jesus you see the the fish and loaves, like right after that, he's like, Well, they're just following me for the fishing. Right, exactly. And he kind of shuts the food pantry down. Yeah. And then the other one is uh is it Acts Yeah, it's Act Six because Act Seven is Stephen. So it's Acts Six where there's a segment of widows who aren't getting the daily distribution. And I really think this would not go over well on social media today, as the apostles are like, hey, we don't need to leave the ministry of prayer and the word to and the phrase they use is to wait on tables.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I mean, that would that would get you on one of those accountability podcasts right there. I mean, that would that would not go well in today's culture. And they're like, Okay, so you said it because it's like, okay, I if somebody feels a call and they they want to serve somebody, it's like, okay, then we push it to the apostles, and the apostles were like, hey, well, we're gonna we're gonna do the we're gonna do the work of the ministry that God's called us to do, but we're gonna find seven faithful men. Yeah. And we're gonna we're gonna pray over them, we're gonna anoint them, they're deacons.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

And then hilariously, one of those seven faithful men who set aside to feed the widows is like, I need to go preach the gospel to the Pharisees and get killed right now. Like, dude, that's not your job. We have we have one less person feeding widows now. Gosh don't it, Stephen. Why do you have to faithfully witness to the gospel? Right. We want you to run the homeless shelter. You know? Evidently, even Stephen is like, I have this high calling to take care of those in need. But you know what's more important to me? The pre-church of the gospel. It's like, whoa, that's crazy. And I think one of the key things in understanding the church theologically, and this is where I would like to sort of step in and and I try my best in social media graciously, because I can even in the last podcast, I was like trying to check myself because I get a little too like fired up about it, because I walked in direct theological and practical opposition to this truth. But the the actual church, as laid out and described in scripture, is uh is essential for the life of the believer. And one of the mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

That's the next place I wanted to go.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah, one of the mistakes that a lot of uh and it's not even just like Christians on their own, but even preachers have made is by making the most important thing about you is your private inward confession and and intellectual assent to belief in Jesus. And I get it, and I I do I agree with that in a sense, but I'd qualify it with like a lot of follow-up. Like yeah, but the the call of discipleship to Jesus that people agree to when they confess him as Lord, it means absolute submission to him and what he and what he commands and what Christ has commanded for us is basic expectation that he doesn't even have to verbalize because it's so simple and matter-of-fact, that you would participate in a real, like legit, visible expression of his people. That you the only way, like Paul's description that he gives us in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians, where he talks about us being the body of Christ, it's like if you want to be united to Christ, you have to belong to the body. So you need to be like the hand, let's say for example, is not directly connected to the head. The neck is connected to the head. So how are you, if you happen to be a hand in the body of Christ, stay united to Christ who is the head, well, you need to be connected to the wrist and the forearm and the elbow and the bicep and the shoulder, like all the way up to the neck. Like you need to be thoroughly connected so that we together can be united to Christ. And and one of the ways that I think people, in misunderstanding the scriptures, they make the whole of the Christian life about sort of my private experience of Jesus, and I'll be willing to go to church if I find it to be beneficial to me. Uh that's a really harmful mindset. Like that's American consumerism just totally twisting what the church is supposed to be about. And if you read the New Testament closely, you find that, for example, the way that Paul and Jesus speak about the coming of Christ's kingdom through his church is that we have in the church a fulfillment of the temple. Okay, so th that's one of the key metaphors where it's only ever used plurally. So people will say, like, you know, I'm the I'm the bride of Christ. Well, no, we're the bride of Christ. No individual Christian is the bride of Christ by themselves. Christ is coming for a plural bride, right? You know, to be consummated with with all of us together. You are not the body of Christ. Like you're a body part of Christ, but you and you are not the temple. We are the temple. That's the the analogy that each of us is living stones being built together into a temple. And so the and that works on like a big cosmic level, of course, but also on like a micro level, where when we come together, we're doing the stuff that priests are supposed to do. So I love what you said that we come and we sing songs to Jesus. Some people will blow that off, like, really? Can that be that important? God wants us together have a have a Christian concert.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

It's like Yeah Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Actually, it's exactly what the writer of Hebrews says, when the writer of Hebrews is laying out how in Christ we have a total fulfillment of the whole temple system, what does he conclude in the final chapter? Hey, offer sacrifices of praise. That that's our New Testament priestly vocation. It's more than that. It's more than that, but it's certainly not less than that. We this is the way that we come together to offer sacrifices to God now. Like this is our priestly vocation. And so once you see that the church, plural, only to only when we're together are we being the temple, then you you can't create this like just me, myself, and my Bible, Christianity doesn't work that way because you'll never be the temple. Right. You'll never be the temple like that. You'll never be the location where sacrifices are being offered to God in the priestly sense the New Testament describes. So, yes, each of us has a calling to cultivate a private, inward, quiet, secret devotion to the Lord. Like Jesus says in Matthew 6, when you pray, close the door. Don't let anybody know what's going on in there. Like, absolutely correct, we need to pursue that private relationship with Jesus. But the way that he intends for us to work it out is for us to come together and and for us to be submitted to the authority that that he's approved of and is using to build his kingdom. Like in we're we're meant to be drawn into a complex web of relationships that we can't easily depart from. And that if you go on an unrepentant sin, you can get excommunicated from.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

We could go for a while.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Uh I think the statistics right now I could be wrong pulling this, you know, out of my brain. But I at one point it was like church attendance was once every three weeks in the US. I think it's down to once every four weeks in the US. And then there's a phrase I want to uh like it's it's one of my like I don't I don't like the phrase. And it's um hey, it I think it's diminished. This is kind of dated now. I don't think I don't think it's in vogue as much as it was, but it was like, hey, just go be the church. And I'm like, there's no individual version of the church. Right. The church uh defined as a is a gathering, specifically a public gathering, not a private gathering. It's a public gathering of believers for you know a a purpose uh called out. And then uh, you know, one of the things I started to realize is like we and I and I believe this, I bel my statement, let's mix this up. You can you can fight me on this. I don't feel like you know, you you're the theologian, the aspiring theologian. No, no, no. My idea is yes, salvation is personal. Like you don't you don't sign a card and like join you know, like you joined a church, now you're saved. Like there's this there's this personal encounter with God. And we're we have a personal salvation, but we have a corporate calling. They that in in scripture you you see the phrase God saves and God adds. I think it's Acts 13. It's like God saved, God added to the church. Like there was no s there was no distinction between those two things of like, okay, well you're saved and now you know you've gotta go find someplace to go. It's like, no, when God saves you, the intention is to add you to the church of Jesus Christ. And it's the understanding, and I think what you said is so important, is the the ministry of the priesthood is we bring our sacrifice of praise. Yeah. We we bring our our ministry of worship, we bring our offerings, like those are yeah, we give them to a church, but ultimately, you know, Ananias and Sapphira weren't laying them at the feet of the apostle. They were laying their l offering physically at the feet of the apostle Peter, but uh evidently that offering was being received somewhere else, or not received in their case, somewhere else, because it was more than just a a donation to the church. It was, you know, ultimately rejected by the Holy Spirit because of the the manipulation of the story behind it. Um and I d and my my heart and I like what I want people to understand is the the development that happens, the discipline that happens, and the the pushback on like church is something that you you you pop into. Like one of the things I think we've lost and I was I was asking a question here and I just got on my own rant. But one of the things we were lost, and I'm I'm old enough, I was raised in a gener a different generation, and that was like doing a work for God was everything. Like that was like you like every person was supposed to do a work for God. Like you're you're you're serving in your church, you're you're you're part of a ministry somewhere, you're you're doing something because that was what mattered.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Yeah. I I think that's the the the other half of the priestly ministry. Because priests minister to God and to the people. And so we've been made a kingdom of priests, which means everyone outside of the kingdom is the non priestly people that we. Represent before God and that we are trying to bring before the Lord. Like that's the work that we're doing. So every like you can't it doesn't work to be a Christian who's like spiritually all fattened up, who is not on mission. Right. And I think that's one of the sort of what you described at the beginning about how um in a lot of like evangelical circles, church and the gathering has become primarily about the lost person who happens to be there. And I think the early church had something like that, like where Paul describes in 1 Corinthians about the regulations for how we carry out, for example, the gift of tongues when nonbelievers are present. So it turns there's like curious people who are coming in and participating in these Christian gatherings who like wanted to see what was going on. And so we expect that that kind of thing will happen. But if the the gathering of the church, if basically every single time we gather, it's like a Billy Graham revival meeting trying to lead everyone in the room to Jesus, sometimes that's totally appropriate, but you end up with malnourished Christians who have no sense of what their mission is. And I think that's where you end up. What here's what happens serious Christians begin to feel like, oh, the way for me to be sanctified is all gonna be private for me because what happens at church is not for me, it's for my lost friends, and I'm gonna keep trying to draw them into the church. But a serious Christian then is gonna start asking really individualistic questions like, what is my calling? What is my calling? And my calling might have nothing to do with the community that I'm planted in. Right. It might be completely irrelevant to them in that view. But it's really hard to imagine believers in Jesus in the first century ever thinking that way. Because they're living in like metropolitan cities. Right. And they're, I mean, we're talking, let's take the the city of Rome, for example. I mean, we're talking the Christians are 0.1% of the population, maybe, actually, probably 0.01% of the Roman population. If somebody is going to do a work for God, if we're not doing it together, we don't stand a chance. Like the odds are stacked against us in the most extreme way. But now it's like anybody can go do their Christian mission completely isolated of the of the people that God has given them. Right. And I don't I don't actually don't know if that's a good thing. And so I think one of the ways, like when I think about the way that I communicate as a preacher, and I'm really blessed to be in a kind of church like this, where this deep sense of calling to mission is so significant in my church. Yeah. Like my so my pastor's preaching through the book of Revelation, beginning to end. And you can't read through Revelation and not have the sense that it's my duty to Christ and to the church to be a faithful witness to God in my world and to like actually go out of my way to evangelize lost people and to resist darkness and to pray for the sick and all these things. And the profound sense of meaning that you get and the loss of that deep individualism that just drives people crazy when they can't figure out what they're calling is. They just go, Well, what's my church doing? Like, what is the mission that my church is being called to right now? Like, what's the what does faithful witness look like for my community? I'm just gonna participate in that. I'm gonna be about that. If we reduce that down to the strongest sense of mission we can give to people is, hey, make sure you hand out this invite card. I I'm down for that. Like, I I it's great to invite people into church to invite these curious people to come have a look and see what they think. That's amazing. But how are you, through the ethic and and sort of the the model that your church is giving you, carrying out the mission of Jesus? Because that's what that's that's you know, when the phrase like go be the church is funny because we already have a word to describe what they're trying to say. Christian, go be a little Christ, right? Go be a Christian, yeah, you know, and Christians multiply themselves. Yeah, like that's what we do. And um so so yeah, I'm on board with what you're describing 100%.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Okay, all right, I passed the test. Great. Uh hey, I wanna I want to circle back to uh we might circle back to something. I wanna I wanna go because uh how how you understand the purpose of the church then begins to set uh um where you're going as a church, and uh I wanna I want to talk about how and just dig into how eschatology and and and the and the work of the church kind of go hand in hand. And uh, you know, I was uh in I'm f I'm 48 years old, so I'm a different generation, uh grew up in in a very Pentecostal environment, and so like for the majority of my life the view on eschatology, the end times, there was one view. Like I didn't I didn't know there was anything other than dispensationalism. Like that was there was you had options, you had dispensationalism or you had dispensationalism. You know, you had choices. And it was like and I think a lot of people like probably even you know watching my podcast are like there's dispensationalism. And I w I want to just is I appreciate your your perspective and and and and try to like for people for that for people that have been raised like me, and there was you know, it was like you got options, you got dispensationalism or you got dispensationalism. Like what how would you introduce uh an eschatology that doesn't contain a secret rapture, that doesn't have dispensations, which is uh and you you did something I can't remember where I saw it, but you broke down the word dispensational dispensationalism, how it how it kind of spanned. Uh like the the the the time frame, even the kind of the localization of it. Um walk us through a little bit of that because it's fascinating to you. Okay. And it's in the arena, so like we're gonna get we're we're gonna go there. If people want, if we're gonna say we're gonna mix it up, let's mix it up.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah, I love what you're saying. Like my options were dispensationalism one or dispensationalism two. Totally. Like when people they're like, oh yeah, I know the the end times conversation is highly contested. You got your pre-chrib raptures and your post-trib raptures and your mid-tribe raptures. You're like, actually. Those are your options. Yeah, there's actually like so much beyond that. And I think like one of the critical things to understand about eschatology when we start the conversation. The best way to start the conversation is not to go, well, should I be a dispensationalist, or should I hold a covenant theology, or should I be a non-millennial, or put like all these like theological terms that we throw into the mix because it's they're not helpful starting places. Um instead, we should just go, like, okay, like what are we even when we start talking about eschatology, like what are we even describing? Right. Because people tend to think when you say eschatology or end times, we're talking about the events immediately leading up to and following the return of Jesus Christ. And I understand that, and that is that is a big part of the conversation. But what the New Testament is trying to communicate to us, when Paul preaches the very first sermon in Acts chapter, Acts chapter 2, and when Jesus shows up and the first words he has to say in Mark are repent and believe, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand or has been made accessible, uh, what they're telling us when Peter's first sermon he says like these are the last days. Yes. So so here's the important point the entire Christian life is eschatological. Yeah. Like we are living in an eschatological age. So there the whole of created existence, from the from the moment of the arrival of Jesus Christ, eschatology has begun. Thank you. Right there. We are living in an eschatological age of God's kingdom breaking into our world. And and the promise that God has given through his prophets that he's going to redeem the whole created cosmos has begun. When Jesus Christ arrives, when he becomes incarnate in the world, we have in the Old Testament a buildup and a preparation for the arrival of God in the flesh, who is pouring out his ministry, which Paul describes in Colossians 1, where he is reconciling all things to himself. Everything, all things in heaven and on earth, all created things, everything that God has made is being redeemed and restored through Christ, now presently through the work of the Spirit, who is, if St. Basil describes him as the completer of the works of God. He finishes the works of God. So the Holy Spirit is working out the ministry started by Jesus through his church, and the return of Christ will be the final consummation that ties the bow on that and wraps up what God has been doing through what we call the church age for a long time, through the sword that comes through his mouth. Well, what's that about? Like, why is Jesus riding on a horse in the sky and there's a sword coming out of his mouth? Well, sword is a sign of judgment. You you you cut, you divide, good and evil, right and wrong, dark and light. It's the point where Jesus immediately circumcises the world, basically, where everything that is the excess of what is what has been broadened through through darkness and through the falls that is not supposed to be there is cut off. Okay. So that's my like big like you are living in eschatology right now. Eschatology is a now reality. And I don't mean that look, look what's happening in Russia, we're living in the end times. I mean every Christian ever has been living in an eschatological reality. Okay, so that's that's important. And that's why we can say something like, you know, NT Wright famously will say, like, your eschatology changes, your whole theology changes everything. Yes. Yeah, because the conversation isn't just about when do you think the rapture is happening. The question is, what age do you think we're living in? Like and and what is the point of the end times? And what is the mission of God? Because that's what eschatology is. You know, when we read in Revelation about Jesus, he is worthy to open the scroll. The scroll represents God's, it's what it said is God's judgments. What that means is it's God's redemptive plan of salvation is being enacted on the earth. So when Jesus, and this is the high point, which I'm reading about this right now, but like one of the higher points of the gospel narrative that like nobody talks about is when Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of the Father, established as the one who is ruling over everything. What the kingdom of God, which was once contested, has been bodied and destroyed. And now we have these little micro demonic rebellions that are completely irrelevant because the strong man, Satan, has been tied up. And so Christ is reigning and ruling. That's why I would say something like the millennial reign is happening right now, and it's totally synonymous with the church age and the last days, because that's what eschatology means. Like that's what we're witnessing and experience. And the Jesus now is worthy because he's the one seated at the right hand to enact God's plan, ultimate, eschatological plan of salvation in the world. So it's not like we're in this brief waiting period, Jesus shows up and he does all the work. It's we are the church is building toward what Christ is ultimately coming to do. Okay. That's like big level. So where does dispensationalism come from? So all basically two like sort of mainstream in Reformed and then in like Baptist, etc., even Pentecostal circles, are trying to, when they think of the end times, they're trying to think of how do we reconcile that with the account that we get in the scripture of God's like big story. How do we wrap that story up? And how do you find coherence with the coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus with the Old Testament? And they both have very different approaches. A covenant theologian, like from like a reformed background, and uh again, I don't think it's like I don't think it's perfectly ideal to take these theological systems and then find them in the Bible. Right, right. I I agree with covenant theology for the most part, I just wouldn't call myself a very reliable like recounter of it because it's not how I tend to read or what I but I'll try my best. So they're looking at going the covenants that God begins the first and second covenant with Adam and Eve and with Noah and with Abram and with David, uh, with Moses and Israel, and then finally through Christ and to the church. These God is sort of stacking these things upon each other. Whereas dispensationalism is going to say, in these what whatever number of dispensations, which by the way is just a King James word, which is why we call it that. That's what the language was at the time for like time periods. Right. So just time periods in which God is acting differently, has different expectations, which is why we ask questions, weird questions like how did people get saved in the Old Testament? And we're like, well, it was through sacrifices and through works, because we're really confused. We're thinking basically God had one expectation on the Old Testament patriarchs and then one on the church because of Christ. People will get real crazy with it. They'll start reading, like, well, Jesus' message was for the Jews, not for the church, and we believe the gospel of Paul. And it's like, whoa, that's called mid-acts dispensational. It gets real weird, okay? But here's where it comes from. So you got this guy, John Nelson Darby, in the 1800s, and he is working out a theological system where he's like, God needs to finish what he started with the Jews. So God left a lot unfinished with the Jews. Now that that's just from the outset, I have problems with that because I think it arises from a really poor reading of the prophets. Whatever. He's like, God isn't done with the Jews, and I agree with that. Big asterisk. Okay, read Romans 11, like, yeah, I agree, God isn't done with the Jewish people on a literal ethnic level. I think he's done with the state of Israel, just to give my personal opinion. I think God has nothing to do with the uh with the political state of Israel. Does that does that inform my position on the political state of Israel, like on my political take? No. I just there is nothing eschatological. This is my take. People disagree, but this my eschatological take is that the events happening in political Israel have nothing to do with with the Bible and with Yahweh. That's that's the way that I feel. Okay. John Nelson Darby, he's like, God's not done with the Jews, and he's trying to figure out a theological system to make that work. Well, they were doing these weird prophetic conferences way back then, and this little Scottish, Irish, one of the two, who gives a turd about the difference? They both talk funny. You've got this little Irish girl, and she's like, I've had a vision of the Lord. I've seen the Lord in a dream. The Lord is going to return on it. It's gonna be a sacred. Or it's just Scottish, and she's like, the Lord's gonna return, it's gonna be a sacred, you know, whatever it is. It's not very good Scottish. I got like lost in the in the thoughts of the Irish. I gotta be like, freedom. I can't do a girl Scottish, that's the problem. I can do a Scottish accent, okay? Um, it's one of my favorites. So but so she has this dream that the Lord is gonna return secretly. And John Nelson Darby is like, ooh, I like that. I can work with that. And so that's where we get the doctrine of the rapture, where basically his belief is that God, in order to finish his work with the Jews and reinstate the covenant of works, basically, and the sacrificial system, which God is still fine with, he's gonna get the church out of the world and then pick back up where he left off with Israel. I have problems with that on like an unbelievable amount of levels that I can't even possibly describe. Um, but that's where it begins. So when people look, they're like, well, look, second, second, you know, Thessalonians says we're gonna get caught up. Well, I was just gonna say it's here in the Bible. It's like, okay, well, this is important. Nobody read Thessalonians like that until this guy invents the doctrine. So even though you're like you have thought about the end times with a doctrine with a rapture lens your whole life, you read that and you go, look, here, rapture. But nobody thought that way until somebody created that doctrine so that it could be found in that scripture. So St. Paul never could have been thinking about the end times that way. That's that's really, really important. Um What do you think? Tell me, I've said a bunch. What do you what do there's so many places we could go, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Um yeah, I I forgot to say something because I know there's gonna be people that have been in church for a long time, like me. And uh and and all that's that's all that's the only thing that you have awareness of, right? And so um, you know, my encouragement for those that are that are listening, and like this is challenging for you. Uh when there like there was a trend on social media where it was like we listen and we don't judge. I think this is the listen and we don't judge. Uh like I got I got into David Campbell uh like big time when I was wanting to start trying to get a a better framework of of of where we're at. Uh, you know, uh not where we're at, but what uh what I believe about the the end times. Because one of the things I never could I never could reconcile because you know in dispensationalism like whether whether you're pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, you know, I was I was raised in the in the pre-trib, like the the secret catching away, and then the return of Christ is you know, it's it's nuclear war and it's you know like cataclysmic. And then you read Jesus and he's talking about the w when the Son of Man comes and he's gonna be it's like in the days of Noah. People are gonna be getting married, people are gonna be uh living their life, and I I never could reconcile, like how's life normal under under that uh ideology? You know, like I think uh and then you know the big the big shift for me was like okay, uh the the end times isn't uh this thing that we're like fearing, it's it's where we're at right now. Yeah, like this we're we're in the end times from from Jesus till today, we're in the end times. And that that was a fundamental shift for me because I think that fundamentally changes how we function as a church. Yeah. And you know, I typically when I read the book of Revelation, like what I like to do is, you know, read the news and then try to figure out what Revelation is saying. Is that am I doing that right, Elijah? There is you could be if it in one sense.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

If you're saying I'm reading this headline and that and Revelation, John was talking about this actual event that we're talking about, literally this and only this, then you'd be wrong. But you very well can read Revelation and say, this is the kind of thing that John was talking about. Right. So this is what Revelation seeks to do. Revelation is a very unique kind of literature that it's sort of a lost art that people don't write them anymore. They're called apocalypses. When you think apocalyptic, that doesn't just mean the end of the world. It literally means to unveil or to reveal, hence why we call it the the book of Revelation. It's the apocalypse of of John. Uh it's John's unveiling. And what apocalypse seeks to do, they use these big, crazy you know, metaphors. Like I grew up hearing, you know, and John seeing these giant monsters, he's talking about helicopters and transformers, he doesn't have the language to describe it yet. And I think that's yeah, it's just hysterical because that's not I get it, I understand the temptation, but that's not what's happening. And we have lots of parallel literature that looks a lot like the book of Revelation, some of which is in your Bible. Go read Ezekiel and Zechariah and Daniel, and you read these things, and you it's like, oh, wait a minute, like this is an ancient art that John was tapping into. He isn't just like on some crazy Holy Spirit LSD trip seeing the future, like, and it's like freaking them all out, and he's like, Scorpions with poison. It's like, whoa, slow down. Uh, that's not the best way to read. In fact, what Revelation is probably describing, and what I think it actually this is my take, is Revelation is describing things that happen. So, so so in some parts we might say John is referring to things that have happened, and we might be saying in some places that John is referring to things that will happen, that's true, but for the most part, revelation is these are the things that happen.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

This is the kind of stuff the church will experience as we seek to be faithful witnesses to Jesus in a world that is opposed to us. And that's the message. Um, and and the the big story of revelation is is not, hey guys, you know, God's gonna get the church out of the world. It's actually, guys, the church is what God is doing. The church is where God is in the world. And that's shocking because the the Christians, the seven churches in Asia Minor, and through the churches for early on in the church age, um, through the first 300 years of Christianity, is a tiny little minority, which I've I've already described. And yet John is telling them, hey, I looked and I saw a vision, and there were people from every tribe and every tongue and every every nation. And he says they were thousands upon thousands and ten thousands upon ten thousands that couldn't imagine. This is important. In the book of Revelation, every single number is symbolic. There is not a single number used in the book of Revelation that is not metaphorical because that's how apocalypses work. That's just a rule for how you how we read these things, okay? If you want to learn about this, you could read Revelation and the End of All Things by Craig Coaster. I think that's how you say his name. I'm not sure if I'm right. There's a book called Reading Revelation responsibly and I responsibly. I can't remember his name. David Campbell, Mystery of Strange. I was gonna drop that book. Yeah, banger. And he writes uh uh for everyone commentary on Revelation. Just go read some of this stuff. And you'll see, suddenly you'll see Revelation in a new way that's like, oh, it turns out this book is really beautiful and doesn't give me like nightmares and panic attacks.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Surprised by Hope deals with a little bit of that too.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

That's a great that's a great book. Absolutely. Uh you just get like a bigger picture. Yeah. And it turns out like Revelation has turned into like my favorite book in the Bible to read. Yes. And and to learn about because it's like, whoa, John was doing something so powerful, something so like, dude, John was a genius. Revelation has over 500 references to the Old Testament in just 455 verses, I think is the correct number. Oh my god. So you've got more than one reference to the Old Testament per verse in the book of Revelation. This is a guy who is just like baptized in the Old Testament. You know what I mean? Every square inch of this manuscript is covered in Old Testament. Man, what a profound knowledge of the scripture that we now have to have like a really great knowledge of the Old Testament to understand what John is even describing. And the encouragement is hey, church, as you're resisted and fought against, as you face, you know, persecution and all the various temptations that will come, stay faithful to Jesus. That's the point.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Yeah, that was that was the I think it's mysteries explain where David Campbell starts pulling. Yeah, that's where he starts pulling all of the references that John makes in Revelation, like they're anchored, you know, not in the news. He's pulling the meaning from Ezekiel from Daniel. Yes. Like, hey, this is what it meant in context, which is how that's the hermeneutic, right? That's how we read the scripture.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Yeah, that thing Ezekiel wrote about, that's what you're living in. Yeah. That's what you're experiencing. Hey, you know when Ezekiel like spoke to the dry bones and told them that's you.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Hey, that's what we're experiencing right now. Yeah. You know those visions Daniel had? Yeah, that's us. That's what we're doing, that's what we're doing right now, right now, today, not 2,000 years from now in Russia, right here, right now. That's that's what we're that's what we're living in. So sort of the key for understanding revelation is that if it wouldn't have made sense to them, it can't be the right interpretation. That's huge.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah. It's always like, man, you know, it sucks to be Latin American. You're nowhere. It's like your your nations have nothing to do with the big world events that God's actually concerned about. God barely even sees you over there.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Yeah, it really sucks to be like Mongolia or like South Africa or Australia. Right. Hey, sorry, Australians, Osies. God has nothing to do with you guys. He's really busy in the Mediterranean.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

The US and Israel, we're in the game. They're just sort of on the bench, you know. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not even on the bench, they're just like in the in the stands watching, you know, watching the kingdom. Um and I think one of the big shifts for me uh was trying to figure this out is like what you believe about the end times really changes the mission of the church. Absolutely. Because, you know, like I I think the term would be, and this is how I would describe it, is like when you're when you're convinced this bad stuff is coming and you know, like this this cataclysmic thing or you know, gee or pre-trib, Jesus is gonna come catch us away, then it it really does become escapism. Like you don't you don't build anything lasting. Like we don't, you know, in a churches back in the day would take 200 years to build a cathedral, you know, something that was. That is that that a a thief in the night, blink blanket of an eye, like the the the return of Christ. But when you put a dispensation on it and then you're trying to Figure out a time, it really changes like the work of the church, which is that we're in the now and not yet. Like we're we're establishing the kingdom of God. Like we we haven't lost hope on the world, and we're just trying to get out of here before things get really bad.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Like that fundamentally changes what we do as a church. And and you can't have good eschatology if you don't have a good understanding of the book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden. Because that's that's I mean, that's John's expectation for us. He's constantly calling back. Early on, he's just he keeps describing the church with like Eden Rea. But then the very last chapter, two chapters of the Bible is describing God's eternal kingdom like the Garden of Eden. Well, what's the point there? Is he just saying, like, it's gonna be so blissful and perfect? Well, no, he's telling us, like, hey, the story is gonna finalize, we'll be back where we started. And what's Adam and Eve's vocation? Adam and Eve's vocation is to, and this is the way the biblical authors describe things, and you can read guys like G.K. Beale, who he who's a friend of David Campbell, who David Campbell uh uh collaborated on his shorter commentary on Revelation, which is like one of the I haven't read that one yet. I guess it's a very highly regarded commentary on Revelation. Um the the way that he works out is, and several other scholars will describe it this way, but biblical authors in in Genesis and through through the Torah and places like Ezekiel, etc., Adam and Eve are described as priests to God who their duty in spreading the garden the garden is a temple, and their job is to make the whole world a temple. So when the veil tears, when Jesus Christ dies, and the veil tears, and suddenly the metaphor now is that his when he was on earth, his body was the temple, according to John chapter 2, and when he ascends, the church becomes the temple that he is building. Well, what is the what is the church's duty and mission now? Well, we are taking up again the vocation of Adam, Adam and Eve to make the whole world the dwelling place of God. Like that's what we're doing. So we're spreading the message of Jesus to every square inch of the earth, to every single person, and and and taking over the world through self-denial and cruciform love and and servitude and all these things and through the preaching of the message so that the whole world becomes God's temple. Um that changes. If you're like actually God's goal is to if if here's the two options our job is to stay here and get God's presence into the world, or our job is to stay here until God gets our presence out of the world. Well, those are two very, very different things, and uh it changes the way that you think about what your what your mission is.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Yeah, absolutely. Because other otherwise it's just you're you're trying to build temporary things in a hurry to get out of here, not recognizing no like God hasn't given up on the world. Uh you know, go into all the nations, make disciples, baptize them. I'm with you to the end of the age. Uh like there's there's a space. It kind of puts the church to me, like when you when you have that mindset, it kind of puts the church on a losing team. It's like you you're trying to get out instead of like, no, we're we're we're actually here to reestablish the the reign and rule of God on the earth today and occup like occupy till he comes. And I I uh like there's so much I want to go to, but I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna transition. I'm gonna do my pet peeve. We're gonna do a hard transition right now. We're gonna I'm gonna do my pet peeve and then I wanna hear your pet your your your theological pet peeve. Okay. I I'm gonna use this one and that is the Paul versus Jesus. Like there's there's a whole movement uh in you know right now like that wants to separate like the writings of Paul from the teachings of Jesus as this if as if they're two different entities, like two two different beasts. And you know, one of the things that gets said about Paul, and you can like you jump in when you want, and then uh but also like don't don't stop there. I I really want to uh I want to know what's irking you right now. Like I want to get in the arena for a minute. Okay, so here's my take here's my take on Paul. Is people try to disconnect, like they try to diminish Paul. And one is uh let me just start with the basic thing. The whole Bible was uh authored, yes, by 40 different men, but it has one author, or written by 40 different men, it has one author, and that's the Holy Spirit. Like it's it's settled scripture. But when people try to diminish Paul, I just find it amazing that the only person that Jesus came back to personally evangelize was the apostle Paul. And then they try to disc like they try to disc discredit the one that Jesus came back, knocked him off his donkey, called called him out of Phariseaism into Christianity, and and called him to to preach the gospel, build a church, and then ultimately write, what is it, 13 books of the New Testament.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

Yeah, this is like an issue that drives me nuts when I hear people use this rhetoric of like Paul co-opted Christianity. There's a good book called Paul, Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity. It's like good introduction to like the real issues because what the internet version of this is and it this is like what really like grinds my gears, is you get guys who come on and they're always like, Oh no, Paul made you know, made it Jesus about atonement and all these things, and he invented all these doctrines about obedience and submission. Jesus was never about that. Jesus wanted you to have Christ consciousness and learn to be one with the universe and all these things. And I'm like watching, like, you've never read the gospels before. Right. The only quotation we get from Jesus out of these guys' mouths is, well, he said the kingdom of God is within you. Like dying because that's not even a good translation of that verse. Like Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is in your midst. Right, right. Yeah. His point is like it's within reach. It's yeah. Yeah. The point is like the kingdom is here right now through me. Yeah. I'm bringing the kingdom right here. It's here. I am the kingdom of God. Like I'm bringing the kingdom of God and I'm making it accessible to all men. And you're missing the point because you you think you need to see a physical man on a throne in Jerusalem who drives the Romans out of here. You don't know what the kingdom of God is. I'm here to tell you you don't know what the kingdom of God is. And these guys do the they just flip the problem and go, oh, so what Jesus means is the kingdom of God is this weird, indefinable, supernatural reality, maybe spiritual reality that you just have like have in your heart. And I'm just like, no, dude. So Paul did all the theologizing and made it into a religion. Jesus never meant to start a religion. It drives me crazy. And here's where it always ends. You got these dudes who are like gurus on Instagram. Here's where it always ends. If you want to learn what I've learned, here's my course. Maybe or I'll do one-on-one consultations with you. And I'm like, dude, you're like 25 years old, and you're telling me you've you've mastered oneness with the ineffable, pantheistic god of the whole universe. My my response lately that I wanted to comment on one was like, dude, if that's true, then what the heck happened to your hairline? Like if you like if you really have mastered the spiritual mysteries of the whole created cosmos, really, dog? Like you should have your life together a little more. Like a little you're not a very good witness on this. So that's like the pop theology like drives me crazy version. The other side of it is there's like the proper, like, critical scholar version of this that gets like way more in depth. It's like, well, Paul doesn't seem to be quoting Jesus, and he seems to be using words a little bit differently than the gospel authors did. And then it goes like a level deeper, and we go, actually, half of Paul's letters aren't even authentic to Paul, and nothing that the Jesus of the gospel said is something that the historical Jesus said. They just like throw everything out, and it's like, yeah, we have nothing to work with anymore. Like if you just like dismiss everything the New Testament has as being actually authentic and usable for deciding who these people were and what they thought about, that then yeah, sure, man. We have we literally have nothing to work with. And their arguments are it would be we would have to talk for three more hours about this. Um, but this is where this is like the real scholar version, and there's a lot of great arguments that work to reconcile, to defend the historicity of the gospels as authentically uh communicating the things that Jesus really said. And uh I just wrote a paper defending Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles, for example. 50 footnotes in a six-page paper. I mean, it's you got you have to because it's like it's just where it goes. So, you know, that that's like the craziness behind it all. Um but you can the the basis of it is the dudes who argue this are they're materialists who don't believe in the possibility of death and resurrection, who don't believe in the possibility of the miraculous, yeah, don't believe in the so everything that Luke has to say after Christ's death is irrelevant, and that includes the book of Acts. So there was no appearance of Christ to Paul in Damascus, and so Paul's whole ministry is rooted in a lie. Paul didn't care about the historical Jesus who was just like a weird spiritual guru rabbi guy. He wanted to invent a religion, basically. If you deny the possibility of the supernatural, then that's all we're left with. But I don't accept that presupposition. I don't accept that the miraculous is not possible. I don't accept that resurrection is not possible. In fact, that is the central historical, like real event claim of Christianity, that those things really did happen. So if you start there, then sure. Who even cares if Paul is aligned with Jesus' teaching, if Jesus, if nothing we have in the gospels is authentic to Jesus, because these guys were just making it up because Jesus died and never resurrected? It's like, yeah, I'm with St. Paul on this one, 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ is not raised, then we should be pitied. Yeah. Like who cares about the textual conversation if Jesus wasn't resurrected? I'm not even interested. Yeah. Completely stupid. Uh my pet peeve. Okay. This might be a little higher level. Like, I wanted to come up with just like a bad take that bothers me, but I think when I look at most bad takes I have have one common source. This is where I would say. It's I'm my problem is not that people are bad, they have bad theology, it's better it's that they're bad at doing theology. So nobody thinks about the fact that like we're all working with different processes and methods to decide what we think is true about God and what the scripture means. People don't even know that theologians and biblical scholars are different things. Yeah. Like they don't even know those are different things. Like I like we you keep calling me a theologian, and I'm like, no, in part because I would never call myself a theologian. Like I don't want that title, it's too heavy. But also because I'm not interested in theology, I'm interested in the study of in the Bible, which is a different thing. Yeah. Um, and people don't even know that. So they just think it's the exact same thing and the process works. It's like actually, like, no, there's a lot of debate over when you read something in the scripture, how do you decide what that person meant? That's hermeneutics. And then, theological method from hermeneutics, once you've decided on a reading of the text that's actually reliable, you have to go, how do we get this into a propositional theological truth that we can say is doctrine for the church? Right. This is like a really complicated and convoluted process, and it should be that way because we're trying to decide what do we think is true about the infinite God of all creation. Like it might take some patient deliberation. Yeah. But instead, people want theology to just be, well, whatever is obvious to me, that's just going to be how this works. So you get this on like a broad spectrum. You get like, I just reacted to a video of a chick saying, you know, well, Jesus never said that sex outside of marriage is wrong for people who aren't married. So fornication is fine.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Because Jesus never said fornication was wrong. Well, the Jesus never said thing doesn't work. Like you just for first of all, Jesus does say that it's wrong. Yeah. There's that. When he refers to Pornea, which is sexual immorality. Yeah. Duh. But she's like, well, Jesus has no continuity with the Mosaic law. He rejects all that because he's not into religion.

SPEAKER_03 54:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Like, so Jesus is constantly claiming that like the Old Testament is about him, that he is the new and better Moses, that he's bringing a new and better law for the people of God. Like, please miss me with that. Like, that's crazy. That's bad method. Like, we think theological method, here's how we decide what Christians should think. Did Jesus say this? And this goes back. She's like, Paul might say it, but it doesn't matter. Jesus' words are more important than Paul's. I can't I don't even I don't even want to I don't I don't even want to talk about that. I just I just can't I just can't do that. But you'll get the same thing on like maybe like a bit of a higher level. Well, Jesus, Muslims and atheists will both say this. Well, Jesus never said, I am God, worship me. Well, that's a bad standard. That's a really terrible standard. If the Gospels are going to reveal Jesus as God, we would never anticipate that that's the way that He's gonna do it. And that would never work. You know, and this is how I help people understand like what is going on with the Old Testament and its connection to the New Testament. If God shows up in human flesh, he incarnates, and he shows up to, you know, he drops into Rome and or drops into Babylon and says, Hey guys, it's me, I'm God. That's not gonna work. Right. If somebody did that to you and I right now, we would go, this person needs to be institutionalized. That is very strange, you're very weird. You might get like a cult following. That happens. We see that happen. You might get a cult following people who all do like, you know, do crazy things and everyone looks at and goes, ooh, keep your distance from those guys. But you can't change the world. It won't happen. You can come and do miracles and all the things. Like it just is irrelevant. Like no one is ever gonna believe that. But in in Christianity, what we have is thousands of years of setup for the arrival of the Messiah. From the third chapter of our Bible, we have anticipation that someone is going to come from God.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

That God is gonna deal with the devil's crap and put the world right. Like we have all this anticipation. We have the whole Mosaic law and all these covenants and all these prophecies, like a whole religious universe that we are prepared for Jesus to arrive into. And when he shows up, we have all the context to go, oh, this is what we expect. And it actually makes sense then for Jesus to witness to the world and to claim he's claiming to be Old Testament figures. So when he claims to be God, he's doing it in an incredibly Jewish way, which would never be, hey, it's me, I'm God. Right. But when we when we say that that's the standard, I'm like, no, I disagree with your method that if if if Nicene Christianity, which confesses that Jesus is true God from true God, true light from true light, truly God and truly man, if we're really going to confess that, we need to see Jesus say those words explicitly. Well, I disagree with your with your method for how you decided that that was true. Christians do the same thing. We arrive at the scripture, we have predecided dogmas. I believe in the rapture. So when I read the scripture, I'm looking for the rapture. Right. Yeah. Oh, I believe in Calvinism. So when I read, like man, I I I mean, I grew up listening to John Piper, a lot of John Piper. I love John Piper. But I remember reading one of his articles on Calvinism in high school when I was trying to decide what I thought, and I was telling everybody in the world that I was a Calvinist on the internet. Super embarrassing. Um and I remember reading one of his articles, and he gave the most like roundabout, impossible to follow argument, series of arguments about those verses about Jesus resigning for all people to be to be saved, and a number of different, like just a bunch of different verses like that. And it basically was like, oh, well, because I've already decided Calvinism is true, the word for all people can't mean all people. Right. Yeah, it changes here. Well, that's a that's not an honest reading of what Paul meant anymore. Now you're taking the system you've decided on and you're forcing it into somewhere it doesn't need to be. Uh cessationism is another example. Yes. Where people are like, oh, I've already decided that the gifts have seized, which by the way, when people believe cessationism, which is that specifically the supernatural gifts of prophecy, healing, and tongues, which are gifts given to believers, those have stopped being a thing now that we have the Bible. That is rooted in a belief that the Bible would ever replace those things when the Bible is doing something entirely different than those things, so it doesn't even make sense to reason that way. And ultimately it arises out of anti-Catholicism. Because Catholics are like seeing all these miracles, like Eucharistic miracles, and you know, they're taking dead saint body parts and people are being miraculously healed and having visions of saints and angels and stuff like that, and they're like, they want to distance themselves from that so hard they invent cessationism. Right. Um, and and so now it's like a defined belief for a lot of uh Protestant communities. So when we read 1 Corinthians like 14, and there's no obvious indication, or 1 Corinthians 12, 13, there's no obvious indication at any point that the gifts are gonna go away here on earth. Yeah, the most natural reading is that when Christ returns, these things will go away, but they have they have to see oh, the perfect must be the Bible.

SPEAKER_03 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:57

Like, oh dude, there that's nowhere in the scripture that you're actually reading. So I guess like my simple hot take is that I really don't like when people have unjustified beliefs and they hammer them down as things that you only smart people believe, and you're stupid if you don't. You know, I get told I'm crazy and ridiculous for denying the rapture. But I'm like, you've just taken this as a matter-of-fact thing that's been given to you and then forced it into the scripture, and now you can't help but see it everywhere that you look. I'm like, we actually might need to slow down and take take our time uh when we decide what's true about God and and his mission in the world because it's bigger than us. And I don't want to be a one-man army who's decided that I absolutely have the perfect picture of all of those things. I don't. I want to do theology with the people of God through all ages and and and through all of history, which is why like I guess my my main terrible hot take is like Catholics are going to hell. So I'm just like, no, dude, like they are a part of the body of Christ and their theology. I have to take into account what they think so so that I don't miss something about this God that I love. I'm done. I love that's everything.

SPEAKER_01 59:55

I love it. Man, I hope thank you, first of all, for jumping back on the podcast. Yeah, just love love the time together, and I hope like I hope this conversation just sparks some people to want to go learn some stuff. Read some old dead guys. Just just go go dig in. Like it's it's one of the most rewarding things to to be challenged, to to go to go look into it. But thank you, thank you for your voice, thank you for what you do, thank you for coming to Venice, Florida again. That's awesome. So so glad you're here. And hey, thank you for tuning in. Um, I don't know if you uh follow Elijah, but and you know, find him on social media. It's just Elijah Lamb, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Elijah.lam.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

Elijah.lam. Seriously, great content. Um, he has courses on Thais U. If uh if what what we you know, some of the stuff we got in today piqued your curiosity or or even maybe ticked you off a little bit. Like there's there's great stuff. I recommend Thaoshu, David Campbell courses, uh, Dr. Chris Palmer has courses on there, Elijah has courses on there. There is so much content to dig into and uh just wanted to cite some of this some of the things that's been impactful on me, on how, on, on, on, on what I'm I'm leaning into. And uh just want to say thank you for being with us and uh would would love to hear from you, would love to earn a subscription for you, for for you to follow us, to to be on this journey, because I'm loving these conversations. I hope you're loving these conversations. And until next time, this is in the arena, and I'll see you on the next podcast.