Podcasts about Descent

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal walks through Jonah 1–2, focusing on the remarkable prayer Jonah offers from the belly of the great fish. Far from a simple morality tale, the Book of Jonah presents a complex, deeply theological portrait of a disobedient prophet who nonetheless clings to the Lord in his darkest moment. Tony explores the Hebrew literary features that shape how we read Jonah's prayer, the doctrine of divine sovereignty as it operates through human agency, and the rich typological connections between Jonah and the death and resurrection of Christ. Most importantly, the episode grounds Jonah's experience in the Westminster Confession's teaching on sanctification — offering genuine hope to believers who feel buried under besetting sin, assuring them that salvation, from beginning to end, belongs entirely to the Lord. Key Takeaways Jonah is not the hero of his own story — he functions more as an anti-hero whose failures actually make him a more useful and relatable example for ordinary believers. Divine sovereignty operates through, not apart from, human agency — the sailors freely threw Jonah overboard, and yet Jonah rightly says God cast him into the deep; both are simultaneously true. The sequence debate in Jonah 2 matters theologically — whether Jonah prayed before or after being swallowed affects how we read the book; reading it as a strict cause-and-effect sequence risks turning the gospel into a quid pro quo transaction with God. Jonah's "yet I will see your holy temple" is a confession of eschatological faith — in the midst of near-certain death, Jonah expresses confidence not merely in earthly rescue, but in his ultimate destiny as one of God's people. The deep is a Genesis image — Jonah's descent into the primordial waters deliberately echoes the formless void of Genesis 1 and the undoing of creation in the flood, placing his experience within the grand arc of biblical cosmology. Jonah is a prophetic type of Christ's death and resurrection — his three days in the belly of the fish, his descent into the pit, and his emergence onto dry land anticipate and foreshadow the resurrection, as Jesus himself confirms in Matthew 12. Sanctification is real but imperfect — drawing from Westminster Confession Chapter 13, Tony argues that the up-and-down nature of Jonah's spiritual life is not an aberration but a description of the normal Christian life, in which the flesh and spirit remain in perpetual war until glory. Key Concepts Eschatological Faith in the Pit One of the most striking moments in Jonah's prayer is his declaration in 2:4 — "Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple." Tony argues that this is not merely a hope of physical rescue and a return to Jerusalem. Jonah believed he was dying. The waters had closed in to take his life; he was being dragged into underwater trenches that the ancient Semitic mind associated with the very gates of Sheol. In this context, Jonah's declaration is better understood as eschatological faith — a confession that even if God takes his life in judgment, he will still see the Lord face to face in the heavenly temple. It mirrors Job's cry, "Yet in my flesh I shall see God," and anticipates the kind of faith that says, with the father in Mark 9, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." Sovereignty and Human Agency Working Together Tony uses Jonah's descent as a teaching moment on the Reformed doctrine of concurrence — the truth that God's sovereign decree and human free will are not in competition but operate simultaneously on different levels. The sailors made a free, agonized decision to throw Jonah overboard; and yet Jonah rightly attributes his casting into the sea to God himself. Tony draws the parallel to Joseph's words to his brothers in Genesis 50: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." This is not a philosophical sleight of hand. It is the consistent testimony of Scripture that God governs all things — including the underwater currents that dragged Jonah to the ocean floor — without reducing human beings to puppets or eliminating their moral responsibility. Sanctification Is Real, Imperfect, and Guaranteed Perhaps the most pastorally significant thread of the episode is Tony's application of Westminster Confession Chapter 13 to Jonah's experience. Jonah makes genuine progress in faith — his prayer is theologically rich and demonstrates real trust in God — and yet he almost immediately slips back behind the curve, making vows the sailors had already made before him, and later in chapter 4, sulking over a dead plant. Tony refuses to read this as a failure of the text. Instead, it is the text faithfully portraying the reality of sanctification: real throughout the whole person, yet imperfect in this life, with an irreconcilable war between flesh and spirit. The hope is not that we will finally overcome that war on our own, but that through the continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part will overcome. Salvation — including sanctification — belongs entirely to the Lord. Memorable Quotes Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. All outside visible indicators said he was going to die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again. God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire. Full Transcript [00:00:08] Tony Arsenal: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it. For their evil has come up before me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.  [00:01:24] Storm and Sailors [00:01:24] Tony Arsenal: But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried out to his god. And they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call out to your god. Perhaps the god will give us a thought that we may not perish." And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, "Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation, and where do you come from? What is your country, and of what people are you?" And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, "What is this that you have done?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, "What shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. [00:02:36] Cast Into Sea [00:02:36] Tony Arsenal: He said to them, "Pick me up and hurl me into the sea. Then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you." Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to get back to the dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they called out to the Lord, "O Lord, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not on us innocent blood. For you, O Lord, has done as it pleased you." So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. And the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. [00:03:15] Fish and Prayer [00:03:15] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, "I called out to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the dep-- into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and billows passed over me." Then he said, "I am driven away from your sight. Yet I shall look again upon your holy temple. The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." At the root of the mountain I went to the land, whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet you brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God. When I-- when my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.  [00:04:23] Jonah Not the Hero [00:04:23] Tony Arsenal: And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land Jonah is an interesting book because, as I commented a year ago, Jonah is not necessarily the hero of the story. Uh, if anything, he is kind of the villain in, in some senses. But nevertheless, I think as we'll see today, Jonah still gives us a good example to follow in a sense, and that I think is really the centerpiece of this prayer, is that even as Jonah's going through all of this, his prayer is still remarkably filled with faithful sayings and trust in the Lord. We learned early on in Jonah that Jonah was a prophet during the time of the kings. Uh, he, uh, he seemed to have been a sort of a court temple. He was in the presence of the kings in Jerusalem itself, and he received a calling from the word of the Lord, and this phrase, "the word of the Lord," seems to imply a pre-incarnate, uh, visible manifestation of the second person of the Trinity. So we're not just talking about a, a disembodied voice. We're not just talking about some sort of sense or impression, but the word of the Lord itself, himself, came to give Jonah this mission, to give Jonah this task, to commission him as a prophet to Nineveh. And Jonah gets up and says, "No, thank you," and he goes the opposite direction. We see in that first section there the repeated phrase, "He goes to Tarshish. He boards a ship in Tarshish." The author here, who we, we think is Jonah, is hammering that he did not go where he was supposed to. He went the opposite direction. He went to Tarshish instead of Nineveh, which is 180 degrees the other direction from, uh, from Nineveh on the map. And he boards the, he boards the ship in order to flee the presence of the Lord. He pays, probably buys out the entire ship itself. He pays the fare for the whole ship, and the Lord hurls a great wave, uses the language of weapons. He hurls this storm like a spear. He weaponizes nature itself to correct and chastise and judge Jonah for his disobedience We get to verses seven through 17, and everyone on the boat is crying out to their chosen deity except Jonah. Jonah is asleep in the hold of the ship, oblivious to everything, totally dead to the world and dead to his Lord. The sailors begin to seek divine li- divine wisdom after they wake Jonah. He comes to the deck of the ship, and they cast lots to identify by divine, uh, revelation, sort of a strange practice in the Old Testament or the old, uh, world. Divine revelation that shows them Jonah is the source of this wickedness that is being wrought upon them, at least their impression of it. So they ask Jonah, "Who are you? Tell us who it is that has caused this great calamity." And he says emphatically, "A Hebrew am I." He identifies himself with God's people, and he says, "The Lord is my God, and he made the heaven and the earth and the sea." There's no small amount of irony, and it explains why the sailors are so afraid when he says that God created the heavens where the storm was. He created the sea where they were about to die, and he created the dry land where they were trying to get to. And so this one phrase that Jonah uses almost casually demonstrates that the Lord has total and utter sovereignty over what is going on, which is a theme that we'll see come back again and again through the book The sailors say, "Well, what do we do about this?" And Jonah says, "Throw me into the ocean, because I know that if you do so, then the storm will calm down and you will be saved." Whether he knew this because he's a prophet and it had been revealed to him, or whether he just was surmising that this was the case, we don't know. But the, uh, sailors are hesitant to do so, and we talked about how it was a little bit strange that these, uh, pagan sailors from cultures that d- had no qualms about human sacrifice were suddenly, uh, unwilling to throw Jonah over the sea a- as a, an appeasement offering to this Lord. And we came to the conclusion that they had been regenerated. They had come to faith in this God who created the heavens and the sea and the dry ground. And so they knew intrinsically that this was wrong, that there was a moral imperative not to do this. So they tried to row back to the land. They jettisoned all of their, uh, all of their goods, all of their cargo. They were making for land as best they could, and when it finally became clear that they couldn't do this, they sought the Lord's mercy in saying, essentially, "We don't understand how this is, but please don't put this man's blood on us, because you, Lord, have done as you please," right? The sovereignty of the Lord again comes to the forefront. They finally cast Jonah into the sea, and this is, this is important. They cast Jonah into the sea, and then they worship, they vow vows, and they vow to sacrifice. They offer sacrifices. They seek the Lord, they acknowledge his s- his sovereignty, and they worship him with what they have left. And then rounding out the chapter, the Lord appoints a great fish to come and swallow up Jonah. And we talked about how this, this swallowing of Jonah, although our popular children's books and VeggieTales and other stories we might read to our kids paints the fish often as the vehicle of judgment, it's actually a vehicle of deliverance for Jonah. There's this interesting grammatical feature that happens where in 1:17 the fish is masculine. The, the, the gender of the word is masculine, and then when we get to 2:1 it switches over to the feminine, almost as if to indicate that the whale was pregnant with Jonah, that Jonah was in the whale and was about to be reborn into the world in a new way And that brings us to our passage here today.  [00:10:21] Sequence Debate [00:10:21] Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna read, uh, 1:17 even though that's a little bit outside of our scope. I'm gonna read it along with 2:1 to, to make the point here. It says, "The Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the whale, of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish." When you look at the Hebrew text, 1:17 is actually verse 2:1 and 2:1 is then 2:2 and so on and so forth. In the original Hebrew mindset of how this book goes together, these two things were linked together, him being swallowed by the whale and being in the belly of the fish and then him praying was linked together in this sequence. There's a feature in the Hebrew that's called a vav consecutive. You don't need to remember that. Nobody is gonna care about that. But it's, it's a little grammatical feature where it adds this little character to the front of the verb and it indicates a sequence. It's the narrative storytelling. When you look at Genesis 1 it's, "And then God said, 'Let there be light,' and then there was light." It tells you the sequence of events. Sometimes it indicates that it is a strict sequence of events. This happened and then that finished and then the next thing happened and then that finished. And many of the commentators use this passage to justify a perspective of Jonah where Jonah is this rebellious, stubborn prophet who holds out his stubbornness until the very last minute. He's swallowed by the whale, he's getting digested by stomach acid and he sort of finally relents to the Lord and cries out for deliverance and the Lord acquiesces in response to his prayer. That's certainly a possible interpretation. There's lots of good reasons in the, the text here to think Jonah was kind of a chucklehead and was not paying too much attention to what the Lord had for him The other option is to see this as a way for the author of the text to situate this prayer in contrast to other prayers that are not necessarily talked about directly in this text. And I'm gonna take that later view here, and I think it's important. This makes good sense of the text, and we'll explain exactly why that is when we get to the next little section here. But it also protects us theologically if we understand it this way. Jonah is already a book, uh, as I've alluded to, that tends towards a sort of crass moralism or fabulism. We tend to read it as sort of an allegory of if you do the wrong thing, God punishes you, and when you finally do the right thing, He blesses you. And there's a certain level of common grace wisdom to that approach, right? The whole book of Proverbs is-- are these proverbial sayings that if you do this, then the God-- then God will do this. If you raise up your children in the way they will go, they will not depart when they are older. But we also learn in the Book of Job and the Book of Ecclesiastes that those proverbial sayings, although generally true, it's not a magic formula. And so we have this tendency to read Old Testament literature as though it was this sort of like equation, that God punishes us when we're bad. He, uh, He relents from His punishment when we say we're sorry, and we have to be careful about that. If we understand what I'm about to teach from the next section here, that this is not a strict sequence of events, that Jonah began praying before he was swallowed by the whale, and this is simply recording the prayer that was actually within the whale. It helps protect us from seeing Jonah in this sort of quid pro quo, this for that kind of thing. I think we should simply understand this as saying Jonah was in the water, he got swallowed by the whale, and then when he was in the whale, he prayed. It doesn't say anything about whether he was overly stubborn or whether his stubbornness held out. It simply tells us that he was in the pray-- in the whale when this prayer occurred [00:14:23] Sheol and Descent [00:14:23] Tony Arsenal: He says in verse two, he calls out to the Lord out of his distress. He, and God answers him. Out of the belly of Sheol, Jonah cries, and God hears his voice This here tells us that he began praying, right? He was in the water, he was in the deep. All of this descriptive language we're gonna see later on about how deep he was, how quickly the current took him. He was wrapped up in seaweed, his life was fading from him. It was in the midst of all of that that he cries out in his distress. It's a pretty distressing situation. And Jonah, like all of us would, like even most atheists would, cries out to the Lord, even just out of instinct. I think it's kind of crazy for us to think that this man who's now been cast overboard and is being swept to the bottom of the ocean is sure he's gonna die. Somehow, he overrides all of his instinct and his entire life teaching and refuses to pray to the Lord. It just doesn't make sense, and it doesn't make sense of what the text presents here Jonah was in the belly of Sheol. He was in the very, the very womb of Sheol. And there is this interesting contrast that he goes from the belly of Sheol into the belly of the whale. This phrase, the belly of Sheol, is probably roughly equivalent to our phrase about being at death's door, right? It, it may or may not come from some sort of Mesopotamian, um, mythology. It may be a phrase of sort of co-opted into Hebrew, kinda like our phrase at death's door is actually co-opted in from Greek mythology, where there were actually literal doors to the underworld, and people would go there and when they were about to die. Jonah's point is that this was not a small thing. When we watch VeggieTales, he gets thrown in the water, and, like, 13 seconds later, the, the whale comes up and takes him. Jonah was swept down into the water almost supernaturally quick. He was drawn down to the very bottom of the ocean. We talk about the miracle of him surviving in the whale, and it was miraculous for sure, but the miracle of him being swept to the bottom of the ocean and not being crushed by the weight of the water, by the pressure, is equally miraculous. It's no more difficult for God to do that than it is for Him to preserve him in the whale or to raise Jesus from the dead or to create everything from nothing He finally starts to catch up with the pagan sailors. A theme in Jonah is that everyone around Jonah who shouldn't know any better somehow gets to the right conclusion before he does, right? The sailors begin to worship the Lord. They recognize this is divine wrath while Jonah is still asleep in the hold. Later, we'll see that, uh, the, the Ninevites recognize God's mercy and grace and thank Him for it, and Jonah is still mad because the plant he was sitting on d- uh, dies, right? Jonah is constantly behind the curve, but for this little moment, for this glimpse in the very center of the book, the pinnacle of the book is Jonah finally catching up to the sailors. [00:17:34] Sovereignty Explained [00:17:34] Tony Arsenal: He recognizes that it was God who cast him into the depths. This teaches us something about the doctrine of sovereignty and how it relates to human freedom, right? We, we often ask the question, what, what causes rain? Well, you can answer that by saying tiny particles of dust collect water in the air, and once they have enough weight, they fall out of the sky 'cause the air can't hold them up anymore. That's true, and it's good, and that's what nature teaches us. It's also equally true that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, and those two things are not contradictory. So when Jonah says, "You cast me into the sea," he's recognizing, like Joseph does in the Book of Genesis, that what the sailors in this case meant for good but what the brothers meant for evil, God purposed and caused for good. What the sailors did by their own volition, their own free will, they exercised their own, uh, autonomy in the, the horizontal sense to cast Jonah into the sea, God also cast him into the sea As I said, the text here uses language that we may not catch in our English translations to indicate that it's not just the sea here that's the problem. God's sovereignty continues to affect and act on Jonah. The word that we read here as the, the water or the flood, other places refers to the current of a river. The, um, the Euphrates itself is sometimes referred to this, the large- sort of the largest river apart from the Nile that the Egyptian or the, um, Israelite mind would have is the Euphrates, right? This underwater river, this underwater current, the undertow sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. It's like if you're swimming at the beach at the ocean and you get caught in the undercurrent. There's not a lot you can do about it. Y- sometimes even the strongest swimmers can't overcome this, and Jonah in all of his Middle Eastern robes, all of this stuff, probably with all of his baggage, his, his own equipment, things he had on him, is caught in this undercurrent that sucks him to the bottom of the ocean. And it's not just below the surface of the water. He's dropped down into the heart of the sea, the very core. We're seeing this language of him being pulled to the depths. In, in chapter one he goes down, down, down, and now he's being drawn into the belly of the ocean, into the pit of Sheol, into the heart of the waters The picture here is that Jonah doesn't just get thrown in the water and sink. He is actively pulled down to the bottom. This is not just a judgment where perhaps he can swim to the top. Just as the mariners hopelessly tried to reach land, Jonah would've been hopelessly trying to swim against this. We don't actually have any indication he tried, but had he tried, there would've been no chance He goes on to say that the God's breakers and his waves roll him. This is the picture we see if you ever watch surfing competitions on the ocean, where a surfer will get hit by the wave and he just gets rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and it can be incredibly dangerous. That's why they have like the little lifeguards on the jet skis that zip out there to get them. Because when you get caught in that breaker, you just get rolled over and rolled over and rolled over, and soon you lose track of which direction is up, and even if you did, you couldn't get out This process is not just the forces of nature doing what they do. This is, again, the Lord weaponizing the forces of nature to execute judgment on Jonah This tumultuous and supernatural rapid descent showed Jonah that this is not only the moment in which God wanted to take his life, but was actively casting him away from the g- from the presence of the Lord [00:21:47] Yet I Will See [00:21:47] Tony Arsenal: It says here, um, in verse four, Jonah says, "I am driven away from your sight If you do a word study on this, you start to see that Jonah is pulling language from the creation account. He's pulling language from the fall. He's pulling a lot of language from Genesis itself. He's also pulling from the Psalms, which are pulling from the Genesis account. This word driven away could also be tran- translated as banished. He's cast out of the presence of the Lord. Just as in Genesis 3, we read, "God drove the man out at the east of the Garden of Eden. He placed cherubim and flaming swords." He drove the man out. Genesis 4:14, Cain says, "You have driven me away from the ground." And in Jonah 1:3, we see that Jonah was trying to get away from the presence of the Lord. And I wonder if there was this moment where he goes, "Ooh, I guess I got what I was looking for." Now, the second half of Jonah f- 2:4 here does something a little bit weird, and it's hard to translate. I think we should be honest at times. Hebrew is a language that in some senses is mysterious to us at times. There are still parts of the Hebrew Bible that we're not always 100% sure of. This verse here could be translated... In, in Hebrew it's just a statement. It's, "I, um, I shall again see the holy temple, or your holy temple." How that fits into the text itself is tricky. Some read it as, uh, as a question. "How shall I see your holy temple?" It's actually a statement kind of reaffirming the doubt and the fear and the idea that God was banishing him Most translations translate it as sort of a contrast. He says, "I was driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look on your holy temple." The force of this is even though you're driving me away, even though you're casting me out of your presence, I have faith, I have confidence that I will again see your holy temple The question here, and this is where I think Jonah becomes our example It's certainly possible that Jonah was asserting his belief that he would be rescued from this calamity and he would make his way back to Jerusalem and he would return to the holy temple. I think that what he says in the rest of this, he's recounting what he was praying. What he was praying in this context is not that he would return to the temple. He was confident God was taking his life. He says in verse five, "The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head." The other way that the phrase holy temple is used in the Old Testament is to refer to the place that God lives in heaven. Jonah was asserting faith that even though he was being cast out of the presence of the Lord in this life, even though he was being justly punished for his sin, even though he was about to enter the belly of Sheol and to enter the pit, the very abyss, that he would see God again in His holy temple. This is a statement of Jonah's belief in his own destiny as one of God's people, destined to be saved by faith in God. In this moment, Jonah trusts the Lord despite all of the appearances that God was out to get him It's not all that different than when we read in Mark chapter 9, where this father brings his, uh, demon-possessed child to Jesus, and Jesus says, "I can heal him." And he says, "If you can do anything, Lord," I'm paraphrasing here. He says, "If you can do it, please, Lord." And he says, "If? All things are possible for me." And the father desperately cries out, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." It's this raw, unfiltered statement of just the human condition on this side of glory, right? I believe in the Lord, but there's always that little part in the back of my head that isn't sure, because we're never going to be perfect. Now, I've said before, and, and this is becoming my new catchphrase, I think, I'm not here to rob you of your assurance of faith. Our, our confession, the Bible, this church, our Reform, broader Reform tradition, the assurance of faith of the Christian is the rightful possession inheritance of every person in this room who trusts the Lord. But it is a reality that at times that assurance is shaken. And if there's ever a time for your assurance to be shaken, it's when you're being dragged to the bottom of the ocean, right? One of the words in here, I don't have it-- I don't actually have it in my notes for some reason, but one of the note, words here, uh, s- about the roots of the mountain, I believe, in the next verse. It's not just that he was dragged to the bottom of the ocean. This word root of the mountain is like the word that's used to cut. He's not just being dragged to the bottom of the sea, he's being dragged to the bottom of a deep sea crevasse. He's literally being pulled into the pit, right? Many, uh, in the ancient Semitic world would have seen these underwater pits. They would have theorized or thought about these underwater crevasses as the actual entry into Sheol. And Jonah sees himself being drawn down into these things. Yet, he believes he will see the good presence of the Lord We read a similar statement, I won't, uh, I won't make us go there for time. We read a similar statement in Job. Job goes through this long speech about all the things that God has done to him, and at the very end of it, he says, "Yet I will see the Lord with my eyes, and he will stand up next to me on, on the earth." Right? Even though Job was going through this unimaginable grief, and we know that Job didn't deserve it in the strict sense, he still was saying, "I'm gonna be destroyed. God is shooting arrows at me," right? "His sword is in my side. He's targeting me. He's sending hornets after me." All of these terrible, vibrant images that he's using to show what God is doing to him, and yet he still trusts. I would say that he trusts that he would see the Lord in the flesh. This is not only Jonah's faith, it's a-- or Job's faith, it's a prophecy of Christ This is alien to our modern mindset. We've been talking about this in the Psalms. Weston's been leading us through the, the lament Psalms We often think that suffering and trials and difficulties are the opposite of blessing and favor. And we might recognize that in some sort of way that in God's economy, one thing leads to another. And again, there's an element of truth to that. James says, "Count it all joy when you face trials of every kind." He's not saying that the trials you're facing are in themselves joyful. You don't have to love when you get sick. You don't have to, you don't have to man up and put a smile on or s- pull yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever analogy you wanna use. It's okay to be sad when bad things happen. It's actually good, right? If we're to weep with those who weep, there's an element of sadness that must come with that, not to mention the one who's weeping is not chastised. But the idea that that only leads to this, that that's just one step in the chain, that's not really the mindset the Bible has. All across the Psalms, in the lament Psalms, all across the prophetic literature, the Book of Lamentations, Habakkuk has this long prayer at the end that's very similar, the entire Book of Job, suffering and sanctification, trials and joy and restoration, they're all sandwiched right there, and there is usually this statement in the middle of it that God will do what is right This is Jonah's example for us, and what an example it is. We'll talk in a little bit about all the ways that this whole scenario is typological of Christ. We'll, we'll get to that. But just for a minute in the middle of this book, Jonah is not such a bad guy. And it's because he still has all his faults that he can be this example for us [00:30:26] Genesis Deep Imagery [00:30:26] Tony Arsenal: As though it wasn't clear enough, Jonah in verse five says that the purpose of the waters closing over him was explicitly to take his life. He's now in the belly of the sea. He's being dragged down to the very roots of the mountain, to the very core of the earth in his mind. He, he thinks he's going to hell in the, the Hebrew mind. There's both this idea that God is dragging him to hell in a very real sense. The Hebrew mind, Sheol was a physical place that people went to, and we learn more about it and that becomes clarified as revelation is progressive, not contradictory, but as, as it's clarified But he uses this word deep, and this is where he's drawing again from Genesis. Genesis 1:2, he says, "The earth was without form and void. The darkness was over the face of the deep." The deep is this sort of like unformed chaotic water. It's what exists before God makes everything orderly and good. And in the fall, and especially in the flood in chapter seven, uh, chapter seven verse 11, the f- the flood itself is a sort of undoing of the order. God opens the floods from beneath, from the bottom of the earth, from the wellspring of the deep, as well as the chaotic waters from outside the firmament, and it all pours back in together and the entire world becomes again this deep, primordial, chaotic water And just as in Genesis God separates the land, in, in Genesis 7 or in Genesis 8, he separates out the land by drying it up, drying up the water. We also see that Jonah has this trust that he will return to the dry land. Again, he's the God of heaven and sea and dry earth. We could even read this phrase, depending on the context, as the abyss, which is this, a- again, is some borrowed language from Greek here that the Hebrews use. But it's this deep, watery, murky place th- full of shadows and darkness. Sounds familiar, I think, right? Christ says that those who are apart from him who refuse to obey will be cast into the outer darkness. This is the imagery that Jonah is seeing. All outside visible indicators was that he was gonna die and he was going to hell. Yet he trusted in the Lord that he would see his holy temple again Apart from God's gracious intervention, Jonah was right. So although God is the one that's bringing him to the depth, bringing him to the pit, dragging him down, using the very currents of the sea, weaponizing these underwater currents that only thousands of years later do we understand, and even then only this much, he also graciously rescues him from this by miraculously appointing a whale or a great fish who comes and swallows Jonah, takes him whole, and keeps him there in his own belly, keeps him there in her own womb when we get to chapter 2. In chapter six, or in verse six, Jonah makes this pivot. Again, he says he's brought to the very bottom of the sea, to the roots of the mountain, which is these deep underwater trenches. He conceptualizes himself now in this locked city behind bars. Again, this jail imagery, this pit imagery, it's all meant to evoke this idea of the final punishment of the wicked. This place of murky, gross water, this place of darkness and, uh, limitations of freedom, he's being taken there. This is the section here where people would actually argue that Jonah dies. He actually dies and is resurrected when he's swallowed by the whale. This comes from language where it says God does not prevent him from going to the pit. God actually draws him to the pit and then raises his life up from the pit. Now, I'm not convinced, um, that we should think that Jonah actually died. I don't, I don't think that the text fully supports that. But it certainly is using this imagery [00:34:45] Christ Typology [00:34:45] Tony Arsenal: This is where we get to some typology about Christ. This is where Jonah really shines as a prophet. Sometimes people wonder why the Book of Jonah is considered a prophetic book, and this along with it is part of that. Jonah, although the sign of Jonah in Matthew and in the other Gospels refers to the belly of the whale, that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so also Christ will be in the heart of the earth, the pit, for three days and three nights. When we're talking about typology, we can't get too tripped up on the details. We're not talking about strict allegory where this figure is that person and this signpost represents that thing. This isn't Pilgrim's Progress or Chronicles of Narnia, which is not allegory, but it's similar. Topology functions often on sort of these big picture concepts, right? Although there are some typological references that are super detailed, there are also some that are just sort of evocative The idea that Jonah died and was raised to life and sort of incubated in the earth, in- incubated in the whale and sort of reborn into the world, that certainly sounds a lot like a picture of the resurrection And I think we should see it that way. When Christ says that the sign of Jonah is roughly His resurrection, He is tying it to the three days and three nights, but He's not limiting to that Jonah comes to this pivot, and now he starts to reflect on the context of his deliverance. This whole s- this whole prayer should be seen sort of in the light of the thanksgiving psalms. There's a situation in which Jonah is in, and then God rescues him, and he begins to praise him for it. There's elements of lament, but it's really a thanksgiving psalm that he's drawing on here or that he's, he's writing In 2:7, Jonah is either dead or he's actively dying. I don't know about you, but if you've ever, uh, dove into a pool and got a little deeper than you thought you were, and you-- there's that, like, two seconds before you get to the top where you're sure the lights are going out and you've really only been underwater for, like, 45 seconds, but everything in you tells you if you don't get there, you're gonna die. Every instinct you have is to scramble for the surface. Think about how long it took Jonah to be dragged to the bottom of the ocean. Even at this accelerated pace, we're talking about a long time. And we have no reason to believe, and lots of reasons to think otherwise, Jonah was not preserved from the pain and the terror and the difficulty of feeling like you're drowning because he was drowning. He was without oxygen. His life was fading away. And it is in this context of him being on the brink of death, at death's door, in the belly of Sheol, being drawn into the very pit itself, that his prayer reaches the Lord in His holy temple. Right? This gives further evidence to the thought that Jonah is not talking about the temple in Jerusalem. There was, there was theology, and I, I think it's fine theology, that God lived in the temple in a special way. This is the reason that Daniel faces Jerusalem when he prays. There is a sense in the Old Testament that God's special place of presence is the temple in Jerusalem, and that the prayers of the people physically go to that place to be received by God. But Jonah doesn't know which direction the temple is. He's underwater. He's been tossed around by breakers. He has no sense of geography at this point He knows that his prayers are reaching the Lord in his heavenly temple. And they reach him in his heavenly temple just as his life is being lost in the pit. And it is from this moment that God raises him to life, or preserves his life, depending how you read it, and appoints the well to come reach him And some read this next verse as a little bit of a step back for Jonah, and it may be.  [00:39:02] Vows and Idols [00:39:02] Tony Arsenal: He reads, "Those who pay vain regard to i- regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. And what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord." Jonah didn't see the sailors on the ship vow their vows and offer their sacrifices. That happened after they threw him into the pit and the current sucked him under So we may read this with a little bit of a, "Thank God I'm not like that tax collector," kind of a lens. And there's probably some wisdom for us in that, to recognize that Jonah still hasn't quite gotten there. But it's also very common in the Old Testament to recognize that God treats His people differently because they are different. God brings people to a place of sanctification, and through that process of sanctification, they cease to worship vain idols. And it is absolutely true that those who worship vain idols forfeit their hope of steadfast love from the Lord. That's straight out of the Ten Commandments, right? He visits the iniquity of, specifically of idolatry. He visits the iniquity unto the children to the third and fourth generation. But for those who love the Lord, He loves them with a steadfast love unto thousands We can recognize in Jonah that although he had made great progress in faith, that he still wasn't there yet. And we can recognize that in him because we can recognize that in ourselves. Jonah is the example in this because he is not perfect, because he has not arrived, 'cause he doesn't do a 180 about-face and get everything right going forward We can read this in light of Jonah in chapter four, where he takes big steps back Or we can read this as the regular up and down progress of sanctification in the life of all believers everywhere It is also ironic again, we're back now to Jonah being a little bit behind the curve. He was sent to Nineveh to evangelize the heathens, some of the worst enemies that Israel was going to face, and he ignores that call. And he, instead of going to Nineveh, he goes to Tarshish. He goes the opposite direction, and he does something that would be unthinkable to most Israelites. He goes out on the open ocean. That's just insanity to someone living in the ancient world He should have recognized that the sailors were fearing the Lord when they refused to throw him overboard. I think we all have a sort of innate sense when someone's behavior suddenly changes, and I think most of us, and not in some sort of strange, kooky, charismatic sense, but I think most of us can sort of go, "I think I know why that is." Right, when you, when you see someone at work that suddenly stops lying about everything and stops backbiting and stops taking credit for other people's work, and then you find out a little while linger- longer that they've come to faith in Christ, if we're being honest, we're not all that surprised. But Jonah doesn't get it. Jonah here promises the same things that the sailors already did, so now we're again back behind the curve [00:42:37] Sanctification Confession [00:42:37] Tony Arsenal: To wrap this out, I, I wanna, um, I wanna ground this in something that I think is really vital for us to understand. As I said, Jonah is an example to us because he demonstrates the limited nature of sanctification, but he also demonstrates in a certain sense the fact that sanctification is real and has real effects. So this is a little out of the ordinary, but grab your Trinity Hymnal from the pew in front of you. If you happen to have a copy of the Confession, you could use that if you'd prefer. But open with me to page 927 I have, um, I've been, uh, broadly Reformed most of my Christian life and didn't realize it until I got to seminary. And since I discovered the Westminster Confession of Faith a decade ago, it's not new, uh, not new to me, um, I realized how valuable this resource was. This is essentially a search engine without the internet. And so I wanna just read a little bit out of chapter 13 here, which is our Confessions chapter on sanctification. I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but the, the first, uh, the first section here essentially says that sanctification is real, and it happens throughout the whole person. We talk about total depravity, and there is a sense in which the Christian remains totally depraved after regeneration, in that there still is, there still is corruption within our entire being, uh, that is depraved. There's also an equal sense in which we can say we are totally sanctified in Christ because sanctification is throughout the whole man in which we are renewed after the image of God. So that's section one. And then section two says, "This sanctification is throughout," again, throughout the whole man, "in the whole man, yet imperfect in this life. There abiding still some remnant of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irre- irreconcilable war, the flesh left lusting after the spirit, and the spirit lusting after the flesh." Now, that may feel like just a crushing burden if you stop reading there, but it lines up with our experience, right? This is Paul in Romans 7, "The good things I wanna do, I do not, and the bad things that I, I kn- I do not want to do, I somehow do. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." We shouldn't read that as though somehow our spirits are purified entirely and our bodies are what's really causing us to sin. This is a picture of the spirit being, uh, our, our spiritual part of us. The part of us that's regenerated is willing, but the part of us that remains corrupt is our flesh And our confession goes on to say, "In which war, although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctification- sanctifying spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome." And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. This is revolutionary in our broader evangelical world. The storybook Bible, Jonah did a bad thing and he gets punished, and he did a good thing and so he gets better, cannot understand this concept. This is why I think we have to be so careful when we choose what books to give to our little ones, right? I, I make jokes about VeggieTales. I loved VeggieTales when I was in VeggieTales age range. I probably would sit down and watch VeggieTales with Augie when he gets old enough. But we have to be so careful not to let those messages come to our children, or to ourselves for that matter, uninterpreted by the scriptures first and foremost, and our Reformed tradition that we all believe. Amen.  [00:46:49] Assurance in the Pit [00:46:49] Tony Arsenal: This is vital for us When all is said and done, salvation, whether we're talking about justification, sanctification, glorification, resurrection, all of the different stages and phases of our salvation, it is entirely of the Lord. And it's for this reason that Jonah says, "I, with a voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will pay." Salvation belongs to the Lord So this is the application of the sermon, loved ones. No matter how close to or actually into the pit itself we have fallen The, the chapter on assurance of faith, I won't go there, but the chapter in our confession on assurance of faith is very honest with us that our assurance will be shaken, and at times we may not feel as though we have any assurance at all But even when we have fallen that deep into the pit of despair, even when we feel as though we are in the very depths of hell No matter how much our spiritual or physical life is fainting away as we starve for spiritual breath, as we feel that impulse in us that recognizes we're moments away from losing the faith entirely. No matter how much the remnants of corruption in every part swirl around our heads like seaweed, how often do we feel wrapped up in sin? Whatever it is, I don't need to get specific 'cause I'm sure all of you are thinking of something in your head right now that has been swirling around you for years. Maybe it's months, maybe it's years. Maybe you've never felt, since coming to Christ, you've never felt like it wasn't wrapped up around you like seaweed. Besetting sin is something that we need to be serious about, and it's a good cause for us to think hard and deep about our status as Christians, and to go to our pastor and seek the elders' assistance in this. But besetting sin is not, is not a mark that excludes you from, from Christianity. Right? We're justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, by His grace alone. Not because we've overcome our besetting sin alone, right? That's not one of the five solas God redeems our life from the pit. From the very depths of hell itself, he snatched us like brands from the fire And though it is the case that we often are shaken, and at times God, just as he let Jonah, he let Jonah go to Tarshish. God had every ability to stop him from doing a stupid thing, and sometimes he does that, right? I'm sure there's plenty of times we can think about in our lives where we were heading towards sin and God just pulled a U-turn on us, and we are thankful for that. But there are times that he does not, and he lets us, he lets us do that. He lets us suffer the consequences, and he does that to chastise us and bring us back to him And even in the context of that, it is through this continual supply of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, right?  [00:50:19] God Beautifies His Bride [00:50:19] Tony Arsenal: Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit from the womb beyond measure. That's in the Book of John. There was never a time where Christ did not have the totality of the infinite sanctifying Spirit of the God, of God. We do not have the totality of the sanctifying Spirit of God. Now, we can get into a discussion after the service about divine simplicity and all the complexity of that, but the reality is that God sanctifies us more and more and more, and He does it by giving us the Spirit more and more. Might be more accurate to say He gives more of us to the Spirit. He gives us to the Spirit more and more. He gives us to Jesus more and more. We are Christ's inheritance. We are His bride. And just as the bride, as they're approaching the wedding, is made more and more beautiful, they start their, their beauty treatments weeks and months ahead of time, right? They're already making their hair appointments. They're already doing what they need to do to feel as beautiful as they can and to be as beautiful as they can on their wedding day. If that's the way we treat human weddings; guys do it too, just not as much. If that's the way we treat human weddings, how much more does God treat the heavenly wedding of His Son to His beloved bride? He's beautifying us, Church. Doesn't always feel like it. Doesn't always look like it, but He is. 

We head back to May 2010 and to the area of Wishaw, near Glasgow in North Lanarkshire for the tale this time around. It was the hottest weekend of that year so far, and an off-road motorcyclist named Stuart Bell was about to make a chilling discovery that he will take to his grave with him....The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, including descriptions of injury detail, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whilst listening in. Music used in this episode: "The Descent" by Kevin Macleod. All music used is sourced from https://filmmusic.io/ and used under an Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Mountain Song – Jane's AddictionNew York, Let's Do Nothing - King HannahThe True Crime Enthusiast's Fundraiser For Macmillan Cancer Support References - available upon request. Follow/Contact/Support The True Crime Enthusiast PodcastFacebookFacebook Discussion GroupTwitterInstagramYoutubeWebsiteTTCE MerchandisePatreon Page Remembering Zoe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  DownloadHey guys and gals, welcome to LOTC episode 486. This week's show is our journey through the decades, and we are in the year 2005. We are ranking our top 5 horror movies from that year with special guest Mike " that horror teacher " Capizzani. 2005 was a really strong year for us horror fans, we hope you enjoy our rankings. We want to thank Mike for being on this week's episode.Grab those favorite snacks and beverages as you journey with us through the Land Of The Creeps.HELP KEEP HORROR ALIVE!!TOP 5 LIST'SMIKE C1. THE DESCENT2. WOLF CREEK3. DEVIL'S REJECTS4. HEADSPACE5. THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSEDAVE1. THE DESCENT2. DEVIL'S REJECTS3. WOLF CREEK4. THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE5. LAND OF THE DEADPEARL1. SAW 2 / HOSTEL2. CONSTATINE3. THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE4. THE DESCENT5. WHITE NOISEBILL 1. HOSTEL2. THE DESCENT3. WOLF CREEK4. SAW 25. 2001 MANIACSGREG1. THE DEVIL'S REJECTS2. WOLF CREEK3. SAW 2 / HOSTEL4. THE DESCENT5. FEASTMIKE'S LINKSFACEBOOKPODCAST SPOTIFYPODCAST APPLELOTC Links :Land Of The Creeps InstagramGregaMortisFacebookTwitterLand Of The Creeps Group PageLand Of The Creeps Fan PageJay Of  The Dead's New Horror Movie PodcastYoutubeInstagramEmailLetterboxdDr. ShockDVD Infatuation TwitterDVD Infatuation WebsiteFacebookHorror Movie PodcastJay Of The Dead's New Horror Movies PodcastYouTube ChannelLetterboxdDVD Infatuation PodcastThe Illustrated Fan PodcastBill Van Veghel LinkFacebookLetterboxdMusic,Movies,Sports & Stuff PodcastFacebook Music Movies Sports & StuffTwisted Temptress LinkLetterboxdLOTC Hotline Number1-804-569-56821-804-569-LOTCLOTC Intro is provided by Andy Ussery, Below are links to his social mediaEmail:FacebookTwitterOutro music provided by Greg Whitaker Below is Greg's Twitter accountTwitterFacebook

“There's something down there…” Join Ian & Megs for our 336th episode as we squeeze into the claustrophobic darkness, extinguish every source of comfort, and descend into Neil Marshall's modern horror masterpiece The Descent (2005). Liam isn't with us this week — he confidently insisted he'd found a shortcut through an unexplored cave system and, according to his last voicemail, is "pretty sure this is still the right way." Kev? He volunteered to be the group's map reader despite never actually bringing a map. We haven't seen either of them since they crawled into the first tunnel. This week we discuss: Neil Marshall's masterclass in tension — how The Descent spends almost an hour terrifying us before the monsters even become the biggest problem. The all-female ensemble — authentic friendships, believable conflict, and why the characters feel so much more than horror archetypes. Claustrophobia as horror — does the cave itself remain the film's scariest antagonist, even after the Crawlers arrive? Megs explores the group's dynamics — grief, guilt, betrayal, and how fractured relationships become just as dangerous as the environment. Ian breaks down the film's visual storytelling — darkness, colour palettes, practical effects, and why the audience never loses its sense of geography despite the labyrinth. The Crawlers — perfectly revealed monsters, or does the film become less frightening once it shows its hand? The balance between psychological horror and creature feature — is Sarah fighting monsters, trauma, or both simultaneously? The infamous UK and US endings — which version better serves the story, and does changing the ending fundamentally alter the film's message? The "show vs tell" balance — how little exposition the film needs before we're completely invested in every decision the group makes. The jump scares — expertly earned or simply proof that sound design can make anyone leap out of their seat? The ending — hopeless, empowering, hallucinatory, or one of the bleakest finales horror has ever produced? And finally, whether The Descent is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of the greatest horror films of the 21st century. Become a Patron of this podcast and support the BFE at https://www.patreon.com/BFE We are very thankful to the following Patreon backers for their generous support: Juleen from It Goes Down In The PM Hermes Auslander James DeGuzman Synthia Shai Bergerfroind Ariannah Who Loves BFE The Most Paul Komoroski Duane Smith (Duane Smith!) Andy Dickson Aashrey Chris Pedersen Randal Silva Nate The Great Rev Bruce Richard Ryan Kuketz Dirk Diggler Stew from the Stew World Order podcast NorfolkDomus John Humphrey's Right Foot Timmy Tim Tim Youth Hosteling with Chris Eubank Buy some BFE merch at https://my-store-b4e4d4.creator-spring.com/. Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor Also, massive thanks to Moonlight Social for our age game theme song. You can catch more from them at https://www.moonlightsocialmusic.com/

In this episode of State of the Republic, we break down Sacramento Republic FC's tough 1–0 home loss to New Mexico United. Despite one of the best saves you'll see from Danny Vitiello, a costly mistake proved decisive in a tightly contested match. We discuss the key moments, what went right, what went wrong, and how Sacramento can respond moving forward. We also include the post-match press conference, featuring reactions and analysis following the match. Plus, we preview Republic's upcoming Fourth of July showdown against FC Tulsa, review recent and upcoming matches involving local Central Valley clubs in the USL W League and USL League Two, and spend a few minutes talking World Cup action as hosts United States, Mexico, and Canada all recorded clean sheets in their second matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026. Intro/Outro Music: "The Descent" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Podcast Winner Dinner Music: The following music was used for this media project: Fliegen by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2936-fliegen License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Golazos of Gratitude Music: The following music was used for this media project: Music: Nice Light Of Happiness by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7421-nice-light-of-happiness License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Image: Sac Republic Support State of the Republic by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/state-of-the-republic

Descent Into Sciniparta is a D&D campaign created by Jackle7250, AKA Russ from the Just Some Gamers Podcast. Catch the action live at https://www.twitch.tv/elmmerfuddgames  Reach out to ElmmerFuddGames or FluffyFingersMD for the schedule. The campaign is: Alynora (Mrs Fudd) Borlin Ironspice (Eggman) Firentis Elberko (ElmmerFuddGames) Rothnito (FluffyFingersMD) Neevara (Cheekymix3) Jackle7250 as the DM    

Have you ever wondered where demons actually come from, or what Jesus really meant when He mentioned the "gates of hell"? In this eye-opening message, Elliott Warren dives deep into Genesis 6 to answer the questions most churches never talk about.  We often read past the strangest parts of the Bible, but those details hold the key to understanding the spiritual warfare around us. In this sermon, we explore the origins of the Nephilim (giants) and how the "sons of God," or watcher angels, abandoned their heavenly posts to descend upon Mount Hermon. By examining biblical history and the Book of Enoch, we uncover how these hybrid beings corrupted the earth and why their spirits are linked to demonic activity today.  More importantly, this message reveals the incredible victory of Christ. Discover why Jesus specifically chose the base of Mount Hermon—known historically as the terrestrial headquarters of evil—to declare that "the gates of hell shall not prevail." You will learn how the Mount of Transfiguration was a literal declaration of war against dark forces, proving that Jesus came to reverse the curse and reclaim dominion over the earth.  00:00:00 Introduction & The Move of God  00:01:20 A Special Father's Day Message  00:03:30 Opening the Mystery: Angels, Aliens & Nephilim  00:19:16 Genesis 6: The Sons of God and Daughters of Men  00:23:40 Who Were the Watchers? Insights from Enoch  00:26:23 The Descent of Fallen Angels on Mount Hermon  00:28:59 The Real Meaning Behind "The Gates of Hell"  00:34:07 Why Jesus Was Transfigured on Mount Hermon  00:38:53 Methuselah and the Prophecy of the Flood  00:44:12 The Nephilim: Giants and the Origins of Demons  00:51:00 Are Greek Myths Rooted in Biblical History?  00:58:25 How Fallen Angels Corrupted Humanity  01:03:40 How Jesus Reversed the Curse  #Genesis6 #Nephilim #BookOfEnoch #SpiritualWarfare #FallenAngels #MountHermon #GatesOfHell #BibleMysteries #ChristianFaith #ElliottWarren #CrossCultureChurch #OriginsOfDemons #BiblicalHistory #FaithJourney #sermonshots  If this message opened your eyes to the truth of God's Word, please SUBSCRIBE to our channel and hit the notification bell so you never miss a new sermon! Share this video with a friend who needs to hear this powerful history, and let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments below. Welcome to the official channel of Cross Culture Global, the digital-first media ministry of Cross Culture Church, led by Pastor Elliott Warren. We believe following Jesus isn't a Sunday tradition—it's a radical way of living in today's world. Our mission is to move beyond motivation to deliver profound biblical teaching with raw, real-life application. We dive deep into the complex and often "off-limits" topics that matter most. What you'll find here: Raw Truth: Deep biblical insights for a today's culture. Global Community: A virtual-first community reaching every corner of the earth. New Here? Learn more about us: crossculturechurch.com  Give online: crossculturechurch.com/give  Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5TKYUWdiK0N204bF6b4U4w Watch on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscultureglobal Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrossCultureGlobal/ Sermones disponibles en español. / الخطب متوفرة بالعربية / हिंदी में उपदेश उपलब्ध / 提供中文讲道

Get your free birth chart and learn about the mentorship at https://www.quietmindastrology.com. The June solstice is one of the four most important turning points of the entire year, marking a profound shift in how solar energy moves through our lives. Whether you are north or south of the equator, this transition affects your vitality, routines, and overall health. In this episode, I share how you can use traditional Ayurvedic wisdom—including a gentle kitcheri cleanse—to navigate this seasonal shift, avoid burnout or stagnation, and smoothly adapt your daily practices to maintain true physical and spiritual balance. Quotes:“In Ayurveda, we say that all diseases begin in the transition of the seasons. So this is one of the best times all year... to do some sort of cleanse or diet or fast.” “It's a very natural sort of tendency to balance the imbalance of nature with our diet. And it's one of the best things we can do, basically to maintain some level of homeostasis.” “It's a continual cycle and it's a continual honoring of these rhythms of expansion and contraction, of yin and yang, of active and rest.” Timestamps:00:00 Understanding the June Solstice Turning Point02:07 Seasonal Health & The Benefits of a Kitcheri Cleanse04:57 Midyear Reflection: Reevaluating Your 2026 Goals06:18 Northern Hemisphere: Peak Yang Energy & The Descent to Winter09:15 Southern Hemisphere: Rest, Renewal, & Igniting Your Internal FireKeywords:Vedic astrology, Jyotish, June solstice, Ayurveda, kitcheri cleanse, yin and yang energy, seasonal transition, solar alignment, self-reflectionFree Resources:⭐️ Free Birth Chart: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/freebirthchart ⭐️ Free Horoscopes: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/freehoroscopes⭐️ Podcast (Spotify, Apple, etc): https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/astrology⭐️ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quietmindastrology⭐️ YouTube: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/youtube ⭐️ Yoga Teacher Training Podcast: https://www.anchor.fm/yogateachertraining Work With Me:⭐️ Book a Reading: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/reading ⭐️ Decode Your Chart: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/101⭐️ New Moon Alignment: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/newmoon⭐️ Mentorship: https://www.quietmindastrology.com/mentorship Next Step:⭐️ Get your free birth chart and learn about the mentorship at https://www.quietmindastrology.com.

In this podcast, Eliza Jabore talks about true crime research, Bigfoot, subverting slasher tropes, and much more. [2:50] Elevator pitch for Backstabbers. [4:25] True crime research and Bigfoot. [13:20] Subverting slasher tropes. [18:15] Misdirection and The Descent vibes. [21:10] Jeremiah's name origin. [24:00] Real-world cabin and trails influence. [27:30] Travel, horror, and risk taking. [31:30] Lessons learnt writing Backstabbers. [36:20] Writing insecurity and self-doubt. [42:30] Single location horror and suspense. [46:00] Eliza's first signing. [50:15] Writing to music vs. to silence. [54:10] Best and worst writing advice. Full podcast show notes are available here: https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/tih-668-eliza-jabore-on-true-crime-research-bigfoot-and-subverting-slasher-tropes Support This Is Horror Podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishorror

Your salvation is not primarily in believing a set of propositions about what Jesus did on the cross. Your salvation is Christ Himself. The entire sweep of His life, death, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of the Spirit is the objective reality into which you have been brought into by sheer grace.

Cette semaine : Steam Next Fest (Over The Hill, Gambition, Dave's Word Game, Poly Fighter), Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions, SpaceCraft, MARVEL Cosmic Invasion (DLC Cyclops & The Thing), de la pub dans les jeux EA, Max Cooper - Feeling Is Structure, et Commodore Callback. Lisez plutôt Torréfaction #376 : Steam Next Fest, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions, SpaceCraft et Commodore Callback avec sa vraie mise en page sur Geekzone. Pensez à vos rétines.

You should be able to leave your children for a sleepover, safe as houses, with someone who loves them so deeply she calls them her 'kidlets', shouldn't you? Lee-Anna Spiers and her partner Liam Timbrell had done just that, and looked forward to it for however many months, with all involved excited.Until the night of October 19th, 2012 - when it was to be the last sleepover anyone involved was to ever have...The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, involving children, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whilst listening in. Music used in this episode: "The Descent" by Kevin Macleod. All music used is sourced from https://filmmusic.io/ and used under an Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Literary Mind – SPRINTSOne Way Ticket - EruptionThe True Crime Enthusiast's Fundraiser For Macmillan Cancer Support References - available upon request. Follow/Contact/Support The True Crime Enthusiast PodcastFacebookFacebook Discussion GroupTwitterInstagramYoutubeWebsiteTTCE MerchandisePatreon Page Remembering Lee-Anna, Liam, Skye, Bailey, and Charlie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil Marshall joins us to discuss The Descent ahead of its new 4K UHD Blu-ray release from StudioCanal. He talks about the film's origins, building the cave world, the UK and US endings, and how the new restoration was put together.

Iorlas fights the wraith that rose in the ruins of the plaza in Fornost Erain and gains insight into the past. Going further in he traces the steps of Rangers who came before him, but one wrong step sends him deeper into the darkness...   Learn more about The One Ring 2e by Free League Publishing.   ----more---- Join the DMs After Dark Discord channel!   I made a Ko-Fi if you feel absurdly generous and want to help cover podcast hosting costs & all the upkeep. I'm still working on whether I want to offer anything special over there or just give my extreme gratitude (maybe some stickers or something in the mail) to those who donate, but no pressure whatsoever :)   Where to Follow Rene Plays Games: LinkTree |  BlueSky | Threads | Instagram | Facebook | DMs After Dark Rene's Games: MECH | MECH Cities 2 | One Last Quest | I Know I Know You, But I Don't Know How... email: RenePlaysGamesPod@gmail.com   Music in the Episode (in order of appearance): Descent by Tabletop Audio Dragon Roar by Monument Studios Ice Dragon by Tabletop Audio Lord of Bones by Tabletop Audio Tomb Guardians by Tabletop Audio Lament of the Leaves by Vindsvept Lost Mine by Tabletop Audio Rene Plays Games Theme written & produced by Dan Pomfret | @danfrombothbands

Episode Notes Season seven! Jude does some predictions. Justen coins a new word. Image in the Sand: Three plotlines organized by direness. Kira has been promoted to Colonel!Discussion of ranks. A Pah Wraith cult. It's the 90s, armbands = evil. A Romulan? on OUR station? Damarr is now just drinking in the Fuhrer-bunker. Get used to the evil Dominion command center. Romulans have chronic backstabber syndrome. The return of the warcrimes airhorn. Worf isn't doing so well. He believes that Jadzia did not enter Sto Vo Kor, and because the Defiant is on escort duty he doesn't have the chance to win a great battle. Oh look, a (suicidal) solution! Sisko is stewing. Oh look, a prophecy! Ben's mom... was not his mom? A new ORB. Jake annihilates a pah wraith cultist with a bag of clams. ...Dax? Shadows and Symbols: Turns out that Ezri was the only Trill on the ship when worm Dax needed emergency joining. We have to reiterate: cutting your palm is really stupid. Kira's standoff with the Romulans. The quest for the orb mommy. A questionable plan. Damarr, do not bring a sex worker to the Fuhrer bunker. The evilest wine mom. Noodle incident. Desert hunt. The return of Benny Russell. A new vision from the Prophets. Kira solves the Cuban Missile Crisis by saying "I have God on my side." Way too many rejected titles this week. BabSpace9 is a production of the Okay, So network. Connect with the show at @babylonpod.page Help us keep the lights on via our Patreon! Justen can be found at @justen.babylonpod.page Ana can be found at @ana.babylonpod.page, and also made our show art. Both Ana and Justen can also be found on The Compleat Discography, a Discworld re-read podcast. Jude Vais can be found at @jude.athrabeth.com. His other work can be found at Athrabeth - a Tolkien Podcast and at Garbage of the Five Rings. Clips from the original show remain copyrighted by Paramount Entertainment and are used under the Fair Use doctrine. Music attribution: Original reworking of the Deep Space 9 theme by audioquinn, who stresses that this particular war crime is not their fault. The Descent by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4490-the-descent License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This show is edited and produced by Aaron Olson, who can be found at @aaron.compleatdiscography.page Find out more at http://babylonpod.page

My guest today is Carly Mountain, a women's initiatory guide, psychotherapist, psychosexual somatic therapist, yoga teacher, breathworker and writer. She is the author of Descent & Rising ~ Women's Stories & the Embodiment of the Inanna Myth and a new book Untamed Pleasure: unleash your true erotic nature from Womancraft Publishing. For the last twenty years she has worked with sacred embodied practices. She lives in Sheffield, England with her husband and two daughters. carlymountain.comWe talked about:Being seen and sharing our work during these intense global timesPleasure and freedomWomen's experiences of descent and darkness and how to integrate themPatriarchy's impact on our bodies and mindsShame and vulnerabilityIn the Extended Episode available to paid Patreon members www.patreon.com/lucyhpearceConnections between the creative and erotic – our creative and sexual selvesThe story behind her book coverWatch the video episode - $9/month www.patreon.com/lucyhpearceGrab the Extended Episode of this conversation from $3/month www.patreon.com/lucyhpearceResourcesUntamed PleasureDescent & Rising: women's stories and the embodiment of the Inanna mythBurning WomanShe of the Sea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of State of the Republic, we break down Sacramento Republic FC's hard-fought 1–0 road win over Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC. The victory not only secured three valuable points, but also snapped Sacramento's recent stretch of away frustrations after back-to-back road losses. We discuss the key moments from the match, what stood out from the performance, and what this result could mean moving forward. We also preview Republic's upcoming matchup against New Mexico United, one of the toughest tests on the schedule, and discuss what Sacramento will need to do to continue its momentum. Plus, we talk about the latest disappointing developments surrounding the proposed Modesto soccer stadium project, and we recap recent results from local Central Valley clubs competing in the USL W League and USL League Two. Intro/Outro Music: "The Descent" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Podcast Winner Dinner Music: The following music was used for this media project: Fliegen by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2936-fliegen License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Golazos of Gratitude Music: The following music was used for this media project: Music: Nice Light Of Happiness by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7421-nice-light-of-happiness License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Image: Sac Republic Support State of the Republic by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/state-of-the-republic

Send a message to the JestersSneaking past the Deep Guard, our heroes descend into the Deep Roads. Troubles arrive to follow.Starring: Sky Swanson (Mall Manager), Casey Reardon (Roman Finner), Andrew Frost (Phil Donagan), Seth Coveyou (Montgomery T.B. Dremmeled), Celina (Derek Bronson), Nate Brass (Pete Swards)Edit Team: Casey Reardon, Sky Swanson [EQ], & Andrew Frost [Sound Design]Shoutouts! Need more game modules? Check out https://hatdbuilder.com for some fantastic new content to bring to your games! Use the code 'RPJESTERS' for 20% off your order, and to support the show!Follow Celina @skyeartemisFollow Nate https://linktr.ee/WhatDoIRollWant some cool RP Jesters Merch? Check out our website https://rpjesters.com/pages/storeSupport the show directly and get hours of bonus content over at https://www.patreon.com/c/rpjesters/membershipMusic Courtesy of Epidemic SoundIntro/Outro Music by Seth Coveyou.Additional Music by Monument Studios, Pixabay and YouTube Audio Library.Game System: Dungeons and Dragons 5.5eSupport the showCheck our socials! 

Is Mixtape a “real game”? Honestly, who cares; we love this coming-of-age story set in the 90s from Beethoven and Dinosaur, through Annapurna Interactive. It's quick, it's robust, and it's memorable, and that's what we're after from narrative-focused experiences like this. Snackaroo is advanced Snap by way of Aardman, for up to 5 players, and while it's a children's game for sure, it's got enough meat in the bun for the parents of those kids too. It's from Rudi Biber and Ravensburger, and we really like it. Plus the wood glue is out for a QoL project to make a complex setup more simple, with the Descent 2nd Edition organiser from The Game Doctors, via Feldherr. All that, and being famous for five minutes on r/CasualUK, on Ep249. 00:00 - Getting Creami with ninjas 09:47 - Snackaroo 22:00 - Kris's house is famous 25:15 - Mixtape 49:44 - Getting sticky with The Game Doctors on Feldherr On this episode were Kris (@DigitalStrider), Peter (@XeroXeroXero), and Sam (@MrSamTurner). Our Spotify Playlist brings together lots of great thematic music inspired by the stuff we talk about, our Steam Curator page collects every video game we've ever reviewed available on the platform, and our BoardGameGeek page does the same for every boardgame. And if you'd like to see what we're up to between podcasts, your best bet is our Instagram page. Links to where you can find us - StayingInPodcast.com Note: sometimes we'll have been sent a review copy of the thing we're talking about on the podcast. It doesn't skew how we think about that thing, and we don't receive compensation for anything we discuss, but we thought you might like to know this is the case.

Rebecca Ferguson, Common & Graham Yost on identity, control, and Juliet's rise In this episode of Rewind, Tony revisits the world of Silo, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Hugh Howey's bestselling trilogy about a future where humanity survives in a massive underground structure — 244 levels deep — built on rules, fear, and a carefully curated version of the truth. After years of development attempts and false starts, Silo finally found its home on Apple TV+, becoming one of the platform's most acclaimed sci‑fi dramas. Tony sits down with Rebecca Ferguson, Common, and creator Graham Yost to explore the show's central themes and the emotional and moral weight carried by its characters. What Is Truth? The question that haunts every level of the Silo. Rebecca Ferguson reflects on Juliet's relentless pursuit of truth — not as an abstract ideal, but as a survival instinct. Common on Robert Sims: A Rough First Season Graham Yost on Juliet's Arc SAVE 17% ON PLUS   

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan. This week, Elon Musk managed — not for the first time — to be simultaneously in the stars and the gutter. SpaceX's IPO valued his rocket company at $2 trillion — making Musk, officially, a trillionaire, the richest person in the world by a very large margin. The space Musk — the defiant genius who bet everything on a reusable rocket and the promise of a cosmic monopoly — is astonishing. The Wall Street Journal called the IPO a Goldilocks debut with Musk starring as the three bears. But there is another Musk — the one in the gutter, promoting white nationalist violence from his platform on X. This week Musk not only stoked the anti-immigrant riots in Belfast but reiterated his support for the English white supremacist gangster Tommy Robinson. So is this another Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella? Keith Teare, publisher of That Was the Week, certainly thinks so. While Keith is in awe of Musk's entrepreneurial genius at SpaceX, he seems to excuse Musk's support for Tommy Robinson's paramilitarism. “I'm not even sure I like him,” Keith confesses in his musings on “civilisation.” Nor do the rest of us. But I wonder if this good/bad Elon narrative is too convenient. There is an uncomfortable symbiosis between Musk's journey to SpaceX and to white nationalist violence. For all the utopian cornucopia of space, our earthly reality is one of scarce land and fear of immigrants — Trump, Tommy Robinson, and this weekend's Swiss referendum on capping its population at 10 million. For all the Muskian promise of cosmic abundance, today's Muskian politics is paranoid and exclusionary. So maybe it's not just Elon. Everyone these days is simultaneously in the gutter and looking up at the stars. Five Takeaways •       SpaceX: From El Segundo Warehouse to $2 Trillion Juggernaut: SpaceX is 25 years old. It started in a warehouse near Los Angeles, in an area with a concentration of rocket scientists. Musk bet almost all of his Tesla gains on the idea of a reusable rocket — and nearly lost everything. Then a rocket worked. Since then: iterative improvement, the rockets getting bigger and more reliable, a virtual global monopoly on delivering payloads to space, Starlink (satellite internet that actually works at gigabit speeds), and NASA subcontracting its launches. Now: $2 trillion at IPO, Musk a trillionaire. Wall-to-wall applause from the startup world. Wall-to-wall pylon on social media. Both simultaneously true. •       The Grimace vs the Applause: Andrew vs Keith's Media Diet: Keith says most commentators are grimacing at the valuation and Musk's net worth. Andrew says the serious press — the Wall Street Journal, even the New York Times — is largely applauding. The exchange reveals the media bifurcation: mainstream outlets cover the achievement; social media — X, Facebook, LinkedIn — is wall-to-wall outrage about a trillionaire in a world of growing inequality. Keith's verdict on Musk: he doesn't care whether people like him. Neither, in Keith's view, should we. You judge him not on likability but on criteria: civilization or net worth. Different criteria, different judgment. •       California and Europe: The Failure of Government: Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: California is a case study in failed government. Andrew had Jonathan Weber on the show this week — City on the Edge, the historic dysfunctionality of San Francisco city government. Fukuyama is trying to be optimistic about Europe's liberal future. Keith's counter: Fukuyama ignores the structural problem — top-heavy EU bureaucracy that overrides countries, producing dislike of the EU in every European nation, even France, which built it. Populism, Keith argues, is not the disease. It's the symptom. The disease is twenty years of bad policy. •       Bernie Sanders Finally Had an Insight: The Sovereign Wealth Fund: Sanders has proposed a sovereign wealth fund owning 50% of all high-growth AI companies, giving every citizen ownership shares. Keith, who last week said 50% wasn't enough, this week credits it as the first genuine insight Sanders has had. The kicker: David Sacks — arch right-winger, former PayPal Mafia, Andreessen Horowitz — agreed on his podcast and said it should be 75%. Keith's observation: when David Sacks and Bernie Sanders can agree on the direction, left-right labels stop helping. The question is just how to make capitalism's gains flow to everyone. •       Planning Beats Complaint: Keith's editorial closer. The choice is not between liking Musk and hating Musk, not between celebrating SpaceX and resenting its valuation. The choice is between complaining and planning. John O'Farrell, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, resigned and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times: “We can't let my former venture capital colleagues buy off democracy.” Gary Tan organised an Asian-American reaction against San Francisco's school board and won. Citizens who act beat citizens who complain. That's the week's lesson. That's Keith's lesson. Andrew is away next week. About the Guest Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and Andrew's regular TWTW co-host. References: •       That Was the Week by Keith Teare. •       Fareed Zakaria, “How California Became a Case Study in Failed Government,” Washington Post — referenced in the conversation. •       John O'Farrell, “We Can't Let My Former Venture Capital Colleagues Buy Off Democracy,” New York Times — referenced in the conversation. •       Francis Fukuyama on the liberal vision of Europe — referenced in the conversation. •       Episode 2938: Jonathan Weber on City on the Edge — referenced at the opening. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - Introduction: SpaceX IPO, ...

(92) Magic Island - The Descent Into Modern AtlantisBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/harold-s-old-time-radio--4206392/support.

Welcome to the first State of the Republic World Cup Bonus Episode! Throughout the FIFA World Cup 2026, we'll be releasing special episodes covering the biggest stories, matches, and moments from the tournament, with a special focus on the United States and Mexico. In this episode, we break down the USA's impressive 4–1 victory over Paraguay, discussing the standout performances and what the result could mean as the USA begin their World Cup journey. We also talk about Mexico's 2–0 win over South Africa in the tournament opener and share our thoughts on El Tri's start to the competition. Plus, with World Cup action arriving in Northern California, we discuss some of the upcoming matches taking place at San Francisco Bay Area Stadium and what local fans can look forward to as the tournament continues. Intro/Outro Music: "The Descent" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Support State of the Republic by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/state-of-the-republic

Are you tired of fighting an invisible civil war within your own central nervous system? We frequently attempt to dictate peace with our mouths, yet our bodies carry an entirely different narrative, one written by unexamined trauma, unaddressed conflict, and transgenerational inheritance. In this episode, we address the compounding confusion, chaos, and dis-ease plaguing our modern cultural moment, where an entire generation is medicating its deeper soul-hungers. Virginia moves from identifying how the body keeps the score of broken parental structures and systemic compromises to unpacking the Anatomy of Descent, where unchecked lies cause us to cover, hide, and blame. Finally, she delivers a framework of discipleship counseling that restores the trinitarian alignment of spirit, soul, and body. Discover how to reclaim your internal Liberty so that you may experience true, external Freedom.Where to Find VirginiaWebsiteInstagramFacebookLinkedInDonate

How an Irish‑Born Grandparent Could Change Your LifeOn this episode of the GoNOMAD Travel Podcast, we explore a story that begins with a simple family rumor — the kind told at holiday tables and half‑remembered over generations. What if that old tale about your Irish grandmother isn't just nostalgia, but a key that could change where you're allowed to live, work, and travel for the rest of your life?This episode dives into the emotional and practical power of discovering that one of your grandparents was born on the island of Ireland. For many Americans, Ireland is a place of cliffs, pubs, music, and mist — a beautiful destination. But for some, it's something much more: a doorway.We follow the journey from curiosity to revelation, beginning with the moment you learn about Foreign Birth Registration, the Irish law that allows people with one Irish‑born grandparent to apply for Irish citizenship. One grandparent — that's all it takes to unlock the possibility of holding an Irish passport and becoming a citizen of the European Union.The episode explores what that means in real life: the freedom to live anywhere in the EU, to spend a summer in Greece without counting Schengen days, to take a job in Copenhagen, to rent an apartment in Lisbon long enough to learn your neighbors' names. And uniquely, Irish citizens also retain the right to live and work in the United Kingdom — a privilege most EU citizens lost after Brexit.But this isn't just a legal process. It's a deeply personal one. The search for your grandparent's Irish birth records becomes a detective story through family Bibles, naturalization papers, draft cards, and old boxes of documents. It's a journey that connects you to the landscapes your ancestors walked, the parishes where they were baptized, and the villages they left behind.We walk through the Foreign Birth Registration process, the documents required, the timeline, and the surprising simplicity of the application once the records are in hand. And we look at the long‑term impact: the options you give your future self, your children, and the generations that follow.This episode is an invitation to explore your family history, to reconnect with a place you may never have realized you belonged to, and to consider how one grandparent's birthplace could open an entire continent of possibility.CALLS TO ACTIONListen to more episodes of the GoNOMAD Travel Podcast: Apple Podcasts: Spotify:Read more travel stories on GoNOMAD: https://www.gonomad.comFollow GoNOMAD on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gonomad_travel For more information about Irish citizenship by descent, contact Jack: https://www.irishbydescent.comMentioned in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Travel Network, that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

Monday's episode last week was about green-lighting yourself, refusing to wait for institutions to validate your work. Today we go one layer deeper. Green-lighting yourself does not mean publishing whatever you've got. It means doing the editorial work seriously, on your own behalf, so what you publish is actually ready.Editorial direction is more specific than most writers think. Here are six questions a serious editor asks of a manuscript before saying yes to it. You can start asking these of your own work today.* What is this book actually about* Who is the reader* What shelf does this book sit on* What is the reader's journey* Where is the prose working and where is it slipping* What is the work remainingEach question comes with an exercise you can do on your own manuscript right now.This episode also covers when outside editorial direction is most useful (later than most writers think) and what Crossroads's Editorial Framing Brief actually provides for writers who have done their own work and still can't see what they're missing.If you're working on a manuscript and want a publisher who thinks this way about the editorial standard—voice, testimony, weight per paragraph—Crossroads is that press.We're in our founding season through summer 2026 with founding-rate engagements.Discovery call → 20 min, free, let's chat.Author Engagement and First Draft Cohort here!—Chad Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

120 I Elevation Series with James Beetham Tracklist: 1. MoshicDaSilva - Deep As Rivers (Why RU Here James Beetham Edit) 2. David Alvarado - Blue (Original Mix) 3. Soul Mekanik - I'll Call U (Thin Red Man Mix) 4. Medway - The Bassline Track (Luke Chable Remix) 5. Lexicon Avenue - Why RU Here (The House Heads Mix) 6. Lemon8 - New York New York (Original Mix) 7. Teimoso - Riding (Original Mix) 8. Andy Page - Porcelain Elvis (Original Mix) 9. Kirsty Hawkshaw - Fine Day (James Holden Remix) 10. Pole Folder - Salvation On Slavery Sins (Pole Folder Regenerated mix) 11. John Creamer & Stephane K - I Wish You Were Here (Omid 16b Remix) 12. Barraka - Song To The Siren (Filterheadz Undercurrent Vocal Mix) 13. Tilt - The World Doesn't Know (Ozgur Can Main Mix) 14. Descent & Nicholas Bennison - Revention (Original Mix) 15. PQM - You Are Sleeping (PQM meets Luke Chable Vocal Pass) 16. Way Out West - Intensify (Peace Division Remix) 17. Medway - Release (Original Mix) 18. Tomaz, Filterheadz - I Love Techno (United As One) (Dub) 19. Silvio Ecomo - Standing (Original Mix Hooj Edit) 20. Barry Robb & Martin Accorsi - Foundation (Original Mix) 21. Mara - Coming Down (Original Mix) 22. Deep Funk Project - Blackwitch (Original Mix) 23. Fluke - Slap It (Why RU Here James Beetham Edit) • Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jamesbeethammusic • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesbeethammusic • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamesbeethammusic ___ • Visit our website: www.progresivnasuza.com • Follow us for the latest updates: linktr.ee/progresivnasuza • More info for you: office@progresivnasuza.com • Send us your demo: records@progresivnasuza.com • Elevation Series Inquiry: podcast@progresivnasuza.com

The Descent.On this episode I am joined by Neil Marshall.Mark and Me is now on YouTube - Please subscribe here https://www.youtube.com/@markandmePlease support the Mark and Me Podcast via Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/Markandme or you can buy me a coffee here: https://ko-fi.com/markandme.The Mark and Me podcast is proudly sponsored by Richer Sounds.Visit richersounds.com now to shop for all your hi-fi, home cinema and TV solutions. Also, don't forget to join their VIP club for FREE with just your email address to receive a great range of fantastic privileges.The Mark and Me podcast is also proudly sponsored by Vice-Press.If you are a fan of films and pop culture, check out Vice Press. All of their limited edition posters, art prints & collectibles are officially licensed & are made for fans like us to collect & display in their homes. Vice Press work directly with artists and licensors to create artwork and designs that are exclusive to them.This year, Vice Press also launched Vice Press Home Video, dedicated to releasing classic films on VHS. And yes, they play! Get 10% off of your first order using code MARKANDME26All artwork and designs are produced by Dead Good Tees - Dead Good Tee crafts graphic T-shirts for true horror and movie enthusiasts. Drawing inspiration from classic movies, iconic villains, and the darker side of cinema, their designs offer a subtle nod to the genre's most unforgettable moments. Visit www.deadgoodtees.co.ukEvery episode of Mark and Me is for Billy x 

If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office feeling dismissed, confused, or like something just didn't add up, this episode is for you. In this conversation, we're pulling back the curtain on something most people never stop to examine: the difference between science itself and the human biases, financial interests, and worldviews that shape how science gets used. As a registered nurse with over 17 years inside the pharmaceutical industry, I've seen this pattern up close. And as a Christian woman, I believe this is one of the biggest blind spots in the church today. This episode is for the Christian woman who is tired of being told to simply trust the system, who senses that something deeper is going on, and who is ready to bring discernment and faith into every health decision she makes. --- The Real Threat to Your Health May Not Be What You Think We live in a culture that shuts down questions with slogans. Question the consensus and you're labeled ignorant. But here's what Merriam-Webster actually says science is: systematized knowledge that may be studied or learned. Why would anyone be against learning? Science in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is the human bias, financial agenda, and worldview behind some of the science. When evaluating any study or health claim, wise questions to ask include: - Who ran the experiment? - Who funded it? - How many people were included? - What does the researcher stand to gain? - What worldview is shaping the interpretation? A perfect study does not exist. And even if it did, the conclusions drawn from it would still pass through a human filter. --- Worldview Shapes Everything, Even in the Lab To illustrate how a scientist's worldview affects their conclusions, consider Charles Darwin, widely taught as the father of evolutionary theory. A Princeton University article titled "The Descent of Man, 150 Years On," published in the journal Science, documents that Darwin described indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia as lesser than Europeans, referred to African peoples as cognitively inferior, and characterized women as less capable than white men. His worldview was deeply racist and sexist, and it shaped his science. This is not an isolated example. It is a pattern. --- We've Been Wrong Before. More Than Once. Throughout history, the cultural and medical consensus has been confidently wrong: - Margarine was promoted as a heart-healthy butter alternative - Cigarette smoking was endorsed by medical doctors as safe or even beneficial - All dietary fat was declared the enemy - Kellogg's cereal was marketed as a complete, healthy breakfast - Formula was pushed as superior to breast milk - Giving birth on your back in a hospital was presented as the only safe option These were not fringe ideas. They were mainstream consensus backed by experts. And they were wrong. --- The Brainwashing Goes Beyond Health The same pattern shows up across every area of culture. We've been conditioned to believe that delaying marriage and children is the sophisticated choice, that divorce is self-care, that pornography is harmless, that sexual identity is the foundation of human identity, and that children and the elderly are burdens rather than blessings. Each of these ideas contradicts both scripture and human flourishing. When we can see the pattern clearly in culture, we become better equipped to recognize it in healthcare too. --- Why the Church Has a Blind Spot Here Many believers view the medical system as conflict-free and the science as settled. But if the enemy can convince us to put harmful things into our bodies while calling it health, he can do significant damage without ever being noticed. This is not a call to throw out the entire medical system. It is a call to bring the same discernment to your healthcare decisions that you bring to every other area of your faith. Seeking God's wisdom first for your health is not anti-science. It is stewardship. --- Timestamped Highlights - 0:01 - What if the real threat to your health is assuming the consensus is always correct? - 0:29 - Why questioning science gets mislabeled as ignorance - 1:26 - The right questions to ask about any study or health claim - 2:22 - Darwin's worldview and what it reveals about how science gets interpreted - 3:48 - A cultural history of things we were confidently told that turned out to be wrong - 5:12 - How the same brainwashing pattern shows up in marriage, sexuality, and family - 6:37 - Why this is a blind spot in the church and why it matters for holistic health - 7:08 - The real goal: not to reject the system, but to question it wisely --- Key Takeaways - Science is a tool. Like any tool, its value depends entirely on who is using it and why. - Financial interests and personal worldview shape scientific conclusions, sometimes significantly. - History shows us repeatedly that the consensus can be wrong. Discernment is not ignorance. - The church is not immune to cultural and industrial influence when it comes to health. - Seeking God's wisdom for your health is an act of faith, not fear. - You do not have to choose between faith and informed health decisions. You were made for both. --- Ready to Take the Next Step? If today's episode made you think twice about what you've been told, go grab my free training, Eight Myths That Are Keeping You Sick Right Now, at herholistichealing.com/free. A credentialed RN and pharma insider walks you through what conventional medicine keeps getting wrong, and what to do instead.

In this episode of State of the Republic, we break down Sacramento Republic FC's resilient 1–1 draw against Monterey Bay FC in USL Cup play. After going down to 10 men following a first-half red card, Sacramento battled back to earn a point in regulation before claiming the extra point with a 5–3 penalty shootout victory, giving Republic two valuable points in the group standings. We also take a look at the current USL Cup group standings and discuss what Sacramento needs to do to advance to the next stage of the competition. Plus, we preview Republic's upcoming USL Championship matchup against Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC, check in on recent results from local clubs competing in the USL W League and USL League Two, and look ahead to their upcoming matches. Intro/Outro Music: "The Descent" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Podcast Winner Dinner Music: The following music was used for this media project: Fliegen by Sascha Ende Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/2936-fliegen License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Golazos of Gratitude Music: The following music was used for this media project: Music: Nice Light Of Happiness by MusicLFiles Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7421-nice-light-of-happiness License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Image: Sac Republic Support State of the Republic by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/state-of-the-republic

An Ancient Trap - Episode 09 - The First Descent   We are proud to announce that Shadowpublications.com is sponsored by Larry's Coffee. Visit Larry's, check out their awesome coffees, and get a free gift.   Support the podcast by purchasing The Black: Oceania. Ebook available from Amazon Become a member for exclusive content Written by Paul E Cooley Text Copyright:    ©2023 Paul E Cooley Audiobook Copyright:    ©2026 Paul E Cooley Support the podcast and get access to published and unpublished books all voiced by the author! If you are suffering from depression or other mental disorders, please get help. http://www.bipolarsupport.org/ https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ Please visit Shadowpublications.com for more information about the author and this series. To stalk the author on social media: Email: paul@shadowpublications.com Mastodon: @paul_e_cooley@vyrse.social Newsletter: http://mailinglist.shadowpublications.com  

Father James Searby, a Parochial Vicar, offers a reflection on the Third Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost), for our Communal First Saturday for June. It was recorded on June 6, 2026  

God puts a calling on the life of all of His children… Life is way better when we follow His calling. Sometimes God directs us to a change of course. Whatever direction God sends us in life, we can rest assured that He is always preparing us for the future plans He has for us. There's an old saying that goes, "If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it." On today's program we will hear from someone that has spent nearly half his life living out his calling as the host of a hunting show on national TV.  We will hear of his calling, his struggles and how God continues to use him in a very unique ministry.

WHAT'S EMERGING AND WHAT IT MEANSThe question is shifting from “should writers use AI” to “what kind of writing is worth doing.” Tim Moon argues the shame regime around AI use is making honest conversation harder. The Atlantic piece shows the detection question is real but temporary — and the deeper question is what's lost when the thinking that produces writing goes away. Ramachandran shows the Commonwealth Prize fiasco was really a story about what we'd been rewarding. Sun and Morine both argue the writer's comparative advantage is not the absence of AI but the presence of voice and testimony and the kind of writing only this writer would do.For the writers I'm trying to publish at Crossroads—for the writers in the cohort, for the writers I'm talking to in discovery calls—this is the frame I want to model. We are not the press that takes a position on AI. We are the press that asks whether every paragraph is bearing weight, whether the voice on the page is the writer's voice, whether the manuscript contains things the writer brought back from somewhere only they have been.Those questions can be asked of a manuscript written entirely by hand or one written with AI assistance or anything in between. The questions are the editorial standard. The tools the writer used to get there are the writer's business.What's freeing about this conversation is that it lets serious writers be honest about their actual practice without performing a position. That's what Sun and Ramachandran and Moon and Morine are doing. That's the tone I want for Crossroads, for the show, and for the writers we're working with.THE READING LIST- Sanjana Ramachandran, The Print — Should we leave writing to AI?- The Atlantic — How to Tell AI Writing (May 2026)- Tim Moon, Substack — AI: The Scarlet Letters- Jasmine Sun, jasmi.news — Comparative Advantage of Independent Writers- Nicholas Morine on LinkedIn — Mile Wide, Inch Deep---If you're working on a manuscript and want a publisher who thinks this way about the editorial standard—voice, testimony, weight per paragraph—Crossroads is that press.We're in our founding season through summer 2026 with founding-rate engagements.Discovery call → 20 min, free, let's chat.Author Engagement and First Draft Cohort here!—Chad Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

Gothic Industrial Music Ep199 - EBM - Darkwave - Electro-Industrial 2026https://www.youtube.com/@shadowsradiomixes0:00:00 - The Synthetic Dream Foundation – Revenge of a Mechanized Monarchy0:03:59 - Neuroticfish – Silence0:07:57 - Front Line Assembly – Eye On You (Feat. Robert Görl)0:12:21 - Unsinn – Like a Deep Sleep0:16:51 - Dark Insights – Egomanie0:20:22 - Matt Hart – I am Overlord0:24:26 - Zardonic and Voicians – Bring Back the Glory0:29:07 - Mvtant – Voraphobes0:31:42 - aktivehate – My Own God0:36:41 - Incubite – Tanzen, Sofort0:40:11 - Hanzel und Gretyl – Pleiadian Agenda0:43:47 - Circuit Preacher – Entity0:47:28 - Siva Six – Hell Is Where The Heart Is (DYM Remix)0:51:14 - Psyclon Nine – Hymn to the Angels' Descent

In Dante's Inferno, the lustful are not burned. They are swept, a great relentless wind moves them endlessly, helplessly, no footing, no direction, just the next gust carrying them where it will. This week's episode is a weekend reflection; slower, more meditative, less about publishing and craft and more about the soul-work questions underneath. Lust in its oldest, broadest sense—unrestrained wanting. The fire the Greeks understood. The Cyclops's single eye. Odysseus making himself Nobody to escape the cave. Emily Dickinson's delight in being Nobody too. And the difference between failure (which you can face) and self-abandonment (which is harder). This is from a nonfiction book I'm working on. If the reflection register resonates, stay close—these weekend episodes will keep coming.The Difficulty is the podcast of Crossroads Publishing Group, a new IBPA-pledged hybrid press based in Chattanooga, TN. We publish serious nonfiction in three lanes—Argument, Reflection, Witness.00:00 What this episode is — the weekend reflection lane01:00 Dante's lustful — swept endlessly by the wind02:30 The id, duende, and Heraclitus on fire03:30 The Cyclops — single eye, all surface, all appetite05:00 Odysseus calls himself “Nobody” — and it saves his life06:00 Emily Dickinson's “I'm Nobody. Who are you?”07:00 The American problem with being Somebody08:00 Personal — what got abandoned along the way09:00 Failure vs. self-abandonment10:00 Soul work, calling, and the descentCrossroads Publishing Group: crossroadspublishing.groupLearn more about two engagement opportunities happening right now: https://crossroadspublishing.group/start/ Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

50 Days after the Resurrection of our Lord something amazing happened to those who were gathered in the upper room.  It took all fear and worry away and brought a fire in spreading the message of the Gospel to the whole world in all languages - This is the Holy Spirit.The Holy Spirit is still as active today as It was on that day of Holy Pentecost, in our personal and parish life.  How?Listen…

Send us a text or a voicemailAfter surviving one deadly game, a group of old friends must now outrun four rival podcasts competing not for chart supremacy, but for a powerful treasure - the friends they made along the way. On Episode 723 of Trick or Treat Radio our featured film discussion is Ready or Not 2: Here I Come from the directing collective known as Radio Silence! We also talk about our favorite films to quote, how Elijah Wood can do no wrong, and we react to the trailer for the upcoming Adam Wingard film, Onslaught! So grab your favorite blood stained wedding attire, give your old Papa Bava Booey a call, and strap on for the world's most dangerous podcast!Stuff we talk about: Fall, 2000 foot towers, The Descent, Frozen, Fall 2: Deadpoint, The Spierig Brother, Undead, Meatballs 2, Police Academy 2, Moving Violations, Spaceballs, Remo Williams, Wendie Jo Sperber, Babes, Bosom Buddies, The Mandalorian and Grogu, John Wayne, mudskippers warp speed and laser guns, Star Wars, Phil Tippet, Frank Henenlotter, Travis Knight, ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, the Volume technology, Battlestar Galactica, we have Star Wars at home, Werner Herzog, The Unknown, The Hands of Orlac, Revolt of the Zombies, Captive Wild Woman, The Lost Planet, The Nutty Professor, Slaughter of the Vampires, Poltergeist, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, Harry Potter, The Crow: Wicked Prayer, Splice, Three Days in the Woods, The Battery, Black Lake, The Fun Park, TJ Miller, Cloverfield, Bad Ghost, Sean Pertwee, Dog Soldiers, The Invitation, Dead Heat, The Ring, Event Horizon, Queen of Black Magic, Keith David, They Live, The Thing, John Carpenter, Waxwork, The Prophecy, Ticks, Parker Stevenson, Bruce Dern, Silent Running, Toolbox Murders, Swamp Devil, John Barrymore, Dennis Weaver, UHF, Duel, Don Diamond, Papa Bava, Spider-Noir, Nicolas Cage, Tim Curry, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Undead, Winchester, The Spierig Brothers, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Radio Silence, Southbound, The Mummy, Shawn Hatosy, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Iron Eagle, Kid Video, jump the shark, Kathryn Newton, Samara Weaving, Elijah Wood, Todd Bridges, Gen V, They Will Kill You, Fools and Folklore, Ash from Evil Dead, Shaun from Shaun of the Dead, Reggie from Phantasm, on fleek this week, Papa Bava Booey, and The Critiqueables.Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/trickortreatradioJoin our Discord Community: discord.trickortreatradio.comSend Email/Voicemail: mailto:podcast@trickortreatradio.comVisit our website: http://trickortreatradio.comStart your own podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=386Use our Amazon link: http://amzn.to/2CTdZzKFB Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/trickortreatradioTwitter: http://twitter.com/TrickTreatRadioFacebook: http://facebook.com/TrickOrTreatRadioYouTube: http://youtube.com/TrickOrTreatRadioInstagram: http://instagram.com/TrickorTreatRadioSupport the show

Putin didn't seize a democracy — he hollowed one out. Twenty-five years inside Russia's slow spiral, and what it tells us about our own moment. Read More: www.WhoWhatWhy.org

He's the London serial killer you may never have even known existed - from the late 1950's to the mid 1960's, West London was shocked by the deaths of several sex workers, who were found stripped, strangled, and their bodies dumped unceremoniously, like pieces of rubbish. It's widely considered to be the UK's most prolific series of unsolved serial killings, claiming more victims than his similar namesake the previous century, and in a joint 8 part series between myself, and the award nominated Murder Mile podcast, myself and Mike will examine the case in full detail, sifting through misinformation, lies, rumour - and perhaps even downright corruption.The True Crime Enthusiast and Murder Mile have brought you so far the accounts of eight dead women – Elizabeth Figg, Gwyneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridie O'Hara - who were found dead around the river Thames and in residential areas of the surrounding districts over a six year period from 1959 to 1965 – with police considering:Was there another Ripper on the loose?We have heard the full story of the investigation into the murders, what certainly connected the latter four of these, and the tales of a number of suspects for the crimes - I stress suspects - for only one person was ever charged with any of the linked killings - as you'll have heard.But - for the final time, join the Enthusiast and Mike, your tour guide for Murder Mile, as we sit down unscripted, unedited - togetrher, and Undress - Undressing - Jack The StripperThe episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, including descriptions of a sexual nature, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whilst listening in. Music used in this episode: "The Descent" by Kevin Macleod. All music used is sourced from https://filmmusic.io/ and used under an Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Clever Trevor – Ian DuryShort Change Hero - The HeavyThe True Crime Enthusiast's Fundraiser For Macmillan Cancer Support References - available upon request. Follow/Contact/Support The True Crime Enthusiast PodcastFacebookFacebook Discussion GroupTwitterInstagramYoutubeWebsiteTTCE MerchandisePatreon Page Remembering Elizabeth, Gwyneth, Hannah, Irene, Helen, Mary, Margaret and Bridie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Topics covered:A field report from week one of Crossroads Publishing Group—what's coming in the door, what's surprising, what's confirming.What a hybrid press actually is. A working definition: a publisher where the author shares the financial risk via a fee (broadly $5K to $45K, depending on the engagement), in exchange for real editorial work, professional production, distribution under the press's imprint, and a higher royalty share than traditional contracts.Why the vanity-press confusion exists, and why it's no longer accurate to the category as it stands in 2026.The IBPA Hybrid Publisher Pledge—the trade-association standard the legitimate hybrid presses meet (and the vanity operations don't).Three case studies of serious hybrid presses: She Writes Press (founded by Brooke Warner, 2012; 500+ titles; Industry Innovator Award from the Book Industry Study Group in 2017; Warner is chair of the IBPA) Greenleaf Book Group (Austin; operating since 2003; 1,500+ titles; multiple New York Times bestsellers) Lucid Books (Texas Christian hybrid; 5,000 authors in 20 years of operation)Three structural reasons the hybrid category is growing while the Big Five contracts: * The agent and Big Five pipeline is capped (≈1,000 active US agents, 3-5 new clients each per year) * Platform requirements at traditional imprints have become unworkable for serious working writers * The math of a hybrid contract is often better for the author: The traditional advance reality in 2026: $5K-$25K for non-celebrity nonfiction, declining year over year, with the author doing the marketing anyway, on a 10-15% royalty, with the publisher owning the ISBN.Why this matters for The Difficulty‘s actual listeners — coaches, therapists, consultants, pastors, mission-driven leaders, retired executives in second and third acts, working professionals in midlife transition.Five questions to ask any hybrid press before you give them a dollar:One — Are they IBPA pledged? If not, why not? Two — What is the author royalty split, in a specific number, with accounting schedule? Three — What editorial work is actually included in the price — developmental, line, copy, proofreading; at what stage; how many rounds? Four — Where does your book actually go after publication? Real distribution (Ingram, Amazon, Bookshop.org, library channels like Baker & Taylor and OverDrive) or just a SKU on a website? Five — What is the editorial selection rate? A serious hybrid press turns books down.About Crossroads Publishing Group:Crossroads is a hybrid press for practitioner authors—coaches, therapists, consultants, mission-driven leaders, and working professionals with a serious book and a body of insight. Three main category lanes on the site. 80% net royalties to the author. IBPA-pledged criteria built into the model.Inquiry door: crossroadspublishing.groupCall to action:If you're a practitioner author with a serious book and the hybrid path sounds like it could be yours, visit crossroadspublishing.group to start the conversation. Feedback on the show is welcome — what episodes are speaking to you, what you'd like to hear more or less of. Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode we're breaking down the 2005 claustrophobic masterpiece The Descent. It's the ultimate "girls' trip gone wrong" movie that made us all collectively decide that caves suck big time but you'll be fine if your with some absolute bad ass women.Whether you're a seasoned horror fan or someone who watches through their fingers this movie has it all. The gore, the guts, the goblins, well sort of so join us as we navigate the dark, the damp, and the downright deadly Just try not to think about what's lurking in the shadows behind you while you listen.Be sure to listen right to the end for the segment “your first time”where you send me over your horror movie memories to read out on the showAnd please make sure you go and check out everything Leighton does on the surviving horror podcast on the below linkhttps://open.spotify.com/show/4nzPXB5rnGVti3AMXP6654?si=DXRwOnIoSCiiUWza8KQDrg&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnC0ybybusbgnd-jI9dTfJn7UKE7iJM-1SW9OfM0kvcUIlEnEzbyZb4ecenOQ_aem_i8AfODnhamYuQbg_uVI_7A&nd=1&dlsi=a0f39697eea74eb6And if you are somebody that prefers to watch video versions of podcasts rather than listening, then you can click the below link to go to our YouTube channel to watch this episode and so many more⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://youtube.com/@theletstalkhorrorchannel?si=TGME1PTgfgG0VaL9⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enjoying the show?Hit that Follow button, please leave us a 5-star review and tell us: Would you have survived the cave or are you tripping over the first rock you see?Go follow us on all the socials and everything else we do on the below links including our patreonhttps://linktr.ee/LetsTalkHorror⁠⁠https://patreon.com/u90665618?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink⁠⁠#horror #podcast #horrormovies #movies #review

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, Dcn. Harrison Garlick discusses Books 11-12 of the Odyssey with Dr. Frank Grabowski and Mr. Luke Heintschel, the Academic Headmaster of Coeur du Christ Academy.Check out Ascend's LIBRARY of written guides and SOCIAL MEDIA. Check out Luke's Substack at CoCrucified and Dr. Grabowski's at Porch & Altar.SummaryListeners are taken on Odysseus' harrowing katabasis into the underworld, where he confronts shades of the dead, including his mother, the tragic Agamemnon, and especially Achilles, whose devastating reflection on glory versus life delivers one of the most “blood on the floor” moments in Western literature. The conversation masterfully unpacks themes of piety, humanization, fate and free will, and the meaning of a well-lived life, while drawing illuminating connections to Plato, Dante, Boethius, and the Christian tradition.The discussion continues into Book 12 with the irresistible Sirens, the terror of Scylla and Charybdis, and the fateful transgression with the Cattle of the Sun. Throughout, the guests offer sharp insight into Odysseus's evolving character, the tensions between cunning and virtue, and why these ancient stories remain essential for forming minds today. Whether you're a longtime lover of Homer or new to the Great Books, this episode delivers rich intellectual conversation, pedagogical wisdom, and profound reflections that will leave you eager to pick up the text—or re-read it with fresh eyes.Chapters00:00 Introduction to the Great Books Podcast06:01 Exploring the Odyssey: Books 11 and 1212:54 The Theme of Descent into the Underworld16:57 Elpenor's Ignoble Death and Its Significance23:42 Tiresias and the Prophecies for Odysseus31:43 Fate vs. Free Will in the Odyssey38:29 The Role of Women in the Odyssey43:24 The Significance of Penelope in the Odyssey45:48 Odysseus' Emotional Journey and Family Dynamics53:13 Agamemnon's Narrative and the Role of Women58:32 Achilles' Regret and the Nature of Glory01:09:41 Ajax's Silence and the Weight of Honor01:17:53 Exploring the Underworld: Tantalus and Heracles01:20:34 Odysseus's Descent: Fear and Fate in Hades01:21:38 Homer's Philosophical Insights: Preparing for Christ01:22:29 Homer as a Teacher and Philosopher01:24:15 The Sirens: Temptation and Knowledge01:33:46 Scylla and Charybdis: Leadership and Sacrifice01:39:31 The Cattle of the Sun: Fate and Free Will01:46:04 Odysseus's Reflection: Mortality and LeadershipKeywordsHomer Odyssey Books 11 and 12, Odyssey Book 11 summary and analysis, Odyssey Book 12 summary, Odysseus katabasis underworld descent, Achilles in Hades dialogue, Odysseus meets Achilles, Sirens episode Odyssey, Scylla and Charybdis, Cattle of the Sun God, Tiresias prophecy, Elpenor burial, Odysseus piety and character development, fate versus free will in Homer, classical education podcast, Great Books discussion Homer, Ascend the Great Books Podcast, Deacon Harrison Garlick Odyssey, Dr. Frank Grabowski, Luke Heintschel Court of Christ Academy, Homer philosophy and theology, katabasis tradition Plato Dante, Christian reading of the Odyssey, Odysseus hero journey analysis.

Episode Notes Yes we skipped the Quark forcefemm one. The Sound of Her Voice: Odo and Quark flirtation. Everyone's in a bad mood. Establishing communications with the stranded officer! Jude is suspicious. Cross-species relationship issues. The engineer's trilemma. Mailbox. Lisa solves problems from beyond the grave. Quark tries to engineer a rom-com so that Odo is busy during his shady business. Quark has to filter normal emotions through the frame of Ferengi horseshit. The end is the saddest but also the least bad. Tears of the Prophets: Turning tides of war. The moment you know things are going to go wrong. The bitch is back! Dukat has become an Indiana Jones villain. God stink. Prophecy vs. directive vs Starfleet policy. Dukat meets a Pah Wraith. Dax is saved, but Jadzia is not. We stan Terry Ferrell. If it weren't for the plot we hate, this would be a very good space battle storytelling episode. BabSpace9 is a production of the Okay, So network. Connect with the show at @babylonpod.page Help us keep the lights on via our Patreon! Justen can be found at @justen.babylonpod.page Ana can be found at @ana.babylonpod.page, and also made our show art. Both Ana and Justen can also be found on The Compleat Discography, a Discworld re-read podcast. Jude Vais can be found at @jude.athrabeth.com. His other work can be found at Athrabeth - a Tolkien Podcast and at Garbage of the Five Rings. Clips from the original show remain copyrighted by Paramount Entertainment and are used under the Fair Use doctrine. Music attribution: Original reworking of the Deep Space 9 theme by audioquinn, who stresses that this particular war crime is not their fault. The Descent by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4490-the-descent License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This show is edited and produced by Aaron Olson, who can be found at @aaron.compleatdiscography.page Find out more at http://babylonpod.page

Brooke Warner, the founder of She Writes Press, gave a TED talk in 2017 called “Green-Lighting Yourself” that I have been thinking about for years. The argument: the traditional creative industries, publishing and film and music, have shifted toward green-lighting only artists who are already famous or who have celebrity connections. The writers and filmmakers and musicians who refused to wait for those industries to discover them, who chose to publish or produce their own work without permission, have a name. Warner calls them green-lighters.The line from her talk that I cannot let go: “Legitimacy cannot be bestowed. You have to take it.”This episode is about what that line means in 2026.There is a question every writer who has been carrying a book for a long time eventually has to face. Are you going to keep waiting for someone to greenlight your work, or are you going to greenlight it yourself.In this episode I share three of my own green-lighter moments. Co-founding C&R Press at thirty-two. Launching Crossroads at fifty-two. And the book I am writing right now, The Crisis of Being Nobody, which will publish through Crossroads because no traditional gatekeeper is going to greenlight it on my behalf.I also talk about what green-lighting actually requires, beyond the romanticized version. Four specific things. The work has to be good. The practical labor of getting the book into the world has to be done. The waiting for institutional bestowal has to end. And the writer has to return to what made them want to do the work in the first place.The episode closes with an invitation. What is the work you have been carrying that you have not yet greenlighted. Notice what happens in your body when you sit with that question. Whether something opens or something flinches. The answer the institution is not going to give you is one you have always been able to give yourself.The Founding Voice cohort, for the first three writers signing a publishing engagement with Crossroads, is open through August 31, 2026.* Submit a project: https://crossroadspublishing.group/inquire* Book a discovery call: Calendly link here. Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, we tackle the raw and unfiltered Book of Judges. We step into an era where "there was no king in Israel" to see what happens when a society—and an individual—abandons prophetic boundaries and begins to substitute personal preference for divine law. The Pride Cycle: We analyze the text's relentless pattern of prosperity, pride, sin, suffering, supplication, and salvation. We look at why God preserves this cycle as a warning for our day. Gideon's Reduction: We explore why God reduced Gideon's army from 32,000 down to just 300 men. We learn why the Lord intentionally puts us in positions where we cannot boast in our own strength. The Leadership of Deborah: We study the courage of Deborah and the unexpected heroism of Jael, illustrating how God raises up faithful individuals to do what others are too fearful to attempt. The Descent of Samson: We map out the tragic, literal "downward" geographical and spiritual journey of Samson, looking at how a man of such high potential fell victim to low achievement because of weak self-discipline. Doing Right in Our Own Eyes: We conclude with the sobering final verse of the book, confronting the modern trap of moral relativism and discovering why true freedom requires submitting to the King of Kings. Call-to-Action: Gideon needed a fleece to confirm his faith, but eventually had to move forward in the dark. What is a "strange strategy" the Lord is asking you to trust in your life right now? Let's share our thoughts on overcoming personal spiritual cycles in the comments below. To keep your faith "Unshaken" through every round of life's trials, please like, subscribe, and share this video! Chapter Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction to the Book of Judges 3:01 The Pride Cycle 14:46 An Incomplete Conquest 23:29 Making the Rounds of Righteousness & Wickedness 43:25 The First Minor Judges 51:24 Deborah & Jael 1:08:06 The Song of Deborah & Mothers in Israel 1:31:45 Gideon's Doubt & Faith 1:54:49 The Sword of the Lord & of Gideon 2:17:28 Gideon's Aftermath 2:29:33 Abimelech's Reign & the Parable of the Bramble 2:44:07 Justice & Mercy, Goodness & Grief 2:52:11 Jephthah & His Daughter 3:16:15 Samson: Child of Promise 3:26:18 Samson's Strength and Weakness 3:57:39 Samson & Delilah 4:07:33 Bind and Blind 4:16:15 Micah and the Problem of Priestcraft 4:33:42 The Levite's Concubine and the Price of Virtue 5:00:52 Conclusion 

When I was seventeen, I drove my parents' conversion van home from a party with a six-pack in my system and a freshly-dented bumper on a stranger's parked car. The officer who arrived at our house decided not to charge me with driving under the influence. He told me to go inside and sleep it off. I have thought about that night for thirty-five years.This episode is an essay reading. The material is personal. Three stories from my reckless adolescence in Richmond, Virginia, told plainly. The drinking and driving. The LSD afternoon at a Goochland County rock quarry. The way my parents finally put me in rehab and the way I was outraged when they did. I survived my adolescence on a margin of unearned protection that I did not deserve, and the survival did not feel, then, like the gift it was.The essay turns to the strangest passage in the Hebrew Bible. Genesis 32. Jacob wrestling the man who turns out to be God, holding on through the dislocated hip, refusing to let go without the blessing. The man gives Jacob a new name. Jacob leaves with a permanent limp. The limp is, in the strange grammar of the story, the proof that the blessing was real.The argument the essay makes is the argument the book it comes from rests on. The crisis of being nobody is not solved by the world finally recognizing you. The world is busy. The crisis is solved by the wrestling. The wrestling produces a self that can speak. The wrestling produces the work. The wrestling produces a person who has something to say because they have done the work of finding out what they are.The blessing is real. The limp is yours forever. So is the name.→ The Crisis of Being Nobody: forthcoming late 2026 from Crossroads Press → Submit a project: crossroadspublishing.group/inquire → Subscribe to The Descent: chadprevost.substack.com → Book a discovery call: Calendly here Get full access to The Descent at chadprevost.substack.com/subscribe

He's the London serial killer you may never have even known existed - from the late 1950's to the mid 1960's, West London was shocked by the deaths of several sex workers, who were found stripped, strangled, and their bodies dumped unceremoniously, like pieces of rubbish. It's widely considered to be the UK's most prolific series of unsolved serial killings, claiming more victims than his similar namesake the previous century, and in a joint 8 part series between myself, and the award nominated Murder Mile podcast, myself and Mike will examine the case in full detail, sifting through misinformation, lies, rumour - and perhaps even downright corruption.The True Crime Enthusiast and Murder Mile have brought you so far the accounts of eight dead women – Elizabeth Figg, Gwyneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridie O'Hara - who were found dead around the river Thames and in residential areas of the surrounding districts over a six year period from 1959 to 1965 – with police considering:Was there another Ripper on the loose?We have heard the full story of the investigation into the murders - were they even all connected? What certainly connected the latter four of these, and the possibility - was the Stripper seen - twice, and in the final part of Undressing - Jack The Stripper, i bring you a series of suspects for the crimes.I stress suspects - for only one person was ever charged with any of the linked killings - as you'll hear.Join myself on The True Crime Enthusiast for parts 1 to 4, and Mike over on Murder Mile for parts A to D, as we are Undressing - 'Jack The Stripper'The episode contains details and descriptions of crimes and events, including descriptions of a sexual nature, that some listeners may find disturbing or distressing, so discretion is advised whilst listening in. Music used in this episode: "The Descent" by Kevin Macleod. All music used is sourced from https://filmmusic.io/ and used under an Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Clever Trevor – Ian DuryShort Change Hero - The HeavyThe True Crime Enthusiast's Fundraiser For Macmillan Cancer Support References - available upon request. Follow/Contact/Support The True Crime Enthusiast PodcastFacebookFacebook Discussion GroupTwitterInstagramYoutubeWebsiteTTCE MerchandisePatreon Page Remembering Elizabeth, Gwyneth, Hannah, Irene, Helen, Mary, Margaret and Bridie Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a skeptical doctor is challenged to spend a midnight hour inside the abandoned mill his new patient swears is haunted, he begins a journey that will force him to question everything science has taught him about the world.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Haunted Mill” (November 08, 1977)00:46:03.754 = Mysterious Traveler, “Key Witness” (January 15, 1942)01:13:37.539 = Mystery House, “Subrosa Justice” (April 07, 1946)01:37:33.654 = Night Beat, “Byline For Frank” (June 29, 1951)02:06:52.463 = CBC Nightfall, “The Wedding” (April 15, 1983) ***WD02:37:26.781 = Nightmare, “Coincidence” (November 26, 1953)02:59:09.365 = Obsession, “Summer Evening” (January 22, 1951) ***WD03:21:53.060 = Origin of Superstition, “Ghost Ships” (July 30, 1947) ***WD03:36:07.573 = Pat Novak, “Death In Herald Square” (November 30, 1947)04:06:43.354 = Peril, “Assassin” (1953) ***WD04:32:40.665 = Mystery Playhouse, “Corpus Delicti” (January 17, 1947) ***WD04:56:50.543 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0668