Podcast appearances and mentions of golden tree

Noticias Con Café 19/07/2024 Una semana de más admisiones de mediocridad de LUMA y Alexandria Ocasio Cortes viene a cuestionar cual es el Plan B. | La campaña sobre Alzheimer que se narra en PR con responsabilidad y sensibilidad. | Más de Golden Tree y la lealtad de abogados del patio que lo ayudan en el truco de seguir amasando fortuna. ¡Sintoniza y Comparte! #periodismoindependiente #periodismodigital #puertorico #jenniffergonzalez #manuellaboy #steventananbaum

Noticias Con Café 19/07/2024 Una semana de más admisiones de mediocridad de LUMA y Alexandria Ocasio Cortes viene a cuestionar cual es el Plan B. | La campaña sobre Alzheimer que se narra en PR con responsabilidad y sensibilidad. | Más de Golden Tree y la lealtad de abogados del patio que lo ayudan en el truco de seguir amasando fortuna. ¡Sintoniza y Comparte! #periodismoindependiente #periodismodigital #puertorico #jenniffergonzalez #manuellaboy #steventananbaum

Please join ​​Roshney Mistry and ​me as we talk about ​​​Healing Emotions Showing Up in the Body.  Join us to explore -Grief shows up in various ways -Your body is a barometer -Radical remission survey, surviving cancer -You are your own healer -Tools you can use to heal yourself ​​Roshney will be doing a live meditation with the Golden Tree which will help you feel more grounded and shielded. You will be able to connect with your guides and ask what emotion do I need to let go of now and what does my body need right now? .             Roshney is a spiritual energy coach whose name means light. She is trained in NLP, Rahanni Celestial Healing, Inner Child Healing, Cord Cutting , Counselling and Akashic Records Healing. She has been working in corporate government for the last 34 years.  Working in a stressful environment has taught her many skills especially on how to heal relationships. She learnt through her experiences that when your soul is not living its true purpose/mission then the body will show you signs on a physical and mental level. Roshney uses powerful inner child healing and cord cutting modalities to help others to remove emotional blocks to relationships, career and good health.  She runs spiritual workshops every 2 weeks via Zoom which are open to everyone and anyone. Whether you are just new to spirituality or very experienced she shares tips and tools on how to heal yourself. The workshops include powerful guided meditations. Roshney is sharing her light with you so that you can shine your light too.   Speaker Gifts: https://awakentohappinessnow.com Roshney's Offers: https://awakentohappinessnow.com/s34roshney/ #shefaliburns , #awakentohappinessnow, #healing, #energy, #transformation, #consciousness, #love, #consciousliving, #joy, #empowerment, #wellness, #spirituality, #spiritualawakening, #awareness

Episode 244 – Jesus and the Great Commission Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event lighting technician. He straightens out the cords on the Christmas lights before we put them up. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to finish up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we’re going to hear the last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. When we left off last time the koala bears who live in the arctic village that surrounds the Golden Tree had just encountered the Frost Lion for the first time in their history. The bears have lived in the valley surrounding the tree for many generations and had heard of the Frost Lion but this is the first time they have ever seen him. And they have only seen him now because the lion has chosen to come to their village. Why did the Frost Lion choose to come to their village now, RD? RD: Well, the biggest reason that the Frost Lion has chosen to enter the bears’ village at this time is because something else has happened to the bears for the first time in their generations around the tree. For the first time since the bears have lived in the village they have had visitors from their ancestral homeland. A bear named Roleb and his travelling companion had made an arduous journey to the north because they were concerned about the state of their village’s faith. Roleb’s travelling companion died just before they could reach the village. Roleb himself was almost at the point of death. They had known that their quest to travel to the great far north would be dangerous but they had made it because their homeland had lost its faith in the bears’ creator who they thought of as the Great White Koala Bear. To try to preserve their own tribe’s faith the two bears from down under had gone searching in the arctic even though they were mocked for doing so. Fortunately for them, two teenage bears from Golden Tree village had spotted Roleb just as he collapsed on the snowy wastelands outside their village. This had kicked off a search for Roleb’s friend. With the aid of a Great Ice Eagle, Gabriel, they had found the friend but he had just died. But when they brought the friend back to the village the Frost Lion was there. But no one knows what the Frost Lion can do – and no one knows what the Frost Lion will do … VK: So, it’s time to find out what happens to Roleb, and his travelling companion in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 7 VK: So, the Frost Lion was able to raise Roleb’s friend from the dead. But I hope that most listeners noticed that the Frost Lion didn’t just stop with restoring the life and health of the two bears down under. The Frost Lion began the process of addressing the deeper need – the fact that the bear clan down under was losing its faith. So just like Jesus did after His resurrection the Frost Lion commissioned missionaries from the Golden Tree village to carry the good news back with Roleb and his friend. Obviously, the message you are sending through this poem is that we live in a day and age when many people in our own clans are losing, or have lost, their faith. And we need to be missionaries to our family and friends. Because if we aren’t who will be? RD: Yes. And for any listeners who haven’t heard the previous episodes of The Frost Lion, they need to know that for the last six weeks we have been playing one section of The Frost Lion during each episode of Anchored by Truth. And since Anchored by Truth is available on most major podcasting apps listeners who want to hear those episodes can do so at any time. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time today to repeat those portions of the poem. But listeners who would like to hear all of the action and adventure that led up to today’s conclusion can listen to those episodes from their favorite podcast app or on our website, crystalseabooks.com. VK: And just as a reminder as of the time of the production of this broadcast and podcast in late 2022 The Frost Lion has not yet been made available for commercial release but that will happen in the early part of 2023. RD: That’s a good note. So, let’s amplify on the reason that the Frost Lion has now chosen to visit the bears, his disciples, in the village around the Golden Tree. For the first time since the bears had come to live near the Golden Tree they had now been presented with a missionary need. In other words, the Golden Tree village bears now knew that their ancestors had actually been saved generations ago for a reason – and that reason had now been brought to their attention in an unmistakable way. VK: Well, if we went back to the first part of the Golden Tree Tales which is The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest we heard the heroine, Komari, say something significant which was quoted by Kodan in The Frost Lion. In her confrontation with the Demon Lord Komari said, “ For if not for the tree, which of us Would ever have even been born? The tree saved our forebears When they came upon it that morn. Ever since then, we’ve not been our own, Our lives bought for a price. This tree that was sown for you and me Was the Great White Bear’s sacrifice.” So, that’s part of the point you’re making with this whole epic saga. Those of us who know Christ as our Savior have been saved for a reason. RD: Right. So, in answer to the question of why did the Frost Lion appear now it was because the Frost Lion wanted to commission the Golden Tree village bears to begin what is sometimes termed “The Great Commission.” The Great Commission is the mission that Jesus gave to His followers in Matthew, chapter 28 and which we heard repeated in the section of the poem we heard today. After His resurrection Jesus told the followers who had been with Him throughout His earthly ministry that the time had come for them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [teach] them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That’s from the New International Version of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 19 and 20. VK: So, the reason that the Frost Lion appeared in the Golden Tree village at this time reminds us that there came and a time and place in history when the Lion of Judah entered world history to conduct His earthly ministry. And as we have talked about in other episodes of Anchored by Truth the time that Jesus entered world history as the God-Man wasn’t a random time. It was the time that had been chosen by the Father before the foundation of the world. Up to that time the world was being prepared for the arrival of the Messiah, the Anointed One, because it was at that time that the good news of salvation was going to be made available to a much larger audience. RD: Right. Before the incarnation it’s not that there weren’t Gentiles who had worshipped the One True God – there were. But up to Jesus’ arrival on the earth the primary audience for God’s message that He was going to provide a Savior had been the Jews. All that changed with Jesus’ life. After Jesus’ earthly life, death, and resurrection not only did Jesus issue the Great Commission to His first followers but we see other evangelical and apostolic giants such as the Apostle Paul come on the scene and begin a concerted outreach to the Gentile nations as well as continuing the spread of the gospel among the Jews. But, this outreach was not going to be easy. Jesus knew it wouldn’t be which is, I believe, He made it so plain that this was a mission He was now assigning His followers. It would have been easy, more natural, for them to want to just speak to their countrymen in Israel or even just to other Jews. The outreach to the Gentiles was going to be hard – but it was the right thing to do because that’s the reason God had preserved His chosen people for thousands of years. VK: That calls to mind a line out of the West Point cadet prayer that you mentioned to me a long time ago. The line says, “O God, our Father … Make us choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.” RD: Exactly. God had selected and preserved a people for Himself because it was through that people that He was going to bring a Savior for the whole world. Jesus, of course, was that Savior. But even after proving that He was the Son of God and the Messiah through His earthly ministry Jesus still had to complete His mission and send His followers to carry that message to the rest of the world. Until the message of salvation was sent to the rest of the world the rest of the world was still under the burden and curse of sin. But the message of salvation could and did change that. VK: And that calls to mind Jesus saying in Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28 and 29 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus’ promise is to help us bear our burdens not merely to dismiss them from our lives but we have to hear that good news for it to be effective in people’s lives. RD: Exactly right. So, living near the Golden Tree had brought many blessings to the bears in the arctic village. But it wasn’t enough for them to enjoy those blessings. They had a responsibility to share their blessings with others. VK: So, that brings us to another question. Couldn’t Roleb and his companion just go back to their village and told their friends and neighbors they had seen the Golden Tree, the Frost Lion, and the northern bears? RD: They could have but it would strengthen their witness to have others from the Golden Tree village support their testimony. That’s something anyone who has ever testified to their friends and neighbors will tell you. We all have a responsibility to give a reason for the hope that lies within us. That’s 2 Peter 3:15. But our witness is strengthened when we have others who will go with us and add their voices to our testimony. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to always engage in Christian fellowship with other believers. Sometimes we can put too much emphasis on that old admonition that “if it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Well, of course, we must do our part. But we should also seek the help of others in our own missionary activities. VK: That’s a really important point. As Christians we can get so caught up in struggling to be good believers, good workers, or good parents or family members that we can forget to turn to other believers for support and help. And we must always trust the Lord to support us and depend on the Lord to provide for us. There’s nothing wrong with hard work but ultimately if we think that our lives and destinies on this earth are all about us we are in danger of relying on our strength rather than the Lord’s. RD: Right. And again our model in how to approach struggles is Christ in his confrontation with Satan. Even Jesus didn’t depend on Himself to when He responded to the temptations presented by Satan. When Jesus needed strength to repel Satan Jesus went to scripture. VK: And most people may not realize that all of the scriptures Jesus used came from probably one of the least well-known books in the Bible, Deuteronomy. Christ quoted Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3 in response to the first temptation Satan presented. He quoted Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 16 in response to the second temptation, and Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 13 in response to the third temptation. This certainly reinforces the need to study the entire Bible. Jesus certainly knew all of the Old Testament and used it in his life. RD: Right. Part of us fulfilling our role in the Great Commission is recognizing that the Lord is sovereign and we are not. Even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for the Father’s will to be done and not his own. We must be willing to witness and testify to others, kindly and gently, but ultimately the results are up to God. Only God can bring change to a human heart. VK: And that calls to mind James, chapter 1, verse 17. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” So, in essence what you’re saying is that Jesus is not only the One who issued the Great Commission but Jesus is the One who enables us to fulfill it. We dare not try to undertake any part of the Great Commission or any other aspect of the Christian life on our own. We must always turn to, and trust in, Jesus to guide and provide. RD: Yes. Jesus is both the source of the instruction and the strength for the obedience. Turning to Jesus should be our first response but all too often I fear it’s our last resort. I always wince a little when I hear people say “the only thing I can do for you is to pray.” VK: Because as you say in your book Purposeful Prayers “the whispered prayer that stirs the hand of God dwarfs the most powerful force in the universe.” RD: Yes. The one big advantage that the bears who lived in the Golden Tree had over their southern relatives was that they had learned that ultimately the supply for their needs came from a source outside themselves. They had lived near the Golden Tree for generations. They knew there was a source of blessing outside of their own effort and that’s where they placed their trust. Anyone or anything that tempts you to place your trust in anything other than God cannot be of God. It’s not that we should not work hard to develop our own skills and abilities but we must keep them in proper perspective. VK: The Apostle Paul essentially affirmed this sentiment in the one of the best-known verses from the Bible: Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13. “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” RD: Exactly. We should learn from Golden Tree village bears’ example to be discerning when the world presents us with challenges or opportunities. Jesus is our sure and certain guide in this world and the primary way Jesus imparts wisdom to us is through the Bible. That’s why we must become so familiar with the Bible that we can immediately discern things or events in our lives that tempt us to depart from its teaching. There are a lot of things that will come our way that may not seem to be harmful, in and of themselves, but we can see that it what they offer or tempt us to do will not be consistent with scripture. At my age I’ve learned that the most important skill we can develop is spiritual discernment and we can only get that from the Bible and developing a strong network of mature Christian friends. VK: And while The Frost Lion doesn’t get into that level of detail it’s obvious from the poem that the bears had a strong regard for genuine wisdom and Kodan, Kojon, Koest and all the reset developed even more wisdom after their encounter with the Frost Lion. Christ came to bring us not only joy and peace but “life more abundantly.” But how can we enjoy that abundant life if we don’t ensure that as we travel through life we stay as close as humanly possible to the author of all life, peace, and joy. Staying close to Jesus means reading the Bible, developing a strong prayer life, and staying connected to other believers who can bless us and who we can bless in turn. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to New Year’s Day let’s listen to a prayer for blessings to come to us in the new year. ---- Prayer for NEW YEAR’S DAY VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on our website or your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we’d like to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest, is available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version

Episode 243 – Jesus' Birth – The Dividing Line of History Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I'm Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I'm here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event librarian. He straightens up the books on the book shelves when one falls over. Today on Anchored by Truth we're going to begin finishing up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we're going to hear the next-to-last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. When we left off last time a group of small koala bears that lives in a valley in the arctic north was trying to save the life of a bear who had gotten lost. This bear had journeyed to the arctic not knowing that a group of koalas already lived in the far north near a Golden Tree that had saved a group of their ancestors. To find the lost southern bear the village bears had enlisted the aid of a great ice eagle. Unfortunately, by the time the village bears found the lost bear the southern bear had died? So, it doesn't look like it's going to be a happy Christmas for the Golden Tree villagers, does it RD? RD: No. It does not. As our last installment of The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion ended two of the villages' teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul, had flown with Gabriel, the great ice eagle. They had gone looking for the bear because earlier in the story Koest and Kopaul had saved the life of Roleb, another bear from the south. Roleb and his friend had made the journey to the north because their own village was in desperate trouble. Their fellow villagers in the south were in danger of losing their faith in their Creator, the Great White Bear. These southern bears knew that many generations ago a group of bears had travelled north but their legends had said that ancestral group had died. The southern bears had no idea the first group that travelled to the north – while they didn't find the Great White Bear – they had found the Golden Tree. Now the question is whether salvation is still available? VK: So, it's time to find out what happens to Roleb and his travelling companion in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 6 VK: Wow. So, now the village bears have met the great Frost Lion – the One who actually created the bears and the ice eagles. But Roleb's friend is still dead. And we still don't know what Roleb's fate is going to be. Is it just too late for the Frost Lion to do anything to help Roleb and his friend? Seems there are still a lot of unanswered questions. RD: Well, hopefully we'll get the answers to all these questions next week since next week is part 7 and there's only seven parts to this part of the Golden Tree saga. But part of what listeners should be listening for is why did the Frost Lion choose to appear at this time in the village bears' history. After all, they had lived near the Golden Tree for many generations? What was it about this situation that made the Frost Lion arrive in the village? Maybe we'll hear something about that next time too. VK: And that's a great lesson for why listeners should grab some friends and family and encourage them to tune in. It would be a good starting point for a discussion in a family setting, or a church youth group, or a home-school study project. The story can help kids learn about poetry as a form of literature, and also see how their imagination can be an important tool in getting immersed in the Bible. RD: Right. Classically some of the greatest poetry ever written like Milton's Paradise Lost was written under the inspiration of the Bible. We've lost some of that awareness but I firmly believe it can be reclaimed by again striving to honor the Lord in everything we do. VK: So, what's on tap for today as we are right on Christmas' doorstep? RD: I thought as our closeout topic for this series on Jesus it would be fitting to talk about the reason for the season: Christ's birth. It's been celebrated on December 25th for centuries, but unfortunately today even that fact has become a source of either criticism or else an outright attack on the historicity of Jesus. For instance, some critics will claim that the celebration of Christmas was an adaptation of the Roman festival of Saturnalia and that as such it casts doubt on the historicity of Jesus. VK: And it is true that the Roman celebration of the Roman god Saturn did occur around the same time on the Julian calendar. The celebration originally started on December 17th but it was eventually expanded so that it lasted until December 23rd. And there are certainly elements of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia that correspond to how we celebrate Christmas. Saturnalia included parties, giving gifts, and plenty of food and drink. Though, it did differ markedly in certain ways. A lot of the time Saturnalia probably resembled Mardi Gras more than Christmas. RD: And that's because the Roman god, Saturn, was the god of abundance and plenty but he was also thought of as the god of dissipation and dissolution. And it's also fair to say that some elements of the Christian celebration of Christmas were influenced by Saturnalia. In the fourth century AD, Pope Julius I (337–352) decided that Christ's birthday should be celebrated on 25 December, around the same time as the Saturnalia celebrations. Some commentators have speculated that part of the reason why he chose this date may have been because he was trying to create a Christian alternative to Saturnalia. Another possibility may have been that in 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus and Julius I may have thought that he could attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day. So it's fair to say that the way in which we celebrate Christmas was probably influenced by Saturnalia, but that is quite a different thing from saying that just because the Roman god Saturn was mythological or fictional that Jesus was also. That would be the classic example of a non sequitur. VK: Non Sequitur: a conclusion that does not necessarily follow. In other words it's a logical fallacy to conclude that just because the god Saturn was a myth that Jesus must be a myth also just because there are some common elements in the way the two different figures were or are celebrated. RD: Exactly. VK: But, of course, that does raise the question of whether Pope Julius picked December 25th just because that was a time when there were already pagan celebrations going on, or whether there were other reasons for selecting that day? RD: And that is a great question. VK: I'm so glad you agree. So… RD: We need to start out by saying that the Bible does not tell us exactly when Jesus was born. As one scholar put it, “the early Christians were not so much concerned with the date of Christ's birth, as the fact of his birth.” And for those people who would like to take an in-depth look at when Jesus was born, there's a great little book called Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ by Harold W. Hoehner. Much of what we're going to talk about now comes from his book. The first question we need to address is not the day Jesus was born but the year. VK: I think most people generally think that Jesus was born in 1 AD. Doesn't AD stand for anno domini meaning the “year of the Lord?” RD: Yes, it does. And that was the original intent when a Scythian monk named Dionysius originally prepared a calendar for use by the Western church at the direction of Pope John I in 525 AD. Before that time the Alexandrian system of dating was being used but it used as it base the reign of Diocletian who was a persecutor of the early church. Dionysius did not want the reference date for the church to be based on a persecutor. So Dionysius used the Julian system, which had been established by Julius Caesar, for the organization of the year which ran from January 1st to December 31st. And the year 1 AD was set on January 1st of 754 A.U.C. – anno urbis conditae – from the founding of the city of Rome. At the time Jesus was thought to have been born on December 25th of the prior year. Remember that there is no “zero” year. The calendar goes straight from 1 BC (before Christ) to 1 AD. VK: But… RD: But subsequent scholarship has determined that Dionysius didn't get the translation between the AUC system and the system based on Christ's birth year right. As our scripture today from Matthew noted, King Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. At the time it was thought that Herod died in 754 AUC but we now know that the latest date for Herod's death was 750 AUC. VK: So that would mean Jesus was actually born 4 or 5 years earlier than previously thought. So he was born in 4 or 5 BC, not December 25th of 1 BC. Interesting. RD: Yes. But it's worth noting that scholars are not even agreed on that. VK: Because…? RD: Because we have two scriptures that serve as the outer boundaries for Jesus' birth. According to Matthew Jesus could not have been born later than Herod's death, but according to Luke Jesus was born after a census that had been taken by a Roman official named Quirinius. In Greek Quirinius would have been Kyrenius. Luke says that this was “This was the first census that took place while a Quirinius was governor of Syria.” One of the issues was there aren't any clear records about when this census took place. Josephus does not mention a census that took place during Herod's reign but he does mention one that took place in 6 or 7 AD. So scholars are not unified on the date that this previous census might have taken place. This is one of the more puzzling questions that still linger about the birth of Jesus. VK: So, does Dr. Hoehner discuss this question in his book? RD: He does and there is actually a wealth of discussion available from many sources on this first census of Quirinius. Here are a few things we know for certain. The Romans were well known to take censuses throughout their empire to establish what we might call the basis for taxation and it was common for them to take them about every 14 years. Second, the text from Luke that says that Quirinius was the governor of Syria does not actually use the normal word, legatus, that is translated as “governor.” It uses a more generalized term for being in charge or leading. Third, we know that Quirinius was in the mid-East from 12 B.C. to 2 B.C. successively suppressing rebellions taking place in modern day Turkey. Apparently, Quirinius was well known as a successful military leader. VK: So, it would make sense that he was given charge of an important task of taking a census even if was done as an extra duty. Also, it would make sense that Augustus would want a census taken in that part of the empire because Herod had fallen out of favor with Augustus around 7 or 8 BC and by then it was known that his health was failing and that his sons were quarrelling over who would succeed him. Herod changed his will 3 times in the year before his death, each time naming a different son. Augustus knew about the changes and the quarrels because Herod had to get Augustus' permission before making the changes. RD: Or executing one of his sons which Herod also did – again with Augustus' knowledge and consent. VK: So that helps show that Herod was the kind of a king who would order the murder of all boys, 2 years old and under, in and around Bethlehem to get rid of a child the Magi had described the “king of the Jews.” So, it looks very much like Quirinius might have been in charge of a census sometime in the latter part of Herod's reign around 5 BC. Herod died in 4 BC. But, what about the specific day? Did Pope Julius just pick that day because it roughly corresponded with Saturnalia? RD: We can't be entirely sure why Pope Julius picked December 25th but the traditional date for Jesus' birth had been around for at least 100 or 150 years before he set it officially within the church calendar. At a minimum an early church father named Hippolytus of Rome (ca 165-235 AD) had proposed that date. It is thought that Hippolytus might have had some greater insight about Jesus because he was associated with one of the early disciples of the Apostle John. There's not a lot of information in scripture itself to pin down the date, but the tradition of a midwinter date for his birth does date back to the very earliest of the church fathers. Also, it's fair to note that December 25th is the traditional day of celebration in the Western church but the Eastern church has traditionally used January 6th as the birthday and arrival of the Magi. VK: But some people object to the December date because a part of Luke that we didn't listen to today says the shepherds were keeping watch on their flocks which were out in the fields at night. It is generally known that the shepherds brought their sheep into enclosures from about November through March. So the thinking is that if the sheep were out in the field it couldn't have been December. RD: And that's a reasonable observation but it's not conclusive. First, it might have been a mild winter so there would have been less reason to keep the sheep enclosed. Second, the sheep were apparently in and around Bethlehem as opposed to being out in their spring and summer feeding grounds in the wilderness so this makes it far more likely the birth was in the winter. The shepherds had to be close enough to be able to get to family who were lodged in the stable in Bethlehem fairly quickly. Third, there are Jewish texts that say that the sheep that were going to be used for the Passover celebration were to be out in the field for at least 30 days before the celebration. Passover could have been as early as February so this would again reinforce a midwinter date as early as late December or early January. VK: The bottom line is that - again – when you look at the details of history and the gospel accounts it dispels completely the notion that even if there are superficial resemblances between the Christian celebration of Christmas and some pagan winter festivals that somehow diminishes the historicity of Jesus as a person. Or his birth in Bethlehem on a night over 2,000 years ago. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we're so close to Christmas let's listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We'd like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we'd to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari's Quest, is available from our website. If you'd like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We're not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version

Episode 242 – Jesus’ Attributes Were Not “Borrowed” Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event planning consultant. He rearranges the chairs in the conference room when we have meetings. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we want to continue our series where we focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Frost Lion is the third part of the Golden Tree trilogy. The first installment of the Golden Tree saga was The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and copies of it are available from our website which is crystalseabooks.com. Even though we’re playing Frost Lion on our broadcasts and podcasts it has not yet been released for people to get their own copy but that will happen in the near future. Today we’re coming to part five out of seven of the poem. So, we’re getting close to bringing it home, right RD? RD: We are indeed. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last couple of episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It was written in seven parts and each part ends in a sort of cliffhanger. So, now that we’re at part five we’re pretty deep into the story. But just as a quick refresher The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is about a group of small koala bears who live in the Artic in valley that’s green and warm because in the middle of the valley is a Golden Tree that keeps the valley warm and fertile. They’ve been there for several generations but just as Christmas season is approaching two teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul, were on a high hill near their town when the spotted a dark shape crossing the snow and ice. The strange shape turned out to be a bear named Roleb. Roleb came from the village their ancestors had left many generations ago and had travelled with a friend who got lost. Roleb and his friend were travelling to the arctic to search for help for their village which had lost its faith. Thanks to the wisdom of the village elders, Kodan and Kojon, the bears have been able to summon an ice eagle. But what can this ice eagle do? What will this ice eagle do … if anything? VK: Sounds like we’re getting to the good part. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part five of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 5 VK: Ok. So, the bears from the village have now found Roleb’s lost friend. But it’s too late. Roleb’s friend has died from the cold. So, it seems as if Roleb’s whole journey to the north has been for nothing. That seems very sad – if that was how the story ended. But, of course, it hasn’t ended yet. So, maybe all hope isn’t lost. And, knowing you, the answer to finding out whether anything can be done for Roleb and his friend is …to tune in next time. RD: That sounds like a brilliant suggestion. And maybe listeners could gather some family members to join them ... VK: Sounds even better. Listening to Golden Tree as a family could be a great way for parents or grandparents to connect with their kids and help them develop their faith. It would also make a great centerpiece for a home school study group or church youth group discussion about the role that courage and commitment play in the Christian faith – something that’s particularly relevant as we get closer and closer to Christmas. RD: Right. Somebody once said that the Christian faith is so simple that even children can comprehend enough about it to understand the plan of salvation. But even though we can begin with the faith of a child we should pursue the goal of developing a truly mature faith. God will meet us and help us wherever we are in our faith journey but He isn’t satisfied with leaving us at the starting line. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus doesn’t just initiate our faith. He also wants to perfect it. And part of perfecting our faith is ensuring that we understand what the Bible tells us about Jesus. VK: Well, so far we’ve seen that there are extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure who lived and died in Judea during the time period described by the Bible. But we’ve also seen that as helpful as it is to know that there are secular sources that confirm Jesus’ life that those sources aren’t enough to tell us everything that we need to know about Jesus. We can only get a complete revelation about Jesus from God’s special revelation to people, the Bible. And as we saw in our last episode, and again in today’s scriptures, Jesus’ statements about himself tell us something pretty important: that Jesus is not only fully human but also fully divine. RD: Yes. And so that takes us to the next subject that we need to talk about as we are focusing on the life of Jesus in preparation for celebrating his birth at Christmas. VK: And that is... RD: And that is - that because Jesus is the central figure not just of Christianity, but also the entire Bible, one of the criticisms that’s sometimes directed toward Jesus is that the attributes that the Bible assigns to Jesus were borrowed from other cultures or religious sources. So, Christians need to be familiar with some of the assertions that Jesus’ deeds, especially his miracles, were simply drawn from other religious myths or pagan characters. VK: Can you give us an example of what you’re thinking about? RD: Sure. It is has been alleged that Jesus’ miraculous conception isn’t a unique belief. For instance, critics will say that the mythological figure, Hercules, was also supposed to be the son of a divine father – in this case Zeus - and a mortal mother. VK: But, of course, there are significant differences between Hercules purported conception and Jesus. In the Greek legend Hercules mother was named Alcmene (ALK-MEN-EE). Zeus was supposed to have taken on the human form of Alcmene’s husband and deceived Alcmene and slept with her. And that’s how Hercules was conceived. That’s not nearly the same thing as Jesus being born of Mary while Mary was literally still a virgin. RD: The differences are even more pronounced. Hercules was actually the Roman name of a hero the Romans adapted from the Greek Heracles. According to the Greek legend, Heracles’ mother Alcmene was simultaneously pregnant with Heracles by Zeus and his half-brother Iphicles by her husband. And that’s only the beginning of the legendary aspects in Alcmene’s pregnancy with Heracles. So, as soon as you get beyond the superficial similarity and look at the details, the notion that Jesus’ conception was somehow an adaptation of the Heracles/Hercules myth falls apart. But this is a good example of one kind of obviously fallacious attack that’s directed against the historicity of Jesus. VK: So, what you’re saying is that one form of attack that’s leveled at Jesus has to do with a particular attribute of Jesus and then trying to find a parallel somewhere else in a different religion that is obviously false. The critics then try to discredit the life of Jesus by saying that if story A is false, then story B must be false also. RD: Right. But that makes as much sense as saying that if there are two $5 bills on the table and one is counterfeit, the other one must be also which is just silly. So, sometimes the supposed pagan origin of the details of Jesus earthly life and ministry are concerned with specific attributes of Jesus, such as his virgin birth. But sometimes the copycat thesis is less concerned with the specifics of Jesus life and more concerned with generalities that might be associated just about any supernatural figure. VK: Again, do you have any specific examples in mind? RD: For instance, since sickness and disease are obviously a plague on human existence... VK: No pun intended… RD: No pun intended… anyway, the ability to bring miraculous healing would be expected to be a staple of myths or legends. And it is. For example, Asclepius or Asklepios was a Greek demi-god who was the god of medicine. He was supposed to have raised Hippolytus from the dead, though he was killed by Zeus for doing so. Asclepius was supposed to be the son of the god Apollo and a human mother. Buddha was also supposed to have been able to cure the sick. VK: But again, these kinds of general miracle workings of mythological characters vary considerably from the information we have about the miracles that Jesus performed. For instance, in the case of Jesus curing Peter’s mother we have precise details of the location where the miracle was done, the people involved, and even a pretty close approximation to the timing. And many of Jesus’ healings involved specific details that conform to the religious and cultural conventions known to exist. Such as when he healed the lepers and then told them to go show themselves to a priest which was required by Jewish law. And Jesus’ healing miracles weren’t always the cause for celebration the way you would expect of a miracle like when Jesus restored the eyesight of the man born blind. The blind man was rejected by the religious leaders and cast out by them. RD: Exactly. The descriptions of Jesus’ miracles read like historical accounts because they are. Again, the key to drawing distinctions between Jesus’ miracles and those general sorts of miraculous powers that are associated with the pagan sources is in the details. The Bible accounts provide the details and in the majority of cases there are multiple eyewitness accounts. But the case of Buddha provides another way of refuting the claims that the Bible’s descriptions of Jesus are drawn from other sources. The earliest known account of Buddha’s life was written in the 2nd century AD so it came after Jesus and not before it. That’s also true for another supposed religious figure who supposedly served as the source for many of the details of Christ’s life, Mithra. In Mithra’s manifestation during the Roman period he was supposed to have been born on December 25th, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, had a final meal before he died, and rose from the grave after 3 days. VK: And since Mithra was a religious figure that was known to come from the Persian culture, modern day Iran, supposedly he was the inspiration for much of what the disciples taught about Jesus. Right? RD: Right. The earliest mention of Mithra is around 1400 BC so as a religious figure Mithra would pre-date Christ by a considerable time period. But the problem is that the attributes of the Iranian version of Mithra do not correspond to the Roman version. The Roman version of Mithra is best known for slaying a bull whereas there is no known connection to bull slaying in the Iranian version. And a lot of the supposed correspondences between Christ and Mithra appear in the Roman version and the dating of the correspondences is after Christ. VK: So, many scholars believe there might have been some cross pollination between Christ and the Roman version of Mithra but given the timing of the appearance of the similarities it’s far more likely that the legends of Mithra borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa. RD: And that would have been fair because there was one way that Christianity did borrow from Mithraism, in art. In the early part of the 3rd century AD (313), the Roman emperor Constantine issued the edict of Milan which accepted Christianity. Before then the Roman emperors had generally been very hostile to Christians. Within 10 years Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. But by then Mithraism seems to have also gained a strong foothold within the empire as well. In the third and fourth centuries, the Roman church officials seemed to have embarked on an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign. One commentator said their efforts were “reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb.” VK: That sounds suspiciously like the law of unintended consequences. The church officials in the 3rd and 4th century went on a campaign to prove that Christianity was superior to Mithraism and 1,600 years later the church now has to defend itself against the claim that Jesus’ life and ministry were the copycat version. RD: I think that’s an excellent observation. And let’s close out with one more, quick example. In Hinduism Krishna was also supposed to have had a miraculous conception so some critics point to that legend as a possible inspiration for the Christian tenant. VK: But in that case, Krishna’s ‘miraculous conception’ is his mom being impregnated by ‘mental transmission’ from his completely human father. Again, not remotely similar to the Bible’s description of how Mary became pregnant. RD: And to add to that – how credible is it that the first Christians, who were largely Jews from Palestine, would have borrowed a legend from a thousand miles away. At a minimum the Jews were fiercely monotheistic whereas Hinduism is distinctly polytheistic. So, this again points to the need to not only examine the varying details of alleged instances of borrowing but also consider the cultural factors that would have been in play. Often either chronological or cultural factors alone will be enough to refute the alleged possibilities. To go back to our earlier example with the money, when new bank tellers are being taught to spot counterfeit dollars they aren’t given lots of counterfeits to study. They’re given lots of real bills to feel and handle. The idea is that if the tellers get so used to touching and handling the real thing, the fakes will become instantly recognizable. That same approach will work when it comes to being able to answer many of the criticisms that are addressed at Christianity and Jesus. VK: And that’s a good lesson for all of us. The more time we spend studying scripture – and developing familiarity with the details of the people, the nations, the geography, the culture – not only will we be able to be confident in our own faith. But we will also be able to point other people to the truth. RD: Precisely. Myths and legends read like myths and legends. They have fantastic details that have little or no correspondence to things in the real world. Good common sense enables us to quickly see elements that don’t make sense in our experience. By contrast, the history contained in the Bible reads like good histories that we see elsewhere. There are specifics about people, places, times, and events and quite often either archeological finds or extra-Biblical records will provide information that helps confirm the Biblical record. VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to Christmas let’s listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 15, verse 5, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://creation.com/pagan-copycat-thesis-refuted http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.php http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.php

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- ManEpisode 241 – Jesus – Man and God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 6, verse 35, New Living Translation “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verse 12, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time pastry consultant. He buys the cookies we keep in the kitchen. Though to be fair I’m the one who makes sure we don’t run out of animal crackers. Anyway, today on Anchored by Truth, as we start to celebrate the Christmas season, we want to continue our series where we focus on Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Today we’re coming to part four of the poem where we now hear about the seemingly unsolvable quandary that is confronting our bears. So do you want to tell us where we are in the story, RD? RD: I’d love to. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last few episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It’s the third of the Golden Tree series. The first segment is called The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and the second part was called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. Both of these earlier parts of the saga were also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part four listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who live in the arctic. Even though they are in the arctic they live near a Golden Tree that creates a peaceful and fertile valley. The bears’ ancestors discovered the Golden Tree after they had left their homes down under and went searching for their Creator that they called the Great White Koala Bear. The bears have lived near the Golden Tree for generations. In all that time they had never met another bear from the land their ancestors left – but that has now changed. A new, strange bear named Roleb was rescued by a pair of young bears, Koest and Kopaul, and brought to Koest’s home. Once there, Roleb told the bears he had friend who was traveling with him but that friend is now lost in the arctic wasteland. Two of village elders, Kodan and Kojon are trying to figure out if there is a way to save Roleb’s lost friend before it is too late … which it might already be. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part four of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion – part four. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 4 VK: Wow. So, the bears figured out how to summon an ice eagle … but can this ice eagle help them? Will this ice eagle help them? It doesn’t seem like this ice eagle is all that friendly at this point. RD: I guess folks will just have to tune in next week and see what happens... VK: I’m starting to see why the movies played those serial episodes before they played the main feature. RD: Well, as a kid the trick was not to not eat all your popcorn during the serial. Otherwise, you didn’t have any left to enjoy during the feature. It helped if you had enough money to buy a large bag. No buckets in those days. VK: Today I think some of us need to worry about waistlines more than money… RD: No comment. VK: Anyway, maybe one of the lessons we can learn from the bears is that we need to understand that challenges to our faith can come to us at any time. We need to be prepared to intelligently respond to them. And Ephesians 6:17 does tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the Bible, the Word of God. That’s one of the big reasons we try to encourage people to develop the habit of staying in the Word. It’s the best way for us to cope with our own ice eagles. So, where do you want to go today as we resume our study of Jesus’ earthly life? RD: Well, in our last couple of episode on Anchored by Truth we talked about some examples of extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Judea during the early part of the first century AD. But, naturally, the only thing that the secular writers could write about was the human dimension of Jesus. If secular writers were our only source about the life of Jesus we could know some important details about him, but we would completely miss the most important fact about Jesus: that Jesus was not only fully human but that he was also fully divine. VK: And here is where a lot of headaches begin. How can one person be both God and man? I think it’s safe to say that many Christians – even serious and devout ones – have trouble with that concept. So, let’s go over some of the basics of historical, orthodox Christian theology – the Trinitarian nature of God and the dual nature of Jesus. A lot of confusion arises because people don’t understand what Christians mean when they refer to the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ. So, let’s start there. RD: Well, let’s acknowledge right at the start the limitations of human language and the incomprehensibility of God. Humans are finite. God is infinite. So, there is no way any human or group of humans is every going to be capable of exhaustively understanding or explaining the nature of the God or the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. That doesn’t mean we can’t know some true things about God and develop an awareness of the miracle of the incarnation, but it does mean that mysteries will always remain. But that the fact that mysteries will always remain doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t apply ourselves to develop a full-orbed understanding of God insofar as we are able. VK: And it also means that we should always approach these subjects in a spirit of reverence and prayer, right? I mean the one Person who can help us grow in our understanding is the very Person we’re seeking to understand. So, what does the doctrine of the Trinity refer to? RD: Orthodox, Christian theology believes that the Bible refers to one God, but acknowledges that God exists eternally as three divine Subsistences or Persons. The classic proof text for the Trinitarian view of the Godhead is Matthew 28:18 and 19 which says: “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A slightly different way of explaining this is that God is singular in nature but three in person. By contrast, Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, is singular in person but has two natures. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. And the classic formulation of this that came out of the Council of Chalcedon is : ” Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, having two natures inseparably united in one divine person without confusion, mixture, separation, or division. Each nature retains its own attributes.” VK: So, those views explain why Christians still believe in one God – we’re monotheistic – but we also believe that within the Godhead there are three distinct Persons who have a relationship with each other. Grappling with these concepts is challenging to say the least. RD: And that’s the reason we have to always be willing to acknowledge that even though the church has classic formulations like the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds that help amplify the basics, these doctrines will always contain a certain amount of mystery for men. We’re back to the plain fact that finite man cannot fully understand or explain an infinite, Triune God. VK: So, how do our opening scriptures relate to this who discussion? At least on the surface, while Jesus is certainly providing some really comforting assurances to his disciples – such as that he will provide for them and protect them like a shepherd does his sheep – how do these verses demonstrate that Jesus was claiming to be God? RD: In English, the claim is not as obvious as it was in the language in which John originally recorded his Gospel, Greek. You see the Greek words that are translated as “I am,” in “I am the bread of life,” and in the other scriptures we heard are two Greek words: ego and eimi. And these are exactly the same words that God used when He made declarations about himself in the Old Testament. VK: As in the declaration that God made to Moses when Moses was standing before the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3:14? Let me read that part. But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” God also said that Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.” RD: Exactly. The Septuagint translators when they translated the Hebrew “Yahweh” which came from the word for “I am” translated it by a combination of two different Greek words used for the verb “to be:” ego and eimi. So in Jesus’ time the phrase ego eimi came to be synonymous with the name for God. In Hebrew, Yahweh. In Greek, Jehovah. So, when the Apostle John recorded what Jesus said about Jesus being the bread of life or the light of the world, John used the phrase “ego eimi” for the words “I am.” Many scholars think that when Jesus identified himself with the “I am,” He was directly proclaiming to his followers that he was the same as the one who appeared to be Moses. But there are other references in the Old Testament to which Jesus may have been pointing to make the same point. Michael J. Krueger, who is a New Testament scholar and President of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, has shown that there are number of “I am” references in chapters 40 – 55 of the book of Isaiah that unmistakably point to God. Let’s listen to a couple of examples, Isaiah 41: 4 and 43:10: Isaiah 41:4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he (ego eimi). Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he (ego eimi). Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. The “I am he” in these passages is translated in Greek by ego eimi. VK: So, when Jesus said he was the bread of life or the light of the world he was going beyond simply giving metaphors for the provisions that he was making for his people? He was saying that one of the reasons his followers could have confidence in the promises that he was giving was because he was God. And as God whatever he promised he had the irresistible power to fulfill. I’m starting to get another headache when I think about that. Imagine, listening to someone standing before you who was saying “I am the light of the world,” - meaning he would give you all the light and wisdom you would ever need – and then realizing that the one making the promise was the who made light to begin with. That’s a staggering thought. RD: And it gets even more staggering. Remember that on Anchored by Truth we have often talked about the fact that logic and empirical observations demonstrate that the universe was created by a self-existent Being. We call that Being God. We can arrive at the need for a self-existent Being to explain the existence of the universe and everything in it, just by making some informed observations. In other words, as people we have the ability to deduce the existence of a self-existent Being or God just by exercising our reason and intelligence. Well, when God said to Moses that his name, God’s name, was “I am” he was identifying himself by using the attribute of self-existence. God was simultaneously exalting Moses by saying “you’re standing in the presence of the One who made everything,” and God was condescending to the level of man by communicating to Moses in a way Moses could understand. God was also pointing out that Moses should be aware of His existence because Moses own intellect and intelligence would have revealed the need for God even God had never chosen to communicate with him directly. VK: And the same thing would have been true of the people listening to Jesus, wouldn’t it? Only now, rather than the people listening to a voice out of a burning bush, they’re hearing those words from a man standing in front of them. And many, if not most, of them would have seen Jesus perform miracles so they would have known that when Jesus spoke, he was speaking the truth. But I think you have one more point that you’re making with the line of reasoning aren’t you? RD: Exacatamundo… VK: Exactamundo, again ... RD: Ok. Precisely, if you prefer. Think about it. By making empirical observations and exercising a little logic and reason we can arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created by a self-existent Being – God. But where did we derive the ability to make those observations? Where did we get eyesight that could see the sun and stars? Where did we get the intellect and reasoning ability to design instruments that could amplify our own observational capabilities like telescopes or microscopes? Where did we get the reasoning ability to understand that an effect demands a cause and that the law of non-contradiction is an essential element in reasoning correctly? Where did we get the ability to write and use language and make and retain records so we could pass words and observations down over thousands of years? And not just the records of the Bible but the other records that we examined on Anchored by Truth the last couple of times by secular observers who affirmed that Jesus was a real man who lived in Judea at a particular time in history. VK: So the point you’re making is that the same God who designed and created the universe with all its marvelous complexity and order also created us in such a way that we could perceive Him. And you’re saying that that same God came to various men at different points in history – to Moses and Isaiah in the Old Testament, to Matthew, John and others in the New Testament – to leave us a record of His appearances in this world. So, you’re saying that God designed man so that man could recognize not only the design in nature but also the design in God’s plan for human history. The plan that we call the plan of creation, fall, and redemption. Oh, all that is either super scary or super exciting. RD: Rather like the disciples in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm or Moses when he was in front of the burning bush, an immediate confrontation with the undeniable presence of the Almighty is simultaneously terrifying and thrilling. Unfortunately, today too many people deny themselves that experience of reverential awe that comes from truly grappling with the authentic nature of God. VK: And only the Bible gives us what we need to understand that nature. And we all need to have a better understanding of that nature. Because when we gain it we will find out that God is not only an awesome and mighty God but He is also a loving and merciful God who has made provisions for us to have eternal fellowship with him by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the first person of the Trinity, our heavenly Father. ---- PRAYER OF ADORATION OF THE FATHER VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://www.ligonier.org/about/who-we-are/what-we-believe/ https://www.michaeljkruger.com/why-does-jesus-use-the-phrase-i-am/ https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means

Lisa tells a Jewish tale from India of a king seeking forgiveness. From his journey, we can glean much about how gender plays part in business, as well as how to conduct ourselves professionally, operate with integrity, and move past our mistakes.

Episode 240 – Jesus Beyond the Bible Part 2 Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ... And Joseph also … to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; to enroll himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. …while they were there… she [gave birth].” The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time health consultant. He buys the cough drops we keep in the studio for people to use during recording. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we want to continue our series where we focus on the earthly life and ministry of Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Today we’re coming to part three of the poem where the action starts to get a little more intense. Is that a fair statement, RD? RD: I think so. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last couple of episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It was also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part three listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who live in a valley in the arctic. A group of the bear’s ancestors settled in the valley because in the center of the valley is a golden tree that transforms the valley into a place where they can live and thrive. They’ve been there for several generations but in the current Christmas season an unexpected challenge has come to their valley, the tree, and their lives. Two of the town’s teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul had gone to a hill to look at the northern lights. While on the hill they saw a new, strange bear staggering through the snow. At first they weren’t sure if this new bear posed a danger but since the new bear was so close to death they brought him back to Koest’s home where Koest’s mother, Koray, began attending to the bear. But they still don’t know anything about the new bear. Where did he come from and why is he here? And what does he want? VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part three of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – part three. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 3 VK: Ok. As the old timers … RD: Like me... VK: Right… used to say, “the plot commences to thicken.” The bears who live near the Golden Tree have found out that they have distant relatives who don’t know about the Golden Tree or even the Great White Bear. But a couple who still did believe in the Great White Bear decided to attempt the quest that others had tried long ago. But now their quest is in danger because one of them has almost died and the other one is lost in a vast arctic wilderness – a wasteland for anyone who’s not near the tree. RD: Right. And sometimes those of us who live in today’s post-modern culture can feel that way – that we are living in a wilderness that has lost sight of our true Creator. That’s why it’s such a good idea for mature believers to listen to or read stories to the kids or grandkids because they can introduce those kids or grandkids to the real struggles that life contains and help prepare to them to be overcomers. And of course the best strategy for being an overcomer is to be so familiar with the truth that lies and deception become immediately identifiable. VK: And of course that’s why we do Anchored by Truth – to remind people that the Bible, in the words of Psalm 46, is a “very present help in time of trouble.” But people aren’t likely to turn to the Bible to help them in times of trouble if they aren’t confident that the Bible is reliable and trustworthy. So that’s why we focus on using evidence and logic to demonstrate that we have very good reasons for believing that the Bible is the very Word of God. RD: Yes. Everybody, at some point in their life, is going to ask the question, “Why am I here?” It’s one of the most obvious questions that arise from the human experience. But, whether most people realize it or not, the answer to the question, “why am I here,” is inexorably tied to three other questions. Is there a God? If there is a God, does He communicate with people – or said slightly differently, “Is the Bible the Word of God.” And, if there is a God and the Bible is His word, can I learn about my life, my needs, and my purpose by studying the Bible? Of course at Anchored by Truth we think that the answer to all three questions is a resounding “yes.” But we would just as quickly admit that, unless people are convinced that the Bible is more than just an aggregated collection of fairy tales and myths, they are unlikely to find the Bible relevant to their lives. VK: I notice that you said “study the Bible” not just “read the Bible.” What you’re observing is that understanding the Bible, confidently and contextually, demands effort. Right? I mean that sort of runs against the old method of letting the Bible fall open and then reading the first verse that comes to your attention. RD: Well, I wouldn’t try to restrict the Lord’s ability to communicate to any particular person any way He chooses. But randomly or haphazardly reading selected portions of the Bible isn’t likely to help people answer the question, “Why am I here?” I am fully persuaded that the Lord will reveal Himself to anyone and everyone who seeks to truly know Him. But our relationship with the Lord – who is after all first and foremost a person – is just like our relationship with others in our lives. The quality of our relationship will be dependent on the quality and quantity of time we spend with the Lord. And because the Bible was written in a different time and era we need to do some study on the times, customs, and cultures that form its setting. And, unfortunately, because so much misinformation circulates in our own culture today about what the Bible is or isn’t, contemporary Christians need to arm themselves by being able to respond to certain common errors. VK: Such as the erroneous assertion that Jesus wasn’t a real person. That he didn’t live a real life, eat, walk, and sleep like normal human beings. And that, despite being fully human, he didn’t also demonstrate that he was fully divine by rising out of a stone tomb after being killed by the most powerful empire on the earth at the time. So, that takes us back to our review of some examples that Jesus’ earthly existence is confirmed by sources outside the Bible. Last time we took a look at two examples of other ancient historians who mentioned Jesus in their histories: the Roman historian Tacitus and the Jewish historian Josephus. Both are considered reliable historians. Both wrote their histories within a relatively short period after Jesus’ earthly life. And both wrote accounts that confirmed some of the details in scripture. Where do you want to start today? RD: Well, let’s take a look at another Roman historian, Suetonius. Suetonius was a Roman historian and annalist of the Imperial House under the Emperor Hadrian. His writings about Christians describe their treatment under the Emperor Claudius (41-54AD): “Because the Jews at Rome caused constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Christ], he [Claudius] expelled them from the city [Rome].” (Life of Claudius, 25:4) This expulsion took place in 49AD. In another work, Suetonius wrote about the fire which destroyed Rome in 64 A.D. under the reign of Nero. Nero blamed the Christians for this fire and he punished Christians severely as a result: “Nero inflicted punishment on the Christians, a sect given to a new and mischievous religious belief.” (Lives of the Caesars, 26.2) So from these quotes we can see that the awareness of Jesus had spread all the way to Rome less than 20 years after Jesus died. The awareness was so strong that the emperor had taken personal notice of Jesus’ followers and apparently felt the need to try to minimize their influence in the capital city. VK: And again, just to remind everyone of what we mentioned last time the fact that Roman historians and even Roman emperors would take notice of Jesus is remarkable. It wasn’t as if Jesus had led a conquering army that was threatening to lay siege to Rome or even one of his outlying provinces. And Suetonius’ observation that the Christians had a “new and mischievous religious belief” is particularly fascinating. When you think about the pantheon of gods with which the Romans were thoroughly familiar – not only their own gods but also the Greek gods and the gods of all the people they’d conquered – when you think about the vast variety of religious beliefs with which they were acquainted what could be considered “new and mischievous?” RD: Well, of course, many scholars believe that Suetonius was likely referring to the physical resurrection of Jesus. Obviously, the Romans were well familiar with various beliefs of life after death, but those belief systems never included a person – a flesh and blood man – walking around, talking, eating, and even touching other people after being crucified. That was new and novel. VK: Still is. I’ve never seen it though I thoroughly believed it happened. Who’s next? RD: Well, take a look at two sources who wrote about Jesus but for whom we don’t have any copies of their writings: Thallus and Phlegon. VK: Well, if there are no existing copies of their manuscripts how can we know what they wrote? RD: Because just like today, there were other writers who did read what they wrote and preserved some of their material by quoting it in documents they were preparing. Just like someone may not have attended a political event, but they can know part of what the speaker said by reading quotes in articles written by people who were there. In Thallus’ case, parts of his histories were preserved by Julius Africanus who wrote around 221 AD. In Phlegon’s case, not only did Julius Africanus record some of his material but so did Origen who was an early church scholar and theologian. VK: So what observation did Julius Africanus preserve from Thallus’ writings that pertain to Jesus? RD: Well let me read a quote from Julius Africanus: “On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.” (Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18:1) So Thallus had written more than one book of history but in at least one of his books he took note of the darkness and earthquake that accompanied Christ’s crucifixion. This parallels precisely the account that Matthew gave us in Chapter 27 of his Gospel. VK: And Luke also wrote about the darkness. The Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, verses 44 through 47 say: “And it was now about the sixth hour, and a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun's light failing: and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said this, he gave up the ghost. And when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly, this was a righteous man.” So, it is very interesting that a secular historian like Thallus would mention the same detail that is present in Matthew and Luke. And if I remember correctly Thallus’ observations are particularly important because many scholars believe he wrote around 52 AD. In fact, he may have been the earliest secular writer to comment on the events surrounding the crucifixion. Well, what about Phlegon? RD: Well let me read three quotes. This first is one preserved by Julius Africanus and the second two were preserved by Origen: “Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth to the ninth hour.” (Africanus, Chronography, 18:1) “And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place … ” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 33) “Jesus, while alive, was of no assistance to himself, but that he arose after death, and exhibited the marks of his punishment, and showed how his hands had been pierced by nails.” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 59) So in these quotes we several things of significance. First, Phlegon confirms the darkness mentioned by Matthew, Luke, and Thallus. Second, he confirms that Jesus was crucified and he gives us a specific time reference: during the reign of Tiberius. And third, he confirms the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus including that he showed the marks of his crucifixion to those to whom he appeared. VK: Well, that’s even more amazing because now we know that the secular historians of the 1st and 2nd century AD were not only aware of Jesus’ life and ministry but they were also familiar with many of the details that surrounded his death and resurrection. But that does raise a question. Since Julius Africanus and Origen were both admitted Christians is it possible that they fabricated the quotes they attributed to Thallus and Phlegon? RD: It’s not impossible, but why would they have done that? VK: I think critics would say they would have fabricated the quotes to make their case for the truth of Christianity stronger. RD: Well, if they had attempted to do that it would actually have had the opposite effect in their day and time. First, remember that even though copies of the writings from Thallus and Phlegon are no longer extant today, they were in existence at the time Julius Africanus and Origen wrote and quoted from them. So if they had fabricated quotes or deliberately misquoted them their fraud or errors would have been easily detectable. Second, Africanus and Origen were writing at a time when there was substantial official opposition to Christianity. In other words they were writing in a hostile world. As such, they would have taken even greater pains to be sure that they wouldn’t be subject to easily refuted assertions. Third, Origen’s quotes of Phlegon came from a work entitled Contra Celsum or in English Against Celsus. So Origen was writing a work to refute the claims of Celsus who wrote a work entitled The True Doctrine. The True Doctrine was likely written under the authority of a Roman emperor was critical of Christianity. Since accuracy was essential to his refutation of Celsus’ book, most scholars agree that Origen is a reliable source for what Phlegon said. Why would Origen have handed his opponent an easy method for dismissing Origen’s criticisms? VK: That all makes a lot of common sense and it points to a broader implication of the extra-Biblical sources that you’ve been citing. None of the observers themselves, including Thallus or Phlegon, were friendly to Christianity. So theirs were essentially the observations of hostile witnesses. As such, when they confirm details of the Biblical account their testimony of Jesus’ life has even greater weight. If they thought that Jesus was a fraud or a fabrication it would have been very easy for them just to not mention him. RD: And one more point to note before we close. In these episodes we haven’t been able to cover all the extra-Biblical sources that there are that confirm Jesus’ life, ministry, and death. There’s a book called The Historical Jesus by Dr. Gary Habermas that contains a much more exhaustive treatment of this subject. VK: And – again – we wanted to point listeners to all these resources, including the links we put on our podcast notes, to enable them to continue their own studies about the life and ministry of Jesus. As we said at the start of this episode, to answer the question “why am I here,” we need to understand why any of us are here. And how we got here. Those questions are directly related to what we think about God and Jesus. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of the One who leads into a knowledge of truth, the Holy Spirit. ---- Prayer for Adoration of the Holy Spirit VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ https://alwaysbeready.com/extrabiblical-historical-sources-corroborate-the-bible/ https://crossexamined.org/why-should-we-trust-the-extra-biblical-references-to-jesus/

Episode 239 – Jesus Beyond the Bible Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf. Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time barista. He turns on the coffee maker and puts in those little cups. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are continuing our series where we focus on the earthly birth and life of Jesus. In today’s culture, it seems as though just about everybody has heard about Jesus, but fewer and fewer people actually know much about him. Do you agree with that RD? RD: Yes. Jesus’ name is certainly well known in modern culture but unfortunately there is as much or more misinformation that circulates about him than there is actual fact. I’m afraid that more people get there information about Jesus more by watching television specials or dramatized movies than they do from reading the Bible or studying the many fine, well-documented books and articles that have been produced by excellent Christian scholars through the years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that for those who are truly interested in knowing the actual, historical Jesus it’s probably easier today than any time in history to get accurate information. But you do have to be careful about the sources you use. VK: So, today we want to continue to provide the listeners to Anchored by Truth with a head start on doing their own study about Jesus. As you have so often said, Jesus is the centerpiece of both the Bible and the plan of redemption. So, to be confident not only in our own faith but to help those who are still looking for anchors for their own lives it’s imperative we know the real Jesus of the Bible. But before we get too deep into our discussion how about telling us a little about the Christmas poem that we’re going to continue today? RD: I’d love to. As I mentioned in an earlier episode of Anchored by Truth, years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote this piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. That story became The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest. It was about a group of koala bears who had gone on a quest to the far north to find their creator that they called The Great While Koala Bear. The bears never found their creator but they did find a golden tree in the artic that made a valley a perfect place for them to live. Well, later on I created a new story that I called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma and we’ve followed that up now with another Golden Tree story – the Frost Lion. In part one of Frost Lion that we heard on our last episode we’ve learned that there are two young bears confronting a dilemma they believe might threaten their village. From a vantage point at the top of a tall hill near their town they have seen a strange shape out on the distant snow – but they don’t know who or what the shape is. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part two of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 2 VK: The drama is now building. What we’ve heard is that bears have enjoyed the peace and plenty in the valley for generations but now a new bear from a strange land is in their midst – and that bear is very near death. Worse this new bear has a friend who is still lost in the deep winter snow and may already have died. So, the bears are learning - just like in the real world – that there are always unexpected events in this world that may require us to respond. And it may take real courage to confront those events … RD: And commitment and sacrifice... VK: And it’s hard to have those virtues if we don’t know why we’ve been sent on our own quests, isn’t it? I mean, God’s grace has saved us just like the Golden Tree saved the bears. But as the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians they had to. “work hard to show the results of [their] salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in [them and us], giving [them and us]the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” God’s grace saves us but our sanctification requires effort on our part. RD: Right. The old song there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to “trust and obey.” Part of that obedience is to be able to tell others why we believe that Jesus was qualified to be our savior. And that starts with us being assured that Jesus was a real, historical figure – not a myth or some kind of pious concoction. In our day and age one of the semi-criticisms that’s hurled against the Christian faith is that the Jesus that Christians worship is either a mythological figure or – if he even existed – that we can’t trust the gospel accounts for information about him. VK: But the truth is that Jesus was a real person. And we see that from passages like the ones we used for our opening scriptures. In these passages we can see that the Bible tells us specific facts about Jesus like where he was born – in Bethlehem – and when – during the reign of a king named Herod. But beyond even what scripture tells us Jesus life is a fact that is even confirmed by sources outside the Bible isn’t it? And that’s what you wanted to focus on today, right – the fact that we have historical sources besides the Bible that confirm Jesus’ historicity and even confirm many of the details contained in the gospels about his life, death, and circumstances? RD: Right. In some earlier episodes of Anchored by Truth we’ve discussed the fact that you can use the existence of the physical universe and apply logic and reason to come to the conclusion that there is a self-existent being responsible for the creation of the universe and of living creatures. But that line of reasoning can only carry you so far in an understanding of God and it would give us almost no information about other attributes that are essential parts of the Christian faith such as the plan of redemption or Jesus’ role in it. For that, we need a special revelation from that self-existent being – God – and fortunately we have that in the Bible. But we need to be persuaded that that revelation is true and reliable and once again logic, reason, and evidence can play a role in validating the Bible’s claim that it is the inspired Word of God. And that’s where extra biblical sources can be helpful. Such sources don’t add anything to the Bible, but they can add to our individual confidence that the Bible is describing history accurately when it speaks of historical events. VK: So, today you want to take a brief look at some other historical sources that also confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure. You know when you think about it, it’s remarkable that there would be any other surviving sources outside the Bible who would mention Jesus. In his day and time – if Jesus hadn’t been the Son of God – he would have been just another obscure and unimportant itinerant preacher that had a brief public ministry in a distant Roman province. He never led an army, held a prominent government or political position, or even wrote a book. Plus, his public ministry only lasted about 3 years and he didn’t travel all that widely. His public ministry was all conducted within 100 miles of his home. And he died the death of a common criminal. So, if Jesus wasn’t who he claimed to be – the Son of the Almighty God – he should have faded from the pages of history as just another local crank. But he didn’t. He’s mentioned by some of the most important historians of his age, men who had far more earthly distinction that he did. Where do you want to start? RD: Let’s start by talking about a few examples of well-known Roman historians who are widely regarded as having written important histories of the Roman Empire and conquests. The examples that we’re going to use today came from an article available on the website coldcasechristianity.com entitled “is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible.” We’ll put a link to the article on the notes that accompany the podcast version of this show. But these examples are all widely known and can be found in any number of historical reference sources. So the first example we want to use is a quote from Cornelius Tacitus was well known for his analysis and examination of historical documents and is among the most trusted of ancient historians. He was a senator under Emperor Vespasian and was also proconsul of Asia. In his “Annals’ of 116 AD, he describes the Roman Emperor Nero’s response to the great fire in Rome and Nero’s claim that the Christians were to blame: “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.” So, in this account, Tacitus confirms that there was a man who lived in Judea, was known as Christ, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and who had followers who called themselves by his name and were persecuted for following him. VK: Well, this account is helpful because it directly confirms a number of details directly about Jesus. But it’s also important for another reason, isn’t it? A few episodes ago we talked about the fact that Luke and the other gospel writers were meticulous when it came to their historical recording and reporting. So much so that they got some obscure details right, even when other ancient historians got them wrong. So, this quote from Tacitus helps illustrate that point too, doesn’t it. RD: Very good. That’s pretty impressive. You noticed that Tacitus called Pontius Pilate the procurator of Judea not the prefect. VK: Thank you. I try. RD: And you’re absolutely right. As good a historian as Tacitus was he was human and in this case he did make a mistake. He got Pilate’s title wrong. For many years there were questions about the existence and the actual title of Pontius Pilate—the Roman governor who presided over the trial of Jesus. Later Roman writers, as well as almost all Bible reference works, referred to Pilate as the “procurator” of Judea but Luke and the other gospel writers called Pilate a “governor;” not a procurator. The fact that “governor” was the correct title was confirmed in 1961, when a two by three foot stone was discovered that had a Latin inscription. The translation of the inscription reads as follows: Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberieum to the Caesareans. This find was not only archaeological confirmation for the existence of Pilate but it was also confirmation that Pilate was the Prefect, or governor, of Judea. VK: In fact, we now know that the title “Procurator” was not used at the time of Jesus’ trial for the Roman governors. This title only came into usage at a later time, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, A.D. 41-54. During Claudius’ reign the title of the Roman governors shifted from Prefect to Procurator. So although Tacitus was correct about the title in use for the Roman governor of Judea at the time he wrote – about 60 years later - strictly speaking that was not Pilate’s actual title when he supervised the trial and execution of Jesus. Pilate was a prefect, a governor, not a procurator – a fact the Bible writers got right. So, who’s next on the list of extra-Biblical writers? RD: Well, before we close for today we should probably take a quick look at one of the most famous of the ancient historians, Josephus, because he lived so close to the time of Jesus and during the period of early church’s formation. Josephus lived from 37 AD to 101 AD. The most widely accepted year for the crucifixion is 33 AD so he was born just four years after the crucifixion. He wrote an extensive history of the Jews in 93 AD called “the Antiquities of the Jews.” So today when you see people referring to it you often just hear people call it “Antiquities.” Josephus wrote about Jesus in more detail than any other non-biblical historian and Josephus himself was a really interesting character. He was a consultant for Jewish rabbis and became a Galilean military commander by the age of sixteen. He was an eyewitness to much of what he recorded in the first century A.D. As a Jewish military leader he initially fought against the Romans but later surrendered and he eventually became an adviser to the Roman emperor Vespasian. Under Vespasian, Josephus was allowed to write a history of the Jews. This history includes three passages about Christians, one in which he describes the death of John the Baptist, one in which he mentions the execution of James (and describes him as the brother of Jesus the Christ), and a final passage which describes Jesus as a wise man and the messiah. There is some legitimate controversy about the writing of Josephus, because of the timing of the discovery of his writing but why don’t you read a conservative scholarly reconstruction of one of Josephus’ most famous passages. VK: “Now around this time lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accept the truth. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, (but) those who had first loved him did not cease (doing so). To this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared.” RD: Now there are some other ancient versions of Josephus’ writing which are even more explicit about the nature of Jesus’ miracles, life and his status as the Christ, but from even this conservative version we can conclude: Jesus lived in Palestine, was a wise man and a teacher, worked amazing deeds, was accused by the Jews, crucified under Pilate and had followers called Christians. Josephus’ observations are particularly compelling because at the time he wrote he was very close in terms of timing to when Jesus lived. Even though he wasn’t like the apostles who actually walked with Jesus he could see around him the effect of the early church’s spreading and he may even have had the opportunity to talk to Jews who had been in and around Judea when Jesus had his public ministry. VK: Well, those two examples are a good introduction to the fact that Jesus’ earthly life has confirmation outside the Bible. Next time we can take up a few more examples but before we close for today a few general observations would seem to be in order. And you said that the early church itself is a confirmation that Jesus was a real, historical figure? RD: Exactly. VK: I’m surprised you didn’t say what you do in some of the Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo … RD: Ok. Exactamundo. Anyway, there is no dispute that in the first century AD Christians and the Christian church began to be an issue within the Roman Empire. They were so widely known that the emperor Nero blamed the great fire of Rome on them. Well, it would be impossible to explain the spread of a movement if there wasn’t something or someone who started the movement. Remember that the Romans weren’t known for being timid administrators of their provincial empire and in the first century AD they certainly weren’t friendly to Christians. So, something remarkable must have happened in the early part of the first century AD in Judea that animated so many people to continue carrying the same message throughout the empire despite the official opposition they encountered everywhere. There are two simple reasons for this phenomena. First, they were persuaded something truly remarkable had happened. A dead man had risen from the grave and walked around for 40 days. And second, they had a source of support and strength – the Holy Spirit – who sustained them as they carried their message to a world that needed it but didn’t want it. VK: Well, all that makes perfect sense. As Paul said to the Romans the same power that raised Jesus from the dead also empowers us and gives us the ability to carry on in his name. Sounds like a perfect time to go to prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ https://alwaysbeready.com/extrabiblical-historical-sources-corroborate-the-bible/ https://crossexamined.org/why-should-we-trust-the-extra-biblical-references-to-jesus/

Episode 238 – A Necessary God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time poet. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are going to begin a new series where we focus on the central figure of the entire Bible: Jesus. That seems appropriate as we come to the time of year when we celebrate the Lord’s birth, doesn’t it RD? RD: Well, Christmas is certainly a time of the year when people begin to more naturally think about Jesus because the reminders of him start to appear more and more around us every day. But, of course, it’s important to remember that we really should focus on Jesus every day of the year. For Christians, Jesus should be the focus of our daily lives. And actually throughout our lives we should be on a quest to get to know God better each day that is granted to us. VK: I agree with that. So, today we’re going to start listening to a new Crystal Sea story. This time it’s one of our rhymed pieces that you wrote as a Christmas epic poem. This is actually the second installment of a story that you began a long time ago. You said you originally wrote the first installment because you wanted to give it as a gift to some co-workers? RD: I did. Years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote a piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. VK: And then a few years ago you decided that the story needed to continue so you wrote the next installment of what is going to be, when completed, a poetic trilogy. The story began in Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Komari’s Quest. The story continued in The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. Today, we are beginning the final part of the trilogy. Here is part one of The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part I VK: I really like some of the lines from that part. “Where the lights soared in the vault overhead and proclaimed indescribable glory as if the heavens could not but proclaim their omnipotent Creator's story.” Not only are the lines lyrical but they also evoke such clear imagery. I can imagine kids sitting around their mom and dad … RD: Or grandmother and grandfather... VK: Or grandparents and listening to this recording with them - just like families used to sit around and listen to someone read The Night Before Christmas. Of course, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to put this poem out there. To give families an entertaining story that also would allow parents to discuss their faith with their kids. RD: Exactly. There are so many questionable choices these days that are advertised as being “family friendly” but they are based on a secularist view of the world. We wanted to be sure that there was a story that was available for “fireside” listening that directed everyone’s attention to the real “reason for the season.” VK: Well, there are a total of seven parts to Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. So, for the next six weeks we’ll be letting the story unfold as we continue to unpack insights into how the Bible is such an integral part of being able to frame a coherent world view. I mean the two fundamental attributes that you believe would have to characterize any book that would constitute a genuine special revelation of God are that that revelation would have to be consistent with the created order as it is observable by creatures within it – essentially us. And that revelation would have to display supernatural origin. RD: Right. As hard – or as exciting – as it may be to comprehend empirical observations, combined with logic, tell us that the visible universe does not – indeed cannot – provide an explanation for its own existence. The universe, as grand and vast as it is, has all the fingerprints of having a beginning in space and time. Also, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, tells us that it will have an ending. Anything that has a limited life span, no matter how long some people might conceive that light span to be, cannot be self-existent. Only a self-existent being or entity can account for its own existence or the existence of anything else. Some philosophers use the terms Necessary Being and Contingent Beings to describe the difference between the two. VK: And since the universe is not eternal it looks very much like it is contingent on something or someone outside itself to account for its existence – a Necessary Being upon which it is dependent. And we call that Necessary Being God. So just like the bears in our story when we see the northern lights or stars twinkling in a deep night sky we can know that that the starlight - and the night sky and especially our ability to see and understand all that grandeur - points to the need for a Creator. And we’ve seen that the bears we’ve just met aren’t the first bears who have lived in this land. It was actually their ancestors who left their home and shortly we’ll learn they were searching for the lair and throne of their Creator – who they thought of as the Great White Bear. RD: Yes. I think the symbolism for the story is already pretty plain but I would like to point out one thing - and that’s what I want to spend some time on today – is that the bears who set out on their quest wouldn’t ever have started out if they weren’t convinced that the Great White Bear existed. And that’s one of the problems that we see reflected so clearly in today’s very relativistic culture. Too many - far, far, far too many people today, both inside the church and out, are defeated in their own quests because they have been misled to believe that there is no Creator – no Great White Bear if you will. As a result, they see the world as fundamentally being either chaotic at best or outright meaningless at worst. VK: I think you need to expand on that thought a bit. You’re saying that God isn’t just a logical necessity to explain the existence of a contingent universe, but that an awareness of God is an essential component of us being able to comprehend our place in that universe? RD: To quote what I say in some of our humorous Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo. VK: So you’re quoting yourself. Sounds like something only a writer would do… RD: Again, exactamundo. Anyway as the eminent theologian RC Sproul used to say, “Ideas have consequences.” The idea that the universe was framed by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and holy God carried with it the inextricable notion that the universe has been created intentionally and for a purpose. As such the universe would display design and order and the intelligent creatures within that universe – us – could perceive that design and order. VK: And that very concept formed the foundation for what we think of as science today. And that’s why many of the founders of modern science – like Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur were strong Christians. They were convinced that there was design, order, and logic in universe because the universe had been made by a being that was supremely purposeful and logical. As such, they were encouraged to go and discover that order and use the results of it to improve the lives of the people around them. Or said a little differently they were encouraged to go on their own quests to discover more about the creation and thereby appreciate even more the Creator. RD: So all that made perfect sense. If the universe had been created by a God of order, logic, and purpose then creation would be comprehensible. Those early giants of science took seriously the Biblical statement that man had been made in the image of God, so they felt sure that God would bless their efforts at applying themselves to understand what he had created. But one of the tragic effects of the success of their work and the amazing results they achieved is that over time – and now we’re talking about centuries not decades – the work of science became divorced from the original source of the inspiration for them to do the work. Scientists – not all, but a great many – became convinced that it was possible to understand creation while ignoring the Creator. VK: Or said slightly differently, they sought the blessing without regard to the Blesser. So, one of the points you’re making is that somewhere along the journey – the quest – for discovery, a lot of people forgot why the journey was begun in the first place. And that is reflected in our society and culture today. RD: Yes. And Christmas is a great example of that same phenomenon happening in our calendar and celebration of the common understanding that was the foundation of our communities. The word “Christmas” obviously derives from the words “Christ” and “mass.” And one of the big reasons that gift exchanges became a part of the celebration was in commemoration of the great gift that God had given the world in the birth of Jesus. And, of course, the whole reason that God gave us the gift of Jesus was because after the fall in the garden of Eden God had begun his great plan of redemption. So, in a very real way the history of all of mankind gives evidence of God’s plan unfolding in exactly the way God intended. VK: And you believe that even some of the more tragic of the things that we see around us provides evidence for the existence of God and the truth of scripture? RD: Yes. C.S. Lewis noted that one of the things that convinced him to become a Christian was that he couldn’t get over the idea that some things were right and some things were wrong. But then he realized for that idea to make sense – that there’s a difference between right and wrong – he had to have an explanation for where that idea came from. Why did he think that there was a real distinction? Of course, the only logical conclusion was because there was a Being – a God somewhere – who had established the whole moral and ethical scheme to begin with. That’s just as true today as it has ever been. VK: That’s a pretty remarkable idea when you think about it. The very notion that we have ethical sensibilities to begin with is dependent on there being a real difference between right and wrong. And not just a matter of personal convenience like preferring squash to broccoli. When people begin to assert that something is wrong they don’t just mean that they find it inconvenient. They mean that there is a determinable ethical distinction that compels – or should compel – our behavior. And we all know that. Anyone who doesn’t know that there is a difference between right and wrong we would describe as a sociopath. RD: And we would have good reason for doing so. Now in saying this we’re not saying that there is universal agreement on the precise details of what’s right or wrong and different societies at different times have arrived at varying conclusions about the specifics. But there’s never been a society that didn’t make some kind of a distinction regardless of what they did with the specifics. In some cultures the distinctions might have been ones that we would consider trivial – like acceptable dress for women and men. In other they would have been more profound or serious – like the relationship between a government and its people or whether private ownership of property is permitted or prohibited. The rules have varied but every culture, tribe, and nation has had rules of some sort. VK: And pretty much all people everywhere know that they have – at one point or another – violated those rules. Written or unwritten. Government or cultural. Religious or secular. We have an inherent awareness that as moral and ethical agents we have certain obligations that we are subject to. So we see that not only is there a physical order to the physical universe there is also an ethical order that applies to us as people. But without there being a God, a holy and purposive God, we would have no reasonable explanation for the existence either of the obligation or the sense that we need to be accountable the obligation. And that same sense that tells us that we are subject to the obligation tells us that we have all fallen short. RD: Right. We all know that we’re not perfect, but to know that means we know that somewhere there is a standard against which that determination can meaningfully be made. That’s why Jesus had to come and why the Christian claim that Jesus was perfect, was sinless, is so essential. Again, to refer to Sproul again, RC used to say that if he was in a discussion with someone who just refused to acknowledge the existence of God, one of the final questions he would ask such people is what they did with their guilt. VK: And we all have guilt. And some of us feel it far more keenly than others. If we don’t have Jesus, if we don’t know Jesus, then we’re the only ones who can shoulder that guilt. But the moment we understand that the Perfect Man, Jesus, has willingly taken our guilt onto his own shoulders, we can start to become free of that guilt. And that’s one of the keys to beginning and completing our own quests through life. As we talked about a long time ago on Anchored by Truth, understanding the Bible provides context and meaning to our lives. Knowing that God himself made a provision for our imperfection removes the need for us to continue to feel guilty forever. Knowing that Jesus is our savior is the truth that sets us free. RD: And that’s one of the things we really want to focus on as the days unwind toward Christmas. We want to take a close look at how we can be sure that Jesus isn’t a mythological figure, but instead is a real person who was born, walked and lived at a specific place and time, and died. But then he demonstrated that he was God’s atoning gift by walking out of the grave and appearing to a group of women first and then to his disciples. If Jesus wasn’t a real person who did those things we would have absolutely no hope for being justified before a perfectly holy God. A mythological figure, no matter how charming, couldn’t save anyone. But Jesus did and does. So, as we conduct our own quests through life, if we’re pursuing worthwhile ends we can be confident that they aren’t futile. There is a meaning to our individual lives even when those lives are set against the backdrop of an unimaginably grand cosmos. The Bible and Jesus give us that meaning. As Augustine famously said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” VK: Sounds like it’s a great time to have a prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine, Confessions https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/ourheartisrestlessuntilitrestsinyou/ https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/reforming-apologetics-common-notions/

Please join ​​Roshney Mistry and I as we talk about ​​Healing Relationships.  Join us to explore -Importance of the relationship you have with yourself -What is your vibrational frequency -Law of attraction -Forgiveness are gratitude are key -How can Akashic records help you heal -How cutting the cords can help heal relationships ​Roshney will be doing a live meditation with the Golden Tree which will help you feel more grounded and shielded. You will be able to connect with your guides and ask what do I need to heal or know about a certain relationship? Roshney is a spiritual energy coach whose name means light. She is trained in NLP, Rahanni Celestial Healing, Counselling and Akashic Records Healing. She has been working in corporate government for the last 34 years.  Working in a stressful environment has taught her many skills especially on how to heal relationships. She learnt through her experiences that when your soul is not living its true purpose/mission then the body will show you signs on a physical and mental level. Roshney uses powerful inner child healing and cord cutting modalities to help others to remove emotional blocks to relationships, career and good health.  She runs spiritual workshops every 2 weeks via Zoom which are open to everyone and anyone. Whether you are just new to spirituality or very experienced she shares tips and tools on how to heal yourself. The workshops include powerful guided meditations. Roshney is sharing her light with you so that you can shine your light too.  Receive 28+ Gifts: https://awakentohappinessnow.com Roshney's Offers: https://awakentohappinessnow.com/s33roshney/   #alaracanfield , #awakentohappinessnow, #healing, #energy, #transformation, #consciousness, #love, #thealaracanfieldshow, #consciousliving, #joy, #empowerment, #wellness, #spirituality, #spiritualawakening, #awareness

From the first day of this podcast we've been hellbent on demonstrating that even the more mundane corners of this land hide incredible things. Some of you might have rolled your eyes, thinking this is just another attempt to bring back Tuscany to its golden age but this land is really special. Even if you're a seasoned traveller, expert in the art of avoiding the usual tourist traps, chances are you'll miss some of the outstanding beauties of our region. Look at Valdichiana, for example: while people gravitate naturally towards Cortona or Pienza, not many give more than a passing look to an ancient castle not far from the A1 highway. The town is quite small and looks like it's frozen in the Middle Ages but this is hardly special in this neck of the woods. And yet it's here, tucked away in a small museum, that you can find one of this land's best kept secrets. This castle that was fought over centuries between the powers of Central Italy was rich enough to commission one of the most unbelievable pieces of jewellery you have ever seen. That's why this week What's Up Tuscany will bring you to the charming town of Lucignano to tell you everything there is to know about its amazing Golden Tree, a huge reliquary that has got to be seen to be believed.If you listen to the full episode you will learn about how it took 120 years and the death of a wealthy lady to finish it and how its outrageous value made it a magnet for thieves since the 1400s. People in Lucignano loved it so much because that exchanging marriage vows in front of it brought good fortune to the newlyweds but in 1914 a band of thieves actually managed to break down and steal the art treasure. It took years before most pieces were recovered and the Tree rebuilt but a few days ago a bunch of other ornaments were discovered, bringing it back to the original glory. I'll walk you through the charming alleys of this weird castle, explain a curious plaque placed on top of an escalade and tell you several quirky stories about this place. In the final chapter, then, I'll walk you through some festivals held in Lucignano throughout the year, from the explosion of colour of the Maggiolata to the nostalgic Christmas festival that brings back the Tuscany of old. Last but not least, a couple of charming hotels able to turn a weekend break into a real event and two really good restaurants where you can treat your taste buds without breaking the bank. This might not be the most popular part of Tuscany but if you come to Valdichiana you'll fall in love with it. That's a promise.Email: podcast@larno.itFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/larno.itTwitter: @arno_it / @WhatsupTuscanyLINKS TO SOURCES (ITALIAN ONLY)https://viaggichemangi.com/italia/toscana/lucignano-cosa-vedere/https://www.museodilucignano.it/il-museo/albero-d-oro/https://www.intoscana.it/it/articolo/lalbero-doro-di-lucignano-stupisce-ancora-ritrovate-parti-trafugate-un-secolo-fa-al-via-il-restauro/https://www.viaggiatricecuriosa.it/2020/11/11/lalbero-doro-di-lucignano/https://www.tripadvisor.it/Restaurant_Review-g887269-d8594152-Reviews-Osteria_le_Botti-Lucignano_Province_of_Arezzo_Tuscany.htmlhttps://www.tripadvisor.it/Restaurant_Review-g887269-d2264112-Reviews-Locanda_del_Baraccotto-Lucignano_Province_of_Arezzo_Tuscany.htmlBACKGROUND MUSICPipe Choir - Bom Bom Breakthrough (Instrumental)Wayne John Bradley - Waiting (Instrumental)Mike Chino - Calm and HarmonyEzaOne - SupernovaPipe Choir - Gemini (Instrumental)Wayne John Bradley - Blues Rock Original InstrumentalAll released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licensehttps://soundcloud.com/pipe-choir-2/pipe-choir-bom-bom-breakthrough-creative-commons-instrumentalhttps://soundcloud.com/ayneohnradley/waiting-original-uplifting-indie-pop-style-instrumentalcreative-commonshttps://soundcloud.com/argofox/mike-chino-calm-and-harmonyhttps://soundcloud.com/argofox/ezaone-supernovahttps://freemusicarchive.org/music/Pipe_Choir/SGONS_Instrumentals/Pipe_Gemini_Instrumentalhttps://soundcloud.com/ayneohnradley/blues-rock-original-instrumentalcreative-commonshttp://www.pipechoir.com/

Hello, let's go for deep vibes this month.Enjoy and much Love !Playlist :01 Kassian, Patterns, !K7;02 Dense & Pika, Lack Of Light (extended mix), Armada Music Holland; 03 Stimming, Golden Tree, Awesome Sound Wave; 04 Sven Dohse, Mellow Fellow (Ali Schwarz remix), URSL;  05 Oliver Deutschmann, Reduced, Hotflush Recordings; 06 La Madone, Bounce, Snatch!; 07  Blu 9, Azzurri, Phobiq; 08 D-Unity & Juli Aristy, Suena Mas Fuerte, Tronic; 09 Uncertain, Organic, RSPX; 10 Ekoboy, Mirage, North Of Neptune.  minimal show on iTunes minimal show rss feed 

Episode 192 – Jesus and the Great Commission Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event lighting technician. He straightens out the cords on the Christmas lights before we put them up. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to finish up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we’re going to hear the last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. When we left off last time the koala bears who live in the arctic village that surrounds the Golden Tree had just encountered the Frost Lion for the first time in their history. The bears have lived in the valley surrounding the tree for many generations and had heard of the Frost Lion but this is the first time they have ever seen him. And they have only seen him now because the lion has chosen to come to their village. Why did the Frost Lion choose to come to their village now, RD? RD: Well, the biggest reason that the Frost Lion has chosen to enter the bears’ village at this time is because something else has happened to the bears for the first time in their generations around the tree. For the first time since the bears have lived in the village they have had visitors from their ancestral homeland. A bear named Roleb and his travelling companion had made an arduous journey to the north because they were concerned about the state of their village’s faith. Roleb’s travelling companion died just before they could reach the village. Roleb himself was almost at the point of death. They had known that their quest to travel to the great far north would be dangerous but they had made it because their homeland had lost its faith in the bears’ creator who they thought of as the Great White Koala Bear. To try to preserve their own tribe’s faith the two bears from down under had gone searching in the arctic even though they were mocked for doing so. Fortunately for them, two teenage bears from Golden Tree village had spotted Roleb just as he collapsed on the snowy wastelands outside their village. This had kicked off a search for Roleb’s friend. With the aid of a Great Ice Eagle, Gabriel, they had found the friend but he had just died. But when they brought the friend back to the village the Frost Lion was there. But no one knows what the Frost Lion can do – and no one knows what the Frost Lion will do … VK: So, it’s time to find out what happens to Roleb, and his travelling companion in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 7 VK: So, the Frost Lion was able to raise Roleb’s friend from the dead. But I hope that most listeners noticed that the Frost Lion didn’t just stop with restoring the life and health of the two bears down under. The Frost Lion began the process of addressing the deeper need – the fact that the bear clan down under was losing its faith. So just like Jesus did after His resurrection the Frost Lion commissioned missionaries from the Golden Tree village to carry the good news back with Roleb and his friend. Obviously, the message you are sending through this poem is that we live in a day and age when many people in our own clans are losing, or have lost, their faith. And we need to be missionaries to our family and friends. Because if we aren’t who will be? RD: Yes. And for any listeners who haven’t heard the previous episodes of The Frost Lion, they need to know that for the last six weeks we have been playing one section of The Frost Lion during each episode of Anchored by Truth. And since Anchored by Truth is available on most major podcasting apps listeners who want to hear those episodes can do so at any time. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time today to repeat those portions of the poem. But listeners who would like to hear all of the action and adventure that led up to today’s conclusion can listen to those episodes from their favorite podcast app or on our website, crystalseabooks.com. VK: And just as a reminder as of the time of the production of this broadcast and podcast in late 2022 The Frost Lion has not yet been made available for commercial release but that will happen in the early part of 2023. RD: That’s a good note. So, let’s amplify on the reason that the Frost Lion has now chosen to visit the bears, his disciples, in the village around the Golden Tree. For the first time since the bears had come to live near the Golden Tree they had now been presented with a missionary need. In other words, the Golden Tree village bears now knew that their ancestors had actually been saved generations ago for a reason – and that reason had now been brought to their attention in an unmistakable way. VK: Well, if we went back to the first part of the Golden Tree Tales which is The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest we heard the heroine, Komari, say something significant which was quoted by Kodan in The Frost Lion. In her confrontation with the Demon Lord Komari said, “ For if not for the tree, which of us Would ever have even been born? The tree saved our forebears When they came upon it that morn. Ever since then, we’ve not been our own, Our lives bought for a price. This tree that was sown for you and me Was the Great White Bear’s sacrifice.” So, that’s part of the point you’re making with this whole epic saga. Those of us who know Christ as our Savior have been saved for a reason. RD: Right. So, in answer to the question of why did the Frost Lion appear now it was because the Frost Lion wanted to commission the Golden Tree village bears to begin what is sometimes termed “The Great Commission.” The Great Commission is the mission that Jesus gave to His followers in Matthew, chapter 28 and which we heard repeated in the section of the poem we heard today. After His resurrection Jesus told the followers who had been with Him throughout His earthly ministry that the time had come for them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and [teach] them to obey everything I have commanded you.” That’s from the New International Version of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 19 and 20. VK: So, the reason that the Frost Lion appeared in the Golden Tree village at this time reminds us that there came and a time and place in history when the Lion of Judah entered world history to conduct His earthly ministry. And as we have talked about in other episodes of Anchored by Truth the time that Jesus entered world history as the God-Man wasn’t a random time. It was the time that had been chosen by the Father before the foundation of the world. Up to that time the world was being prepared for the arrival of the Messiah, the Anointed One, because it was at that time that the good news of salvation was going to be made available to a much larger audience. RD: Right. Before the incarnation it’s not that there weren’t Gentiles who had worshipped the One True God – there were. But up to Jesus’ arrival on the earth the primary audience for God’s message that He was going to provide a Savior had been the Jews. All that changed with Jesus’ life. After Jesus’ earthly life, death, and resurrection not only did Jesus issue the Great Commission to His first followers but we see other evangelical and apostolic giants such as the Apostle Paul come on the scene and begin a concerted outreach to the Gentile nations as well as continuing the spread of the gospel among the Jews. But, this outreach was not going to be easy. Jesus knew it wouldn’t be which is, I believe, He made it so plain that this was a mission He was now assigning His followers. It would have been easy, more natural, for them to want to just speak to their countrymen in Israel or even just to other Jews. The outreach to the Gentiles was going to be hard – but it was the right thing to do because that’s the reason God had preserved His chosen people for thousands of years. VK: That calls to mind a line out of the West Point cadet prayer that you mentioned to me a long time ago. The line says, “O God, our Father … Make us choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.” RD: Exactly. God had selected and preserved a people for Himself because it was through that people that He was going to bring a Savior for the whole world. Jesus, of course, was that Savior. But even after proving that He was the Son of God and the Messiah through His earthly ministry Jesus still had to complete His mission and send His followers to carry that message to the rest of the world. Until the message of salvation was sent to the rest of the world the rest of the world was still under the burden and curse of sin. But the message of salvation could and did change that. VK: And that calls to mind Jesus saying in Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28 and 29 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus’ promise is to help us bear our burdens not merely to dismiss them from our lives but we have to hear that good news for it to be effective in people’s lives. RD: Exactly right. So, living near the Golden Tree had brought many blessings to the bears in the arctic village. But it wasn’t enough for them to enjoy those blessings. They had a responsibility to share their blessings with others. VK: So, that brings us to another question. Couldn’t Roleb and his companion just go back to their village and told their friends and neighbors they had seen the Golden Tree, the Frost Lion, and the northern bears? RD: They could have but it would strengthen their witness to have others from the Golden Tree village support their testimony. That’s something anyone who has ever testified to their friends and neighbors will tell you. We all have a responsibility to give a reason for the hope that lies within us. That’s 2 Peter 3:15. But our witness is strengthened when we have others who will go with us and add their voices to our testimony. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to always engage in Christian fellowship with other believers. Sometimes we can put too much emphasis on that old admonition that “if it’s to be, it’s up to me.” Well, of course, we must do our part. But we should also seek the help of others in our own missionary activities. VK: That’s a really important point. As Christians we can get so caught up in struggling to be good believers, good workers, or good parents or family members that we can forget to turn to other believers for support and help. And we must always trust the Lord to support us and depend on the Lord to provide for us. There’s nothing wrong with hard work but ultimately if we think that our lives and destinies on this earth are all about us we are in danger of relying on our strength rather than the Lord’s. RD: Right. And again our model in how to approach struggles is Christ in his confrontation with Satan. Even Jesus didn’t depend on Himself to when He responded to the temptations presented by Satan. When Jesus needed strength to repel Satan Jesus went to scripture. VK: And most people may not realize that all of the scriptures Jesus used came from probably one of the least well-known books in the Bible, Deuteronomy. Christ quoted Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3 in response to the first temptation Satan presented. He quoted Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 16 in response to the second temptation, and Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 13 in response to the third temptation. This certainly reinforces the need to study the entire Bible. Jesus certainly knew all of the Old Testament and used it in his life. RD: Right. Part of us fulfilling our role in the Great Commission is recognizing that the Lord is sovereign and we are not. Even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for the Father’s will to be done and not his own. We must be willing to witness and testify to others, kindly and gently, but ultimately the results are up to God. Only God can bring change to a human heart. VK: And that calls to mind James, chapter 1, verse 17. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” So, in essence what you’re saying is that Jesus is not only the One who issued the Great Commission but Jesus is the One who enables us to fulfill it. We dare not try to undertake any part of the Great Commission or any other aspect of the Christian life on our own. We must always turn to, and trust in, Jesus to guide and provide. RD: Yes. Jesus is both the source of the instruction and the strength for the obedience. Turning to Jesus should be our first response but all too often I fear it’s our last resort. I always wince a little when I hear people say “the only thing I can do for you is to pray.” VK: Because as you say in your book Purposeful Prayers “the whispered prayer that stirs the hand of God dwarfs the most powerful force in the universe.” RD: Yes. The one big advantage that the bears who lived in the Golden Tree had over their southern relatives was that they had learned that ultimately the supply for their needs came from a source outside themselves. They had lived near the Golden Tree for generations. They knew there was a source of blessing outside of their own effort and that’s where they placed their trust. Anyone or anything that tempts you to place your trust in anything other than God cannot be of God. It’s not that we should not work hard to develop our own skills and abilities but we must keep them in proper perspective. VK: The Apostle Paul essentially affirmed this sentiment in the one of the best-known verses from the Bible: Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13. “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” RD: Exactly. We should learn from Golden Tree village bears’ example to be discerning when the world presents us with challenges or opportunities. Jesus is our sure and certain guide in this world and the primary way Jesus imparts wisdom to us is through the Bible. That’s why we must become so familiar with the Bible that we can immediately discern things or events in our lives that tempt us to depart from its teaching. There are a lot of things that will come our way that may not seem to be harmful, in and of themselves, but we can see that it what they offer or tempt us to do will not be consistent with scripture. At my age I’ve learned that the most important skill we can develop is spiritual discernment and we can only get that from the Bible and developing a strong network of mature Christian friends. VK: And while The Frost Lion doesn’t get into that level of detail it’s obvious from the poem that the bears had a strong regard for genuine wisdom and Kodan, Kojon, Koest and all the reset developed even more wisdom after their encounter with the Frost Lion. Christ came to bring us not only joy and peace but “life more abundantly.” But how can we enjoy that abundant life if we don’t ensure that as we travel through life we stay as close as humanly possible to the author of all life, peace, and joy. Staying close to Jesus means reading the Bible, developing a strong prayer life, and staying connected to other believers who can bless us and who we can bless in turn. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to New Year’s Day let’s listen to a prayer for blessings to come to us in the new year. ---- Prayer for NEW YEAR’S DAY VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on our website or your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we’d like to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest, is available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version

Episode 191 – Jesus’ Birth – The Dividing Line of History Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event librarian. He straightens up the books on the book shelves when one falls over. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to begin finishing up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we’re going to hear the next-to-last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. When we left off last time a group of small koala bears that lives in a valley in the arctic north was trying to save the life of a bear who had gotten lost. This bear had journeyed to the arctic not knowing that a group of koalas already lived in the far north near a Golden Tree that had saved a group of their ancestors. To find the lost southern bear the village bears had enlisted the aid of a great ice eagle. Unfortunately, by the time the village bears found the lost bear the southern bear had died? So, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a happy Christmas for the Golden Tree villagers, does it RD? RD: No. It does not. As our last installment of The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion ended two of the villages’ teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul, had flown with Gabriel, the great ice eagle. They had gone looking for the bear because earlier in the story Koest and Kopaul had saved the life of Roleb, another bear from the south. Roleb and his friend had made the journey to the north because their own village was in desperate trouble. Their fellow villagers in the south were in danger of losing their faith in their Creator, the Great White Bear. These southern bears knew that many generations ago a group of bears had travelled north but their legends had said that ancestral group had died. The southern bears had no idea the first group that travelled to the north – while they didn’t find the Great White Bear – they had found the Golden Tree. Now the question is whether salvation is still available? VK: So, it’s time to find out what happens to Roleb and his travelling companion in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 6 VK: Wow. So, now the village bears have met the great Frost Lion – the One who actually created the bears and the ice eagles. But Roleb’s friend is still dead. And we still don’t know what Roleb’s fate is going to be. Is it just too late for the Frost Lion to do anything to help Roleb and his friend? Seems there are still a lot of unanswered questions. RD: Well, hopefully we’ll get the answers to all these questions next week since next week is part 7 and there’s only seven parts to this part of the Golden Tree saga. But part of what listeners should be listening for is why did the Frost Lion choose to appear at this time in the village bears’ history. After all, they had lived near the Golden Tree for many generations? What was it about this situation that made the Frost Lion arrive in the village? Maybe we’ll hear something about that next time too. VK: And that’s a great lesson for why listeners should grab some friends and family and encourage them to tune in. It would be a good starting point for a discussion in a family setting, or a church youth group, or a home-school study project. The story can help kids learn about poetry as a form of literature, and also see how their imagination can be an important tool in getting immersed in the Bible. RD: Right. Classically some of the greatest poetry ever written like Milton’s Paradise Lost was written under the inspiration of the Bible. We’ve lost some of that awareness but I firmly believe it can be reclaimed by again striving to honor the Lord in everything we do. VK: So, what’s on tap for today as we are right on Christmas’ doorstep? RD: I thought as our closeout topic for this series on Jesus it would be fitting to talk about the reason for the season: Christ’s birth. It’s been celebrated on December 25th for centuries, but unfortunately today even that fact has become a source of either criticism or else an outright attack on the historicity of Jesus. For instance, some critics will claim that the celebration of Christmas was an adaptation of the Roman festival of Saturnalia and that as such it casts doubt on the historicity of Jesus. VK: And it is true that the Roman celebration of the Roman god Saturn did occur around the same time on the Julian calendar. The celebration originally started on December 17th but it was eventually expanded so that it lasted until December 23rd. And there are certainly elements of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia that correspond to how we celebrate Christmas. Saturnalia included parties, giving gifts, and plenty of food and drink. Though, it did differ markedly in certain ways. A lot of the time Saturnalia probably resembled Mardi Gras more than Christmas. RD: And that’s because the Roman god, Saturn, was the god of abundance and plenty but he was also thought of as the god of dissipation and dissolution. And it’s also fair to say that some elements of the Christian celebration of Christmas were influenced by Saturnalia. In the fourth century AD, Pope Julius I (337–352) decided that Christ’s birthday should be celebrated on 25 December, around the same time as the Saturnalia celebrations. Some commentators have speculated that part of the reason why he chose this date may have been because he was trying to create a Christian alternative to Saturnalia. Another possibility may have been that in 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus and Julius I may have thought that he could attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day. So it’s fair to say that the way in which we celebrate Christmas was probably influenced by Saturnalia, but that is quite a different thing from saying that just because the Roman god Saturn was mythological or fictional that Jesus was also. That would be the classic example of a non sequitur. VK: Non Sequitur: a conclusion that does not necessarily follow. In other words it’s a logical fallacy to conclude that just because the god Saturn was a myth that Jesus must be a myth also just because there are some common elements in the way the two different figures were or are celebrated. RD: Exactly. VK: But, of course, that does raise the question of whether Pope Julius picked December 25th just because that was a time when there were already pagan celebrations going on, or whether there were other reasons for selecting that day? RD: And that is a great question. VK: I’m so glad you agree. So… RD: We need to start out by saying that the Bible does not tell us exactly when Jesus was born. As one scholar put it, “the early Christians were not so much concerned with the date of Christ’s birth, as the fact of his birth.” And for those people who would like to take an in-depth look at when Jesus was born, there’s a great little book called Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ by Harold W. Hoehner. Much of what we’re going to talk about now comes from his book. The first question we need to address is not the day Jesus was born but the year. VK: I think most people generally think that Jesus was born in 1 AD. Doesn’t AD stand for anno domini meaning the “year of the Lord?” RD: Yes, it does. And that was the original intent when a Scythian monk named Dionysius originally prepared a calendar for use by the Western church at the direction of Pope John I in 525 AD. Before that time the Alexandrian system of dating was being used but it used as it base the reign of Diocletian who was a persecutor of the early church. Dionysius did not want the reference date for the church to be based on a persecutor. So Dionysius used the Julian system, which had been established by Julius Caesar, for the organization of the year which ran from January 1st to December 31st. And the year 1 AD was set on January 1st of 754 A.U.C. – anno urbis conditae – from the founding of the city of Rome. At the time Jesus was thought to have been born on December 25th of the prior year. Remember that there is no “zero” year. The calendar goes straight from 1 BC (before Christ) to 1 AD. VK: But… RD: But subsequent scholarship has determined that Dionysius didn’t get the translation between the AUC system and the system based on Christ’s birth year right. As our scripture today from Matthew noted, King Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. At the time it was thought that Herod died in 754 AUC but we now know that the latest date for Herod’s death was 750 AUC. VK: So that would mean Jesus was actually born 4 or 5 years earlier than previously thought. So he was born in 4 or 5 BC, not December 25th of 1 BC. Interesting. RD: Yes. But it’s worth noting that scholars are not even agreed on that. VK: Because…? RD: Because we have two scriptures that serve as the outer boundaries for Jesus’ birth. According to Matthew Jesus could not have been born later than Herod’s death, but according to Luke Jesus was born after a census that had been taken by a Roman official named Quirinius. In Greek Quirinius would have been Kyrenius. Luke says that this was “This was the first census that took place while a Quirinius was governor of Syria.” One of the issues was there aren’t any clear records about when this census took place. Josephus does not mention a census that took place during Herod’s reign but he does mention one that took place in 6 or 7 AD. So scholars are not unified on the date that this previous census might have taken place. This is one of the more puzzling questions that still linger about the birth of Jesus. VK: So, does Dr. Hoehner discuss this question in his book? RD: He does and there is actually a wealth of discussion available from many sources on this first census of Quirinius. Here are a few things we know for certain. The Romans were well known to take censuses throughout their empire to establish what we might call the basis for taxation and it was common for them to take them about every 14 years. Second, the text from Luke that says that Quirinius was the governor of Syria does not actually use the normal word, legatus, that is translated as “governor.” It uses a more generalized term for being in charge or leading. Third, we know that Quirinius was in the mid-East from 12 B.C. to 2 B.C. successively suppressing rebellions taking place in modern day Turkey. Apparently, Quirinius was well known as a successful military leader. VK: So, it would make sense that he was given charge of an important task of taking a census even if was done as an extra duty. Also, it would make sense that Augustus would want a census taken in that part of the empire because Herod had fallen out of favor with Augustus around 7 or 8 BC and by then it was known that his health was failing and that his sons were quarrelling over who would succeed him. Herod changed his will 3 times in the year before his death, each time naming a different son. Augustus knew about the changes and the quarrels because Herod had to get Augustus’ permission before making the changes. RD: Or executing one of his sons which Herod also did – again with Augustus’ knowledge and consent. VK: So that helps show that Herod was the kind of a king who would order the murder of all boys, 2 years old and under, in and around Bethlehem to get rid of a child the Magi had described the “king of the Jews.” So, it looks very much like Quirinius might have been in charge of a census sometime in the latter part of Herod’s reign around 5 BC. Herod died in 4 BC. But, what about the specific day? Did Pope Julius just pick that day because it roughly corresponded with Saturnalia? RD: We can’t be entirely sure why Pope Julius picked December 25th but the traditional date for Jesus’ birth had been around for at least 100 or 150 years before he set it officially within the church calendar. At a minimum an early church father named Hippolytus of Rome (ca 165-235 AD) had proposed that date. It is thought that Hippolytus might have had some greater insight about Jesus because he was associated with one of the early disciples of the Apostle John. There’s not a lot of information in scripture itself to pin down the date, but the tradition of a midwinter date for his birth does date back to the very earliest of the church fathers. Also, it’s fair to note that December 25th is the traditional day of celebration in the Western church but the Eastern church has traditionally used January 6th as the birthday and arrival of the Magi. VK: But some people object to the December date because a part of Luke that we didn’t listen to today says the shepherds were keeping watch on their flocks which were out in the fields at night. It is generally known that the shepherds brought their sheep into enclosures from about November through March. So the thinking is that if the sheep were out in the field it couldn’t have been December. RD: And that’s a reasonable observation but it’s not conclusive. First, it might have been a mild winter so there would have been less reason to keep the sheep enclosed. Second, the sheep were apparently in and around Bethlehem as opposed to being out in their spring and summer feeding grounds in the wilderness so this makes it far more likely the birth was in the winter. The shepherds had to be close enough to be able to get to family who were lodged in the stable in Bethlehem fairly quickly. Third, there are Jewish texts that say that the sheep that were going to be used for the Passover celebration were to be out in the field for at least 30 days before the celebration. Passover could have been as early as February so this would again reinforce a midwinter date as early as late December or early January. VK: The bottom line is that - again – when you look at the details of history and the gospel accounts it dispels completely the notion that even if there are superficial resemblances between the Christian celebration of Christmas and some pagan winter festivals that somehow diminishes the historicity of Jesus as a person. Or his birth in Bethlehem on a night over 2,000 years ago. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to Christmas let’s listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest, is available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version

Episode 190 – Jesus’ Attributes Were Not “Borrowed” Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event planning consultant. He rearranges the chairs in the conference room when we have meetings. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we want to continue our series where we focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Frost Lion is the third part of the Golden Tree trilogy. The first installment of the Golden Tree saga was The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and copies of it are available from our website which is crystalseabooks.com. Even though we’re playing Frost Lion on our broadcasts and podcasts it has not yet been released for people to get their own copy but that will happen in the near future. Today we’re coming to part five out of seven of the poem. So, we’re getting close to bringing it home, right RD? RD: We are indeed. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last couple of episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It was written in seven parts and each part ends in a sort of cliffhanger. So, now that we’re at part five we’re pretty deep into the story. But just as a quick refresher The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is about a group of small koala bears who live in the Artic in valley that’s green and warm because in the middle of the valley is a Golden Tree that keeps the valley warm and fertile. They’ve been there for several generations but just as Christmas season is approaching two teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul, were on a high hill near their town when the spotted a dark shape crossing the snow and ice. The strange shape turned out to be a bear named Roleb. Roleb came from the village their ancestors had left many generations ago and had travelled with a friend who got lost. Roleb and his friend were travelling to the arctic to search for help for their village which had lost its faith. Thanks to the wisdom of the village elders, Kodan and Kojon, the bears have been able to summon an ice eagle. But what can this ice eagle do? What will this ice eagle do … if anything? VK: Sounds like we’re getting to the good part. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part five of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 5 VK: Ok. So, the bears from the village have now found Roleb’s lost friend. But it’s too late. Roleb’s friend has died from the cold. So, it seems as if Roleb’s whole journey to the north has been for nothing. That seems very sad – if that was how the story ended. But, of course, it hasn’t ended yet. So, maybe all hope isn’t lost. And, knowing you, the answer to finding out whether anything can be done for Roleb and his friend is …to tune in next time. RD: That sounds like a brilliant suggestion. And maybe listeners could gather some family members to join them ... VK: Sounds even better. Listening to Golden Tree as a family could be a great way for parents or grandparents to connect with their kids and help them develop their faith. It would also make a great centerpiece for a home school study group or church youth group discussion about the role that courage and commitment play in the Christian faith – something that’s particularly relevant as we get closer and closer to Christmas. RD: Right. Somebody once said that the Christian faith is so simple that even children can comprehend enough about it to understand the plan of salvation. But even though we can begin with the faith of a child we should pursue the goal of developing a truly mature faith. God will meet us and help us wherever we are in our faith journey but He isn’t satisfied with leaving us at the starting line. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus doesn’t just initiate our faith. He also wants to perfect it. And part of perfecting our faith is ensuring that we understand what the Bible tells us about Jesus. VK: Well, so far we’ve seen that there are extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure who lived and died in Judea during the time period described by the Bible. But we’ve also seen that as helpful as it is to know that there are secular sources that confirm Jesus’ life that those sources aren’t enough to tell us everything that we need to know about Jesus. We can only get a complete revelation about Jesus from God’s special revelation to people, the Bible. And as we saw in our last episode, and again in today’s scriptures, Jesus’ statements about himself tell us something pretty important: that Jesus is not only fully human but also fully divine. RD: Yes. And so that takes us to the next subject that we need to talk about as we are focusing on the life of Jesus in preparation for celebrating his birth at Christmas. VK: And that is... RD: And that is - that because Jesus is the central figure not just of Christianity, but also the entire Bible, one of the criticisms that’s sometimes directed toward Jesus is that the attributes that the Bible assigns to Jesus were borrowed from other cultures or religious sources. So, Christians need to be familiar with some of the assertions that Jesus’ deeds, especially his miracles, were simply drawn from other religious myths or pagan characters. VK: Can you give us an example of what you’re thinking about? RD: Sure. It is has been alleged that Jesus’ miraculous conception isn’t a unique belief. For instance, critics will say that the mythological figure, Hercules, was also supposed to be the son of a divine father – in this case Zeus - and a mortal mother. VK: But, of course, there are significant differences between Hercules purported conception and Jesus. In the Greek legend Hercules mother was named Alcmene (ALK-MEN-EE). Zeus was supposed to have taken on the human form of Alcmene’s husband and deceived Alcmene and slept with her. And that’s how Hercules was conceived. That’s not nearly the same thing as Jesus being born of Mary while Mary was literally still a virgin. RD: The differences are even more pronounced. Hercules was actually the Roman name of a hero the Romans adapted from the Greek Heracles. According to the Greek legend, Heracles’ mother Alcmene was simultaneously pregnant with Heracles by Zeus and his half-brother Iphicles by her husband. And that’s only the beginning of the legendary aspects in Alcmene’s pregnancy with Heracles. So, as soon as you get beyond the superficial similarity and look at the details, the notion that Jesus’ conception was somehow an adaptation of the Heracles/Hercules myth falls apart. But this is a good example of one kind of obviously fallacious attack that’s directed against the historicity of Jesus. VK: So, what you’re saying is that one form of attack that’s leveled at Jesus has to do with a particular attribute of Jesus and then trying to find a parallel somewhere else in a different religion that is obviously false. The critics then try to discredit the life of Jesus by saying that if story A is false, then story B must be false also. RD: Right. But that makes as much sense as saying that if there are two $5 bills on the table and one is counterfeit, the other one must be also which is just silly. So, sometimes the supposed pagan origin of the details of Jesus earthly life and ministry are concerned with specific attributes of Jesus, such as his virgin birth. But sometimes the copycat thesis is less concerned with the specifics of Jesus life and more concerned with generalities that might be associated just about any supernatural figure. VK: Again, do you have any specific examples in mind? RD: For instance, since sickness and disease are obviously a plague on human existence... VK: No pun intended… RD: No pun intended… anyway, the ability to bring miraculous healing would be expected to be a staple of myths or legends. And it is. For example, Asclepius or Asklepios was a Greek demi-god who was the god of medicine. He was supposed to have raised Hippolytus from the dead, though he was killed by Zeus for doing so. Asclepius was supposed to be the son of the god Apollo and a human mother. Buddha was also supposed to have been able to cure the sick. VK: But again, these kinds of general miracle workings of mythological characters vary considerably from the information we have about the miracles that Jesus performed. For instance, in the case of Jesus curing Peter’s mother we have precise details of the location where the miracle was done, the people involved, and even a pretty close approximation to the timing. And many of Jesus’ healings involved specific details that conform to the religious and cultural conventions known to exist. Such as when he healed the lepers and then told them to go show themselves to a priest which was required by Jewish law. And Jesus’ healing miracles weren’t always the cause for celebration the way you would expect of a miracle like when Jesus restored the eyesight of the man born blind. The blind man was rejected by the religious leaders and cast out by them. RD: Exactly. The descriptions of Jesus’ miracles read like historical accounts because they are. Again, the key to drawing distinctions between Jesus’ miracles and those general sorts of miraculous powers that are associated with the pagan sources is in the details. The Bible accounts provide the details and in the majority of cases there are multiple eyewitness accounts. But the case of Buddha provides another way of refuting the claims that the Bible’s descriptions of Jesus are drawn from other sources. The earliest known account of Buddha’s life was written in the 2nd century AD so it came after Jesus and not before it. That’s also true for another supposed religious figure who supposedly served as the source for many of the details of Christ’s life, Mithra. In Mithra’s manifestation during the Roman period he was supposed to have been born on December 25th, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, had a final meal before he died, and rose from the grave after 3 days. VK: And since Mithra was a religious figure that was known to come from the Persian culture, modern day Iran, supposedly he was the inspiration for much of what the disciples taught about Jesus. Right? RD: Right. The earliest mention of Mithra is around 1400 BC so as a religious figure Mithra would pre-date Christ by a considerable time period. But the problem is that the attributes of the Iranian version of Mithra do not correspond to the Roman version. The Roman version of Mithra is best known for slaying a bull whereas there is no known connection to bull slaying in the Iranian version. And a lot of the supposed correspondences between Christ and Mithra appear in the Roman version and the dating of the correspondences is after Christ. VK: So, many scholars believe there might have been some cross pollination between Christ and the Roman version of Mithra but given the timing of the appearance of the similarities it’s far more likely that the legends of Mithra borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa. RD: And that would have been fair because there was one way that Christianity did borrow from Mithraism, in art. In the early part of the 3rd century AD (313), the Roman emperor Constantine issued the edict of Milan which accepted Christianity. Before then the Roman emperors had generally been very hostile to Christians. Within 10 years Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. But by then Mithraism seems to have also gained a strong foothold within the empire as well. In the third and fourth centuries, the Roman church officials seemed to have embarked on an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign. One commentator said their efforts were “reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb.” VK: That sounds suspiciously like the law of unintended consequences. The church officials in the 3rd and 4th century went on a campaign to prove that Christianity was superior to Mithraism and 1,600 years later the church now has to defend itself against the claim that Jesus’ life and ministry were the copycat version. RD: I think that’s an excellent observation. And let’s close out with one more, quick example. In Hinduism Krishna was also supposed to have had a miraculous conception so some critics point to that legend as a possible inspiration for the Christian tenant. VK: But in that case, Krishna’s ‘miraculous conception’ is his mom being impregnated by ‘mental transmission’ from his completely human father. Again, not remotely similar to the Bible’s description of how Mary became pregnant. RD: And to add to that – how credible is it that the first Christians, who were largely Jews from Palestine, would have borrowed a legend from a thousand miles away. At a minimum the Jews were fiercely monotheistic whereas Hinduism is distinctly polytheistic. So, this again points to the need to not only examine the varying details of alleged instances of borrowing but also consider the cultural factors that would have been in play. Often either chronological or cultural factors alone will be enough to refute the alleged possibilities. To go back to our earlier example with the money, when new bank tellers are being taught to spot counterfeit dollars they aren’t given lots of counterfeits to study. They’re given lots of real bills to feel and handle. The idea is that if the tellers get so used to touching and handling the real thing, the fakes will become instantly recognizable. That same approach will work when it comes to being able to answer many of the criticisms that are addressed at Christianity and Jesus. VK: And that’s a good lesson for all of us. The more time we spend studying scripture – and developing familiarity with the details of the people, the nations, the geography, the culture – not only will we be able to be confident in our own faith. But we will also be able to point other people to the truth. RD: Precisely. Myths and legends read like myths and legends. They have fantastic details that have little or no correspondence to things in the real world. Good common sense enables us to quickly see elements that don’t make sense in our experience. By contrast, the history contained in the Bible reads like good histories that we see elsewhere. There are specifics about people, places, times, and events and quite often either archeological finds or extra-Biblical records will provide information that helps confirm the Biblical record. VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to Christmas let’s listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 15, verse 5, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://creation.com/pagan-copycat-thesis-refuted http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.php http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.php

The Court of Philip the Good was known as one of the foremost centers of art patronage in the late middle ages. But Philip the Good did not start from scratch. The Burgundian Court of Dukes Philip the Bold and John the Fearless were centers of art and culture and set the stage for the opulence and grandeur of the later dukes. Artists/Art Featured: Tres Riches Heurs of John of Berry (The Limbourg Brothers), The Romance of the Rose, The Song of Roland, Jean Gerson, Christine de Pisan (The Book of the City of Ladies, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, The Tale of the Rose), Cour d'Amour, Order of the Golden Tree, The Castle of Hesdin, Melchior Broederlam, Jan Maelwael, Claus Sluter, Claus de Werve, The Charterhouse of Champmol Check out granddukesofthewest.com for images of many of the works of art featured in today's episode! Cover Art by Brandon Wilburn Music by Zakhar Valaha

Episode 189 – Jesus – Man and God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 6, verse 35, New Living Translation “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verse 12, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time pastry consultant. He buys the cookies we keep in the kitchen. Though to be fair I’m the one who makes sure we don’t run out of animal crackers. Anyway, today on Anchored by Truth, as we start to celebrate the Christmas season, we want to continue our series where we focus on Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Today we’re coming to part four of the poem where we now hear about the seemingly unsolvable quandary that is confronting our bears. So do you want to tell us where we are in the story, RD? RD: I’d love to. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last few episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It’s the third of the Golden Tree series. The first segment is called The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and the second part was called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. Both of these earlier parts of the saga were also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part four listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who live in the arctic. Even though they are in the arctic they live near a Golden Tree that creates a peaceful and fertile valley. The bears’ ancestors discovered the Golden Tree after they had left their homes down under and went searching for their Creator that they called the Great White Koala Bear. The bears have lived near the Golden Tree for generations. In all that time they had never met another bear from the land their ancestors left – but that has now changed. A new, strange bear named Roleb was rescued by a pair of young bears, Koest and Kopaul, and brought to Koest’s home. Once there, Roleb told the bears he had friend who was traveling with him but that friend is now lost in the arctic wasteland. Two of village elders, Kodan and Kojon are trying to figure out if there is a way to save Roleb’s lost friend before it is too late … which it might already be. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part four of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion – part four. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 4 VK: Wow. So, the bears figured out how to summon an ice eagle … but can this ice eagle help them? Will this ice eagle help them? It doesn’t seem like this ice eagle is all that friendly at this point. RD: I guess folks will just have to tune in next week and see what happens... VK: I’m starting to see why the movies played those serial episodes before they played the main feature. RD: Well, as a kid the trick was not to not eat all your popcorn during the serial. Otherwise, you didn’t have any left to enjoy during the feature. It helped if you had enough money to buy a large bag. No buckets in those days. VK: Today I think some of us need to worry about waistlines more than money… RD: No comment. VK: Anyway, maybe one of the lessons we can learn from the bears is that we need to understand that challenges to our faith can come to us at any time. We need to be prepared to intelligently respond to them. And Ephesians 6:17 does tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the Bible, the Word of God. That’s one of the big reasons we try to encourage people to develop the habit of staying in the Word. It’s the best way for us to cope with our own ice eagles. So, where do you want to go today as we resume our study of Jesus’ earthly life? RD: Well, in our last couple of episode on Anchored by Truth we talked about some examples of extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Judea during the early part of the first century AD. But, naturally, the only thing that the secular writers could write about was the human dimension of Jesus. If secular writers were our only source about the life of Jesus we could know some important details about him, but we would completely miss the most important fact about Jesus: that Jesus was not only fully human but that he was also fully divine. VK: And here is where a lot of headaches begin. How can one person be both God and man? I think it’s safe to say that many Christians – even serious and devout ones – have trouble with that concept. So, let’s go over some of the basics of historical, orthodox Christian theology – the Trinitarian nature of God and the dual nature of Jesus. A lot of confusion arises because people don’t understand what Christians mean when they refer to the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ. So, let’s start there. RD: Well, let’s acknowledge right at the start the limitations of human language and the incomprehensibility of God. Humans are finite. God is infinite. So, there is no way any human or group of humans is every going to be capable of exhaustively understanding or explaining the nature of the God or the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. That doesn’t mean we can’t know some true things about God and develop an awareness of the miracle of the incarnation, but it does mean that mysteries will always remain. But that the fact that mysteries will always remain doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t apply ourselves to develop a full-orbed understanding of God insofar as we are able. VK: And it also means that we should always approach these subjects in a spirit of reverence and prayer, right? I mean the one Person who can help us grow in our understanding is the very Person we’re seeking to understand. So, what does the doctrine of the Trinity refer to? RD: Orthodox, Christian theology believes that the Bible refers to one God, but acknowledges that God exists eternally as three divine Subsistences or Persons. The classic proof text for the Trinitarian view of the Godhead is Matthew 28:18 & 19 which says: “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A slightly different way of explaining this is that God is singular in nature but three in person. By contrast, Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, is singular in person but has two natures. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. And the classic formulation of this that came out of the Council of Chalcedon is : ” Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, having two natures inseparably united in one divine person without confusion, mixture, separation, or division. Each nature retains its own attributes.” VK: So, those views explain why Christians still believe in one God – we’re monotheistic – but we also believe that within the Godhead there are three distinct Persons who have a relationship with each other. Grappling with these concepts is challenging to say the least. RD: And that’s the reason we have to always be willing to acknowledge that even though the church has classic formulations like the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds that help amplify the basics, these doctrines will always contain a certain amount of mystery for men. We’re back to the plain fact that finite man cannot fully understand or explain an infinite, Triune God. VK: So, how do our opening scriptures relate to this who discussion? At least on the surface, while Jesus is certainly providing some really comforting assurances to his disciples – such as that he will provide for them and protect them like a shepherd does his sheep – how do these verses demonstrate that Jesus was claiming to be God? RD: In English, the claim is not as obvious as it was in the language in which John originally recorded his Gospel, Greek. You see the Greek words that are translated as “I am,” in “I am the bread of life,” and in the other scriptures we heard are two Greek words: ego and eimi. And these are exactly the same words that God used when He made declarations about himself in the Old Testament. VK: As in the declaration that God made to Moses when Moses was standing before the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3:14? Let me read that part. But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” God also said that Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.” RD: Exactly. The Septuagint translators when they translated the Hebrew “Yahweh” which came from the word for “I am” translated it by a combination of two different Greek words used for the verb “to be:” ego and eimi. So in Jesus’ time the phrase ego eimi came to be synonymous with the name for God. In Hebrew, Yahweh. In Greek, Jehovah. So, when the Apostle John recorded what Jesus said about Jesus being the bread of life or the light of the world, John used the phrase “ego eimi” for the words “I am.” Many scholars think that when Jesus identified himself with the “I am,” He was directly proclaiming to his followers that he was the same as the one who appeared to be Moses. But there are other references in the Old Testament to which Jesus may have been pointing to make the same point. Michael J. Krueger, who is a New Testament scholar and President of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, has shown that there are number of “I am” references in chapters 40 – 55 of the book of Isaiah that unmistakably point to God. Let’s listen to a couple of examples, Isaiah 41: 4 and 43:10: Isaiah 41:4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he (ego eimi). Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he (ego eimi). Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. The “I am he” in these passages is translated in Greek by ego eimi. VK: So, when Jesus said he was the bread of life or the light of the world he was going beyond simply giving metaphors for the provisions that he was making for his people? He was saying that one of the reasons his followers could have confidence in the promises that he was giving was because he was God. And as God whatever he promised he had the irresistible power to fulfill. I’m starting to get another headache when I think about that. Imagine, listening to someone standing before you who was saying “I am the light of the world,” - meaning he would give you all the light and wisdom you would ever need – and then realizing that the one making the promise was the who made light to begin with. That’s a staggering thought. RD: And it gets even more staggering. Remember that on Anchored by Truth we have often talked about the fact that logic and empirical observations demonstrate that the universe was created by a self-existent Being. We call that Being God. We can arrive at the need for a self-existent Being to explain the existence of the universe and everything in it, just by making some informed observations. In other words, as people we have the ability to deduce the existence of a self-existent Being or God just by exercising our reason and intelligence. Well, when God said to Moses that his name, God’s name, was “I am” he was identifying himself by using the attribute of self-existence. God was simultaneously exalting Moses by saying “you’re standing in the presence of the One who made everything,” and God was condescending to the level of man by communicating to Moses in a way Moses could understand. God was also pointing out that Moses should be aware of His existence because Moses own intellect and intelligence would have revealed the need for God even God had never chosen to communicate with him directly. VK: And the same thing would have been true of the people listening to Jesus, wouldn’t it? Only now, rather than the people listening to a voice out of a burning bush, they’re hearing those words from a man standing in front of them. And many, if not most, of them would have seen Jesus perform miracles so they would have known that when Jesus spoke, he was speaking the truth. But I think you have one more point that you’re making with the line of reasoning aren’t you? RD: Exacatamundo… VK: Exactamundo, again ... RD: Ok. Precisely, if you prefer. Think about it. By making empirical observations and exercising a little logic and reason we can arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created by a self-existent Being – God. But where did we derive the ability to make those observations? Where did we get eyesight that could see the sun and stars? Where did we get the intellect and reasoning ability to design instruments that could amplify our own observational capabilities like telescopes or microscopes? Where did we get the reasoning ability to understand that an effect demands a cause and that the law of non-contradiction is an essential element in reasoning correctly? Where did we get the ability to write and use language and make and retain records so we could pass words and observations down over thousands of years? And not just the records of the Bible but the other records that we examined on Anchored by Truth the last couple of times by secular observers who affirmed that Jesus was a real man who lived in Judea at a particular time in history. VK: So the point you’re making is that the same God who designed and created the universe with all its marvelous complexity and order also created us in such a way that we could perceive Him. And you’re saying that that same God came to various men at different points in history – to Moses and Isaiah in the Old Testament, to Matthew, John and others in the New Testament – to leave us a record of His appearances in this world. So, you’re saying that God designed man so that man could recognize not only the design in nature but also the design in God’s plan for human history. The plan that we call the plan of creation, fall, and redemption. Oh, all that is either super scary or super exciting. RD: Rather like the disciples in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm or Moses when he was in front of the burning bush, an immediate confrontation with the undeniable presence of the Almighty is simultaneously terrifying and thrilling. Unfortunately, today too many people deny themselves that experience of reverential awe that comes from truly grappling with the authentic nature of God. VK: And only the Bible gives us what we need to understand that nature. And we all need to have a better understanding of that nature. Because when we gain it we will find out that God is not only an awesome and mighty God but He is also a loving and merciful God who has made provisions for us to have eternal fellowship with him by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the first person of the Trinity, our heavenly Father. ---- PRAYER OF ADORATION OF THE FATHER VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://www.ligonier.org/about/who-we-are/what-we-believe/ https://www.michaeljkruger.com/why-does-jesus-use-the-phrase-i-am/ https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means

Episode 188 – Jesus Beyond the Bible Part 2 Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: Now it came to pass in those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ... And Joseph also … to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; to enroll himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. …while they were there… she [gave birth].” The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time health consultant. He buys the cough drops we keep in the studio for people to use during recording. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we want to continue our series where we focus on the earthly life and ministry of Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. Today we’re coming to part three of the poem where the action starts to get a little more intense. Is that a fair statement, RD? RD: I think so. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last couple of episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It was also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part three listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who live in a valley in the artic. A group of the bear’s ancestors settled in the valley because in the center of the valley is a golden tree that transforms the valley into a place where they can live and thrive. They’ve been there for several generations but in the current Christmas season an unexpected challenge has come to their valley, the tree, and their lives. Two of the town’s teenage bears, Koest and Kopaul had gone to a hill to look at the northern lights. While on the hill they saw a new, strange bear staggering through the snow. At first they weren’t sure if this new bear posed a danger but since the new bear was so close to death they brought him back to Koest’s home where Koest’s mother, Koray, began attending to the bear. But they still don’t know anything about the new bear. Where did he come from and why is he here? And what does he want? VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part three of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – part three. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 3 VK: Ok. As the old timers … RD: Like me... VK: Right… used to say, “the plot commences to thicken.” The bears who live near the Golden Tree have found out that they have distant relatives who don’t know about the Golden Tree or even the Great White Bear. But a couple who still did believe in the Great White Bear decided to attempt the quest that others had tried long ago. But now their quest is in danger because one of them has almost died and the other one is lost in a vast arctic wilderness – a wasteland for anyone who’s not near the tree. RD: Right. And sometimes those of us who live in today’s post-modern culture can feel that way – that we are living in a wilderness that has lost sight of our true Creator. That’s why it’s such a good idea for mature believers to listen to or read stories to the kids or grandkids because they can introduce those kids or grandkids to the real struggles that life contains and help prepare to them to be overcomers. And of course the best strategy for being an overcomer is to be so familiar with the truth that lies and deception become immediately identifiable. VK: And of course that’s why we do Anchored by Truth – to remind people that the Bible, in the words of Psalm 46, is a “very present help in time of trouble.” But people aren’t likely to turn to the Bible to help them in times of trouble if they aren’t confident that the Bible is reliable and trustworthy. So that’s why we focus on using evidence and logic to demonstrate that we have very good reasons for believing that the Bible is the very Word of God. RD: Yes. Everybody, at some point in their life, is going to ask the question, “Why am I here?” It’s one of the most obvious questions that arise from the human experience. But, whether most people realize it or not, the answer to the question, “why am I here,” is inexorably tied to three other questions. Is there a God? If there is a God, does He communicate with people – or said slightly differently, “Is the Bible the Word of God.” And, if there is a God and the Bible is His word, can I learn about my life, my needs, and my purpose by studying the Bible? Of course at Anchored by Truth we think that the answer to all three questions is a resounding “yes.” But we would just as quickly admit that, unless people are convinced that the Bible is more than just an aggregated collection of fairy tales and myths, they are unlikely to find the Bible relevant to their lives. VK: I notice that you said “study the Bible” not just “read the Bible.” What you’re observing is that understanding the Bible, confidently and contextually, demands effort. Right? I mean that sort of runs against the old method of letting the Bible fall open and then reading the first verse that comes to your attention. RD: Well, I wouldn’t try to restrict the Lord’s ability to communicate to any particular person any way He chooses. But randomly or haphazardly reading selected portions of the Bible isn’t likely to help people answer the question, “Why am I here?” I am fully persuaded that the Lord will reveal Himself to anyone and everyone who seeks to truly know Him. But our relationship with the Lord – who is after all first and foremost a person – is just like our relationship with others in our lives. The quality of our relationship will be dependent on the quality and quantity of time we spend with the Lord. And because the Bible was written in a different time and era we need to do some study on the times, customs, and cultures that form its setting. And, unfortunately, because so much misinformation circulates in our own culture today about what the Bible is or isn’t, contemporary Christians need to arm themselves by being able to respond to certain common errors. VK: Such as the erroneous assertion that Jesus wasn’t a real person. That he didn’t live a real life, eat, walk, and sleep like normal human beings. And that, despite being fully human, he didn’t also demonstrate that he was fully divine by rising out of a stone tomb after being killed by the most powerful empire on the earth at the time. So, that takes us back to our review of some examples that Jesus’ earthly existence is confirmed by sources outside the Bible. Last time we took a look at two examples of other ancient historians who mentioned Jesus in their histories: the Roman historian Tacitus and the Jewish historian Josephus. Both are considered reliable historians. Both wrote their histories within a relatively short period after Jesus’ earthly life. And both wrote accounts that confirmed some of the details in scripture. Where do you want to start today? RD: Well, let’s take a look at another Roman historian, Suetonius. Suetonius was a Roman historian and annalist of the Imperial House under the Emperor Hadrian. His writings about Christians describe their treatment under the Emperor Claudius (41-54AD): “Because the Jews at Rome caused constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Christ], he [Claudius] expelled them from the city [Rome].” (Life of Claudius, 25:4) This expulsion took place in 49AD. In another work, Suetonius wrote about the fire which destroyed Rome in 64 A.D. under the reign of Nero. Nero blamed the Christians for this fire and he punished Christians severely as a result: “Nero inflicted punishment on the Christians, a sect given to a new and mischievous religious belief.” (Lives of the Caesars, 26.2) So from these quotes we can see that the awareness of Jesus had spread all the way to Rome less than 20 years after Jesus died. The awareness was so strong that the emperor had taken personal notice of Jesus’ followers and apparently felt the need to try to minimize their influence in the capital city. VK: And again, just to remind everyone of what we mentioned last time the fact that Roman historians and even Roman emperors would take notice of Jesus is remarkable. It wasn’t as if Jesus had led a conquering army that was threatening to lay siege to Rome or even one of his outlying provinces. And Suetonius’ observation that the Christians had a “new and mischievous religious belief” is particularly fascinating. When you think about the pantheon of gods with which the Romans were thoroughly familiar – not only their own gods but also the Greek gods and the gods of all the people they’d conquered – when you think about the vast variety of religious beliefs with which they were acquainted what could be considered “new and mischievous?” RD: Well, of course, many scholars believe that Suetonius was likely referring to the physical resurrection of Jesus. Obviously, the Romans were well familiar with various beliefs of life after death, but those belief systems never included a person – a flesh and blood man – walking around, talking, eating, and even touching other people after being crucified. That was new and novel. VK: Still is. I’ve never seen it though I thoroughly believed it happened. Who’s next? RD: Well, take a look at two sources who wrote about Jesus but for whom we don’t have any copies of their writings: Thallus and Phlegon. VK: Well, if there are no existing copies of their manuscripts how can we know what they wrote? RD: Because just like today, there were other writers who did read what they wrote and preserved some of their material by quoting it in documents they were preparing. Just like someone may not have attended a political event, but they can know part of what the speaker said by reading quotes in articles written by people who were there. In Thallus’ case, parts of his histories were preserved by Julius Africanus who wrote around 221 AD. In Phlegon’s case, not only did Julius Africanus record some of his material but so did Origen who was an early church scholar and theologian. VK: So what observation did Julius Africanus preserve from Thallus’ writings that pertain to Jesus? RD: Well let me read a quote from Julius Africanus: “On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.” (Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18:1) So Thallus had written more than one book of history but in at least one of his books he took note of the darkness and earthquake that accompanied Christ’s crucifixion. This parallels precisely the account that Matthew gave us in Chapter 27 of his Gospel. VK: And Luke also wrote about the darkness. The Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, verses 44 through 47 say: “And it was now about the sixth hour, and a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun's light failing: and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said this, he gave up the ghost. And when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly, this was a righteous man.” So, it is very interesting that a secular historian like Thallus would mention the same detail that is present in Matthew and Luke. And if I remember correctly Thallus’ observations are particularly important because many scholars believe he wrote around 52 AD. In fact, he may have been the earliest secular writer to comment on the events surrounding the crucifixion. Well, what about Phlegon? RD: Well let me read three quotes. This first is one preserved by Julius Africanus and the second two were preserved by Origen: “Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth to the ninth hour.” (Africanus, Chronography, 18:1) “And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place … ” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 33) “Jesus, while alive, was of no assistance to himself, but that he arose after death, and exhibited the marks of his punishment, and showed how his hands had been pierced by nails.” (Origen Against Celsus, Book 2, Chapter 59) So in these quotes we several things of significance. First, Phlegon confirms the darkness mentioned by Matthew, Luke, and Thallus. Second, he confirms that Jesus was crucified and he gives us a specific time reference: during the reign of Tiberius. And third, he confirms the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus including that he showed the marks of his crucifixion to those to whom he appeared. VK: Well, that’s even more amazing because now we know that the secular historians of the 1st and 2nd century AD were not only aware of Jesus’ life and ministry but they were also familiar with many of the details that surrounded his death and resurrection. But that does raise a question. Since Julius Africanus and Origen were both admitted Christians is it possible that they fabricated the quotes they attributed to Thallus and Phlegon? RD: It’s not impossible, but why would they have done that? VK: I think critics would say they would have fabricated the quotes to make their case for the truth of Christianity stronger. RD: Well, if they had attempted to do that it would actually have had the opposite effect in their day and time. First, remember that even though copies of the writings from Thallus and Phlegon are no longer extant today, they were in existence at the time Julius Africanus and Origen wrote and quoted from them. So if they had fabricated quotes or deliberately misquoted them their fraud or errors would have been easily detectable. Second, Africanus and Origen were writing at a time when there was substantial official opposition to Christianity. In other words they were writing in a hostile world. As such, they would have taken even greater pains to be sure that they wouldn’t be subject to easily refuted assertions. Third, Origen’s quotes of Phlegon came from a work entitled Contra Celsum or in English Against Celsus. So Origen was writing a work to refute the claims of Celsus who wrote a work entitled The True Doctrine. The True Doctrine was likely written under the authority of a Roman emperor was critical of Christianity. Since accuracy was essential to his refutation of Celsus’ book, most scholars agree that Origen is a reliable source for what Phlegon said. Why would Origen have handed his opponent an easy method for dismissing Origen’s criticisms? VK: That all makes a lot of common sense and it points to a broader implication of the extra-Biblical sources that you’ve been citing. None of the observers themselves, including Thallus or Phlegon, were friendly to Christianity. So theirs were essentially the observations of hostile witnesses. As such, when they confirm details of the Biblical account their testimony of Jesus’ life has even greater weight. If they thought that Jesus was a fraud or a fabrication it would have been very easy for them just to not mention him. RD: And one more point to note before we close. In these episodes we haven’t been able to cover all the extra-Biblical sources that there are that confirm Jesus’ life, ministry, and death. There’s a book called The Historical Jesus by Dr. Gary Habermas that contains a much more exhaustive treatment of this subject. VK: And – again – we wanted to point listeners to all these resources, including the links we put on our podcast notes, to enable them to continue their own studies about the life and ministry of Jesus. As we said at the start of this episode, to answer the question “why am I here,” we need to understand why any of us are here. And how we got here. Those questions are directly related to what we think about God and Jesus. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of the One who leads into a knowledge of truth, the Holy Spirit. ---- Prayer for Adoration of the Holy Spirit VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ https://alwaysbeready.com/extrabiblical-historical-sources-corroborate-the-bible/ https://crossexamined.org/why-should-we-trust-the-extra-biblical-references-to-jesus/

Episode 187 – Jesus Beyond the Bible Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf. Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time barista. He turns on the coffee maker and puts in those little cups. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are continuing our series where we focus on the earthly birth and life of Jesus. In today’s culture, it seems as though just about everybody has heard about Jesus, but fewer and fewer people actually know much about him. Do you agree with that RD? RD: Yes. Jesus’ name is certainly well known in modern culture but unfortunately there is as much or more misinformation that circulates about him than there is actual fact. I’m afraid that more people get there information about Jesus more by watching television specials or dramatized movies than they do from reading the Bible or studying the many fine, well-documented books and articles that have been produced by excellent Christian scholars through the years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that for those who are truly interested in knowing the actual, historical Jesus it’s probably easier today than any time in history to get accurate information. But you do have to be careful about the sources you use. VK: So, today we want to continue to provide the listeners to Anchored by Truth with a head start on doing their own study about Jesus. As you have so often said, Jesus is the centerpiece of both the Bible and the plan of redemption. So, to be confident not only in our own faith but to help those who are still looking for anchors for their own lives it’s imperative we know the real Jesus of the Bible. But before we get too deep into our discussion how about telling us a little about the Christmas poem that we’re going to continue today? RD: I’d love to. As I mentioned in an earlier episode of Anchored by Truth, years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote this piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. That story became The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest. It was about a group of koala bears who had gone on a quest to the far north to find their creator that they called The Great While Koala Bear. The bears never found their creator but they did find a golden tree in the artic that made a valley a perfect place for them to live. Well, later on I created a new story that I called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma and we’ve followed that up now with another Golden Tree story – the Frost Lion. In part one of Frost Lion that we heard on our last episode we’ve learned that there are two young bears confronting a dilemma they believe might threaten their village. From a vantage point at the top of a tall hill near their town they have seen a strange shape out on the distant snow – but they don’t know who or what the shape is. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part two of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part 2 VK: The drama is now building. What we’ve heard is that bears have enjoyed the peace and plenty in the valley for generations but now a new bear from a strange land is in their midst – and that bear is very near death. Worse this new bear has a friend who is still lost in the deep winter snow and may already have died. So, the bears are learning - just like in the real world – that there are always unexpected events in this world that may require us to respond. And it may take real courage to confront those events … RD: And commitment and sacrifice... VK: And it’s hard to have those virtues if we don’t know why we’ve been sent on our own quests, isn’t it? I mean, God’s grace has saved us just like the Golden Tree saved the bears. But as the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians they had to. “work hard to show the results of [their] salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in [them and us], giving [them and us]the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” God’s grace saves us but our sanctification requires effort on our part. RD: Right. The old song there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to “trust and obey.” Part of that obedience is to be able to tell others why we believe that Jesus was qualified to be our savior. And that starts with us being assured that Jesus was a real, historical figure – not a myth or some kind of pious concoction. In our day and age one of the semi-criticisms that’s hurled against the Christian faith is that the Jesus that Christians worship is either a mythological figure or – if he even existed – that we can’t trust the gospel accounts for information about him. VK: But the truth is that Jesus was a real person. And we see that from passages like the ones we used for our opening scriptures. In these passages we can see that the Bible tells us specific facts about Jesus like where he was born – in Bethlehem – and when – during the reign of a king named Herod. But beyond even what scripture tells us Jesus life is a fact that is even confirmed by sources outside the Bible isn’t it? And that’s what you wanted to focus on today, right – the fact that we have historical sources besides the Bible that confirm Jesus’ historicity and even confirm many of the details contained in the gospels about his life, death, and circumstances? RD: Right. In some earlier episodes of Anchored by Truth we’ve discussed the fact that you can use the existence of the physical universe and apply logic and reason to come to the conclusion that there is a self-existent being responsible for the creation of the universe and of living creatures. But that line of reasoning can only carry you so far in an understanding of God and it would give us almost no information about other attributes that are essential parts of the Christian faith such as the plan of redemption or Jesus’ role in it. For that, we need a special revelation from that self-existent being – God – and fortunately we have that in the Bible. But we need to be persuaded that that revelation is true and reliable and once again logic, reason, and evidence can play a role in validating the Bible’s claim that it is the inspired Word of God. And that’s where extra biblical sources can be helpful. Such sources don’t add anything to the Bible, but they can add to our individual confidence that the Bible is describing history accurately when it speaks of historical events. VK: So, today you want to take a brief look at some other historical sources that also confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure. You know when you think about it, it’s remarkable that there would be any other surviving sources outside the Bible who would mention Jesus. In his day and time – if Jesus hadn’t been the Son of God – he would have been just another obscure and unimportant itinerant preacher that had a brief public ministry in a distant Roman province. He never led an army, held a prominent government or political position, or even wrote a book. Plus, his public ministry only lasted about 3 years and he didn’t travel all that widely. His public ministry was all conducted within 100 miles of his home. And he died the death of a common criminal. So, if Jesus wasn’t who he claimed to be – the Son of the Almighty God – he should have faded from the pages of history as just another local crank. But he didn’t. He’s mentioned by some of the most important historians of his age, men who had far more earthly distinction that he did. Where do you want to start? RD: Let’s start by talking about a few examples of well-known Roman historians who are widely regarded as having written important histories of the Roman Empire and conquests. The examples that we’re going to use today came from an article available on the website coldcasechristianity.com entitled “is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible.” We’ll put a link to the article on the notes that accompany the podcast version of this show. But these examples are all widely known and can be found in any number of historical reference sources. So the first example we want to use is a quote from Cornelius Tacitus was well known for his analysis and examination of historical documents and is among the most trusted of ancient historians. He was a senator under Emperor Vespasian and was also proconsul of Asia. In his “Annals’ of 116 AD, he describes the Roman Emperor Nero’s response to the great fire in Rome and Nero’s claim that the Christians were to blame: “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.” So, in this account, Tacitus confirms that there was a man who lived in Judea, was known as Christ, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and who had followers who called themselves by his name and were persecuted for following him. VK: Well, this account is helpful because it directly confirms a number of details directly about Jesus. But it’s also important for another reason, isn’t it? A few episodes ago we talked about the fact that Luke and the other gospel writers were meticulous when it came to their historical recording and reporting. So much so that they got some obscure details right, even when other ancient historians got them wrong. So, this quote from Tacitus helps illustrate that point too, doesn’t it. RD: Very good. That’s pretty impressive. You noticed that Tacitus called Pontius Pilate the procurator of Judea not the prefect. VK: Thank you. I try. RD: And you’re absolutely right. As good a historian as Tacitus was he was human and in this case he did make a mistake. He got Pilate’s title wrong. For many years there were questions about the existence and the actual title of Pontius Pilate—the Roman governor who presided over the trial of Jesus. Later Roman writers, as well as almost all Bible reference works, referred to Pilate as the “procurator” of Judea but Luke and the other gospel writers called Pilate a “governor;” not a procurator. The fact that “governor” was the correct title was confirmed in 1961, when a two by three foot stone was discovered that had a Latin inscription. The translation of the inscription reads as follows: Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberieum to the Caesareans. This find was not only archaeological confirmation for the existence of Pilate but it was also confirmation that Pilate was the Prefect, or governor, of Judea. VK: In fact, we now know that the title “Procurator” was not used at the time of Jesus’ trial for the Roman governors. This title only came into usage at a later time, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, A.D. 41-54. During Claudius’ reign the title of the Roman governors shifted from Prefect to Procurator. So although Tacitus was correct about the title in use for the Roman governor of Judea at the time he wrote – about 60 years later - strictly speaking that was not Pilate’s actual title when he supervised the trial and execution of Jesus. Pilate was a prefect, a governor, not a procurator – a fact the Bible writers got right. So, who’s next on the list of extra-Biblical writers? RD: Well, before we close for today we should probably take a quick look at one of the most famous of the ancient historians, Josephus, because he lived so close to the time of Jesus and during the period of early church’s formation. Josephus lived from 37 AD to 101 AD. The most widely accepted year for the crucifixion is 33 AD so he was born just four years after the crucifixion. He wrote an extensive history of the Jews in 93 AD called “the Antiquities of the Jews.” So today when you see people referring to it you often just hear people call it “Antiquities.” Josephus wrote about Jesus in more detail than any other non-biblical historian and Josephus himself was a really interesting character. He was a consultant for Jewish rabbis and became a Galilean military commander by the age of sixteen. He was an eyewitness to much of what he recorded in the first century A.D. As a Jewish military leader he initially fought against the Romans but later surrendered and he eventually became an adviser to the Roman emperor Vespasian. Under Vespasian, Josephus was allowed to write a history of the Jews. This history includes three passages about Christians, one in which he describes the death of John the Baptist, one in which he mentions the execution of James (and describes him as the brother of Jesus the Christ), and a final passage which describes Jesus as a wise man and the messiah. There is some legitimate controversy about the writing of Josephus, because of the timing of the discovery of his writing but why don’t you read a conservative scholarly reconstruction of one of Josephus’ most famous passages. VK: “Now around this time lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accept the truth. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, (but) those who had first loved him did not cease (doing so). To this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared.” RD: Now there are some other ancient versions of Josephus’ writing which are even more explicit about the nature of Jesus’ miracles, life and his status as the Christ, but from even this conservative version we can conclude: Jesus lived in Palestine, was a wise man and a teacher, worked amazing deeds, was accused by the Jews, crucified under Pilate and had followers called Christians. Josephus’ observations are particularly compelling because at the time he wrote he was very close in terms of timing to when Jesus lived. Even though he wasn’t like the apostles who actually walked with Jesus he could see around him the effect of the early church’s spreading and he may even have had the opportunity to talk to Jews who had been in and around Judea when Jesus had his public ministry. VK: Well, those two examples are a good introduction to the fact that Jesus’ earthly life has confirmation outside the Bible. Next time we can take up a few more examples but before we close for today a few general observations would seem to be in order. And you said that the early church itself is a confirmation that Jesus was a real, historical figure? RD: Exactly. VK: I’m surprised you didn’t say what you do in some of the Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo … RD: Ok. Exactamundo. Anyway, there is no dispute that in the first century AD Christians and the Christian church began to be an issue within the Roman Empire. They were so widely known that the emperor Nero blamed the great fire of Rome on them. Well, it would be impossible to explain the spread of a movement if there wasn’t something or someone who started the movement. Remember that the Romans weren’t known for being timid administrators of their provincial empire and in the first century AD they certainly weren’t friendly to Christians. So, something remarkable must have happened in the early part of the first century AD in Judea that animated so many people to continue carrying the same message throughout the empire despite the official opposition they encountered everywhere. There are two simple reasons for this phenomena. First, they were persuaded something truly remarkable had happened. A dead man had risen from the grave and walked around for 40 days. And second, they had a source of support and strength – the Holy Spirit – who sustained them as they carried their message to a world that needed it but didn’t want it. VK: Well, all that makes perfect sense. As Paul said to the Romans the same power that raised Jesus from the dead also empowers us and gives us the ability to carry on in his name. Sounds like a perfect time to go to prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ https://alwaysbeready.com/extrabiblical-historical-sources-corroborate-the-bible/ https://crossexamined.org/why-should-we-trust-the-extra-biblical-references-to-jesus/

Episode 186 – A Necessary God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time poet. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are going to begin a new series where we focus on the central figure of the entire Bible: Jesus. That seems appropriate as we come to the time of year when we celebrate the Lord’s birth, doesn’t it RD? RD: Well, Christmas is certainly a time of the year when people begin to more naturally think about Jesus because the reminders of him start to appear more and more around us every day. But, of course, it’s important to remember that we really should focus on Jesus every day of the year. For Christians, Jesus should be the focus of our daily lives. And actually throughout our lives we should be on a quest to get to know God better each day that is granted to us. VK: I agree with that. So, today we’re going to start listening to a new Crystal Sea story. This time it’s one of our rhymed pieces that you wrote as a Christmas epic poem. This is actually the second installment of a story that you began a long time ago. You said you originally wrote the first installment because you wanted to give it as a gift to some co-workers? RD: I did. Years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote a piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. VK: And then a few years ago you decided that the story needed to continue so you wrote the next installment of what is going to be, when completed, a poetic trilogy. The story began in Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Komari’s Quest. The story continued in The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. Today, we are beginning the final part of the trilogy. Here is part one of The Golden Tree, The Frost Lion. ---- The Golden Tree: The Frost Lion – Part I VK: I really like some of the lines from that part. “Where the lights soared in the vault overhead and proclaimed indescribable glory as if the heavens could not but proclaim their omnipotent Creator's story.” Not only are the lines lyrical but they also evoke such clear imagery. I can imagine kids sitting around their mom and dad … RD: Or grandmother and grandfather... VK: Or grandparents and listening to this recording with them - just like families used to sit around and listen to someone read The Night Before Christmas. Of course, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to put this poem out there. To give families an entertaining story that also would allow parents to discuss their faith with their kids. RD: Exactly. There are so many questionable choices these days that are advertised as being “family friendly” but they are based on a secularist view of the world. We wanted to be sure that there was a story that was available for “fireside” listening that directed everyone’s attention to the real “reason for the season.” VK: Well, there are a total of seven parts to Golden Tree: The Frost Lion. So, for the next six weeks we’ll be letting the story unfold as we continue to unpack insights into how the Bible is such an integral part of being able to frame a coherent world view. I mean the two fundamental attributes that you believe would have to characterize any book that would constitute a genuine special revelation of God are that that revelation would have to be consistent with the created order as it is observable by creatures within it – essentially us. And that revelation would have to display supernatural origin. RD: Right. As hard – or as exciting – as it may be to comprehend empirical observations, combined with logic, tell us that the visible universe does not – indeed cannot – provide an explanation for its own existence. The universe, as grand and vast as it is, has all the fingerprints of having a beginning in space and time. Also, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, tells us that it will have an ending. Anything that has a limited life span, no matter how long some people might conceive that light span to be, cannot be self-existent. Only a self-existent being or entity can account for its own existence or the existence of anything else. Some philosophers use the terms Necessary Being and Contingent Beings to describe the difference between the two. VK: And since the universe is not eternal it looks very much like it is contingent on something or someone outside itself to account for its existence – a Necessary Being upon which it is dependent. And we call that Necessary Being God. So just like the bears in our story when we see the northern lights or stars twinkling in a deep night sky we can know that that the starlight - and the night sky and especially our ability to see and understand all that grandeur - points to the need for a Creator. And we’ve seen that the bears we’ve just met aren’t the first bears who have lived in this land. It was actually their ancestors who left their home and shortly we’ll learn they were searching for the lair and throne of their Creator – who they thought of as the Great White Bear. RD: Yes. I think the symbolism for the story is already pretty plain but I would like to point out one thing - and that’s what I want to spend some time on today – is that the bears who set out on their quest wouldn’t ever have started out if they weren’t convinced that the Great White Bear existed. And that’s one of the problems that we see reflected so clearly in today’s very relativistic culture. Too many - far, far, far too many people today, both inside the church and out, are defeated in their own quests because they have been misled to believe that there is no Creator – no Great White Bear if you will. As a result, they see the world as fundamentally being either chaotic at best or outright meaningless at worst. VK: I think you need to expand on that thought a bit. You’re saying that God isn’t just a logical necessity to explain the existence of a contingent universe, but that an awareness of God is an essential component of us being able to comprehend our place in that universe? RD: To quote what I say in some of our humorous Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo. VK: So you’re quoting yourself. Sounds like something only a writer would do… RD: Again, exactamundo. Anyway as the eminent theologian RC Sproul used to say, “Ideas have consequences.” The idea that the universe was framed by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and holy God carried with it the inextricable notion that the universe has been created intentionally and for a purpose. As such the universe would display design and order and the intelligent creatures within that universe – us – could perceive that design and order. VK: And that very concept formed the foundation for what we think of as science today. And that’s why many of the founders of modern science – like Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur were strong Christians. They were convinced that there was design, order, and logic in universe because the universe had been made by a being that was supremely purposeful and logical. As such, they were encouraged to go and discover that order and use the results of it to improve the lives of the people around them. Or said a little differently they were encouraged to go on their own quests to discover more about the creation and thereby appreciate even more the Creator. RD: So all that made perfect sense. If the universe had been created by a God of order, logic, and purpose then creation would be comprehensible. Those early giants of science took seriously the Biblical statement that man had been made in the image of God, so they felt sure that God would bless their efforts at applying themselves to understand what he had created. But one of the tragic effects of the success of their work and the amazing results they achieved is that over time – and now we’re talking about centuries not decades – the work of science became divorced from the original source of the inspiration for them to do the work. Scientists – not all, but a great many – became convinced that it was possible to understand creation while ignoring the Creator. VK: Or said slightly differently, they sought the blessing without regard to the Blesser. So, one of the points you’re making is that somewhere along the journey – the quest – for discovery, a lot of people forgot why the journey was begun in the first place. And that is reflected in our society and culture today. RD: Yes. And Christmas is a great example of that same phenomenon happening in our calendar and celebration of the common understanding that was the foundation of our communities. The word “Christmas” obviously derives from the words “Christ” and “mass.” And one of the big reasons that gift exchanges became a part of the celebration was in commemoration of the great gift that God had given the world in the birth of Jesus. And, of course, the whole reason that God gave us the gift of Jesus was because after the fall in the garden of Eden God had begun his great plan of redemption. So, in a very real way the history of all of mankind gives evidence of God’s plan unfolding in exactly the way God intended. VK: And you believe that even some of the more tragic of the things that we see around us provides evidence for the existence of God and the truth of scripture? RD: Yes. C.S. Lewis noted that one of the things that convinced him to become a Christian was that he couldn’t get over the idea that some things were right and some things were wrong. But then he realized for that idea to make sense – that there’s a difference between right and wrong – he had to have an explanation for where that idea came from. Why did he think that there was a real distinction? Of course, the only logical conclusion was because there was a Being – a God somewhere – who had established the whole moral and ethical scheme to begin with. That’s just as true today as it has ever been. VK: That’s a pretty remarkable idea when you think about it. The very notion that we have ethical sensibilities to begin with is dependent on there being a real difference between right and wrong. And not just a matter of personal convenience like preferring squash to broccoli. When people begin to assert that something is wrong they don’t just mean that they find it inconvenient. They mean that there is a determinable ethical distinction that compels – or should compel – our behavior. And we all know that. Anyone who doesn’t know that there is a difference between right and wrong we would describe as a sociopath. RD: And we would have good reason for doing so. Now in saying this we’re not saying that there is universal agreement on the precise details of what’s right or wrong and different societies at different times have arrived at varying conclusions about the specifics. But there’s never been a society that didn’t make some kind of a distinction regardless of what they did with the specifics. In some cultures the distinctions might have been ones that we would consider trivial – like acceptable dress for women and men. In other they would have been more profound or serious – like the relationship between a government and its people or whether private ownership of property is permitted or prohibited. The rules have varied but every culture, tribe, and nation has had rules of some sort. VK: And pretty much all people everywhere know that they have – at one point or another – violated those rules. Written or unwritten. Government or cultural. Religious or secular. We have an inherent awareness that as moral and ethical agents we have certain obligations that we are subject to. So we see that not only is there a physical order to the physical universe there is also an ethical order that applies to us as people. But without there being a God, a holy and purposive God, we would have no reasonable explanation for the existence either of the obligation or the sense that we need to be accountable the obligation. And that same sense that tells us that we are subject to the obligation tells us that we have all fallen short. RD: Right. We all know that we’re not perfect, but to know that means we know that somewhere there is a standard against which that determination can meaningfully be made. That’s why Jesus had to come and why the Christian claim that Jesus was perfect, was sinless, is so essential. Again, to refer to Sproul again, RC used to say that if he was in a discussion with someone who just refused to acknowledge the existence of God, one of the final questions he would ask such people is what they did with their guilt. VK: And we all have guilt. And some of us feel it far more keenly than others. If we don’t have Jesus, if we don’t know Jesus, then we’re the only ones who can shoulder that guilt. But the moment we understand that the Perfect Man, Jesus, has willingly taken our guilt onto his own shoulders, we can start to become free of that guilt. And that’s one of the keys to beginning and completing our own quests through life. As we talked about a long time ago on Anchored by Truth, understanding the Bible provides context and meaning to our lives. Knowing that God himself made a provision for our imperfection removes the need for us to continue to feel guilty forever. Knowing that Jesus is our savior is the truth that sets us free. RD: And that’s one of the things we really want to focus on as the days unwind toward Christmas. We want to take a close look at how we can be sure that Jesus isn’t a mythological figure, but instead is a real person who was born, walked and lived at a specific place and time, and died. But then he demonstrated that he was God’s atoning gift by walking out of the grave and appearing to a group of women first and then to his disciples. If Jesus wasn’t a real person who did those things we would have absolutely no hope for being justified before a perfectly holy God. A mythological figure, no matter how charming, couldn’t save anyone. But Jesus did and does. So, as we conduct our own quests through life, if we’re pursuing worthwhile ends we can be confident that they aren’t futile. There is a meaning to our individual lives even when those lives are set against the backdrop of an unimaginably grand cosmos. The Bible and Jesus give us that meaning. As Augustine famously said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” VK: Sounds like it’s a great time to have a prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine, Confessions https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/ourheartisrestlessuntilitrestsinyou/ https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/reforming-apologetics-common-notions/

Downeast Mike Episode 45 *News & Commentary* July 18th, 2022 | In today's episode: Our Motto: Some of this is whimsy – some of this is true – the interpretation of it all is entirely up to you! Today is Monday, July 18th, 2022 In today's episode: Headlines: Dizzy Dean, John Lennon, Khadafy (July 18th, 1974) Abominable Snowman (July 18th, 1974) Haymakers Cooling Drink (July 18th, 1884) Maine's Timely Tree. Thank you for listening! Please send your birthday wishes, comments and requests to mike(@)downeastmike.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/frank-w-norwood/support

In this bilingual episode (Cornish and English), Kensa Broadhurst (PhD Student, Exeter University) interviews Mark Trevethan (Cornish Language Lead, Cornwall Council). They discuss what Mark's role involves, the fantastic projects going on surrounding Cornish and his hopes and plans for the future. They also talk about Mark's collaborations with those who work to promote other Celtic languages. This episode was recorded in April 2022. Host: Kensa Broadhurst Guest: Mark Trevethan Languages: Cornish and English Music: “Kesh Jig, Leitrim Fancy” by Sláinte, CC BY-SA 3.0 US (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/), available from freemusicarchive.org. Links to initiatives, organisations and people mentioned in the episode: The Cornwall Council Cornish Language Office and Translation Service: Cornish Language Office - Cornwall Council Online Cornish Dictionary: Gerlyver Kernewek | (cornishdictionary.org.uk) FylmK - Cornish language short film competition: FylmK — Screen Cornwall Gwenno (Saunders) - Welsh/Cornish language singer: Gwenno IndyLan - minority language app launched earlier this year: E.N.T.E.R. Projects - IndyLan (enter-network.eu) Holyer an Gof - book awards for books about Cornwall run by Gorsedh Kernow: Holyer an Gof Publishers' Awards - Gorsedh Kernow An Nowodhow - weekly news programme in Cornish on BBC Radio Cornwall: BBC Sounds - An Nowodhow, the news in Cornish - Available Episodes Go Cornish, part of the company Golden Tree. Runs an award programme for Primary Schools which encourages them to both teach Cornish and embed it throughout their whole school provision: Go Cornish - Having fun with the Cornish language Radyo an Gernewegva - a weekly radio show in Cornish: Home - Radyo An Gernewegva (anradyo.com) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/celticstudents/message

The Golden Tree joins forces with members of the Supernatural Victims Unit to keep the city of AGMAR safe. While Valeska, Selv, Char, and Harrison patrol the streets, they find themselves blindsided by a wave of isolation that chills them to their very core.

The Golden Tree guild's administrator decides to invite her new guildmates down to Torts and Ports, the local watering hole. This local bakery by day, fully-stocked bar by night, is just down the street from the guild hall, and promises to be the location of many delicious pastries and terrible decisions for our party while they're in AGMAR.Come check out all the people that made this possible! https://www.recklessattack.com/contact/ Like the show? Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/recklessattack

Episode 140 – Jesus Solves the Enigma Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event lighting technician. He straightens out the cords on the Christmas lights before we put them up. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to finish up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we’re going to hear the last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. When we left off last time Kodan, one three bears that were searching in the arctic for the lair of the Great White Koala Bear, had made a decision to ride a huge ice eagle. Kodan decided he had to ride an ice eagle because the three bears were trying to reach city of gold they could see on the other side of an un-crossable canyon. Kodan had had to choose between a gold eagle with blue eyes or a white eagle with black eyes. He knew that one of the eagles would help him but the other eagle was a servant of the demon lord. But just from appearances he could not tell which was which. So essentially he and his traveling companions, Koru and Kojon, were facing a giant enigma, right RD? RD: Well, they were facing multiple enigmas. They could see a gleaming city on the other side of the canyon but was that the home of the Great White Bear? And how could they cross the canyon to find out? Kodan, has figured out that the ice eagles they’ve encountered on the edge of the great gap could give them a ride across but which one – the gold eagle or the white eagle? So, Kodan had posed two questions to both eagles to try to figure out which was the good eagle and which was the evil eagle. After hearing their answers Kodan chose the gold eagle. The gold eagle picked up Kodan but after flying into the sky the gold eagle dropped Kodan over the middle of the canyon. As we closed last time Kodan is falling through the sky so Koru and Kojon have left their hiding place to go try riding with the white eagle. VK: So, it’s time to find out what happens to Kodan, and his two travelling companions in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 7 VK: So, Kodan had chosen the right eagle to fly with. But I think many listeners are wondering how he knew which of the birds served the Great White Bear and which served the Demon Lord. Obviously, Kodan knew by listening to the answers to the questions but what exactly did the two eagles say that enabled Kodan to solve the enigma correctly? RD: Well, we should start by telling listeners who haven’t heard the previous episodes that for the last six weeks we have been playing one section of Eagle Enigma during each episode of Anchored by Truth. And since Anchored by Truth is available on most major podcasting apps listeners who want to hear those episodes can do so at any time. The titles of those episodes were Jesus Attributes were not Borrowed and Jesus: The Dividing Line of History. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time today to repeat those portions of the poem. But listeners who would like to hear the exact responses the eagles gave to Kodan’s questions can hear parts 5 and 6 of Eagle Enigma in those two episodes of Anchored by Truth. VK: And just as a reminder as of the time of the production of this broadcast and podcast in late 2021 Eagle Enigma has not yet been made available for commercial release but that will happen in the early part of 2022. RD: That’s a good note. So, to begin to answer the question as to how Kodan chose the gold eagle let’s remind everyone of the two different questions Kodan posed to the eagles. The first question Kodan asked was, “Great White Eagle, if I fly with you where will you set my feet?" VK: And the white eagle said, I’m paraphrasing, “You’ve had a hard journey to get to this place. Fly with me and I’ll take you the rest of the way to the city of gold.” Whereas the gold eagle said, “I’m going to take you home. You have years left to live. And the gold eagle finished by saying, I’m quoting now, “There’s much to this world you can give.” RD: Right. So, in answer to Kodan’s first question the white eagle essentially said, “I’ll give you the easy way out” whereas the gold eagle said, “there is work left to do and all I’m promising is to give you the chance to finish it.” So, the first clue to Kodan that the white eagle was serving the demon lord was the white eagle’s promise that there was a short cut to the bears achieving their goal. Now, of course this kind of an answer was very appealing, but unfortunately the promise of short cuts and easy way outs is far more often characteristic of sin than sanctification. VK: That was essentially what Satan offered Jesus when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. There are two accounts of those temptations – one in the Gospel of Matthew and one in the Gospel of Luke. The first temptation in Matthew was for Jesus to turn stones into bread after Jesus had been fasting for 40 days. The second Matthew temptation was for Jesus to prove that he was truly the Son of God by hurling himself off the highest point of temple and let the angels catch him before he hit the rocks below. And the third temptation in Matthew was that Satan would give Jesus the right to rule the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just kneel down and worship Satan. RD: Right. So, in the three temptations Satan was essentially offering Jesus short cuts to achieving legitimate goals. Jesus was hungry so Satan said just use your power and make bread out of stones. Jesus, you’re God’s son and so God will make sure the angels protect you. Jesus, you’re destined to be a sovereign but rather than take your rightful place by completing the work God gave you, just worship me and I’ll give you power, position, and prestige. In each temptation part of the temptation was for Jesus to take the easy way out. In effect, Satan was offering Jesus a crown without the cross. VK: That calls to mind a line out of the West Point cadet prayer that you mentioned to me a long time ago. The line says, “O God, our Father … Make us choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.” RD: Exactly. The white eagle was offering a half truth. The bears had struggled mightily to get to the canyon and they were tired and in need of relief. They deserved help and the gold eagle was willing to offer that help. But the help was to return them to their village where their new insights and strength could do the rest of the village some good. The white eagle was – insincerely – offering to relieve their burden rather than to help them bear it. VK: And that calls to mind Jesus saying in Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28 and 29 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus’ promise is to help us bear our burdens not merely to dismiss them from our lives. RD: Exactly right. That was one way Kodan knew the gold eagle was telling the truth. The gold eagle didn’t just offer an easy way out of their plight. VK: So, the second question Kodan asked was, “Great White Eagle, you know why we've come to this chasm beneath your sky. Tell me now about the tree, how it came to be and why." How did the white eagle’s answer to this question reinforce the fact that he was lying to the bears? RD: Because when the white eagle answered this question the white eagle told Kodan that the blessings the bears enjoyed in the valley was all about them. The white eagle completely ignored the role the golden tree played. Whereas the gold eagle immediately reminded Kodan that the golden tree had been a gift to the bears from the Creator. In other words, the white eagle turned the bears’ attention to themselves. The gold eagle turned their attention to God. In The Golden Tree series, the golden tree represents the Holy Spirit who was the gift that the Father gave to the world after Jesus returned to heaven. That’s what the gold eagle reminded Kodan in the poem’s lines that say, “The golden tree was the gift that He gave to abide until He returns. It does not depend on you or me for the life that within it burns." VK: That’s a really important point. As Christians we can get so caught up in struggling to be good believers, good workers, or good parents or family members that we can forget to turn to the Lord to support us and depend on the Lord to provide for us. There’s nothing wrong with hard work but ultimately if we think that our lives and destinies on this earth are all about us we are in danger of relying on our strength rather than the Lord’s. RD: Right. And again our model in how to approach struggles and temptations is Christ in his confrontation with Satan. Even Jesus didn’t depend on Himself to respond to Satan. The first thing Jesus did was to quote scripture to Satan. VK: And most people may not realize that all of the quotes Jesus used came from probably one of the least well-known books in the Bible, Deuteronomy. Christ quoted Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verse 3 in response to the first temptation, Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 16 in response to the second temptation, and Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 13 in response to the third temptation. This certainly reinforces the need to study the entire Bible. Jesus certainly knew all of the Old Testament and used it in his life. RD: Yes. Now it’s probably important here to note that we’ve been using the order of temptations presented in the Gospel of Matthew. Luke reverses the order of the 2nd and 3rd temptations. Luke recounts the same temptations. He just uses a different order when presenting them in his account. VK: Isn’t that a problem? Doesn’t that mean that there is a conflict between the two accounts of the temptations? RD: There is certainly a difference in how the two gospelists chose to make their reports about the temptations but the different order of reporting the temptations doesn’t affect the trustworthiness of the accounts. When making his report Matthew used adverbs and conjunctions that are more indicative of chronological order than Luke’s. Matthew says this happened and then this next thing happened. Luke uses words that essentially translate to “and” rather like the report of someone who attends a football game and says “we got autographs from the players and hot dogs.” The spectator may very well have gotten their hot dogs during the game and the autographs after the game. But when they told others about the game getting the autographs was more important to them so they reported it first. For some reason Luke seems to have thought that the temptation to hurl himself off the temple and be caught by angels was of greater importance in demonstrating Jesus’ divinity than becoming the earthly ruler of several kingdoms. VK: Well, when Satan tempted Jesus to accept earthly authority from him that wouldn’t necessarily have been a demonstration of something supernatural. But, if Jesus had hurled himself from the temple and angels intercepted him in the air, that clearly would have been something supernatural. It may be that Luke just thought a clearly supernatural act was the more momentous of the two temptations. RD: And that’s what many scholars believe. Anyone interested in a more thorough discussion of the order of the temptations can consult Dr. Gleason Archer’s book An Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. At any rate, in Eagle Enigma, Kodan was wise enough to recognize the example that Jesus set. When we are tempted or have a difficult decision to make our first impulse should be to turn to the Lord. Jesus’ response to the first temptation to turn the stones into bread was to redirect Satan’s attention back to God. And in the next two responses Jesus clarified that turning to God involves having an appropriate relationship with him. Jesus reminded Satan that we are permitted to put God to the test and that our worship is restricted to God alone. VK: People may not think that they’re testing God but that’s exactly what they do when they say things like “if God doesn’t do such and such a thing for me then I won’t believe in him anymore.” The thing we want may be perfectly reasonable and even understandable like healing for ourselves or a loved one. But we can’t condition our relationship with the Lord on demands that we present to Him. This calls to mind the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verse 24 when Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman. Jesus said, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” RD: Right. Part of worshipping truthfully is recognizing that the Lord is sovereign and we are not. Even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for the Father’s will to be done and not his own. So, Kodan recognized that the white eagle was trying to make Kodan, his friends, and the bears the center of attention. The gold eagle was trying to make God, the gift giver, the center of attention. The white eagle told Kodan the bears should take credit for the blessings they had in their lives. The gold eagle reminded the bears that the Golden Tree and all their blessings had been bestowed on them by a truly loving Creator. VK: And that calls to mind James, chapter 1, verse 17. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” So, in essence what you’re saying is that Biblically based wisdom was the basis for Kodan making the correct choice about which eagle to trust. I guess you could say Jesus was the solution to the enigma facing the bears. RD: Yes. And Jesus is the solution to our own enigmas. Turning to Jesus should be our first response but all too often I fear it’s our last resort. I always wince a little when I hear people say “the only thing I can do for you is to pray.” VK: Because as you say in your book Purposeful Prayers “the whispered prayer that stirs the hand of God dwarfs the most powerful force in the universe.” RD: Yes. Kodan asked questions of the eagles to determine where the eagles placed their trust. Anyone or anything that tempts you to place your trust in anything other than God cannot be of God. It’s not that we should not work hard to develop our own skills and abilities but we must keep them in proper perspective. VK: The Apostle Paul essentially affirmed this sentiment in the one of the best-known verses from the Bible: Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13. “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” RD: Exactly. In response to Kodan’s first question the white eagle tempted Kodan with the same kind of temptation Satan presented to Jesus. Satan tempted Jesus to take the easy way out to get food, prove he was the Son of God, and gain authority. In response to Kodan’s second question the white eagle tempted Kodan to place his trust in himself and his friends – while leaving God out of the equation. Those were sure signs to Kodan that the white eagle had not been sent by the Great White Bear. We should learn from Kodan’s example to be discerning when the world presents us with enigmas or opportunities. Jesus is our sure and certain guide in this world and the primary way Jesus imparts wisdom to us is through the Bible. That’s why we must become so familiar with the Bible that we can immediately discern things or events in our lives that tempt us to depart from its teaching. There are a lot of things that will come our way that may not seem to be harmful, in and of themselves, but we can see that it what they offer or tempt us to do will not be consistent with scripture. At my age I’ve learned that the most important skill we can develop is spiritual discernment and we can only get that from the Bible and developing a strong network of mature Christian friends. VK: And while Eagle Enigma doesn’t get into that level of detail it’s obvious from the poem that the bears had a strong regard for genuine wisdom and Kodan, Koru, and Kojon developed even more wisdom after their journey and their encounter with the gold eagle. I really like the closing stanza of the poem. “Joy was delivered to a waiting world on a night many centuries ago when I and my brothers appeared in the sky to shepherds who witnessed our glow.” Christ came to bring us not only joy and peace but “life more abundantly.” But how can we enjoy that abundant life if we don’t ensure that as we travel through life we stay as close as humanly possible to the author of all life, peace, and joy. Staying close to Jesus means reading the Bible, developing a strong prayer life, and staying connected to other believers who can bless us and who we can bless in turn. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to New Year’s Day let’s listen to a prayer for blessings to come to us in the new year. ---- Prayer for NEW YEAR’S DAY VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest, is available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, verses 8 through 10, New International Version

Episode 139 – Jesus’ Birth – The Dividing Line of History Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event librarian. He straightens up the books on the book shelves when one falls over. Today on Anchored by Truth we’re going to begin finishing up our current series where we have focused on the life and historicity of Jesus. And we’re going to hear the next-to-last installment of our seven part, epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. When we left off last time three bears that were searching for the lair of the Great White Koala Bear had come face-to-face with two huge ice eagles on the edge of an un-crossable canyon. So essentially they were facing a giant enigma, right RD? RD: Well, they were facing multiple enigmas. They could see a gleaming city on the other side of the canyon but was that the home of the Great White Bear? And how could they cross the canyon to find out? One of the bears who has gone on the quest, Kodan, has figured out that the ice eagles they’ve encountered on the edge of the great gap could give them a ride across but which one? One of the eagles is brilliantly white and the other is a shining gold. One of the eagles works for the demon lord and will surely kill them if they choose to ride with him, but which one? So, as we ended last time Kodan had posed a question to both eagles to try to figure out which was the good eagle and which was the evil eagle. Kodan has heard their answers but now he thinks he needs to ask one more question before he makes a final decision. VK: So, it’s time to find out what happens to Kodan, and his two travelling companions in this Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 6 VK: Wow. So, did Kodan choose the wrong eagle? It seems that way since the gold eagle picked up Kodan but then dropped him over the gap. And what about the other two bears? They went on their quest to try to help their village find another guardian for the Golden Tree. So, if they fail is their tree also doomed? Seems there are still a lot of unanswered questions. RD: Well, hopefully we’ll get the answers to all these questions next week since next week is part 7 and there’s only seven parts to this part of the Golden Tree saga. But part of what listeners should be listening for is why did Kodan pick the gold eagle and not the white eagle? What was it about the answers that the eagles gave to Kodan’s questions that made him lean one way or another? Maybe we’ll hear something about that next time too. VK: And that’s a great lesson for why listeners should grab some friends and family and encourage them to tune in. It would be a good starting point for a discussion in a family setting, or a church youth group, or a home-school study project. The story can help kids learn about poetry as a form of literature, and also see how their imagination can be an important tool in getting immersed in the Bible. RD: Right. Classically some of the greatest poetry ever written like Milton’s Paradise Lost was written under the inspiration of the Bible. We’ve lost some of that awareness but I firmly believe it can be reclaimed by again striving to honor the Lord in everything we do. VK: So, what’s on tap for today as we are right on Christmas’ doorstep? RD: I thought as our closeout topic for this series on Jesus it would be fitting to talk about the reason for the season: Christ’s birth. It’s been celebrated on December 25th for centuries, but unfortunately today even that fact has become a source of either criticism or else an outright attack on the historicity of Jesus. For instance, some critics will claim that the celebration of Christmas was an adaptation of the Roman festival of Saturnalia and that as such it casts doubt on the historicity of Jesus. VK: And it is true that the Roman celebration of the Roman god Saturn did occur around the same time on the Julian calendar. The celebration originally started on December 17th but it was eventually expanded so that it lasted until December 23rd. And there are certainly elements of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia that correspond to how we celebrate Christmas. Saturnalia included parties, giving gifts, and plenty of food and drink. Though, it did differ markedly in certain ways. A lot of the time Saturnalia probably resembled Mardi Gras more than Christmas. RD: And that’s because the Roman god, Saturn, was the god of abundance and plenty but he was also thought of as the god of dissipation and dissolution. And it’s also fair to say that some elements of the Christian celebration of Christmas were influenced by Saturnalia. In the fourth century AD, Pope Julius I (337–352) decided that Christ’s birthday should be celebrated on 25 December, around the same time as the Saturnalia celebrations. Some commentators have speculated that part of the reason why he chose this date may have been because he was trying to create a Christian alternative to Saturnalia. Another possibility may have been that in 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian had declared 25 December the birthdate of Sol Invictus and Julius I may have thought that he could attract more converts to Christianity by allowing them to continue to celebrate on the same day. So it’s fair to say that the way in which we celebrate Christmas was probably influenced by Saturnalia, but that is quite a different thing from saying that just because the Roman god Saturn was mythological or fictional that Jesus was also. That would be the classic example of a non sequitur. VK: Non Sequitur: a conclusion that does not necessarily follow. In other words it’s a logical fallacy to conclude that just because the god Saturn was a myth that Jesus must be a myth also just because there are some common elements in the way the two different figures were or are celebrated. RD: Exactly. VK: But, of course, that does raise the question of whether Pope Julius picked December 25th just because that was a time when there were already pagan celebrations going on, or whether there were other reasons for selecting that day? RD: And that is a great question. VK: I’m so glad you agree. So… RD: We need to start out by saying that the Bible does not tell us exactly when Jesus was born. As one scholar put it, “the early Christians were not so much concerned with the date of Christ’s birth, as the fact of his birth.” And for those people who would like to take an in-depth look at when Jesus was born, there’s a great little book called Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ by Harold W. Hoehner. Much of what we’re going to talk about now comes from his book. The first question we need to address is not the day Jesus was born but the year. VK: I think most people generally think that Jesus was born in 1 AD. Doesn’t AD stand for anno domini meaning the “year of the Lord?” RD: Yes, it does. And that was the original intent when a Scythian monk named Dionysius originally prepared a calendar for use by the Western church at the direction of Pope John I in 525 AD. Before that time the Alexandrian system of dating was being used but it used as it base the reign of Diocletian who was a persecutor of the early church. Dionysius did not want the reference date for the church to be based on a persecutor. So Dionysius used the Julian system, which had been established by Julius Caesar, for the organization of the year which ran from January 1st to December 31st. And the year 1 AD was set on January 1st of 754 A.U.C. – anno urbis conditae – from the founding of the city of Rome. At the time Jesus was thought to have been born on December 25th of the prior year. Remember that there is no “zero” year. The calendar goes straight from 1 BC (before Christ) to 1 AD. VK: But… RD: But subsequent scholarship has determined that Dionysius didn’t get the translation between the AUC system and the system based on Christ’s birth year right. As our scripture today from Matthew noted, King Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. At the time it was thought that Herod died in 754 AUC but we now know that the latest date for Herod’s death was 750 AUC. VK: So that would mean Jesus was actually born 4 or 5 years earlier than previously thought. So he was born in 4 or 5 BC, not December 25th of 1 BC. Interesting. RD: Yes. But it’s worth noting that scholars are not even agreed on that. VK: Because…? RD: Because we have two scriptures that serve as the outer boundaries for Jesus’ birth. According to Matthew Jesus could not have been born later than Herod’s death, but according to Luke Jesus was born after a census that had been taken by a Roman official named Quirinius. In Greek Quirinius would have been Kyrenius. Luke says that this was “This was the first census that took place while a Quirinius was governor of Syria.” One of the issues was there aren’t any clear records about when this census took place. Josephus does not mention a census that took place during Herod’s reign but he does mention one that took place in 6 or 7 AD. So scholars are not unified on the date that this previous census might have taken place. This is one of the more puzzling questions that still linger about the birth of Jesus. VK: So, does Dr. Hoehner discuss this question in his book? RD: He does and there is actually a wealth of discussion available from many sources on this first census of Quirinius. Here are a few things we know for certain. The Romans were well known to take censuses throughout their empire to establish what we might call the basis for taxation and it was common for them to take them about every 14 years. Second, the text from Luke that says that Quirinius was the governor of Syria does not actually use the normal word, legatus, that is translated as “governor.” It uses a more generalized term for being in charge or leading. Third, we know that Quirinius was in the mid-East from 12 B.C. to 2 B.C. successively suppressing rebellions taking place in modern day Turkey. Apparently, Quirinius was well known as a successful military leader. VK: So, it would make sense that he was given charge of an important task of taking a census even if was done as an extra duty. Also, it would make sense that Augustus would want a census taken in that part of the empire because Herod had fallen out of favor with Augustus around 7 or 8 BC and by then it was known that his health was failing and that his sons were quarrelling over who would succeed him. Herod changed his will 3 times in the year before his death, each time naming a different son. Augustus knew about the changes and the quarrels because Herod had to get Augustus’ permission before making the changes. RD: Or executing one of his sons which Herod also did – again with Augustus’ knowledge and consent. VK: So that helps show that Herod was the kind of a king who would order the murder of all boys, 2 years old and under, in and around Bethlehem to get rid of a child the Magi had described the “king of the Jews.” So, it looks very much like Quirinius might have been in charge of a census sometime in the latter part of Herod’s reign around 5 BC. Herod died in 4 BC. But, what about the specific day? Did Pope Julius just pick that day because it roughly corresponded with Saturnalia? RD: We can’t be entirely sure why Pope Julius picked December 25th but the traditional date for Jesus’ birth had been around for at least 100 or 150 years before he set it officially within the church calendar. At a minimum an early church father named Hippolytus of Rome (ca 165-235 AD) had proposed that date. It is thought that Hippolytus might have had some greater insight about Jesus because he was associated with one of the early disciples of the Apostle John. There’s not a lot of information in scripture itself to pin down the date, but the tradition of a midwinter date for his birth does date back to the very earliest of the church fathers. Also, it’s fair to note that December 25th is the traditional day of celebration in the Western church but the Eastern church has traditionally used January 6th as the birthday and arrival of the Magi. VK: But some people object to the December date because a part of Luke that we didn’t listen to today says the shepherds were keeping watch on their flocks which were out in the fields at night. It is generally known that the shepherds brought their sheep into enclosures from about November through March. So the thinking is that if the sheep were out in the field it couldn’t have been December. RD: And that’s a reasonable observation but it’s not conclusive. First, it might have been a mild winter so there would have been less reason to keep the sheep enclosed. Second, the sheep were apparently in and around Bethlehem as opposed to being out in their spring and summer feeding grounds in the wilderness so this makes it far more likely the birth was in the winter. The shepherds had to be close enough to be able to get to family who were lodged in the stable in Bethlehem fairly quickly. Third, there are Jewish texts that say that the sheep that were going to be used for the Passover celebration were to be out in the field for at least 30 days before the celebration. Passover could have been as early as February so this would again reinforce a midwinter date as early as late December or early January. VK: The bottom line is that - again – when you look at the details of history and the gospel accounts it dispels completely the notion that even if there are superficial resemblances between the Christian celebration of Christmas and some pagan winter festivals that somehow diminishes the historicity of Jesus as a person. Or his birth in Bethlehem on a night over 2,000 years ago. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to Christmas let’s listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of the first part of the the Golden Tree saga, The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest, is available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New International Version) The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, New International Version

Episode 138 – Jesus’ Attributes Were Not “Borrowed” Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time event planning consultant. He rearranges the chairs in the conference room when we have meetings. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we want to continue our series where we focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. Eagle Enigma is the second part of the Golden Tree trilogy. The first installment was The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest and copies of it are available from our website which is crystalseabooks.com. Even though we’re playing Eagle Enigma on our broadcasts and podcasts it has not yet been released for people to get their own copy but that will happen in the near future. Today we’re coming to part five out of seven of the poem. So, we’re getting close to bringing it home, right RD? RD: We are indeed. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last couple of episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It was written in seven parts and each part ends in a sort of cliffhanger. So, now that we’re at part five we’re pretty deep into the story. But just as a quick refresher The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma is about a group of small koala bears who live in the Artic in valley that’s green and warm because in the middle of the valley is a Golden Tree that keeps the valley warm and fertile. They’ve been there for several generations but just as the last Christmas season was approaching a Demon Lord and his horde came into the bears’ town telling them that they’d come to steal the tree. The bears confronted the Demon Lord and ultimately the Demon Lord and his horde were driven off. But the tree’s guardian, Komari, was lost in the struggle. Since Komari’s loss no new bear has been able to pass the guardian’s test so the bears are worried about the tree’s survival. Three of the bears, Kodan, Koru, and Kojan have set out a quest to find the home of the Great White Koala Bear to ask for his help. But they’ve come across an un-crossable canyon that is guarded by huge ice eagles and now they’re trying to solve this seemingly unsolvable enigma. VK: Sounds like we’re getting to the good part. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part five of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 5 VK: Ok. So this part doesn’t end with a cliff hanging. It ends with a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Which eagle is there to help the bears? And which of the eagles is there to destroy them? So, the question is what happens? And, knowing you, the answer is …to tune in next time. RD: That sounds like a brilliant suggestion. And maybe listeners could gather some family members to join them ... VK: Sounds even better. Listening to Golden Tree as a family could be a great way for parents or grandparents to connect with their kids and help them develop their faith. It would also make a great centerpiece for a home school study group or church youth group discussion about the role that courage and commitment play in the Christian faith – something that’s particularly relevant as we get closer and closer to Christmas. RD: Right. Somebody once said that the Christian faith is so simple that even children can comprehend enough about it to understand the plan of salvation. But even though we can begin with the faith of a child we should pursue the goal of developing a truly mature faith. God will meet us and help us wherever we are in our faith journey but He isn’t satisfied with leaving us at the starting line. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus doesn’t just initiate our faith. He also wants to perfect it. And part of perfecting our faith is ensuring that we understand what the Bible tells us about Jesus. VK: Well, so far we’ve seen that there are extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure who lived and died in Judea during the time period described by the Bible. But we’ve also seen that as helpful as it is to know that there are secular sources that confirm Jesus’ life that those sources aren’t enough to tell us everything that we need to know about Jesus. We can only get a complete revelation about Jesus from God’s special revelation to people, the Bible. And as we saw in our last episode, and again in today’s scriptures, Jesus’ statements about himself tell us something pretty important: that Jesus is not only fully human but also fully divine. RD: Yes. And so that takes us to the next subject that we need to talk about as we are focusing on the life of Jesus in preparation for celebrating his birth at Christmas. VK: And that is... RD: And that is - that because Jesus is the central figure not just of Christianity, but also the entire Bible, one of the criticisms that’s sometimes directed toward Jesus is that the attributes that the Bible assigns to Jesus were borrowed from other cultures or religious sources. So, Christians need to be familiar with some of the assertions that Jesus’ deeds, especially his miracles, were simply drawn from other religious myths or pagan characters. VK: Can you give us an example of what you’re thinking about? RD: Sure. It is has been alleged that Jesus’ miraculous conception isn’t a unique belief. For instance, critics will say that the mythological figure, Hercules, was also supposed to be the son of a divine father – in this case Zeus - and a mortal mother. VK: But, of course, there are significant differences between Hercules purported conception and Jesus. In the Greek legend Hercules mother was named Alcmene (ALK-MEN-EE). Zeus was supposed to have taken on the human form of Alcmene’s husband and deceived Alcmene and slept with her. And that’s how Hercules was conceived. That’s not nearly the same thing as Jesus being born of Mary while Mary was literally still a virgin. RD: The differences are even more pronounced. Hercules was actually the Roman name of a hero the Romans adapted from the Greek Heracles. According to the Greek legend, Heracles’ mother Alcmene was simultaneously pregnant with Heracles by Zeus and his half-brother Iphicles by her husband. And that’s only the beginning of the legendary aspects in Alcmene’s pregnancy with Heracles. So, as soon as you get beyond the superficial similarity and look at the details, the notion that Jesus’ conception was somehow an adaptation of the Heracles/Hercules myth falls apart. But this is a good example of one kind of obviously fallacious attack that’s directed against the historicity of Jesus. VK: So, what you’re saying is that one form of attack that’s leveled at Jesus has to do with a particular attribute of Jesus and then trying to find a parallel somewhere else in a different religion that is obviously false. The critics then try to discredit the life of Jesus by saying that if story A is false, then story B must be false also. RD: Right. But that makes as much sense as saying that if there are two $5 bills on the table and one is counterfeit, the other one must be also which is just silly. So, sometimes the supposed pagan origin of the details of Jesus earthly life and ministry are concerned with specific attributes of Jesus, such as his virgin birth. But sometimes the copycat thesis is less concerned with the specifics of Jesus life and more concerned with generalities that might be associated just about any supernatural figure. VK: Again, do you have any specific examples in mind? RD: For instance, since sickness and disease are obviously a plague on human existence... VK: No pun intended… RD: No pun intended… anyway, the ability to bring miraculous healing would be expected to be a staple of myths or legends. And it is. For example, Asclepius or Asklepios was a Greek demi-god who was the god of medicine. He was supposed to have raised Hippolytus from the dead, though he was killed by Zeus for doing so. Asclepius was supposed to be the son of the god Apollo and a human mother. Buddha was also supposed to have been able to cure the sick. VK: But again, these kinds of general miracle workings of mythological characters vary considerably from the information we have about the miracles that Jesus performed. For instance, in the case of Jesus curing Peter’s mother we have precise details of the location where the miracle was done, the people involved, and even a pretty close approximation to the timing. And many of Jesus’ healings involved specific details that conform to the religious and cultural conventions known to exist. Such as when he healed the lepers and then told them to go show themselves to a priest which was required by Jewish law. And Jesus’ healing miracles weren’t always the cause for celebration the way you would expect of a miracle like when Jesus restored the eyesight of the man born blind. The blind man was rejected by the religious leaders and cast out by them. RD: Exactly. The descriptions of Jesus’ miracles read like historical accounts because they are. Again, the key to drawing distinctions between Jesus’ miracles and those general sorts of miraculous powers that are associated with the pagan sources is in the details. The Bible accounts provide the details and in the majority of cases there are multiple eyewitness accounts. But the case of Buddha provides another way of refuting the claims that the Bible’s descriptions of Jesus are drawn from other sources. The earliest known account of Buddha’s life was written in the 2nd century AD so it came after Jesus and not before it. That’s also true for another supposed religious figure who supposedly served as the source for many of the details of Christ’s life, Mithra. In Mithra’s manifestation during the Roman period he was supposed to have been born on December 25th, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, had a final meal before he died, and rose from the grave after 3 days. VK: And since Mithra was a religious figure that was known to come from the Persian culture, modern day Iran, supposedly he was the inspiration for much of what the disciples taught about Jesus. Right? RD: Right. The earliest mention of Mithra is around 1400 BC so as a religious figure Mithra would pre-date Christ by a considerable time period. But the problem is that the attributes of the Iranian version of Mithra do not correspond to the Roman version. The Roman version of Mithra is best known for slaying a bull whereas there is no known connection to bull slaying in the Iranian version. And a lot of the supposed correspondences between Christ and Mithra appear in the Roman version and the dating of the correspondences is after Christ. VK: So, many scholars believe there might have been some cross pollination between Christ and the Roman version of Mithra but given the timing of the appearance of the similarities it’s far more likely that the legends of Mithra borrowed from Christianity and not vice versa. RD: And that would have been fair because there was one way that Christianity did borrow from Mithraism, in art. In the early part of the 3rd century AD (313), the Roman emperor Constantine issued the edict of Milan which accepted Christianity. Before then the Roman emperors had generally been very hostile to Christians. Within 10 years Christianity had become the official religion of the empire. But by then Mithraism seems to have also gained a strong foothold within the empire as well. In the third and fourth centuries, the Roman church officials seemed to have embarked on an effort to prove that their faith was the superior one, embarked on an advertising campaign. One commentator said their efforts were “reminiscent of our soft drink wars. Mithra was depicted slaying the bull while riding its back; the church did a lookalike scene with Samson killing a lion. Mithra sent arrows into a rock to bring forth water; the church changed that into Moses getting water from the rock at Horeb.” VK: That sounds suspiciously like the law of unintended consequences. The church officials in the 3rd and 4th century went on a campaign to prove that Christianity was superior to Mithraism and 1,600 years later the church now has to defend itself against the claim that Jesus’ life and ministry were the copycat version. RD: I think that’s an excellent observation. And let’s close out with one more, quick example. In Hinduism Krishna was also supposed to have had a miraculous conception so some critics point to that legend as a possible inspiration for the Christian tenant. VK: But in that case, Krishna’s ‘miraculous conception’ is his mom being impregnated by ‘mental transmission’ from his completely human father. Again, not remotely similar to the Bible’s description of how Mary became pregnant. RD: And to add to that – how credible is it that the first Christians, who were largely Jews from Palestine, would have borrowed a legend from a thousand miles away. At a minimum the Jews were fiercely monotheistic whereas Hinduism is distinctly polytheistic. So, this again points to the need to not only examine the varying details of alleged instances of borrowing but also consider the cultural factors that would have been in play. Often either chronological or cultural factors alone will be enough to refute the alleged possibilities. To go back to our earlier example with the money, when new bank tellers are being taught to spot counterfeit dollars they aren’t given lots of counterfeits to study. They’re given lots of real bills to feel and handle. The idea is that if the tellers get so used to touching and handling the real thing, the fakes will become instantly recognizable. That same approach will work when it comes to being able to answer many of the criticisms that are addressed at Christianity and Jesus. VK: And that’s a good lesson for all of us. The more time we spend studying scripture – and developing familiarity with the details of the people, the nations, the geography, the culture – not only will we be able to be confident in our own faith. But we will also be able to point other people to the truth. RD: Precisely. Myths and legends read like myths and legends. They have fantastic details that have little or no correspondence to things in the real world. Good common sense enables us to quickly see elements that don’t make sense in our experience. By contrast, the history contained in the Bible reads like good histories that we see elsewhere. There are specifics about people, places, times, and events and quite often either archeological finds or extra-Biblical records will provide information that helps confirm the Biblical record. VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today since we’re so close to Christmas let’s listen to a prayer about that special day. ---- Prayer for Christmas VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) The Gospel of John, Chapter 11, verse 25, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 6, New Living Translation The Gospel of John, Chapter 15, verse 5, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://creation.com/pagan-copycat-thesis-refuted http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.php http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.php

Episode 137 – Jesus – Man and God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 6, verse 35, New Living Translation “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” The Gospel of John, Chapter 8, verse 12, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time pastry consultant. He buys the cookies we keep in the kitchen. Though to be fair I’m the one who makes sure we don’t run out of animal crackers. Anyway, today on Anchored by Truth, as we start to celebrate the Christmas season, we want to continue our series where we focus on Jesus. And we want to continue listening to Crystal Sea’s epic Christmas poem The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. Today we’re coming to part four of the poem where we now hear about the seemingly unsolvable quandary that will confront our bears. So do you want to tell us where we are in the story, RD? RD: I’d love to. For any listeners who weren’t able to be with us for our last few episodes we should tell them that The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma is a poem that is written in the style of some classic Christmas stories. It’s the second of the Golden Tree series. The first segment is called The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest. It was also written using the model of the old-time movie serials that they used to play when I was a kid and you went to the theater on Saturday afternoons. Before the movie they’d give you the latest installment of an ongoing saga. Each episode would end with the heroes and heroines left in a precarious position so next week you’d come back and plunk down another quarter or two. So, to get ready for part four listeners need to know that the epic is all about a group of small koala bears who are on a quest searching for the lair of the Great White Koala Bear. They started this quest because, even though they live in the arctic, they live near a Golden Tree that creates a peaceful and fertile valley. The bears have lived near the Golden Tree for generations but the tree is now threatened. Last Christmas the demon lord and his horde of marauding minions marched into the town. During the ensuing confrontation the Golden Tree’s guardian, a bear named Komari, was lost. Since Komari was lost no new guardian for the tree has been found. When we left off last time three koala bears, Kodan, Koru, and Kojan had set out on a quest to find the lair of the Great White Koala Bear to ask for His help. The bears have been travelling through blizzard conditions for days and they’ve just climbed the highest peak yet. They had hoped this last climb would reveal their goal but … maybe not. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part four of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma – part four. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 4 VK: Wow. So not only are the bears now facing an un-crossable canyon there are huge ice eagles circling over the canyon. I guess the bears think that those eagles might be an even greater danger than trying to cross the canyon. This is an enigma. So, how can the bears solve their dilemma … RD: I guess folks will just have to tune in next week and see what happens... VK: I’m starting to see why the movies played those serial episodes before they played the main feature. RD: Well, as a kid the trick was not to not eat all your popcorn during the serial. Otherwise, you didn’t have any left to enjoy during the feature. It helped if you had enough money to buy a large bag. No buckets in those days. VK: Today I think some of us need to worry about waistlines more than money… RD: No comment. VK: Anyway, maybe one of the lessons we can learn from the bears is that we need to understand that challenges to our faith can come to us at any time. We need to be prepared to intelligently respond to them. And Ephesians 6:17 does tell us that the sword of the Spirit is the Bible, the Word of God. That’s one of the big reasons we try to encourage people to develop the habit of staying in the Word. It’s the best way for us to cope with our own ice eagles. So, where do you want to go today as we resume our study of Jesus’ earthly life? RD: Well, in our last couple of episode on Anchored by Truth we talked about some examples of extra-Biblical sources that confirm that Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Judea during the early part of the first century AD. But, naturally, the only thing that the secular writers could write about was the human dimension of Jesus. If secular writers were our only source about the life of Jesus we could know some important details about him, but we would completely miss the most important fact about Jesus: that Jesus was not only fully human but that he was also fully divine. VK: And here is where a lot of headaches begin. How can one person be both God and man? I think it’s safe to say that many Christians – even serious and devout ones – have trouble with that concept. So, let’s go over some of the basics of historical, orthodox Christian theology – the Trinitarian nature of God and the dual nature of Jesus. A lot of confusion arises because people don’t understand what Christians mean when they refer to the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ. So, let’s start there. RD: Well, let’s acknowledge right at the start the limitations of human language and the incomprehensibility of God. Humans are finite. God is infinite. So, there is no way any human or group of humans is every going to be capable of exhaustively understanding or explaining the nature of the God or the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. That doesn’t mean we can’t know some true things about God and develop an awareness of the miracle of the incarnation, but it does mean that mysteries will always remain. But that the fact that mysteries will always remain doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t apply ourselves to develop a full-orbed understanding of God insofar as we are able. VK: And it also means that we should always approach these subjects in a spirit of reverence and prayer, right? I mean the one Person who can help us grow in our understanding is the very Person we’re seeking to understand. So, what does the doctrine of the Trinity refer to? RD: Orthodox, Christian theology believes that the Bible refers to one God, but acknowledges that God exists eternally as three divine Subsistences or Persons. The classic proof text for the Trinitarian view of the Godhead is Matthew 28:18 & 19 which says: “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” A slightly different way of explaining this is that God is singular in nature but three in person. By contrast, Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, is singular in person but has two natures. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. And the classic formulation of this that came out of the Council of Chalcedon is : ” Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, having two natures inseparably united in one divine person without confusion, mixture, separation, or division. Each nature retains its own attributes.” VK: So, those views explain why Christians still believe in one God – we’re monotheistic – but we also believe that within the Godhead there are three distinct Persons who have a relationship with each other. Grappling with these concepts is challenging to say the least. RD: And that’s the reason we have to always be willing to acknowledge that even though the church has classic formulations like the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds that help amplify the basics, these doctrines will always contain a certain amount of mystery for men. We’re back to the plain fact that finite man cannot fully understand or explain an infinite, Triune God. VK: So, how do our opening scriptures relate to this who discussion? At least on the surface, while Jesus is certainly providing some really comforting assurances to his disciples – such as that he will provide for them and protect them like a shepherd does his sheep – how do these verses demonstrate that Jesus was claiming to be God? RD: In English, the claim is not as obvious as it was in the language in which John originally recorded his Gospel, Greek. You see the Greek words that are translated as “I am,” in “I am the bread of life,” and in the other scriptures we heard are two Greek words: ego and eimi. And these are exactly the same words that God used when He made declarations about himself in the Old Testament. VK: As in the declaration that God made to Moses when Moses was standing before the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3:14? Let me read that part. But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” God also said that Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.” RD: Exactly. The Septuagint translators when they translated the Hebrew “Yahweh” which came from the word for “I am” translated it by a combination of two different Greek words used for the verb “to be:” ego and eimi. So in Jesus’ time the phrase ego eimi came to be synonymous with the name for God. In Hebrew, Yahweh. In Greek, Jehovah. So, when the Apostle John recorded what Jesus said about Jesus being the bread of life or the light of the world, John used the phrase “ego eimi” for the words “I am.” Many scholars think that when Jesus identified himself with the “I am,” He was directly proclaiming to his followers that he was the same as the one who appeared to be Moses. But there are other references in the Old Testament to which Jesus may have been pointing to make the same point. Michael J. Krueger, who is a New Testament scholar and President of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, has shown that there are number of “I am” references in chapters 40 – 55 of the book of Isaiah that unmistakably point to God. Let’s listen to a couple of examples, Isaiah 41: 4 and 43:10: Isaiah 41:4 Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he (ego eimi). Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he (ego eimi). Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. The “I am he” in these passages is translated in Greek by ego eimi. VK: So, when Jesus said he was the bread of life or the light of the world he was going beyond simply giving metaphors for the provisions that he was making for his people? He was saying that one of the reasons his followers could have confidence in the promises that he was giving was because he was God. And as God whatever he promised he had the irresistible power to fulfill. I’m starting to get another headache when I think about that. Imagine, listening to someone standing before you who was saying “I am the light of the world,” - meaning he would give you all the light and wisdom you would ever need – and then realizing that the one making the promise was the who made light to begin with. That’s a staggering thought. RD: And it gets even more staggering. Remember that on Anchored by Truth we have often talked about the fact that logic and empirical observations demonstrate that the universe was created by a self-existent Being. We call that Being God. We can arrive at the need for a self-existent Being to explain the existence of the universe and everything in it, just by making some informed observations. In other words, as people we have the ability to deduce the existence of a self-existent Being or God just by exercising our reason and intelligence. Well, when God said to Moses that his name, God’s name, was “I am” he was identifying himself by using the attribute of self-existence. God was simultaneously exalting Moses by saying “you’re standing in the presence of the One who made everything,” and God was condescending to the level of man by communicating to Moses in a way Moses could understand. God was also pointing out that Moses should be aware of His existence because Moses own intellect and intelligence would have revealed the need for God even God had never chosen to communicate with him directly. VK: And the same thing would have been true of the people listening to Jesus, wouldn’t it? Only now, rather than the people listening to a voice out of a burning bush, they’re hearing those words from a man standing in front of them. And many, if not most, of them would have seen Jesus perform miracles so they would have known that when Jesus spoke, he was speaking the truth. But I think you have one more point that you’re making with the line of reasoning aren’t you? RD: Exacatamundo… VK: Exactamundo, again ... RD: Ok. Precisely, if you prefer. Think about it. By making empirical observations and exercising a little logic and reason we can arrive at the conclusion that the universe was created by a self-existent Being – God. But where did we derive the ability to make those observations? Where did we get eyesight that could see the sun and stars? Where did we get the intellect and reasoning ability to design instruments that could amplify our own observational capabilities like telescopes or microscopes? Where did we get the reasoning ability to understand that an effect demands a cause and that the law of non-contradiction is an essential element in reasoning correctly? Where did we get the ability to write and use language and make and retain records so we could pass words and observations down over thousands of years? And not just the records of the Bible but the other records that we examined on Anchored by Truth the last couple of times by secular observers who affirmed that Jesus was a real man who lived in Judea at a particular time in history. VK: So the point you’re making is that the same God who designed and created the universe with all its marvelous complexity and order also created us in such a way that we could perceive Him. And you’re saying that that same God came to various men at different points in history – to Moses and Isaiah in the Old Testament, to Matthew, John and others in the New Testament – to leave us a record of His appearances in this world. So, you’re saying that God designed man so that man could recognize not only the design in nature but also the design in God’s plan for human history. The plan that we call the plan of creation, fall, and redemption. Oh, all that is either super scary or super exciting. RD: Rather like the disciples in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm or Moses when he was in front of the burning bush, an immediate confrontation with the undeniable presence of the Almighty is simultaneously terrifying and thrilling. Unfortunately, today too many people deny themselves that experience of reverential awe that comes from truly grappling with the authentic nature of God. VK: And only the Bible gives us what we need to understand that nature. And we all need to have a better understanding of that nature. Because when we gain it we will find out that God is not only an awesome and mighty God but He is also a loving and merciful God who has made provisions for us to have eternal fellowship with him by placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior. So let’s close with prayer. Today let’s listen to a prayer of adoration for the first person of the Trinity, our heavenly Father. ---- PRAYER OF ADORATION OF THE FATHER VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Revised Version) The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 1 through 6, English Revised Version The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 23, verses 44 through 47, English Revised Version (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://www.ligonier.org/about/who-we-are/what-we-believe/ https://www.michaeljkruger.com/why-does-jesus-use-the-phrase-i-am/ https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/10-things-yahweh-means

Episode 135 – Jesus Beyond the Bible Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf. Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time barista. He turns on the coffee maker and puts in those little cups. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are continuing our series where we focus on the earthly birth and life of Jesus. In today’s culture, it seems as though just about everybody has heard about Jesus, but fewer and fewer people actually know much about him. Do you agree with that RD? RD: Yes. Jesus’ name is certainly well known in modern culture but unfortunately there is as much or more misinformation that circulates about him than there is actual fact. I’m afraid that more people get there information about Jesus more by watching television specials or dramatized movies than they do from reading the Bible or studying the many fine, well-documented books and articles that have been produced by excellent Christian scholars through the years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that for those who are truly interested in knowing the actual, historical Jesus it’s probably easier today than any time in history to get accurate information. But you do have to be careful about the sources you use. VK: So, today we want to continue to provide the listeners to Anchored by Truth with a head start on doing their own study about Jesus. As you have so often said, Jesus is the centerpiece of both the Bible and the plan of redemption. So, to be confident not only in our own faith but to help those who are still looking for anchors for their own lives it’s imperative we know the real Jesus of the Bible. But before we get too deep into our discussion how about telling us a little about the Christmas poem that we’re going to continue today? RD: I’d love to. As I mentioned in an earlier episode of Anchored by Truth, years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote this piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. That story became The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest. It was about a group of koala bears who had gone on a quest to the far north to find their creator that they called The Great While Koala Bear. The bears never found their creator but they did find a golden tree in the artic that made a valley a perfect place for them to live. Well, later on I created a new story that I called The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. In Eagle Enigma the bears are confronting a dilemma they believe threatens their tree. Last time we heard we heard part one of Eagle Enigma. And what we hear is the bears have to decide whether to resume the search for their creator to try to save their golden tree. VK: Alright then. So, let’s continue with the story. Here’s part two of Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part 2 VK: The drama is now building. What we’ve heard is that bears have enjoyed the peace and plenty in the valley for generations but now their happy life may be in danger. So, the bears are learning - just like in the real world – that there are always forces in this world that would like to take away the peace we have – including the peace we have in Christ. And it will take real courage to resist that force … RD: And commitment and sacrifice... VK: And it’s hard to have those virtues if we don’t know why we’ve been sent on our own quests, isn’t it? I mean, God’s grace has saved us just like the Golden Tree saved the bears. But as the Apostle Paul said to the Philippians they had to. “work hard to show the results of [their] salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in [them and us], giving [them and us]the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” God’s grace saves us but our sanctification requires effort on our part. RD: Right. The old song there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to “trust and obey.” Part of that obedience is to be able to tell others why we believe that Jesus was qualified to be our savior. And that starts with us being assured that Jesus was a real, historical figure – not a myth or some kind of pious concoction. In our day and age one of the semi-criticisms that’s hurled against the Christian faith is that the Jesus that Christians worship is either a mythological figure or – if he even existed – that we can’t trust the gospel accounts for information about him. VK: But the truth is that Jesus was a real person. And we see that from passages like the ones we used for our opening scriptures. In these passages we can see that the Bible tells us specific facts about Jesus like where he was born – in Bethlehem – and when – during the reign of a king named Herod. But beyond even what scripture tells us Jesus life is a fact that is even confirmed by sources outside the Bible isn’t it? And that’s what you wanted to focus on today, right – the fact that we have historical sources besides the Bible that confirm Jesus’ historicity and even confirm many of the details contained in the gospels about his life, death, and circumstances? RD: Right. In some earlier episodes of Anchored by Truth we’ve discussed the fact that you can use the existence of the physical universe and apply logic and reason to come to the conclusion that there is a self-existent being responsible for the creation of the universe and of living creatures. But that line of reasoning can only carry you so far in an understanding of God and it would give us almost no information about other attributes that are essential parts of the Christian faith such as the plan of redemption or Jesus’ role in it. For that, we need a special revelation from that self-existent being – God – and fortunately we have that in the Bible. But we need to be persuaded that that revelation is true and reliable and once again logic, reason, and evidence can play a role in validating the Bible’s claim that it is the inspired Word of God. And that’s where extra biblical sources can be helpful. Such sources don’t add anything to the Bible, but they can add to our individual confidence that the Bible is describing history accurately when it speaks of historical events. VK: So, today you want to take a brief look at some other historical sources that also confirm that Jesus was a real historical figure. You know when you think about it, it’s remarkable that there would be any other surviving sources outside the Bible who would mention Jesus. In his day and time – if Jesus hadn’t been the Son of God – he would have been just another obscure and unimportant itinerant preacher that had a brief public ministry in a distant Roman province. He never led an army, held a prominent government or political position, or even wrote a book. Plus, his public ministry only lasted about 3 years and he didn’t travel all that widely. His public ministry was all conducted within 100 miles of his home. And he died the death of a common criminal. So, if Jesus wasn’t who he claimed to be – the Son of the Almighty God – he should have faded from the pages of history as just another local crank. But he didn’t. He’s mentioned by some of the most important historians of his age, men who had far more earthly distinction that he did. Where do you want to start? RD: Let’s start by talking about a few examples of well-known Roman historians who are widely regarded as having written important histories of the Roman Empire and conquests. The examples that we’re going to use today came from an article available on the website coldcasechristianity.com entitled “is there any evidence for Jesus outside the Bible.” We’ll put a link to the article on the notes that accompany the podcast version of this show. But these examples are all widely known and can be found in any number of historical reference sources. So the first example we want to use is a quote from Cornelius Tacitus was well known for his analysis and examination of historical documents and is among the most trusted of ancient historians. He was a senator under Emperor Vespasian and was also proconsul of Asia. In his “Annals’ of 116 AD, he describes the Roman Emperor Nero’s response to the great fire in Rome and Nero’s claim that the Christians were to blame: “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.” So, in this account, Tacitus confirms that there was a man who lived in Judea, was known as Christ, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and who had followers who called themselves by his name and were persecuted for following him. VK: Well, this account is helpful because it directly confirms a number of details directly about Jesus. But it’s also important for another reason, isn’t it? A few episodes ago we talked about the fact that Luke and the other gospel writers were meticulous when it came to their historical recording and reporting. So much so that they got some obscure details right, even when other ancient historians got them wrong. So, this quote from Tacitus helps illustrate that point too, doesn’t it. RD: Very good. That’s pretty impressive. You noticed that Tacitus called Pontius Pilate the procurator of Judea not the prefect. VK: Thank you. I try. RD: And you’re absolutely right. As good a historian as Tacitus was he was human and in this case he did make a mistake. He got Pilate’s title wrong. For many years there were questions about the existence and the actual title of Pontius Pilate—the Roman governor who presided over the trial of Jesus. Later Roman writers, as well as almost all Bible reference works, referred to Pilate as the “procurator” of Judea but Luke and the other gospel writers called Pilate a “governor;” not a procurator. The fact that “governor” was the correct title was confirmed in 1961, when a two by three foot stone was discovered that had a Latin inscription. The translation of the inscription reads as follows: Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea, has presented the Tiberieum to the Caesareans. This find was not only archaeological confirmation for the existence of Pilate but it was also confirmation that Pilate was the Prefect, or governor, of Judea. VK: In fact, we now know that the title “Procurator” was not used at the time of Jesus’ trial for the Roman governors. This title only came into usage at a later time, during the reign of the emperor Claudius, A.D. 41-54. During Claudius’ reign the title of the Roman governors shifted from Prefect to Procurator. So although Tacitus was correct about the title in use for the Roman governor of Judea at the time he wrote – about 60 years later - strictly speaking that was not Pilate’s actual title when he supervised the trial and execution of Jesus. Pilate was a prefect, a governor, not a procurator – a fact the Bible writers got right. So, who’s next on the list of extra-Biblical writers? RD: Well, before we close for today we should probably take a quick look at one of the most famous of the ancient historians, Josephus, because he lived so close to the time of Jesus and during the period of early church’s formation. Josephus lived from 37 AD to 101 AD. The most widely accepted year for the crucifixion is 33 AD so he was born just four years after the crucifixion. He wrote an extensive history of the Jews in 93 AD called “the Antiquities of the Jews.” So today when you see people referring to it you often just hear people call it “Antiquities.” Josephus wrote about Jesus in more detail than any other non-biblical historian and Josephus himself was a really interesting character. He was a consultant for Jewish rabbis and became a Galilean military commander by the age of sixteen. He was an eyewitness to much of what he recorded in the first century A.D. As a Jewish military leader he initially fought against the Romans but later surrendered and he eventually became an adviser to the Roman emperor Vespasian. Under Vespasian, Josephus was allowed to write a history of the Jews. This history includes three passages about Christians, one in which he describes the death of John the Baptist, one in which he mentions the execution of James (and describes him as the brother of Jesus the Christ), and a final passage which describes Jesus as a wise man and the messiah. There is some legitimate controversy about the writing of Josephus, because of the timing of the discovery of his writing but why don’t you read a conservative scholarly reconstruction of one of Josephus’ most famous passages. VK: “Now around this time lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accept the truth. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, (but) those who had first loved him did not cease (doing so). To this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared.” RD: Now there are some other ancient versions of Josephus’ writing which are even more explicit about the nature of Jesus’ miracles, life and his status as the Christ, but from even this conservative version we can conclude: Jesus lived in Palestine, was a wise man and a teacher, worked amazing deeds, was accused by the Jews, crucified under Pilate and had followers called Christians. Josephus’ observations are particularly compelling because at the time he wrote he was very close in terms of timing to when Jesus lived. Even though he wasn’t like the apostles who actually walked with Jesus he could see around him the effect of the early church’s spreading and he may even have had the opportunity to talk to Jews who had been in and around Judea when Jesus had his public ministry. VK: Well, those two examples are a good introduction to the fact that Jesus’ earthly life has confirmation outside the Bible. Next time we can take up a few more examples but before we close for today a few general observations would seem to be in order. And you said that the early church itself is a confirmation that Jesus was a real, historical figure? RD: Exactly. VK: I’m surprised you didn’t say what you do in some of the Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo … RD: Ok. Exactamundo. Anyway, there is no dispute that in the first century AD Christians and the Christian church began to be an issue within the Roman Empire. They were so widely known that the emperor Nero blamed the great fire of Rome on them. Well, it would be impossible to explain the spread of a movement if there wasn’t something or someone who started the movement. Remember that the Romans weren’t known for being timid administrators of their provincial empire and in the first century AD they certainly weren’t friendly to Christians. So, something remarkable must have happened in the early part of the first century AD in Judea that animated so many people to continue carrying the same message throughout the empire despite the official opposition they encountered everywhere. There are two simple reasons for this phenomena. First, they were persuaded something truly remarkable had happened. A dead man had risen from the grave and walked around for 40 days. And second, they had a source of support and strength – the Holy Spirit – who sustained them as they carried their message to a world that needed it but didn’t want it. VK: Well, all that makes perfect sense. As Paul said to the Romans the same power that raised Jesus from the dead also empowers us and gives us the ability to carry on in his name. Sounds like a perfect time to go to prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Micha, Chapter 5, verse 2, New Living Translation The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, verse 1, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/ https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/the-evidence-for-jesus/ https://alwaysbeready.com/extrabiblical-historical-sources-corroborate-the-bible/ https://crossexamined.org/why-should-we-trust-the-extra-biblical-references-to-jesus/

Episode 134 – Questing for God Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation ******** VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, founder of Crystal Sea Books, and part-time poet. Today on Anchored by Truth, as we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we are going to begin a new series where we focus on the central figure of the entire Bible: Jesus. That seems appropriate as we come to the time of year when we celebrate the Lord’s birth, doesn’t it RD? RD: Well, Christmas is certainly a time of the year when people begin to more naturally think about Jesus because the reminders of him start to appear more and more around us every day. But, of course, it’s important to remember that we really should focus on Jesus every day of the year. For Christians, Jesus should be the focus of our daily lives. And actually throughout our lives we should be on a quest to get to know God better each day that is granted to us. VK: I agree with that. So, today we’re going to start listening to a new Crystal Sea story. This time it’s one of our rhymed pieces that you wrote as a Christmas epic poem. This is actually the second installment of a story that you began a long time ago. You said you originally wrote the first installment because you wanted to give it as a gift to some co-workers? RD: I did. Years ago when I worked in one of those big state agency buildings that are so common here I wanted to give Christmas presents to some of my co-workers but doing that in a state agency can sometimes be tricky. So, I decided that one present I could give was a little entertainment so I wrote A piece that was inspired by some of things that used to entertain the kids of my generation: Christmas poems and the short serial stories you used to see in the movie theaters before the main feature. Each of those film pieces would always leave you hanging so you had to come back every week to see what happened. So, I wrote a Christmas story in six parts and each part left you wondering what would come next. VK: And then a few years ago you decided that the story needed to continue so you wrote the next installment of what is going to be, when completed, a poetic trilogy. The story began in Crystal Seas’ Christmas epic poem: The Golden Tree, Komari’s Quest. The story continues in The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. So, here is part of The Golden Tree, Eagle Enigma. ---- The Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma – Part I VK: I really like some of the lines from that part. “A sea set with ethereal jewels with diamond, jasper, and quartz. Starry lights of a grand display Gleaming beacons of angels gone forth.” Not only are the lines lyrical but they also evoke such clear imagery. I can imagine kids sitting around their mom and dad … RD: Or grandmother and grandfather... VK: Or grandparents and listening to this recording with them - just like families used to sit around and listen to someone read The Night Before Christmas. Of course, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to put this poem out there. To give families a entertaining story that also would allow parents to discuss their faith with their kids. RD: Exactly. There are so many questionable choices these days that are advertised as being “family friendly” but they are based on a secularist view of the world. We wanted to be sure that there was a story that was available for “fireside” listening that directed everyone’s attention to the real “reason for the season.” VK: Well, there are a total of seven parts to Golden Tree: Eagle Enigma. So, for the next six weeks we’ll be letting the story unfold as we continue to unpack insights into how the Bible is such an integral part of being able to frame a coherent world view. I mean the two fundamental attributes that you believe would have to characterize any book that would constitute a genuine special revelation of God are that that revelation would have to be consistent with the created order as it is observable by creatures within it – essentially us. And that revelation would have to display supernatural origin. RD: Right. As hard – or as exciting – as it may be to comprehend empirical observations, combined with logic, tell us that the visible universe does not – indeed cannot – provide an explanation for its own existence. The universe, as grand and vast as it is, has all the fingerprints of having a beginning in space and time. Also, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, tells us that it will have an ending. Anything that has a limited life span, no matter how long some people might conceive that light span to be, cannot be self-existent. Only a self-existent being or entity can account for its own existence or the existence of anything else. Some philosophers use the terms Necessary Being and Contingent Beings to describe the difference between the two. VK: And since the universe is not eternal it looks very much like it is contingent on something or someone outside itself to account for its existence – a Necessary Being upon which it is dependent. And we call that Necessary Being God. So just like the bears in our story when we see stars twinkling in a deep night sky we can know that that the starlight - and the night sky and especially our ability to see and understand all that grandeur - points to the need for a Creator. And we’ve seen that the bears we’ve just met aren’t the first bears who have lived in this land. It was actually their ancestors who left their home and shortly we’ll learn they were searching for the lair and throne of their Creator – who they thought of as the Great White Bear. RD: Yes. I think the symbolism for the story is already pretty plain but I would like to point out one thing - and that’s what I want to spend some time on today – is that the bears who set out on their quest wouldn’t ever have started if they weren’t convinced that the Great White Bear existed. And that’s one of the problems that we see reflected so clearly in today’s very relativistic culture. Too many - far, far, far too many people today, both inside the church and out, are defeated in their own quests because they have been misled to believe that there is no Creator – no Great White Bear if you will. As a result, they see the world as fundamentally being either chaotic at best or outright meaningless at worst. VK: I think you need to expand on that thought a bit. You’re saying that God isn’t just a logical necessity to explain the existence of a contingent universe, but that an awareness of God is an essential component of us being able to comprehend our place in that universe? RD: To quote what I say in some of our humorous Life Lessons with a Laugh - exactamundo. VK: So you’re quoting yourself. Sounds like something only a writer would do… RD: Again, exactamundo. Anyway as the eminent theologian RC Sproul used to say, “Ideas have consequences.” The idea that the universe was framed by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and holy God carried with it the inextricable notion that the universe has been created intentionally and for a purpose. As such the universe would display design and order and the intelligent creatures within that universe – us – could perceive that design and order. VK: And that very concept formed the foundation for what we think of as science today. And that’s why many of the founders of modern science – like Sir Isaac Newton and Louis Pasteur were strong Christians. They were convinced that there was design, order, and logic in universe because the universe had been made by a being that was supremely purposeful and logical. As such, they were encouraged to go and discover that order and use the results of it to improve the lives of the people around them. Or said a little differently they were encouraged to go on their own quests to discover more about the creation and thereby appreciate even more the Creator. RD: So all that made perfect sense. If the universe had been created by a God of order, logic, and purpose then creation would be comprehensible. Those early giants of science took seriously the Biblical statement that man had been made in the image of God, so they felt sure that God would bless their efforts at applying themselves to understand what he had created. But one of the tragic effects of the success of their work and the amazing results they achieved is that over time – and now we’re talking about centuries not decades – the work of science became divorced from the original source of the inspiration for them to do the work. Scientists – not all, but a great many – became convinced that it was possible to understand creation while ignoring the Creator. VK: Or said slightly differently, they sought the blessing without regard to the Blesser. So, one of the points you’re making is that somewhere along the journey – the quest – for discovery, a lot of people forgot why the journey was begun in the first place. And that is reflected in our society and culture today. RD: Yes. And Christmas is a great example of that same phenomenon happening in our calendar and celebration of the common understanding that was the foundation of our communities. The word “Christmas” obviously derives from the words “Christ” and “mass.” And one of the big reasons that gift exchanges became a part of the celebration was in commemoration of the great gift that God had given the world in the birth of Jesus. And, of course, the whole reason that God gave us the gift of Jesus was because after the fall in the garden of Eden God had begun his great plan of redemption. So, in a very real way the history of all of mankind gives evidence of God’s plan unfolding in exactly the way God intended. VK: And you believe that even some of the more tragic of the things that we see around us provides evidence for the existence of God and the truth of scripture? RD: Yes. C.S. Lewis noted that one of the things that convinced him to become a Christian was that he couldn’t get over the idea that some things were right and some things were wrong. But then he realized for that idea to make sense – that there’s a difference between right and wrong – he had to have an explanation for where that idea came from. Why did he think that there was a real distinction? Of course, the only logical conclusion was because there was a Being – a God somewhere – who had established the whole moral and ethical scheme to begin with. That’s just as true today as it has ever been. VK: That’s a pretty remarkable idea when you think about it. The very notion that we have ethical sensibilities to begin with is dependent on there being a real difference between right and wrong. And not just a matter of personal convenience like preferring squash to broccoli. When people begin to assert that something is wrong they don’t just mean that they find it inconvenient. They mean that there is a determinable ethical distinction that compels – or should compel – our behavior. And we all know that. Anyone who doesn’t know that there is a difference between right and wrong we would describe as a sociopath. RD: And we would have good reason for doing so. Now in saying this we’re not saying that there is universal agreement on the precise details of what’s right or wrong and different societies at different times have arrived at varying conclusions about the specifics. But there’s never been a society that didn’t make some kind of a distinction regardless of what they did with the specifics. In some cultures the distinctions might have been ones that we would consider trivial – like acceptable dress for women and men. In other they would have been more profound or serious – like the relationship between a government and its people or whether private ownership of property is permitted or prohibited. The rules have varied but every culture, tribe, and nation has had rules of some sort. VK: And pretty much all people everywhere know that they have – at one point or another – violated those rules. Written or unwritten. Government or cultural. Religious or secular. We have an inherent awareness that as moral and ethical agents we have certain obligations that we are subject to. So we see that not only is there a physical order to the physical universe there is also an ethical order that applies to us as people. But without there being a God, a holy and purposive God, we would have no reasonable explanation for the existence either of the obligation or the sense that we need to be accountable the obligation. And that same sense that tells us that we are subject to the obligation tells us that we have all fallen short. RD: Right. We all know that we’re not perfect, but to know that means we know that somewhere there is a standard against which that determination can meaningfully be made. That’s why Jesus had to come and why the Christian claim that Jesus was perfect, was sinless, is so essential. Again, to refer to Sproul again, RC used to say that if he was in a discussion with someone who just refused to acknowledge the existence of God, one of the final questions he would ask such people is what they did with their guilt. VK: And we all have guilt. And some of us feel it far more keenly than others. If we don’t have Jesus, if we don’t know Jesus, then we’re the only ones who can shoulder that guilt. But the moment we understand that the Perfect Man, Jesus, has willingly taken our guilt onto his own shoulders, we can start to become free of that guilt. And that’s one of the keys to beginning and completing our own quests through life. As we talked about a long time ago on Anchored by Truth, understanding the Bible provides context and meaning to our lives. Knowing that God himself made a provision for our imperfection removes the need for us to continue to feel guilty forever. Knowing that Jesus is our savior is the truth that sets us free. RD: And that’s one of the things we really want to focus on as the days unwind toward Christmas. We want to take a close look at how we can be sure that Jesus isn’t a mythological figure, but instead is a real person who was born, walked and lived at a specific place and time, and died. But then he demonstrated that he was God’s atoning gift by walking out of the grave and appearing to a group of women first and then to his disciples. If Jesus wasn’t a real person who did those things we would have absolutely no hope for being justified before a perfectly holy God. A mythological figure, no matter how charming, couldn’t save anyone. But Jesus did and does. So, as we conduct our own quests through life, if we’re pursuing worthwhile ends we can be confident that they aren’t futile. There is a meaning to our individual lives even when those lives are set against the backdrop of an unimaginably grand cosmos. The Bible and Jesus give us that meaning. As Augustine famously said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” VK: Sounds like it’s a great time to have a prayer. Since we’re approaching Thanksgiving how about if today we listen to a prayer for that special day when we turn our attention to the goodness that God has shown to us. ---- Prayer for Thanksgiving – VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us next time as we continue our discussion of the reality of Jesus’ life. We hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. Also, we’d to remind listeners that copies of The Golden Tree: Komari’s Quest are available from our website. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the New Living Translation) Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, New Living Translation (Sources used for this episode or other in this series) “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Augustine, Confessions https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/ourheartisrestlessuntilitrestsinyou/ https://www.proginosko.com/2019/07/reforming-apologetics-common-notions/

As the first wave of Grung forces is routed, tensions run high between members of the Golden Tree and Verdant Wave adventuring guilds. Will the two groups return to the caravan as allies, or enemies?Warning: Fantasy ViolenceCome check out all the people that made this possible! https://www.recklessattack.com/contact/ Like the show? Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/recklessattack

Whether you need a change in circumstances or a quick boost to your bank account or you just want to go to the festival, "The Golden Tree" just might be able to help. Make the charm when you can, then use it when you need it. Adapted from The Sisters Grimmoire, Vol. I, 2nd edition. Visit my shop for books and other witchy goodies! Follow the show on Twitter @hex_podcast for the latest updates! For more information on how to support the show and get access to early releases and extra content, visit my Patreon. Proud member of the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network MUSIC CREDITS "Carpe Diem" & "Teller of Tales" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capital

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capitalcryptocurrenciesfiatpodcast

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capitalcryptocurrenciesfiatpodcast

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capital

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capitalcryptocurrenciesfiatpodcast

Cryptocurrrency &Financials Market News2nd August 2021Life over Moneyalways remember that.GoldmanSachs haven'tgot a clue.Today I talk about the following :1. GoldmanSachs has not got a clue about the younger generation2. Markets are extremely stressful - you always need to look after your mental health people3. Square 4. Ripple ver SEC5. Binance 6. ADA launch delayed7. Moody's downgraded El Salvador 8. ETH EIP 1559 coming9.Theta great story 10.Golden TREE 11. Fiat markets, Economics, the FED, Stagflation,10 yr USD bond yield rate, & Social media12. Derivative positions on Equities, BTC,ETH and XRP13. Risk spreads are blowing out14. Gary Gensler, Staglation,LTC, BINANCE,Paul Tudor Jones,George Soros,Cowen, Investments,PundiX,EBAY,FTX,PAYPAL,QTUM,POLYGON,SXP,BNB,OKEX,FUN,BYBIT,HT,KUCOIN,WAVES,FILECOINS.BYBIT, THOR,TEZOS,ROBINHOOD,COINBASE,fidelity, stone investments, BTT, PAXOS, BANK OF AMERICA, DCG, WAR, ISRAEL, SEC,FED KAPLAN,FED ,FUNFAIR, BOSIC,TAPER, POLYGON,MATIC, SHINU, ALPHA, BTC EFT, SAXO BANK, COINBASE,Bank of Oman, Bank of America,Paxful,OKcoin, Musk,ENJ,JP Morgan,Polygon Bridge,Kusama,Bullish break out , bullish triangle, 4 hour, 200 day moving average,Tezos , HOFAR,FINANCE,INVWXT,ridge,PRO,DOT,LINK,SOL,BiTSTAMP,SOLDITY,RUST,NOKIA,WEB3,MARK CARNEGIE,TRAVEL RULE, MASTER CARD SURVEY, NOVOGRATZ,KucoinQTUM,OMG,NFT's,BITSO,GoldmanSach ,BCH,UBS, CITIBANK, OPERATIONAL RISKS, OpenOcean AGI,ALGO,MUSK,INSTITUTIONS, ETC, StormX,futures,Derivatives, ETH,ETC,XRP,BTC,CHZ.DOGE,HACKED, EOS, PETER , 1inch, Reddit, DRUCKENT MILLER, PETER THIEL, NOMURA , EOS,ETC,ada,chz,mercado libre,citibank, Tron, network, & BSC, GALAXY,BITGO, Nexo, Ripple, hedera hashgraph & Pantera Capital

Westland gets a new queen.

Musiks --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

From the Caucasus comes this tale in which the theft of a golden apple leads to a wedding between the human and spirit worlds. It's a story that has the qualities of a dream-poem or a ritual, a crucial ceremony from the sea-swept beginnings of European culture.

This song was performed live by Golden Tree Story during Composer Spotlight at Jack Straw Productions on June 9, 2010. Applications for 2011 residencies are available now!