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Welcome to Day 2929 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom. Day 2929– “Lord, Teach Us to Pray” – Luke 11:1-13 Putnam Church Message – 08/09/2026 The Good News According to Luke: “Lord, Teach Us To Pray.”   Last week, our message was “Exchanging What's Good for What's Best,” and we learned that when good things begin to crowd out the best thing, have the courage to exchange what is good for what is best. Today, we continue with our thirty-third message from Luke's narrative of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Today's message is: “Lord, Teach Us To Pray.” Our core passage today is Luke 11:1-13, on page 1614 of your pew Bibles. Jesus' Teaching on Prayer 1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” 2 He said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father,[a] hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.[b] 3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.[c] And lead us not into temptation.[d]'” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.' 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[e] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. 9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[f] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Opening Prayer Father, we come before You today as children who need to learn. We confess that we often pray last instead of first. We try to assemble life by our own wisdom, strength, and effort, and only when we have made a mess do we turn to You. Lord Jesus, teach us to pray. Teach us not only the words of prayer, but the heart of prayer. Teach us to come to the Father with reverence, trust, humility, boldness, and surrender. Holy Spirit, open our hearts to receive Your Word, and make prayer not a last resort, but the daily breath of our souls. In Jesus' name, amen. Introduction: When All Else Fails, Read the Instructions There is an old saying many of us know well: “When all else fails, read the instructions.” Some of us live by that saying a little too confidently. We look at a box marked “Some Assembly Required,” and instead of beginning with the instruction sheet, we dump the parts on the floor, glance at the picture on the box, and say, “I can figure this out.” And sometimes we can. / But every now and then, we get humbled. Imagine Christmas Eve. The children are asleep. A hidden box is dragged from the closet. The parts are laid out with great confidence. Screws, bolts, panels, wheels, rods, brackets — all carefully arranged. The project begins smoothly. But somewhere around midnight, the finished product starts looking less like the picture on the box and more like an abstract sculpture. Finally, with dawn approaching, the builder digs the instructions out of the trash. At the top of the page, in small print, some sarcastic soul has written, “Now that you have made a mess of things, please start over and follow these instructions.” That is funny because it is true. And it is often how we approach prayer. We say, “When all else fails, pray.” But Jesus did not live that way. Jesus did not pray only when He was desperate. / He prayed before major decisions. / He prayed after ministry. / He prayed in solitude. / He prayed with others. / He prayed when crowds pressed in. / He prayed in joy. / He prayed in anguish. / He prayed before the cross. Luke has emphasized this repeatedly. / Jesus withdrew to lonely places to pray. / He prayed before choosing the Twelve. / He prayed on the mountain before the Transfiguration. / He prayed as His mission moved toward Jerusalem. / Prayer was not a spare tire in Jesus' life. / Prayer was the steering wheel. Last week, in “Exchanging What's Good for What's Best,” we saw Mary sitting at Jesus' feet while Martha was worried and upset about many things. Mary chose the one necessary thing — listening to Jesus. Now, in Luke 11, the disciples watch Jesus pray, and they realize they need instruction. They do not say, “Lord, teach us to preach.” They do not say, “Lord, teach us to heal.” They do not say, “Lord, teach us to cast out demons.” They say, “Lord, teach us to pray.” That request is still one of the most important requests any disciple can make. Let's explore four truths that will help us to understand why this one question is so important. These are found on your bulletin insert on the side that is titled: Lord, Teach us to Pray. Main Point 1: Prayer Begins With Relationship and Reverence Jesus begins the model prayer with one word: “Father.” / That is astonishing. Jesus does not begin with “Distant Creator,” though God is Creator. He does not begin with “Almighty King,” though God is King. He does not begin with “Sovereign Master,” though God is Lord. He teaches His disciples to begin with “Father.” In Greek, the word is pater. In Aramaic, Jesus used the intimate word Abba, which we see in Mark 14 when He prays in Gethsemane. Paul later says in Romans 8 and Galatians 4 that by the Spirit, believers cry, “Abba, Father.” This means prayer begins not with technique, but with relationship. We do not come to God as strangers trying to get the attention of a reluctant deity. We come as children to a Father who already knows us, loves us, and welcomes us. But Jesus also teaches reverence. “May your name be kept holy.” (Hallowed be your name.) God is Father, but He is not casual. / He is near, but not common. / He is loving, but

The Daily Quiz - Entertainment, Society and Culture Today's Questions: Question 1: Who played the role of James Bond in Goldfinger? Question 2: Which film contains the character 'Jake Gittes'? Question 3: Which director directed 2001: A Space Odyssey? Question 4: In Greek mythology, who solved the riddle of the Sphinx? Question 5: If someone typed the letters 'IDC' in a message, what would they mean? Question 6: Who won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Leading Actress for playing the role of Viola De Lesseps in Shakespeare in Love? Question 7: What is the plot of the movie The Lives of Others? Question 8: In which year was The Wolf of Wall Street first released in the cinema? Question 9: Who caused outrage with the quote 'We are more popular than Jesus now'? This podcast is produced by Klassic Studios Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew 13: 47-51, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind. When the net was full, they dragged it up onto the shore, sat down, and sorted the good fish into crates, but threw the bad ones away. that is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked people from the righteous, throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Do you understand all these things?” So, Jesus is saying in the end there will only be 2 categories of people and they will be separated out by the angels. There will be the wicked and the righteous. The wicked’s fate is the fiery furnace of misery. The righteous will be kept and carried off. We know from earlier parables in this chapter that the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom. So, it’s clear who we don’t want to be – we don’t want to be the wicked. And it’s clear who we do want to be – we want to be the righteous. Now, how can we be sure because this is eternity we’re talking about. There will be no undoing this. After sharing this story, Jesus says, “Do you understand all these things?” No – I honestly don’t at this point, Jesus, help me understand. Explain this to us. He wants us to understand this, so let’s dig deeper here for understanding. When I’m trying to understand scripture, I do a few things: 1. I look at different translations for clearer wording. 2. I look up the original Greek or Hebrew words and their definitions. 3. I read commentary to get additional understanding. Looking at other translations of this parable, they all say it in the same words – there are the good and the bad – the righteous and the wicked, and in the end they are getting separated. Until then, they will be in the same waters living together. God doesn’t separate us now, but the day will come when he does. Now, let’s look at the original text. These spoken words of Jesus were recorded by the disciple Matthew after he personally heard them. The language was Greek. In Greek, the two groups people will be separated into are the ponēros and the dikaious. The ponēros are the wicked ones. The word means evil, bad, harmful, morally corrupt. It describes one who is not only bad in character, but produces bad effects. This isn’t the person who messes up in their life and fails – this is the person who is truly bad. This isn’t about just doing bad things – this is about BEING bad. It’s a moral corruption from within. It’s a genuinely rotten, poisonous fruit. Religion has warped this word to make us think we’re going to Hell if we sin. Well, here’s the really bad news about that teaching – WE ALL SIN. Every single one of us. There has only been one without sin and that was Jesus. The rest of us aren’t good enough – but that doesn’t mean we are wicked. This word ponēros is used when Jesus teaches us how to pray in Matthew 6. Verse 13, “deliver us from the evil one.” That’s the ponēros one. Satan. So his people, his followers, his devoted workers are the ones who Jesus tells us are wicked. They are the ones who will meet the fate of the fiery furnace. These are NOT the ones who have made wrong choices and wandered off the path occasionally. These are the ones who are inherently evil. —— Then there are the dikaious. Here’s what that word means – those who are in right standing with God. Here’s what that word doesn’t necessarily mean – a good person. We try to make this all about us, about our acts, our deeds, and our track record. And if we do, we always fall short. We simply are not righteous. No matter how good you are, it hasn’t made you right with God. There is one thing and one thing only that has made you right with God – that’s the man on the middle cross. Jesus gives us right standing with a Holy and perfect God. JUST JESUS. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be MADE RIGHT WITH GOD through Christ.” This is how we are the diakious – the righteous – the ones who will get to shine bright in the Kingdom of God forever! Jesus did that for us. Romans 5:17, “God’s wonderful grace and his GIFT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.” Righteousness is a gift of God’s grace. No, we don’t deserve it, but he gives it to us anyway. You can stop thinking you have to make yourself good enough and receive the grace that completely covers you. Romans 3:22, “We are made RIGHT WITH GOD by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. yet God, in his grace, freely makes US RIGHT in his sight. People are made RIGHT WITH GOD when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.” It just couldn’t be any clearer than that. We are made right with God through one thing and one thing alone – BELIEVING IN JESUS! And no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, no matter where you’ve come from or how wrong you’ve been, this is true for YOU. YOU ARE RIGHTEOUS THROUGH JESUS. So my friend, your destiny is sealed. If you believe in Jesus, you are in the diakious, the righteous, the ones in right standing with God. And your future is secure in Jesus – you get to shine in God’s Kingdom forever! So let’s go back to Jesus’ question: “Do you understand all these things?” I think I finally understand what He’s trying to show us. One day, the net is going to come ashore. One day, there will be a separation. One day, this life will be over, and eternity will begin. And on that day, the question won’t be, “Were you perfect?” Because none of us were. It won’t be, “Did you make good choices every day?” Because none of us did. It won’t even be, “Were you good enough?” Because none of us are. The question is: What did you do with Jesus? Because there are only two categories in the end: the wicked and the righteous. And here’s the incredible news for every person who has put their faith in Jesus: Jesus makes you righteous. Not your performance. Not your religious résumé. Not how many Bible verses you know. Not how many times you’ve gotten it right. Jesus. The man on the middle cross took what belonged to you so that you could receive what belonged to Him. He took your sin. He gave you His righteousness. He took your shame. He gave you His grace. He took your condemnation. He gave you right standing with God. So stop trying to earn what Jesus already died to give you. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering, “Am I good enough?” You aren’t. Jesus is. And that’s the whole point. The Gospel isn’t that you finally became good enough for God. The Gospel is that Jesus was good enough for you. So when the net comes ashore, I don’t want to be standing there hoping my good outweighs my bad. I want to be standing there covered by Jesus. I want to be found in Christ. I want His righteousness to be my righteousness. And then—because I have received His life—I want that life to change the way I live here and now. Because this isn’t just about where we go when we die. It’s about who we become while we’re alive. If Jesus has truly gotten into your life, He should eventually begin getting into everything. Your thoughts. Your words. Your relationships. Your decisions. Your money. Your marriage. Your work. Your habits. Your reactions. Your dreams. Your disappointments. Everything. He becomes the center. And when Jesus becomes the center, He begins changing what your life produces. So don’t spend your life trying to prove you’re good enough. Receive the righteousness Jesus freely gives you. And then spend the rest of your life letting Him transform you from the inside out. Because someday the net will come ashore. And when that day comes, I want to hear Jesus say: “You are Mine.” And I want to shine like the sun in my Father’s Kingdom. Not because I was good enough. Because Jesus was. Follow Pamela on Instagram – https://instagram.com/headmamapamela Or Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/pamela.crim Find out more about BIG Life – http://biglifehq.com

There are many hero myths the world over, but they tend to share common features. In Greek mythology and epic, there was an earlier, greater generation of heroes before the Trojan War heroes. The exploits of Perseus, the first of these.

Have you ever wondered if trees could communicate what would they say? I know…it sounds a little unusual. But this week I decided to find out. I gave myself a challenge – I spent time with six different trees, asked each one if it was willing to communicate with me. Then, I listened. What happened next surprised even me. I’ve talked to plants, but never to trees. Whether you believe I was talking to trees, tapping into my intuition, or simply letting nature inspire me, I invite you to keep an open mind. Let’s see where this adventure takes us. What Started This Conversation Idea It all started when I went to the grocery store this week. I parked near the edge of the lot which has a nice evergreen border on the property line. AS I got out of the car, the trees caught my attention. Looking closely, I noticed a ton of little green balls at the end of the needle groups that make up the cypress leaves. Spiky, bright green, and maybe half an inch in diameter. What the heck? Were those going to be pinecones? I posted the picture on Substack and a friend looked it up. Yes! Those are tiny, immature pinecones of the cypress tree. That’s what caught my attention and and started me wondering if they had something to say. Yes, they did. Cypress: Beauty and Being Seen First, I heard these words: “Empress, royal, stately, graceful, beautiful.” Regal as they stand there, creating a tall emerald green border. “I am a mother tree, so I have loads of pinecones. These are like our flowers, to seed the earth and keep our kind going. My babies are full of seeds and offer nourishment to insects and small animals, as well as seeding the ground with new cypress trees. Don’t we make a beautiful border? Look at our auras and our energy fields. What do you see?” I was quite surprised to see little elemental helpers scurrying about between the trees. Gnome-like beings, hats and all, bringing energy and life force, and keeping the flow going. Then strangely, I also saw what seemed to be colorful, snake-like energies in pink and blue, swiftly wrapping around the trunks. Having never encountered anything like it, I did a little research. In Norse mythology, serpents are tied to the World Tree. In Greek mythology, a snake coils around the tree of the Hesperides to protect the golden apples. And in Buddhist tradition, the naga king Mucalinda shelters Buddha beneath the Bodhi Tree. Someone else had this image before me. That was really comforting. The cypress continued: “Trees have great wisdom because of our deep roots into Mother Earth. While our trunks are strong and stable, our branches blow in the breeze. We love this. To flow and move and twist and turn with the wind, dancing to our own lovely tune. We’re happy to mark the property line; it’s the perfect job for us. A strong masculine boundary with a fluid feminine grace. Notice us, be grateful to us, be kind to us. Say hello, acknowledge us. So few people even notice our beauty or the job we do. Thank you for spending time in our presence.” Ornamental Cherry: Abundance and Generosity Next, I approached the ornamental cherry tree. Here’s what I heard, “I am the picture of abundance, filled with tiny cherries. My pink blossoms turn into fruit in a matter of months. I love sitting here on your hill, rooted deeply into the earth, providing shade for the plants below me and a home to the insects and animals. Thank you for taking time with me today, for viewing me, appreciating me, and coming close enough to get to know me.” Russian Olive: Sharing and Spreading I said hello to the Russian olive tree and expressed that I love how it’s leaves go from green to silver in the breeze. They’ve populated so much of our land. I ask if this one would you tell me about itself. “Thank you for coming to talk to me. I have a certain grace, I know this is true. I am prolific and I spread everywhere. I’m not meant to grow big and old because my branches and wood are soft. But I do create shade and I do spread rapidly. I love sharing my presence on your land. I spread my branches wide as they curve down to make a wide top that brings shade to your yard.” Cedar: Resilience Two cedar pines stand as siblings. Planted years ago as one-foot bushes, they are now 12 to 15 feet tall despite the deer chewing at their base. I asked what they’d say about themselves as evergreens. “My leaves are spindly and small, but I am resilient. Regardless of the weather or the animals, I continue to grow. My branches come out from all around my trunk, inch after inch, filled with more branches. This is part of my beauty, strength, and resilience, and protects of my trunk as well. We appreciated being given the space to grow, and we’ve done so beautifully, don’t you think?” Oak: Standing in Your Power The oak was next. It’s such a stately tree. Regal, with a unique split trunk, like twins -two for one. It keeps its curled brown leaves through winter until spring brings new growth. “Thank you for noticing me, for your comments, and kindness. I know you worry that I shadow your garden, but it all works out. Here at the back of your property, I stand making a statement that this is where your property comes to an end. I am strong and I grow straight and tall. Oak is old wisdom, the wisdom of the druids. The small acorn grows the big, tall oak tree. We are mighty, we are wise.” I asked if it would share some oak wisdom. “Oak wisdom is about strength, about growing tall, standing still. It’s about staking a claim and standing in your power. When you stand tall in your power, you are like the oak. That makes us smile and we can see a smile on your face too.” Poplar: Flexibility Last was the poplar tree, tall, with siblings a hundred yards off. Their leaves twist and dance in the wind, the whole top of the tree sways like it’s moving to music. “Thank you for noticing my grace. I love that I sway in the breeze, that my leaves are dancing and twirling. I am flexible and fluid. Okay, the willow is more fluid, but don’t deny me my own grace. I love when a storm comes, so I can sway and dance, my branches reaching tall into the sky. I’m here to show that something tall and firmly rooted can still have delightful movement. You can be grounded and yet move and sway, dodge and hedge, persevere, and continue to grow and expand and experience life. My leaves are often the first to fall in a storm, and small branches snap off, but I heal rapidly. That’s part of my perseverance. Not like oak, standing there tall and firm and unyielding. That’s not me. I move and I have grace. My message to you is that you too can move and be flexible and change with the wind, and you’ll be rewarded for it. Sometimes you need to be firm. Sometimes you need to sway with the wind.” What Do Trees Talk About? As I listened to each tree, I noticed something surprising. None of them talked about themselves for very long. Each one reflected something back to me that we humans needed to hear. They spoke of qualities which humans need to live well. Cypress — Beauty and being seen Cherry — Abundance and generosity Russian Olive — Sharing and spreading Cedar — Resilience Oak — Standing in your power Poplar — Flexibility They seemed to be reminding me of qualities we already have but sometimes forget. Maybe that’s one of the gifts of spending time in nature. Whether you believe the trees were speaking to me, or that my intuition was translating their energy into words, it almost doesn’t matter. The wisdom was real. And every message left me feeling more connected to the living world around me. The next time you walk past a tree, consider being intentional. Stop for a minute. Really look at it. Notice its shape, its bark, its leaves. Say hello. Thank it for the shade it offers, the oxygen it creates, the beauty it brings to the world. Then, if it feels right, ask, “Is there anything you’d like me to know today?” Then simply listen. Maybe nothing happens. Or maybe you’ll be surprised. I started this little experiment wondering if trees had something to say. I ended it wondering something completely different. What if the trees have been speaking all along, and I simply never took the time to listen? FAQs About Trees Communicating Can trees actually communicate with humans? Trees exchange chemical and electrical signals with each other and their environment, which science confirms. Whether a tree can communicate a message to a specific person is a matter of belief and intuition rather than proven fact. Many people report receiving impressions, feelings, or words while sitting quietly with a tree. How do you communicate with a tree? Approach with an open mind, sit or stand near the tree, and quietly observe its shape, bark, and leaves. Say hello, ask a simple question such as “what would you like me to know today?” Then, listen for any words, feelings, or images that surface. Patience and stillness matter more than technique. What is intuitive communication with nature? Intuitive communication with nature is the practice of tuning into subtle impressions, feelings, or inner “words.” These might arise while spending focused, quiet attention with a plant, tree, or natural setting. It relies on inner sensing rather than verbal exchange, and results vary from person to person. Do different trees carry different meanings? Many spiritual traditions assign symbolic qualities to specific trees. Oak for strength and endurance, cedar for resilience, cypress for grace and boundaries. These associations come from folklore, mythology, and personal intuitive experience rather than scientific classification. What The Trees Taught Me Six trees, with six distinct qualities: beauty, abundance, sharing, resilience, personal power, and flexibility Each message pointed back to something we need to remember, not just a fact about the tree itself. Slowing down and paying attention to nature can surface intuitive insight, whether you call it tree communication or simply inspiration. Here’s a small ritual to try. Pause by a tree, notice it, say hello, ask a question, and listen. That’s all it takes to try this yourself. Have fun! { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "Can trees actually communicate with humans?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Trees exchange chemical and electrical signals with each other and their environment, which science confirms. Whether a tree can communicate a message to a specific person is a matter of belief and intuition rather than proven fact. Many people report receiving impressions, feelings, or words while sitting quietly with a tree." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How do you communicate with a tree?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Approach with an open mind, sit or stand near the tree, and quietly observe its shape, bark, and leaves. Say hello, ask a simple question such as what it would like you to know today, then listen for any words, feelings, or images that surface. Patience and stillness matter more than technique." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is intuitive communication with nature?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Intuitive communication with nature is the practice of tuning into subtle impressions, feelings, or inner words that arise while spending focused, quiet attention with a plant, tree, or natural setting. It relies on inner sensing rather than verbal exchange, and results vary from person to person." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Do different trees carry different meanings?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Many spiritual traditions assign symbolic qualities to specific trees, such as oak for strength and endurance, cedar for resilience, and cypress for grace and boundaries. These associations come from folklore, mythology, and personal intuitive experience rather than scientific classification." } } ] } The post Do Trees Communicate? Here’s What Six Trees Told Me appeared first on Intuitive Edge.

Read OnlineThe Storms of LifeJesus made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. Matthew 14:22–25Only God, in His perfect Wisdom, could convey profound spiritual meaning through Jesus' human actions. Though His miracles reveal His divinity and His teachings articulate divine mysteries, so does every subtle movement He makes—each one working together to prophetically depict the full Gospel. The Church, from her earliest centuries, has come to recognize and contemplate these deeper layers through what is known as the allegorical and spiritual sense of Scripture.On the surface, today's Gospel reveals Jesus' divinity simply through His walking on the water. Yet beneath the surface, other mysteries are unveiled. The mountain, the solitude, the prayer, the storm, the boat, the fear, and Jesus' words all communicate something of Christ's saving mission and of our journey through life with Him.Jesus goes up the mountain alone to pray. In Scripture, mountains are places of divine encounter—Moses and Elijah encountered God on Mount Sinai, and Jesus was transfigured before the disciples on Mount Tabor. In today's Gospel, the mountain signifies Jesus' communion and heavenly intercession with the Father. He ascends alone, leaving the disciples behind, just as He would ascend to the Father after the Resurrection—remaining with us spiritually while we, the Church, continue our pilgrimage through the storms of this world.While Jesus is in prayer, the disciples struggle in the boat, tossed by waves, with the wind against them. The boat represents the Church amid the turmoil of the world. The waves symbolize trials, temptations, and fears that rise without warning. And though Jesus seems physically distant, He is never inattentive. In fact, it is precisely in the hour of greatest distress that He draws near.Jesus comes to them in the fourth watch of the night—the final and darkest stretch before dawn. This is the hour of the soul's deepest desolation, when one feels most abandoned, most vulnerable, most helpless. Yet it is also the very moment when divine help arrives. Jesus walks toward them on the sea, using the very waves that threatened to destroy them as the path of His approach. The storm does not hinder Him; He walks above it, showing His authority over chaos and His power to transform even the fiercest trials into a means of His presence.But the disciples do not recognize Him. They cry out in fear, thinking He is a ghost. This reveals a spiritual truth: In our moments of fear and confusion, we can misperceive even the presence of Christ. When our hearts are unsettled and our faith is shaken, we may not see clearly the One who comes to save us.Then Jesus speaks words that echo through every age: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” In Greek, the phrase “it is I”—egō eimi—is the divine Name revealed to Moses: “I AM.” This is not only reassurance, it is a revelation of Jesus' divine identity. With this declaration, Jesus does more than calm the sea—He calms the soul, inviting the disciples to place their trust not only in what He does, but in who He is.Reflect today on any storm in your life in which you feel God is absent and the waves are overwhelming. Imagine Jesus walking toward you on those very waves. Though His presence may not be immediately clear, look with eyes of faith and listen for His voice: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Welcome Him in, and trust that His grace is sufficient for every trial and tribulation God permits you to endure.Most miraculous Lord, You speak to me day and night—through the Scriptures, inspirations, signs, and sacred symbols. Yet too often I fail to perceive Your presence, especially amid the storms of life. Open my eyes to recognize You, even when You come in unexpected ways. Help me to welcome You into the boat of my soul with faith and joy, so that You may bring order to the chaos I endure and fill me with Your abiding peace. Jesus, I trust in You.  Image: Walking on Water, by Ivan AivazovskySource: Free RSS feed from catholic-daily-reflections.com — Copyright © 2026 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. This content is provided solely for personal, non-commercial use. Redistribution, republication, or commercial use — including use within apps with advertising — is strictly prohibited without written permission.

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal delivers a rich expository sermon on James 5:1–6, one of the most striking prophetic passages in the New Testament epistles. Drawing on the Jewish literary and cultural context of James's original audience — Jewish Christians scattered from Jerusalem by persecution — Tony unpacks why this text is not a blanket condemnation of wealth, but a devastating judgment oracle against those who hoard riches and oppress the vulnerable. Along the way, he explores the eschatological weight of accumulated wealth, the theology of God's omniscient justice, and the stunning comfort available to the suffering believer. The episode closes by returning to James's thesis: that trials of every kind, including economic oppression, can be counted as joy because of who God is and what He has done in Christ. Key Takeaways James is a deeply Jewish book written to a specific audience — Jewish Christians dispersed from Jerusalem by Saul's persecution, not a general audience of wealthy or Gentile believers. The prophetic "Come now" signals a judgment oracle, not a direct address — James is not rebuking wealthy members of his congregation, but pronouncing eschatological judgment on oppressive landowners using a technique common in Amos, Malachi, and Micah. Hoarding wealth is not morally neutral — it is self-condemning — The corroded gold and moth-eaten garments are not just symbols of decay; they serve as legal evidence against those who refused to use their wealth for God's glory and the good of others. Withholding wages from laborers constitutes a form of murder — In the ancient world, depriving workers of their wages could literally cost them their lives. James draws on Old Testament law to frame predatory economic exploitation as a capital sin. God sees and hears the cries of the oppressed — The wages of defrauded workers "cry out" to the Lord of Hosts, echoing the blood of Abel in Genesis 4. God's justice is not passive or delayed out of ignorance — it is certain and coming. Matthew 25 reframes Christian mercy as care for the body of Christ — The sheep-and-goats judgment is not a general humanitarian mandate, but a specific call to care for persecuted brothers and sisters — and to recognize that mistreating them is mistreating Christ Himself. Trials are counted as joy through the doctrine of imputation — Suffering is not stripped of its pain, but it can be moved from the loss ledger to the profit column because God uses adversity as the instrument of sanctification and glorification. Key Concepts The Prophetic Address: Who Is James Actually Talking To? One of the most common misreadings of James 5:1–6 is assuming James is directly rebuking wealthy Christians in his own congregation. Tony Arsenal corrects this by grounding the passage in its literary and historical context. James employs a well-established prophetic technique — seen in Amos, Malachi, and Micah — of addressing an absent party in order to pronounce judgment on them, while simultaneously comforting those who overhear the oracle. His audience is the dispersed, impoverished Jewish Christians who fled Jerusalem under Saul's persecution. There were almost certainly no wealthy landowners in the room. The "Come now, you rich" is a judgment declaration directed outward, designed to assure the suffering poor that God has seen their oppressor and will act. Far from being a proof-text for radical poverty, the passage is a pastoral comfort wrapped in prophetic fire. Corroded Gold as Legal Evidence Against the Soul James's claim that gold and silver have "corroded" is deliberately shocking — and theologically precise. Gold, uniquely among metals in the ancient world, does not corrode. By saying it has already corroded, James is not making a metallurgical claim but a moral and eschatological one. The accumulated, hoarded wealth of the oppressor has lost its purpose. It sits idle while workers starve, and in doing so it becomes evidence — a legal witness — against its owner in the court of divine justice. Tony draws a direct line between this image and Jesus's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about treasures stored on earth being subject to moth and rust. Both brothers — Jesus and James — appear to be drawing on the same shared wisdom, likely rooted in the same household and the same mother's instruction. Unused wealth does not just fail to help others; it actively indicts its holder. Counting It All Joy: The Accounting Logic of Sanctification Tony closes the sermon by returning to James 1:2 — the thesis statement of the entire letter — and unpacking the word "count" as an accounting term, directly related to the doctrine of imputation. Just as righteousness is reckoned to the believer in justification, so suffering can be reckoned as joy in sanctification. This is not a call to pretend pain isn't real, or to perform contentment. It is a theological reframing: what belongs in the loss column of the ledger can, by faith, be moved to the profit side — not because the trial was pleasant, but because God is sovereign, good, and working all things toward the believer's conformity to the image of Christ. The oppressor means their wickedness for evil. God means it for glory. The supreme example is the cross itself — the only truly innocent man, suffering the worst evil ever committed, for the redemption of His people. Memorable Quotes The corrosion of that gold serves as evidence for the condemnation of those who are harming you — and the corrosion of this wealth is an indication of the corrosion of their very souls. He sees your pain. He sees your suffering. He sees your victories even when no one else is celebrating them. He sees you — and that should be a great source of comfort. Imputation is an accounting term. And when we count it all joy, we're taking what should be a red line in the loss ledger — what should be an expense — and we're able to move it to the profit. Not because it didn't hurt, and not because we wanted it to happen, but because our God is good enough to not rob us of the chance to be sanctified. Full Transcript Tony Arsenal: Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you." It's always a little, uh, strange to sort of jump into the middle of a series, and, um, you know, Wes is one of the most competent preachers that I know personally, so I trust that he has given you a good and satisfying overview. Uh, but I don't feel like I would be doing my responsibility if I didn't at least touch on a few things, uh, related to the, the intro to James that I think is relevant for this particular passage in a way that maybe is not relevant for the rest of the book. So some of this I hope is review, I, I anticipate is review, but I think it's worth, uh, touching on. James, as you know, is the, the half brother of Jesus. He was the leader of the Jerusalem church, and specifically he was sort of the figurehead of the Jewish church as a whole. Um, the Jewish church was the only church for the very early part of the church's growth. There were always, uh, Gentile believers. Even in the Old Testament, there were Gentiles who trusted in the Lord of Israel and the God of Israel. They were often called God-fearers. They rarely converted all the way to Judaism, but they were sort of seen as an attachment to the Jewish people. They didn't participate in all of the blessings of the Jewish people, but they did participate in most. They often had the same kind of protection. They were in a form of covenant with God. Um, they were able to worship and offer sacrifices. The temple itself had a whole portion of the temple dedicated called the Court of Gentiles, specifically for these Jewish worshipers. And as the church spread, primarily through persecution, which we'll touch base on here in a minute, as the church spread out from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria, and ultimately to the ends of the earth, it took on a, an increasingly Gentile Greek flavor. As more and more primarily initially Greek converts came into the church, and then of course, as it spread to other sort of non-Hellenistic lands, other, other types of people, other nations, other people groups joined the church, the scriptures which-- the New Testament we receive primarily from Paul, at least in terms of the epistles, um, also began to take on a more Gentile flavor. Not because Paul was a Gentile, but because Paul was ministering primarily to Gentiles What we'll see here is that James is a very Jewish book. I'm sure that along the way there's been several kinds of things pointed out to you to show that, but I wanna show a couple things that not only establish James as the author, James the brother of, of Jesus, but also root the, not only the author, but the audience in a distinctly Jewish Christian, uh, context. So you don't have to turn there, I'll read this, but in Acts, uh, 15, which is the, the great Jerusalem Council, uh, we read this. It says, "With the following letter..." So the, the council meets, they make a decision about what k- what parts of the Jewish law were going to be commended to and recommended, uh, and required for the Christian believers, the Gentile Christian believers, and when they're done, they send this letter to all of, all of the churches. And it says, "With the following letter, the brothers, both apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are at, of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings." Now, I don't know about you, but I always sign my emails the same way, right? I've got, like, my work signature that I have to use, that the, the hospital makes me use with all the proper formatting and colors and fonts, but I always have the same signature. Mine is very simple. I just say, "Thanks," right? I just sign it as, "Thanks," above my signature, and I'm sure you all have that sort of characteristic way you sign a s- sign an email, or maybe it's the way you say goodbye at the end of a phone call. My father-in-law always says, "So long," which is a phrase you don't hear very often, so it's very distinct to him. We all have these little tells in our communication that sort of tip off who they're from. If you turn quickly back over to James 1, so just flip the page, uh, to the left here, he starts his letter by saying, "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, greetings." It's the only two letters in the New Testament that we have where the author identifies himself, sends to a sort of generalized audience, and then signs it, "Greetings." Now, James, the brother of Jesus, was the leader of the Jerusalem Church. He was the leader of the Jewish ch- the Jewish Church in general, and he signed the letter coming from the Acts Council as sort of the presiding minister. If, if we were, y- you might call them, like, the moderator of your business meeting, or we would call them the moderator of our presbytery or our session in the Presbyterian context I come from. He was the one who sort of, like, presided over there, and so the letter that went out to the churches was signed in his name and written, drafted by him. So we see this characteristic way that the letter is addressed with this final word, "Greetings," which is not used frequently in the New Testament We also see when we look at the language carefully that the audience of this, uh, of this letter, it's debated and there are good arguments, but i- in my opinion, it's very clear that the audience of this letter is not Jewish Christians in general or, uh, Jews who have not yet converted. There are some people who would say that 'cause they're called the 12 tribes. But instead it is the Jewish Christians who originally dwelled in Jerusalem and were sent out into the countryside after the persecution that was started primarily by Saul. If you look at Acts, Acts 1 which is, uh, the passage where Saul begins to persecute the church or where Saul kinda comes on the scene as the persecutor of the church, there's a couple distinct, um, distinct linguistic markers we should touch base on. Starting in verse one it says, "And p- Saul approved of his execution. And there arose a day-- that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. They were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made a great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church and entered the house after house. He dragged off men and women and committed them to prison." When we look at this and we compare it to that, uh, again, that first verse of James where he says to the ones who are scattered, we see that there's a pretty strong linguistic parallel that tells us that the people he has in mind for this letter, the people he's addressing, are the same people who were dispersed or scattered out of Jerusalem in the persecution. When he says to the 12 tribes in the dispersion, that word dispersion is not really a translation. It's what we call a transliteration. So it's not like we've taken a word and sort of given it an English word. We've just changed the word, the letters over to English letters. In Greek, the word is diaspora, dispersion, and in, uh, Acts 1, the verb used to, to sort of describe this scattering of them is diaspero. And it is a picture of scattering seed. This is what a farmer would do. So it's not even the normal word we would use when someone is fleeing persecution. It's this idea that God has scattered Christians out into the world, in this case by persecution. He scattered them out into the world to be planted. A lot of this is where we get phrases from Tertullian about the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Now, why does this matter? As I mentioned, we often think in Gentile categories when we're reading the New Testament, and for good reason. One, we're all, all Gentiles, I'm presuming. I, I don't, I don't think-- I think I mentioned this last time, and no one came up and corrected me. I don't think anyone here is ethnically Jewish with ancestry that they're directly aware of, you know, where they trace their lineage directly back. Europe is a, a big amalgamation of just about everything, so most of us probably have a smattering of different ethnicities. But none of us are ethnically Jewish to the idea that we would, uh, identify as such in the same way. And even if we were, we've been raised and grown up in a Gentile context. We live in the West. We have-- We think in different categories. And what's more is most of the New Testament is written primarily to Gentiles by someone who is ministering to Gentiles. So Paul uses a fair amount of, of Hebraisms or things that are related to the Old Testament. Of course, he's explaining the Old Testament, and he makes ample reference to the Old Testament because that is the word of God, and it is profitable for our teaching, our correction, our reproof, and ultimately for our, our sanctification. But he uses metaphors and language in a way that is not common to the Israel context that Jesus and James and Peter and the other apostles were raised in. We don't have time to go there, but there's even some metaphors that Paul uses that are actually used the opposite way in, uh, in the more Hebraic Jewish, uh, epistles we have. One example that comes to mind is, um, Paul looks at the concept of milk, and that's not necessarily a good thing, right? It's not a bad thing, but it's what immature believers use, right? They can't handle the meat of the Bible. They have to be given the milk of the gospel before they can progress to the meat. In the Book of Hebrews, which I don't think was written by Paul, and in other places, Peter uses milk as a way to talk about nourishment, right? We think of the land flowing with milk and honey. Milk was not seen as some sort of substandard food that was only for babies. It was seen as, like, the richest, best thing that you could eat. We all have a linguistic environment that we grow up in. We all have a shared vernacular. You know, if I say something like, "You can't get there from here," everyone knows what that means. Obviously, you can get there from here, but you have to take this circuitous route. We know what that means. I think if we went around the room, we probably would find that there is this shared language. And then if we took individual families, we'd find that even within those families, there's further narrowing down of sort of like inside jokes and words that are used in ways that are not necessarily the same as others So when we read James, or when we read the letters of Peter or the letters of John, we should default to thinking more along the lines of comparing them to the words of Christ in the Gospel, first and foremost, and then to the Old Testament before we start to think about them necessarily comparing them to Ja-- or to Paul or to other kind of first century Hellenistic literature. That's not, of course, to say that Paul and James contradict. I'm sure that we went through a long explanation with much detail when you got to James chapter two, which is, of course, the most famous example. Paul uses the word justification or justify in a legal sense to make or to declare someone to be righteous. It's the verdict that the judge delivers, and it communicates the status. It actually performs what it says. When the judge says, "I find you not guilty," it changes your status from being potentially guilty to being cleared of all charges. Paul uses it slightly differently. He's not using it in the sense of to make someone righteous or to declare them righteous. He's using it to say they've been shown to be righteous. They've been validated. They've been vindicated. And if we get that mixed up, that's the source of all sorts of confusion. So when we come to this passage, and we'll get there, I promise, when we come to this passage, we have to understand some of the metaphors and the language that's being used draws from an existing body of shared cultural language that is foreign to us and is in some ways foreign to the rest of the New Testament, apart from what we see in the Gospels And it's important to remember, and this is why it's so key to land, that the audience of this letter is the persecuted, poor Jewish Christians who probably had a fairly comfortable life, relatively speaking, living in Jerusalem. These are city folks. These are people that live in Jerusalem or farm into the fields immediately around Jerusalem. They were established. They owned land. They probably had family that they had to leave, and now they're scattered out into the country with nothing. They're sent out into the world with no jobs, no family connections, no social welfare. Because they've left the Jewish faith, at least from the perspective of the Jews, they can't even go to their Jewish brothers and sisters and rely on the hospitality that's required in the law of Moses This is so important when we think about how James opens the letter and delivers what I think is his thesis statement. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of every kind." Trials like not knowing where the next meal is gonna come from, not knowing where the next roof over your head is, not being sure you can feed your children. We all face real trials and tribulations in our life. Some of them are related to our faith, and some is just the fallen human condition in the fallen world we live in. But we're talking here about a totally different category of, uh, trial and persecution than most of us hopefully will ever experience That brings us to our actual passage now. James opens up this section with a linguistic marker that signifies this is a change in topic. He says, "Come now," or another way to translate it might be, "Now listen. Listen up." When my son is doing something that, uh, I need him to stop or I need to give him instructions, I hold him by his shoulders and I say, "Look at my eyes. I want your eyes right here. Look at my eyes." That's what Paul is doing. He's stopping and he's interrupting the flow of language. This shows us this is a new topic and a new audience. James is not speaking to rich Christians in his audience. First, 'cause there likely weren't any rich Christians directly in his audience. Remember, these are the, the poor Christians scattered out into the Judean countryside, into Samaria He's using a technique that's really common in the prophets. It's common in Jesus, where he's addressing the people who are not really listening as a way to establish that they will be judged, to hold them accountable, but also to comfort those who are hearing the message. This is a form of prophetic address. We see this in Amos, where he's chastising the Jewish leaders. Uh, in Malachi and Micah, this happens. Malachi is primarily, at least initially, is primarily, uh, a book that is railing against the rich leaders in Jerusalem who had oppressed their own brothers and sisters. The chances that those Jewish cr- uh, Jewish leaders were reading his prophecy or hearing his prophecy is pretty slim. So he was addressing a different group to establish the judgment that he was proclaiming on another party. Jesus does this when he says like, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees." There were probably scribes and Pharisees in the audience there, but he wasn't just talking to the people in front of them. He was pronouncing a judgment oracle, a judgment prophecy on all people who fit that category, and James is doing the same thing here James is not opposing wealth generally. Sometimes James is used as kind of a New Testament example to justify the idea that we should all be poor and wear shabby clothing and walk around barefoot and dirty all the time. Right? This is a key passage that's used, uh, in parts of the church that really emphasize sort of a poverty-based lifestyle. Think of like the wandering monks of the Middle Ages or the, the, um, sort of more radical exclusionists that exist even in our day. I remember when I was in college, I was really enamored with this figure named Shane Claiborne. Some of you have probably heard of him, and I remember I was so impressed because he, he didn't buy new shoes. He just cut new shoes out of duct tape and put them back together. Now, there's some, you know, there's some rugged, uh, rugged get-it-done-ness that, uh, I think us, uh, New Englanders can appreciate, but God does not call us to wear duct tape shoes, at least not universally. I'm not gonna comment on whether he calls Shane Claiborne to do that. I also don't think Shane Claiborne does that anymore. Um, some of us he may call to a lifestyle of poverty in association with a mission field or in association with a specific calling. He does not call us generally to be poor or to not gain wealth What he is opposing here is the refusal to use wealth appropriately for God's glory and the accumulation of wealth just for wealth's sake We'll see that as we unpack the language here a little bit. He establishes that he's not just talking about the earthly hoarding of wealth, as though somehow the very act of accumulating wealth was itself the problem. What he's doing is he's pronouncing an eschatological judgment on those who hoard wealth and use it to oppress others. We see here he says, "Come now, you rich, and weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you." Th- that word weep and howl, those are li-- those are words that are most commonly used in prophetic literature to describe the final cry of anguish. Think about the weeping and gnashing of teeth that Jesus talks about. This is the language he's using. He's talking about the final estate of those who refuse to submit their wealth to God He says, "Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be the evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasures in the last days." Now, remember what we said. We, we should read this not in light of some general wisdom, although it is general wisdom that if we accumulate wealth, it tends to not actually go well for us if we're not utilizing it in God-honoring ways. But we should read this in light of the most obvious connection, his big brother, Jesus, who taught his people, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be." To maybe land this linguistic, uh, this linguistic connection a little more, I don't know, vibrantly, I'm gonna speculate a little bit. So if you don't like it, then you can disregard it. This is not God's Word. This is a speculation. I can just imagine little Jesus, little nine-year-old Jesus, and probably little six or seven-year-old James and the rest of their siblings, and there's quite a few of them. And we have Joseph, uh, who maybe at this time was still living, although probably not. We know he was living until Jesus was later, you know, 12, he was still around, but we don't know exactly when he left the picture. But he was a carpenter, and he was not, probably not overly wealthy. Uh, they had had to pick up and move, you know, cross-country anyways. They-- We don't know exactly where they were from initially, but they went to Bethlehem, and then they returned to Nazareth. They probably didn't have a lot. There were a lot of mouths to feed and only one business. They didn't have a farm. They didn't own livestock that we know of. I can just imagine a time when little J- little James or one of his sisters was frustrated about the fact that they didn't have anything. And I could picture Mary getting down and going, "Do not store up treasures in, in, uh, in heaven or on Earth. It's all gonna waste away." The same way we might tell our children kind of a, a moral kind of story. Sometimes we have this picture, last time I was here I, I spoke on Philippians 2, we have this idea that Jesus was somehow like Superman, that he, he was just pretending to be a normal human most of the time. As it touches his humanity, as, as we think about Jesus as a human, he had a, his own human set of thinking faculties, his own human knowledge. He grew in wisdom and stature is what Luke teaches us. Well, where did he get some of this wisdom? There's a good reasonable argument to be made that some of the pr- more proverbial type sayings that we see in Christ, that they actually come from the wisdom of his mother and father. And a really good reason to believe that is James relies on the same exact, uh, sort of proverbial wisdom to l- land his point. He doesn't create his own metaphor, he goes back to, at the very least we can say he goes back to the words of Christ. That's a very safe position to take. But this is the shared linguistic context that they both grew up in And he says, "You've done this in the last days." Now, the, the phrase last days in the Bible, uh, in the New Testament generally refers to the time period from Christ's resurrection to his return. We, for a lot of reasons, think about it as kind of like that climactic end period in time. Depending on your, your persuasion, maybe this is when the Antichrist comes, or maybe this is before or after, or maybe during the time when the church is raptured. But in either case, we think of that sort of last period in time before Christ finally comes back. But the New Testament writers are really talking about the entire duration, from Christ's resurrection to his return is what they're referring to. But it does have in view this idea that we are in the last times. The, the final judgment is not necessarily strictly something that's out there in the future. We are living in the last days now, and so what we do and what we say and, and how we worship and if we worship is eschatology. It is the theology of the last times He also positions this as though this is a universal thing going on with those who hoard wealth. This is a very shocking image. Um, we have very good ways to preserve things in our modern world, right? We have ways to m- to make, uh, stainless steel that won't rust, or at least won't rust quickly. But most things in the ancient world, even most precious metals, corroded. Um, I remember when I was growing up, there was this project in my hometown. I lived in a, a little town called White Bear Lake in, in, um, Minnesota, although little is relative. It's pretty big compared to most of what we have out here. And I remember when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, they had this big building project to build this brand-new, beautiful lakeside pavilion in the center of town, and it w- just gleamed in the sun. It was so gorgeous, and it was made of copper, and everybody loved it, and two years later, it was bright green. I think it's still bright green. I think they figured out it wasn't worth repairing, so they, they just, they just make sure it doesn't keep getting worse, and at some point, I'm sure they either have or will tear it down. But the one metal in the ancient world that didn't do this was gold. It's part of why gold is such a durable measurement of wealth is because it doesn't wear out. It doesn't corrode. It's very soft. It's very easy to damage it, which is why we don't build statues out of it, or we don't build, uh, buildings out of it usually, but it didn't corrode. So when James says here, "Not only your silver, which tarnishes and corrodes, but your silver and gold have corroded." Not are corroding, but have corroded. The rich hearer of this is probably, you know, sitting around like Scrooge McDuck with a pile of gold coins thinking, "Ah, it looks pretty good to me." And what James is saying is, "No, no, no. No, it's corroded. It's eating away at your heart. It's lost its value because you refuse to use it, and so it sits in a pile doing nothing for no one, except serving to further your own condemnation." This is such a crazy, shocking situation that the insanity of not using your wealth, period, the insanity of sitting on your wealth in the ancient world is going to serve as a form of evidence justifying the condemnation of these wicked fools And further, the corrosion of this wealth is an indication of the corrosion of their very souls. There's something about money. I was-- When I was here a couple times before, I preached one of the wealth passages out of Ecclesiastes, and there's something about money that has a unique way of really, really wrecking us. Either we don't have it and we want it, or we have it and we don't wanna lose it, or we have it and we don't spend it wisely. It seems like there's an infinite number of ways to screw it up. And we landed last time that the gospel is good news because with the nearly infinite ways of screwing it up, we're going to screw it up. But the one way that he talks about screwing it up here is hoarding it and sitting on it and not using it Moving on into verses four and five, James moves us now to a more sort of temporal register. He starts out by talking about what wealth is and what it's doing and how it will ultimately affect the entire life and eternity of those in his targeted audience, those he's proclaiming this prophetic, uh, judgment against. But in verse four, he moves back to the behaviors that are being, uh, being engaged in to show the state of these people's souls. He says, "Behold, the wages of the laborers you, who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter." James here points at the, at the behaviors that show this hoarding behavior, and he does it for a number of reasons. One, he needs to call out sin. That's part of the role of a Christian, and especially a leader or a minister in the church, is, um, to not only call out sin in the body of, of Christ, but in a, I think a very particular way, and there's all sorts of, uh, all sorts of theological controversies flying on around about Christian nationalism and other associated things. Some of it is just the spirit of the age. Um, post-COVID, there's a, a real strong sense that our government has failed us and we need to replace it with something else. But there is a, a true way, and I, I think some of those things are a little misguided, but there's a true way that the church, particularly her leaders, should be speaking to the culture around us, and yes, even to the government, to proclaim the truth of God into a wicked and godless culture. This might take the form o- of a m- minister who goes to a town hall meeting to speak out against a gambling association that's going to be forming, or a, an elder in the church or a deacon in the church who goes to speak to, uh, to the city hall or to the state legislature about the wickedness of abortion and about what we see it does to women's lives when they are fooled into thinking that this is the right thing for them. Again, the church is not the state, and the state is not the church, and we should be very careful not to cross those lines for all sorts of reasons. But we as a culture, as a Christian culture, in the United States particularly, have lost sight of our responsibility to speak truth in all circumstances to those in power So James is doing that, of course. But even more so, this is a way that he establishes for his direct audience, for the Jewish poor Christians who have been scattered in this diaspora, in this dispersion. He looks at them in a sense and says, "I see you. I see what's happening to you." And as God's representative, as his chosen voice for this message, as his inspired author, God sees you too This goes back again, the first two chapters of James serve as kind of a thesis statement and table of contents for the whole book. We get an idea of what may have been happening, the actual, uh, acts that were being engaged in, in, in chapter two verse six, he says, "You have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?" James has in mind here a form of predatory land purchasing, where the rich were sort of sweeping up property. They were sweeping it up, and then they were charging probably exorbitant prices to those who would lease the land to try to eke out a living. Does that sound at all like any of our current context, right? When's the last time any of us have tried to buy a house and found anything reasonable? Well, a large part of that is that there are big companies that are scooping up all the land and buying all the, the developments. Now, I'm not commenting on those particular situations. I don't know those people. I don't know their hearts, and some of those things actually are doing good things for the community. But we're familiar with this idea of someone who will purchase a resource, who will then jack the price up in order to turn a profit on it. I'm not opposed to turning a profit. Y- y- yeah, it takes money to run a business, and you have to, you have to recuperate those funds if your business is going to survive. But there's a, there's a way that that can be done that is a predatory act These rich landowners were getting fat on those that they were victimizing In our, in our modern world, we tend to think of someone who is overweight as unhealthy, for good reason, right? Too much weight, and I say that with someone with a little too much padding around the middle, so no, no judgment on this, but too much weight is not healthy, right? We hear that from our doctors, that there's a healthy weight range and there's an unhealthy weight range. In the ancient world, obesity was not the concern, right? Malnutrition was the concern. And so when you see, uh, a king in the Old Testament who's, who's noted to be fat, that's not always negative. Sometimes it is, but he's noted to be fat or he's noted to be large. Even the word for glory, I'm sure you've heard this before, the word for glory in the Old Testament has to do with being heavy. So this idea of weightiness or, um, being able to eat enough to actually gain weight instead of being thin was seen as a good thing, but not when you use it as a way to victimize other people. A person who gathers wealth honestly and enjoys it, that's, that's Proverbs right there. That's the Book of Ecclesiastes in its sort of positive sense, is that we, when we accumulate wealth and we use it for God's glory, it's perfectly okay for us to also use it for our enjoyment. God wants us to enjoy the fruit of our labor. But when we accumulate wealth and use it as a way to gain power over someone and to abuse them, that is what James is railing against here And ultimately, with the audience that James is writing to, this is a form of murder. This is why he says, "You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter." Because a person who can't feed their family in the Old Testament or in the New Testament era was likely to see them die. There are not a ton of people in modern America that are starving to death on the streets. It's not to say it doesn't happen. It's not to say that there's not things like food insecurity or malnutrition, but there are, there are plenty of places people can go to get their basic food needs met. It was not like that-- It's not like that in most of the world now, and it certainly was not like that in the ancient world. And so a, a landowner who again refuses, we're talking about the Jewish landowners, refuses to obey the Jewish law to leave some leftovers for the poor, and instead gleans all the way to the corner so that they can turn a little bit of extra pro-profit, is not only sinning against the Old Testament law, but is committing murder in the strictest sense by refusing to preserve the life of these poor, uh, Christians who are destitute And again, James is encouraging his readers here that the Lord has not ignored their plight. We can think back to the Book of Habakkuk, where Habakkuk basically lodges a lawsuit against God, saying, "You are not paying attention. You're not doing your thing. You're not being faithful to your covenant." And God says, "Let me show you how faithful to my covenant I am. The Chaldeans are on the way." And Habakkuk is like, "Whoa, wait a second here. That's not what I had in mind." God sees the oppression of the poor. He knows when His people are targeted. He knows when children are abused or when widows are ignored. He knows when the government does something to shut down a church, or when the medical institution refuses to acknowledge your personal rights. He sees those things, and He's not ignorant, and He's not static. He's not sleeping on those things. The purpose here is to comfort the oppressed by showing that God is not ignorant of what has happened to them. Just two quick Old Testament examples that use similar language. In Genesis 4, we read of Cain and his murder of Abel, and in verse eight it says, "Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is Abel your brother?' He said, 'I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?' And the Lord said, 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground.'" Numbers, uh, 35 verses 30 says, "If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses, but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death. And you shall accept no ransom from him who has fled to the city of refuge, that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land except for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it." There's a rich history in the Old Testament of language of inanimate things, land, blood, wealth, other kinds of things that give testimony to God in some way, and specifically of these inanimate, uh, impersonal things testifying to the sin of the people that dwell around them. Even Christ says, "If these people do not worship me, the rocks will cry out." Now, the rocks are not literally crying out, although it certainly would be within God's power to make the rocks sing. But Christ is not saying in that passage that the rocks are going to form mouths and begin singing Hosanna or whatever song they might have been doing. What he's saying is that the very rocks themselves give testimony to the glory and goodness of God. So even if the people around here fail to do so, the entire rest of creation is doing so, and that is what James is saying here. My dear brothers and sisters scattered in the dispersion who have nothing, and in society's eyes are nothing, some of you are facing persecution. Some of you will be killed for your faith, but God sees because the wealth that is being accumulated on the breaking of your own backs is crying out. The corrosion of that gold serves as evidence for the condemnation of those who are harming you We often want justice in the moment. I think we always want justice in the moment, don't we? I think it's a really hard discipline to say, "That person wronged me, but I'm okay letting God sort it out." That is a hard pill to swallow, but it is often the pill that we have to take. It's the medicine that God uses to further our justification, our j- our, uh, excuse me, our sanctification Paul says, you know, "Do not take vengeance. Let the Lord do that." We can trust, and this is where the comfort of this passage comes for us, brothers and sisters, we can trust that when we are wronged, that when someone has done something to us that is a violation of God's law, that that sin will be punished. Now, when we're dealing with other Christians, that sin has already been punished, and so it is not, it is not appropriate for us to hold onto that and to take vengeance. That's what the parable of the unmerciful servant is all about If I as a Christian refuse to forgive my brother and sister when they've wronged me, it's me saying that I'm a better judge of their sin and I'm a better executioner than the Lord is when he punished that sin on the cross. But that sin was not atoned for when we're talking about unbelievers. When we're talking about those who will ultimately end their earthly life and find themselves waking up in flames, that sin has not been atoned for, and so God will have his justice, and we will have our justice. We won't turn there, but in Revelation, we're familiar with the passage, I think it's chapter six, where the martyred saints are under the throne and they say, "How long, O Lord?" Well, God doesn't answer their question, but he gives them new clothes. When Job cries out and he's, he's saying, "I don't understand why this is happening. Why are you targeting me, God? Why, why are you a hunter with your arrows in my liver?" God doesn't tell him why, but he says, essentially, "I'm God and you're just going to have to trust me that this is right." We see a very similar, uh, kind of situation here when we think about when, uh, when Abraham, uh, when God tells Abraham what he's about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah, and then Abraham negotiates, apparently negotiates with God, uh, trying to secure the salvation of the city for the sake of the righteous. And we read starting in verse 20 of chapter 18, he says, "The Lord said to, to Abraham," he says, " 'Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. If not, I will know.' " God is always seeing and investigating the sin of people We're, we're teaching my son, August, the children's catechism, which is a, a great resource. Um, and one of the questions is, "Can you see God?" And the answer is, "No, but he always sees me." Now that may feel at first to some people like a little bit of a heavy-handed answer, but knowing that God sees us is not just there to correct our sin. It should do that, right? Even the secret sins we commit in the dark when, when we're not being watched by anyone else, even, even those God sees. But do you know what else He sees? He sees your pain. He sees your suffering. He sees your victories even when no one else is celebrating them. He sees your progress. He sees you, and that should be a great source of comfort Now this passage, especially verse six, can be a little bit hard to apply because although we're the targeted audience, we're not the target of the judgment oracle. So I think what we have to do, we have to, we have to think about this in light of the way that God talks about the judgment of unbelievers in other places in the scripture, and how that helps us to understand kind of what our, what our status is. If you'll take your Bibles and open to Matthew chapter 25, I think the, um, the account here of the goat and sheep judgment, uh, is instructive for us Starting in verse 31, it says, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory and the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King answered them, 'Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those on the left, 'Depart from me for you for, uh, depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I was naked and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also, uh, they also will say, answer saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not minister to you?' Then he will answer them saying, 'Truly I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." Now, this passage is sometimes understood as a general command to feed the poor or the sick, or to visit those in prisons, or any of the f- the sort of mercy ministry things that, that, um, are mentioned here. And those are all things that Christians should do, right? We should be engaged in, um, in mercy ministry to the poor, to those who are destitute. We should be mindful and thoughtful of those who have needs around us. What this passage is teaching, though, is not a general command to feed all people, but a specific command to care for your brothers and sisters in Christ when they have a need He doesn't say to the righteous, "You did these to everyone." He says, "Whatever you did to the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me." All of the things that are listed here, the, the six mercy ministries that are listed by Christ here, are things that persecuted Christians were suffering at the time, persecuted Jew- Jewish Christians, and that would be common experiences for, for Jewish Christians and for all persecuted Christians. Right? They're hungry. They don't have food. Our diaspora Jewish Christians don't have land to farm, and even if they're able to scrape together enough funding to lease out a farm, they're being, uh, they're being totally overwhelmed by the cost of that. The sort of homeowners association dues of these pyramid schemes that were going on in the first century, they were so exorbitant that it wasn't even subs- subsistence farming. Christians were being thrown in, uh, in prison. They didn't have enough money to replace their clothes when it wore out. They couldn't have access to clean water. We take clean water as such a, such a basic thing, and it's so easy. You just turn on the tap, or you just go to the store and you buy a bottle of $7 water. It wasn't like this in the first century. If you didn't have a well, you didn't have water, unless you had someone who cared enough to share this precious resource with you. And so what Christ is saying to, to his people, both in the immediate audience on the Sermon on the Mount, uh, and in this, the Olivet Discourse here, what he's saying to his people is when someone in the body of Christ does not have what they need, the body of Christ should step up and make sure that that is the case, that they take care of that person. And likewise, he's saying to those who are not a part of the body of Christ, "Depart from me, I never knew you." Now, the intro to this, why it sometimes is called a parable, is the sheep and the goats. We sometimes go way too far into the arena of comparing the behavior of sheeps with the behavior of the people here, right? Sheep are nice, they're affable, they listen to you. In reality, from what I understand, sheep are pretty dumb and can be very stubborn, right? And then we, we read and we go, "Goats are stubborn, they're rebellious, they're not really good for anything." Well, there's a reason people have goats on farms. They, they can be stubborn, right? They can be destructive, but they also serve a purpose. So the point here is not that sheep are good and goats are bad. The point is that sheep are not goats and goats are not sheep. And, uh, another point that comes with this is sheep don't become goats by behaving like goats, and goats don't become sheep by acting like sheep. I have some friends that will tell you they have very affectionate, friendly, lovable goats, right? I'd, I would... If I could get my kids one of those little pygmy goats that everybody loves, I would do that, 'cause they can be very kind, very sweet, and they're very smart. But they're not sheep. And if you read this passage carefully, this fact that those who are taken to the right are, are in fact taken to the right is not because they fed the poor. It's not because they ministered to Christ by feeding the least of these. They did those things because they were part of the kingdom The King says to those on His right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." The sheep on the right were always going to be the sheep on the right. They were predestined according to the counsel of God's will before all time to live and walk in good works. That's just Ephesians 2 there. That's also just James 2 there. You have faith, I will show you my faith by my works. This is evidence language, loved ones Likewise, the ones who are told to depart into eternal darkness were also predestined not to inherit this kingdom. No kingdom was prepared for them before the foundation of the world. They have no inheritance. They have nothing. They will end up in the state that they are trying to impose on these poor Jewish Christians. They will end up in the state that they may be trying to impose on some of us in this room And for the final verse here in, in chapter five, in verse six here, there's a lot of discussion and debate in the commentaries about who the identity of this righteous one is. It says, "You've condemned and murdered the righteous person, he does not resist you." Now, some commentators will take the fact that this is the singular righteous person, that he has been murdered and h- was condemned, and will take this as a reference to Christ. And that would, would make good sense, right? The Jewish, the wealthy Jewish landowners, the wealthy Jews in Jerusalem who per- who persecuted and cast out, um, the Christians, they were in the same group of people who condemned and murdered Jesus And at least at the time of writing this, and in many ways in our own day, God is not necessarily resisting them. He's allowing them to store up judgment for the coming day of wrath There are others who will take this as sort of the hypothetical singular, right? The righteous one or the righteous person is this, uh, representative hypothetical person that represents all of the persecuted Christians. And so it's more like saying, um, to the, the wealthy landowners who are persecuting Christians, "You have condemned and murdered the Christians, the righteous people, and we do not resist you." Now, at the end of the day, it's, it's always good to have good, sober, well-intentioned, text-based debates about what the Bible means. We can and we should try to convince others, uh, when we think they're wrong about what the scripture means. So that's not what I'm saying here. But in many ways, which of those two perspectives it actually is doesn't change the interpretation of this passage. Like we read in Matthew 25, like we read in Acts 9 when Christ comes and confronts Saul, what you do to God's people, you are doing to Christ himself. What you do to the body, you have done to the head. It's a little bit weird to say that when I stub my toe, I injure my head, but that's true, right? I don't injure my toe as though it's some separate piece. It's not like I'm a Lego man where I can just swap out a hand that gets cracked and put it back on. When I injure my toe, I injure myself. My whole body is injured even though it's specific to a part of my body. When you-- when someone persecutes you, when they, uh, try to extort your wealth, your funds, when they try to harm your body, when they try to take away your children, all things that are happening not just out there in the world, but in our country, even in our own region. When they try to tell you that because you don't wanna play a basketball game, that you can't play sports at all. When a city taxes a portion of a church's property because they don't think it's being used for religious purposes, they are doing that to Jesus Christ himself, and God will not be mocked This should call us both to faithfulness and to encouragement How people treat Christ or how people treat Christ's people, including how we trust, tr- uh, treat Christ's people, shows us what we think about Christ. The people who take care of the church do so because they love God, and they do it out of a regenerated heart that already loves God. And the people who hate the church do it because they hate Christ, and they do it out of their wickedness and out of their wicked heart This brings us back again to the thesis statement of James. "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." And then he says later in that, uh, first chapter in verse nine, "Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like the flower of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower fails, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him." Now, you're all coming up to the end of James here. Um, we probably have two, two more sermons, I would guess, and the rest of this chapter is reinforcing this. It's unpacking for the immediate audience and therefore for us, it's unpacking that although the rich have their punishment coming to them, that likewise our consolation, our comfort from Christ is also coming to us. He closes the whole letter out, he returns to his thesis statement to say, "I'm not going to pretend that the trials you're going through are joyful, but you can count it all joy." You can reckon it, you can impute it as joy, my brothers and sisters. You can put it in the joy column instead of the t- the pain column, right? We had discussion about the beautiful word imputation in the announcements and scripture reading in the beginning here Imputation is a, is an accounting term. And when we count it all joy, we're taking what should be a red line in the, in the loss ledger, right? We're taking what should be an expense, and we're able to move it to the profit. We're able to move it to the positive side, not because it didn't hurt and not because we wanted it to happen, but because our God is good enough to not rob us of the chance to be sanctified When we are oppressed and opposed, those who are oppressing and oppose us mean it for evil, just like Joseph's brothers, uh, and Pharaoh, and all sorts of wicked men in, in the Old Testament and in our own world. Pilate, Herod, you mean, you name it in the Bible, this applies. They meant their wicked acts for wicked things, but God, rich in mercy, works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And what is that purpose? That we might be transformed into the image of Christ so that Christ may be glorified and He may be the firstborn among many brothers. When we face trials and suffering of every kind, it leads us to our sanctification and to our ultimate glorification. We do not earn those things. We don't sanctify ourselves any more than we justify ourselves, or that any more than we will glorify ourselves or will raise ourselves from the dead. That is all God's work from start to finish. But God does use these things that He brings us through as a way to bring about that work It's like he bends us over the hammer, over the anvil of trials, and he hammers us until we become a sharp sword in the hand of, in his hand. Or he polishes us with a rough cloth until we become a smooth, beautiful gem, right? Think of any number of refining things that need to be done. It always involves, if the thing was, uh, was a person, it always involves something that would hurt a little bit. It always involves a little bit of damage to wear away the impurities. Our sanctification and our glorification is no different than that. He uses adversity. He uses the wicked actions and intentions of, of evil men and women. He uses those things to glorify us. So although we should never, uh, we should never seek those things, right? You don't have to go and make yourself the soft target to the wicked people. It's okay to keep your head down. There's nothing wrong with that. The Jewish Christians were probably doing their best to keep their heads down most of the time, and that's fine. There's not any words in scripture about being a coward if you don't, if you don't put a target on your back. But your target is gonna get there eventually, and that's not a bad thing. We can welcome that. We can count it as joy because of who God is and what he's done. The supreme act of suffering, the supreme act of, of evil happened to the only innocent person there ever was, and it happened to him for us.  this episode is available below.

As one examines Exod. 25-31 and 35-39 one finds a repeat – almost word for word in some cases – of verses related to the construction of the Tabernacle.  In the first instance it is God giving detailed instructions to Moses about the construction and the details of the garments of the High Priest and the Priests of the Sanctuary and their ordination ceremony.  In the second case, in chapters 35-39, we read about the actual construction of the Mishkan HaKodesh, the Holy Dwelling place of the Lord, or His Ohel HaKodesh, the Holy Tent (tabernacle in Latin just means tent).  So, we ask why the repeat of so many verses almost word for word.  This has led a few Bible scholars to develop the DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS or the theory that the Torah was not written by only one man, namely Moses.  Thus, this makes Jesus, the Lord, God Himself, a liar when Jesus says the Torah are the books of Moses.  If they were written by special groups and more than one person, then Jesus should not say the Torah are the books of Moses implying Moses is the author.  Jesus is God and this creates a real problem as per the character of the Lord. However, a Jewish scholar, highly recognized and considered a superb Bible historian, Torah expert, and Hebrew scholar, Umberto Cassuto, found the answer to this repetition!  He found archaeologically that in the ancient near east those ancient peoples when writing about the construction of a special temple would repeat what they wrote.  The first writing was to show how a god or gods gave instruction to build the special temple.  The repeat was to describe the actual construction leading to the dedication.  This fits the Torah.  First … here's some background on Umberto Cassuto. UMBERTO CASSUTO Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto, an early 20th-century Italian historian, rabbi, and scholar, wrote a popular Hebrew commentary on the Bible, as well as more detailed commentaries on the Book of Genesis and part of the Book of Exodus. His commentary is marked by an assumption that in order to understand the Bible, one must understand the Ancient Near-Eastern cultural context in which it was composed. As such, he incorporates archeological findings, his understanding of ancient Semitic languages, and literary tools into his analysis of biblical verses.  Cassuto in his own words discussing the repetition found not only in Exodus but throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. REPETITION IN EXODUS “The subject of the founding and building of a temple was a kind of permanent literary genre in the ancient literatures of the East; In it, it was customary to first come the divine speech describing the plan of the Temple in all its details and grammar, and then the story of the action, which repeats in an equal or similar way the description in the divine speech. And this is nothing more than a special detail of a general method, the method of repetition that was very popular with the writers of the ancient East.” (Accessed from https://www.sefaria.org/Cassuto_on_Exodus.35.2?lang=bi) Here are two links to two articles that are a must read.  These again will enhance and expand your understanding that Moses DID write the Torah and that the Documentary Hypothesis has been proven wrong. ARTICLE ON MOSES AS THE SOLE WRITER OF TORAH https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/moses/evidence-mosaic-authorship-of-torah/ SCHOLARLY ARTICLE BY CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS USNG CASSUTO'S FINDINGS  https://biblearchaeology.org/research-articles/the-documentary-hypothesis/ Once again I provide the article on Jesus' teaching about the Rabbi/Talmid model of His day.  He taught it precisely and accurately but NOT IN ENGLISH.  And He did not teach it IN GREEK but in HEBREW.  We in the church are commanded by the Lord to go and make disciples (talmidim in Hebrew).  And yet few churches even understand what Jesus meant when He mentioined disciples or talmidim.  Probably since so fe in the church know the Gree or the Biblical Hebrew and how to connect the Greek to the Hebrew.  Check it out … DID JESUS EVER SPEAK OF THE RABBI DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP? DID HE EVER TEACH US USING HIS CULTURE? NOT IN ENGLISH OR GREEK BUT HEBREW!! Jesus said, "A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. (Luk 6:40) Pupil?  Nope.  The Greek word used here is μαθητής mathētēs (Strongs number G3101) meaning a learner, disciple or a pupil.  But, Jesus is speaking Hebrew and not Greek.  What is the Hebrew word for disciple?  It is Talmid (תַּלְמִיד) Strongs umber H8527 (pronounced talmeed). The plural form is Talmidim (תַּלְמִידִים) (pronounced talmideem). Teacher? Nope.  The Greek word used here is διδάσκαλος Didaskalos (Strongs number G1320) meaning instructor, doctor, master, teacher.  The Hebrew word in Jesus' day that διδάσκαλος Didaskalos translates is RAV ( רַב )(Strongs number is H8227) meaning master.  The Hebrew word RAVEE רבי meaning “my master.” So when Jesus is called “RABBI” in the Gospels in Hebrew He is being called RAVEE רבי or “my master.” So, so far, Luke 6:40 can be read … "A TALMID is not above his RAV but TALMIDIM, after they have been fully trained, will be like their RAV.” (Luk 6:40) FULLY TRAINED – Nope.  Better is “after he has been made καταρτίζω katartizō (Strongs number is G2675) meaning complete or perfect or finished).  In Jesus' day a TALMID of a RAV was finished when the RAV saw that his talmid was ready to go in the name of the RAV to teach the Bible just like the talmid's master or his rav.  Now we read Luke 6:40 from the Hebrew … "A TALMID is not above his RAV but TALMIDIM, after they have finished, will be like their RAV.” (Luk 6:40) BE?? – Nope.  The Greek word used here is ὡς hōs (Strongs; number 5613) meaning “exactly like.”  It translates the Hebrew letter used as a prefix KEE כְּ meaning just like, identical, the same as, be like.  So we finally come to the complete translation from the English to the Greek to the Hebrew of Luke 6:40.  "A TALMID is not above his RAV but TALMIDIM, after they have finished, will be EXACTLY LIKE their RAV.” (Luk 6:40) The RAV and TALMID Relationship To be a talmid was a highly esteemed honor. The relationship between a RAV (we'd say rabbi) and his talmidim went far beyond basic education: Total Dedication: A talmid would often leave their former life, home, and family to follow their rabbi full-time. Imitation: The primary goal of a disciple was not just to know what the rabbi knew, but to become exactly like the rabbi. This meant absorbing the rabbi's lifestyle, character, and interpretation of the scriptures. Walking in the Dust: Ancient Jewish writings describe disciples following their teacher so closely that they became covered in the "dust of the rabbi's feet". See this video Bible study from Light of Menorah ministries. Part 1 of what is a disciple - https://youtu.be/JZv2YhSoya8?si=_WidHCq2RTtDVl5R Link to part 2 - https://youtu.be/m9pNgjAI18g?si=CThLTsg5uLD9gtId Check out these links from Ray Vander Laan's website entitled THAT THE WORLD MAY KNOW … https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/rabbi-and-talmidim https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/preview/1539 https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/preview/1540 https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/preview/1540 https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/preview/1568 https://www.thattheworldmayknow.com/preview/1557 In this Bible study podcast I brought up the verse 1 Cor. 3:16 that we are THE TEMPLE of God and the “you” in the verse in Greek is plural!  Check out the Bible study podcasts I did on these verses. Truth Nuggets #3 part 1 – https://lightofmenorah.podbean.com/e/truth-nuggets-lesson-3-part-1/ Truth Nuggets #3 part 2 - https://lightofmenorah.podbean.com/e/truth-nuggets-lesson-3-part-2/ Rev. Ferret - who is this guy?  (Ferret - teaching somewhere in the Galilee) What's his background?  Why should I listen to him?  Check his background at this link - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ortnret3oxcicu4/BackgrndTeacher%20mar%2025%202020.pdf?dl=0          

pWotD Episode 3368: Calypso (mythology) Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 48,968 views on Wednesday, 22 July 2026 our article of the day is Calypso (mythology).In Greek mythology, Calypso (; Ancient Greek: Καλυψώ, romanized: Kalypsṓ, lit. 'she who conceals') was a nymph who lived on the island of Ogygia, where, according to Homer's Odyssey, she detained Odysseus for seven years against his will. She promised Odysseus immortality if he would stay with her, but Odysseus preferred to return home. Eventually, after the intervention of the other gods, Calypso was forced to let Odysseus go.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 03:33 UTC on Thursday, 23 July 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Calypso (mythology) on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm generative Stephen.

The fruits of the spirit are the direct results of God’s presence in our lives. It’s the natural byproduct produced from within us when God’s Holy Spirit lives in us. Today we study the 3rd evidence that grows like fruit on a tree. Galatians 5:23, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, PEACE …” Peace. In Greek, Jesus would have often used the word ‘shalom’. It means completeness, wholeness, everything being as God intended it to be – nothing missing and nothing broken. So when Paul says the Holy Spirit grows peace, he’s not talking about someone who simply doesn’t get upset. He’s talking about a soul that has been made WHOLE by God. This is not a guarantee of an easy life. This is not peace that comes through an absence of trouble. Oh no, Sis. This is a peace that remains regardless of the trouble. This is a divine calm in the storm and a guard for our heart in the heat of the battle. The world says, “I’ll have peace when…” When the bills are paid. When the diagnosis changes. When my kids finally straighten up. When the relationship gets better. When life slows down. But the Holy Spirit says, “You can have peace now.” Not because everything around you is settled, but because the One within you is settled. Before facing the cross, Jesus tells his disciples that he is about to die and would no longer walk with them, but God would give them another Advocate who would never leave them. He is the Holy Spirit. God’s presence to live within them, teach them and guide them. Further describing this divine internal presence that’s so hard to understand, Jesus says in John 14:27, “I’m leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to produce this peace for yourself. There’s no meditation or deep breathing that brings this peace. There’s no soundtrack for this, no magical place on a mountaintop or hidden away in the woods. No, this peace isn’t found in the world or in yourself. It is ONLY through the presence of the Holy Spirit. You don’t have to work for it, you simply have to abide in Christ and this unspeakable peace grows. Peace isn’t pretending everything is okay. It’s knowing that even when everything isn’t okay, God still is. As I mentioned last week, while at our Lake Retreat, one of our really special BIG Life girls received the phone call that her husband had died. While her whole world is absolutely shattered and she has walked through this unimaginable and unexpected loss for the past week, something remarkable has happened. She has literally felt God strengthening her. When she can’t catch her breath, she says she can feel God breathing into her. In this time where nothing makes sense, not even the time of day, there is a settled peace living inside of her. My friends, that is the Holy Spirit. Have you ever experienced that level of peace? Peace that Philippians 4:7 says, “exceeds anything we can understand. Peace that will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” It’s a settled knowing from within when everything else is spinning out of control. It’s an anchor for your soul that holds you steady when the waves come crashing against you. But this peace isn’t reserved for times of trouble. This peace can be your constant. On the bad days and the good days. In the highs just as much as in the lows. You know when you need the peace of the Holy Spirit? … in the battle and in victory. In the storm and in the blissful sunshine. The truth is, without God’s peace, you can be sitting in the most beautiful day of life and be radically upset. Without God’s peace you can miss the goodness of the moment and be all stirred up about things that aren’t even a real threat. Are you in a reasonably good season of life right now? Did you wake up today without crisis or deep grief? Pause for a moment and think about that. You’re okay today. Your people okay are today. Let your mind settle in peace. You don’t have to manufacture the next thing to worry about. You don’t have to busy yourself. You can sit here in this peace and let it wash over you. PEACE CAN BE YOUR CONSTANT. When the Holy Spirit is living inside of you, this level of peace naturally grows in your life. You wake up with this peace. You walk in this peace. You are held steady in this peace. You move forward in this peace. You rest in this peace. And you know what else you do – YOU BRING PEACE TO EVERY TABLE YOU SET AT. Girl, that’s what your family needs! That’s what your office needs. That’s what your neighborhood needs. They don’t need you to be the one with all the answers and solutions. They don’t need you to be the one that takes charge and creates radical change. Actually what they need is for you to bring the gift Jesus brought to his disciples on the night before the cross. THE GIFT OF PEACE. Think about that – how can you offer the gift of peace today? It is a gift you can give because it’s growing in your life. Have you ever seen an apple tree straining and groaning trying to push out apples? No. It simply stays rooted. The fruit is evidence of the life inside it. That’s our job too. Stay rooted in Jesus. The Holy Spirit grows the fruit. If I’m an apple tree growing apples, I can easily offer you an apple. I can’t offer you a ribeye steak because that’s not what’s growing on my limbs. But as an apple tree, I can always give you an apple. And it’s really that simple. As God’s girl with the very presence of God within, you’re growing peace on your limbs. Peace during the good and peace during the bad. Peace in the storm and peace in the calm. You can always offer peace. It’s not your calling to bring the freak-out. Freak-out doesn’t grow in the life of a girl carrying around the Holy Spirit. It’s not your calling to bring the negativity. Negativity doesn’t grow in the life of a girl carrying around the Holy Spirit. It’s not your calling to bring the drama. Drama doesn’t grow in the life of a girl carrying around the Holy Spirit. It’s not your calling to spread fear. Fear doesn’t grow in the life of a girl carrying around the Holy Spirit. Your calling is to bring the peace. PEACE GROWS IN THE LIFE OF A GIRL CARRYING AROUND THE HOLY SPIRIT! Peace in your home. Peace in your office. Peace in your neighborhood. Peace in your car. Peace everywhere you go. Don’t be a thermometer that only reflects the temperature of the room. Be a thermostat that changes it. When everyone else is anxious, you stay steady. When everyone else is panicking, you stay prayerful. When everyone else is arguing, you stay peaceful. Why? Because you’re carrying the Holy Spirit. Every room you walk into has an atmosphere. Some rooms feel tense. Some feel fearful. Some feel angry. Some feel rushed. But because the Prince of Peace lives in you, every room you enter has the opportunity to become more peaceful simply because you showed up. Show up today and bring PEACE WITH YOU AS YOUR PLUS ONE! Hey girl, it’s me, plus PEACE today! I interrupt your chaos with God’s peace. I interrupt your stress with God’s peace. I interrupt your worry with God’s peace. Don’t confuse peace with being passive. Jesus had perfect peace—and He still walked straight toward the cross. Peace doesn’t make you weak. Peace makes you unshakable. Imagine what would happen if every daughter of God decided today: “Wherever I go, peace goes.” Into my marriage… peace goes. Into my parenting… peace goes. Into my workplace… peace goes. Into the waiting room… peace goes. Into the hard conversation… peace goes. Into the celebration… peace goes. Why? Because I carry the Holy Spirit. I don’t have to manufacture peace. I don’t have to chase peace. I don’t have to wait for peace. I carry Peace Himself. And wherever the Spirit of God lives, the fruit of peace grows. You are a soul who has been made whole by God, so you have PEACE. SHALOM. With God, everything is as it should be. Follow Pamela on Instagram – https://instagram.com/headmamapamela Or Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/pamela.crim Find out more about BIG Life – http://biglifehq.com

In this episode, we're going to look at the ImpossibleQuest he's calling “The Witch's Test.” Now, mythology is full of witches, sorcerers, mages, and other magical types – but they don't all put heroes to specific tests. In Greek mythology, Circe and Medea do more to help Odysseus and Jason than to test them, and other witches like Grimhilde in Norse mythology are just interested in getting their own way, by whatever means necessary – the heroes are just obstacles to them. There are some, though, who take it upon themselves to make heroes prove themselves. So let's hear a few of their stories! Visit the World of Mythik website to learn more and to contribute your theories to our board! All stories told on Myths & Muses are original family-friendly adaptations of ancient myths and legends. Stories from ancient mythology can also sometimes deal with complicated topics for young listeners — to the mortal parents and caretakers reading this, we encourage listening along with your young demigods to help them navigate those topics as they explore these epic tales. [Transcript for Episode 5] If you'd like to submit something creative you've done inspired by the stories in Myths & Muses, use this form (with a Mortal Guardian's permission!). ----more---- Stuff to Read:  BBC: Baba Yaga: The Greatest Wicked Witch of All? Baba Yaga at the World History Encyclopedia Who is Baba Yaga? Vasilisa the Beautiful: A Russian Fairy Tale Marya Morevna Louhi, Mistress of Pohjala Stuff to Watch: Our curated YouTube playlist for the stories in this episode!  

Bishop Nathan Wilson pt.1 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Hey, this week I interviewed Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and it was a good long interview, so I’ll be breaking it up probably into three segments for the next three weeks here. Bishop Wilson earned a diploma of ministry from the Gnostic Catholic Union, and then he later went on to create The Gnostic Union, and he’ll tell you about that in this week’s episode. Here I’ll read you the intro from their website. “The Gnostic Union is an independent sacramental assembly of Gnostic Christian communities and individuals. It exists to uphold the Gnostic Christian traditions and to encourage and promote the work of Christ and the Holy Sophia in the world.As an international, independent, autonomous, non-political organization, the Gnostic Union is in no way dependent upon any other authority outside of its own administration. We are neither Roman Catholic, Orthodox, nor Protestant. We are Gnostic Christians that encourage self-development and connecting with the spirit within to build a personal relationship with God, the Monad, the Father. Our bishops, priests, and deacons are merely guides to help you on your spiritual journey. The Gnostic Union aligns itself with the history and teachings of the first Christians of early first century Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospel of Thomas. We encourage new members to read from the Nag Hammadi and to understand how different early Christianity is from modern mainstream Christianity. We welcome all people, regardless of past religious backgrounds or faiths. Gnosis means knowledge, not just simple intellectual knowledge, but deep spiritual knowledge within you. Knowledge from the Spirit, from the Holy Spirit, and from and of God.” You see, I felt that that really went along with what we talk about here at Gnostic Insights, and so when Bishop Wilson reached out to me via our Substack Gnostic Reformation site, I was more than happy to engage in conversation with him, and I thought that having a talk with him along with you and then broadcasting it would be helpful to all of us. Here’s the last little bit that it says on their Gnostic Union homepage, which is only one page long. It’s still in development. It says, “Gnostic Christian theology differs greatly from Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Gnostic Christianity does not depend upon the authority of a Pope or the Church. Instead, it emphasizes being reborn in Spirit, building a personal spiritual relationship with God, and becoming Christ-like by enacting the teachings of Jesus Christ in our lives. Gnostic Christianity began from earlier Gnostic traditions, such as Hermeticism and Mysticism, which arose from Jewish mystics. Gnosticism itself is much older than Judaism, and traces back to the Hermetics of ancient Egypt, the Druids, and the ancient Greeks. Although many Gnostic Christian theologies differed, they shared a common theme of a trapped spiritual essence within the material body, the divine spark, the soul, or the spark of Sophia. The ultimate goal for Gnostic Christians was to become like Jesus, to be reborn in Spirit, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Sophia, and to know thyself, reflecting the divine essence within.” As you know, here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation, I stay away from the histories, because it seems to me that what is important is the here-and-now relationship we have with the Christ and with the Fullness of God. And so, I’m just not all that interested in history, but as you’ll hear from these ongoing interviews with Bishop Wilson, he’s all about history. So, for those of you who have been missing that strain of thought in our Gnostic Insights here, you’ll get an earful for the next three weeks. So without further ado, here's part one of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union. Cyd: Well, such a pleasure to see you. You have such a nice smile. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. It’s always lovely to meet other Gnostics, other spiritual people, all those with open hearts and open minds. It’s always lovely to see. Cyd:Yes. Yes. Yes, it’s true. I wish I had more of these people close around me. Do you have neighbors who are Gnostic? Do you have people you can actually face-to-face with? Bishop Nathan Wilson:I’ve met a priest that I can now speak face-to-face, which was really good. So, it was the first real Gnostic I got to speak to face-to-face. Mostly, I was speaking to many online in other parts of the world, and I kind of felt like I was the only one here in Adelaide, Australia. So, I kind of felt like the one odd villager out. So, it was lovely to meet some other people. I’ve trained people, and other people have done what they wanted. Other people carried on as undercover Gnostics in this world. So, yeah. Cyd:Let me get a formal introduction to you here going. This is Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and we have connected through Substack, although you don’t have a Substack presence, do you? You don’t have a site? Bishop Nathan Wilson:No, no. We have got a website in the works, but it’s still in development. I’m not too tech-savvy, but we’ve got other people that are. So, we’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube at the moment. Cyd:Well, wonderful. Now, tell me the difference between the Gnostic Catholic Union and just the Gnostic Union. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, we used to be the Gnostic Catholic Union as well until I basically got in charge, and then I removed the Catholic part, which they only had for the Latin reasons, meaning universal, but not everyone knows that Latin subject. They’re just going to see Catholic, and usually today’s world, when you have a Catholic Union, it’s mostly those who have been brought up with a Catholic background that have now found Gnosis, and in turn, carry on those old traditions, which I don’t find anything wrong with. I think there’s many different ways to experience Gnosis. Gnosis doesn’t belong to any religion. It’s something you find within. It’s what you experience, spiritual knowledge gifted to you by what’s divine, by God, by the Father, by the Mother-Father, whichever term you like. The Source. It could even be referenced to, given you to by divine beings, by angels, angelic forces. So, Gnosis is something that you experience. So, it’s yours. It’s personal. It’s intimate. So, it’s a beautiful thing. So, with the Gnostic Union, we are more open to different Gnostic schools of thoughts. So, you could be a Sethian, a Valentinian. You could be a Carpucratian Gnostic, whichever. It doesn’t matter. You could be a Jewish Christian. Whichever the path is—we’re not really dogmatic. So, we appreciate all those who come into this spiritual life, seeking answers, and respecting each other’s beliefs, which is also rare. We have to remember, when we looked at the ancient schools of thought regarding Gnosticism, the ancient Gnostics got along. They didn’t kill each other. They didn’t fight. They had some disagreements, but they shared each other’s writings, which is fantastic. So, that’s very rare when you see that in a religious or even a spiritual school of thought. Many people can be my way only. So, that’s where Gnosis comes in, that inner spiritual experience. So, one’s own personal relationship with what’s divine. The Gnostic Union wants to encourage that, not to be bound by traditions. That’s mostly the difference between the Gnostic Union and the Gnostic Catholics, where they will be more bound by tradition, more bound by a dogmatic experience. We’re not really about that, not dissing any of that. We don’t mind, but we’re more open. Cyd:So, the Gnostic Catholics are still going on? That church is still active, but you have stepped away from them then, in that sense? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, pretty much. So, we’ve done our own independent thing. So, that way we can have more schools of thought. I prefer it like that, so we can all grow from each other, which is something that I’m more about. So, that’s why I went into more of the Gnostic Union sense of things and removing the Catholic part. Some people didn’t like Catholic. Some people liked it and others were stoked that I removed that term from the group. I much prefer it. It’s less of a mouthful as well. I like things nice and simple as well. Cyd:Yes. So, it’s union—it's unity. That’s what the union means in the name, not like a labor union, but the union of Gnostics. That’s lovely. That’s very lovely. So, how many people are associating with the Gnostic Union at this point? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, we have a couple of other different groups from different parts of the world. We have a Gnostic Catholic group. I think they’re Gnostic Catholic Unitarians located in the Philippines. Then, we have other groups as well that associate with us. Within the Union itself, we have a couple of different ones. We have also side branches as well that used to be a part of the Gnostic Catholic Union, but there was some theological difference. So, some splitting went on. So, there’s other groups. We still recognize each other. Within the Gnostic Union at the moment. There is Bishop Jason, me, Bishop Nathan Wilson, Bishop Lorenzo, David and Michael, Randall over in South Africa. There’s also Priest Jeremy and Edgar and Rus. So, there’s quite a few. At the moment, it’s mostly men. We’re hoping to have some females join as well. We did have a couple of female members back in the Gnostic Catholic Union, but they ultimately retired. So, we’re hoping to expand. So, the Gnostic Union is kind of fresh on the scene. So, everything’s still building. Cyd:How fresh is it? How long have you been in existence here? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, in the Union itself, probably about almost two years now. It’s still maybe a year, year and a half, something like that there. So, it’s still growing in a sense. So, we’re doing okay, which is not too bad. We’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube. So, we do our online masses and group gatherings and stuff like that online as well. And mostly, just support each other’s individual works as well as promote each other’s work. And sometimes, I might edit a couple of videos of all of us together, give it to other people with their own channels, their own independent use, and then I’ll put it onto, say, the Union sites. Other people can go check it out as well. Cyd:I’ll be putting this up on my site. I’m going to post this to YouTube and make it for my audio podcast. But I’ll also give you the recording so that you can use it at your site if you’d like. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Oh, lovely. Lovely. I’d enjoy that as well. And again, thanks for reaching out to me. I very much enjoy speaking to like-minded individuals as well. And regarding even my translations that you brought me on to discuss as well, that’s relatively new as well. It took me about two years to fully actually translate. So, to get it all together, I use encyclopedias, I used Greek, Koine Greek dictionaries, as well as I used Bill Mounce, which is one of the top Koine Greek-speaking people in the world. I have a few friends that can speak Koine Greek as well as modern Greek as well. So, that also came in handy. So, it took me a while. I started doing that while I was still with the Gnostic Catholic Union and I didn’t finish it until the Gnostic Union. Cyd:So, tell us about, you’re speaking of your translation, tell us about that. It’s your New Testament, is it? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yeah, I did the New Testament Gospels. I used Codex Sinaiticus because that was the oldest complete text, but then I wanted to do non-canonical. I didn’t know any Coptic at all, so I didn’t want to use any other people’s work. I just went to the Koine Greek, used what knowledge I did know, and I also used experts as well. So, I was able to look at every definition of the word and term and use. I did the Gospel of Thomas, which I actually first messed up on because I found out that the version I was looking at first was actually inspired by the Coptic version put into Koine Greek, and I realized it’s not the text. So, I went to the actual fragments themselves, and so I translated from there. It’s not very long. I didn’t use any AI recovery, so anything that wasn’t visible to our naked eye, I did not touch. So, I didn’t want to have any guessing involved. So, I just put what it was, and I did the Greek Gospel of Mary, as well as the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Peter, and I did three unknown Gospels, and they are little fragments, and they are Papyrus Oxyrhynchus. I have the names here. Actually, I better put that in—5072, and the other one was Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 and the other one is Egerton Gospel. So, they’re little fragments. The titles are missing. We don’t know who wrote them, so they’re unknown, but they could and likely do predate the Gospels that we do have. So, they predate the fragments we have. So, that’s interesting. So, all the fragments we have are second century. It’s likely they predate the fragments that we have. So, I chose to do them, but the interesting side was the Egerton gospel, which was actually a two-sided text, and Bart D. Ehrman actually did side two, and I did side one. So, he didn’t realize that there was a side on one. So, that means he was only looking at digital copy only, just like me. So, he didn’t actually look at the actual Papyrus itself, and so when I did one-sided, I didn’t realize there was a double side to that text, and so otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. So, the interesting thing is side one has not been publicly released for public domain, where side two has been released, which is very suspect, if you ask me, and I didn’t like that. So, I thought I’d introduce some texts that are very little looked at that were very Gnostic, such as Jesus insulting the Pharisees for dipping in waters that pigs jumped into and making themselves look like prostitutes to attract men. Cyd:They’re highly offensive, yes. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, and that’s why they really want to release that publicly. So, you have to pay a scholar for their works, and that’s not really fair. All this knowledge should be for free, especially when you’re looking at our own religious or spirituality or the text involved in that. Otherwise, we’re limiting ourselves, and that’s definitely not fair. So, I think we should be more open, and the text should be up for public display, public domain for everyone to have access to. So, that’s what I ultimately believe in. It’s one reason I chose to share my translations and make accessible for free digital copies. I didn’t want people to just buy my work rather than download the digital text and just read it for themselves. Go to the library, print it out. It might be cheaper. So, when I do sell my texts, I donate it, like some of it’s a charity anyway, to Make-A-Wish Foundation. So, that’s something I do on my end. So, everything I do, I try not to make money just for myself. I try to do other things with it because I’m not really materialistic. I live very much a monk lifestyle, so I read a lot. Cyd:Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I live like a nun, I say. I’ve got a little cloister where I sleep. I live in a one-room place, so it’s very interesting. Would you explain to us the difference between the Koine Greek and the Coptic Greek and which was written and why are there two different versions? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Okay, well the Coptic, when you see Coptic Greek, that’s devolving into Coptic. So, very early proto-Coptic is what scholars term, is the developing into it. You see it with Greeks in the very language. Otherwise, Coptic language very much is a mixture of Greek and Egyptian. So, Egyptian hieroglyph turned into writing basically, but mixed in with Greek. So, Greek was like the English of the past back then. Hebrew also borrowed from the Greek during the second temple period of Jesus’ time. So, the word Judaism and synagogue are Greek words, for instance. So, a lot of borrowing, but the Greeks also borrowed from the Canaanites, such as the Phoenician language or the alphabet. So, that’s also fascinating. So, the ancient past, it was all about borrowing and making it your own, you know. But yeah, with Greek as well, that would be also evolving as well. So, you have, within the gospel itself, you might have one word being spelt slightly different, but ultimately meaning the same thing. And all that is, is one dialect from another speaking from one coastal region to a different coastal region. Obviously, saying the same thing, it just might be the accent. So, that’s played different in the language. So, it’s like we see hilios or hilion, but it’s the same root message. It’s just one person’s pronouncing it in the market different from this region, because he’s closer to the shore and other ones closer to the inner cities. And that’s basically all. So, Greek’s very advanced. You can have one word that can mean ultimately different meanings. And some words you come across can have hundreds of meanings, and that can make things difficult when translating. So, with the Koine Greek, we only know 70% to 90% of the language. We know the 100% of the alphabetical, but we don’t know every context of use. So, because of that difficulty, I had to add alternative English translations. So, I realized then that every translation we’re reading is just based on someone else’s interpretation of that translation. And it’s like, oh, that kind of sucks, so I put them all in there. So, when you come across the word aftos, for he, she, it, they, them, this one, I leave it as all of that, so, you can choose what that means. Because Jesus is speaking to diverse audiences. He’s speaking to males and females, not just men. And that’s what people forget. It’s like the word for spirit is also very feminine in Hebrew. In Greek, it’s masculine and feminine. So, it’s used as both, which is fascinating as well for the spirit within us, you know. So, but again, that’s going back to that root meaning of feminine, because when you add in the word hagion pneuma you now have the Holy Spirit, but that’s a feminine word of it. Otherwise, the root word of masculine is hagios, but the female name or the feminine version of that concept is hagion. Cyd:Ah, that’s fascinating. Yeah. You run into the same problem when translating Chinese, because Chinese pictograms can just mean many, many things. So, I’ve studied the Tao Te Ching quite a bit, and everybody’s book that’s famous of the Tao Te Ching, it’s their translation out of a hundred choices for every word. So, it’s, I understand quite a bit what you’re saying there. Well, tell me this, what makes you a bishop? How is it that you’re calling yourself bishop? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, I was ordained by, well, back when it was the Gnostic Catholic Union, I was ordained by Bishop Bill Thomas, and he was the bishop of a church in Florida. He was running a church. He was an older man, so he’s kind of, he retired for a bit, and now he’s more of a wandering bishop, because he had trouble with the funds of running a church. It’d be quite expensive. So, he was part of an organization that was the Gnostic Catholic Union. A lot of members retired as well, then he took over, and then it kind of went on for a few years, and then they started retiring, and then I joined from there, and I was ordained, and I took up a course with them, started off as a deacon, then became a priest, and then as they were retiring, I was made bishop, basically, and so then I was left with a little bit of the reins. So, it was from there, it was a lot more—more churches were involved. So, some of that has also, a lot of them have also retired or ultimately changed theologies. One of the original members of the Gnostic Catholic Union, I believe, is now either an Orthodox priest or joined the Orthodox Church, and he renounces all his old Gnostic past, which is kind of a shame. So, sometimes that does happen. So, people become wanderers because of, people basically rely solely on one priest, oftentimes, which is also sad, and when one priest moves, people lose passion, and sometimes that’s how it is. So, I prefer to have people more independently on their own, not just say rely on me, I make other people bishops so they can carry on with their own, and from there, expand it. So, someone might have, say, the coin enough to start their own church, and from there, maybe, from there, do whatever they need. So, it inspires, and still something to bring a bit of community in, and have a little bit of recognition from other people, basically. So, I kept that term. I was almost considering to remove the title, bishops and priests, but a lot of the old members wanted to keep it as well, and some of the young ones did as well. So, I thought, well, I’ll keep the term for them in their sake. Otherwise, I was going to keep it as teachers, or brothers and sisters, but I still encourage our members to, when dealing with each other, not just sit there and call each other bishops, or bishopettes, or priests, or priestess, whichever term they prefer. I prefer to call us brothers and sisters, which is more stressed. Even with the outfit some people are talking about, I would tell them, remember that Jesus wouldn’t be wandering around with fancy robes, or wearing collared shirts, or wearing gold jewelry, and say, I’m doing now, in a sense. He was out in the wilderness, gathering with community. So, as blessed as those who are poor, you know, so, which was rare. So, a lot of people wanted money back then. So, he was very much for the poor, which is beautiful to see. There were rich Christians. It doesn’t mean that was strictly only for poor people only. There were ones who were shipfarers, and in turn, would carry their message throughout the ports, or from region to region. Cyd:I was just wondering–you are obviously a Christian Gnostic, as am I. I know that you’re open to all Gnosticism, but Gnostics who reject the notion of the Christ, or the need for the Christ, doesn’t that create some kind of difficulty, let’s say? Bishop Nathan Wilson:It would conflict a little bit, yes. I haven’t really come across ones that more reject the Christ. I wouldn’t mind. I have come across ones who have debated me over it in a sense, which I don’t mind in a sense, but I would also encourage them to say, look at the message. Ultimately, it’s about finding the Christ within, being Christ-like for yourself. It goes back to that root word of the first Christians for Christanos, being little Christs, little anointed ones. So, those who were taken on their masters teaching to be Christ-like. But say we have ones that don’t believe Jesus existed. I don’t mind that, because ultimately it is the message, but I will tell them I do believe because I have reasons. I would say for them to look up, say, Judas Kriakos, which is a grandson of Jesus, which is recorded in history. We have church father writings that actually whinged about Jesus’ family being Jewish Christians and not Catholic. So, that’s interesting. So, why would you whinge about a family if the man did not exist? For instance like that. But ultimately, there were some Gnostics that didn’t believe that Jesus existed, but was rather a spirit or was the myth that you took on yourself. So, I’m okay with that, as long as we don’t conflict with each other, with our hearts, as long as we’re not hating each other. So, we can have separate beliefs, as long as we respect those beliefs. Ultimately, that’s what would stop the disheartening and also the conflictions. end part one of interview Okay, we’re going to stop for this week. This is a good place to stop because next, Bishop Wilson goes on to discuss his translation of the New Testament and also some other Gnostic texts. So, we’ll spend next week talking about his translation that he calls the Gnostic Christian Truth Bible, and we’ll get into that. Also, I did record this entire interview as a Zoom video, and as soon as I get that edited, I’ll be posting it to YouTube so you will be able to find it and watch the interview as Bishop Nathan Wilson and I discuss these things. So, I hope to see you there, and thank you for listening this week, and we’ll pick it up again next week. Until then, God bless us all, and onward and upward. The Gnostic Union Facebook The Gnostic Union YouTube Channel

Bishop Nathan Wilson pt.1 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Hey, this week I interviewed Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and it was a good long interview, so I’ll be breaking it up probably into three segments for the next three weeks here. Bishop Wilson earned a diploma of ministry from the Gnostic Catholic Union, and then he later went on to create The Gnostic Union, and he’ll tell you about that in this week’s episode. Here I’ll read you the intro from their website. “The Gnostic Union is an independent sacramental assembly of Gnostic Christian communities and individuals. It exists to uphold the Gnostic Christian traditions and to encourage and promote the work of Christ and the Holy Sophia in the world.As an international, independent, autonomous, non-political organization, the Gnostic Union is in no way dependent upon any other authority outside of its own administration. We are neither Roman Catholic, Orthodox, nor Protestant. We are Gnostic Christians that encourage self-development and connecting with the spirit within to build a personal relationship with God, the Monad, the Father. Our bishops, priests, and deacons are merely guides to help you on your spiritual journey. The Gnostic Union aligns itself with the history and teachings of the first Christians of early first century Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospel of Thomas. We encourage new members to read from the Nag Hammadi and to understand how different early Christianity is from modern mainstream Christianity. We welcome all people, regardless of past religious backgrounds or faiths. Gnosis means knowledge, not just simple intellectual knowledge, but deep spiritual knowledge within you. Knowledge from the Spirit, from the Holy Spirit, and from and of God.” You see, I felt that that really went along with what we talk about here at Gnostic Insights, and so when Bishop Wilson reached out to me via our Substack Gnostic Reformation site, I was more than happy to engage in conversation with him, and I thought that having a talk with him along with you and then broadcasting it would be helpful to all of us. Here’s the last little bit that it says on their Gnostic Union homepage, which is only one page long. It’s still in development. It says, “Gnostic Christian theology differs greatly from Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Gnostic Christianity does not depend upon the authority of a Pope or the Church. Instead, it emphasizes being reborn in Spirit, building a personal spiritual relationship with God, and becoming Christ-like by enacting the teachings of Jesus Christ in our lives. Gnostic Christianity began from earlier Gnostic traditions, such as Hermeticism and Mysticism, which arose from Jewish mystics. Gnosticism itself is much older than Judaism, and traces back to the Hermetics of ancient Egypt, the Druids, and the ancient Greeks. Although many Gnostic Christian theologies differed, they shared a common theme of a trapped spiritual essence within the material body, the divine spark, the soul, or the spark of Sophia. The ultimate goal for Gnostic Christians was to become like Jesus, to be reborn in Spirit, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Sophia, and to know thyself, reflecting the divine essence within.” As you know, here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation, I stay away from the histories, because it seems to me that what is important is the here-and-now relationship we have with the Christ and with the Fullness of God. And so, I’m just not all that interested in history, but as you’ll hear from these ongoing interviews with Bishop Wilson, he’s all about history. So, for those of you who have been missing that strain of thought in our Gnostic Insights here, you’ll get an earful for the next three weeks. So without further ado, here's part one of my interview with Bishop Nathan Wilson of The Gnostic Union. Cyd: Well, such a pleasure to see you. You have such a nice smile. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure. It’s always lovely to meet other Gnostics, other spiritual people, all those with open hearts and open minds. It’s always lovely to see. Cyd:Yes. Yes. Yes, it’s true. I wish I had more of these people close around me. Do you have neighbors who are Gnostic? Do you have people you can actually face-to-face with? Bishop Nathan Wilson:I’ve met a priest that I can now speak face-to-face, which was really good. So, it was the first real Gnostic I got to speak to face-to-face. Mostly, I was speaking to many online in other parts of the world, and I kind of felt like I was the only one here in Adelaide, Australia. So, I kind of felt like the one odd villager out. So, it was lovely to meet some other people. I’ve trained people, and other people have done what they wanted. Other people carried on as undercover Gnostics in this world. So, yeah. Cyd:Let me get a formal introduction to you here going. This is Bishop Nathan Wilson of the Gnostic Union, and we have connected through Substack, although you don’t have a Substack presence, do you? You don’t have a site? Bishop Nathan Wilson:No, no. We have got a website in the works, but it’s still in development. I’m not too tech-savvy, but we’ve got other people that are. So, we’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube at the moment. Cyd:Well, wonderful. Now, tell me the difference between the Gnostic Catholic Union and just the Gnostic Union. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, we used to be the Gnostic Catholic Union as well until I basically got in charge, and then I removed the Catholic part, which they only had for the Latin reasons, meaning universal, but not everyone knows that Latin subject. They’re just going to see Catholic, and usually today’s world, when you have a Catholic Union, it’s mostly those who have been brought up with a Catholic background that have now found Gnosis, and in turn, carry on those old traditions, which I don’t find anything wrong with. I think there’s many different ways to experience Gnosis. Gnosis doesn’t belong to any religion. It’s something you find within. It’s what you experience, spiritual knowledge gifted to you by what’s divine, by God, by the Father, by the Mother-Father, whichever term you like. The Source. It could even be referenced to, given you to by divine beings, by angels, angelic forces. So, Gnosis is something that you experience. So, it’s yours. It’s personal. It’s intimate. So, it’s a beautiful thing. So, with the Gnostic Union, we are more open to different Gnostic schools of thoughts. So, you could be a Sethian, a Valentinian. You could be a Carpucratian Gnostic, whichever. It doesn’t matter. You could be a Jewish Christian. Whichever the path is—we’re not really dogmatic. So, we appreciate all those who come into this spiritual life, seeking answers, and respecting each other’s beliefs, which is also rare. We have to remember, when we looked at the ancient schools of thought regarding Gnosticism, the ancient Gnostics got along. They didn’t kill each other. They didn’t fight. They had some disagreements, but they shared each other’s writings, which is fantastic. So, that’s very rare when you see that in a religious or even a spiritual school of thought. Many people can be my way only. So, that’s where Gnosis comes in, that inner spiritual experience. So, one’s own personal relationship with what’s divine. The Gnostic Union wants to encourage that, not to be bound by traditions. That’s mostly the difference between the Gnostic Union and the Gnostic Catholics, where they will be more bound by tradition, more bound by a dogmatic experience. We’re not really about that, not dissing any of that. We don’t mind, but we’re more open. Cyd:So, the Gnostic Catholics are still going on? That church is still active, but you have stepped away from them then, in that sense? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, pretty much. So, we’ve done our own independent thing. So, that way we can have more schools of thought. I prefer it like that, so we can all grow from each other, which is something that I’m more about. So, that’s why I went into more of the Gnostic Union sense of things and removing the Catholic part. Some people didn’t like Catholic. Some people liked it and others were stoked that I removed that term from the group. I much prefer it. It’s less of a mouthful as well. I like things nice and simple as well. Cyd:Yes. So, it’s union—it's unity. That’s what the union means in the name, not like a labor union, but the union of Gnostics. That’s lovely. That’s very lovely. So, how many people are associating with the Gnostic Union at this point? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, we have a couple of other different groups from different parts of the world. We have a Gnostic Catholic group. I think they’re Gnostic Catholic Unitarians located in the Philippines. Then, we have other groups as well that associate with us. Within the Union itself, we have a couple of different ones. We have also side branches as well that used to be a part of the Gnostic Catholic Union, but there was some theological difference. So, some splitting went on. So, there’s other groups. We still recognize each other. Within the Gnostic Union at the moment. There is Bishop Jason, me, Bishop Nathan Wilson, Bishop Lorenzo, David and Michael, Randall over in South Africa. There’s also Priest Jeremy and Edgar and Rus. So, there’s quite a few. At the moment, it’s mostly men. We’re hoping to have some females join as well. We did have a couple of female members back in the Gnostic Catholic Union, but they ultimately retired. So, we’re hoping to expand. So, the Gnostic Union is kind of fresh on the scene. So, everything’s still building. Cyd:How fresh is it? How long have you been in existence here? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, in the Union itself, probably about almost two years now. It’s still maybe a year, year and a half, something like that there. So, it’s still growing in a sense. So, we’re doing okay, which is not too bad. We’re mostly on Facebook and YouTube. So, we do our online masses and group gatherings and stuff like that online as well. And mostly, just support each other’s individual works as well as promote each other’s work. And sometimes, I might edit a couple of videos of all of us together, give it to other people with their own channels, their own independent use, and then I’ll put it onto, say, the Union sites. Other people can go check it out as well. Cyd:I’ll be putting this up on my site. I’m going to post this to YouTube and make it for my audio podcast. But I’ll also give you the recording so that you can use it at your site if you’d like. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Oh, lovely. Lovely. I’d enjoy that as well. And again, thanks for reaching out to me. I very much enjoy speaking to like-minded individuals as well. And regarding even my translations that you brought me on to discuss as well, that’s relatively new as well. It took me about two years to fully actually translate. So, to get it all together, I use encyclopedias, I used Greek, Koine Greek dictionaries, as well as I used Bill Mounce, which is one of the top Koine Greek-speaking people in the world. I have a few friends that can speak Koine Greek as well as modern Greek as well. So, that also came in handy. So, it took me a while. I started doing that while I was still with the Gnostic Catholic Union and I didn’t finish it until the Gnostic Union. Cyd:So, tell us about, you’re speaking of your translation, tell us about that. It’s your New Testament, is it? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yeah, I did the New Testament Gospels. I used Codex Sinaiticus because that was the oldest complete text, but then I wanted to do non-canonical. I didn’t know any Coptic at all, so I didn’t want to use any other people’s work. I just went to the Koine Greek, used what knowledge I did know, and I also used experts as well. So, I was able to look at every definition of the word and term and use. I did the Gospel of Thomas, which I actually first messed up on because I found out that the version I was looking at first was actually inspired by the Coptic version put into Koine Greek, and I realized it’s not the text. So, I went to the actual fragments themselves, and so I translated from there. It’s not very long. I didn’t use any AI recovery, so anything that wasn’t visible to our naked eye, I did not touch. So, I didn’t want to have any guessing involved. So, I just put what it was, and I did the Greek Gospel of Mary, as well as the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Peter, and I did three unknown Gospels, and they are little fragments, and they are Papyrus Oxyrhynchus. I have the names here. Actually, I better put that in—5072, and the other one was Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 and the other one is Egerton Gospel. So, they’re little fragments. The titles are missing. We don’t know who wrote them, so they’re unknown, but they could and likely do predate the Gospels that we do have. So, they predate the fragments we have. So, that’s interesting. So, all the fragments we have are second century. It’s likely they predate the fragments that we have. So, I chose to do them, but the interesting side was the Egerton gospel, which was actually a two-sided text, and Bart D. Ehrman actually did side two, and I did side one. So, he didn’t realize that there was a side on one. So, that means he was only looking at digital copy only, just like me. So, he didn’t actually look at the actual Papyrus itself, and so when I did one-sided, I didn’t realize there was a double side to that text, and so otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. So, the interesting thing is side one has not been publicly released for public domain, where side two has been released, which is very suspect, if you ask me, and I didn’t like that. So, I thought I’d introduce some texts that are very little looked at that were very Gnostic, such as Jesus insulting the Pharisees for dipping in waters that pigs jumped into and making themselves look like prostitutes to attract men. Cyd:They’re highly offensive, yes. Bishop Nathan Wilson:Yes, and that’s why they really want to release that publicly. So, you have to pay a scholar for their works, and that’s not really fair. All this knowledge should be for free, especially when you’re looking at our own religious or spirituality or the text involved in that. Otherwise, we’re limiting ourselves, and that’s definitely not fair. So, I think we should be more open, and the text should be up for public display, public domain for everyone to have access to. So, that’s what I ultimately believe in. It’s one reason I chose to share my translations and make accessible for free digital copies. I didn’t want people to just buy my work rather than download the digital text and just read it for themselves. Go to the library, print it out. It might be cheaper. So, when I do sell my texts, I donate it, like some of it’s a charity anyway, to Make-A-Wish Foundation. So, that’s something I do on my end. So, everything I do, I try not to make money just for myself. I try to do other things with it because I’m not really materialistic. I live very much a monk lifestyle, so I read a lot. Cyd:Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I live like a nun, I say. I’ve got a little cloister where I sleep. I live in a one-room place, so it’s very interesting. Would you explain to us the difference between the Koine Greek and the Coptic Greek and which was written and why are there two different versions? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Okay, well the Coptic, when you see Coptic Greek, that’s devolving into Coptic. So, very early proto-Coptic is what scholars term, is the developing into it. You see it with Greeks in the very language. Otherwise, Coptic language very much is a mixture of Greek and Egyptian. So, Egyptian hieroglyph turned into writing basically, but mixed in with Greek. So, Greek was like the English of the past back then. Hebrew also borrowed from the Greek during the second temple period of Jesus’ time. So, the word Judaism and synagogue are Greek words, for instance. So, a lot of borrowing, but the Greeks also borrowed from the Canaanites, such as the Phoenician language or the alphabet. So, that’s also fascinating. So, the ancient past, it was all about borrowing and making it your own, you know. But yeah, with Greek as well, that would be also evolving as well. So, you have, within the gospel itself, you might have one word being spelt slightly different, but ultimately meaning the same thing. And all that is, is one dialect from another speaking from one coastal region to a different coastal region. Obviously, saying the same thing, it just might be the accent. So, that’s played different in the language. So, it’s like we see hilios or hilion, but it’s the same root message. It’s just one person’s pronouncing it in the market different from this region, because he’s closer to the shore and other ones closer to the inner cities. And that’s basically all. So, Greek’s very advanced. You can have one word that can mean ultimately different meanings. And some words you come across can have hundreds of meanings, and that can make things difficult when translating. So, with the Koine Greek, we only know 70% to 90% of the language. We know the 100% of the alphabetical, but we don’t know every context of use. So, because of that difficulty, I had to add alternative English translations. So, I realized then that every translation we’re reading is just based on someone else’s interpretation of that translation. And it’s like, oh, that kind of sucks, so I put them all in there. So, when you come across the word aftos, for he, she, it, they, them, this one, I leave it as all of that, so, you can choose what that means. Because Jesus is speaking to diverse audiences. He’s speaking to males and females, not just men. And that’s what people forget. It’s like the word for spirit is also very feminine in Hebrew. In Greek, it’s masculine and feminine. So, it’s used as both, which is fascinating as well for the spirit within us, you know. So, but again, that’s going back to that root meaning of feminine, because when you add in the word hagion pneuma you now have the Holy Spirit, but that’s a feminine word of it. Otherwise, the root word of masculine is hagios, but the female name or the feminine version of that concept is hagion. Cyd:Ah, that’s fascinating. Yeah. You run into the same problem when translating Chinese, because Chinese pictograms can just mean many, many things. So, I’ve studied the Tao Te Ching quite a bit, and everybody’s book that’s famous of the Tao Te Ching, it’s their translation out of a hundred choices for every word. So, it’s, I understand quite a bit what you’re saying there. Well, tell me this, what makes you a bishop? How is it that you’re calling yourself bishop? Bishop Nathan Wilson:Well, I was ordained by, well, back when it was the Gnostic Catholic Union, I was ordained by Bishop Bill Thomas, and he was the bishop of a church in Florida. He was running a church. He was an older man, so he’s kind of, he retired for a bit, and now he’s more of a wandering bishop, because he had trouble with the funds of running a church. It’d be quite expensive. So, he was part of an organization that was the Gnostic Catholic Union. A lot of members retired as well, then he took over, and then it kind of went on for a few years, and then they started retiring, and then I joined from there, and I was ordained, and I took up a course with them, started off as a deacon, then became a priest, and then as they were retiring, I was made bishop, basically, and so then I was left with a little bit of the reins. So, it was from there, it was a lot more—more churches were involved. So, some of that has also, a lot of them have also retired or ultimately changed theologies. One of the original members of the Gnostic Catholic Union, I believe, is now either an Orthodox priest or joined the Orthodox Church, and he renounces all his old Gnostic past, which is kind of a shame. So, sometimes that does happen. So, people become wanderers because of, people basically rely solely on one priest, oftentimes, which is also sad, and when one priest moves, people lose passion, and sometimes that’s how it is. So, I prefer to have people more independently on their own, not just say rely on me, I make other people bishops so they can carry on with their own, and from there, expand it. So, someone might have, say, the coin enough to start their own church, and from there, maybe, from there, do whatever they need. So, it inspires, and still something to bring a bit of community in, and have a little bit of recognition from other people, basically. So, I kept that term. I was almost considering to remove the title, bishops and priests, but a lot of the old members wanted to keep it as well, and some of the young ones did as well. So, I thought, well, I’ll keep the term for them in their sake. Otherwise, I was going to keep it as teachers, or brothers and sisters, but I still encourage our members to, when dealing with each other, not just sit there and call each other bishops, or bishopettes, or priests, or priestess, whichever term they prefer. I prefer to call us brothers and sisters, which is more stressed. Even with the outfit some people are talking about, I would tell them, remember that Jesus wouldn’t be wandering around with fancy robes, or wearing collared shirts, or wearing gold jewelry, and say, I’m doing now, in a sense. He was out in the wilderness, gathering with community. So, as blessed as those who are poor, you know, so, which was rare. So, a lot of people wanted money back then. So, he was very much for the poor, which is beautiful to see. There were rich Christians. It doesn’t mean that was strictly only for poor people only. There were ones who were shipfarers, and in turn, would carry their message throughout the ports, or from region to region. Cyd:I was just wondering–you are obviously a Christian Gnostic, as am I. I know that you’re open to all Gnosticism, but Gnostics who reject the notion of the Christ, or the need for the Christ, doesn’t that create some kind of difficulty, let’s say? Bishop Nathan Wilson:It would conflict a little bit, yes. I haven’t really come across ones that more reject the Christ. I wouldn’t mind. I have come across ones who have debated me over it in a sense, which I don’t mind in a sense, but I would also encourage them to say, look at the message. Ultimately, it’s about finding the Christ within, being Christ-like for yourself. It goes back to that root word of the first Christians for Christanos, being little Christs, little anointed ones. So, those who were taken on their masters teaching to be Christ-like. But say we have ones that don’t believe Jesus existed. I don’t mind that, because ultimately it is the message, but I will tell them I do believe because I have reasons. I would say for them to look up, say, Judas Kriakos, which is a grandson of Jesus, which is recorded in history. We have church father writings that actually whinged about Jesus’ family being Jewish Christians and not Catholic. So, that’s interesting. So, why would you whinge about a family if the man did not exist? For instance like that. But ultimately, there were some Gnostics that didn’t believe that Jesus existed, but was rather a spirit or was the myth that you took on yourself. So, I’m okay with that, as long as we don’t conflict with each other, with our hearts, as long as we’re not hating each other. So, we can have separate beliefs, as long as we respect those beliefs. Ultimately, that’s what would stop the disheartening and also the conflictions. end part one of interview Okay, we’re going to stop for this week. This is a good place to stop because next, Bishop Wilson goes on to discuss his translation of the New Testament and also some other Gnostic texts. So, we’ll spend next week talking about his translation that he calls the Gnostic Christian Truth Bible, and we’ll get into that. Also, I did record this entire interview as a Zoom video, and as soon as I get that edited, I’ll be posting it to YouTube so you will be able to find it and watch the interview as Bishop Nathan Wilson and I discuss these things. So, I hope to see you there, and thank you for listening this week, and we’ll pick it up again next week. Until then, God bless us all, and onward and upward. The Gnostic Union Facebook The Gnostic Union YouTube Channel

fWotD Episode 3323: Amalthea (mythology) Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia's finest articles.The featured article for Wednesday, 10 June 2026, is Amalthea (mythology).In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is the figure most commonly identified as the nurse of Zeus during his infancy. She is described either as a nymph who raises the child on the milk of a goat or, in some accounts from the Hellenistic period (c. 323–30 BC) onwards, as the goat itself.From as early as the 6th century BC, there survive references to the "horn of Amalthea" (known in Latin as the cornucopia), a magical horn said to be capable of producing endless amounts of any food or drink desired. In a narrative attributed to the mythical poet Musaeus and dating to around the 4th century BC, Amalthea, a nymph, nurses the infant Zeus and owns a goat which is terrifying in appearance. After Zeus reaches adulthood, he uses the goat's skin as a weapon in his battle against the Titans (the earlier generation of gods). The first known author to describe Amalthea as a goat is the 3rd-century BC poet Callimachus, who presents a rationalised version of the myth in which Zeus is fed on Amalthea's milk. Aratus, also writing in the 3rd century BC, identifies Amalthea with the star Capella, and describes her as "Olenian" (the meaning of which is unclear).Scholars disagree as to when the tale of Zeus's upbringing was first merged with that of the magical horn. They are explicitly combined by the Roman poet Ovid (1st century BC/AD), whose story of Zeus's nursing weaves together elements from multiple accounts. A passage from a marginal note in a manuscript of Aratus's version has been taken as evidence that the two myths may have been connected prior to Ovid. In the Fabulae, a 2nd-century AD mythological handbook, Amalthea hides the infant in a tree and gathers the Kouretes to dance noisily, so that the child's crying cannot be heard. Other accounts of Zeus's upbringing describe Amalthea as related to Melisseus, the mythical king of Crete, including an Orphic version of the story.Among the few surviving representations of Amalthea in ancient art is a 2nd-century AD marble relief which represents her as a goat suckling Zeus, behind two dancing Kouretes. She is also depicted on multiple coins and medallions from the Roman Empire. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, she was the subject of works by painters such as Giorgio Vasari and Jacob Jordaens, and sculptors such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pierre Julien.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:13 UTC on Wednesday, 10 June 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Amalthea (mythology) on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Russell.

In this follow-up to their discussion of the Parable of the Ten Virgins, Jesse and Tony make a critical discovery about Matthew 25:13 that fundamentally changes how we should read Christ's eschatological parables. The command to "watch therefore" isn't primarily about staying awake—it's about preparedness for Christ's return. This episode explores the grammatical and theological connections between the Parable of the Ten Virgins and the Parable of the Talents, revealing how Matthew 25:13 functions as a hinge verse that binds these parables into a unified teaching on eschatological readiness. The hosts demonstrate how modern chapter divisions and translation choices can sometimes obscure the organic flow of Christ's teaching, and why understanding these connections matters for Christian living today. Key Takeaways Matthew 25:13 is a hinge verse, not an endpoint. The Greek grammatical structure (using post-positive connectors "therefore" and "for") links verses 1-13 forward to the Parable of the Talents, not just backward to the Ten Virgins. Sleep wasn't the problem in the parable. Both the wise and foolish virgins fell asleep. The issue was preparedness—having oil ready before the bridegroom's arrival, not staying physically awake. "Watch" means preparedness, not wakefulness. The better translation of the Greek word emphasizes alert readiness and preparation rather than literal sleeplessness. The Parable of the Talents explains what preparedness looks like. Christ intentionally connected these parables to show that watchfulness manifests in faithful stewardship and fruitful living. Christ himself made these connections. This isn't just Matthew's editorial arrangement—Jesus deliberately taught these parables together as a unified discourse on eschatological readiness. Sanctifying grace is non-transferable. The wise virgins couldn't share their oil because saving grace and the Spirit's indwelling cannot be borrowed or transferred between people. Eschatological ignorance is divinely ordained. Not knowing the day or hour prevents us from delaying obedience until the last moment, which was precisely the foolish virgins' error. Key Concepts The Grammatical Evidence for Connection The discovery that transformed this discussion centers on how Greek post-positive particles function. Both "therefore" (οὖν) in verse 13 and "for" (γάρ) in verse 14 cannot grammatically stand as the first word in a Greek sentence—they must connect to what precedes them. This means verse 13 isn't simply concluding the parable of the virgins; it's simultaneously introducing the parable of the talents. English translations that insert paragraph breaks between these verses may inadvertently suggest a harder separation than exists in the original text. When Christ says "watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour, for it will be like a man going on a journey," He's creating a seamless logical progression: the reason for watchfulness is eschatological uncertainty, and the nature of that watchfulness is illustrated by what follows in the talents parable. Preparedness vs. Wakefulness in Translation Some English translations render Matthew 25:13 as "stay awake" or "keep alert," emphasizing the sleep imagery from the preceding parable. However, this creates a logical problem: if falling asleep was the sin, then both groups of virgins sinned, since the text explicitly states "they all became drowsy and slept" (v. 5). The better understanding recognizes that the Greek word (γρηγορέω) encompasses a broader semantic range including vigilance, preparedness, and readiness—not just physical wakefulness. The wise virgins weren't praised for staying awake; they were praised for having secured oil before the bridegroom's arrival. This preparedness enabled them to respond appropriately when the moment came, regardless of whether they had been sleeping. Translating with an emphasis on sleep therefore misses Christ's point and artificially seals verse 13 off from the explanation that follows. The Perseverance of the Saints in Action This parable sequence reveals an often-overlooked dimension of the doctrine of perseverance: believers must actually do the persevering. While the Holy Spirit enables, empowers, and ordains our perseverance, He doesn't persevere instead of us—He causes us to persevere. The wise virgins' preparedness wasn't passive; they actively obtained oil before it was needed. They prepared for both the bridegroom's arrival and the potential delay. This illustrates that Christian preparedness isn't anxious vigilance or frantic last-minute effort, but the steady, Spirit-enabled work of sanctification, growing in grace, abiding in Christ, and maintaining readiness over the long haul. The Parable of the Talents then unpacks what this looks like practically: faithful stewardship, productive kingdom work, and diligent use of what God has entrusted to us during the time of waiting. Memorable Quotes The difference between foolishness and wisdom in the first parable is not whether or not the virgins fell asleep. It's whether or not they were prepared for the eventual coming of the bridegroom. - Tony Arsenal When God's people take to see and request his eminent and transcendent power in the lives of somebody else through intercessory prayer, a special bond is created that is very real. - Jesse Schwamb Christ himself has strung these different parables together... Christ was the one who decided that the parable of the talents was a proper explainer for the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript [00:00:08] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 495 of the Reformed to Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:00:14] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:00:18] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. So sometimes the episodes just seem to write themselves, and I say that of course, tongue in cheek from my full providential register. But in the last episode, we went over with great detail, the parable of the 10 virgins, or the 10 bridesmaids found in Matthew 25. And I think we did all the things that we were supposed to do, like contractually. We made really good oil puns. We talked about Petras song, midnight Oil. We talked about 10 bridesmaids, five Ys, five foolish. They're all waiting for the bridegroom who is late because he operates on divine timing. The foolish five run out of oil and begged the five whys to share theirs. The five whys decline, because sanctifying grace is non-transferrable. This is not a potluck. We went through all of that stuff and then what happened is we turned off the microphones and somehow you and I started a, a new conversation about this thing still. And we thought there's more to say and we didn't even expect it. And incidentally, it all hinges on a single word. Yeah. So we're gonna come back to that on this episode because we couldn't help ourselves. And I say that because we couldn't help ourselves. We literally kept talking about this long after the episode had ended. So we wanted to bring it back and it's something new. I think that you and I were really pondering that's gonna be really, really, really good. Yeah. But the other thing that's really good is either affirming with something or denying against something that's the part of the conversation where we either affirm with something that we think is underrated, really exceptional, that we wanna recommend or we deny against something that's just not that great. So Tony, what have you got for us today?  [00:02:04] Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna phrase this in a very particular way, of course, and then I'll explain why I'm phrasing it that way. I'm starting. Great. Um, I am affirming adult baptism upon a profession of faith, and I say it in that particular way. Sure, of course. Um, because I often hear, and I've heard, I mean, I've heard Presbyterian pastors say this, um, I've heard, heard it said that Presbyterians do cradle baptism too. And, uh, and sort of like, sometimes it's kind of in like a, I'm trying to like build a bridge with a, a cradle Baptist. Sure. Um, I actually object to that because the, the basis on which an adult is baptized in a Westminster covenant theology framework is different than the basis, uh, on which a believer is baptized under a traditional Baptist credo, Baptist position. Right. So I'm affirming adult. Profession of faith, baptism or adult baptism upon a profession of faith. Um, and the reason I'm saying that is because my wife and I had this opportunity this morning to go to another church to visit, uh, a friend of ours. It's actually a friend of our son's, which is crazy to say. He's four years old. A friend of our son's from school, his mother, um, who is a Christian, um, but had never been baptized, was being baptized at her church today. And so we got an opportunity to go to their church. It's a church we've been to before. It was not like a brand new church or any, like, super far away. It's a church we've been to before. Um, so we got to go to church and then we went over to the local sort of like swimming hole. Uh, like there's this little, uh, like recreational area called stores pond, I'm sure. Just I know you're familiar with it. Oh,  [00:03:38] Jesse Schwamb: yeah.  [00:03:39] Tony Arsenal: Um, and they did sort of like a testimony ceremony and, uh, all of the baptizes, I don't know if that's the right word, but all of those being baptized. Uh, I would normally call them catechumens, but I don't think that actually that applies here. But all of those being baptized, uh, got up and gave their testimony. There was eight people being baptized, which was fun to see. Um, of course all adults. This is a Baptist, um, a Baptist church that we were visiting. And then we walked over to the, over to the lake and they dunked him in there. And, uh, it was really great to see. And the reason that I'm affirming adult baptism upon a profession of faith, um, uh, is because it's really quite beautiful, right? I think we've, we just recently talked about this, um, and I'm sure we'll talk about it again at some point in the future, but we just recently talked about a baby baptism at my church that, uh, is beautiful in its own right for its own reasons, and it's got its own theological, uh, underpinnings and theological elegance to it. But there's also something just very beautiful about an adult who either has come to faith, um, and I don't, I don't know, um, this woman very well, like I, she's another mom at, um, at Agie school. And so our kids go to school together and so we interact with her periodically at like drop off and other times and they've been over to the house. I don't know her, well, I heard enough of her testimony today to know that she was kind of a nominal Christian. Uh, and they actually started going to church because in order to bring their son to the school that, um, they wanted to go to, which is, uh, the school that my son goes to, the school that your father teaches at, um. You have to have at least one parent needs to be a Christian, needs to be a regular attender, a regular member of a church. And so they, they joined a church, um, to be able to fulfill that requirement. And either, and, and again, I wasn't, I was watching the kids, um, including her son while she was doing this. So I was only kind of hearing with one ear. So either she was a nominal Christian and was kind of like renewing her faith or she was coming to faith for the first time. I'm not sure. But in either case, she had not been baptized previously that I know of. I didn't, I mean, I guess maybe she was baptized as a baby or something, I don't know. But, um, she was being baptized today upon a sort of a new profession of faith or renewal of faith, and it's just very sweet to see. The emotional investment that occurs when someone is recognizing that God's promise is being sealed on them. Right. And I don't know that, I don't know that a lot of traditional Baptist, and this is a pretty like plain Jane Evangelical church. I'm not sure that a lot of evangelicals would really recognize or use that language. But I also think there's an intuitiveness to it that like this is a sign that God gives us. It's gotta be a sign of something. Right. Um, it's not, this was a church that brought sort of broadly Calvinistic part, the baptism of house was actually adopted or adapted from, uh, a modification of question, one of the Heidelberg catechism. So I warned my Presbyterian heart, um. So they're in a context where like covenantal language is not foreign to them, even if it's not the primary structure that they're using. But it was just very sweet and kind and a, a really encouraging, uh, opportunity for the body of Christ to gather. Uh, it was a little bit chilly. It was raining actually, and people, anybody, like everybody was out there and, and in the rain, most people didn't have umbrellas. And you know, people's hair is wet and their clothes are getting wet and nobody cares. Nobody is bothered by it because there is some baptism going on. There's some, uh, some new birth in a roundabout sense and some yes, uh, some, some signification of that new birth in a very direct sense. So that's what I'm affirming today. Adult baptism upon a profession of faith, uh, with an asterisk in a covenantal mode. That's, that's my very specific, very technical affirmation today.  [00:07:19] Jesse Schwamb: There's also something about that's just special. Again, it's not prescriptive, but there's something special about those open water baptisms too. Oh  [00:07:27] Tony Arsenal: yeah.  [00:07:28] Jesse Schwamb: I mean,  [00:07:29] Tony Arsenal: yeah, it was like super picturesque. It was like, I felt like I was on the Jordan with Town of Baptist, like the, like, it was like a, that classic like Baptist minister standing in the water, like it was very right. Very, uh, it looked staged, but I don't think it was, I think it just was actually this, that genuine scenario. [00:07:44] Jesse Schwamb: Right. So, yeah. Yeah. And that's like a beautiful thing. Like we're saying, oh, we're not trying to get into the particulars. It's just to appreciate, I think all of those details. I myself was baptized by my father in a pond and it was glorious. That was, that was special. And there was something about the occasion and the environment as well that was special to me in that. But you're right, like in that Baptist mode, I, I think when it's like properly administered, when it's really appreciated and the theology is rich and richly exemplified in what's happening there to, it's hard not to be moved, I think in the Christian heart, not to be warned by seeing somebody go down into the water to come up into this representation of new life in Christ. I think regardless of your convictions on this, it's hard not to be moved by the power of the spirits.  [00:08:25] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:08:26] Jesse Schwamb: And the sign and seal being delivered to God's people. In a profound way. So whether you're a Pado or Cradle Baptist, I think it really is difficult not to be moved. And especially in an environment like that, you love to see it, right? I mean, this idea of of, um, being able to come to the Lord because he's called you and whatever season of life that is, and then to follow an obedience into baptism is a glorious thing that we should all celebrate. So I love this idea of people on a chilly day in New Hampshire standing in the rain saying, give us the baptism. Like let, let us see the Holy Spirits working through the lives of the people in our midst. Let, we wanna be a part of that. We wanna celebrate that we're here for that.  [00:09:07] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. It was just a, it was just a very, very sweet, like, I, like I said with, when we were talking about the, the baby baptism at my church, it's, there's just a, there's a sweetness to it. It's, yes. It's almost like, um, I've never been present for the birth of someone's child other than my own. Um, I've been at the hospital, uh, so meeting the family and the, the baby like very shortly after birth, but I've never been actually there. But there's something reminiscent to that, whether it's a baby being baptized or an adult being baptized where it's, it's just this sort of sweet moment of introduction to yes, this person with, um. To varying degrees depending on the theology, underlying baptism. But this person with a very real new identity that they have been given, yes, it's, it's, the old has gone, the new has come new creation in Christ. Um, whether, you know, I, I don't affirm baptism or regeneration, right? That's not a reformed position. But whether you have a, a position of some form of baptismal regeneration or baptismal efficacy, which is where kind of the, the reform tradition tends to fall, or even just, uh, I say just, I don't mean just in a peor sense, but like, even if, if what's going on is, is entirely a symbol that you know, is being applied to a person, there is a new sense of identity. There's a, there's a, a mark, a, a physical mark that it isn't persistent like circumcision, but it's a physical mark being applied, a visible mark being applied to, to the person claiming them as God's child. Um, and, and there's something very sweet and genuine. And, and to see, like, just to see, like I said, the, just the emotionality. And not a crass like emotionalism, but a genuine, heartfelt, emotional moment that someone is going through like a real, genuine emotion, um, is also not something we actually see that much in the world anymore, which is, it was nice to see. Anyway, I could, I could blather on about baptism and, and adult baptism and baby baptism and how great it is. Uh, God knew what he was doing and he, he gave us this beautiful symbol. So next time you have an opportunity to experience a adult baptism upon a profession of faith in a covenantal mode, uh, than you make sure you take advantage of that.  [00:11:14] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. You know what it's like for me and certainly I, baptism is way more profound, uh, than this example I'm about to give. But there's something within me that feels similarly or appreciates in a similar way when you're participating or just viewing a wedding. Yeah. Isn't there? There's that new identity. There's the vows and the covenants being made and promises being given and that that's just like a really meaningful, profound thing. And then like, you know, a thousand times, a million times, that is to participate or to witness again, baptism. And in my own church, which is Cradle Baptist, the one I attend, baptism, I'll say it this way in like this most trite way again, is like a super big deal. And one of the things I really appreciate is when that person, after they've given their testimony and they've gone down into the water and they come back up, our congregation goes like wild. Like just wild in celebration. Yeah. And at first I was like, wow, this. This seems like too much. Guys, can we take, can we take it down now? Just the Lord's day after all. And then I was with you in the sense of like, really, it's like we, you and I have talked so much about like the, the way in which you're trying to sometimes manufacture or theologians try to bring in some sense of emotionalism to kind of convey some kind of like, really, so I can demonstrate that I have a heartfelt and genuine commitment and love for God and Christ and you know, we can leave that as it is right now. Here is a place where I think that celebration is like just wholly and totally appropriate.  [00:12:36] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:12:36] Jesse Schwamb: And so I love that there's genuine enthusiasm and excitement over those things. And you're genuinely gonna get that more in the kind of traditional Baptist mode of this thing. I'm just saying celebrate where you celebrate, you know, get in where you fit in. Yeah. And so I think that your admonishment to us and affirmation there is really good. Um, totally about that. And all the better if you can do it in a, on a rainy day in a pond in New Hampshire. That sounds like a glorious spot.  [00:13:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it was interesting. It was good. It was a good time. Jesse, what do you got for us tonight? [00:13:07] Jesse Schwamb: I'm also gonna go affirmation, and I think we can file this one for me, under seeing the power of God in his, that power demonstrated in his transcendence and in his eminence. All our timing is gonna be off on this, but there's a certain compulsion I have to report back to everybody. And that reporting is really on my wife who did undergo some surgery this week. And I'm about to say a bunch of things medically so you can, I mean, there's nothing in here like grotesque, but I say that because somebody might be like, wow, you're seeing a lot of personal things. I have her permission to share all this. But of course some of you may remember, she spoke on the podcast, I dunno, like a half dozen episodes ago. Go back and listen to that. She talks about her medical journey, but she just had this big surgery. And here's the reason why I want to report back. I sense that when God's people take to see and request his eminent and transcendent power in the lives of somebody else through intercessory prayer, that like a special bond is created that is very real. So I think when somebody comes to their brothers and sisters and says. Would you pray for us? Would you pray for me? That's not just an act. I think of vulnerability. It's one of of truly seeking after what God desires for his people to help and to intercede for one another. And there's something special about that. And then equally special, and I think binding is when people say, yes, I will pray. And they make themselves committed to doing that. When that relationship is established, what I think is like mutual accountability, mutual yielding to one another, mutual submission. The lovely thing about that is I think there ought to be a reporting back. I really feel highly convicted about that because so many people, including those in the from Brotherhood hanging out in the Telegram, TT Me Reform Brotherhood, they have prayed for us. My church has prayed, my parents have prayed. You have prayed. So many people have prayed. And so my wife did go undergo an 11 hour surgery just two days ago. And uh, I can say that that surgery, the doctors, the three surgeons who are working as part of this interdisciplinary team, this multifactorial, multidisciplinary team, were able to accomplish everything that they wanted to do, which was a wild accomplishment. And it was more intense than they thought it was going to be. But I can say to you very, very clearly, very cogently that, uh, God was in the midst of all of these things in a mighty and powerful way. Now, I know people are prone to say that kind of thing. I'm saying it because it was all exceptionally real. Not only as I sat there waiting for the next updates in the waiting room, did I really sense a peace of God that I haven't felt before, even in all of my wife's previous surgeries, when this was the most uncertain, this was the biggest, the highest risk that was all real. But at the very end, and I'll, I'll spare a lot of the details, uh, but at the very, very end when the surgeon reported back to me all the things that they did, which included having to take out a portion of her bowel and stitch it back together again, because she had some endometriosis that had embedded itself in there and that was unknown to them. You can't see that stuff in an MRI and yet God ordained that the right surgeon, the right preparation would be in the room and ready to go if something like that occurred and it did. That she had a full hysterectomy, which we were praying that it would be lack laparoscopic because they were concerned they would not be able to do it that way. And God answered that prayer that she needed to have her ureter, the thing that connects your kidney to your bladder, that also was filled with endometriosis. It had to be resectioned and repaired. And it was that the end of all of this, what the main doctor kept saying to me was, we wanted to put your wife in a position where her anatomy would determine the outcome and that you would have all of the skilled persons in the room to provide the best care, the best expertise possible. And what he said to me at the end is, it's strange things just kept breaking her way. And I said, well, I can tell you why that is. That's because God was answering the prayers of so many people who are praying for her. And so I'm so thankful for everybody who's prayed. She's in a critical time of healing right now. Our prayers now are turning to just that God would solidify the work that he has already accomplished, that there'd be no complications, that all the things that they did, and they did a lot of things. The surgeon in fact said to me at the end, it's gonna feel like she got hit by a truck. And that's actually not a bad description of what we did to her. And so the next days are the ones where we're really pleading for God to do this kind of miraculous healing that he started by providing all the things that he's, he's already done. I, as a husband, cannot be more thankful, more grateful, without words for everybody who has prayed. Uh, for my parents, for you guys, Tony, for all of our friends who reached out for so many people, I've realized I have a part-time job now just answering text messages, uh, on behalf of my wife for those who desperately are loving her through prayer. And again, I think I'd affirmed before. I'll say this very quickly, about the elders praying over her. About what a sweet time that was. Not only did that happen, but uh, unbeknownst to me until a little bit later on in that day did I learn that a bunch of women in the church had taken it upon themselves to schedule an 11 hour block where there was gonna be somebody praying every hour for my wife. And, um. Man, if, if, if this is not what the family of God does for one another, I don't know what they do.  [00:18:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:18:35] Jesse Schwamb: So I'm so grateful. Thank you for everybody who has prayed. I also don't want to testify. That's the power of God and his eminence. And his transcendence is just unreal loved ones. It's unreal, it's otherworldly and he comes in power when his people pray. He does good work and it's very James one. There's a lot that even as I'm worried now about the outcome of this surgery and how it will play out, that I can still somehow truly count it all joy, because it is God who does these things in our lives to test and to prove out our faith and our love towards him, because he's in fact good. And I'm just testifying to that goodness in the midst of this difficulty. So wherever you are at. For whatever it's worth. And I think it's worth a lot. God is faithful. He will do the work that he began, and he will meet us when we need him, where we are at in his loving kindness because of his great mercy. So be encouraged by that. And again, my sincere gratitude.  [00:19:36] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't have much that I can add to that. I mean, I, I, I think, um, prayer is an undervalued commodity in the church.  [00:19:48] Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  [00:19:49] Tony Arsenal: And. As good and right as it is for us, uh, to pray when there's some big, um, big need like this. Um, and, and there's no, there's no, uh, dishonor or shame in asking for prayer in the big situations. I think sometimes too, like we forget that prayer is just as vital and just as important and just as powerful and just as meaningful and just as everything in the small things. Amen. Um, and, and I also think, you know, sometimes we, maybe this is just me, but like sometimes we go into, we go into a, a scenario like what you and your wife are going in and we sort of like prepare ourselves for. The hard providence to come. Like, I don't know if, if that's where you've been at, but I know when I'm facing things like this, um, I'm, I'm kind of like asking people to pray, expecting God to bring the hard providence.  [00:20:43] Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  [00:20:44] Tony Arsenal: Um, and maybe that's just a coping mechanism to sort of like get out in front of it in case he does. Um, but like that God, God doesn't, uh, how do I wanna say this? I don't think that God takes any particular joy in bringing the par, the hard providences. Mm-hmm. And I actually think he does take a particular joy in answering the prayers of his people unto good effect. Um, I think there's a particular joy that God brings when he, God has in his own divine accommodated, anthropo, pathic way, um, when he can make sure that everything just breaks the right way for his children. Right. In a really difficult, complex, long surgery. Um, and all of the butterfly effect elements of, of how all of those different things are gonna, you know, spread out. Right. I don't know if this surgeon's gonna come to faith because you attributed his success in this surgery to, you know, to, to God. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Um, but, but either way, there are a thousand, a million imperceptible little ways that God's providence flows out of these kinds of situations that we will never know. Um, and he, he takes great joy in answering the prayers of his people and. Yes, it's true that when God, when we ask God for bread, he does not give us a stone even when he gives us the hard providences, right? The hard providences are not a stone, but he likes to give us really good bread.  [00:22:10] Jesse Schwamb: Amen.  [00:22:10] Tony Arsenal: And I think at times, um, we, we sort of almost doubt that he is able and willing and joyful to do so. So that's more, I think, more a reminder for me than it is for anyone else. 'cause I, I have a tendency to prep myself for the hard providences, um, before they come and, and pray to that effect that God would comfort me in the midst of whatever trials is coming. Um, maybe I need to show a little bit more faith in a good God who gives good gifts, um, to pray and thank him in advance for the good providence is the, the easier the soft providence is that he has in store for his people as well.  [00:22:46] Jesse Schwamb: Well, I think we all need that reminder from time to time and I, again, I like where you've taken that. It is a good reminder to pray for the people that you love around you all the time, or just ask. What's something that you would like some prayer for, especially maybe something that you can't pray for yourselves through this time? I can't tell you how many times somebody has asked to pray with me or for me, and they pray in ways that just astound me. I dunno if that makes sense. Yeah. Like just, I get off the phone and I think, well, that was spirit filled because I didn't know that I needed to hear those words. I didn't know exactly like what needed to be stitched together in terms of the requests that would really minister to my heart and provide me encouragement. But course the Lord knows, and even in prayer as you're saying, he's giving that good gift to each other.  [00:23:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:23:35] Jesse Schwamb: When we pray with one another, when we pray for one another, it's just a remarkable thing that I fail to understand and I definitely fail to appreciate. So in this season of being able to see it very clearly as if like the clouds. Parted and I could see some of this power of prayer and what God does in prayer, what God does to us in the prayer of others. I can't help but testify again. I feel it is my duty to do so, actually. So be encouraged, loved ones that this is a powerful weapon that God gives us. I think you and I have said before, Tony, maybe we can also partly this into like another reform. A brotherhood bumper sticker. I said another, like, we have bumper stickers. We don't, we definitely should. At some point  [00:24:17] Tony Arsenal: we do have at least one cross stitch pillow floating around out there  [00:24:20] Jesse Schwamb: somewhere. That's true. Yes. We need to get our hands on that. And maybe here's something else we could add to it, which is of course, when, when we work, we work, but when we pray, God works. And so I've just been reminded of that over and over and over again. The situation, like you said in the big times and the small times, what a blessing, what God is like this, who cares. Who again, is what I've been thinking about is how high and lifted and transcendent God is, so that like he's not moved in, uh, in a dis, like a passionate way by this nonsense of our world. He's steady and steadfast. You know, Isaiah 26, like our God is an everlasting rock, and yet he's eminent in sending his son to identify with the kind of pain even my wife is in right now. In her time of trial and struggle. He is there and yet separated and so powerful that he orchestrates all the details himself. I mean, what God is like this.  [00:25:11] Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  [00:25:11] Jesse Schwamb: So this is the one to whom we get to bend his ear, as it were, and we'll avail ourselves of that opportunity. Always. You're gonna have to stop it, Tony. Otherwise, I'm, this whole episode is just gonna be me talking about, which would not be bad, I suppose, but me talking about how good our God is, I suppose we can talk about that actually in the context of Matthew 25. [00:25:30] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. You better watch yourself before you wreck yourself. Is that how it goes? But I did that, that took a month off of podcasting. I forgot how to do transitions. Not that we were ever great at transitions. It's just slamming into gear  [00:25:43] Jesse Schwamb: now. That loved one's a segue that you, you don't even know about yet. You didn't even get it. So let me help you try to get it. 'cause I, I wanna do this quickly, but of course it's always the best part of our conversations where we can get to the scripture. Let me read just the first, uh, 13 verses Matthew 25, and I'm gonna read them from the version that I read on the last episode because part of the fun of this conversation that Tony I had had subsequently was, do you remember what you said to me, Tony, about, about the, this, I don't wanna say the word yet, but this word. [00:26:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. I, what I remember is, um, feeling confused because I, I said, I thought this was like a Mandela effect kind of thing. Yes. We might have to, I'll explain briefly what that is in that I could have swore this word was in the, in the Bible. Like I was, it was so ingrained in my head that this was there. And then I'm trying to find it in my, my version that I'm bringing in. It's not there. And the obvious answer is it actually was there in the version that Jesse was reading and is there in many translations. Um, so we'll, we'll read the translation, uh, Jesse read, and then we'll talk about why not only why this is, uh, important in the light of our last conversation, but actually how it's important in light of what will likely now be the beginning of our conversation on the next parable, and in the next week or maybe two of, of the discussion of the parable of the talents here, or one of the parable and talents. [00:26:57] Jesse Schwamb: So this is Matthew 25, beginning in verse one. Then the kingdom of heaven may be compared to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the body groom. Now five of them were foolish and five are prudent. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now, while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout. Behold the bridegroom come out to meet him. Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the prudent, give us some of your oil for our lamps are going out. But the prudent answered saying, no, there will not be enough for us. And you go to and instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves. And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast and the door was shut. And later the other virgins also came saying, Lord, Lord, open for us. But he answered and said, truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Therefore, stay awake for you. Do not know the day nor the hour.  [00:28:02] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. So the part of this, uh, passage that I was having, like a brain cramp on and couldn't figure out is actually verse 13 and, um. The reason this is important and ties in, and this is part of why Jesse and I after we sort of had like a second, the beginning of a second episode, following the last episode, um, wanted to come back, is that this, this verse in verse 13 actually makes, um, in effect it makes the second parable that we're gonna talk about the parable of the talent here. It actually makes that parable like an extension of the first one or maybe an explanation of the first one, or further clarification. I'm not sure. It, it links the two together in a way that's really significant. So we need to make sure we really understand. Verse 13, and I'm gonna read verse 13 in my translation to demonstrate kind of where I think the, the question starts and says, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. And what Jesse and I kind of like marveled at is, um, the word for watch, uh, it's actually the same word we get the name Gregory, for, uh, from, um, the, the idea of being wakeful or alert or not falling asleep. That's that's there in the word. Um, and, and I don't think it's a bad translation. I don't. I always, um, wanna be really hesitant to sort of like make an argument that you wanna like build an entire theological point on a translation or a mistranslation. I think those are really shaky arguments, and even more than that, I don't ever wanna make an argument that makes it so people feel like they can't trust their English bibles. So the, the difference between the version that Jesse read with, you know, statements of being awake or stay awake or be alert versus watch, or more generalized alertness language, which is I think probably a better, not, not that the other one's bad, but this is probably a better translation. And it's a translation decision that's trying to connect that verb back to something that was said about the virgins. Right, right. The, the virgins, um, and this is, this is where our conversation went, is actually the, the sort of like real time epiphany that Jesse and I had, maybe I just had Jesse new, the, the sort of like real time epiphany that both, both groups of virgins fell asleep. Right. And so being asleep is not the necessary, it's not the thing that makes the virgins foolish.  [00:30:35] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly.  [00:30:36] Tony Arsenal: The, the translation, I think, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, not like a mind reader and I haven't read anything from the translation committees that explain that this is why they did it. But I'm, I'm, I think it's reasonable to think they translated in light of that wakefulness element of being alert because of the fact that the virgins fell asleep and they were sort of caught off guard when the bridegroom came. But the reason I think that's an over translation is exactly the dynamic we pointed out last week, falling asleep was not the problem,  [00:31:04] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:31:05] Tony Arsenal: What was, what was the problem was not being prepared. And so this concept of watch, therefore is more, I think is more about preparedness because of the fact that the parable is about preparedness, not about wakefulness. So when we wanna think about translations, yes, verse 13 comes after verses one through 12, but there's this little word therefore that connects this one with the next one, right? And so it's watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. If that was the end of, end of the book of Matthew, right, right there, then that therefore would be like, because of what I just said, watch for, you neither know the day nor the hour, you know, neither the day nor the hour. But then in verse 14, it starts with four. It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servant and entrusted them through his property. That word for, that's another connecting logic word. So it's watch therefore, so like, because of what I just said, be alert, watch, be wakeful, be mindful, be prepared for, you know, neither the day or the hour. Four, because it will be like a man going on a journey, right? The reason you have to watch is partially, or the reason you have to watch is that you will neither know the day nor the hour. And the reason you will neither know the day nor the hour is because it will be like a man who's going on a journey called his servants and entrusted them to his property, right? So these two parables are connected and we have to sort of like understand what that watch word means and how it relates to the previous parable to understand now what it is that the next parable is trying to say and how the two relate to each other.  [00:32:45] Jesse Schwamb: I think that's right. It's like you said before, we talked about last time, it's not that sleep was the problem. That's not where the condemn nation comes in. It's merely that sleep revealed the lack of preparedness. Right. Like I suppose if you wanted to change it up, you could be like, and then they all played Uno for a while and the lambs were going strong and then suddenly the bride coon came out and it was like, okay, well it was the fact that all the lamps were still burning. Yeah. But as they were still burning and that time was passing and the bridegroom delayed, providentially, then it was only those imbued with that grace who already I prepared for that moment in time. Not that they were all playing Uno itself. So, which, which I know this is like my own translation, which is horrible, but. It is important if somebody thinks like we're overworking this.  [00:33:26] Tony Arsenal: Right?  [00:33:26] Jesse Schwamb: It's important, I think, because it, it's gonna set up the next stuff, which we're gonna get to, uh, I presume in the next episode. But this verse is, is like a, is like kind of like the keystone. It's, it constitutes like the entire moral conclusion of both this parable, but the other two that are just like it, that come before it in different ways. And of course it's like structurally parallel to a bunch of like mark and stuff that we may or may not get to. And then it echoes like the broader, all that discourse as well. So I was just looking up quickly, mark 13, in other words like where do we hear this same type of language? Where does it almost rhyme in our minds? And so if you go over just to mark 1333, and this is the parable of the fig tree. So we won't get into that there, but you'll see kind of like the same conclusion, the same, I kind of high and lifted point at the end. And this is where Jesus says, see to it, keep on the alert. For you do not know when the appointed time will come. So instead, really what we're getting at is there's all this language about watchfulness, like the, the present imperative in Greek. Keep on watching, be continuously a work, uh, alert, but it's not like watchfulness in this like anxious, vigilant, kind of nervous energy uncertainty, but it's the prepared readiness of one who has oil in the vessel and knows that the bridegroom is coming regardless of whether you fall asleep. [00:34:46] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, the, the way that, um, the way that English translations are broken up into paragraphs and into, with headings and editorial content and chapter divisions and verse divisions, um, those things are all helpful and they're all really useful and I'm glad they're there. Uh, they're not inspired though, right? They're not the word of God. The, the, for the little, the little super script 14 before the word four and the little super script 13 before the word watch. Is not, it's not inspired and neither is the little, at least in the version I'm looking at on logs Bible start, neither is the little paragraph break that separates these two. So we, we can equally read and again, like I haven't done a full Greek exo treatment of this and maybe I should to, to know whether there is actually some real specific grammatical reasons why we would break these. There probably is, but we could equally read it saying, but he answered truly I say to you, I do not know you watch therefore for, you know, neither the hour or the day nor the hour. For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his sermon or we could read it, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour for it will be like a man going on a journey. Right, right. We can, we can, the way that we read it, we can, we can clump verse 13 with what comes before it and sort of imply a full break or we can clump it with what comes after it and imply a full break before it. In reality, we shouldn't do either of those. Right. This is in, this is linked together in the, the Bible specifically to take these two parables. And pull them together. Right. Thematically, they're the same. They match, they, they have kind of this rhyming nature that like, there's, there's this theme of like, these people who have a specific task and they accomplish it to greater or lesser degree. And the ones who do it, right, the ones who do it well are rewarded in some sense because of their preparedness and their diligence. And again, I, I don't, um, I know that we can't overemphasize this because this is God's word, right? Right. The, the difference between foolishness and wisdom in the first parable is not whether or not the virgins fell asleep. It's, it's whether or not they were prepared for the eventual coming of the bridegroom, meaning that they had everything they need, not only to, um, and this is a, a real time realization I'm having here, not only to be ready when the bridegroom came, but to be prepared for the long haul until he came. Right. I think that's actually probably another big part of this pearl that we didn't even really talk about is that there's a, there's a, um. There's an implied statement here about the, the, um, perseverance of the saints in the fact that the saints have to persevere. Right? That's a corollary of the doctrine, of the perseverance of the saints, is that we actually have to do the persevering, right? Empowered by the spirit. Enabled by the spirit. Ordained by the spirit, of course, but that doesn't mean the spirit is the one who's persevering, right? Right. The spirit is not persevering for us. The spirit is causing us to persevere, but it's still us that he's causing to persevere. That's a major part of that. This next parable and, and we'll read, we'll read the parable here and then we'll get into some of the beginning part. I think this next parable here is really about like what does that perseverance look like? What does that diligence until the master comes, looks like. It's kind of like taking this, this period of time where the bride groom is delaying and the virgins all are becoming drowsy and sleeping. Well, what does that actually look like? What does it look like for the virgins who have gotten the oil ahead of time versus the virgins who waited and then had to go buy it? Well, the parable of the talents in this next passage shows us what it means to be prepared. And part of what it means to be prepared is to be diligently working to advance the kingdom of God diligently working to pursue and excel in righteousness, insofar as it depends on us, and insofar as we're empowered by the Holy Spirit. So these two, these two parables are linked together and um. Maybe we're falling into this trap a little bit, although I think because of the way we're kind of doing these, these passages in sort of organic fashion, rather than really insisting on sort of hermetically sealing off each parable, we have a tendency, I think to say like, this parable is this right? This parable is that. And we don't really ever talk about them unless you're in like a parables of Christ Seminary class or like you're reading a book on the parables of Christ. Um, if you're just sort of looking at popular teaching on parables or you're. Like a sermon series through the parables. I don't think you're gonna run into a lot that's gonna show these connections and relationships between the parables in the way that I think we're, I'm stumbling upon is maybe not right. But that's what it feels like. We're sort of like discovering in real time together that these parables are so organically linked to each other that we really can't seal them off from each other or we do some violence to the text.  [00:39:36] Jesse Schwamb: Right on. Yeah. And speaking of that whole life, whole preparedness, whole watchfulness, John Owen writes, in the mortification of sin, the whole of Christian living may be described as a preparation for eternity, mortifying sin, growing in grace, abiding in Christ, waiting for his appearing, which really strikes me as maybe a summary of like an umbrella of all of these parables of ones that we've just seen most recently and the ones that we're about to go into because. The ground for the watchfulness here is that like legitimate eschatological ignorance. This is like a deliberate, divinely ordained uncertainty. So of course, like knowing the precise moment would just tempt the flesh to delay until the last possible moment, which is precisely the error of the foolish virgins who assume that there was enough time to obtain the oil after that midnight cry. So all of this is happening right now. Like I, I do think this verse is just so critical now. It's like really a weird linchpin. It is like the capstone in a strange way of like the three parable sequence in the olive discourse, which we already talked about, the 10 virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. Because it strikes me as you were speaking, Tony, what was coming to my mind is like each is almost escalating from, as it were, like a watchfulness to like a fruitfulness, to like a final judgment. And each of those are kind of building on each other. In other words, like there is a logical consistency and chronology to those things that Christ is leading us through. And the verse therefore doesn't stand alone. It's like this hinge between the eschatological warning of the virgin narrative and the productive stewardship demanded in the parable of the talents. And I think unless you see that here, it's like saying, listen, the watchful person does this. You know, why should you be watchful because of this example I've just given to you. So within that Oliver discourse, there's the exhortation to watchfulness, which occurs with that striking force. Stay awake, be ready, watch. And of course, I think we're just joining in all the reform exe and the pros who had this instinct of reading those with a unity. Yeah. The whole discourse is like the L, the Lord's own like pastoral Herman Hermeneutic, I guess on like Daniel nine or whatever. So like it is important, and I think it is maybe a bridge that, at least in my mind, I often didn't build or didn't seem necessarily because you're like, well this, this ends one. And the warning is to be watchful. And now here's something else. That's something interesting you should consider. Yeah. But really this is all one and the same, all, all. Maybe one like well like parable to rule all parables, like it's a single parable told in many sequential pieces.  [00:42:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Which is something we saw before, right? Yes. And maybe, maybe not to belabor the point and, and again taking, take this in the context of me saying I never want to try to make an argument that you must be able to read Greek in order to profit from the scriptures. [00:42:20] Jesse Schwamb: Sure.  [00:42:20] Tony Arsenal: All of that said, it's very helpful to understand a little bit about how Greek works, even if you don't actually learn Greek. So for example, and here's, I promise you that this is not just me being nerdy about Greek. I'm looking at the ESV and verse 13 says, watch therefore for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. Right? So the, the command comes, uh, before the logical connector that sort of like, is explaining why, right? Because of, because of something. Right? When it's the thing that comes before, maybe it's the thing that comes after, usually it's probably before, but because of this thing, watch therefore for, you know, neither they or the hour, right? And then in verse 14 it says four. It will be like a man going on a journey. This is where I think understanding how Greek works a little bit is important. Both the word therefore and the word for. In Greek, which it's, it's therefore it's un OUN or omega upsilon new un and gar for four. Both of those are what's called post positive, and what that means is that it cannot be the first word in a sentence. So, um, verse 13 is translated very word order, literal watch. Therefore that ma matches the Greek very closely. Verse 14 is not right, right. Verse 14, if you translated it very literally would be like, uh, let's see. Would be. Just as for a man, and I get like, you can hear there, right there, why we don't translate it that way is 'cause it's really awkward, but it's just as for a man, uh, a man went on a journey or a man, um, going on a journey who called his servants. Right. The, the point of what I'm trying to say here though is that that subtle variation in the verb, the command coming first versus this post positive, logical connector coming first, that that sort of like gears your brain towards a certain conclusion. Right? Right. Watch, therefore we, we have a tendency to think like watch connects to the previous one. Right? This verb must connect us to the previous one, where the next one we see four being the beginning of a word, beginning of a sentence. We feel like that's the beginning of a new thought, right? This logical connector at the be very beginning of a sentence is like starting a new thought. The problem with that is, one, it doesn't actually match the Greek word order in both cases. Neither of these is the first word of the sentence, but let's just think of it in as a post positive and say that it should have been the first word of the sentence, but the Greek grammar won't allow it to be.  [00:45:00] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:45:01] Tony Arsenal: That connector in both cases is linking us to the previous sentence, and that means both of these sentences are linking us to the previous sentence, meaning both segments of thought are linked to other together. Verse 14 is linked to verse 13, and verse 13 is linked to verse 12. There's no good grammatical reason that I can see with the 30 seconds of looking at it and the five semesters of Greek, right? Keep that in mind. I'm not an expert, but there's no good reason I see immediately from the Greek text, right? There are certain phrases and indicators in Greek that tell you like, this is a new segment of thought. I don't see those here. What I see is a very strong, strong, logical sequence of connection between 13 and 14, right? Therefore, watch for, you know, neither the day nor the hour. Well. Going back to our discussion about translating that in terms of sort of general watchfulness or preparedness or translating it in light of sleep. These are the things that are important for us to think about when we're reading English translations. 'cause this keys us off to what the, what the translators thought in terms of what belongs with what translators. Even though there's a paragraph break here in the ESV, the translation that says be awake or be, you know, uh, do not sleep like this language that's specifically connected to this, like not falling asleep aspect of watchfulness, they're signaling to you that this sentence belongs with the parable above it. Right. Almost exclusively. Right. Because there's nothing in the next parable that has anything to do with being awake or sleeping.  [00:46:35] Jesse Schwamb: Right?  [00:46:36] Tony Arsenal: Right. So, so by translating it as sleep language or do not sleep language, they're sealing it off from the parable that follows and they're kind of like making it this firm break in the text. That's not there in the Greek. That language is not there in the Greek. And it's, um, again, I think the sleep language, that's certainly a part of this word and it's, it's fine for us to interpret this word in light of the parable that came before it, as long as we're not letting that interpretation of it in light of the word that came before it seal it off from the next parable. And I, I worry that if we, if we think about it in terms of the sleepiness aspect of it, which again, there's already some contextual reasons why that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would, why would Christ command to the people that are listening to him be about not falling asleep when falling asleep was not the problem in the, in the bearable He's told. Right, right. But the problem was, was be prepared. And it actually may be, this is also maybe an overt translation. A better translation might be, be prepared, therefore, right. Be alert, be wakeful, be be mindful, be uh, be on top of things. Right. Be ready for anything. Might be a good way to look at this. Be ready for anything for you. Neither know the day nor the hour. Four. It will be like a man going on a journey and called his servants and entrusted them to his property. So he tells the parable of the virgins, which is, is all about being prepared for the sudden, unexpected coming of the Lord after a delay, after he tarries. And then he says, for it will be like a man going on a journey. Well, what will be like a man going on a journey? The coming of the Lord, the coming of the bridegroom, the coming of the one, the promised one from the previous parable, the bride groom. For that will be like a man going on a journey for the day on the hour, which you do not know. That will be like a man going on a journey, I think. Um, and this will be the last thing I say before I, I let you jump in and, and we're getting close to ending anyways here. I think that, um, these parables are so often, uh, this parable about the talents and the parallels. I mean, there's several different par uh, parables that have to do with this theory. This sort of like scenario of like a master is giving some, some funds to his servants, or a man going on a journey. He's giving some funds to his servants and he expects them to make a return. Right? That's a, there's multiple parables that tell that same basic principle. This one here. Is an eschatological one, but I think it gets clumped in with the others in sort of this idea. And it doesn't hurt that the word talents has a meaning in English, right? It gets clumped in with these sort of like way of teaching this that's like Christ has given you some special abilities and some gifts, you better use it for his glory. Or you're all done. That's not really at all what this is talking about, at least this version of it. You might be able to make an argument for some of the others that that is about kingdom fruitfulness and, and to much is given, much is expected, right? That's the output of those parables. This one is really, it's explicitly about being prepared for this sudden arrival of the bridegroom, uh, after he delays, after he tarries. So that's all I'll say for now on that. I just, this is. This is why we had to do another episode, right? Like, because we couldn't do all of this Last week we started and we were like, we gotta push pause, save something for next week. This is one of those like realtime discoveries, realtime uh, epiphanies that I'm just like, I cannot believe I didn't see this in the text before, but I'm so glad that we're doing this deep dive. This sort of like long running slow burns through these parables because these are the kinds of things we're able to see when we really slow down and take our time.  [00:50:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, it's that good old like crockpot theology. I'm with you. There is like in the next par we'll see a kind of manifest fruitfulness that comes from a preparedness and if, if we divorce that we're gonna get to the end of the next parable. And I think what we'd find is that, wow, the master seems super harsh here. Why is he so ticked off that the people with whom he entrusted all of these resources didn't do anything with them? It just seems like he's overzealous in saying, well, you just wasted a lot of things until you see like that full emphasis that comes all the way through these other parables in terms of the reason why. Then I think it starts to make more sense. So I did have to look it up like you're right, that the NIV has therefore keep watch. The King James version also is using watch, therefore. So if that's the emphasis, in other words, if the thrust is you ought to be watchful and prepared in all of your life for all the things preparing for Christ, doing the things in the work of Christ. Now it makes sense that to go away again and to have this time of not knowing when the perusia happens and being unprepared and unfruitful because you were not watchful, because you did not do the things you ought to have done and be making yourself again aware and vigilant in that awareness, then there's a problem. And that's like gonna be, I think, the full thrust of what's gonna happen that we're gonna see next when we look into this parable. I think it's important to remember that this parable is not as it sometimes is presented like an allegorize timeless moral maxim that's divorced from its eschatological referring. Yeah, the 10 virgins are figures of those awaiting Christ perusia. The oil is not some kind like vague symbol of like good works in a ian sense, but I think it's best understood as the reality of saving grace and the spirits in dwelling, which cannot be borrowed or transferred. If all of that is true. Then how does that manifest in daily living? What does that look like? And then what does that lead to on the day of judgment? All of that is to come for us, but it actually starts in this verse here in verse 13, just with the simple, very direct, but e expressly articulated phrase, be watchful or be prepared. Maybe like a better incidentally, like contemporary treatment would be like, don't sleep on this. Like, I like the word sleep in that context. Yeah. Which of course, when somebody says that to you, they're not actually meaning like, don't fall asleep now. But make sure that you're paying attention to this thing. Get after this thing, go and grab this thing, get a hold of this very thing. Make it your priority. And I think really that is what is Christ is after here as he moves us from one example into another. That's almost, again, to me like the manifestation or the outworking 'cause because one might ask, and maybe this is like a good question, he was anticipating, you hear that story and we're just used to like things moving, or like you said, like discreet chunks of text, which we appropriate for ourselves. We take out, it's almost as they have little boxes on the shelf and we remove that box. We look at it, we study it, we turn over, we put it back, and it's a little compartment place. And instead you can imagine, uh, as I could, I think if you were hearing this in the context of conversation, of teaching in this way, that you might say like, so what? Like be prepared for what, how do we get prepared? What does preparedness look like? And so that's what's coming for us next.  [00:53:34] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And you know, the other thing I think that's, um, important for this parable, um, there are some places in the scripture in the, uh, in the gospels where Christ's teaching and nothing specific comes to mind. So this is. Hypothetical, but I know there are actual places. I just can't think of anything right off the top of my head. There are some places where sort of like discrete chunks of Christ's teaching are juxtaposed next to other discreet chunks. Sure. That's an editorial decision by the gospel author. Right. Matthew makes a decision to put this story next to this story, and we might see in Luke actually, it's slightly different. A good, a good example would be like in the temptation narratives, um, the order of the Temptations is different I think between Matthew and Luke. Right. And there's, there's an editorial decision that's made there and there's a theological reason. I don't know off the top of my head what it is. I'm sure I studied it in, you know, like gospels class in seminary. Um, that's not what's happening here, right? These are not two discreet chunks of text. That Matthew has decided to put together, right? Right. Christ is the one that says, watch therefore for you. Neither know the day nor the hour for it will be like a man going on a journey. Christ is the one who has decided, and this is one chunk of teaching. There's, um, like the Sermo

You were confirmed. You receive the Eucharist. You have the Holy SpiritSo why are so many Catholic men living like dry bones?Fr. Dom breaks open Pentecost Sunday and delivers one of the most personal and direct homilies of the Easter season. He walks through what the Holy Spirit actually is, what it actually does, and why most Catholics are sitting on an untapped power they do not even realize they have. He goes from Genesis, the breath of God moving over the waters, breathing life into dry bones in Ezekiel's valley, all the way through to the consecration at Mass, where a priest breathes the words over the host and bread and wine become God. The Holy Spirit is not a feeling. It is pure act. And every single sacrament you have received has the Holy Spirit attached to it with a call to action attached to that.He also goes personal. He shares what his life looked like before Christ and what happened when God came crashing in and breathed life into him. That story is the whole point. A witness is more powerful than an argument. And the Greek word for witness is martyr.

On this episode George and Maria continue the discussion of Patmos, interview Irini Patrikarakou, president of Slow Foods and owner of Nektar in Patmos, a shop with selected products from all over Greece.This is part 2 of a two part episode.Greek phrase shared on the episode:Religious tourism in Patmos: Thriskeftikós tourismós stin Pátmo (In Greek: Θρησκευτικός τουρισμός στην Πάτμο).Patreon subscribers also enjoy Maria's top picks for free on this episode. Join now for more.See our online travel chats and in-person wine events in London here.Need help planning your trip to Greece? Book your travel consultation here.To support the show, sign up to Patreon.Visit the website www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Socials @mygreekisland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here in Matthew, Jesus assembled the disciples shortly before His ascension and gave them a now familiar call to action.  It sounds like four commands but it's actually just one – to “make disciples.”  In Greek, it's the only imperative in these two verses.  But our Savior used three participles to explain how it's done. Here's how God grows His Church.  Here's how the Holy Spirit makes Christians.

Pastor Rick Warren once said, “The way you store up treasure in heaven is by investing in getting people there.” That's a powerful statement—and it raises an important question: What does it really mean to store up treasure in heaven? Jesus speaks directly to this in Matthew 6:20, where He says, “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” That word “treasure” is striking. In Greek, the word is thēsauros—the same root from which we get the word “treasury.” It describes something stored safely for the future. But Jesus isn't describing a spiritual savings account filled with gold and silver. He's pointing to the lasting fruit of a life lived in alignment with God's Kingdom. Notice that Jesus doesn't say, “Don't have treasure.” He says, “Store your treasure in heaven.” In other words, what we invest in God's purposes today carries eternal significance. What Are Eternal Rewards? In 1 Timothy 6:18–19, Paul writes that believers are “to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” That final phrase matters: “that which is truly life.” The reward is not merely something we receive later. It is the fullness of life that comes from walking in step with Christ—now and forever. The early church understood this well. Augustine wrote in The City of God, “God Himself, who is the author of virtue, shall there be its reward, for as there is nothing greater or better, He has promised Himself.” In other words, the greatest reward of eternity is not something we possess, but Someone we know. That is the heart of eternal rewards: deeper fellowship with God, fuller participation in His Kingdom, and the joy of seeing His work unfold through our lives. Money Reveals What We Treasure This is where our finances come in. Jesus often connected money to an eternal perspective because it reveals what we value. When we give generously, serve faithfully, and steward wisely, we are investing in something that lasts beyond the temporary. We are declaring that our hope is not in wealth, comfort, or control, but in God Himself. In Luke 16:11, Jesus says, “If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” In other words, how we manage earthly resources reflects whether our hearts are ready for something far greater. Every act of generosity, every decision to trust God rather than money, every sacrifice made for His Kingdom becomes part of a story that continues into eternity. God's Rewards Are Gifts of Grace Here's the beautiful truth: God's rewards are never wages. They are gifts. Scripture does not teach that we earn God's favor through generosity or faithful stewardship. Rather, God rewards His people because He is generous in grace. He chooses to reward the very faithfulness He produces in us. That reveals something remarkable about our Father. No matter what we have or do not have in this world, because we belong to Him, He promises to entrust us with the true riches of His Kingdom. That is what it means to store up treasure in heaven. Instead of investing everything in what is temporary, we place our lives, our resources, and our trust into the hands of the One who is the very source of heaven and earth. It's not about building a spiritual portfolio. It's about orienting our hearts toward God Himself. Living Today in Light of Eternity Life with God has never been about accumulating more. It has always been about knowing Him, trusting Him, and sharing in His purposes. So the real question is not, “What do I get in heaven?” The better question is, “How can I live today in light of eternity?” Because one day, every faithful steward will hear the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 25:21—words that will fill every believer's heart with awe and joy: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.” A Resource to Help You Live with Eternal Perspective If you've ever wondered how to live with that kind of eternal perspective day by day, we walk through it in our new devotional, Our Ultimate Treasure: A 21-Day Journey to Faithful Stewardship. It's designed to help you view every part of your financial life—saving, giving, planning, and investing—through the lens of eternity as you learn to treasure Christ above all else. You can pick up your copy today, or place a bulk order for your church or small group, at FaithFi.com/Shop. On Today's Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions: I have an old individual retirement account that was purchased in 1987 and matured in 1990. I've been receiving letters from agencies offering to help me cash it out for a fee, but I still have the original receipt. What's the best way to access the money? Can I transfer it to another traditional IRA or convert it to a Roth? I'm calling on behalf of my daughter about my two-year-old granddaughter. They'd like to set aside about $1,000 a year until she's 18 or 20, but they're unsure whether to use a 529 in case she doesn't attend college. They also want to be careful about putting money directly in the child's name. What's the best way to invest and structure this? I have about $4,300 in debt, including $4,000 on a credit card. What's the best way to handle it—should I use a balance transfer card or take a loan from my 401(k)? I have about $1,000 of extra margin each month. My emergency fund is fully funded, and I've paid off all consumer debt except my home. Should I use that extra money to invest more, give more, or pay down my mortgage faster? Resources Mentioned: Faithful Steward: FaithFi's Quarterly Magazine (Become a FaithFi Partner) The Treasure Principle, Revised and Updated: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving by Randy Alcorn Christian Credit Counselors (CCC) Sound Mind Investing (SMI) Our Ultimate Treasure: A 21-Day Journey to Faithful Stewardship by Rob West Wisdom Over Wealth: 12 Lessons from Ecclesiastes on Money Look At The Sparrows: A 21-Day Devotional on Financial Fear and Anxiety Rich Toward God: A Study on the Parable of the Rich Fool Find a Certified Kingdom Advisor® (CKA) FaithFi App Remember, you can call in to ask your questions every workday at (800) 525-7000. Faith & Finance is also available on Moody Radio Network and American Family Radio. You can also visit FaithFi.com to connect with our online community and partner with us as we help more people live as faithful stewards of God's resources. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You might want AI to help your team work smarter, but are you just giving them more work? Instead of freeing people to focus on meaningful, higher-value work, AI can end up creating a cycle where more efficiency just leads to more work. If you're not careful, the work never really changes, it just keeps coming back faster – and that's bad for everybody.https://swiy.co/go-the-sisyphus-trapWhen you're using AI in your organisation, are you falling into the Sisyphus trap?In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king who angered the gods. So, for his punishment, they gave him a never-ending task. Every day, he had to push a big rock up a hill. But before it reached the top, it magically rolled down to the bottom, and he had to start all over again. Push the rock, it rolls down. Push the rock, it rolls down. Push the rock, it rolls down.In Greek mythology, this was known as the eternal punishment. I call it the birth of rock and roll, ha ha.But isn't this exactly what happens in many workplaces?Many team members feel like Sisyphus – spending most of their waking hours pushing rocks up a hill, never achieving anything useful. Even when they get a “new and improved” system for boosting their productivity, it just means they can push more rocks up more hills!Is that true for you? Do people in your team feel like they're making progress, or just working harder?New tools, new processes, and new expectations promise efficiency, but sometimes they just lead to more work. AI can draft your emails and replies faster – good! But does that just mean you get more emails???Using AI isn't better if it just means more emails, more tasks, more pointless meetings, and more pressure.That's short-term gain (at best) but it's terrible for your people, and uitimately for your organisation.This is not true of all AI adoption, of course, but I'm seeing it a lot.As a leader, recognise this and ensure that change is actually improving the work – not just increasing the workload – of everybody in your team.AI is part of a broader conversation about the future of work, but it's a very important part because everybody's talking about it.I'm running a free public online presentation very soon about the future of work – including AI – so please join me and invite others in your team and organisation as well.Register for the virtual masterclass:https://swiy.co/go-the-sisyphus-trap Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Greek mythology, after leading his fellow titans in a revolt against the Olympian gods, Atlas was condemned to hold up the heavens for all eternity. Over the centuries, the details of the story got kind of mixed up, so when we now think of Atlas holding something, we picture him holding the whole world. He's, as we say, “carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.”  We, however, carry the weight of the world, not on our shoulders, but in our pockets. Every injustice, every catastrophe, every outrage, piped directly to us, fast and loud.  How then do we hear the still small voice of God beneath the noise of it all? To find assurance, comfort, direction, the next step, when it's all too much?

EPHESIANS – WEEK 1 Sermon Notes Summary: Ephesians 1:1–14” Pastor: Dave BrownSeries: Ephesians   Series context: Beginning a 14-week journey through Ephesians. This opening message sets the stage for the letter's big themes and asks what kind of people—and what kind of church—God is forming us to be. Why Ephesians matters: Ephesians gives a sweeping vision of the gospel, the church, and God's purpose from creation to new creation. It helps answer: Why did God call this church into existence? Why bring different people into one body? Why does our community need a church like this? Why does God care not only about what we believe, but who we are becoming? Genre: A letter (epistle), so context matters for interpretation. Author: Traditionally Paul. Though scholars debate this because of vocabulary and church language, the sermon argues Paul likely wrote it late in life, possibly from prison, as a final pastoral vision for multiple churches. Audience: Not just Ephesus, but likely a wider circle of churches. About Ephesians 1:3–14: In Greek, this is one long sentence overflowing with praise. Paul packs it with major themes and echoes from Israel's story to show continuity between God's work in the Old Testament and God's work in Christ now. Adoption/sonship: Echoes Israel as God's firstborn son. Chosen/predestined: Echoes God's choosing of Abraham and Israel to form a people for His purposes. Redemption/freedom: Echoes the Exodus—God delivering His people from slavery. Blood of the Lamb: Echoes Passover and God's saving power. Forgiveness: Echoes God's mercy after Israel's failure. Wisdom, understanding, mystery: Echoes God giving His people instruction for covenant life. Unity: Echoes the hope of God reuniting His people under the Messiah. Main idea: The opening of Ephesians is about identity. Paul confronts the identities the world tries to give us and reminds us who we are in Christ. We are a people of praise — our lives are centered on God's glory, not ourselves. We are blessed — in Christ, heaven has broken into our story. We are loved — God pursued us before we pursued Him. We are chosen — our identity begins with God's initiative. We are adopted — wanted, welcomed, and claimed as God's own. We are holy — set apart for God's purposes, not perfect but called. We are saved by grace — forgiven through the blood of Christ. We are free — released from sin, shame, and old masters to belong to Christ. We are one — a new humanity under Jesus, beyond all lesser divisions and allegiances. We are sealed — marked and empowered by the Holy Spirit as God's possession. Application: Before asking, “What should we do?” Ephesians first asks, “Who are we becoming?” A church that knows its identity stops chasing relevance, fearing the future, and imitating culture, and instead lives as the people of God. Prayer focus: Lord, teach us to live as Your holy, forgiven, loved, unified, Spirit-filled people, and empower us to help others experience the freedom and life found in Christ.  

Be Subject to One Another Ephesians 5:21-6:9 by William Klock Yesterday our parish breakfast group discussed C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  In the story, Edmund and Lucy make their third visit to the magical land of Narnia, but they also take their cousin, Eustace, with them.  And Eustace, he has no framework, no point of reference, no way to understand Narnia.  Because Eustace came from a “progressive” family.  He addressed his parents by their first names.  He read books about factories and granaries, about modern industry and agriculture.  The one bit of beauty in his home was a painting of a Narnian ship.  His parents couldn't bear it, but it had been a gift and they couldn't get rid of it, so they hung it in a disused bedroom.  Eustace couldn't wrap his head around the idea of being in a land of kings and princesses, magic and dragons, and talking animals.  All he can do in the first few chapters is scream for the British Consul, compare King Caspian's beautiful dragon ship to modern steamships, and retreat from everyone. And, I think, if we had to understand God on our own, we'd be a lot like Eustace.  We wouldn't have the vocabulary, let alone the vision, to even think about God.  When we saw the beauties of his creation, we could do nothing more than reduce it all to physics equations and chemical formulas.  And so, Brothers and Sisters, God has spoken.  He's given us his word.  (Imagine how much better off Eustace would have been had he read the Bible, the greatest of the “right books” he'd neglected.)  God speaks, not only so that we can know him, but so that we can have the vocabulary and the mental—even the emotional—framework to begin to understand him.  But, most importantly, his word has become incarnate: one of us.  And in Jesus we meet and come to know God at our level: A God who knows our life, who is full of patience and love, mercy and grace, a God who is angry at the sin that has disrupted and broken his creation, a God who will justly judge wrong, but who is also humble and loving enough to die to redeem and to set right.  In Jesus we meet concretely the God whom the Old Testament describes as King, as Father, as Husband. And then we realise that these relationships—things like king and father and husband—are relationships we understand, because God has established them as the foundational units of human life and society and particularly so the family: husband and wife, children and parents.  And it's in these relationships, even imperfect and damaged by our sins, it's in them that we learn our first vocabulary for understanding and knowing—and trusting—God. It's no wonder that the devil lies to us about sex, marriage, and family.  The devil lies and tells us that sex is about personal gratification, not about mutual self-giving.  And we believe the lie and sex becomes selfish.  He lies and tells us that men and women are interchangeable, and so we create birth control and try to make women like men by robbing them of the defining feature of feminine biology: the ability to give birth to children.  We start seeing God's blessing of children as a negative “consequence” of sex.  And we create HR departments staffed by women who try to quash all the things that make men men out of their male employees.  And when we believe the lie of interchangeability, men have unnatural relations with men and women with women, undermining and rejecting the very purpose for which God created sex and rejecting his blessing upon us to be fruitful and to multiply.  And if we keep believing the lie, as our culture has, we get ever more absurd, thinking that with surgery and with chemicals and by changing our pronouns, we can turn men into women and women into men.  We reject the good story God has written for us, the one in which he's given us the vocabulary of husband and wife, of children and parents, and we write our own lie-based story in which, when confronted with God, we can only think of him as a celestial killjoy out to rob us of our fun, our autonomy, and the carefully crafted identities we've created for ourselves.  We start to see God's blessing of fruitfulness as a curse.  We start to see the traditional family as an enemy.  We're like Eustace, surrounded by goodness and beauty, but only able to see it as threatening and other.  And, like the pagans of old, we reinvent God and remake him in our image and using our new vocabulary.  Instead of Father, Son, and Spirit we start speaking of him as her and addressing Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer or even Parent (or Mother), Child, and Spirit.  Not too far off the mark it seems, but no longer able to be properly known through the relationships, now rejected, that God established precisely so that we can know him and make him known. And so, Paul writes to the Ephesians in Chapter 4: Put away lies.  Instead, speak the truth to each other.  Don't be fooled by the dark and foolish ways of the world.  God has washed you clean in the blood of Jesus and he has given his Spirit to live in you.  He's made you his temple: stewards and priests of his presence, his glory, and his wisdom.  A temple that one day, through the power of the gospel and the Spirit, will fill the earth with God's presence and glory.  Don't swallow the lies.  It's your job, our job, the church's job to confront the world's lies with the truth of God's creation.  So put off the old, corrupt, lie-based way of being human and put on the new humanity exemplified by Jesus, risen from the dead and firstborn of God's new creation.  And Paul started by urging us to put away anger and instead to put on patience, kindness, and love.  It would be hard for even the most pagan of pagans to argue with that.  And then, based on exactly the same principle of living out the truth of God's creation, Paul urged us to put away sexual immorality and greed.  And now, without a breath—because in the Greek there's no sentence break, let alone a paragraph break, between Ephesians 5:20 and 5:21, where we ended last week, Paul writes, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for the Messiah.”  That's 5:21.  [Page 1162 in the pew Bibles.] What does new creation look like?  Brothers and Sisters, it looks like Christians being subject to one another.  What does God's wisdom—his wise way of ruling creation look like?  It looks like his people being subject to one another.  He's already told us back in 4:2 to “bear with one another in love, being humble, meek, and patient and making every effort to guard the unity the Spirit has given us.  Put away all anger and yelling, sexual immorality and all impurity and greed.  In other words, stop using others as your punching bags, as your means of sexual gratification, and as your means of getting rich.  Instead, be imitators of God and love each other the way the Messiah loved you and gave himself for you.  Jesus' self-giving for our sake on the cross was a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God and if we're going to be his priests and his temple, giving of ourselves to each other will be our sweet-smelling offering to God.  And this follows right along with what Paul has said already about our differentiated unity: Jew and gentile, man and woman, slave and free…Canadian and American, white and black, Liberal and Conservative, Coke and Pepsi, Ford and Chevy, and on and on.  Different people with different backgrounds, different identities, Paul even stressed different giftings given by God, but all made one through our union with Jesus. Our unity, maintained by this self-giving of ourselves is the means by which we confront the lies and foolishness and darkness of the world with the truth and wisdom and light of God's new creation.  And at this point Paul could write a whole book covering all the situations and relationships in our lives and how this rule of being subject one to another might apply, but he's writing a letter from prison and so he focuses on three areas that were key to the Ephesians.  I want to spend most of our time on the first, because it's the most important for us.  But before we look at what he says specifically to wives and to husbands, I want to jump to his summary of the whole thing in the end, midway through verse 28.  As is so often the case with Paul, it's at the end that he sums everything up and gives us the theology behind it.  So look at verse 28 and following: “Someone who loves his wife loves himself.  After all, nobody ever hates his own flesh.  He feeds it and takes care of it, just as the Messiah does with the church, because we are parts of his body.  [Now Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24.] ‘That's why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.'  The mystery [the hidden meaning] in this is very deep; but I am reading it as referring to the Messiah and the church.  Anyway, each one of you must love your wife as you love yourself; and the wife must see that she respects her husband.” So Paul understands marriage in light of the Messiah's relationship with his body, the church.  He takes us back to Genesis 2 and God's command that the man will leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife.  Yes, Paul admits, there are some hard things here, some hidden meanings, but the important and obvious thing is that this is ultimately about the Messiah and the church.  There are two important take-aways from this. First, Paul saw Genesis 2 as a prophecy of God's son, leaving his home to find his appointed bride.  And once Paul makes this connection, we can see this story weaving its way through the whole Old Testament as the Lord pursues and woos his intended bride in the wilderness, showing his covenant love; as the marriage is ruined through Israel's prostituting herself to other gods as Hosea and Ezekiel describe; as God promises to renew that covenant, betrothing Israel to himself all over again.  And so Paul saw Jesus, the bridegroom taking up this role, one laid out for him over the course of the Old Testament.  And Paul could look forward to the culmination of the story as we see it in Revelation, in the restoration of all things, heaven and earth, God and man rejoined, all symbolised in the marriage supper of the lamb and his bride. And the second point Paul sees here: Think of how this fits into the big sweep of Ephesians.  In Chapter 1 Paul wrote about God's eternal purpose to bring together everything in heaven and earth in the Messiah.  In Chapter 2 Paul explained how this great plan is symbolised in the coming together in the church of Jews and gentiles into a single new humanity and growing into a temple filled with God's Spirit.  And in Chapter 3 Paul described this coming together of the two people into one as one of the mysteries of the gospel that confronts the principalities and powers of the present age with the reality of God's victory at the cross and his new creation.  Then in Chapter 4 Paul wrote about how this new humanity, the church, is sustained by a diversity of gifts and ministries given by God to help the church grow up in every way into the head, the Messiah himself.  And now Paul brings it all to a crescendo with this mystery—the Messiah's own self-giving love as the radical model for the husband's vocation to serve his bride.  So this isn't just some one-off, detached, stand-alone advice on marriage.  What Paul says here about marriage is an integral part of the whole thing, the whole story that began with Adam and Eve and runs through God's wooing Israel in the wilderness, and the coming of his son to prepare and to wed his bride. Brothers and Sisters, if you want to understand marriage, look to the relationship between the Messiah and the church.  And if you want to understand the Messiah and the church, look to the institution of marriage.  Think about it: heaven and earth, Jew and gentile, the body building itself up in love—now man and woman brought together in marriage.  The mystery is revealed.  This is the whole biblical story of God and his people in miniature, revealed in the institution of marriage itself.  And that comes with a warning: mess with marriage, tinker with it and you might just lose the whole thing.  Like Eustace having no way to relate to Narnia, because he hadn't read the right sort of books.  But that's what we seem to do.  We listen to the world's foolish lies instead of God's wisdom, we get bogged down in arguments about gender roles, and we end up missing the great vision of God's purposes to set creation and us to rights. So, now let's back up to the details.  Look at 5:22-24: “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  The man, you see, is head of the woman, just as the Messiah, too, is head of the church.  He is himself the saviour of the body.  But, just as the church is subject to the Messiah, in the same way women should be subject in everything to their husbands.” And let's keep going.  Paul is nothing if not an equal opportunity offender.  Verses 25 and following: “Husbands, love your wives, as the Messiah loved the church and gave himself for it, so that he could make it holy, cleaning it by washing it with water through the word.  He did this in order to present the church to himself in brilliant splendour, without a single spot or blemish or anything of the kind, so that it might be holy and without blame.  That's how husbands ought to love their own wives, just as they love their own bodies.” Now, my observation has been that people usually rankle at this because they're well aware that abuse happens.  It does.  And Paul knew that as well as anyone.  In his world there were some powerful and independent women, but the reality for most women was that they often were little more than chattel.  They could be exploited, abused, and divorced on a whim.  In Greece and Rome, marriages were typically made for social or political reasons and with little if any expectation of love.  And this is why verse 21 matters so much.  “Be subject to one another,” Paul writes.  As in his day, so in ours.  The answer to abuse of power is not to abandon marriage.  The answer is to recover God's original design, to live his new creation, to embrace the transforming power of self-giving love.  Paul knew it's not easy.  If he felt the need to write this, it's most likely because he knew some of the Ephesian Christians were struggling with this very thing. And it's not to say that all men are a certain way and that all women are a certain way with no variation, but Paul really leans into our natural wiring as men and women—how God made us in his wisdom.  When men look after, care for, and show love to their wives, their wives are more inclined to be subject to their husbands.  And, when wives are subject to their husbands, husbands are naturally inclined to respond with that love and care.  It's a cycle that feeds itself, but more importantly, it reflects and teaches us something about Jesus and the church.  Because Jesus the Messiah has given himself for our sake, showing that he loves us, and showing that he is worthy of our trust, it's both natural and easier for the church to submit to him in a reciprocal love.  Notice how Paul holds up marriage as a signpost to God's new creation in the Messiah as the woman subjects herself, not to the heavy-handed, lording-over of her husband, but to a husband who models the self-giving love of the Messiah who died for his church.  And the husband loves his wife in the way the Messiah loved his church.  Just as the Messiah has redeemed and purified and is preparing us for God's new world, so the husband should do everything he can to encourage the flourishing of his wife, for her to be glorious creation God intends for her to be.  That creates the relationship in which the wife, herself, responds with her own self-giving love.  And Paul wraps it all up in the language of redemption—of being presented spotless and pure and holy.  And the two becoming one flesh, mirroring the gathering together of Jew and gentile, Ford and Chevy, Coke and Pepsi in the church.  Our marriages are swept up and become part of God's renewal of all things.  It shouldn't be any wonder that marriage is so often a point of attack by the devil. But that's not the end of the passage.  Paul goes on in 6:1-4, addressing children and fathers.  And let me say before we read, that saying something like this to children, in Paul's world, was almost unheard of.  Children were not addressed as responsible agents.  Consider that in Greek, the words for “child” are neuter, not male or female.  It's almost like kids weren't actually people yet.  But Paul says to them anyway, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.  This is right and proper.  [And now he quotes Exodus 20:12.] ‘Honour your father and your mother'—this is the first commandment that comes with a promise attached!—so that things may go well with you and that you may live long life on earth.”  And then in verse 4 he says, “Fathers, don't make your children angry. Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Paul knew what family life can be like.  And if children and parents can get at each other in our world, imagine how bad things might have been in a world where children were hardly even seen as being real people.  Paul knew the danger of parents being harsh with their children and he knew how angry children can get when they're treated unfairly or when parents demean them.  So he addresses them.  He reminds children of the command and promise God gave to the Israelite children: Honour your parents so it will go well for you in the land”—meaning the promised land.  In Greek that world “land” can also mean “earth” and since the gospel opens up that promise beyond Israel itself to the whole earth, I think Paul is now envisioning those children as the next generation of Christians, living out new creation in their own relationships and being the temple that God's Spirit has made them and being the fulfilment of the blessing to be fruitful and fill the earth—not just with themselves, but with the gospel—as stewards of God's presence and wisdom. But Paul's exhortation to mutual submission also extends to masters and slaves.  Look at verses 5-9: “Slaves obey your human masters, with respect and devotion, with the same single-mindedness that you have toward the Messiah.  You must get on with your work, not only when someone is watching you, as if you were just trying to please another human being, but as slaves of the Messiah.  Do God's will from your heart.  Get on with your tasks with a kind and ready spirit as if you were serving the master himself and not human beings.  After all, you know that if anyone, slave or free, does something good, they will receive it back from the master. “Masters, do the same to them.  Give up using threats.  You know, after all, that the master in heaven is their master and yours, and he is no respecter of persons.” This is another spot where modern people get angry with Paul, because he sounds like he's defending slavery.  He's not.  In fact, in Philemon Paul offers a protest against the institution at least within the Christian community.  But here's the important thing: Paul was thinking big when he wrote this.  Paul was thinking about new creation and in God's new world there will be no slavery.  Paul could never put an end to it himself.  Slavery was what made the ancient world work.  We have machines and engines and robots.  The ancient world had slaves.  Close to a third of the people in the Roman Empire were slaves.  And Paul knew the way out wasn't through rebellion, but through the gospel; the way out was through the church being the church, by putting off the old humanity and living the new humanity in the midst of whatever our current circumstances are, because that's how Jesus the Messiah, his humility, his gracious sacrifice for sinners, his resurrection and life, and God's new creation wisdom make their way into the world.  In that sense, slavery was no different an evil than anger, wrath, sexual immorality, or greed.  The only way out is for Jesus' people to take up our vocation and to live as God's priests, to be his temple in the midst of a broken world living in foolish darkness and in doing so to confront it all with the life-restoring wisdom of God.  To confront the selfishness of the world, with the mutual self-giving love of the cross, lived out in our lives, lived out in whatever situations we find ourselves: in marriage, in divorce, in singleness; as parents and as children; as slaves and as masters.  In our world today as employees—often used and abused because of the greed of our employers—and as employers. Think on that.  We've often read this part of Ephesians as if Paul is giving us a doctrine of marriage—or a doctrine of parenting or of slavery.  We tend to look at these things as detached from each other.  We get bogged down debating gender roles or parenting techniques or even slavery.  And we end up missing Paul's point, which is that these aren't stand-alone doctrines or bits of advice.  Brothers and Sisters, this is about the church—about you and I—living out the gospel, about us putting off the old and foolish way of being human and putting on Jesus the Messiah, putting on the new humanity and living out in our relationships the humble, self-giving, and mutual submission of the cross.  It's about living gospel lives that put into practise the gospel that we proclaim.  It's about living out our future hope of renewal and restoration here and now and in a way that brings Jesus to world around us. Let's pray our Collect again: O Lord, from whom all good things come: Grant to us, your humble servants, that by your holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by your merciful guidance put them into practice; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Welcome to Episode #205 of the Way of the Bible podcast. This is our fifth of eight episodes in our Twenty-Sixth mini-series entitled Return to the Sermon on the Mount. On our four episodes so far on this mini-series, we've been speaking of the veracity of Jesus' preaching to the crowds regarding the kingdom of heaven and the importance of having ears to hear. This week will be no different, as we take a deeper dive into the first part of last week's passage and look at what it means to “Enter!”Let's begin by reading the passage for our last episode to give us some context for today.Matthew 7:13-14 – “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.Last episode, we hammered home the reality Jesus was pointing out to the crowd as he was winding down his talk focused on the kingdom of heaven. Specifically, there are only two places a person can go after their departure from this life. To destruction through the wide gate and easy way that many are upon. In fact, all humanity is born such that this road to destruction is the way all take unless something changes the course of a life. I believe that if an infant or child, from conception, dies before reaching the age of innocence (the age at which God chooses to judge an individual based upon what they've consciously done), then that child, by the mercy and grace of God, enters into the kingdom of heaven. Once a child passes that age, they are of their own making, born into sin and death, already walking on the wide and easy way leading to destruction.Of their own making refers to our individual responsibility to our conscience regarding right and wrong, and our consciousness of God in regard to who we are ultimately answerable to. The end of the age of innocence of a child is fluid and is greatly influenced by the actions of others. This is a universal reality, not respective of culture or nationality. It is a sad part of the human experience, and part of what Jesus came to make right.A keyword Jesus used in this passage to point a hearer to the possibility of escaping the road to destruction and finding the gate to the hard way that leads to life was the word Enter. In Greek, that word is eiserchomai - ice-er'-khom-ahee. This word means both a physical entry into a space as well as a spiritual and or metaphysical entry into a physical and or metaphysical space. For example, a spirit entering our bodies, and/or our spirit leaving our bodies to enter a new space for occupation. See 1 Corinthians 15 for more details.When we die a physical death, our spirit that God gave us returns to him for judgment of what we've done in the body, whether good or evil. For the believer, that judgment will be at the judgment seat of Christ and concerns our rewards given for divinely ordained and orchestrated works done through Christ that advance the kingdom. 2 Corinthians 5:10 – For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.For the unbeliever, that judgment will occur at the Great White Throne judgment in Revelation 20:11-15 – Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the

A “murder” of Crows has been seen flying left to right over Tel Aviv. In Native American tradition the bird is protector of Sacred Law. In Northern Europe, the Crow is strongly associated with the Irish goddess of war and the Norse god Odin, from whence the “murder” was known as “Odin's Eye.” To the Romans most famously, a gathering of crows was seen as a military portent. Crows flying left to right was the worst omen; it means do not proceed with military action. In Greek tradition they are bringers of unpleasant but necessary truths, and that is what we interpret here. The unpleasant truth is that Tel Aviv has broken the Sacred Law and the Eye of Odin is upon them. Proceeding further with military action will guarantee divine intervention - for the religious zealots this is the plan, but rather than getting a messiah, they are gong to work their own destruction. With this the memo has gone out that any opposition to the war in Iran or President Trump and MAGA is simply nazism and the byproduct of foreign intelligence operations - odd because support for the same was recently called nazism. Political influencers like Laura Loomer and Alexis Wilkins are claiming that the network is Catholic and connected to Islam; that Joe Kent is a traitor; that a black woman and Mexican kid of white supremacists. They say podcasters are being paid and that an Islamic terror attack is coming soon. All of this is true in a sense, because Israel is conducting an open counterintelligence operation in the US, successfully through the purchasing of CBS and TIkTok and the X-Twitter contract with CHEQ, not to mention influencers like Loomer. Wilkins, the FBI Director's girlfriend, is employed by PragerU, run by Marissa Streit who is United 8200 Israeli intelligence. Israel is now, and has been, openly paying podcasters. Netanyahu even met with podcasters to give them scripts, including christian groups and people like Tim Poole. The War in Iran has been largely blackout with everything threat an excuse to expand the war; every dissenting voice blaming the conflict on Israel's admitted goals is targeted ruthlessly by the White House. But what if we defined MAGA as the foreign intelligence operation; then technocracy (Palantir, Axonius, etc), Epstein's network, and the Iran war would all turn out to be the byproduct of a different foreign threat to the country. Above all else, a crow is compared in the far east with Tengu, that Japanese demon bearing a striking resemblance to rabbis. *The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, you can subscribe below underneath the show description.

On this episode George and Maria discuss Naxos, a popular island to visit, great for island hopping as it is perfectly combined with many islands in the Cyclades!Tune in to hear more about Naxos and enjoy some bonus content at the end with George and Marias top picks in Naxos.Greek phrase shared on the episode: Naxos, the largest island of the Cyclades: Náxos, to megalýtero nisí ton Kykládon (In Greek: Νάξος, το μεγαλύτερο νησί των Κυκλάδων).Available Itineraries/Top Picks:Athens, Santorini, Paros (+ Antiparos) and the Athens RivieraParos (+ Antiparos) ItineraryParos (+ Antiparos) e-map - Free as bonus content for patreon subscribersFurther podcast listening:Paros/Naxos and the Small CycladesAlternative islands with kidsAmorgosFolegandrosTinosSyrosAthens - A Greek-endGreek Islands for Solo TravellersTop Greek Islands without a carThe Athens RivieraExpress Skopelitis: https://www.smallcycladeslines.gr/en/home/Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Visit the website: www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @mygreekislandSubscribe and leave a rating and review!To support the show further sign up to Patreon for ad free episodes and exclusive content here.There are 227 inhabited Greek Islands, which one will YOU visit next?#MGIPODCAST Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prisoner of Jesus the Messiah Ephesians 3:1-13 by  William Klock Ask yourself what happens when the church is being faithful in its gospel calling and life. As we've worked through the first two chapter of Ephesians, Paul has explained that the church is God's new temple. It's a people purified by the blood of Jesus so that God can draw near in the person of his Spirit to dwell with us. That's always been God's plan for humanity and for creation. The garden was his temple and he placed us there to steward it well, on the one hand, and on the other, to dwell with him and to enjoy his presence—life with him.  And ever since we rejected that calling, God has been working to restore us to it.  And so the church, this people washed clean of sin and death by Jesus, and then filled with his Spirit, this new temple, we're the working model of God's coming new creation in the here and now. And if we're faithful in being that working model, what happens? The ideal, the hope is that people hear our proclamation of the kingdom and they see the first beginning of God's new creation when they look at the church. In the midst of the darkness, the church should be light.  In the midst of death, the church should be life.  The church should be here to show a better way through the cross.  To prophetically wipe away the tears of the hurt and mourning and to confront the principalities and powers, the false lords and the corrupt systems of the world with the truth of the gospel and the lordship of Jesus.  And people do hear and see and experience the faithfulness of the church.  In us they meet the living God and the Lord who died for them and they encounter his glory and they kneel in faith and are, themselves washed by Jesus and filled with the Spirit. But our idea of the faithful church often stops there. Maybe that's because we think of the church, not in terms of faithfulness, but in terms of success.  Butts in the pews. Money in the plate. Acclaim by the world.  And yet for the first Christians the opposite was true.  They were small.  They were poor.  They were persecuted and imprisoned and martyred by the world around them. And that's because, when the church is faithful in living and proclaiming and witnessing the presence of God's new creation and the Lordship of Jesus, the principalities and powers—that was how Jews like Paul thought of the unseen powers, once placed by God to oversee peoples and nations, but now in rebellion against him—those principalities and powers, earthly kings, and the powerful people invested in those kingdoms and the corrupt systems that run them—Brothers and Sisters, if we're doing our job showing that God's new world is breaking in and that Jesus is setting things to rights, those powers will fight back.  They will try to shut us up or shut us down. They will throw us in prison.  They will kill us.  Or they will try to corrupt us. They'll divide our loyalties: Sure you can worship Jesus, but you'll also need to kneel to Caesar.  They'll get us to adulterate the gospel with materialism and commercialism or politics.  They'll convince us we can have one set of values in the church and another in business or in government. With that in mind, look at Ephesians 3. Paul rites, “It is because of all this that I, Paul, the prisoner of Messiah Jesus on behalf of you gnetiles…”  Paul sort of interrupts himself there for rhetorical purposes, but we should pause here too.  Paul was in prison. Probably this is when he was in prison in Rome, but it could have been in Ephesus.  And for a lot of people in his word, that meant that Paul was out of favour with God.  How often do we hear that sort of thing today? There are parts of the church that have been corrupted and compromised by the idea that faith means health and wealth, happiness and prosperity.  That you can name it and, by faith, claim it.  And if you don't get it, well, then you don't have enough faith or you're out of favour with God.  If we were to turn over to Second Corinthians we'd see that that's how the Corinthians interpreted Paul's imprisonment.  But this is pagan thinking. But Paul knew better. In verse 13 he tells them, “Don't lose heart because of my sufferings on your behalf. That's your glory!”  In other words, he's imprisoned because he's been faithful to the calling God gave him.  He's imprisoned because of his great faith.  He wants the Ephesians to understand the paradox of the cross: God's power is made perfect in weakness.  We're prone to forgetting this.  When we bail on a church because we think it's too small, when we start adopting sales tactics as if the gospel is something to sell, when we cozy up to corrupt leaders and rulers looking for favour, when we think we have to project or pursue strength in order to win, we've lost the plot that is centred on the cross of Jesus.  You can't adulterate God's new creation with the old.  If we do, we lose our witness and we stop challenging the principalities and power of the old with the lordship of Jesus and the glory of the kingdom. So Paul was in prison because he was being faithful, because he was establishing, just as God had called him to do, these little communities that were breaking the rules of the old order: bringing Jews and gentiles, men and women, slave and free together into a single family.  This was the family through which God will make his glory known throughout the earth.  Remember the priests mocking Jesus on the cross, to come down if he was really the son of God, then they would believe. But Paul knew—and the people in those little churches in Ephesus knew—it was because Jesus is the son of God that he had to stay on the cross.  It was through his weakness, through his death that the great enemy, death itself, would be defeated and the battle won.  Weakness is the powerful way of the cross. Paul had got the attention of the powers of the present evil age and it landed him in prison, but instead of thinking that God had failed, Paul knew that this was actually the sign, the proof that the gospel and the Spirit were doing their work, that they were truly rising to challenge the old gods and kings.  So he goes on in verse 3, “I'm assuming, by the way, that you've heard about the plan of Gods' grace that was given to me to pass on to you?  You know, the mystery that God revealed to me, as I wrote briefly just now.  Anyway…  When you read this you'll be able to understand the special insight I have into the Messiah's mystery.  This wasn't made known to human beings in previous generations, but now it's been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.  The mystery is this, that, through the gospel, the gentiles are to share Israel's inheritance.  They are to become fellow members of the body, along with them, and fellow sharers of the promise of Jesus the Messiah.”   God's great mystery, his secret purpose that was there all along, promised to Abraham and to Moses, to David and to the Prophets, but missed by so many people in Israel—and of course totally unknown to the gentiles who did know about those promises—that mystery hit Paul like a ton of bricks the day he met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus—or maybe it was three days later when Ananias prayed for him and his eyes were opened.  Paul started to rethink everything his Jewish Pharisee brain knew—and it knew the whole story—but suddenly he was looking it at through a new lens, through the reality that this Jesus who was crucified as a false Messiah had been raised and was, in fact, the Messiah after all.  And if that were true—well, that wall outside the temple, the one carved with the warning that gentile must not pass on pain of death—that wall was now irrelevant.  In fact, that whole temple had become irrelevant because of Jesus.  He's said this back in 2:19 and now he says pretty much the same thing again, “The mystery is this, that through the gospel, the gentiles are to share in Israel's inheritance.  They are to become fellow members of the body…fellow sharers of the promise in Messiah Jesus.”  In Greek he drives this point home with real force using three words that all begin with the prefix syn that means “with”.  The gentiles are with-inheritors, with-body, and with-partakers—to put it very literally in English.  For those in the Messiah, the distinction between the Jews and the rest of the world is gone.  And we often read right past it, but this was absolutely key, heart of the gospel stuff for Paul. Israel's story reached its climax and the promises were fulfilled in the Messiah and in his death for the sins of the whole world.  In that moment the whole sacrificial system, the whole system of purity and impurity, the temple itself became irrelevant for everyone—whether or Jew or gentile—for anyone who throws himself or herself at the feet of Jesus in faith and love to be purified once and for all and forever by his blood, to be filled by God's Spirit, and thereby to become a part of God's new temple. When the scales fell from Paul's eyes, he was the first to really grasp all this.  The other apostles back in Jerusalem were still debating whether gentile believers had to be circumcised or not.  So Jesus sent Paul to go announce to the gentiles that it's not necessary.  There's now a single people defined by faith in the risen Messiah.  Of course, Paul first went back to Jerusalem to make sure his fellow apostles understood this, too.  But his mission was to proclaim the good news to the nations.  I expect most of the his first converts were those gentiles who were already on the fringe.  The “god fearers” as the Jews called them.  Greeks and Romans who encountered Jewish society and saw something they'd never seen before.  In a world of moral filth, they saw in Israel a passion for holiness, a desire for justice, a hope of God setting the world to rights—a hope few in the gentile world had.  And they couldn't go to the temple, but they could sit in the synagogues and hear the scriptures read and there they heard about the faithfulness of Israel's God.  And so they hung around, on the fringe, longing for what this family had, but knowing it was not theirs and thinking it never could belong to them.  Hoping that maybe there could be a place for them, even if on the fringe, in this story of hope.  And Paul came to them excited, to announce that in Jesus, they were co-inheritors, fellow body-members, and fellow partakers of all those promises God had made to his people.  That in Jesus and the Spirit, the could actually become the temple of the living God…not on the fringe, but actually the temple in which he dwells. Imagine the excitement those first gentile believers felt. Like children in an orphanage, waiting and longing for years to have a place in and the love of a family, now they were part of the family.  They'd escaped from the fickle gods and moral filth and hopelessness of paganism and were now sons and daughters of God. So having made clear this point that is so central to everything, Paul goes on in verse 7: “This is the gospel that I was appointed to serve, in line with the free gift of God's grace that was given to me.  It was backed up with the power through which God accomplishes his work.”  I have to think that Paul never ceased to marvel at this.  The guy who made it his career to round up Christians so they could be brought before the Jewish council—and stoned like Stephen—that evil guy was called and chosen by God to proclaim this good news.  Washed clean by the blood of Jesus and made an apostle.  If anyone understood grace, it was Paul.  If anyone knew the power of God made perfect in weakness, it was Paul.  And so he goes on in verse 8: “I am the very least of all God's people.  However, he gave me this task as a gift: that I should be the one to tell the gentiles the good news of the Messiah's riches, riches no one could begin to count. My job is to make clear to everyone just what the mystery is, the purpose that's been hidden from the very beginning of the world in God who created all things.” Paul, the least deserving of anyone having been such a great persecutor of Jesus and his church, has been given the grace to proclaim the riches of God, his immense wealth.  The riches of the Messiah.  Sonship in God's family.  The inheritance of the word.  And one day that world set to rights and fellowship with the living God forever.  This is good news.  Not good advice, like, “Hey, let me tell you about Jesus. Try him out and see if he works for you and if not, oh well.”  No this is good news.  Sin and death are defeated, the corrupt principalities and powers are on borrowed time, God's kingdom has come.  And those powers have heard the proclamation of Paul and his churches and they're angry.  Maybe if it had just been all talk, maybe if they'd just proclaimed it as good advice, maybe if they'd let themselves be corrupted by the desire for strength and power, but no…the principalities and powers, the king and gods of the present age are angry, because they've seen this good news at work.  Caesar was the great peacemaker who had forged all the peoples of his vast empire into one with his sword and his armies.  But this crucified Messiah who came out of a weak and conquered people, whose missionaries had gathered a bunch of largely poor people, women, and slaves—their unity across all their difference brought about by a message of grace—that was a real threat to the order of the old world.  The Lord Jesus was the real deal.  Caesar was a cheap copy.  And while the Caesars of the world will one day be brought down, they won't go down easily.  And yet, it's in just this that the church has its greatest witness the power of God, the power of the cross, the power of the good news.  God's power is made most manifest when we are at our weakest—laughed at, imprisoned, martyred.  Those things are proof of the power of the gospel. And now Paul brings the first part of the chapter to its climax in verse 10: “This is it: that God's wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places—through the church! This is God's eternal purpose, and he's accomplished it in Messiah Jesus our Lord.  We have confidence and access to God in him, in full assurance, through his faithfulness.” I've heard and read Tom Wright say that if you want to understand what Paul is really getting at in this first half of Ephesians, look at the 10s: 1:10, 2:10, and 3:10.  In 1:10 we see God's purpose to bring all things together in heaven and on earth in the Messiah. In 2:10 we see the church today, justified by grace through faith, called to have the vital role to play in God's plan to bring everything together in the Messiah.  And here in 3:10 Paul reminds us that when the church is faithfully the church—that fellowship of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue who have given their allegiance to the Messiah, then the principalities and powers are put on notice and called to account.  As Paul says here: “God's wisdom, in all its rich variety, was to be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places—through the church!”  For two thousand years God's promises to set creation and humanity rights was out there, but how was it going to happen?  Brothers and Sisters, it's through the church being the church, with uncompromising allegiance to Jesus, living in the power of the Spirit, refusing to compromise, refusing to give an inch to evil men, to wicked systems, to the gods of the present age.  Not one inch.  Because, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus tell us, in those famous words of Abrham Kuyper, “there is not one inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” And knowing that with full assurance, uncompromisingly living that out, we the church are, as Paul put it in Chapter 2, we're God's poiema, his beautiful, finely crafted handywork.  We put on display God's wisdom in all its polypoikilos, the ESV translates it “manifold”.  I'm tempted to translate it a little more freely as something like “all the colours of the rainbow”.  Think of the vision of the church in Revelation 7—an uncountable multitude from every nation, tribe and tongue.  The church is meant to display the polychromed, Technicolor glory of God's new creation and, in doing so, to reveal the shabby drabness of this wicked old age and its gods and kings.  But what the church has done instead is to fracture.  This colour here and that colour over there.  It's to our shame.  And perhaps it's because we ourselves have lost the glory of that Technicolor world the church is meant to represent, we seem to be perpetually drawn back to the shabby drabness of the present age and it's cheap attempts to do what only Jesus and the Spirit can do.  Again, we treat the church and the gospel like commodities to marketed and to be bought and sold.  We try to divide our loyalty between Jesus and mammon or sex or power.  We become captivated by the ugliness of violence and war.  Or we sell our souls for a mess of political pottage, losing our vision of new creation and our passion for goodness, truth, and beauty and instead of trusting in the God who will bring it about, we trust in horses and chariots and chase after lesser evils instead of the good.  Brothers and Sisters, that what the principalities and powers, that's what the devils want.  They want us to think that we can bring God's kingdom by using the world's ways.  But it won't, it can't work.  Because doing so simply paints the church with the same shabby drabnesss of their world and casts a veil over the glory of God and the goodness of the gospel.  It removes us as a threat to those powers. But when we are faithful to being the church.  When we are uncompromising in our loyalty to Jesus.  When love one another and are truly one, instead of fracturing our witness to the unity of the people of God, that's when the world and its rulers take notice.  They recognise that, as Paul wrote back in 2:6, we are already seated with God in the heavenly places in the Messiah.  That doesn't mean we're somehow above the mess.  Instead it means we're right here in the midst of the mess, taking on the corrupt and evil powers of this age with power of the cross of Jesus for the sake of the people around us.  We're here, with the authority of heaven, to shine the light of the gospel and to put on full display the Technicolor glory of God.  Even as the powers fight back. We've all seen it.  It's not always as obvious as Paul being in prison.  More often than not, it seems that when a church being faithful to preach God's word and to live out the gospel and the life of the Spirit, all hell comes at us out of nowhere.  People start grumbling and creating divisions.  People leave over stupid things.  World or national events distract us from the gospel. or divisions become obstacles to faithfulness.  Those are times for prayer and to double-down on faithfulness to Jesus and the gospel when we're tempted to give up or tempted to compromise.  But Paul would tell us to be prepared.  When you're being faithful, when a church is putting on display the manifold wisdom of God—new creation—the enemies of the gospel will see, they'll feel the threat, they will strike back.  That's why Paul was in prison.  And he tells them, “That's your glory.” Think again back to the Solomon's dedication of the temple.  That stunningly grand and beautiful building, skilfully and purposefully crafted so that the glorious presence of God could dwell with in it.  So that God could shine forth from it.  That was the glory of his people on display for the sake of the whole world.  And Solomon and all Israel watched as the cloud of glory descended and filled the temple.  I always struggle to visualize just how amazing that must have been.  But the key takeaway here is this, Brothers and Sisters: that glory now indwells us.  We are now God's temple, his skilfully and purposefully crafted handiwork, purified by the blood of Jesus, so that he can dwell in us.  And if we, by his grace and sure of promises, are faithful to be what he has made, we will shine forth that glory: life in the midst of death, light in the midst of darkness, hope in the midst of despair, glorious Technicolour in the midst of dreary mud puddles, new creation in the midst of the hold. Let's pray: Almighty God, consider the heartfelt desires of your servants, we pray,  and stretch out the right hand of your majesty to defend us against all our enemies, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Guest post by Declan Goodman, Digital Mythology. Helping leaders make sense of digital transformation through story, myth and meaning After nearly 30 years working in digital transformation across different cultures, I have learned that digital transformation success is less about technology and more about people. While digital transformation is concerned with technology and how it can enable business outcomes, the most transformative element is not the tech, it's the people. How Mythology can help with Digital Transformation Many digital transformations struggle not because of the tech, but because the story behind it is unclear. Technology professionals often use frameworks, capability models and technical jargon to explain transformation – which makes sense to technologists – but rarely resonates with business stakeholders. Transformation only succeeds when the story behind it speaks to the hearts and minds of the people who must live through the change. People care far less about what is going to be built or replaced, and far more about what the change will mean for them. This is where mythology offers a practical lens. Myths are deeply human narratives that societies have used for centuries to understand transformation. They capture universal themes that help people make sense of uncertainty and imagine a different future. The use of mythology in storytelling is not new. The film Star Wars was built on mythic structures like the classic hero's journey and the redemption of the fallen father. Opera composers like Wagner used Norse mythology in The Ring Cycle to explore timeless themes of power, greed and downfall. Yet this approach has not quite found its way into the tech world. This is where the real opportunity lies. Tech leaders today can harness the power of myth to frame digital transformation as a human story rather than a technical endeavour. Here are some examples of how you can use myth to tell your story of digital transformation in a more human-led way. Example 1: How myth can help you ground your digital transformation program Mythology has a wonderful way of teaching us the importance of perspective. In Greek myth, Apollo observes humanity from high above, judging human behaviour without fully understanding the struggles they face. It's only when he comes down to live among humans that he grasps our reality. This is also true for tech leaders who architect and strategise transformation roadmaps that tick the logical boxes, but overlook the lived experience of change 'on the ground' for stakeholders. The lesson here is that leaders must avoid becoming trapped in the 'ivory tower' of strategy and instead experience transformation as their stakeholders do. Practical ways to implement this myth include leaders spending time 'shadowing' teams to understand their daily workflows and conducting 'day in the life of' workshops to see how transformation actually affects people. Just as Apollo learned that walking in the shoes of others brings perspective, tech leaders can do the same to make digital transformation grounded and real. Example 2: How myth can help people embrace the change digital transformation will bring Another lesson from mythology is how empathy can help us move fully into the new world by letting go of the old one. The Norse goddess Hel is the guardian between worlds, where souls pass from one world to the next, a deeply unsettling transition. She greets souls with empathy and explains that the old world is no longer right for them, they have outgrown it, and the new world is where they now belong. This applies strongly in digital transformation. The legacy processes and systems that your stakeholders have relied upon for years will significantly change or disappear and may require changes to their expertise – leading to a sense of loss or fear. This myth reminds digital leaders that resistance to change is not a barrier, rather it is a natural human response to losing what is familiar. Practical...

In Greek mythology, Sleep and Death were brothers. Hypnos, the god of sleep, visited each night through dreams, while Thanatos, the god of death, arrived only once to guide the soul beyond life. In this episode of The Moon in Carolina, host Shelby Bundy explores the myth of these twin figures and the ancient belief that sleep may be a small rehearsal for death, along with the ways different cultures have understood the mysterious connection between sleep, dreams, and the afterlife.

Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.To support the show, for ad free episodes and exclusive content sign up here.On this episode George and Maria discuss Milos, a popular island to visit because it has a never ending number of beaches and some of the best waters in Greece!Tune in to hear more about Milos and enjoy some bonus content at the end with Marias top picks in Milos.Greek phrase shared on the episode: I tried the Milos pumpkin spoon sweet and it was tasty: Dokímasa to kouféto tis Mílou kai ítan nóstimo (In Greek: Δοκίμασα το κουφέτο της Μήλου και ήταν νόστιμο).Websites for festivals:https://milos.gr/en/home/https://www.e-kyklades.gr/travel/tourism/milos_eventsEurovision song by Giorgos Alkaios filmed in Milos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmeCC53FKes&list=RDbmeCC53FKes&start_radio=1Further podcast listening:The best of SantoriniMy Greek WineGreek Islands for solo travellersWhere to stay in SantoriniWhere to stay in AthensAthens - A GreekendFolegandrosDo you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Visit the website: www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @mygreekislandSubscribe and leave a rating and review!To support the show further sign up to Patreon for ad free episodes and exclusive content here.There are 227 inhabited Greek Islands, which one will YOU visit next?#MGIPODCAST Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elizabeth Baird Hardy, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts Professor, the genius behind AppalachianInkling.com, Hunger Games expert, and author of Milton, Spenser and the Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C.S. Lewis Novels, joined Nick and John to discuss the Charm Bracelet that J. K. Rowling posted on her Twixter home page as a Christmas gift to her readers. She said that that the thirteen charms on nine links were a set of clues about the next Strike novel, the ninth in a ten book series.In the first Part of Elizabeth, Nick, and John's conversation, they discussed Rowling's charm bracelet history, speculated about why she posted this picture when she did, decided to look at each charm on the bracelet for its stand-alone meaning and its place in the nine link set, and to read the whole series as if it were a ring composition, one reflecting a nine Part structure in Strike 9. They then made deep dives into the details of each charm: the heart shaped box containing a ‘You and Me' engagement ring, a golden diamond-laden egg, a foul anchor, two angels, and a Trojan horse.In this second Part of that conversation, the trio of Serious Strikers continue with the remaining charms on the bracelet, namely, a Jack-in-the-box, an Hourglass, a White Rose and Crocodile, a Corvid head, and a Psalter paired on the last link with the Head of Persephone. They share their thoughts, too, about the bracelet as a symbolic integer and its ring meaning.The notes below are in support of references they make mid-flight and to other resources of interest to Magic Charm Decoders! Enjoy.Thank you to all our subscribers with special gratitude and appreciations for our paid subscribers; you are the wind in our sails, the heat from our vents… Serious Strikers are reading Browning's The Ring and the Book, charting Hallmarked Man Part Six, and reviewing the Myth of Cupid and Psyche to look for parallels in the Strike-Ellacott series. See you soon!Jack-in-the-Box Charm* Rowling claims this as her favorite charm (Nick and John in the conversation mistakenly attribute this preference to the Psalter charm):* Badly Wired Lamp ID'd it* Is it a devil — or a Racoon?* The jack in the box toy, the 'Jack' being a devil, was invented in Germany in the 16th century as a mockery of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. * The shape of this charm, the golden circular center in the inside of the open box top, represents the transcendent spiritual realm and the square bottom with its four directions, the fallen world. The ‘jack' devil lives in the latter but is from the former.* The charm is the third latched object in the chain, the heart box and Trojan horse preceding it and the psalter at chain's end following it — which means the ring latch and center are latched objects with surprises inside. The two interior objects at center have deadly surprises and the beginning and end eternal life interiors. The symbolism here is of the human being and its capacity via choice for either spiritual perfection in sacrificial love (anteros) or consumption by individual desires (eros). The thing hidden inside, man's spiritual capacity or heart, is either light or darkness, the inside bigger than the outside. (John)* What is the Strike 9 connection, the analogue to the demonic Jack in the box? Is it RFM? Uncle Ted? Ilsa's husband Nick? Polworth?* The Jack's position is at the center of the bracelet and between the hourglass and the Trojan horse. So it's placed between cleverness and craftiness and things that we can control and bad surprises, but also time, because we can't control time. (Elizabeth)Hourglass Charm* tempus fugit ‘like sand in an hourglass'* memento mori* infinite symbol* The Strike series may be a collection of mystery-story genres, each one illustrating a unique type of story, different from all the others while keeping the same core of characters and overarching narrative (cf., Rowling's note in The Running Grave acknowledgements that that book was her “cult” book). The hourglass, then, may be Rowling's pointer to Strike9 being a suspense drama in which the good guys not only have a challenging mission (find and rescue the missing Robin, Strike, Lucy, Pat, whomever) but have to do it before a literal deadline arrives. The Ticking Clock plot device.* If the Jack at link five is the center of the bracelet ring of nine links, how does the hourglass mirror the Trojan horse? It's two parts? The deadline aspect? “Reveal the crazies inside before the hourglass empties”?White Rose Charm* White Rose of Yorkshire* The interior of the flower charm is a literal Turtleback or ring composition diagram.* White Rose of Dante: Paradiso Cantos XXXI and XXXIIThe true home of all the blessed is with God in the Empyrean, a heaven of pure light beyond time and space. Dante sees the blessed systematically arranged in an immense white rose: like a hologram, a three-dimensional image, the rose is formed from a ray of light reflected off the outer surface of the Primum Mobile (30.106-17). The queen of this white rose is the Virgin Mary, traditionally represented as a rose herself (see Par. 23.73-4). This celestial rose recalls large rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, many of which are dedicated to Mary. The image of the rose, often red, is also used to represent Christ or, in other contexts, earthly love. The white rose is symmetrically structured according to various criteria, including belief, age, and gender. One half of the rose, already full, holds those who, according to Christian tradition, believed in Christ to come (the blessed of the Hebrew Bible); the other half, with only a few seats still unoccupied, contains those who believed in Christ already come (saved Christians). Two gendered rows mark this division of the rose in two halves. In the row below Mary appear women of the Hebrew Bible (Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, and unnamed others); Beatrice is seated next to Rachel, on the third row from the top. Opposite Mary, John the Baptist heads a row of men containing Francis, Benedict, Augustine, and other Christian fathers. Mary is flanked by Adam (first man) and Moses on one side, and Peter (first pope) and John the Evangelist on the other. John the Baptist is flanked by Lucy on one side and Anna, the mother of Mary, on the other. While only adults are seated in the upper section of the rose, below a certain line the rose contains souls of blessed children, their precise location based not on their own merits (since they lacked the power of free will) but on predestination. As physical laws do not apply in the Empyrean, Dante's ability to see these figures is not diminished by distance (30.118-23; 31.76-8).* White Rose of Mockingjay (Hunger Games finale)The prevailing symbol of Catching Fire and the most meaningful token the Christ figure of the series gives Katniss is a pearl, the solid-light symbolism of which we've discussed before. I think Commander Paylor's name may be our last Madge-Pearl-Mags name reference in being a “pale orb.” That gold and pearls have a similar translucency and metaphysical correspondence with the ‘Light of the World' make the twin possibilities that much more rich — and Commander Paylor's ascending to Panem's Presidency that much more meaningful and appropriate.Katniss steps into the Garden with the Pearl's blessing (“on my authority”) and discovers roses of every possible color. There are red, of course, and “lush pink, sunset orange, and even pale blue.” She knows what she wants, though; the rose colored like light, the white rose, Dante's symbolic prelude to the beatific vision and transcendence. Just as she cuts the “magnificent white bud just about to open” “from the top of a slender bush” (ibid, p. 355), the manacled, “pale, sickly green” President Snow, our snake in the Garden, speaks.“The colors, are lovely, of course, but nothing says perfection like white.”Our story Satan, you recall, left her a white rose in District 12 in chapter 1 and dropped roses with the bunker buster bombs in Part 1 to terrify Katniss. Now we know why. He was taunting her with her end, that as a seeker's soul he knew her goal was perfection in Christ and taunted her with it, especially when he held Peeta-Christ and understood the cartharsis and chrysalis she would have to pass through to claim it herself. Now that she is in the inner sanctuary, the High Place, he tells her the truth she could not hear anywhere else, the final, ugly truth about the cause for which Katniss had sacrificed everything. Snow reveals, just as Peeta had told her at the story's start, that she was deceived by those she trusted. President Coin killed Primrose with a weapon designed by Gale.Having been to the Absolute center, the world navel, and taken away the beatific vision as a white rose, Katniss is no longer a seeker but the resolution of contraries, an androgyn of justice and mercy. She is above right and wrong now as the phoenix-mockingjay and hears the voice of the “murderer” on the Hanging Tree at last. She deceives President Coin at the Victors Meeting as something of an avenging angel; she becomes a murderer herself by assassinating President Coin. Peeta-Christ comes down from the tree as her savior once again and prevents her suicide via Nightlock by his out-of-nowhere intervention.* Why does the White Rose share the seventh bracelet link with a crocodile? Faerie Queene!Crocodile Charm* The Crocodile in Shed, crocodile skin handbags (Hallmarked Man) “Maybe the4 crocodile or whatever they're keeping in the shed's chewed its way out,” said Strike. “ (Chapter 22, p 176; center chapter of Part 2)* Crocodile entry, Cirlot's Dictionary of SymbolismCrocodile Two basically different aspects of the crocodile are blended in its symbolic meaning, representing the influence upon the animal of two of the four Elements. In the first place, because of it viciousness and destructive power, the crocodile came to signify fury and evil in Egyptian hieroglyphics (19); in the second place, since it inhabits a realm intermediate between earth and water, and is associated with mud and vegetation, it came to be thought of as an emblem of fecundity and power (50). In the opinion of Mertens Stienon there is a third aspct, deriving from its resemblance to the dragon and the serpent, as a symbol of knowledge. In Egypt, the dead used to be portrayed transformed into crocodiles of knowledge, an idea which is linked with that of the zodiacal sign of Capricorn. Blavatsky compares the crocodile with the Kumara of India (40). Then, finally, come the symbols of Inversion proper and of rebirth. (67)* Lyndy Abraham's Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery entry for ‘Crocodile:'Crocodile The mercurial *serpent or transforming arcanum in its initial chthonic aspect during the dark, destructive opening of the opus alchymicum. Like the *bee, the crocodile was classified as a serpent in te bestiaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The amphibious nature of the crocodile made it an apt symbol for the dual-natured *Mercurius. When Lepidus in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra says, ‘Your serpent of Egypt is bred of your mud by the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile' (2.7.26-7), he is referring to the generation of gold in the earth, and the generation of the mercurial serpent through the heat of the secret *fire or ‘sun'. With the phrase ‘operation of your sun' Lepidus also alludes to the final law of the alchemical Emerald Table: ‘That which I had to say about the operation of the Sun is completed' (48)* Sandy Hope on Crocodile symbolismIsis Church crocodile in Faerie Queene: Book 5, Canto VIIBook V Canto vii. The speaker praises the virtue of justice and cites Osyris as an example of the just man. His wife, Isis, represented equity and to the Temple of Isis Britomart and Talus come to spend the night. Talus, however, is not allowed into the temple. Britomart enters and sees a statue of Isis with her foot on a crocodile. The temple is also full of the priests of Isis who are not allowed to drink wine as it leads to rebellion. Britomart sleeps under the statue of Isis and dreams that the crocodile comes alive and threatens the Goddess. The Goddess subdues the crocodile and it becomes meek and then impregnates the Goddess. She gives birth to a lion which conquers all other beats. Britomart awakes and tells her troubling dream to a priest. He tells her that the crocodile represents Arthegall, Isis represents Britomart, and the lion their son whom they will conceive. Grateful for the interpretation, Britomart leaves and comes to Radigund's castle. Radigund and Britomart battle, Britomart is wounded in the shoulder, and finally Britomart beheads Radigund. Talus enters the castle and wreaks carnage on the Amazon women inside. Britomart finds Arthegall dressed, like other, in women's clothing. she is shamed by the sight, and it is not quite clear whether her suspicions that Arthegall has been unfaithful are confirmed or refuted. She finds Arthegall some armour, arms him, and the rest in the castle. during this time Britomart rules as a princess and reforms the Amazon society so that women are restored to proper subjection to men. Finally, Arthegall leaves to complete his quest against Grantorto. Britomart lets him leave because she knows that his success in this quest is important to restore his ego. After residing further at the Amazon castle she finally leaves to help keep her mind off the absent Arthegall.* The Spenser Encyclopedia entry for ‘Church of Isis:' (408) Clifford DavidsonWhen Britomart spends the night in the temple, she sees a ‘wondrous vision' in which she participates first as a votary of Isis and then as the goddess herself. Her devotion to the statue causes her to become Isis in her dream: she is serving at the altar when she sees herself transformed into Isis but wearing the royal robe. The crocodile awakens, devours the flames which threaten to destroy the temple, and threatens to eat Isis/Britomart until it is driven back by her rod. Then it seeks her ‘grace and love,' she yields, it impregnates her, and from their union she gives birth to a lion. As the Priest explains, the crocodile is Osiris (the Egyptian god of Justice) who sleeps under the feet of Isis ‘To shew that clemence oft in things amis,/ Restraines those sterne behests, and cruell doomes of his' (22), and who shows thereby the proper relation of justice and judgment to equity. The Priest also explains to Britomart that the crocodile is Artegall, ‘The righteous Knight,' who will settle the storms and ‘raging flames, that many foes shall reare' and restore to her the heritage of her throne, and who will give her a ‘Lion like' son (23), the new British monarchy of the Tudors.The crocodile is a symbol both of guile and of a regeneration that will affect future history. As guile, its relation to Isis is reminiscent of Vice figures under the feet of triumphing Virtues in medieval art. An iconographic association between the crocodile in its demonic aspect and medieval saints' legends derives ultimately – significantly for Spenser – from the classical figure of Britomartis (Miskimin 1978). In Plutarch's Isis and Osiris 50, it is linked to Typhon, the enemy of justice and order, while in Renaissance iconographic tradition it is often symbolic of the need for prudence (for one must be prudent to avoid the wily crocodile). Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (sv Lussuria) shows the nude Luxury (or Lechery) seated upon a crocodile, an interesting analogy to its phallic sexuality in Britomart's dream. Yet along with these primarily negative associations, there are also positive ones in the crocodile's identification with Osiris/Artegall/Justice and in the implication that Isis/Britomart/Equity is incomplete without her partner. The image contains its own contradiction, unresolved by the Priest.* Troubled Blood and Faerie Queene: Where Britobart and Artegall are used as stand-ins for Robin and Cormoran:Troubled Blood features several embedded texts, the most important of which is never mentioned in the book: Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. Serious Strikers enjoyed the luxury of not one but two scholars of Edmund Spenser who checked in on the relevance and meaning of Rowling's choice of the greatest English epic poem for her epigraphs, not to mention the host of correspondences between Strike 5 and Queen. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy did a part by part exegesis of the Troubled Blood-Faerie Queen conjunctions and Beatrice Groves shared her first thoughts on the connections as well. Just as Lethal White's meaning and artistry is relatively unappreciated without a close reading of Ibsen's Rosmersholm, so with Strike 5 and Faerie Queen.Elizabeth Baird-Hardy* Day One, Part One: The Spenserian Epigraphs of the Pre-Released Troubled Blood Chapters* Day Two, Part Two: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Eight to Fourteen* Day Three, Part Three: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Fifteen to Thirty* Day Four, Part Four: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Thirty One to Forty Eight* Day Five, Part Five: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Forty Nine to Fifty Nine* Part Six: The Spenserian Epigraphs of Troubled Blood Chapters Sixty to Seventy One* Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the BetterBeatrice Groves* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 1): Spenserian Clues in Troubled Blood Epigraphs* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 2): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood* Trouble in Faerie Land (Part 3): Searching for Duessa in Troubled BloodJohn Granger:* How Spenser Uses Cupid in Faerie Queen and Its Relevance for Understanding Troubled Blood* Reading Troubled Blood as a Medieval Morality PlayCorvid Charm* Rowling Twixter headers: 12 January 2016, 9 April 2017 (Nick)* Fantastic Beasts reference? The Lestrange Family Motto features a crow and the ‘Lost Child' of that series is named ‘Corvus'* Crow Symbolism per Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols:Crow Because of its black colour, the crow is associated with the idea of beginning (as expressed in such symbols as the maternal night, primigenial darkness, the fertilizing earth). Because it is also associated with the atmosphere, it is a symbol for creative, demiurgic power and for spiritual strength. Because of its flight, it is considered a messenger. And, in sum, the crow has been invested by many primitive peoples with far-reaching cosmic significance. Indeed, for the Red Indians of North America it is the great civilizer and the creator of the visible world. It has a similar meaning for the Celts and the Germanic tribes, as well as in Siberia (35). In the classical cultures it no longer possesses such wide implications, but it does still retain certain mystic powers and in particular the ability to foresee the future; hence its claw played a special part in rites of divination (8). In Christian symbolism it is an allegory of solitude. Amongst the alchemists it recovers some of the original characteristics ascribed to it by the primitives, standing in particular for nigredo, or the initial state which is both the inherent characteristic of prime matter and the condition produced by separating out the Elements (putrefactio) … In Beaumont's view, the crow in itself signifies the isolation of him who lives on a superior plane (5), this being the symbolism in general of all solitary birds. (71-72)* Lyndy Abraham's Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery entry for ‘Crow:' (49)Crow, crow's head, crow's bill A symbol of the *putrefaction and *black nigredo which is the first stge of the opus alchymicum. The old body of the metal or matter for the Stone is dissolved and putrefied into the first matter of *creation, the *prima materia, so that it may be regenerated and cast into a new form. The Hermetis Trismegisti Tractatus Aureus said of this initial stage of death and dissolution in the work: ‘The First is the Corvus, the Crow or Raven, which from its blackness is said to be the beginning of the Art' (bk. 2, 235). In his Aurora, Paracelsus wrote that when the matter has been placed in the gentle heat of the secret fire it passes through corruption and grows black: ‘This operation they call putrefaction, and the blackness they name the head of the Crow' (55). Thomas Charnock likewise wrote of the putrefaction: ‘The Crowes head began to appere as black as Jett' (TCB, 296). In Zoroaster's Cave the matter produced during this stage is identified with the name of the process: ‘When the matter has stood for the space of forty dayes in a moderate heat, there will begin to appear above, a blacknesse like to pitch, which is the Caput Corvi of the Philosophers, and the wise men's Mercury' (80). According to Ripley the terms ‘crows head' and ‘crows bill' are synonymous: ‘The hede of the Crow that tokeyn call we,/And sum men call hyt the Crows byll' (TCB, 134) (see ashes). In A Fig for Momus Thomas Lodge listed the crow's head amongst other alchemical enigmas: ‘Then of the crowes-head, tell they weighty things' (Works, 3:69). When Face in Jonson's The Alchemist says that the matter of the Stone has become ‘ground black', Mammon enquires of him, ‘That's your crowes-head? And Subtle replies, ‘No, ‘tis not perfect, would it were the crow' (2.3.67-8).Psalter Charm* In ‘Charms, Psalms & Golden Clues: A brace(let) of clues for Strike 9,' Prof Groves discusses the psalm as charm:Charm first meant the incantation itself, and then the amulet that carried that incantation to protect the wearer and then – from the 19th century – the small ornamental trinkets, fastened to girdles, watch-chains and bracelets, that resembled those original, talismanic charms. This means that Rowling's clue-charm of a Psalm book (which can actually carry a sacred text) circles back beautifully to the original meaning of the word – in which a charm was an amulet carrying a holy text. These charms do not always hold texts but Rowling has confirmed that this one does: ‘The book is a psalm book and holds real, miniature psalms' I think this protective hinterland of charms make it likely that the specific psalm that such a psalm-book charm would carry would be the most comforting and talismanic of psalms – Psalm 23. This psalm famously describes the Lord's love as protective, even unto the valley of the shadow of death* John argues that, in addition to the 23rd Psalm, Psalm 90 (91 in Masoretic or KJV reckoning), the so-called ‘Soldier's Psalm' is at least as likely as an insert for this charm, which is to say, as a talisman a soldier might give a woman about to enter Hades to beg a gift from Persephone…The Head of Persephone Charm* Rowling's clarifying picture* Psyche's Last Task from Venus:One final task is then given to Psyche, one in which Psyche is commanded to bring back a bit of Persephone's beauty from the Underworld. In Greek mythology no living soul is meant to be able to enter the Underworld, let alone leave it, and so Aphrodite felt that she would be rid of Psyche once and for all. Indeed, it seemed that Aphrodite would be proved right, for Psyche's only idea about entering the Underworld was to kill herself. Before Psyche can commit suicide a voice whispers to her instructions about how to complete the task. Thus Psyche finds an entrance to the Underworld and is soon crossing the Acheron upon the skiff of Charon, and the princess even manages to gain an audience with Persephone. Persephone on the surface appears to be sympathetic to the quest of Psyche, but Psyche has been warned about accepting food or a seat in the palace of Hades, for both would bind her to the Underworld for all time. But eventually, Persephone gives Psyche a golden box, said to contain some of the goddess' beauty.* The Head of Persephone charm is paired with the Psalter on the ninth and last link; again, if the Psalm is 22 (23) or 90 (91), then the connection is an invocational prayer for help traveling through the “valley of death,” for protection from the “asp and basilisk,” the “lion and dragon.”* As above, note that the beginning, middle, and end of the bracelet feature clasped objects, with the Psalter being a codex that opens and Psyche's journey to Persephone is in pursuit of a “golden box” containing the means to otherworldly beauty. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

John 20:31John 1:1-141. WHO IS JESUS? John 1:1-5John calls Jesus "the Word." In Greek, that's Logos.Now, if you were a Greco/Roman listener hearing this, your ears would perk up. Logos was a big deal in Greek philosophy—it meant the rational principle that ordered the universe, the divine reason behind everything.If you were a Jewish listener, you'd think of how God SPOKE creation into existence. "And God SAID, 'Let there be light.'" The Word of God was God's creative, powerful self-expression.John takes both ideas and says, "That Logos? That Word? He's not an 'it.' He's a 'He.' And His name is Jesus."So who is Jesus according to these first five verses?Eternal ("In the beginning was")"In the beginning WAS the Word."Not "in the beginning, the Word came into being." Not "in the beginning, the Word was created."WAS. Already existing. Already there.You know how when you show up late to a party and everyone's already having a good time? Jesus showed up to creation and said, "Oh, this? I was here before the party started. Actually, I planned the party. I AM the party."Jesus is the eternal Word who has always existed, but He entered time so you could enter eternity.Divine ("was God")"The Word was WITH God, and the Word WAS God."This is one of the clearest statements of the deity of Christ in all of Scripture. John is saying two things simultaneously:The Word was WITH God (distinction—two persons)The Word WAS God (unity—one essence)This is the Trinity in seed form. One God, existing eternally in three persons. Father, Son, and Spirit.Now, I know the Trinity can feel like theological gymnastics. Three in one? How does that work? And honestly, if you fully understood it, it probably wouldn't be God. The finite can't fully John Lennox: Consciousness, Energy cant be defined but you believe in them?Creative ("all things were made through Him")"All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."John is emphatic here. ALL things. Not some things. Not most things. EVERYTHING that exists was made through Jesus.The mountains? Jesus. The oceans? Jesus. Giraffes? Jesus. (And honestly, giraffes alone prove God has a sense of humor. "Let's make a horse... but give it a six-foot neck and a purple tongue." Divine creativity right there.)The Word who spoke creation into existence became part of creation to save it.The same voice that said "Let there be light" would one day say "Lazarus, come forth." The same hands that flung stars into space would be nailed to a Roman cross.Life-giving ("in Him was life")"In him was life, and the life was the light of men."This is important: Jesus doesn't just HAVE life. He IS life. Life isn't something He possesses; it's something He IS.And that life brings light. In a world full of darkness—moral darkness, spiritual darkness, the darkness of not knowing why you're here or where you're going—Jesus shows up as light."The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."I love that. The darkness TRIED. It's been trying since Genesis 3. And it's still trying today. But it hasn't won. It CAN'T win. Because light always defeats darkness. Always.You don't walk into a dark room and watch the darkness push the light out. You flip the switch, and darkness flees. That's what Jesus does.So who is Jesus? He's eternal, divine, creative, and life-giving. He's not a good teacher. He's not a moral example. He's GOD in the flesh.2. WHAT DID JESUS DO? (vv. 6-14)John 1:12-13Jesus doesn't just offer forgiveness (though He does). He doesn't just offer a ticket to heaven (though that's included). He offers FAMILY.Jesus didn't come to give you religion. He came to make you family.You cant earn your way in to God's family, you recive your way in.You don't become a child of God by birth, bloodline, or willpower. You become a child of God by believing.You receive. You believe. And God does the rest.

In Greek mythology, Chiron was the wisest of the centaurs – creatures who were half human and half horse. He taught other centaurs about medicine, botany, and other sciences. Today, the astronomical Chiron is teaching scientists about the formation and evolution of ring systems. Chiron is one of about a thousand known centaurs – chunks of ice and rock between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. It’s one of the larger ones, at an average diameter of about 125 miles. Even so, it’s so far away that it’s tough to study. But it sometimes passes in front of a distant star. Such a passage allows scientists to measure its size. It also allows them to study the space around Chiron. Rings cause the light of the background star to flicker. Observing that effect from different locations, and at different times, provides a profile of the rings. A study last year reported some changes. Scientists already knew of three rings. The new study reported evidence of a fourth ring. It’s so far out that Chiron’s weak gravity might not be able to hold it. The scientists also found a wide disk of dust. The rings and disk might be debris from a small moon, or the result of an outburst from Chiron itself. Chiron is moving closer to the Sun. As it warms up, it could produce more outbursts. So the system could undergo more big changes in the years ahead – teaching us much more about the evolution of rings around the small bodies of the solar system. Script by Damond Benningfield

Today, I'm talking about the element of fire. This is the third episode in my series on the elements. Last fall, I explored water and wind, what they represent and how to work with them in everyday life. The Element of Fire When I say fire, I mean the flames that warm you, cook your food, clear land, and forge metal. Fire is one of the few elements that feels instantly familiar and deeply mysterious at the same time. You've sat in front of a fire and felt its heat. You've probably stared into the flames and lost track of time, almost like a meditation. That alone tells you something important. For thousands of years, fire has been far more than a tool. It has been treated as a presence, revered as a teacher, and even honored as a deity. Across cultures, fire has been seen as a messenger between worlds, a force that connects the visible and invisible. In classical and esoteric traditions, fire is one of the four primary elements, alongside earth, water, and air. It's associated with energy, passion, illumination, will, creation, destruction, and transformation. More than anything, fire is the element that changes things. Everything that touches fire is altered, and there is no undo button when it comes to flames. That's exactly why mystics, shamans, and alchemists paid such close attention to it. When I talk about fire as a spiritual element, I'm talking about a force that burns away what no longer serves, illuminates what's been hidden, and initiates transformation at a deep level. Fire is never subtle. Fire Across Time and Tradition If you look back through history, fire appears everywhere people were trying to understand life, death, and the unseen world. In ancient Greece, fire was considered a divine substance, famously stolen from the gods by Prometheus and given to humanity. That myth alone tells you how powerful fire was perceived to be. Fire wasn't just heat, it was consciousness, creativity, and civilization itself. In Vedic and yogic traditions, the fire element is called tejas. Tejas represents inner radiance, metabolic energy, and illumination. It's linked not only to digestion of food, but to digestion of experience, what you can process, integrate, and turn into wisdom. In Chinese philosophy, fire is one of five elements and is associated with the heart, joy, vitality, and spirit. When fire is balanced, there's warmth and enthusiasm for life. When it's excessive or depleted, it shows up as burnout, agitation, or a coldness of spirit. Celtic traditions placed fire at the center of seasonal festivals like Beltane and Samhain. Bonfires marked thresholds between worlds, protected communities, and ushered in new cycles. Fire was symbolic and practical. And in homes across the world, the hearth fire was the literal and energetic center of life. It's where food was prepared, stories were told, and decisions were made. The hearth was both sacred and ordinary. When we work with fire today, we're stepping into one of the oldest relationships humans have ever had with an element that could both sustain and destroy them. Fire demands respect and doesn't negotiate. In return, it offers truth by stripping away illusion and getting to the core. Builder, Destroyer, and Catalyst for Change One of the most important things to understand about fire is its dual nature. Fire is both a builder and a destroyer. People usually think of fire's destructive qualities, but destruction is not inherently bad. Fire clears old growth in the forest, so new life can emerge. It purifies, resets, and creates space. In alchemy and mysticism, this dual role is essential. Fire breaks structures down to their core components. From that essential place, something new can be formed. This mirrors an inner process many people experience, especially in midlife and beyond. There's often a moment when what used to work no longer does. Old identities might feel restrictive and old patterns can feel exhausting. Maybe there's an inner fire saying, “This cannot continue.” That inner fire isn't trying to make you uncomfortable, but working to realign you. Fire doesn't consider your comfort zone as it eliminates illusion to reveal the truth. Fire and Spiritual Alchemy In spiritual alchemy, fire is the heat that refines raw material into something clearer and more potent. Alchemists weren't just trying to turn lead into gold. They were working to transform fear, emotion, and confusion into insight and clarity. That doesn't happen without heat. Fire has long been described as a bearer of information, a force that accelerates transformation and amplifies subtle energy. In yogic and Buddhist traditions, balanced inner fire is linked with clear perception and intuitive awareness. You see more clearly. You digest experience instead of storing it as emotional baggage. This is why working with fire can feel clarifying and, at times, uncomfortable. Fire asks simple but powerful questions such as: What's ready to be released? What truth is trying to surface? What no longer fits? If you've ever sat in front of a candle and had an unexpected realization, you already know how fire speaks. The Hearth and Everyday Alchemy For most of human history, the hearth fire represented safety, nourishment, and belonging. In Greek tradition, Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, embodying stillness and presence. In Irish tradition, Brigid carried the triple flame of hearth, forge, and inspiration, overseeing care, craft, and creativity. Cooking over fire is everyday alchemy. Raw ingredients are transformed into nourishment through heat, time, and attention. When you cook with awareness or light a candle with intention, you're already working with fire as an ally. Fire for Manifesting and Divining Fire has also long been used for manifestation and divination. It creates momentum – just think of how a fire spreads so rapidly. Fire also shifts things from one state to another, responding to clarity and sincerity, rather than force or desperation. Across traditions, people burned symbols of what they wanted to release or manifest. Watching something physically transform signals completion to your nervous system. The flames help the body and psyche understand that a shift has occurred. Fire has also been used for divination, especially using a candle. Observing how a flame moves, steadies, flares, or resists lighting has long been a way of engaging intuition. Fire helps you reflect on what's already present rathern than telling you what to do. One of the easiest ways to work with fire is by candle gazing, a practice found in yogic traditions called tratakah. Watching the flame steadies the mind, quiets mental chatter, and brings clarity. Listen to the podcast to discover several simple fire practices in the podcast. Message from the Element of Fire Intuitively. I've connected with the element of fire. A couple of years ago, my friend Krista and I sat in front of a fire. Suddenly she suggested we should “talk to the fire.” I was surprised, and honestly delighted, when I actually heard something. I had been told it takes years of training to speak with the elements. That's no longer true. The energy on earth moves faster now. The veil is thinner. Many people have a higher vibration today. What I heard from the fire was simple and unmistakable: “I am powerful. I am destructive. I am creative. I am transformative. I am beautiful. I am warmth. I am dancing. I am passion.” That sounds exactly like fire, doesn't it? Fire teaches through warmth and light, but also through endings and change. When you work with fire, you're can't control it. You're partnering with a force that knows how to transform everything it touches. You listen, respect, and collaborate. Sometimes, that's exactly the kind of magic you need. The post How To Use The Fire Element To Transform Your Life appeared first on Intuitive Edge.

It's been 12 years since social worker Cassie discovered a mysterious mould in her home, invisible to almost everyone except her. Now the fungus has spread - its glowing spores a major global health threat, infecting the brains of those who inhale them. But many refuse to take seriously a menace they cannot see. When spores erupt at a care home in Wales, Cassie's son Bryn and 30 residents are exposed to infection. But how could this have happened when just days earlier the building was declared mould-free by a mycelium-sighted Inspector? For Bryn there is only one explanation: not everyone who claims to see the mould can be trusted. But who is this rogue Inspector and why would they lie? In his search for answers, Bryn's fraught relationship with Cassie will be tested to the limit as they battle to stop the fungus before the looming pandemic can take hold. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was condemned to speak the truth yet never be believed. A story of trust and what happens when we lose it. And of a hidden threat destroying the very thing that makes us powerful. Written and created by Marietta KirkbrideCassie ….. Kate O'Flynn Bryn ….. Ben Skym Pascal ….. Emmanuel Berthelot Ola ..… Aggy K. Adams Helen ….. Laurel Lefkow Ethan ..... Philip Desmeules Josie ..... Cristina Wolfe Layla Wolf ..... Laila Alj Thugs ..... Théo Marceau and Félix Marceau Bonobo handler ..... George WilliamsOther voices are played by the castProduction Manager: Eleanor Mein Production Assistant: Liis Mikk with Teresa MilewskiExecutive Producer: Sara DaviesTitle music: Ioana Selaru and Melo-Zed Track laying: Andreina Gómez Sound design: Jon Nicholls and Adam WoodhamsDirected and produced by Nicolas JacksonAn Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

It's been 12 years since social worker Cassie discovered a mysterious mould in her home, invisible to almost everyone except her. Now the fungus has spread - its glowing spores a major global health threat, infecting the brains of those who inhale them. But many refuse to take seriously a menace they cannot see. When spores erupt at a care home in Wales, Cassie's son Bryn and 30 residents are exposed to infection. But how could this have happened when just days earlier the building was declared mould-free by a mycelium-sighted Inspector? For Bryn there is only one explanation - not everyone who claims to see the mould can be trusted. But who is this rogue Inspector and why would they lie? In his search for answers, Bryn's fraught relationship with Cassie will be tested to the limit as they battle to stop the fungus before the looming pandemic can take hold. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was condemned to speak the truth yet never be believed. A story of trust and what happens when we lose it. And of a hidden threat destroying the very thing that makes us powerful. Written and created by Marietta KirkbrideCassie ….. Kate O'Flynn Bryn ….. Ben Skym Pascal ….. Emmanuel Berthelot Ola ..… Aggy K. Adams Helen ….. Laurel Lefkow Ethan ..... Philip Desmeules Josie ..... Cristina Wolfe Layla Wolf ..... Laila AljOther voices played by the castProduction Manager: Eleanor Mein Production Assistant: Liis Mikk with Teresa MilewskiExecutive Producer: Sara DaviesTitle music: Ioana Selaru and Melo-Zed Track laying: Andreina Gómez Sound design: Jon Nicholls and Adam WoodhamsDirected and produced by Nicolas JacksonAn Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

A new week means new questions! Hope you have fun with these!The Oscars are presented by which professional honorary organization Headquartered in Beverly Hills, California?The French company Van Cleef & Arpels is a business mainly specializing in what?A quay is a structure primarily built on or along what kind of geographical feature?The first successful tornado warning in history occurred in 1948 at Tinker Air Field Air Force Base near what city?Till We Have Faces, The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters are lesser-known novels by which author?In video and tabletop games, what does "NPC" stand for?Biellmann Spin, Lutz, and Crossover are all terms used in which sport?In a computer or video gaming system, what does the acronym GPU stand for?H2O2 is the chemical structure for what common product?In Greek myth, which monster was beheaded by the hero Perseus?Before decimalisation in the UK, how many pence made a shilling?The German state that existed from 1701 to 1918 was known as the Kingdom of what?Chad Kroeger and his Canadian chums enjoy this slightly sweet dark rye bread from Germany.In military tech, falconets, culverins, and carronades were all types of what?On The Office, what are the awards called that Michael hands out to his employees?MusicHot Swing, Fast Talkin, Bass Walker, Dances and Dames, Ambush by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Don't forget to follow us on social media:Patreon – patreon.com/quizbang – Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Check out our fun extras for patrons and help us keep this podcast going. We appreciate any level of support!Website – quizbangpod.com Check out our website, it will have all the links for social media that you need and while you're there, why not go to the contact us page and submit a question!Facebook – @quizbangpodcast – we post episode links and silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Instagram – Quiz Quiz Bang Bang (quizquizbangbang), we post silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Twitter – @quizbangpod We want to start a fun community for our fellow trivia lovers. If you hear/think of a fun or challenging trivia question, post it to our twitter feed and we will repost it so everyone can take a stab it. Come for the trivia – stay for the trivia.Ko-Fi – ko-fi.com/quizbangpod – Keep that sweet caffeine running through our body with a Ko-Fi, power us through a late night of fact checking and editing!

It's been 12 years since social worker Cassie discovered a mysterious mould in her home, invisible to almost everyone except her. Now the fungus has spread - its glowing spores a major global health threat, infecting the brains of those who inhale them. But many refuse to take seriously a menace they cannot see. When spores erupt at a care home in Wales, Cassie's son Bryn and 30 residents are exposed to infection. But how could this have happened when just days earlier the building was declared mould-free by a mycelium-sighted Inspector? For Bryn there is only one explanation - not everyone who claims to see the mould can be trusted. But who is this rogue Inspector and why would they lie? In his search for answers, Bryn's fraught relationship with Cassie will be tested to the limit as they battle to stop the fungus before the looming pandemic can take hold. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was condemned to speak the truth yet never be believed. A story of trust and what happens when we lose it. And of a hidden threat destroying the very thing that makes us powerful. By Marietta KirkbrideCassie ….. Kate O'Flynn Bryn ….. Ben Skym Pascal ….. Emmanuel Berthelot Ola ..… Aggy K. Adams Helen ….. Laurel Lefkow Ethan ..... Philip Desmeules Josie ..... Cristina Wolfe Aditi Saklani ..... Amrita Acharia Conference attendees ..... Laila Alj, Liis MikkBonobo recordings courtesy of Professor Zanna Clay of Durham UniversityProduction Manager: Eleanor Mein Production Assistant: Liis Mikk with Teresa MilewskiExecutive Producer: Sara DaviesTitle music: Ioana Selaru and Melo-Zed Track laying: Andreina Gómez Sound design: Jon Nicholls and Adam WoodhamsDirected and produced by Nicolas JacksonAn Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

It's been 12 years since social worker Cassie discovered a mysterious mould in her home, invisible to almost everyone except her. Now the fungus has spread - its glowing spores a major global health threat, infecting the brains of those who inhale them. But many refuse to take seriously a menace they cannot see. When spores erupt at a care home in Wales, Cassie's son Bryn and 30 residents are exposed to infection. But how could this have happened when just days earlier the building was declared mould-free by a mycelium-sighted Inspector? For Bryn there is only one explanation - not everyone who claims to see the mould can be trusted. But who is this rogue Inspector and why would they lie? In his search for answers, Bryn's fraught relationship with Cassie will be tested to the limit as they battle to stop the fungus before the looming pandemic can take hold.In Greek mythology, Cassandra was condemned to speak the truth yet never be believed. A story of trust and what happens when we lose it. And of a hidden threat destroying the very thing that makes us powerful. Written and created by Marietta KirkbrideCassie ….. Kate O'Flynn Bryn ….. Ben Skym Pascal ….. Emmanuel Berthelot Helen ….. Laurel Lefkow Ethan ..... Philip Desmeules Kirsten ..... Cristina Wolfe Gareth ..... George Williams Demonstrators ..... Théo Marceau and Félix Marceau Ola ..… Aggy K. AdamsOther voices played by the castProduction Manager: Eleanor Mein Production Assistant: Liis Mikk with Teresa MilewskiExecutive Producer: Sara DaviesTitle music: Ioana Selaru and Melo-Zed Track laying: Andreina Gómez Sound design: Jon Nicholls and Adam WoodhamsDirected and produced by Nicolas JacksonAn Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.To support the show, for ad free episodes and exclusive content sign up here.On this episode George and Maria discuss the Dodecanese, the other 'side' of Greece, that while it doesn't resemble the Cyclades which many are accustomed to, once you visit you get addicted.... ask us, we have been four years in a row! This is a general episode on the region, as expect more episodes in the next season.Tune in to hear more about this region and make sure to get in touch to tell us what future episodes you would like us to cover, as we plan to be back with more.Greek phrase shared on the episode: I want to visit the Dodecanese: Thélo na episkeftó ta Dodekánisa (In Greek: Θέλω να επισκεφτώ τα Δωδεκάνησα)Available Itineraries/Top Picks:Rhodes (+ Halki)AstypalaiaKarpathosFurther Podcast Listening:KarpathosRhodes - Part 1Rhodes - Part 2The Acropolis of LindosAstypalaia - Part 1Astypalaia - Part 2Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Visit the website: www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @mygreekislandSubscribe and leave a rating and review!To support the show further sign up to Patreon for ad free episodes and exclusive content here.There are 227 inhabited Greek Islands, which one will YOU visit next?#MGIPODCAST Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The supernatural horror returns.It's been 12 years since social worker Cassie discovered a mysterious mould in her home, invisible to almost everyone except her. Now the fungus has spread - its glowing spores a major global health threat, infecting the brains of those who inhale them. But many refuse to take seriously a menace they cannot see. When spores erupt at a care home in Wales, Cassie's son Bryn and 30 residents are exposed to infection. But how could this have happened when just days earlier the building was declared mould-free by a mycelium-sighted Inspector? For Bryn there is only one explanation: not everyone who claims to see the mould can be trusted. But who is this rogue Inspector and why would they lie? In his search for answers, Bryn's fraught relationship with Cassie will be tested to the limit as they battle to stop the fungus before the looming pandemic can take hold. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was condemned to speak the truth yet never be believed. A story of trust and what happens when we lose it. And of a hidden threat destroying the very thing that makes us powerful. Written and created by Marietta KirkbrideCassie ….. Kate O'Flynn Bryn ….. Ben Skym Helen ….. Laurel Lefkow Ethan ..... Philip Desmeules Gwenni ….. Kezrena James Gareth ..... George WilliamsOther voices are played by the castProduction Manager: Eleanor Mein Production Assistant: Liis Mikk with Teresa Milewski Executive Producer: Sara DaviesTitle music: Ioana Selaru and Melo-Zed Score: Ioana Selaru Track laying: Andreina Gómez Sound design: Jon Nicholls and Adam WoodhamsDirected and produced by Nicolas JacksonAn Afonica production for BBC Radio 4

Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.To support the show, for ad free episodes and exclusive content sign up here.On this episode George and Maria discuss the most rounded Greek island which is none other than Crete! This is a general episode, as so many of you have been asking for us to expand on Crete.Tune in to hear more about Crete and make sure to get in touch to tell us what future episodes you would like us to cover on this island, as we plan to be back with more, deep diving into all regions.Greek phrase shared on the episode: Where can I hear mantinades?: Poú boró na akoúso mantinádes? (In Greek: Πού μπορώ να ακούσω μαντινάδες;)Available Itineraries/Top Picks:Chania - Crete - 7 day itineraryChania - Top picks e-mapFurther Podcast Listening:ChaniaThe best of SantoriniChania Q&AKarpathosKythera - Part 1Kythera - Part 2SpinalongaWhere to stay in SantoriniRhodes - Part 1Rhodes - Part 2The Acropolis of LindosDo you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Visit the website: www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @mygreekislandSubscribe and leave a rating and review!To support the show further sign up to Patreon for ad free episodes and exclusive content here.There are 227 inhabited Greek Islands, which one will YOU visit next?#MGIPODCAST Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Main Theme: God is both Savior and Restorer, calling His people to remain steadfast in hope, truth, and repentance while warning against false voices and spiritual apathy in the last days. The study of Zechariah 9–10 connected ancient Israel's restoration to God's prophetic promises being fulfilled in our time. Opening Focus — “Prisoners of Hope” (Zechariah 9:11–12) Pastor Matthew opened with prayer and the reminder that the Lord is longsuffering and merciful, calling believers to follow His will. Zechariah 9:11–12 declares God's promise: “Because of the blood of your covenant, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope.” The phrase “prisoners of hope” was highlighted as a declaration of certainty, not uncertainty. In Greek (elpis), “hope” means expectation without a question mark — because our confidence is in Jesus, not circumstance. No matter how “caged up” we feel, believers are never without hope if they trust the Lord. Lesson: “God's people are not prisoners of despair — we are prisoners of hope.” God the Savior and Restorer God's character is revealed as both Deliverer and Restorer. Like Job, who endured affliction but received double restoration, Israel too would be redeemed and multiplied. God not only saves from destruction but restores what was lost. “You're not allowed to use God and ‘can't' in the same sentence — unless you're talking about sin.” Key Thought: The only thing God cannot do is sin. He can save, heal, and restore anything that's broken. Warnings Against False Shepherds and Idols (Zechariah 10:2) Zechariah warned that idols and false prophets speak delusion and comfort in vain, leading people astray because “there is no shepherd.” Pastor compared this to modern deception — preachers who tell people only what they want to hear. “People don't want a doctor who lies about a tumor, or a financial advisor who hides disaster. But many want a preacher who tells them what they want instead of what they need.” Application: The absence of godly leadership creates confusion and loss. True shepherds preach repentance and righteousness, not comfort and compromise. Parallels to the Last Days — 2 Peter 3 Pastor connected Zechariah's message to 2 Peter 3, describing the same pattern in the last days: Scoffers will deny judgment and live by their own desires. Many will forget the past judgment (the Flood) and ignore the coming one (by fire). The world will not end by human means (like climate change), but by God's sovereign decision. “The world will not end because of warming or cooling — it will end because God brings it to a close.” The Danger of Misreading God's Longsuffering People misinterpret God's mercy as apathy or approval. God delays judgment to give time for repentance — not because He's asleep or indifferent. Israel's repeated disobedience led to captivity because they mistook mercy for permission. “The mystery isn't that God will judge — the mystery is that He hasn't already.” Examples: Nations and individuals fall when they take grace for granted. The sins of abortion, abuse, greed, and deceit invite judgment; only repentance delays it. God's Desire for Repentance and Salvation Pastor reflected on 2 Peter 3:9 — “The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” God's longsuffering aims to save even the worst sinner, illustrated through: Manasseh — the most wicked king of Judah, who repented after 55 years and was forgiven. Barabbas — the murderer set free while Jesus took his place. “Jesus carried the very crossbeam Barabbas had prepared for himself. The cleanest man who ever lived took the place of the worst man in the culture.” Insight: God's mercy reaches even those we think beyond saving. No one is too far gone. The True Shepherd Restores His People (Zechariah 10:3–12) God's anger burns against false shepherds, but He promises to raise up the Good Shepherd — the Messiah, Jesus Christ. “From Him comes the cornerstone, the tent peg, the battle bow, every ruler together.” God promises to strengthen Judah, save Joseph, and bring back His scattered people. The prophecy of Israel's return to the land — scattered “among the nations” — is being fulfilled before our eyes. Pastor noted that since 1948 (Israel's rebirth) and 1967 (Jerusalem's restoration), God has been gathering His people home from every nation. “We're the generation seeing prophecy fulfilled — God is bringing His people home.” Closing Exhortation The study ended with thanksgiving for God's faithfulness and mercy. Pastor urged believers to: Stay grounded in truth, not comfort. Honor Israel, for God blesses those who bless her. Live ready, because the Lord's return will be sudden — “as a thief in the night.” “Everything in this world will be dissolved, but those who walk in righteousness will dwell in His new heaven and new earth.” Core Message God's mercy delays judgment, not cancels it. Hope in Christ is absolute, not uncertain — we are prisoners of hope. False voices bring delusion; truth brings restoration. The true Shepherd, Jesus, gathers His people for eternal peace. Prophecy is unfolding before our eyes — live holy, alert, and full of hope.

Welcome to today's “Identity in the Battle” series, where we continue our exploration of the powerful image Paul gives us in Ephesians 6: the Armor of God. Stephanie Rousselle dives into the spiritual realities of our identity in Christ and how we're equipped to stand strong in spiritual warfare. In our previous episode, (episode 415) we looked at the first few pieces of this armor. So, how do we live victoriously through our spiritual battles? Let's see what Paul has to teach us through his letter to the Ephesians. Context and Purpose Paul sets the stage by reminding us that as followers of Christ, we're engaged in a real, everyday spiritual battle. The “Armor of God” is not just a metaphor; it's a God-given resource to ground us in our identity, empower us, and unite us as the body of Christ. The Shield of Faith Paul's words to the Ephesians brings the shield to life. In Greek, the word is literally “door,” emphasizing its large, protective nature—big enough to hide a soldier entirely. Roman soldiers would lock shields together, signifying unity and teamwork. Alone, we may stand vulnerable, but joined with others in faith, we're nearly impenetrable. The shield also features hinges—faith is “active,” meant to be flexible, adapting to every circumstance. The shield extinguishes “all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” These arrows primarily serve as distractions. Satan often uses “fiery darts” not just to harm, but mostly to divert our attention, separating us from our main purpose and leaving us vulnerable to further attacks. Stephanie reminds us to recognize life's distractions and stay focused—don't mistake the fire for the real enemy! We are challenged to take stock of how many times our faith has shielded us from attack, and to recognize each as a testimony to God's faithfulness. The Helmet of Salvation Just as medicine must be applied—not merely owned—salvation transforms us when we “put it on” daily. The helmet protects our minds from the enemy's lies, renewing our thoughts through daily application. Our salvation is both a present reality and a future inheritance; we're called to live now with the confidence, hope, and abundance Christ offers, not a mindset of spiritual scarcity. The Sword of the Spirit The “sword” is the Word of God—both Scripture and Jesus Himself. Scripture is not merely ink on paper, but alive and active, shaping us as we wield its truths. So, memorizing, speaking, and applying Scripture is our offensive weapon, capable of cutting through lies, confusion, and spiritual strongholds. Prayer as Our Ultimate Weapon Finally, Paul underscores prayer as the glue of our spiritual arsenal. Prayer is not a formality; it's the relational heartbeat with our Commander-in-Chief, Jesus. To kneel in prayer is the only way to stand firm against the enemy. Conclusion: Victory and Identity As believers, we're not called to fight alone. Armor is meant to be worn in unity, our eyes fixed on Jesus, our victorious leader. We're warriors today—clothed for battle—but one day, we'll trade our armor for bridal garments, celebrating our eternal victory in Christ. Until then, let's stand firm, united, and equipped with every spiritual blessing, living out our new identity in Him. Reflection: What distractions (flaming arrows) are keeping you from focusing on your true spiritual battle? Where do you need to “lock shields” with others? How can you apply the helmet of salvation and wield the sword of the Spirit more intentionally this week? Enjoying these reflection questions? Consider the accompanying workbook as a resource to go deeper, at https://www.gospelspice.com/identity  ----- IDENTITY IN THE BATTLE WORKBOOK ------ You have the option to go beyond listening to this series, and to participate actively. This exclusive Gospel Spice Ministries resource is available at gospelspice.com/identity . You will receive a downloadable, printable workbook containing listening guide for each of the 6 episodes in this series, space for note taking, and discussion questions if you want to do this study with a friend! What better way to enjoy a cup of coffee with a friend this season, than to discuss your identity in the battle together? So, grab a friend or family member, or someone to mentor or be mentored by, and signup together.  Every week, Stephanie shares truth from Scripture and invites you to dig deeper in your faith to delight in the glory of God. PLAY IT FORWARD by SHARING the link with friends and family PAY IT FORWARD by supporting us financially PRAY IT FORWARD by praying for us and those you share it with! Find out more at gospelspice.com We invite you to check out the first episode of each of our series, and decide which one you will want to start with. Go to gospelspice.com for more, and go especially to gospelspice.com/podcast to enjoy our guests! Interested in our blog? Click here: gospelspice.com/blog Identity in the battle | Ephesians https://www.podcastics.com/episode/372022/link/ Malachi: Messenger to Messiah https://www.podcastics.com/episode/356130/link/ Wisdom from the Book of Proverbs https://www.podcastics.com/episode/324347/link/ Come to the Table | The Feasts Jesus celebrated https://www.podcastics.com/episode/309956/link/ THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO PARTNER WITH GOSPEL SPICE TODAY! First, PAY Gospel Spice Forward: Give a tax-deductible gift so others can experience our ministry for free, just like you! You can pay it forward with any debit, credit card, or via PayPal. See below for more details about your impact. Go to https://www.gospelspice.com/payitforward to make a one-time gift, or set up a monthly donation. Also, PLAY Gospel Spice Forward: SHARE the podcast and the studies with your friends and family. FOLLOW, RATE & REVIEW on your favorite podcast app (leave a comment + a star rating on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, IHeart, Google Podcast, etc…). It REALLY is the best way to help others find this content-rich podcast.  And, last but not least, PRAY Gospel Spice Forward: We pray for you weekly. We covet your prayers for our ministry, the thousands we reach, and our team! Contact us to let us know you are praying for us! Another way to partner with us is to purchase our workbooks and online Bible studies. We keep them at the lowest possible cost, but they require a lot of work from us! For example, - a complete Bible Study requires an average of 500 man-hours. - a workbook for a series requires almost 100 man-hours. MORE ABOUT PARTNERING WITH US FINANCIALLY: Gospel Spice Ministries is a non-profit organization registered under the tax-exempt 501c3 status. Go to https://www.gospelspice.com/payitforward to make a one-time gift, or set up a monthly donation. Our goal is to provide in-depth, high-quality, free Bible resources for all. They are free, but expensive to create! We need your financial support to keep producing and distributing them. Please pay Gospel Spice forward today! For example, a podcast episode takes close to 10 hours of work (and we release 2 each week). They come to you completely free, but we would truly love your support. We want the money to go to those who really need it. Once our operating costs are paid, 100% of your donation is redistributed to our partners who fight human trafficking. Each year, we aim to give as much as we can. For example, Stephanie works more than full time for Gospel Spice, entirely for free. All board members and volunteers are donating time. We limit our operational expenses to the bare minimum. Your pay-it-forward donations are tax-deductible under IRS Section 170. We want to be the best possible stewards of your financial support. Thank you! Go to https://www.gospelspice.com/payitforward to make a one-time gift, or set up a monthly donation. Support us on Gospel Spice, PayPal and Venmo!

To support the show, for ad free episodes and exclusive content sign up here.On this episode George and Maria discuss some islands many of you have been asking for episodes on and those are Paros, Naxos and the small Cyclades.Tune in to hear more about these islands and if you would like us to come back with more episodes on them, get in touch!Greek phrase shared on the episode: The colors of the Aegean are unique: Ta chró̱mata tou Aigaíou eínai monadiká. (In Greek: Τα χρώματα του Αιγαίου είναι μοναδικά.)Available Itineraries/Top Picks:Athens, Santorini, Paros (+ Antiparos) and the Athens RivieraParos (+ Antiparos) ItineraryParos (+ Antiparos) e-mapFurther Podcast Listening:AmorgosAthens - A Greek-endAstypalaia Part 1 & Part 2Greek Islands for Solo TravellersThe Athens RivieraTop Greek Islands without a carMy Greek EasterExpress Skopelitis: https://www.smallcycladeslines.gr/en/home/Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Do you need help planning your trip to Greece? Then book a travel consultation with Maria. Click here.Visit the website: www.mygreekis.land for inspiration, itineraries and more.Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @mygreekislandSubscribe and leave a rating and review!To support the show further sign up to Patreon for ad free episodes and exclusive content here.There are 227 inhabited Greek Islands, which one will YOU visit next?#MGIPODCAST Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 2nd of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We go straight to the Gospel of John 3:35: ”The Father loves the Son and has given and entrusted all things into His hand.” Our Heavenly Father gave Jesus all authority and all responsibility, and Jesus fulfilled and completed the responsibility right to the last letter. He died on the cross for your sins, for my sins. He set us free. He put the devil down once and for all, and then He went back to Heaven to be with His Father. But before He went back, He told His disciples that He will not leave us as orphans. Homeless, with no leaders. He said, ”I am sending you My Holy Spirit.” In Greek the name is, Parakletos, which means “the Helper”. “I am sending you the Helper so that you can complete the entrusting that God has given to me.” That's what Jesus said.Now in the amplified version, reading that today, in both scriptures, we go to John 16:7: But I tell you the truth, (Jesus said) it is to your advantage (our advantage) that I go away (that I go home, that I go back to My Father in Heaven); for if I do not go away, the Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him (the Holy Spirit) to you [to be in close fellowship with you]. I want to speak today, not only to men but to women, to young people, to leaders. The Lord never expected us to do it on our own. Our Father in Heaven sent His Son down to earth because He saw that we were failing terribly. The Son did the work. He's gone back to the Father but He's left us with His Holy Spirit. He says, ”Now you” (That's you and me, sir, you and me, young lady) “complete the job.” You know, it's a handing over, it's a responsibility. In these Olympic relay races, the most important part of the race is handing the baton over. If you drop the baton, you are disqualified, and there's only a certain place that you can hand it over. There are two lines. You've got a few yards. You're running at a full sprint. You need to be in unison with the person that you're giving the baton to. Today, you and I need to understand that our Heavenly Father has given us the authority, he has given us the ability. Now we need to do it, we need to do it fast and we need to do it safely. Let's finish the job. Jesus bless you and goodbye.

“My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David.” (Psalm 89:34-35) In Greek, Roman, and more m... More...

The theme on this episode is the loss of eros and a sense of interconnectedness in the contemporary world. Eros is the elemental principle of connection, the touch of soul that binds us to this world but also connects us to our own essence. The feeling of eros or love is the soul's inner verification of its own genuine existence. When this elemental sense of eros and connectedness is lost, people can more easily be turned against each other, because inside they are turned against themselves.     In Greek myths, Eros is the original, archetypal source of all attractions and all connections, an essential opposing energy to Thanatos, the god of death. In that sense, each loss of eros in the world is a kind of death in life. The more disconnected we are from our own sense of Eros, the closer we are to the realm of death. Thus, this loss of the felt sense of interconnection is at the root of the current crises that can leave us feeling isolated and alone, but also feeling helpless and hopeless, not just about our own lives, but also about the future of life on Earth. The loss of eros is at the heart of both the mistreatment of the Earth and the extremes of hatred, fear and division that now permeate human culture.     The wisdom of the ancient myths also included the radical idea of “kairos,” meaning moments in which time breaks open and the original potentials of life become more available, just as familiar patterns and conventional systems are breaking down. In the dark times in which we live, kairos moments become awakened time in which we reconnect to a greater sense of the world, but also to our place in it. If we fully enter the moment when time opens, we experience an intensification of being that changes the quality of time as well as the direction of our lives.     Kairos represents the opportune moment in which everything can change, the primordial tipping point in which there is a reversal of time and a reconnection to things that are eternal. In kairos moments time breaks open and timelessness reenters the world and can pour into our hearts and minds. And it is that blessed incursion of timelessness that is needed to reconnect us to the innate sense of eros and the hidden unity and interconnectedness of all of life.     Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “The Heart Within the Heart” on Thursday, October 30.   Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.      You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.   Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth     If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.

A Concise Biblical Examination of John 1:1  and It's Importance to Our Faith     “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”      This verse is like a treasure chest full of truth about who Jesus is. It tells us that Jesus, called “the Word,” is God and has always been with God. Let's break it down into three simple parts, using the original Greek words to help us understand, and see how it shows that Jesus is fully God.   Part 1: “In the beginning was the Word”   What it says in Greek: En archē ēn ho Logos   Simple meaning: “When everything started, the Word was already there.”   -“In the beginning”:  This is like the very first moment of everything, just like the start of the Bible in Genesis 1:1, where God created the world. The Greek word archē means the start of all things.  It's saying Jesus was there before anything was made.   -“Was”:  This Greek word tells us the Word didn't start existing—it was already there, always existing, forever. Jesus didn't have a beginning; He's eternal God.   -“The Word”:  The “Word” is Jesus. In Greek, Logos means God's way of speaking or showing Himself. Jesus is God's special way of talking to us and showing who God is. The word ho (the) means He's the one and only Word, not just any word.   What this tells us: Jesus, the Word, was there before time began. He didn't get created because He's eternal, just like God. This shows us Jesus is God because only God has no beginning.     Part 2: “And the Word was with God”   What it says in Greek: kai ho Logos ēn pros ton Theon   Simple meaning: “The Word was close to God.”   -“Was with”:  The Greek word pros means being right next to someone, like best friends who are always together. It shows Jesus was with God in close proximity, sharing a special relationship.   -“God”:  This is talking about God the Father. The Greek words show it's a specific person, not just a vague idea of God. Jesus, the Word, is not the Father, but He's with Him.   What this tells us: Jesus is a distinct person from God the Father, but they're together as One. This shows Jesus is part of the Godhead, not a creation. It's a hint that God is more than one person but yet still one God.     Part 3: “And the Word was God”   What it says in Greek: Kai Theos ēn ho Logos Simple meaning: “The Word was God.”   -“God”:  In Greek, Theos means God, but here it doesn't have the word ho (the) like before. This doesn't mean Jesus is less than God. It's a way to say Jesus has all the qualities of God—He is God in His nature, not a different or smaller god. -“Was”:  Again, this word shows Jesus didn't become God; He always was God, forever.   What this tells us: Jesus, the Word, is fully God. He's not just like God or partly God—He is God, with all of God's power, glory, and nature. This is super important because it tells us Jesus isn't just a great person or a prophet; He's God Himself.   Kai ——  And Theos —  God ēn ——-   was (can also mean “always existed”- thus, “God ‘always existed' as the Word.”) ho ——   the  Logos — Word   Our translators didn't get it wrong, it was proper to translate it “…and the Word was God,” in English in 1611.  Saying “God was the Word” is like saying God's essence is perfectly shown in Jesus. It's two ways of saying the same thing: Jesus is truly, fully, 100% God.  Christ came to fully reveal God to humanity, thus the Word was God and God was the Word.   Why This Matters: Jesus is God — Yet there are approximately 10,000 world religions that claim He isn't. (Source:  Google, Accessed 10-8-2025)   John 1:1 is like a big sign shouting that Jesus is God. Here's what we learn:   1. Jesus is eternal: He was there “in the beginning,” before anything was made. Only God is eternal, so Jesus is God. 2. Jesus is close to God: He's with God the Father in a special, loving relationship, showing He's a person in the Godhead, not just a thing or idea. 3. Jesus is fully God: The Word is God, sharing all of God's qualities. This means Jesus has God's power, love, and glory.   This verse sets up the whole Gospel of John, where we see Jesus do amazing things only God can do, like creating life (John 1:3) and forgiving sins (John 8:58). Later, in John 1:14 (“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth”), we learn that this Word became a human—Jesus! So, the God who was there forever (always existed) became a person to show us who God is and to save us.           Summary of the Lesson on John 1:1   “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”   The verse is broken into three parts to show that Jesus, called “the Word” (Greek: ho Logos), is fully God.   “In the beginning was the Word”: Jesus existed before everything, even before creation (like Genesis 1:1). The Greek word ἦν (was) shows He's eternal, with no beginning, proving He's God.   “And the Word was with God”: Jesus is close to God the Father, like best friends, in a special relationship. The Greek πρὸς (pros) shows they're distinct but united, hinting at the Trinity.   “And the Word was God”: Jesus is fully God, sharing all of God's qualities. The Greek Θεὸς (Theos) without “the” emphasizes His divine nature, not a lesser god.   The phrase “the Word was God and God was the Word” reflects the Greek, emphasizing Jesus' full deity.    In conclusion, John 1:1 teaches that Jesus is eternal, in close relationship with the Father, and fully God, setting the foundation for His identity as our Savior who became human (John 1:14).    This one verse establishes the most outstanding case for the Deity of Christ, that is, Jesus Christ is God.

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a woman gifted, and then cursed, with foresight. Despite warning everyone about the tragedies to come, she was ignored. Modernly, this story still resonates. We talk about the history, the Cassandra complex, modern day Cassandras, and why it has such staying power.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.