Podcasts about Last Supper

Something special happens when people come to the table for a meal. The table turns strangers into neighbors and enemies into friends. In Luke 22:14-20, Jesus shared a meal with His twelve disciples that we know as the Last Supper. The people gathered together that night had different personalities, circumstances, weaknesses, and failures. Despite that, Jesus still gave them a seat at the table, and Jesus pulls out a chair for you, too.

Have you ever seen the painting “The Last Supper” by Leonardo Da Vinci? If so, did you see the yellow sun globe around Jesus head? Did you ever depict what it meant on a deeper level? You see a lot of the stories in the bible are meant for allegory and metaphors as it was meant for a deeper truth. For example back in ancient days the Egyptians gave the name Neter to the great and supreme Force of all, the “One God,” the source of all Creation, all that is and all that shall be. They felt that to know this one God was to know the many faces, qualities, and attributes of this sacred source, and the more they learned of these faces, the closer they got to the divine origin. From the Neter emerge the Neteru, there are countless Neteru, so from the One come the many. These Neteru are Cosmic principles, laws, and forces of Universal Nature and the Consciousness that permeate the whole universe. They are the means by which the Neter sustains creation and manifests through it. You and I are a part of God's creation. How we express ourselves are different, but nonetheless a part of the many faces of the source of all creation. The ancient Egyptian people reasoned that no one on Earth could ever lay claim of ownership to the Great Orbit of the Day. It must belong to the unseen Creator of all. It became, figuratively speaking, not man's, but “God's Sun”. God's Sun was truly the light of the world. Come listen in and find out if “God's Son is God's Sun” allegorically and see if there's any expression of truth figuratively for us to live by today. 

We should be known by our love. And that love is defined as a basin and towel of humble service, even to those who would deny us and betray us.He washed us clean of our guilt and shame. And we still deny Him. We still betray Him. Even so, He loves us like this. Let Him wash you. Let Him serve you. And then join Him in doing the same.And when we do? Just think of the impact we can have. Social historians point out this is one of the primary reasons the Christian movement grew in the first centuries. We actually loved like this. Across ethnic lines. Across socio-economic lines. Even towards our enemies. And it literally changed our world.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/49007532Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2542/responses/new23.01.15

Watch or listen at https://youtu.be/dhTa5rLu2rM and then educate yourself on the history of Communion, the Last Supper, the Lord's Supper... the Eucharist.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 698, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Name's The Same 1: Writers Kilmer and Carol Oates. Joyce. 2: Fashion designer Lagerfeld and car designer Benz. Karl. 3: Ford who starred in "Gilda" and Close who starred in "Damages". Glenn. 4: Schnabel of the art world and civil rights leader Bond. Julian. 5: First Lady Coolidge and computer whiz Hopper. Grace. Round 2. Category: The Oscar-Winning Role 1: 1987:Getting greedy as Gordon Gekko. Michael Douglas. 2: 2008:For his brilliant and deranged Joker. Heath Ledger. 3: 1982:Her as refugee Sophie. Meryl Streep. 4: 1996:As Rod Tidwell, he could've said, "Show me the Oscar!". Cuba Gooding, Jr.. 5: 1962:Atticus! Atticus! (Finch). Gregory Peck. Round 3. Category: Fruit And Vegetable Vendors? 1: For the third quarter of fiscal 2013, this tech company posted revenue of $35.3 billion. Apple. 2: This Italian restaurant chain boasts a "never ending pasta bowl". Olive Garden. 3: HQ'd somewhat ominously in Waterloo, Canada, the company now known as this debuted its first smartphone in 2003. BlackBerry. 4: This yoga clothing company was founded in Vancouver in 1998--watch your step! the first one's a lulu!. Lululemon. 5: This clothing company wasn't monkeying around when it was founded in 1978 in Mill Valley. Banana Republic. Round 4. Category: There's No Place Like Home 1: Steel titan Andrew Carnegie helped transform American industry but was born in this country. Scotland. 2: Architect Julia Morgan designed a home with 61 bathrooms for William Randolph Hearst at this Calif. town. San Simeon. 3: The Vandals conquered parts of Italy, Spain and Africa but their first home may have been this Danish peninsula. Jutland. 4: In 1926 Zane Grey built an elaborate home on this island off Los Angeles, where he spent most of the rest of his life. Catalina. 5: Henry Flagler's Palm Beach, Florida estate was named this, also the name of a "pale" London palace. Whitehall. Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 698, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Prime Numbers 1: To get a brief respite, you "take" it. five. 2: This many diners attend da Vinci's "Last Supper". 13. 3: The First Battle of Bull Run was in this year. 1861. 4: It's the largest 3-digit prime. 997. 5: Number "Against Thebes" in a work by Aeschylus. seven. Round 2. Category: Cereal Characters 1: This trio has been helping sell Rice Krispies since the 1930s. Snap, Crackle, and Pop. 2: For many years it's been this creature for Cocoa Puffs. a cuckoo. 3: The silly spokes-creature for Trix cereal is this type of animal. a rabbit. 4: Cornelius is one of these animals selling Kellogg's corn flakes. a rooster. 5: First name of the leprechaun mascot of a popular cereal. Lucky. Round 3. Category: Common Bonds 1: Loving,measuring,sippy. cup. 2: Mediterranean,South Beach,paleo. diets. 3: All Soul's Day,Eat a Cranberry Day,The Great American Smokeout. things in November. 4: Accent,Adirondack,office. types of chairs. 5: A cat,a Scottie dog,a wheelbarrow. Monopoly playing pieces.

It's time for episode #57 of the Last Call Trivia Podcast! The game kicks off with a round of general knowledge questions. Then, we're hopping in our time machines for a round of Historical Figures Trivia.Round OneFirst up, we have an Animals Trivia question about the incredibly intelligent and clever birds that have been known to use human inventions as tools of their own, like using cars to crack nuts. Next, a Cities question challenges the Team to name the Indian city that was known as Bombay until 1995.The first round concludes with a Food Trivia question about the first-ever McDonald's breakfast item.Bonus QuestionToday's Bonus Question is a follow-up to the Food question from the first round.Round TwoHistory is rife with people who were ahead of their time and left a major impact on the world for generations to come. And we're celebrating them today with a round of Historical Figures Trivia!The second round begins with an Art Trivia question about The Red Vineyards near Arles, the only painting known by name that a now-famous artist sold during their lifetime.Next, we have an Awards question about the namesake of the Prize for American Humor.Round Two concludes a Places Trivia question about the city in which Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is located.Final QuestionWe've reached the Final Question of the game, and today's category of choice is Websites. Let's go surf the web!The Trivia Team is given a list of four ultra-popular websites and asked to place them in order based on the years in which they launched.Pop Run RadioPop Run Radio is a radio show hosted by Jackie Brewer and Maegan Mills. Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Scripture Reading: John 18:28-19:16a 28 Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the Roman governor's residence. (Now it was very early morning.) They did not go into the governor's residence so they would not be ceremonially defiled, but could eat the Passover meal. 29 So Pilate came outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They replied, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.”31 Pilate told them, “Take him yourselves and pass judgment on him according to your own law!” The Jewish leaders replied, “We cannot legally put anyone to death.” 32 (This happened to fulfill the word Jesus had spoken when he indicated what kind of death he was going to die.)33 So Pilate went back into the governor's residence, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” 34 Jesus replied, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or have others told you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own people and your chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”36 Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37 Then Pilate said, “So you are a king!” Jesus replied, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world—to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate asked, “What is truth?”When he had said this he went back outside to the Jewish leaders and announced, “I find no basis for an accusation against him. 39 But it is your custom that I release one prisoner for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?” 40 Then they shouted back, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” (Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.)1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged severely. 2 The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they clothed him in a purple robe. 3 They came up to him again and again and said, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly in the face.4 Again Pilate went out and said to the Jewish leaders, “Look, I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find no reason for an accusation against him.” 5 So Jesus came outside, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Look, here is the man!” 6 When the chief priests and their officers saw him, they shouted out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said, “You take him and crucify him! Certainly I find no reason for an accusation against him!” 7 The Jewish leaders replied, “We have a law, and according to our law he ought to die because he claimed to be the Son of God!”8 When Pilate heard what they said, he was more afraid than ever, 9 and he went back into the governor's residence and said to Jesus, “Where do you come from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you know I have the authority to release you and to crucify you?” 11 Jesus replied, “You would have no authority over me at all, unless it was given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of greater sin.”12 From this point on, Pilate tried to release him. But the Jewish leaders shouted out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar! Everyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar!” 13 When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus outside and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called “The Stone Pavement” (Gabbatha in Aramaic). 14 (Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover, about noon.) Pilate said to the Jewish leaders, “Look, here is your king!”15 Then they shouted out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked, “Shall I crucify your king?” The high priests replied, “We have no king except Caesar!” 16 Then Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.Main ThemesPilateThe Jewish authorities sentence Jesus. Jesus' apostles—most notably Peter—desert him. Then the time comes for the Romans to get involved.The first question we ought to ask is: why? Why must the Romans be involved at all? I have discussed this already, so I will be brief. The Romans depended on delatores—accusers—to bring criminals to justice. These accusers could be individuals or councils, such as the Sanhedrin. In particular, the Sanhedrin was composed of the aristocratic elite of the most important city in Israel. The Roman governor would certainly cooperate with such a group.The Jews deliver Jesus to Pilate “very early in the morning,” probably around 6 am. For Romans, “late morning” in the summer months was before 8 or 9 am. A Roman governor would probably end his public transactions around noon, leaving some time for leisure. In fact, Romans rarely slept in; doing so could carry the implication of drinking or partying the night before.When the Jews deliver Jesus, they avoid entering into the “governor's residence”—the praetorium. There is some debate whether the praetorium was Fortress Antonia, adjoining the temple courts, or the old palace of Herod the Great. The lavishness of Herod's old palace, which would have been preferred by a Roman governor, along with confirmation from other ancient writings seem to support the latter alternative. Either way, why did the Jews not enter the praetorium? Because houses of non-Jews were ritually impure and entering them would render a Jew impure as well, keeping him from fully participating in the Passover festivities. This concern for ritual purity serves as evidence of the aristocrats' hypocrisy: they spent the night ignoring the weightier matters of the law, such as justice and fairness, to then show concern for more superficial rituals. Recall Matthew 23:23-24:“Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You should have done these things without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!Notice Pilate's attitude. From Josephus' writings (an ancient Jewish historian) we know that originally Pilate was quite unsympathetic towards the Jewish customs. In John, we find a Pilate much more willing to avoid unnecessary friction. He comes out to meet the Jewish elite, accommodating of the fact that they could not enter the home. However, Pilate also shows some annoyance with the situation. He asks, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” The response is, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” If we read between the lines, Pilate's question does not seem like an honest request for information. He seems to be aware of the accusation but remains unconvinced that this is a matter worthy of his involvement. The Jews insist they would not seek audience before Pilate if Jesus was not really a criminal.The Jewish elite finally speak truly when they say, “We cannot legally put anyone to death.” As I explained last session, only the Roman governor could order a person killed—particularly by crucifixion. Notice, therefore, that the only way in which Jesus' words could be fulfilled (e.g., “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John 12:32) was if the Jews involved the Romans. This was expected, indeed planned, by Jesus.Roman citizens could not be legally crucified, but slaves and provincials could be, generally for rebellion against Rome.Pilate was known for his brutality. He had sometimes executed Jews without trial. The Jewish elite knew that if they wanted Jesus dead, they were asking the right guy. They may have expected no hearing at all, even if Roman law technically required one. But there were politics at play. An overly cruel governor could give rise to revolts by the provincials. In fact, later in his life, Pilate's excessive use of capital punishment cost him his office. We also have other reasons to believe that Pilate may have been trying to be more careful than usual. His patron, Sejanus, was executed in the year 31 AD. If the crucifixion happened in the year 33 AD, then Pilate found himself in a precarious situation with little political support. Even if the crucifixion happened in the year 30 AD (the other widely argued for date), Pilate may have already been feeling the mounting opposition to his patron. Pilate himself was only an equestrian, a class lower than senators. Finally, there is likely some personal animosity at work as well. Pilate had gained some political savvy by this point, but he probably strongly disliked the Jews. Pilate may have been fair to Jesus simply to spite the Jews.Pilate Questions JesusAccording to normal judicial procedure, the accuser spoke first. So, Pilate had to already be aware of the charge of treason when he begins Jesus' interrogation. The question Pilate asks is, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Ain't that the million dollar question! In classic Johannine fashion, this moment drips with irony. Pilate is probably employing sarcasm, perhaps even mockery. But the gospel audience understands that the question is serious—the most important question ever, in fact. Is Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the High Priest, the King, God himself?Notice that Pilate's question is strange in one regard: so far no one has used his exact terminology. Jesus' detractors do not calling him king of the Jews. Jesus himself does not make the claim with those exact words. The title is not even a traditional Christian confession. Christians will call Jesus Messiah, Christ, Lord, or perhaps even King of Israel or King of Kings, but generally not King of the Jews. There is irony in the fact that a Gentile is one to speak with such insight, even if he spoke more than he knew.Jesus' reply plays on the irony of Pilate's question. Jesus retorts, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or have others told you about me?” Allow me to rephrase it as, “Oh, so you can tell? You figured it out on your own or someone told you?” Pilate's response makes perfect sense, “I am not a Jew, am I?” In other words, “How would I know? I am not a Jew.”If up to this point the conversation had a mocking tone, it becomes serious as Pilate asks, “Your own people and your chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” This is a hefty question. Paraphrased, Pilate says, “Your people wish me to have you killed. Why?” There is also some legalese at play here. If a defendant failed to offer a defense, the judge would ask about the charge three times before convicting the defendant by default.Jesus explains that his kingdom is not of this world. He offers a simple proof. If his kingdom were of this world, his followers would be fighting to free Jesus; they would probably be fighting against Jews to establish Jesus as King and fighting against the Romans to liberate Israel. They are not. “As it is,” meaning, “look around, there is no fighting,” Jesus' kingdom is certainly not political. But Jesus does not deny the charge against him. Jesus affirms he has a kingdom: “my kingdom is not from here.” If Jesus were trying to win his trial, this was not a wise move.Pilate picks up on Jesus' confession. “So you are a king!” To whatever extent Pilate is following standard trial procedure, notice that this is the third time the charge is brought up to the defendant. The defendant's lack of defense will result in a conviction by default. (Although, perhaps the conversation simply developed this way and the governor is not thinking in terms of legal procedure.) For the last time, Jesus fails to defend himself. “You say that I am a king.” This statement can be taken in a few different ways. Jesus may mean it as, “You say I am king because I am.” As an older commentary puts it, “Thou sayest; for I am a king.” Another alternative is that Jesus bypasses the title and instead affirms the substance of the accusation. Then we could rephrase Jesus response as follows: “Is King the proper title for someone like me? I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to me. Does that make me king?” However we interpret Jesus' response, it is not a denial of the charge against him. Jesus may have sealed his fate.Pilate ends the conversation with another million dollar question, “What is truth?” The true tone and intent behind his questions is hard to discern. Maybe Pilate is mocking Jesus' and his commitment to truth. After all, Pilate lived a life of Roman politics and military prowess. Truth? Who cares. Power—that's what really matters. We can almost hear his argument: “Do you think a man is convicted because he is guilty? He is convicted because he is weak. Do you think the powerful escape justice because they are righteous? Don't be naïve! Do you think only the wicked are conquered and enslaved? We conquer devils and saints alike. Do you think the righteous rule the world? The strong rule over all. Do you think that kings speak only truth? They don't yet go ahead and disagree with them and see what happens. Do you think truth matters at all? Don't be a child.”However, there is a good chance Pilate means his question earnestly. The other gospels tell us that Pilate knew Jesus to be innocent. Moreover, Pilate's wife had received a vision confirming Jesus was blameless and should not be convicted.So after they had assembled, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Christ?” (For he knew that they had handed him over because of envy.) As he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent a message to him: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man; I have suffered greatly as a result of a dream about him today.” Matthew 27:17-19We can imagine a corrupt ruler of a corrupt nation being asked by a corrupt ruling council to brutally crucify a man he knows to be innocent and asking himself: “What is truth? Is there anything worth fighting for? Anything worth sacrificing for? If so, what is that truth? Where does it come from?” These could be the questions of a wicked man who is beginning to see that what is right and wrong is not simply a matter of power.Pilate Attempts to Release JesusPilate finds no (legal) fault in Jesus and attempts to release him. Pilate follows a custom of releasing one prisoner during Passover (as scholars call it, the “paschal amnesty custom”). A Roman governor was free to issue amnesties. We have record of Romans sometimes releasing prisoners en masse on local feasts. During their own festivities, Romans usually delayed punishments. So, the custom described in John would not have seemed odd in the ancient world.Pilate gives the Jewish people a choice: Jesus or Barabbas? To Pilate's surprise, the people exclaim: “Barabbas!” There is irony upon irony here. Jesus was accused of being a revolutionary but found to be innocent. Barabbas was an actual revolutionary! Technically, the word used in verse 40 is “robber,” but that was a euphemism for revolutionary. As the NET's translators' note 118 explains:Or “robber.” It is possible that Barabbas was merely a robber or highwayman, but more likely, given the use of the term ληστής (lēstēs) in Josephus and other early sources, that he was a guerrilla warrior or revolutionary leader. Moreover, the Jewish leaders allegedly acted against Jesus to prevent a revolution that could destroy Israel. John 11:49-50:Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.”Yet, they requested the release of the very type of person who would bring demise to the nation just 40 years later.Abusing the PrisonerThe FloggingJewish law allowed for up to 40 lashings (Deuteronomy 25:3). To make sure that one did not accidentally exceed the lawful numbers of blows, the Jews only dealt 39 lashings. The Romans were not beholden to such a limit. In fact, the text indicates a more severe flogging. As the NET's study note 1 explains:Three forms of corporal punishment were employed by the Romans, in increasing degree of severity: (1) fustigatio (beating), (2) flagellatio (flogging), and (3) verberatio (severe flogging, scourging). The first could be on occasion a punishment in itself, but the more severe forms were part of the capital sentence as a prelude to crucifixion. The most severe, verberatio, is what is indicated here by the Greek verb translated flogged severely (μαστιγόω, mastigoō). People died on occasion while being flogged this way; frequently it was severe enough to rip a person's body open or cut muscle and sinew to the bone. It was carried out with a whip that had fragments of bone or pieces of metal bound into the tips.The Roman scourging could be so severe that sometimes victims that were not sentenced to death died. There are accounts of scourgings that left the victim's bones exposed. It was a horrific practice.Jesus was probably tied to a pillar or post and beaten with flagella, which as the quotation above explains, were leather whips with interspersed knots with pieces of iron or bone, which left skin hanging from the back in bloody strips.The Mocking“The soldiers braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they clothed him in a purple robe. They came up to him again and again and said, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!' And they struck him repeatedly in the face.” (John 19:2-3)The crown of thorns may have been made for mockery more than torture, although it may have served both purposes. It was probably made from the branches of an available shrub, such as acanthus. The thorns may have been turned outward to simulate a crown instead of inward to produce bleeding. The main point was making Jesus look like a king to then sarcastically mock him. We have records of the Romans abusing other prisoners, even by adorning them as king as well. So, the scene being described is entirely in keeping with Roman practice.Purple was an expensive dye in the ancient world. Consequently, purple clothing was often worn only by the wealthy elite or royalty. For example, the robes of Hellenistic princes were purple. To complete Jesus' costume, the Roman soldiers give him a purple robe. However, if purple was so expensive, would the soldiers dare waste such an item of clothing? The Gospel of Matthew gives us an important clue. In Matthew 27:28, the same item is described as a “scarlet robe.” A scarlet robe would have been worn by a Roman soldier and it was cheaply dyed in contrast to expensive royal purple—but it resembled a king's robe. Imagine a child pretending to be a superhero. His parent may tie a towel around the child's neck and then refer to it as a cape. On one hand we understand that it is a towel, but on the other hand we clearly understand it is meant to represent a cape and would refer to it as such. Similarly, although the soldiers probably used a scarlet military garment to clothe Jesus, everyone understood it was meant to represent a royal purple robe.Finally, the soldiers chant, “Hail, king of the Jews!” In the Eastern Roman Empire, those who worshipped Cesar would chant “Hail, Cesar!” The soldiers purposely utilize the same chant for Jesus to add to their sarcastic mockery.Pilate's Second AttemptPilate's Attempt to Release JesusAfter the scourging and mockery, Pilate attempts to release Jesus once more. Presumably hoping that the flogging had satiated the Jews' bloodthirst, Pilate presents the horrifically bloodied Jesus to them an exclaims, “I find no reason for an accusation against him.” In other words, “Hasn't this innocent man suffered enough for whatever he did to annoy you? Can we be done with this whole ordeal?” The words that Pilate actually uses carry even more irony. Pilate says, “Behold the man!” This sounds strikingly similar to words of God to the prophet Samuel as God presented Israel's first king:When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord said, “Here is the man that I told you about. He will rule over my people.” 1 Samuel 9:17Moreover, “behold the man” is the whole reason for the gospel. God became man! To quote C.S. Lewis, “The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation.” Had God not become man there would be no Gospel, there would be no story to tell, there would be no chance of killing God. We should behold indeed!The Jewish religious elite respond by demanding, “Crucify him!” Pilate has no reason to crucify Jesus, so he responds, “You take him and crucify him!” Pilate's response is a bit metaphorical. The Roman soldiers will have to be the ones to carry out the execution, but it will be done so at the behest of the Jews not the Romans. As we will see throughout the next few verses, John does not exculpate Pilate, who is too weak to save a man he believes to be innocent, but the brunt of the guilt for Jesus' execution is placed squarely on the Jewish elite's shoulders.Why do the “chief priests and their officers” demand execution? Because they have a law and according to that law Jesus ought to die for claiming to be the Son of God. Notice this is a different charge from what Pilate was told earlier—that Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews. However, both charges are related. Since Caesar was understood to be divine, a claim to be a son of a god could be understood by the Romans as a political claim to office. Nonetheless, Pilate seems unconvinced. For Pilate to declare Jesus innocent implies Pilate understood Jesus' claims as merely philosophical, not political.To the reader of John's Gospel, the claim that the law demands Jesus' death because he claims to be God's son would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. The law would certainly demand such a penalty—if the claim were false! That's the whole question. Is Jesus telling the truth or not? Jesus provided miracle after miracle after miracle to substantiate his claims, but nothing sufficed for the religious elite. The careful reader will also detect a deep irony. Jesus is the incarnation of their law (“Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us.” John 1:14). To say that the law demands the death of Jesus is to say that Jesus demands the death of Jesus.Pilate More Afraid than EverWhen Pilate is informed that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he becomes “more afraid than ever.” As a Roman, Pilate would have been familiar with tales of deities appearing in human form and of the harsh consequences to the mortals who rejected them. Consequently, Pilate seems to take the claim of Jesus' divinity quite seriously—ironically, much more seriously than the Jews who witnessed miracle after miracle. A Roman proves more willing to believe the Jewish Messiah than the Jews.Pilate takes Jesus' words so seriously that he immediately grasps the importance of determining Jesus' origin.Recall the following verses:The one who comes from above is superior to all. The one who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is superior to all. He testifies about what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. John 3:31-32Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the solemn truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but my Father is giving you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!” John 6:32-34Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began complaining about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Isn't this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven'?” John 6:41-42The Jews were either too obtuse or too obstinate to understand Jesus when he spoke as being “from heaven,” “from above,” or “from God.” Pilate, who has heard none of these statements, immediately demands such an explanation. “Where do you come from?”Jesus does not respond. In this way, Jesus seals his fate—a fate not brought upon the Jews or the Romans but controlled by Jesus himself all the while.Pilate responds either in annoyance, hostility, or (less likely for a Roman ruler) earnest concern: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don't you know I have the authority to release you and to crucify you?” If, against the odds, Pilate is truly concerned for Jesus, we could take his statement as: “I have the power to help you, but you have to give me something to work with! Help me help you!” If we understand Pilate's statement to be less friendly, we could rewrite his words as saying: “You dare disrespect me while your life is in my hands!” Perhaps Pilate meant his words both ways. Pilate may have been trying to help Jesus while taking offense that, as a scholar (Brown) points out, “by not answering Jesus is somehow looking down on [Pilate].”Jesus' attitude towards Pilate is wholly unexpected, which may have been what earned him some credibility before the Roman ruler. A prisoner, particularly one facing crucifixion, would praise the judge's integrity. Jesus does nothing of the sort.No Authority Except by GodJesus makes clear to Pilate that no, Jesus' life is not in his hands—not ultimately anyways. Pilate has power over Jesus only because God has made it so. If God had so desired, Pilate would have no authority. This statement is partially exculpatory. Pilate may be choosing incorrectly but at least the situation he finds himself in is not of his own making. The Jewish elite, on the other hand, are much guiltier. This messy situation (to use a severe understatement) was not brought upon them. They caused it.The idea that God establishes and uses rulers is not foreign to scripture. We find it both in the Old and the New Testament. The interaction between God and government is a difficult topic that goes well beyond our current study of John. Merely as a introduction to the topic, I quote other verses that touch on the matter.Some of the key passages in the New Testament include:Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except by God's appointment, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by God. So the person who resists such authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will incur judgment (for rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad). Do you desire not to fear authority? Do good and you will receive its commendation because it is God's servant for your well-being. Romans 13:1-4aBe subject to every human institution for the Lord's sake, whether to a king as supreme or to governors as those he commissions to punish wrongdoers and praise those who do good. For God wants you to silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. 1 Peter 2:13-15Throughout the ages, Christians have interpreted these passages differently. Some take them as universal teachings with no exceptions. They would argue that Christians should obey the government regardless of how wicked it is. Romans 13, for example, was heavily preached by German churches in the 40s to convince Christians to follow the Nazi government. Most Christians have taken a more nuanced approach, recognizing the general principle that Christians should be exemplary citizens for the sake of the Gospel. However, the government should be disobeyed or even opposed in a number of situations, like when the government requires Christians to engage in sinful behavior. Some of the key passages in the Old Testament include:“Work to see that the city where I sent you as exiles enjoys peace and prosperity. Pray to the Lord for it. For as it prospers you will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7“This is what the Lord says to his chosen one, to Cyrus, whose right hand I hold in order to subdue nations before him, . . .” Isaiah 45:1aThese Old Testament verses may not seem as impactful as the New Testament verses quoted above, but in context they are nothing short of scandalous. The verse in Jeremiah is written as God decrees the exile of the Jews to Babylon, after the Babylonians utterly destroyed the kingdom of Judah and decimated the Israelites. In the midst of the tragedy, as the Jews are carried off as captives and slaves, God commands them to pray for peace and prosperity for the captors! In an unfathomable twist of events, God will use the nation of Babylon—the same nation he used to destroy his people—to prosper his people. The verse in Isaiah has a similar context—God using the Persians to subdue nations. A gentile king is called anointed.God uses rulers, even the evil ones.Pilate's Third AttemptPilate is so impressed by his conversation with Jesus that he is determined to release him. Although I have tried to keep my opinion mostly out of the discussion, I think this is clear evidence that Pilate's dialogue should not be read mostly with a mocking or hostile tone, but in earnest. Some Eastern Christian churches, such as the Ethiopian and Coptic Orthodox Churches hold that Pontius Pilate later converted to Christianity himself. So they revere Pilate as a saint. These conversion narratives are late and hard to rely on as historical accounts, but I think they make more sense of the text than the negative view of Pilate developed by Western tradition.Whether Pilate was beginning to believe Jesus or not ends up becoming irrelevant. The Jews twist his arm. The Jewish elite threaten Pilate that if he lets Jesus go free, they will tell Caesar that Pilate released a man claiming to be king—i.e., a traitor to Caesar! Pilate has a political calculation to make. Could he defend himself of a treason charge? Could he explain that Jesus' kingdom was not of this world? Recall the discussion above regarding Caesar's precarious political support. His patron had either already been killed or there was mounting opposition against him. Caesar himself was nothing more than an equestrian with a questionable record as a governor. Ultimately, is it worth becoming a martyr for Jesus? Alas, despite Pilate's belief that Jesus was innocent, he opts for political expediency. He caves to the threats of the Jews and condemns Jesus to crucifixion. Again, this moment shifts the weight of blame between the Jewish elite and the Roman governor. Pilate was guilty of weakness—he knew what was right but lacked the courage to see it through. The Jewish elite were guilty of deliberate wrongdoing.The trial reaches its climax in a shocking statement. In my opinion, one could argue that all the hypocrisy, antagonism, and wickedness of the Jewish religious elite builds up to this one stupefying statement: “We have no king except Caesar!” The Jewish religion, at its core, believed that God was their ultimate king ruling from everlasting to everlasting. Moreover, God had and would again appoint a human king over the Israelites, but the king would come from their own people. No foreign king could ever be the true king of Israel—much less Caesar who claimed to be divine. I provide scriptural support for these point below.Notice that in the Old Testament, God is called Israel's Judge:I have not done you wrong, but you are doing wrong by attacking me. May the Lord, the Judge, judge this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites! Judges 11:27bJudge in this context referred to a political office meaning something akin to ruler.God was not often called King of Israel in the Old Testament, but the implication was always clear from his role, for example, as the one who fought wars for the nation of Israel.Joshua captured in one campaign all these kings and their lands, for the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel. Then Joshua and all Israel returned to the camp at Gilgal. Joshua 10:42-43Indeed, when the Israelites demanded a king “just like all the other nations have,” God decried this as a rejection of his kingship.The Lord said to Samuel, “Do everything the people request of you. For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is me that they have rejected as their king. Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected me and have served other gods.” 1 Samuel 8:7-8aWas the concept of demanding a human king intrinsically wrong? No, it was the sinful motives underlying the request that amounted to a rejection of God's authority and plan. In fact, God had promised the Israelites a human king.When you come to the land the Lord your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,” you must select without fail a king whom the Lord your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king—you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. Deuteronomy 17:14-15But regardless of whether a human person ruled over Israel, God's kingship endured forever.But you, O Lord, rule forever, and your reputation endures. Psalm 102:12 (literally “sit enthroned” forever)Moreover, God promised a future king to Israel who would rule forever and bring upon the wonderful promises of the eschaton.For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us. He shoulders responsibility and is called Wonderful Adviser, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His dominion will be vast, and he will bring immeasurable prosperity. He will rule on David's throne and over David's kingdom, establishing it and strengthening it by promoting justice and fairness, from this time forward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of Heaven's Armies will accomplish this. Isaiah 9:6-7With that background in mind, again consider the high priests exclaiming, “We have no king except Caesar!” Caesar was not their king, and he was certainly not their only king. This statement amounts to the kind of blasphemy for which they sought to kill Jesus.Thursday or Friday: When Did Jesus Die?Verse 14 seems to place Jesus' death during Passover (Thursday) instead of the day after (Friday) like all the other Gospels. At least initially, this presents a difficult harmonization question. Are the gospels contradictory with one another? Did John make a mistake? I was going to write somewhat extensively about this question, but I found a great summary of the issue and potential answer:In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus dies the day after Passover. But in John, it seems like he dies on the Passover. Can these be reconciled?The Last Supper is clearly a Seder, a Passover dinner (Matt 26:17-19). Passover lambs were sacrificed earlier that day, Thursday, Nisan 14. Jesus died the next morning, Friday, Nisan 15. However, at first read, John seems to place Jesus' death on the Passover, making it Friday, Nisan 14 (which would only occur in a different year). The chief priests do not want to enter Pilate's palace so that “they might not be defiled but eat the Passover” (John 18:28), and Pilate sends the titulus (the sign for Jesus' cross) proclaiming Jesus as king on “the day of Preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14).There have been a number of proposals attempting to deal with these two different accounts. Some suggest that John is ignoring historical accuracy to make Jesus' death coincide with the slaying of the Passover lambs. Others suggest that John and the Synoptic authors were using different calendars. Although it is true that some early Jews, most notably the Essenes, followed a different calendar, I don't think that really solves the problem in John.Here's the solution I find most likely. “Day of preparation” (παρασκευή, paraskeuē) is also the standard word for “Friday” for early Jews and Christians, since Jewish households had to prepare for the Sabbath every Friday. John clearly means Friday, since he says that this παρασκευή was the day before Sabbath (John 19:31). The other Synoptic Gospels also call the day of the crucifixion παρασκευή (Matt 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54). So the phrase “Preparation of Passover” (παρασκευὴ τοῦ πάσχα) can simply mean “Friday of Passover [week]” rather than “preparation for Passover.” That makes it the same day and date as the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels.What about the chief priests' desire to “eat Passover” that night, after Jesus' death? (John 19:31) While this is definitely evidence for the belief that John has a different chronology, there is a reasonable explanation. Passover is not only a single meal, but a week of festivities, with more than one sacred meal. The chief priests would be more likely than most Jews to be involved in multiple rituals during Passover week, and all of them would have required ritual purity.Personally, I find the suggestion that John got the crucifixion day wrong to be so unlikely as to be untenable. Even if we took the most liberal understanding of the Fourth Gospel's authorship and postulated it was not written by John or his disciples, the other gospels were already popular. The author of the Fourth Gospel, whoever he was, would have known exactly when the crucifixion occurred. The suggestion that John moves the date of the crucifixion to make a theological point seems to me also highly unlikely. Sure, ancient authors were allowed, even expected, to take more liberties when writing a narrative than a modern author might. But there is no indication in the text that John is writing anything but an accurate and chronological description of events. He even provides the time of day in which the events occur. To take this interpretation is to severely undermine the historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel.

Whatever hardships you live with, strengthen yourself with Christ's example on the night he was betrayed. Take up your cross daily, and do it to the tune of a hymn.

As for the failures of the Church: the faithful and the faithless have failed to be perfect in all eras and situations and nations since the beginning of time, and on that all groups agree. If you don't believe me, you haven't read the Old Testament or the Greek epics or even Native American myths, because all takes are full of fallen man. The news from last evening where I live was full of overdoses, murders, and domestic disputes. We cannot keep the Commandments, not without help from above. This is kind of the whole point of the person of Jesus, and why he came, in case you didn't know, and many today don't know. It's an interesting time because millions of people have not heard the Gospel, or have no idea of what it says.He brought us the second part of what we need, called the Beatitudes, but people are less aware of these than they are of the Commandments. The Commandments are like a beam we have to walk on above a shark filled tank. But the Commandments with the Beatitudes is like a nice sidewalk with a guardrail above the shark tank where we can relax, be joyful, and not be constantly worried about falling off the beam.We cannot live the Beatitudes by themselves either. We need the Commandments with the Beatitudes, otherwise we just discard the idea of sin altogether. We need to use the cheat code. There is a cheat code, but it's not as easy as what video game developers build into their systems. The way to win is to stop trying to cheat. We have to take up our cross and follow Christ. I think what people fail to understand is that Christ showed us how to live. In the devolving of Christendom, through our obsession with knowledge, we have to unlearn and invert nearly everything that our American teachers have taught us to value, from public school, to Hollywood, to government. Christ way of living is an inversion of Americanism, which is why Americanism was called out as a heresy by the Church in 1899. Pope Leo XIII didn't just go on the offensive against the errors of Karl Marx in Rerum Novarum (a prophetic encyclical that predicted all of the horrors of Communism), he also called out the errors that Thomas Jefferson gave birth to with his mistress, the “pursuit of happiness.” This might be a news flash to some: the Church is neither capitalist nor socialist. Instead, the Church is for both the Commandments and the Beatitudes. Again, Catholicism is a both/and religion, except for when it comes to ideologies - then it is neither/nor. Sometimes I think we focus on the Commandments too much and forget about the Beatitudes. A common critique of Catholics is that they are “too dogmatic,” and act like Pharisees. But oddly enough, while, yes, Jesus does scold the Pharisees frequently, the reason he does is telling. In Matthew 23, Jesus says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”Now, this can be passed over easily, but Jesus says something really important here. The Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. The Church today refers to “the seat of Peter,” or “the chair of Peter.” The Pharisees, according to Jesus himself, have authority to interpret Sacred Scripture. This, dear reader, is why the Pharisees bear the brunt of Jesus' anger in the Gospels. God chose Moses. He chose Moses' successors, and they are the Pharisees. It is not the Sadducees, or Jesus would have said that they sit on Moses' seat. This idea of Moses' seat must be attended to. Later, in Matthew 28, Jesus says before ascending to heaven something extremely important about that authority. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”So the Pharisees held the seat of Moses, and Jesus was given all authority in heaven and earth. But what about when he's gone? Then who has authority to interpret and defend the Word of God? Who will the Holy Spirit be with? Well, that was covered in Matthew 16:18-19. Simon was given a new name, Peter, the rock, upon who he would build his church. “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”Let's recap here. Jesus states plainly that there is to be a Church. One Church. Peter is the leader. This is a direct commission, by name. There's not even any wiggle room on this for interpretation. Further, nothing will ever defeat the Church that is founded on Peter, even though that Church may be attacked by Hell itself. There is only one Church founded on Peter. That is the Catholic Church. Ok fine. So we know there is to be a Church. We also know that baptism is important, even critical to salvation. The Eucharist is as well, which Jesus spoke ample words about at the Last Supper and in the Bread of Life chat after feeing the 5,000. And in this verse above, we know that Confession is important because in order to “bind” and “loose” sins, you have to speak them out loud to someone. As far as I know, the Apostles could not read minds like Jesus. (Although Peter does seem to be able to in Acts with Ananias, but that's another story). In Matthew 18:18-19, Jesus also states this “binding and loosing” power. He also says that his followers must gather in Jesus' name, meaning there should be what? A meeting. “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”Now, this brings me to a point about the Gospel of Matthew that has led me to many hours of pondering and displeasure, which I will write about later or this will never end. I am teeming with words here, so I need to resist commenting on the lies of 19th century German scholarship and their intentions of tearing down Matthew because of these important phrases.Let's get back to the Commandments and the Beatitudes, and why both are needed. Living by the Commandments and the Beatitudes can only come through following Jesus. You can't have one without the other. Otherwise you end up a Pharisee, a legalist on the one hand, and on the other hand you are all free-love and dope and Jesus becomes the Big Lebowski, the dude. In fact, if you watch the Big Lebowski, you can see the problems of Pharisees and libertines rather plainly. Walter is a jerk obsessed about the rules, and the Dude cares for no rules. One is all justice and is a hypocrite, and the other is a buffoon that stands for nothing. Donny, the forgotten third character, is a kind of Jesus character, and indeed, he is indirectly killed by Walter and Dude's dispute with the nihilists, which wouldn't have happened had they not both been so hell-bent on justice (Walter) and mercy (the Dude). Donny is martyred for their sins. So we need to be like Donny a bit. Humble. Peaceful. Seeking righteousness while following the rules. Ok, now forget Donny. Be like Jesus.When you wake up in the morning, surrender to God, be grateful for breath, and ask Jesus, “What are we going to do today?” To follow him requires surrender and obedience. Freedom requires forgetting the self. Let's cut to the chase: nobody loves a list of rules. Rules alone do not inspire. No one ever built a Cathedral because of a list of rules any more than the local swimming pool was built to hang up a sign of “pool rules.” Kids do not go to the swimming pool on a hot summer day to celebrate the rules. They go to the pool to play and cannonball and scream and splash. This to me is the fundamental error of the Pharisees, and Catholics can become Pharisaical quickly if they think the early Christians were gathering just to celebrate a list of rules instead of cannonballing into a pool with Christ. They came for community, beauty, joy, truth. St. Peter's Basilica and Notre Dame were not built so that we could hang up a sign that read, “No running. No glass bottles.” They were built because people experience a union with God that unshackles them from life and makes them free, in a way that the pool, or drinking, or sex, or money, or trophies can never even come close to reaching. The funny thing about the rules is that once you find that key that opens the door, and you follow Christ, only then do the rules make total sense and you actually want to follow them. You even yearn to follow them, because it would please God to do so. In fact, the pool was built for joy, but if there were no pool rules it would be chaos and no one would want to swim there. Lawless pools with loud drunks and kids running wild end up as empty pools. Suddenly, once you believe, the joy singing goes right along with the requirements of fasting. The prayer where the heart surges toward God goes right alongside Confession. That's the miracle that happens, which I will keep repeating it on this site until I move to my cave someday, following the leads of St. Benedict or St. Anthony of Egypt, where there is no internet.We're all “failures” to some degree and we deal with our human flaws in different ways. This is the problem of sin. In order to feel better, we need to elevate our side. Out of this competition, scapegoats are born. We want to scapegoat and point fingers at the failures of our opponents. The notion to blame is always inserted into our heads, put there as a thought from somewhere. I can tell you where that somewhere thought comes from. For many years I assumed thoughts came from myself, but the conception of thoughts have outer origins. It is from the devil, who is the divider and the distractor. There I said it. The devil is real. What a relief. It's nice to stop dancing around these things and just say it. The favorite, perennial scapegoat for all sides is the Church, as in the Catholic Church, because it's an easy target, and it is the main target. And I mean all sides are on the attack. Even Catholics attack the Church relentlessly, from both the liberal progressive side and the Rad-Trad side. After a while, when you see how much hatred is directed at the Church, it should start to make you wonder. Why? Why is there so much hate against the Church? Because they say that abortion is wrong? Because they say that marriage is between a man and a woman? Because they reprimanded Galileo? Because of the Crusades? There are hundreds of these reasons, but none of them are the real reason.The real reason is because God granted the Church authority on interpreting faith and morals until Jesus returns, and we really, really hate anyone telling us how to live. We hate authority. But that is exactly what Jesus claimed, and he deputized the Apostles, with Peter as the leader. Even “scripture alone” interpreters have to dance around the fact of Jesus giving the keys to Peter, and Peter being the rock of the Church. Furthermore, you have to pretend Peter never lived in Rome, and do all kind of “textual criticism” and other rain-dances to try and undo the fact that the Church was founded on Peter, and Peter's took his seat in Rome. We hate authority so much that we'll do anything to tear it down or avoid it. And this is precisely what the devil does. It's really the first line from the serpent over and over again, as he said to Eve: “Did God really say…?” That is his opening phrase and his unending hymn of rebellion. When Jesus gave Peter the keys to the Church, he chose a leader and gave him and the Apostles the authority to bind and loose sins. This is really irritating to people because it means that someone has the authority, and the reason we dislike that idea is because we, each of us, wants to be king. Thus, the claim to authority over faith and morals becomes a target just as it did in the Garden of Eden, when the authority of God was questioned and rejected. Now, I know for any of my Protestant friends who read this, they will disagree, and will assume that for 1,500 years the church was in the wrong, and only the Reformation brought Christianity back to life. But that assumes that all of the spiritual battles and bloodshed by every saint and martyr from 30 A.D. onward was for a Church on the wrong track, which to me is ludicrous. The early church was the Catholic Church, and the more I read of early Church history, the more it's clear that the doctrines in the Catechism we use today matches with what Jesus and the Apostles believed. As John Henry Neumann said, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."But, even Protestants should be wary of this urge to blame Catholics, because if they pray for the demise of the Church and the Pope, you can bet that the next domino to go is your local Bible-believing neighborhood church, because the only keeper of doctrine is then in the pastor's head, or three-ring binder, or the next vote at the annual conference. Chastity is currently on the chopping block for many Protestants, and the faith of the early church is being flung aside for the spirit of the age. The long history of half-truths being told about the Catholic Church will only blow up in the face of anti-Catholic Christians in the end. Why? Because we are all, at the root, brothers in Christ. We are all drinking from the same vine. But here's my belief: the last stand of Christianity will be made in the barque of Peter, the Catholic Church, not in your local pastor's three-ring binder, or in the Southern Baptist Convention or in one of the Lutheran Synods or in the First, Second, or Third Baptist Church. And if the barque of Peter goes down, then so shall all other boats, because the focal point of the anger always lands on the Church. If the gates of hell were to prevail against the Catholic Church (which can't actually happen), then all of the denominations that came after the Catholic Church will lose the boogeyman. Then they will become the boogeyman and would crumble quickly under the weight of the world. The Church, I believe, is in the world, but is not of this world, and Jesus guaranteed that his followers would be hated, and they most certainly are. But that only encourages us to keep speaking, to keep partaking in the Sacraments, and to keep “praying to Mary and our statues” as the detractors like to say. As for the unbelievers, the “love of others” has taken precedent over the first commandment of Christ, which is to “love God.” And here's the problem with that: When love of God and his word gets put into second place and given the silver medal, then love thy neighbor attempts to take the podium, the gold. Unfortunately, this never works. There is a reason for the order. The imitation of Christ is not a game with optional modes of play, it's guidance for the salvation of your soul. So much has been forgotten in the distractions and fragmentation of modern thought. This is why you now see Pride flags outside of Methodist and ELCA churches that would make the Wesley brothers' and Martin Luther's heads explode. It's honestly hard to imagine a greater insult to their names and legacy than what has happened in their churches, but because their own step to form these churches was one of protest, it's not terribly surprising that the protestors are now protesting the earlier protestors. This again, goes back to the beginning and illustrates exactly why the odd story of the Garden of Eden has such lasting power. Obedience to God must be first. Not flags, not clubs, not organizations, and certainly nothing national or political. None of those things can provide the foundation needed. If Jesus said that not one letter of the law would be undone, meaning the Commandments, then how on earth can you skip Sunday Mass for youth sports or claim that sex outside of marriage is allowed? You can only do that if you are ignoring what Jesus says. And the Church was established to defend and follow his example. To argue against marriage and chastity means you have to throw out the Gospel, and if you start throwing out parts, you've thrown out all of it. It comes as a package. Moreover, it only makes sense as an entire package. The baby and bathwater are both out on the lawn now in those churches because they have rejected the Gospel and called it “love.” What they really mean by love is “lust.” Many people have forgotten that Jesus was a celibate man his whole life and ardently, clearly stated that there is to be one marriage in life, and if you aren't married, no sex. No one wants to hear that, but it's incredibly loud and crystal clear if we would just take a minute to open up the book and actually look at the words. The only thing the Church is saying to make people so angry is the exact words of Jesus in Mark 6. It's remarkable really, that just repeating the Gospel words, as they are written, can cause such madness among us lusty moderns. That is how you can tell that we are under a kind of slavery to the passions. The same happens when you try to take away an addict's drugs or when a wealthy person's finances collapse. When the devil finds the right bait for each of us, he keeps using it and sets the hook deep.In our era, methinks the Protesting hath gone on too long and each protesting generation tries to remake the world anew in its own desires. This is why the saying rings true that “A church that marries the age it finds itself in will find itself a widow in the next.” This is the logical conclusion of sola scriptura and sola fide. By faith alone, you can do whatever you want because you were saved fifteen years ago. With sola scriptura, you can interpret the book yourself, however you like, which is being proved out right now before our eyes. Want to throw out chastity? It's gone! Poof. Want to sacralize greed? As you wish, says Kenneth Copeland. Want to rid yourself of the Eucharist and just focus on preaching? Welcome to the party, Zwingli and all you other random people who wants to start your own church. Every heresy since Christ rose from the tomb has played out again and again, thanks to the five solas of Protestantism, but mostly because of two: sola fide and sola scriptura. You can argue yourself into any position, because, well, why not? If you're saved by your faith, actions don't matter. If traditional interpretations of scripture doesn't quite match your wants, then you can hammer it intellectually into the shape you like. Works? Works mean nothing. Works are optional. As soon as you cut out the physical, as soon as the Sacraments are not needed, you've cut the body from the soul, because the body is what carries out “works.” In fact, if there is one damning bit of evidence against Protestantism's shedding of the Sacraments it's that Covid proved that church attendance is not necessary. The internet and streaming video seems to be God's humorous way of proving that “four walls and a sermon” make not a Church, because now everyone can stay home to watch it online. Covid presented this fact in full, because a community gathering to hear a sermon is only as compelling as the speaker, and if the mouthpiece can be piped into the ear alone, then getting dressed and driving to church is not needed. With the Catholic Mass, attendance is required. You cannot do confession over Zoom, and you most certainly cannot receive the Eucharist through an iPhone. Again, body and soul are required in the Catholic Church. This is a great feature of the Church. It's worth noting that Jesus isn't here in the flesh. He is risen. So that means that we must act as the arms and legs now. He is the head of the Church, but the mystical body is important, too. We can use our individual bodies like cells of the mystical body. Our bodies can move around. We can use our bodies to feed the poor or to carry out sinful actions. Ideally, we move toward using it for God's purposes rather than our own. Socialists understand that the body is needed to do good things, so they have half of this whole thing figured out, except they deny the soul. Protestants have the soul and faith part figured out, but can't quite factor in the body because it's not really needed. Put them together and you have something more whole, body and soul, and it's called the Catholic Church. I don't believe that scripture alone or faith alone jives with the Gospel. Otherwise, when you are on your third marriage or looking at porn or having extra-marital sex, you get angry when the Church merely points out the words that Jesus said. Simply reminding others what Jesus said about marriage gets people fired up. It's not like the Church made any of this up. Jesus said these things and the Apostles wrote them down. Merely saying what Jesus said invokes rage from many unbelievers and Protestors, because they have already decided that Jesus is some watered down hippy teacher. But he's a knife that divides people. He was clearly offensive. Nice people don't get crucified. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

Yeshua and His disciples had crossed over the Kidron Valley into the Garden of Gethsemane after they had finished all the events that occurred at the Last Supper. Yeshua was deeply troubled about the events that were about to unfold and sought a quiet place in the Garden where He would agonize in prayer for three solid hours.    It was while they were in the Garden of Gethsemane, and after He had agonized in prayer and committed to Father's will, that Judas brought with him a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the Chief Priests and the Elders of the people to arrest Yeshua.   After a minor scuffle, the disfigurement of a guard, and a healing miracle, Yeshua was apprehended. He was taken into custody to be put on trial just as He had predicted would happen before He came into the vicinity of Jerusalem. The events that followed were a flagrant display of lawlessness, abuse of authority, and inhumane treatment against the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world.    

Jase and Phil have a few choice words for Willie. Zach can't wait for people to see the updated Phil & Miss Kay section of the Duck Commander tour! Jase and Al continue the conversation from the last "Overtime" episode about all manner of public bathroom etiquette rules, and Zach admits he's never experienced what Jase did ... thankfully. What is YOUR public bathroom strategy, especially if your stomach is a bit upset? Plus, the guys dive into the Last Supper. The Blind hits theaters in 2023. Get updates, trailers, behind-the-scenes moments, and special opportunities here: https://theblindmovie.com - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We continue in our study through the gospels - The Betrayal; Prepare The Passover; The Last Supper; A Big Discrepancy Reading: Matthew 26:14-19, Mark 14:10-16, Luke 22:3-13, John 13:1 Scripture: Zechariah 11:12-13, Exodus 21:32, 1 Samuel 16:14-15, Matthew 27:3 Oki Dokinotes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11tKD376-YmVdoEgyRVWkv1rfKzLpJKFg/view?usp=sharing

Last week in Part 2 of The Last Supper and Passover, we investigated further the conversation, dialogue, and language of the Gospel narrative of Matthew and compared statements made in the Gospel narrative of John to help determine and answer that very important question of whether the last supper Yeshua ate with His disciples was the Passover meal. We established a timeline of events that occurred while Yeshua and His disciples were together and discerned what was said and done as they shared their last supper together. After Yeshua and His disciples had eaten and done all that had to be done, according to prophecy, they went to the Garden of Gethsemane where another prophecy would be fulfilled. Yeshua was deeply troubled about the events that were about to unfold and sought a quiet place in the Garden where He would agonize in prayer for three solid hours. Yeshua's disciples, whom He had instructed to watch and pray, after a very long day of teaching, eating, and ministry were very tired and struggled to stay awake. We will join Yeshua and His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane as prophecy is being fulfilled in this teaching, Another Prophecy Fulfilled.  

Friends of the Rosary: Merry Christmas! Today is the Feast of St. John Apostle and Evangelist. St. John, the son of Zebedee and brother of St. James the Great, become the beloved disciple of Jesus. He wrote the fourth Gospel, three Epistles, and the Book of the Apocalypse or Revelation. St. John was present with Peter and James at the Transfiguration of Christ and witnessed His agony in the Garden. At the Last Supper, he leaned on the Master's breast. At the foot of the cross, Jesus entrusted His Mother to his care. He was the only one of the Apostles who did not forsake the Savior in the hour of His Passion and Death. John's pure life kept him very close to Jesus and Mary for years to come. St. John described in his Gospel the pre-existence of the Word, who by His Incarnation became the light of the world and the life of our souls. He was later exiled to the Island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse, but afterward returned to Ephesus to take care of the Holy Virgin. St. John died in peace at Ephesus, at the age of ninety-four years old. “My dear children, love one another,” was the message of his preaching. Ave Maria! Jesus, I Trust In You! St. John, Pray for Us! + Mikel A. | RosaryNetwork.com, New York • December 27, 2021, Today's Rosary on YouTube | Daily broadcast at 7:30 pm ET

Full Text of ReadingsFeast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist Lectionary: 697The Saint of the day is Saint John the EvangelistSaint John the Evangelist's Story It is God who calls; human beings answer. The vocation of John and his brother James is stated very simply in the Gospels, along with that of Peter and his brother Andrew: Jesus called them; they followed. The absoluteness of their response is indicated by the account. James and John “were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him” (Matthew 4:21b-22). For the three former fishermen—Peter, James and John—that faith was to be rewarded by a special friendship with Jesus. They alone were privileged to be present at the Transfiguration, the raising of the daughter of Jairus and the agony in Gethsemane. But John's friendship was even more special. Tradition assigns to him the Fourth Gospel, although most modern Scripture scholars think it unlikely that the apostle and the evangelist are the same person. John's own Gospel refers to him as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2), the one who reclined next to Jesus at the Last Supper, and the one to whom Jesus gave the exquisite honor of caring for his mother, as John stood beneath the cross. “Woman, behold your son…. Behold, your mother” (John 19:26b, 27b). Because of the depth of his Gospel, John is usually thought of as the eagle of theology, soaring in high regions that other writers did not enter. But the ever-frank Gospels reveal some very human traits. Jesus gave James and John the nickname, “sons of thunder.” While it is difficult to know exactly what this meant, a clue is given in two incidents. In the first, as Matthew tells it, their mother asked that they might sit in the places of honor in Jesus' kingdom—one on his right hand, one on his left. When Jesus asked them if they could drink the cup he would drink and be baptized with his baptism of pain, they blithely answered, “We can!” Jesus said that they would indeed share his cup, but that sitting at his right hand was not his to give. It was for those to whom it had been reserved by the Father. The other apostles were indignant at the mistaken ambition of the brothers, and Jesus took the occasion to teach them the true nature of authority: “…[W]hoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27-28). On another occasion, the “sons of thunder” asked Jesus if they should not call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable Samaritans, who would not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to Jerusalem. But Jesus “turned and rebuked them” (see Luke 9:51-55). On the first Easter, Mary Magdalene “ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, ‘They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him'” (John 20:2). John recalls, perhaps with a smile, that he and Peter ran side by side, but then “the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first” (John 20:4b). He did not enter, but waited for Peter and let him go in first. “Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed” (John 20:8). John was with Peter when the first great miracle after the Resurrection took place—the cure of the man crippled from birth—which led to their spending the night in jail together. The mysterious experience of the Resurrection is perhaps best contained in the words of Acts: “Observing the boldness of Peter and John and perceiving them to be uneducated, ordinary men, they [the questioners] were amazed, and they recognized them as the companions of Jesus” (Acts 4:13). The Apostle John is traditionally considered the author also of three New Testament letters and the Book of Revelation. His Gospel is a very personal account. He sees the glorious and divine Jesus already in the incidents of his mortal life. At the Last Supper, John's Jesus speaks as if he were already in heaven. John's is the Gospel of Jesus' glory. Reflection It is a long way from being eager to sit on a throne of power or to call down fire from heaven to becoming the man who could write: “The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). Saint John the Evangelist is the Patron Saint of: Turkey Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

December 27: Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist c. Early First Century–c. 100 Feast; Third day in the Octave of Christmas; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of authors, loyalty, and friendship Outside of Christianity, few people believe God is love Saint Jerome, while living in Palestine in the late 300s, relates a touching anecdote still being told at that time about John the Evangelist.  When John was old and feeble, Jerome recounts, and no longer able to walk or preach, he would be carried among the faithful in church and would repeat only one thing over and over again: “My little children, love one another.” Saint Polycarp, through Saint Irenaeus, tells us that Saint John's long life ended peacefully in Ephesus about 100 A.D. John was the only Apostle not to die a martyr. John's old age in Ephesus was a long way from where his life began on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Young John was sitting in his boat mending his nets alongside his brother James when an enigmatic but straight-talking teacher who lived in nearby Capernaum (Mt 4:13) walked by. Jesus saw the brothers on the water and challenged them to follow Him and become fishers of men (Mt 4:21–22). John and his brother said “Yes.” Their immediate and generous response put them at the red hot center of a movement which would change the world. From that decisive moment onward, John was at Christ's side in the quiet times and in the momentous times. Text BoxA picture containing building, window, large, womanDescription automatically generatedPeter, James, and John were the select Three inside of the Twelve. John saw Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor and wondered at what it meant. He leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper and stood under His drooping body at the foot of the cross. John was the first to reach the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday, though he deferred to age and authority and let Peter enter the tomb first. John sees the resurrected Jesus in the upper room and then back where it all began, at the Sea of Galilee. John perseveres despite persecution, even the religiously inspired murder of his brother. John likely accompanied the Virgin Mary to Ephesus, where both shared their memories and tender faith with the Christian community there over the decades and years. John's Gospel is stylistically distinct from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He likely wrote it in his old age. Perhaps many calm years mellowed the Gospel's tone, allowing John to draw out God's pure love more than His fight. John's Gospel, his letters, and his Book of Revelation soar. They offer a high theology of Christ, a supernatural, often mystical vision of Christ's role in salvation. John is the Apostle who best conveys God's love. It is a commonplace to say that God is love. It is also commonplace to say that any further description of God complicates His simplicity and leads to arguments, division, and violence. Yet the Christian attestation that “God is love” is like a flag snapping in the wind at the summit of a mountain of thought—complicated and nuanced theological and philosophical thought. The simplest thing we can say about God is tied to the most complex thing we can say about God. It took centuries of hard climbing to plant that flag of love at the summit. To say God is love implies a wealth of supportive truths.  The harshness and apparent injustice of life does not naturally lead to the conclusion that God is love, and no one said that God was love before Christians said it. For many, God was, and is, a master, a warrior, a hero, an oak, a waterfall, or a sunrise. God was a growling earthquake, a mighty storm, a tidal wave that drowned the new colony. God took vengeance for sins and flooded the earth when the people disobeyed. He was like a hunter on the prowl, his bow arched with arrow ready to fly. Reading the history of man and experiencing daily life, it is in no way clear that God is love. We have to be told this. We have to see this. We have to experience this. And the Church tells us and shows us this constantly. That many people the world over instinctively think that God is love is a triumph of the Church and of Saint John the Evangelist. To say this and to think this is to break one's lance against the brick wall of daily life. But it is also to say the truth, a received truth. God loves Himself in the Holy Trinity first, and then that loves radiates outward to all of us. Without knowing that, we cannot know the rest. Saint John the Evangelist, you wrote of God's love for you, Christ's Beloved Disciple. Through your intercession in heaven, inspire all writers and evangelists to convey God's goodness and love, so that the entire world knows that there is one person, a divine person, who cares.

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they put him.” So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. John 20:1–3It's interesting that Saint John refers to himself as the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” Of course, Jesus loved all people. He loved all of the disciples. But in John's Gospel, this unique title of the beloved disciple is given to John.Saint John the Apostle may be understood as this beloved disciple for many reasons. First, recall the special closeness and affection John shows Jesus at the Last Supper when John reclined next to Him. Recall, also, that it was John alone who stood at the foot of the Cross with Jesus' mother and that Jesus entrusted His mother to John and John to His mother. And note in the passage above that it was John who first ran to the empty tomb as soon as Mary Magdalene revealed her discovery to him. Furthermore, many scholars believe John to be the youngest disciple. And as a younger disciple, he may have received special fatherly-like attention from our Lord.However, John may also be understood as the beloved disciple for another reason. Simply put, this is how John saw himself as he wrote his Gospel account. John may have done so because telling the story of Jesus' life was deeply personal to him. His own love and affection for his Lord was the central and most consuming passion of his soul. And it appears that as John speaks of Jesus, and of his own encounters with Jesus, John was compelled to prayerfully ponder the holy and spiritual love that Jesus had for him. Thus, it appears that John could not speak of his encounters with our Lord without also identifying the divine love that united them. It's as if every time his Gospel story spoke of an encounter he had with Jesus, John was overwhelmed by the simple fact that Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, knew him and loved him personally. And so he was compelled to state that fact over and over.In this case, it's quite beautiful, on a spiritual level, to ponder John's soul. He was clearly a man who was deeply touched by God in the Person of Jesus. And after Jesus ascended into Heaven, it appears that John's holy love for Jesus only grew. As he went forth as an Apostle, preaching about the salvation that comes through his Savior and dear friend, he clearly grew closer to our Lord day by day. When John wrote his Gospel toward the end of his life, his heart was clearly aflame with divine love as he was intensely looking forward to being fully united with his Lord in Heaven.As we honor this unique and holy Apostle, reflect, today, upon the simple truth that you are also invited to share in the holy and intimate love shared by Jesus and Saint John. Ponder the fact that our Lord also loves you with perfect charity, intimacy and totality. If you can gaze upon the love in the heart of this beloved disciple, then you, too, can share in that love and become a beloved disciple yourself.My beloved Lord, the love You bestowed upon the disciple John was perfect in every way. After Your ascension into Heaven, You continued to deepen Your relationship with him, drawing him ever closer to Your Sacred Heart. Please pour forth upon me that same love and draw me into Your Heart so that I, too, will become Your beloved disciple. Saint John, pray for us.  Jesus, I trust in You.Source of content: catholic-daily-reflections.comCopyright © 2022 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission via RSS feed.

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Today's transcript Thank you for joining us as we lead people to Jesus through friendship, good conversation, and the Rosary! The Daily Rosary Meditations is now an App! Click here for more info. We depend on donations from exceptional listeners like you. A small monthly gift goes a long way to help us deliver this podcast. To donate, click here To find out more about The Movement and enroll: https://www.schooloffaith.com/membership Prayer requests | Subscribe by email | Download our app | Donate

Welcome to a new episode of Cookies and Beer! This week we talk about doing what you want on Christmas, religion, my movie idea for a Jesus themed action movie, and much more. I love you all, thank you! Andrew Wagner (DOTP - December 23rd 1999) IG - cookiesandbeerpodcast  email - cookiesandbeer19@gmail.com

People today believe that Christianity is being put back into its cage. That it's being snuffed out. But what those poor folks don't realize is how the release of the old pluralistic religions into the world, like that of Rome in the first century, is creating the exact same conditions that allowed Christianity to take hold and win hearts in the first place. What kind of world do we imagine the twelve apostles woke up in each morning? There wasn't even a single church for them to go to. They had nothing but the life and words of Jesus, and even that wasn't written down yet. They didn't have pamphlets to hand out or crosses to give away. They only had faith that Jesus was God, and with a rudimentary liturgy from the Last Supper, they built the church from that. They lived among the most hostile of worlds to the idea they were selling. It inverted everything that the Romans and Jews and every other culture held as truth. Yet the message of “Surrender your life to the crucified Christ, the humble carpenter, and you will find peace!” took the world by storm. For the apostles, there wasn't even so much as an Adoration Chapel to find refuge in, unless you count the Upper Room where they huddled in fear until Pentecost. Those who wish for the death of the Christian faith or the Catholic Church may be in for a rude awakening when the conditions are re-created so that this dynamite can erupt once again. The watered-down, lukewarm, stale versions of Christianity has turned people off, as familiarity breeds contempt. The merger of worldly desires with the goals of Christianity has repulsed people. But the more that we retreat from the ideas that Jesus brought to us, we will begin to realize what we had, and what we lost, and why it won so many hearts and minds in the first place. The Way, as it was originally called, long before it was called Christianity, was a life of total surrender to Christ; to Jesus himself, the risen and glorified God-man. The Way, long before the Mandalorian borrowed that noun, meant abandoning all possessions and goals and desires to be reborn in life through Christ. As we separate into our homes, hovering over our devices, in isolation, the communities of real people that form around Christ and his Church will once again remind us how his victory was achieved without sending down fire from heaven. That's the freedom that Christ gives. That's the relationships that he creates. That's the whole secret. And that's the recipe that has been put into storage and is waiting to be re-introduced, and will be in spectacular fashion once the “Big Empty” of this world's pleasures becomes felt again. As it was in the first century, so shall it be again. I've said it more than once on this site but I'll say it again. We are lost in the morass of modern desires because of a simple fact:We want the wrong things. In this age of comfort we have the extreme luxury of being able to assume that we are in charge, that we humans don't need a healer or savior. However, anyone who has gotten drunk a thousand times trying to find heaven can tell you (pick me!) that the next thousand times turns into hell. The same goes for sex or anything else, because the initial high wears off and the addiction takes you by the throat. We may not need a cataclysm to find the need for God, but we will have signs along the way even in days of comfort. One sure fire way to remove all doubt of our need for God is when food prices triple and fuel runs out. Then we may be reminded of what the pre-Christian world was like, and what type of people and powers occupied it. Affluence can provide a mask of control over our affairs, when in reality we are just a few weeks of broken supply-chain away from total desperation. Even without something dramatic we will find the same conclusion. We control nothing in the end. There are two great tests in life. One is not getting what you want, and the other is getting what you want. For those of us who have lived in the West our entire lives, we don't know what it means to live in a fully godless society, but we should remain under no illusion that our chance to learn isn't nearing. Within the last century, Mexico and Russia have had extermination campaigns to kill off every priest in the land, and both have failed. This has happened before. It has happened in all of Europe during the early centuries of Christianity. It has happened in Japan. Priests are getting killed every week in Nigeria even today. There are thousands of pages of martyr stories from every corner and country in the world. It is happening now in Nicaragua. It will most certainly happen in America at some point. Rest assured, there is a new Miguel Pro right now, already born today in one of the fifty states. There is a St. Lawrence and a St. Joan of Arc, already attending faith formation classes somewhere. They are out there, praying, on their journey toward God. St. Paul went to Athens, the place of sophisticated non-believers, and stood on the Areopagus long ago, but we are reaching a point where it will happen again, because most people today don't even know the story of Jesus. We are traveling backward in time. Few kids today could tell you who Moses or David was or why their names are known. This whole yo-yo effect nearly has a Big Bang feel to it, like how the universe is said to expand and contract. It's like there is a parallel in human history, as the expansion of sin ran amok from Adam to Noah, then contracted in the Flood. Then sin expanded again, from Babylon through Rome, and then contracted once Christ's message was rolled into the cosmos from the center-point of the ancient world in Jerusalem. The false religions started backpedaling into hiding. And today, as promised by Jesus, the devil would be let free for awhile and sin would seem to rule. The devil has been released for his time, and clearly the twentieth century was part of his allowance. If you don't believe the message of Christ is divinely inspired, then you have to at least consider the fact that the story of Christ is far more compelling to people than that of Zeus or Wicca or the other stories of supernatural explanations. The fact is that Christianity has a far better story, even if you don't believe in supernatural things. We have just stopped telling the story because many of the tellers can't separate themselves from the Word of God. The reason the message is diluted is because you have everyone claiming the message and welding their favorite sin onto the message, whether it be love of money or sexual sin. We are lacking heroes and authentic lives. We don't yet have our St. Benedict or St. Sixtus or St. Anthony of Egypt. But that person will arrive. The false prophets are loud, but they will fade away. And even if they continue to make noise and draw followers, the way of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is already known to those who seek to follow Him. People have forgotten that demons exist. Now we are emboldened by a false sense of security, as the chaos of the world seems gone. We can walk into dark basements and tell ourselves that no monsters exist. Feeling so bold, we have even started seeking out those demons once again. But we are only bold because we know the light switch is near. The comfort of technology and electricity acts as a security blanket. After all, monsters aren't real, or so we tell ourselves. So there's nothing to be afraid of. Right? And yet people still go out into the countryside, or woods, or a basement when the bulb is out, and they start to wonder…what if they are real? The boldness shrinks when the lights go out, or the engine fails, or the boat starts to take on water. People who are glued to screens do not understand what prior generations did. As soon as the chaos peeks its head out from the darkness, we're not so sure that those monsters are gone. This is the result of people trying to live on reason alone. Stuffing our sense of the supernatural into a box doesn't make it disappear. The ghosts and demons come out of hiding once God is forgotten or ignored. Since the demons cannot destroy God, the next best thing is to destroy his beloved creation, and that means you and me. The best way to destroy a person is to tell them there is no God. It's also the easiest. We are wired for God, but we are wired for desire and rebellion as well. The wiring for God urges us, via our consciences, to seek God, as doing the wrong thing leaves us empty. No one wakes up from a one-night stand and feels fulfilled. No one wakes up after a food or drinking binge and feels it was a good decision. If they do, they are already long down the path of denying that sin exists. Habitual sin acts like blinders on a horse, keeping the soul going in the direction where the devil wants to take you. The good that we are after is not the stuff or substance that we want. It's something far better, but we have to give up our self to obtain what is truly good. As soon as there is no God, then we can not only do whatever we like, but then we must solve all of our problems by ourselves and using things in this world. Or, if we can't solve them, we at least must shove our problems out of the way. This can be seen in basic data points, like how non-religious doctors are much more likely to hasten and accelerate death of terminally ill patients. The reality of the denial of God and rejection of the idea of sin rises up like swamp gas. Once the flip of the switch is made where God is not something to be taken seriously, then something must take its place because we still need salvation, a healer. If you don't think you do, examine where all of your free time is spent and you will find your surrogate savior. For many, it's sports. For others, it's politics. For the more obvious sinners, it's drugs, alcohol, and sex. In all cases, the person of Jesus takes a backseat, or is kicked out the car altogether. For those who remain on a strict diet of Enlightenment thinking, they have tapped technology to play the savior. They have turned to science, because rejecting spirits and God leaves no where else to turn. At least the seekers who summon spirits are trying, unboxing that supernatural feeling. Reason alone leaves you as half a human. The body and the soul must be put back together, as is done to Peter in John, Chapter 6. When all other options have failed, when flat reason and unbelief leaves you flat, and the false religions are outed as nonsense, you will have nowhere else to turn. Consider this exchange between Peter and Jesus, but replace the word “Jesus” with “Science” or “Technology” or “Wicca” or “Astrology”. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:67-69)Now the modern version:Science then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Science, to whom shall we go? You have the words of material life. We have come to believe and are convinced that there is no God.” (Jn 6:67-69)Technology is the modern master, but it's an odd one because it's an amorphous blob of knowledge, not wisdom, that is so specialized that we just grunt and accept it as the one true god, like cave men who “knew” that the sun god or big oak tree held all the secrets of the universe. For 99% of us, if tomorrow we were told that electrons were found to be very tiny acorns, we would take it on faith as a fact, because in no way or scenario could most people ever test or prove otherwise. Now, we have to take it on faith that physicists and chemists would not lie to us like that. Yet often they do. Science takes bad paths that require a long time to undo, plus a massive waste of time and energy as good money follows bad science. (If you don't believe me, see the 2006 Alzheimer's research, or dry labbing, or the history of phrenology, or cold fusion in a coffee cup, or Piltdown man in Sussex, or many, many other cases). Unsurprisingly, scientists are as susceptible to the deadly sins like anyone else, much of which is prompted by the shiny tempting apple that promises to get their paper published and make them a science god. You can see that Genesis 3:1 verse playing out in those stories just like any other story. Can't you just see how the wheels turn in a brain to lie, to fudge the truth, in order to get a paper published? When the serpent says to Eve, “Did God really say you can't eat from the tree?” This is how that question plays out:“Did God really say…I can't alter this image to match my experiment results?”After all, we only sin because we perceive a good thing and want it, and decide that skirting the next right action will be acceptable, as the perceived good thing we want won't hurt anyone if we just cheat a bit to get it. We want status and recognition, that is the perceived good thing. In order to get it, how easy it is to be convinced that our ideas and interpretation of the data is correct, and that we just need to fit things into our mind's image of the world, instead of resting our in God's world. Faith is submitting our intellect and will to God, which means that unbelief is the opposite: it is submitting our will and intellect to our selves. So science has its own falls and corruption. It advances and retreats and advances again. Science can do so much, but only so much. The limitation to science is the fact that it can't get outside the universe, nor can it tell us why a sunset is beautiful, or why Shakespeare's stories are timeless, or why seeing a baby born can change a person's conception of everything in creation. In fact, this is exactly why so many people like to quote Hamlet when he says to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” There is more to this world than science and technology. In fact, the dullest things in this world is the way we treat nature like it was a cadaver to be dissected. Consider Horatio to be like a Mark Zuckerberg, or any agnostic or atheist. Hamlet and Horatio have just seen and spoke with the ghost of Hamlet's father. Horatio is the archetype of the Enlightenment world-changer.Horatio, a model of rationality, is still having a hard time swallowing the whole business. Ghosts are not the sort of beings his "philosophy" easily takes into account. We know that Horatio is, like Hamlet, a student at the University of Wittenberg, a notable outpost of Protestant humanism. The philosophy he studies there is probably classical—a compound of ethics, logic, and natural science. The emphasis on everyday phenomena pretty much excludes speculation about talking ghosts. (From enotes.)So Horatio is just like a modern person, like me not that long ago, who must rely solely on reason and rationality. He is one of those poor folks sliced in half, by their own volition: all body, no soul. Because like our alternate version of Peter, anonymous internet user, where else can Horatio go? Peter can say to Jesus, the living son of God, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” The purely rational person cannot ask for any spiritual explanation, ever! Because even cracking the door to the reality of souls and spirits leads to a flood of what-ifs. To someone trying to live in a world of pure reason, the only thing holding back the chaos monster is science and technology. The odd thing about this position is that while you lampoon the religious as superstitious fools who puts his fingers in his ears and makes noise to drown out the reality of the material world, on the flip side, the rationalist must put his fingers in his ears and make noise to drown out the possibility of ghosts and spirits. Anything beyond the material world must be stuffed in a box, because if even a single ghost story is true, if a single prophecy of the future was proven legit, or if any being's soul is real, or any miracle has ever happened - even a single miracle - then the closed door of reason is suddenly flung wide open. Thus the savior of technology must be clung to, because to what else can the non-believing materialist turn? All spiritual things must be deduced to a chemistry problem. Many people can claim to make their decisions based purely on reason, but like many a Christian who claims to be in a state of grace while receiving the Eucharist, there is a lot of not-so-devout rationalists. But they believe that when push comes to shove, they will side with science, just as even the most lukewarm Christian will declare that their alliance falls on the side of faith. But these types of declarations are for grouping and identifying oneself, where the science-fan does not wish to align with the ignorant believers and the half-hearted Christian will side with believers to avoid being called a heathen. Marketing departments make healthy profits relying much on our instinctual reaction to divide ourselves among declarations. Selling cars and nail polish is not terribly different from selling a worldview, but the worldview you adopt has a far greater impact on your life and death than the color of your fingernails on the steering wheel.The promise of freedom through a gadget or technology leads to a kind of reliance, and ultimately a kind of slavery. But this servitude cannot easily be seen except by some unfortunate prophetic Cassandra who know of problems to come, yet can do nothing to halt its progress. Also, it should be noted that once Prometheus had stole fire from the gods, no one ever suggested that he put it back, even if it turned out the we weren't even ready to handle fire properly. The entrepreneurial maxim that “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door” holds true whenever we discover something new and shiny. But these are all distractions from the truth. And all of those shiny things will leave you empty, all of those experiences will end and require another chase down the next rabbit-hole. There is always something to keep looking for, until you trip over the treasure in the field, and find Jesus, the crucified carpenter, and discover that it was him you were looking for all along. Then like St. Augustine you can say, “My heart was restless until it rested in Thee.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.whydidpetersink.com

In Part 1 of The Last Supper and Passover, the question was asked if the Last Supper Yeshua ate with His disciples on the night He was betrayed, was the Passover meal commanded by the Torah or was it just that, Yeshua's last supper with His disciples? We identified and addressed the confusion surrounding the event of Yeshua's last supper with His disciples. As a result of some peoples' confusion, they argue, debate, and perpetuate their confusions causing babes in the faith to be confused, all because of a verse here or there containing statements Yeshua made to His disciples and the interpretations of translators. We investigated the conversation, dialogue, and language of the Gospel narrative of Matthew and compared statements made in the Gospel narrative of John to help determine and answer that very important question of whether the last supper Yeshua ate with His disciples was the Passover meal. In this teaching, we will establish a timeline of events that occurred while Yeshua and His disciples were together and discern what was said and done, as they shared their last supper together.  

*****SCRIPTURES AND REFERENCES IN THIS EPISODE*****https://thedoctrineofchristseries.com/seasons-scripture-references/****DOC Links****DOC Website: http://thedoctrineofchristseries.com*****Support This Channel*****Paypal: https://paypal.me/jimivision?locale.x=en_USMonthly Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JimivisionCash App: https://cash.app/$JimivisionVenmo: www.venmo.com/Jimmy-Cooper-17Mail To:Jimmy Cooper11205 Lebanon Rd #16Mount Juliet, TN 37122*****Links to Podcast Networks*****Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-doctrine-of-christ/id1499184324Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0mFiTMRND9DWJIL5Z02Yi8Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jimivision/the-doctrine-of-christ*****Youtube Playlist Links*****https://thedoctrineofchristseries.com/seasons/****Follow Jimivision****Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClUvYf3rZHvqQloMEoEFtlw? ****Follow FOJC Radio****YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0RmdJ0nhShuDLp8Q41BlwgFollowers of Jesus Christ Web Site:http://www.fojcradio.com  or http://www.ritualabusefree.org“NEW” RUMBLE CHANNEL https://rumble.com/c/c-704825Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/overcomerBrighteon The Vault: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/fojcvaultTo receive notices for Friday night Remnant Gathering messages or other programs we are on, send an email to lastdayschurch@cs.com with: “Sign Up” in the Subject line.RADIO PAGE at http://www.fojcradio.com/RADIO.htm#fojc radioWe Are *on Air LIVE *** Every Friday for Remnant Gathering@ 6 PM Central TimePlease Join the Chat Room with other Listeners, where Scriptures & Comments are postedor, Listen to the 24/7 Auto DJ with Teachings, Music, and other Audio.CONTACT INFORMATION: David and Donna Carrico Followers of Jesus ChristP. O. BOX 671Tell City, IN 47586Phone -812-836-2288 Email - lastdayschurch@cs.com

In this week's episode of EXHALE BIBLE DISCOVERY, in John 13, we see so many amazing lessons. It is here that we witness the story of The Last Supper. We see the servanthood of Jesus in a way that we have never seen before, as Jesus washes the disciples' feet.To learn more about Dr. Paula McDonald, visit drpaulamcdonald.com'

The Busses discuss Peter's multiple blunders in the last night before Jesus' crucifixion. He was under a demonic attack to keep him from fulfilling God's plan for him. You can overcome the harassment in your life and fulfill God's plan too. Highlights: Understand the seating of the disciples at the Last Supper/Passover meal from scripture. DaVinci's “Last Supper” isn't correct. Having a “flesh flash” makes you vulnerable to making more mistakes. Stay close to Jesus to keep from having a “flesh flash”! The Holy Spirit is the key to overcoming! The accuser leads you to blunder, then slimes you with shame. There is hope for you even if you have kept blowing it! Your Father has a plan for you! We rebuke the spirit of suicide in the Name of Jesus Christ! EMAIL: feedback@globaloutpouring.org WEBSITE: https://globaloutpouring.net RELATED LINKS: Israel Tour Details Sharon and Philip's Love Story CONNECT ON SOCIAL MEDIA Global Outpouring Facebook Page Global Outpouring on Instagram Global Outpouring YouTube Channel Global Outpouring on Twitter

This Christmas, Jesus is offering the same to us. He is offering all of Himself to heal not only our physical needs, but our spiritual, mental and emotional needs as well. If you don't believe He would heal you because you are too broken, He will! He ate with tax collectors and sinners. I love the beautiful picture of the Last Supper, when Jesus used bread to represent His body, broken for all of us, no matter how sinful, to secure our place in heaven.

[dF0105]-describe The Last Supper https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113613/  Follow your hosts & littleHEADBUTT @ https://www.instagram.com/describefear/ https://www.instagram.com/littleheadbutt/ We're your hosts. littleHEADbutt studio's third cassette release, NOTHING CAN HURT ME NOW by Chicago's own XLM999 : https://littleheadbutt.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-can-hurt-me-now-lhb003 describeFEAR has been a [proud] production of littleHEADBUTTstudios.

Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. In this episode, USA Today bestselling author and real estate attorney Angela Lalande joins us to talk about her book, The Lighthouse Method. In the book, Angela discusses how to rise out of darkness and achieve success in life and business. She shares her own story of overcoming failure and finding her path to success. Angela explains how the Lighthouse Method can help others break free from negative self-talk and false beliefs, and replace them with truth and positivity. Tune in to hear more about Angela's journey and the Lighthouse Method.   Highlights    [00:00 - 03:57] Finding the Light Within Yourself Angela shares her story of how she graduated from college and found herself cleaning toilets at a gym. She realized she was not using her potential and sought to change her situation She is now a real estate attorney and bestselling author She wrote "The Lighthouse Method" based on her own journey from darkness to light, and hopes to empower others to overcome setbacks and rise out of darkness   [03:57 - 08:09] The Lighthouse Method The Lighthouse Method is a framework for overcoming setbacks and rising out of darkness It involves confessing, repenting, forgiving oneself and others, and replacing negative self-talk with the truth of who you are The end result is a mindset shift and breaking agreement with the devil, which allows you to become a prism and shine your brightest   [08:09 - 12:49] Becoming a Prism: The Importance of the Lighthouse Method The Lighthouse Method is important because it offers a roadmap for anyone who is going through a tough time in their life. The method is based on the idea that everyone has the potential to overcome adversity and achieve success. By following the steps outlined in the Lighthouse Method, people can break free from negative patterns and shift their mindset to one of positivity and resilience.   [12:49 - 15:42] Final Statements Reach out to Angela See links below Final words     Tweetable Quote   “In life there are a lot of failures and rising, failing and rising. And so, for me I rose up after failing to get to where I am today.” – Angela Lalande   “"If you're postured in humility, you confess. You repent, forgive yourself and others, and then replace the negative self-talk, false accusations and lies with the truth of who you are. That you are actually brave, courageous, more than a conqueror.” – Angela Lalande -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Angela through her Instagram and her company's webpage at https://lalandetitle.com/   Also, be sure to check Angela's book The Lighthouse Method: https://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-Method-Shine-Again-After-ebook/dp/B0B9QJ9QN7     Connect with me:   I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.    Facebook   LinkedIn   Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in!   Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com       Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:     00:00 Angela Lalande: So, if you're postured in humility, you confess. You repent, forgive yourself and others, and then replace the negative self-talk, false accusations and lies with the truth of who you are. That you are actually brave, courageous, more than a conqueror. The end result is a mindset shift and truly you break agreement with the devil, you become a prism. 00:23 Intro: Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   00:35 Sam Wilson: Angela Leland is a USA Today bestselling author and real estate attorney who desires to empower others to shine their brightest. Angela, welcome to the show.   00:44 Angela Lalande: Thank you, Sam. Thank you for having me. 00:46 Sam Wilson: Absolutely. Angela, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes to the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?   00:53 Angela Lalande: Yes. So where did I start? Gosh I realized I was not using my potential and I would found myself cleaning toilets at a gym. And I thought, this was after I graduated from college, and I thought: "There's so much more I can do with my life". And so now I'm a real estate attorney and, you know, bestselling author. And so, really in life there are a lot of, you know, failures and rising, failing and rising, you know, that happened. And so for me I rose up after failing to get to where I am today.   01:23 Sam Wilson: Wow. That is quick. You did it. 90 seconds or less. That sometimes can be hard. Real estate attorney. Failing to rising. I know this is the title of over of your book. What is that actually? I know it was, it's the Lighthouse Method.   01:37 Angela Lalande: That's it. Okay. Yes. The Lighthouse Method.   01:39 Sam Wilson: Before we get too far in, tell our listeners where they can find it, and then I want to hear your story and talk about the Lighthouse method and how this has really come to be.   01:47 Angela Lalande: Thank you, sam. Yes, the lighthouse method. You can find it on Amazon. Really if you Google the Lighthouse Method and my first name, which is Angela, it should pop right up. And so that's where your listeners can find it.   02:00 Sam Wilson: Awesome. Cool. So tell me the backstory, the inspiration for writing the lighthouse method. It sounds like it stems from potentially a painful period in your life.   02:09 Angela Lalande: Yes. It, it did. And so, I was in my own darkness about 11 years ago, almost 12 now. And so there's a period of time where I had my own journey of coming from darkness to light. And so now that I am healed, I desired to empower others to also rise out of darkness. You know, I was thinking about your listeners. I would imagine there's a vast majority, if you took a survey you know, if your listeners took a survey and you had asked them: "Hey, how many of you are dealing with a deep monumental setback or a dark period are you in the dark right now?" I would imagine if they were being honest with themselves, a vast majority would say: "Hey, yes, that's me". And so, so it really I knew this message was kind of burning in inside of me for a while now. And in fact, the book stayed, it started in the form of a letter that stayed in my laptop for more than a year. Before I got a book coach and we hashed out the outline and everything and it de developed after another year into the book that it has now become.   03:04 Sam Wilson: Wow, that's really cool. So what is the lighthouse method and tell me this, maybe even before we get into that, why do you think this is important? I mean, it really sounds like it applies to anybody in life, anybody in business, anybody trying to do something. But how does this really apply, I guess, to everyday people and why?   03:24 Angela Lalande: So, any person, no matter where you are, you know, we all have things that happen in our lives that cause us to, to shrink into the dark. It's just a part of living. Dark circumstances can arise out of nowhere. Sometimes we make choices that put us in the dark. Sometimes things happen to us that put us in the dark. And then, yes, this can happen. And you know, I know that your show, you deal with a lot of investors now in the first person that they need to invest in is really in themselves and in order to do or scale their businesses the way they need to properly, they need to be out of the dark themselves.   03:57 So this can empower your listeners as well as any person who may be dealing with a situation or a setback in how to over overcome, because we were all designed and created to shine. That's it. And so, for those people who may think that they're alone, you are not alone. And there is a place and a strategy to overcome. So these steps, I make it simple. You know, some people may be so, far in the dark. They didn't, don't know where to start to get out of it. So this book lays out these steps and really my path and how what were the things that I did during my time or how did I get out of it? And so that, that's what happens here in this book.   04:32 Sam Wilson: That's really interesting. Tell me what are the steps? If you can, and I know the idea here is that our listeners end up going out and actually reading the book, so I'm not asking for the whole book.   04:44 Angela Lalande: Yes, I'm gonna lay the steps out for you and I wanna go into a couple of them for, but just because of Tom, I know I can't do all of them, but and cut me off if I need. You need to.   04:53 Sam Wilson: No, carry on, please.   04:55 Angela Lalande: Because they're so wonderful and important. So the five steps in the lighthouse method. First, you prepare to rise up. Secondly, become a prism. Three, have the right support system. Four, bend your light and shine and then five is find harbor and become it. So I'll explain these a little more detail first in preparing to rise up and I'll really probably go into one and two deeper, but especially two. In preparing to rise up, you must first cast the vision for healing. Think of some of the greats throughout history. Before Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper. He saw the masterpiece in his mind. Before Venus and Serena Williams were tennis legends. They saw themselves as champions. They cast the vision. The same can be said of somebody looking to rise out of the darkness of depression, anxiety, or fear. If they see it, they be can become it. So you must first cast vision. Then you commit to taking regular actions to stay healthy. This is really filling your time with things that are good for your mind, body and spirit. One of those things is listening to a podcast on overcoming. So this is, you know, since we're doing a podcast right now, you know, if you can find somebody's story. Somebody who's overcome may be listening to their own victory will give you the courage to walk towards obtaining your own. So I love that. So you cast a vision. For healing, you commit to take regular actions. To stay healthy, you honor your emotions. That's thirdly in preparing to rest. Honoring your emotions means you must feel pain, grief, anger, sadness, and process them to heal you. Process instead of suppress. Suppression will only take you further into your own darkness. So those are a couple of steps in preparing to rise, that's the part I wanna dive into quickly. The second step become a prism cuz it's really exciting for me. And it's really the other steps developed around this one: become a prism. So, in order to become a prism you must be transparent and purified where the impurities in your life are extracted. This allows you to be a conduit for light. Now become a prism. Why did I need that step? That it's because of Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Did you recognize that name from science?   07:13 Sam Wilson: I do not.   07:14 Angela Lalande: Well, I didn't know him either until I started researching lighthouses. Okay. Cuz his name kept popping up. So, and you probably didn't realize I'd be giving you a science and history lesson today, but here we go.   07:25 Sam Wilson: I love it.   07:26 Angela Lalande: Augustin-Jean Fresnel, the world knows him as the French physicist who's invention of the Fresnel lens, revolutionized lighthouse technology in the early 19th century. His invention is called "the invention that saved a million ships". So a Fresnel lens, isn't that amazing? So you save so many lives. The Fresnel lens is made up of concentric sections of distinct prisms or triangular pieces of glass. It can take all the light. And chand it out into the night, penetrating the night to over 20 miles out to sea. So before his invention, too many sailors were lost to shipwrecks because the light that admitted for the lighthouse was not bright enough. So ships would run a ground on rocks. Sailors would die because they could not see where they were. So it's the prisms in the lighthouse that cause a light to pierce at night. But a prism doesn't always start out in the way we might imagine. Before it can become a beautiful creation, it must go through a purification process. And let me drill that down a little bit more. So, prisms are typically made of glass. Most glasses made by combining sand, soda, ash, and limestone, and melting these materials at a very high temperature. Once this happens, the impurities inside melt away and the dirt and debris transforms into a beautiful, pristine sustaining creation.   So just kind of giving that visual there. Just as a prism must go through a purification process. We too must go through our own purification process in order for our light to pierce the night. When we are cleansed, when all our dirt is washed away, we can see and be seen with clarity. So in the book, and I'm not gonna dive into them, but I do have a purification process that I do list in there which is made up of five parts. I like the number five, I guess. Humility, confession, repentance forgiveness and replacement. So quite simply, and not quite so simply, if you're postured in humility, You confess your sins are wrongdoings. And sometimes you're not only confessing your sins, you're just confessing what happened to you?   Because if you were put in the dark by someone else's choices, sometimes, you know, we confess one to another, right? So, if you're postured in humility, you confess. You repent, forgive yourself and others, and then replace the negative self-talk, false accusations and lies with the truth of who you are. That you are actually brave, courageous, more than a conqueror. The end result is a mindset shift and truly you break agreement with the devil, you become a prism.   10:05 Sam Wilson: Angela, it sounds like a lot of this is a mindset shift that not just somebody who's maybe struggling with some deep, dark, heavy thing, but that all of us can benefit from. I mean, is that a fair analysis?   10:19 Angela Lalande: Yes, absolutely. And I love that you're asking that question with the prism. If you think of the qualities of a prism, it's transparent. It's see through that it's not clouded or muddied by something, even if it's an a belief that's not right, you know? We are created to create and to achieve and to go for things and not be stuck in a box. So when we are transparent and can see clearly, we're able to see that we're made for much more than we give ourselves credit for. Isn't that right?   10:50 Sam Wilson: Absolutely. No, that, that's very cool. What do you think someone, if they spent the time to investigate this and say, man, this is maybe some, something to dig into, like what has been the effect in your life and maybe what do you propose could be the effect for other people as they go through this process?   11:08 Angela Lalande: Yeah. Yeah. I think for some people when they start the book and really as they're reading, they may be able to - some of their own personal experiences, things that may, they might not have even thought about for years that they didn't realize was even holding them back. May come to the surface and then which will be great, is because when they come to the surface you can deal with them and then overcome them and release them. So, you know what I love about, the last step is find harbor and become it. That's when you courageously rise out of the waters of depression, anxiety, fear, or whatever those waters are that are holding you back.   And you actually take your place, your rightful place, which is on the shore looking out. And the benefit is somebody who you know, has healed. You're able to find somebody else. You'll be able to look past yourself and outside yourself to find other people and bring them home. So that's the goal.   11:59 Sam Wilson: I love it. And that's a great analogy. I hadn't quite tied all those together yet. I'm a slow learner here in that is the lighthouse method. I've always said that for, the easiest way to get over depression or, you know, feelings of like, you know, unhappiness is to go find somebody else in need. Like the fastest way is to go serve someone else. It's like, oh man, like, I can go help this person. By the time you're done helping them, you feel a whole lot better about yourself, which is a weird, kind of self-serving way, but it's mutually beneficial. So I love it. 12:31 Angela Lalande: You're exactly right because in doing that you're taking the focus off yourself. You're seeing the need of somebody else. If we continue, if we only focus on ourselves. A, things may seem bigger than they actually are, right? It's, you know, when we can actually look at others, we're able to have a heart. Our heart posture is different. What I mean?   12:49 Sam Wilson: Yes. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is. No, I love that. And I think so many, so, so many times we have, you know, we go through goal setting exercise as we go through like, Hey, what do I want 2023 to be like, what? You know, we go through these processes. And somehow there's always in the end of it, I think we're always setting bigger and better goals but the idea of, I think you said taking your rightful place, I like that. I think that's a great way to put it. Where it's like, no, like I, I will live into what I was created to become and here's how I'm gonna do it. So a very cool book. I think this'll be fun and hopefully speak to some of our listeners and maybe they can get a copy of this book and really dig in deep on it. I know, I certainly will. Just for a personal exercise. Cause I think there's always value in things like this. I forget where I heard it, but it was something to the effect of everything you want lies on the other side of fear, right? If only we can push through the things that we're afraid of or that might be holding us back if we can somehow, you know, take your method here. I love the steps that you've outlined there. So anyway I won't keep talking about it. I'm just gonna go read your book and digest it from that point forward. I do want to just shift gears real quick though, and hear a little bit about your real estate attorney business, what you do on that front, and maybe give our listeners, you know, part two of who Angela is?   14:05 Angela Lalande: Thank you. Yes. So I am the CEO and owner of Lalande Title. We are a real estate closing company in Louisiana. So we offer title services, settlement and escrow services as well. So when people are in layman's terms, if they're looking to purchase a home or property, or you know, investors who are looking to invest in property, we handle all the paperwork at the end, we pay all the parties. It's the happy place at the end. Of course, during, there can be problems that happen we have to work through or some other things. But usually at the end of the day, it's always a happy place to be because the seller gets money and the buyer is, has new property. Hey, fantastic. We wanna make sure we include both of those there in the show notes. Angela, if our listeners wanna get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do?   14:51 Angela Lalande: Yes. I would say, you know, our website through the Real Estate Company. The title company is www.lalandetitle.com. That's LALANDE title.com. You can also find me on Facebook, Angela Lalande. And on Instagram as well. You can find with company or my personal Instagram account, @aclalande. And I would love to connect.   15:14 Sam Wilson: Fantastic. Thank you, Angela, for your time today. I certainly appreciate it and look forward to getting a copy of your book.   15:18 Angela Lalande: Thank you, Sam. Appreciate you. Take care.   15:21 Outro: Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can, do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories.   So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode. as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.  

Topics: Dating, Adult Children, Drug Addiction, Narcissists, Separation Hosts: Becky Brown, Chris Williams, Dr. Jim Burns Caller Questions: At the Last Supper, did Judas partake in it?  What should I do with the emotions I feel if I think I'm being catfished?  How do we get my 34yo daughter and her kids to move on? She is a recovered drug addict The post New Life Live: December 14, 2022 appeared first on New Life.

Was the Last Supper Yeshua ate with His disciples on the night He was betrayed, the Passover meal commanded by the Torah or was it just that, Yeshua's Last Supper with His disciples? Many people today seem to be confused about this event. As a result of their confusion, they argue, debate, and perpetuate their confusions causing babes in the faith to be confused, all because of a verse here or there containing statements Yeshua made to His disciples and interpretations of translators. In this portion of Matthew's Gospel narrative, we will investigate the conversation, dialogue, and language of the Gospel narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to point out the important statements that will help determine and answer that very important question of whether the Last Supper Yeshua ate with His disciples was the Passover meal. In this teaching, we will join in with Yeshua and His disciples' discussions and discern what was said and done, as they shared their last supper together.  

Topics: Dating, Adult Children, Drug Addiction, Narcissists, Separation Hosts: Becky Brown, Chris Williams, Dr. Jim Burns Caller Questions: At the Last Supper, did Judas partake in it?  What should I do with the emotions I feel if I think I'm being catfished?  How do we get my 34yo daughter and her kids to move on? She is a recovered drug addict The post New Life Live: December 14, 2022 appeared first on New Life.

This morning, we'll take some time to keep talking about why Christmas is good news. Jesus' arrival tells us that God is relational. That means He wants and seeks personal relationships with people. How does the birth of Jesus tell us that?  We're going to look at Jesus' words at the Last Supper to see what He says about why He came and who He's connected to. Then we'll see that it's also the reason behind why Jesus came – because a relationship with us meant that much to Him!

This podcast covers the events leading to the crucifixion of Jesus in the cross at Calvary. It includes the Passover preparations, anointing Jesus for burial and the Last Supper.

As it's nearly Santa's birthday what better way to mark the occasion than by two podcasts doing a crossover episode? Christopher Webb & Robert Johnson are the hosts of Still Any Good which examines films and television shows that they enjoyed in their misspent youth and now revisit to see if they still hold up today. A perfect example is the 1981 Mel Brooks anthology comedy movie History Of The World Part One which qualifies for Goon Pod due to a small but significant role for Spike Milligan playing, as Chris puts it, "the Birdman of the Bastille". The film purports to tell the history of the world since man evolved from the fish, although skips most of it - what we do get is Sid Caesar and pals ugging it up as comedy cavepeople; a memorable Moses moment; a sword-and-sandal saga which outstays its welcome; the circumstances surrounding The Last Supper (with John Hurt as Jesus); the Spanish Inquisition as reimagined by Busby Berkeley; and the first stirrings of the French Revolution (it's highly doubtful Mel Brooks troubled himself to read Thomas Carlyle on the subject, being more interested in portraying Louis XVI as a randy old goat with a bums and bosoms fixation - hump or death? Purrrrlease.) Still, there's chuckles to be had along the way as Rob & Chris join Tyler to ask the question: is it Still Any Goon? SAG is here: https://stillanygood.buzzsprout.com/113660

Bro. Bradley and Andrea walk listeners through the Last Supper written in the New Testament across the 4 Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Check us out on social media: Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/theapcblm Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/the_apc Website – https://www.theapc.org Have a prayer request? We'd love to pray for you! https://apostolicpentecostalchurch.updates.church/# Subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell to get alerts on live or posted videos! www.youtube.com/c/ApostolicPentecostalChurch #pentecostal #upci #pentecostalteaching

Patrick answers listener questions about the Last Supper, how to talk to someone living in sin, does there need to be a crucifix on the altar at Mass, and he shares the news of a new video game where you get to play as Jesus Mary - What do you think about 3 priests from Ireland who sing. Do you think they are serving two masters? Alice - Did Jesus have to eat holy communion? Rose Mary - Niece is married twice and divorced twice and is now living with a man. She says she is good Christian, but I know she's living in sin. What can I say to her? Denny - Does there need to be a crucifix on the altar at mass? Les – I think it's wrong that a priest can't tell the police if someone has confessed to a murder in confessional? A new video game lets users play as Jesus Christ Aiden 9-years-old - If God knew we were going to be great sinners and might go to hell, why did he create us in the first place?

Yuna is an internationally acclaimed R&B pop star, born and raised in Malaysia. But after a decade of living in LA, and missing her mother's homemade nasi lemak and banana leaf rice, she and her husband finally succumbed to learning to cook the Malaysian dishes they miss most! Award-winning London chef and cookbook author Mandy Yi says it's common to eat six meals a day in Malaysia, and walks us through a day of meals, snacks, street food and night markets. Yuna talks about what it was like trying to get a record deal, as a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, and she shares a hilarious story about how a late night snack attack nearly got her into deep trouble with the Canadian government. Follow along on Instagram! Please subscribe to the *new* Your Last Meal newsletter so you can be the first to know about events, giveaways & content only available to subscribers! This episode is sponsored by:Ooni Pizza Ovens!Safe Catch tinned fish! Enter YOURLASTMEAL at checkout for 15% off!Pure Cravings cat food! Enter YOURLASTMEAL at checkout for 15% off!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fr. Mike walks us through the Church's first council in Acts 15 and highlights the importance of the Church's authority in the question of circumcision for Gentile converts. He also draws our attention to Paul's treatment of God the Father and God the Son as equal but not the same. This sheds light on Paul's conversation about head coverings for women in our reading from 1 Corinthians and reassures female believers about their roles in marriage and the Church. Today's readings are Acts 15, 1 Corinthians 11-12, Proverbs 28:10-12. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.