Transcript for:
Insights from Wesley Huff on Christianity

What's up people? Today we are joined by the most bodaciously brolic Bible expert you've ever seen. A true man of God, Wesley Huff, or as Billy Carson calls him, White Devil is here to break down the big questions. Which version of Christianity is the truth? Did Jesus make it to India? That explains how he walked on water because it's so polluted. Also, were there actual giants in the Bible? What's up with the Book of Enoch? Are Christmas and Easter just some old pagan holidays? And can non-Christians still get into heaven? Indulge. Wesley, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm very excited for you to be here. We must state that I'm not taking any credit for your success. Neither is Mark's Alex Nekos. Okay? I'll give it to you. No, no, don't do it because you earned your success. Okay? And Jesus, look at that [ __ ] thing. I know, dude. God bless me a Christian. And the other thing and put the test back in New Testament. There we are. Let's go. Bars. Okay. Um the the the Billy Carson debate. Mhm. Does it sprout from you reacting to Billy on our podcast? Yes. Okay. Because I made response videos. Yes. To you guys. Yes. Because people kept sending it to me. Yes. Yeah. Now, did you watch the whole episode when we were like, "We're not facteing any of this. This is just for fun." Yeah. Yeah. And you were like, I'm gonna fact check because people kept sending me these clips. I know. It's the thing about Billy is like, I know he's full of [ __ ] but he doesn't know he's full of [ __ ] And that's why at least I didn't think he was a con artist. I was like, he really believes it. And this is kind of fun. So, we're like, listen, we're going to have some fun today. But then when things get clipped out and put on the internet, people believe it 100%. Well, he's so confident. Yes. You know what's funny? I was just in Turkey and Billy's now in Turkey. I missed him by a week. We were in the exact same location. Wow. We could have I had this thought. Yes. When we went cuz I went to Darren Cuyu, which is the underground city in Capidoshia. And I had the thought when we were like going in. I was like, "What are the chances I run into Billy Carson down here?" Because he said in an interview last year that he was going to go to Darren Kuyu in a year and it was like almost the exact same time frame. I had that thought. Didn't happen. What would What would happen if you guys ended up in the same place? He's ducking. I don't know. I don't even know. Yeah. Have you guys spoken since? What's up with the lawsuit? Like, fill us in, dude. No, the the lawsuit didn't amount to much because there was no credibility to the lawsuit. You can't sue for not liking what you you yourself said. Yes. Right. So, it's okay. But yeah, I mean, I haven't heard anything from him, nor do I necessarily need to. I don't want to be the guy that took down Billy Carson. I don't want that to be my legacy. Yeah. I don't think that's really my origin story. Yeah. He's still doing He's still doing all right. Yeah, Billy's going to be fine. You know, people still want to believe in aliens. They want to believe in all this stuff. You believe in the little tablets of tooth. You got a necklace about it. Al is 100% locked in. Al's a flat earther. There's a lot of things that we got to What do you think about flat earth? What's your I don't know. I mean, I've been in an airplane and up in the sky and I think I've seen the curve, but I don't know. You don't know. I'm not a scientist. Exactly. Don't make me What are you sciency things? What are you exactly? I'm a historian. Yes, we know that. But then there's another thing. What is it? I don't know. I was looking up your exact title and I was like, there's no way I'm going to memorize it. But your specialty, your PhD is in biblical manuscripts. Okay. So, ancient scribal culture. So, I study ancient scribes and how they produce and copy and disseminate manuscripts. So, you're testing for efficacy of these ancient scribes. Yeah. Different things. So like there's a field called textual criticism which looks at the text of particular documents because in the ancient world we don't have any originals. Everything is a copy no matter what it is. And even if we found quote unquote an original, I don't know how we Yeah. What makes something an original? Uh the author writes it. But like Oh, so the author could write 40 of them and then we would deem that an original or Well, like whatever like say uh we find Plato's Republic and it was one that was written by him or like how would we verify that it's actually but everything we have are copies and most of them are like hundreds of years after because old things wear out. And so textual criticism looks at the text and the copies and looks at internal and external factors and traces the original back. Okay. Question. That's not what I do, but it's related to that. Okay. I just have a question about this. Okay. So, it is possible that you could find an older version of the Bible. Mhm. Or there could be a a newer version of the Bible that is more accurate than an older version of Bible because the older version had a copying mistake. Yeah. And Right. And then so how would you identify that? Because there are so many copies. The thing with the Bible is that you have so many copies, far more copies than you have of any other ancient document. Okay. Why is that? The Christians really wanted the best copy. Is that why we don't got enough of these? copying up Jews. Go for it. You get a copy and you get a copy. You get a copy. Well, part of it was like the Christians were the I mean, Muslims call us the people of the book, right? Christians and Jews because we have a scripture and that's like central to the system we believe. Whereas that's not necessarily true for like other ancient religious practices. In fact, that's the argument. There's a end of first century, beginning of second century Jewish guy named Josephus. Okay? And so he writes a document called the antiquities of the Jews. And in it he talks about the differentiation between like the Greek religious practices, the Greco Roman religious practices and the Jewish religious practices by saying we don't have just a unlimited amount of religious texts like you guys have. We only have this. And part of the reason we know what the books of the Old Testament were in Jesus's day, part of the conversation is that Josephus outlines them. He gives a number and an argument for the list of books and what the books are. Okay. So from there we have this idea because why would he lie or mislead about this time if his argument is to prove that this is the limited amount of books that we have? Yeah. I mean he has no reason to like make it up one way or the other. And then you have so the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament. Yeah. Like a lot. And so we have evidence from okay well Jesus Paul Peter they're quoting this stuff and they're saying like this is script they're advocating for it and arguing like theological stuff on the basis of these texts. So we can also look at how they're treating scripture. Yeah. And then there are other stuff Dead Sea Scrolls and things like that. Okay. What is the earliest version of the Bible? How do we This question sounds familiar. Yeah. Uh well, what do you mean by version? I think that's where I'm going with the question, which is like what were people consuming at the time? So all of these books are like independent scrolls. So there's no such thing. We think of a Bible and we think of like the single volume. When do we get that time in history? So we don't get that until the year 300. Yeah. Anywhere between. So Constantine decriminalizes Christianity in 313. Got it. The edict of Milan, the peace of the church. So he makes it so that it's no longer illegal to be a Christian cuz before him there was a guy named Diolesian who was the emperor and Diolesian in 308 says I'm going to wipe these people out. So he makes it illegal for Christians to gather and he beheads all the church leaders and he like it's this systematized persecution. So there's persecution before that. Vamper were kind of loopy. So like Nero is famous for burning Christians in his garden as like the lights. He's nuts. Yeah. Um he got the lead poisoning, right? Probably. Yeah. Um I think he was the one who made his horse his general and like made a marble boy. Not like a few screws loose. Um so there was persecution, but it wasn't like empirewide until Dlesian. Dlesian comes in. He's like, "Yo, we're getting rid of this shit." Yeah. So easy. And he's going to destroy the Christians. That's his kind of motivation. Constantine eventually takes control of the empire. Now in his effort to try to destroy them, does he just bolster the strength of the religion? Which one? Dlesian. Dialesian uh bolster like you mean for Christians? It's like banning a book makes it sell more. Yeah. Yeah. Does it does it seem is it does is it more popping? Is it more badass? Does more do more people want to go do it because of that badass? I'm just trying Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bad way of putting it sort of. So Christians thrive under persecution, which is an interesting like factor, but largely uh in spite of all of the stuff that's being spread about them. Got it. So Christians do things like the Romans practice this ancient form of abortion where like particularly if you have a girl, uh they it's called exposure. So they take the children, they'd put them out in the garbage dumps or like in the outside the city gates and the Christians would go save them and would raise them. And so there was this like disproportionately large group of women in the Christian community statistically because the Romans didn't want the women. Same as church right now, right? You want to find a girl. Um it's like a Matt Refe comedy show. I'm a girl. Girls there. Yeah. So but and then they have like the Eucharist, the Lord's supper, right? Jesus talks about this is my body. This is my blood. And so the the Romans catch wind of they do this ceremony where they're talking about drinking blood and eating flesh and they're grabbing all these babies. Sounds Hollywood. Yeah, right. So in in the midst of like stuff like that where they're like they're eating the babies, they they they still grow in a large part because they like they're they they they're philanthropic. They help people, right? So we have some like Roman leaders who write and they they decry the fact that Christians are not just taking care of their own, they're taking care of like they're like they're taking care of our this is embarrassing us. So but there are lots of factors that go into that. Take me even earlier then like what's happening immediately after the uh you know the big day the the big day the ground zero. Round zero what's happening. Um what do you mean before that? No, no, after what's happening after like the time of the early church after the resurrection of Christ between resurrection and 313 or whatever, right? So, Christianity is this like small fringe movement of a bunch of and and early on they're still associated in the pagan world with the Jews. They're like a group of Jews. They just follow this. So, they're thought of as Jews at the time, but like an offset of Judaism. Yeah. Because they kind of are, right? A stranger because so your religion in the ancient world is largely tied to your ethnicity, right? And so conversion wasn't unusual. This is interesting. Conversion wasn't unusual in the ancient world. In fact, if you got married and you were like a pagan Roman, it was expected that you would convert to your husband's religion, particularly if they had uh house gods, which was common. But the Christians and the Jews were unusual in that they just denied everybody else's gods existed. Fire. So So actually one of the earliest accusations for Christians is that they're atheists. They deny the gods. So they're accused of being atheists and they're accused of being antisocial. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Atheos, no gods. Like you guys believe in a thousand gods. Why would I believe in one? Yeah. And the ancient world is not just polytheistic. It's what's called heenotheistic. So you don't just believe there are many gods. You believe that there's like hierarchies of gods. And actually your gods could be my gods by another name. So like Zeus and Jupiter. Yes. Like that's why the Greeks and the Romans have the similar if not the same gods by different names and they have like different stories to them. So that's assumed by one another. You're like, "Okay, we both believe in these different gods. You have different names for them. That's fine. But we're both part of the same belief system. The emperor is a god. Everyone's a god. Everybody's a god." And where Jews and Christians are coming around, they're like, "That ain't the case." Yeah. Not only are your gods not like powerful, your gods just don't they straight up don't exist. Exist. You're making them up. And so persecution for Christians becomes this they become this easy scapegoat because if you're like in Athens and the city god is Athena and there's some sort of like famine and why do we have a famine? Well, Athena's mad. Why is Athena's mad? Well, cuz there are these guys running around saying she doesn't even exist. M so there's this early church historian named Tertalian and he has this famous line where he says that if the Tyber River in Rome is too high or the Nile River in Egypt is too low the cry will ring out the Christians the lions because they become like this easy why why would our gods punish us yeah we have no reason yeah so so that that happens pretty quickly and Tertalian also said uh the blood of the martyrs is a seed of the church so We get like martyrdom stories very early, right? And a lot of them are because that Christians become this easy scapegoat. Got it. So there's tons of persecution early. I actually want to go back even before crucifixion. I want to go to John the Baptist. I'm really interested in this John the Baptist guy. And I don't feel like he gets enough shine. Doesn't get the press he deserves. Underrated character in the Bible. Yeah. Okay. So So what I'm So he's offering forgiveness through baptism, right? Is this happening in the woods? Okay. Well, maybe you clarify so I don't misrepresent. Yeah. So he is starting this like this movement of uh group repentance. Okay. Where he is saying so baptism isn't necessarily an unusual thing to do in ancient Judaism. Like ablution cleaning is part of just ritualistic purity. The Jews, the ancient Jews were obsessed with ritualistic purity. And then you have groups like the Essen out in the desert who they're like we we're just going to do this all day long. Like we're basically we're going to there's bads everywhere in Kuman which is their community and they're just constantly washing themselves for ritual purity. So it's not that John the Baptist is doing something unusual. It's that he is then saying that Israel communally needs to repent and that you need to be doing this there for this reason and that then this Jesus guy shows up and he says he's the one that John and Jesus like homies or cousins. Yeah. So like they kind of grew up together. No. Yeah. Okay. But and John knows this this entire time that Jesus is going to be the Messiah or at one day he realizes it. I don't know. I mean that's not explicitly said one way or the other. But Jesus shows up and ask John to baptize him and John says I'm not worthy to baptize you. So he knows you should be baptizing me, not the other way around. Got it. Yeah. But he would have at least heard something cuz we have this story where Mary finds out she's pregnant and she goes to her cousin Elizabeth, John the Baptist mother. Yeah. Don't mess that up. Uh-oh. Um and and uh the progressive Bible. Yeah. Right. And so there's there's like a knowledge there that that something something special might happen. Yeah. Something special going on. So So the thing that John is doing that is novel you would say is is saying that they should repent sort of like what is he doing that is dissimilar from everyone else at the time? Uh he's well he's a like a wild man. and he's wearing camel skins and he's eating locust and honey and he's like living out in the desert and so he's not offering forgiveness. Well, he's saying repent. He's saying so he's not offering forgiveness, but he's saying you need to seek forgiveness from God and you start by doing this like act of going through like a public declaration of your repentance. And the Jewish leaders kind of get mad at him because he's implying that uh they they like their ethnicity isn't enough. So they come and they're like, "Well, we're children of Abraham." And his line is, you know, God can raise up children of Abraham from these stones is what he says. Yeah. Just just being the child of Abraham is nothing special. You have to do the acts. Yeah. He's also speaking out against the political system. So he so he's the first person recognizing that there's something that he deems corrupt happening in society at the time. I mean there were other people doing I don't want to say first but he is one of these people that is recognizing there is corruption and the only way that we can thwart this corruption is through repentance and hopefully there will be forgiveness. Yeah. More or less. Yeah. I'm just trying to understand like what's happening society at the time that compels a guy like John the Baptist to even do that. Well, there's cultural expectations in the day that the Messiah is going to come, right? cuz the Jews are saying, "Yo, Messiah is going to come." Yeah. So, that's okay. So, that's already been set. So, they're looking. They're like, "Who's going to be the guy?" Yeah. And there seems to be in the New Testament this like buzz that it's going to happen soon cuz when Jesus talks with the woman at the well, okay. Like he's he's talking to her and she basically says like the Messiah is going to come and he's going to reveal all these things. There's this like cultural expectation. Yeah. This guy's going to come. Things are bad with the Romans and he's going to rescue us from the Romans. Got it. But they they kind of thought that that would be military leader, right? Right. So the expectation was that the Messiah was going to he was going to save us from the Romans. He wasn't going to get murdered by the Romans. Got it. Okay. So Jesus comes around. Yeah. Really quick, have you heard the claim that Jesus just took up the teachings of John the Baptist and basically co-opted it to then create his own cult, so to speak? Yeah. I mean, there that's never happened in religions before. No. No. What are you talking about? I'm just saying one guy with interesting ideas and then a really smart businessman comes around and like forms religion around it. I'm just saying what are you an early blasphemy that I don't believe I'm hoping that you maybe you could clarify that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep the blasphemies to a minimum. Yeah. I not we're counting them down. Yeah. Yeah. So explain Scientology. Yeah. Go. Um so I mean yeah that that there is an idea there. I think all the evidence we have of the historical John the Baptist kind of points otherwise. And there are actually followers of John the Baptist in the second century that kind of outlived Jesus. Um and and so you have these different factions and some people are still following John the Baptist. So so some people don't choose up with Jesus. They stay true to to John. Well, and even in the Gospels there's this So John the Baptist speaks out against uh like the the local leader. The local leader has a party with his daughter and his he gets his daughter well she dances. It's kind of weird scene. She dances in Herod's palace and then he says I'll give anything to you up to half of my like empire and she says I'm the head of John the Baptist. So she kind of gets coerced to have him bring in the head of John the Baptist. While John is in prison for speaking out against them, he has doubts and he sends some of his followers to Jesus to ask Jesus, "Are you the one we're waiting for? Should we wait for another?" So, even John the Baptist starts to struggle with his own faith when things aren't going his way. And then, um, it's really interesting because Jesus's reply is, "Go tell John what you've seen. the dead are raised, the blind see, the lame walk. And there's this interesting connection with that's those are statements in the Old Testament of what Yahweh is going to do when he like when he reunites his kingdom in the restoration. And there's a Dead Sea Scroll fragment called 4Q521, which is part of these like Essene community. And it talks about the fact that everybody will see God's Messiah and the dead will be raised and the lame will walk and and so it has these connections. So those are verses from the Old Testament. Yeah. How much uh writings is there when he raises some dead? What do you mean? Like do we have like are is everybody going this is insane? Like are you saying like how many are there in Yeah. I mean, well, every copy of like the Gospel of John with the story of Lazarus and and Mark is the Gyrus's daughter, but do you have anything outside of that? Is there just like a newspaper clipping like this guy's on it? No, but like Twitter clip, it's on X. We hear a lot about the walking on the water and the wine. The raising the dead one is Yeah. What's funny about the raising the dead one is that then the the Pharisees, the Jewish leaders are like trying to figure out how to kill Jesus after that. They're like, "Did you see what just happened? We got to get this. We got to kill this guy." And then how are they going to kill Lazarus again? It's like, well, that didn't work the first time. Okay, go on. Go on. But yeah, so I mean all the copies that we have of John and Mark would include those stories, but the ancient world was largely illiterate. So that's something we also have to keep in mind is that our world is hyper literate. So we're constantly writing things down and most people know how to write and read. It's not true in the ancient world, right? So at the height of the Roman Empire probably was only 10% literate and there would be like pockets of communities that would be able to read and write, right? Um but usually like the first Bibles were audio Bibles in the sense that you would have someone within your community that would memorize the entirety of the Bible or they would just read it out loud. Right. So Paul writes letters to these churches. There would probably be a few people in the church who could read it, but they would just hear it. Yeah. most of the time. All right, guys. Dates before I go to hell. See me in Salt Lake City June 19th through June 21st. Oklahoma City. These shows might have to get rescheduled, but as of now is July 18th and July 19th. August, I'm in Kansas City, Missouri on the 1st and 2nd. Parisburg, Ohio on the 8th and 9th. Liberty Township, Ohio. Why am I doing so much? Ohio on the 22nd, 23rd. And we got more dates coming. We got a bunch for the fall. So, get your tickets. Agosc.com is a website. I love y'all. Thank you. What's up, guys? Really quick, I'm on the road. That's right. I'm going to Indianapolis and then I'm going to Buffalo, Raleigh, Pikipsy, Portland, Fort Worth, Austin, Stamford, Philadelphia, Levittown, Washington DC, San Diego, Burlington, Montreal, Toronto, and a bunch of other dates. You can check them out on my website, Mark Aagdon Live, and we can have a great time. See me, come hang out after he's asking. Yeah, I'm not asking for anything. I'll be honest. A few people after the show were like, "Hey, this a few people after the show were like, "Hey, I'm not going to do what Akos told me to do, but I just wanted to say, hey, and that's great. That's all I need." Okay. See me at the show. Well, no. I mean, he wants you to suck his dick. That's why he's sitting like this. See there? Jesus is crucified. Uhhuh. I've heard of it. Runs it back. Okay. What? What do you What What do you What do you description? It is. This is what happened. Runth back. He runth it back. Okay. Um immediate fallout after running it back. Yeah. Who's seeing him? So the the disciples run scared. They hide because they basically figure, okay, the movement's dead. So Jesus isn't the only messianic movement that happens within this time period. There are guys before him and after him who try to create like revolutions. Um so after just a short period after Jesus, there's a guy named Simon Bariora and he's famous. And then there's Simon Barokva. So the Bakoka revolt is the one that kind of launches things that eventually gets Jerusalem destroyed uh under Titus who then marches into Jerusalem. He sacks Jerusalem and they destroy the temple. That happens in 70 AD. Was Simon claiming to be the son of God also? No. So that's unus. So most of these guys are just like military leaders. So Jesus's messianic claims are kind of unique in that he's doing things that people didn't really expect the Messiah to do or be. in that they're still expecting a military leader because uh have you heard of Mcabes? Like first, second, and third Makabes. The Mcabes is the story of Hanukkah. So the the Greek uh emperor guy, he marches in and he takes over Israel and then he does something real bad for the Jews in that he sacrifices a pig on the altar in the temple to Zeus. So all all bunch of layers of not being kosher. And then uh the Simon or not Simon Judas uh Judas Mcabas, Judas the Hammer, he goes in and he kicks them out and he rededicates the temple. And that's the story of Hanukkah. Got it. Um so he's like a like a military leader in that sense. So, he's seen as not the messianic figure that they're waiting for, but a messianic figure in the sense that he's established like he's kicked out the bad guys and he's established the kind of unification of the Jewish nation at that point. So, they're they're kind of looking for that again. And Judas Makabus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, which is also what Jesus does. So, when Jesus does that, it's kind of a call back like, okay, the people are like, I think we know what's going to happen. Okay. when he rides back in on the donkey. I first of all incredibly and I'm going to use the exact term badass, right? Like super flex, but super flex. Do you come in on the donkey? Like I don't need some big shiny horse. I'm going to come in on like the the little I'm trying to be very respectful of my language. Now we're talking about Jesus. But uh little [ __ ] ass fake horse, right? And then so immediately is everybody like shook? Are people running? Are there people rejoicing? Like what is that immediate reaction upon return? Yeah. When he when he rides in the triumphal entry like when he goes into Jerusalem. Yeah. They're waving palm branches. That's why like Palm Sunday wave palm branches because they're waving palm branches. They're putting their coats down and they're saying hosana. Yeah. I listen to that song this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Shadow Hill song. Yeah. Um Yeah. So, but it's the same crowd that then at when he's like on trial with Pilot is then saying crucify him. So, they turn They turn fast. Yeah. I one of I feel like the funniest thing of Jesus going to Jerusalem is that no one thought that a guy like the Messiah could come from Nazareth or or Galilee and that there there's a reference and they go what good has ever come out of like they talk [ __ ] about it. Yeah. It's the boonies. Yeah. It's like I don't know what's what's the what's Jersey. Not quite. It's like the middle of nowhere like an island. Yeah. Yeah. Upper somewhere small in that. Like he's he's a he's a heck. And who says it? I I forget exactly who who makes that comment. I think it's when Jesus is ministering in Galilee and they're like who you know what good can come from Nazareth. Like it's just such an unusual place. Once again, like subverting cultural expectations, right? He's he's born in Bethlehem, which is where he should be, which is like from the house of David, but then he lives and grows up in Nazareth, which is like nowhere. Yeah. And so, and then even when he goes back, they're like, because he ministers in Nazareth at one point, and everybody he's doing, now I'm seeing the Star Wars parallels. I never got it before, but they just ripped off the Jesus story completely. Everybody rips off the Jesus story. Unbelievable. They got to pay their little 10%. Star Wars. Wait, how's the Matrix? The Matrix is the chosen one. Yeah, but outside of that, like I'm talking about That's a good point. Honestly, y'all laughing. But outside of that, there's a Judas, right? There's a Judas who betrays him. That's fair. That's fair. And then there's a John the Baptist. He shows you the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who like like makes the path straight. That's right. Morpheus is John the Baptist. And there's He's like, "I'm not the one. He's going to be the one." There's a Mary Magdalene. Yeah. But what happens with All right. Well, what happens with him and Mary? What happens with him and Mary? Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. Hollywood. Yeah, that's that's Hollywood Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. You don't think that Jesus Jesus was I'm trying to be respectful obviously, but you don't think Jesus was, you know, testing the profession? Nah. She was a pro, right? Like allegedly. Isn't that what some say? Or is that No, no, no. So that's a So Mary Magdalene is not the prostitute that Yeah. That was a Pope's fault. He he connected those dots and that they were wrong and then the the church had to the Roman Catholic Church had to backtrack on that. They did backtrack on that. Okay, good. Prostitute. No. No. Is this is I'm obviously not Christian. So this is a much broader maybe ignorant question. Is there like a matrix kind of thing in Christianity? Like in Hinduism we call that Maya which is like all this stuff that you see is illusion. The reality is the afterlife. Is that like a thing? No. That's fine. Maybe a couple characters like the Matrix. Oh, I love confident Christians, bro. Get your goofy ass multi-go religion out of here. Yeah. What are you talking about? Um, no. Well, cuz there's a there's a differentiation between like Eastern mysticism has this idea of like that this world is an illusion, right? So, you have things like samsara, the cycle, that's Buddhism, right? not Hinduism, but the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth and and you're trying to escape this. Yeah, that's Hinduism, too. Um, and and so that would be that would be ancient Platonic philosophy that gets mixed in with like thenosticism that develops in the second century where the physical is bad and the spiritual is good. And so when you have the early Christians arguing against the Gnostics, they're doubling down not that Jesus is God. They don't have a problem with that. It's that Jesus is a human because they believe if you're human, you can't be God, right? You can't mix that. You're in a meat prison and your spirit's trying to get out of there. But Jews and Christians have the inherent belief of the resurrection. So, we are embodied. You're not a spirit that has a body. You're spirit and body. Those those two things kind of mix. And heaven is a layover. It's not the final goal. You're the heaven is the place you go to wait for the final resurrection when we will all be given new resurrected bodies. And that's why Jesus is called the first fruits is because everybody believed in the resurrection. So when Jesus keeps saying, you know, I'm going to die and I'm going to rise again, they're like, yeah, all of us Jesus. Oh, they don't understand that he's talking about something that's unique and that he's going to do it now as like a preview of what everyone's going to get in the afterlife. Like you have heaven and then the resurrection where heaven and earth meet and all things are restored. I had no clue that's what the real heaven was. I didn't know that this current one is. Dude, I really I I started on the Old Testament. It's dense. Get to Leviticus. Get to Leviticus. The rules were so much. I don't want to be disrespectful. You got to the part with the like the the soar with the white hair. No, I I got to the part where it's like the temple needs to be 6 in from the cubits and and I'm running on a treadmill and I'm listening to the audio version and they're constructing a temple out of like certain materials and the fabric needs to hang 3 in from the thing and I'm like I'm not a GC, you know what I mean? I don't need to know like I what's going on here? I'm not building the temple like we're going to heaven, you know? So, I didn't even get to the fun stories. You start with the gospels. I need I should have started with the gospels. The gospels. Why do you guys uh I still want to get into I still want to get into Yeah, you're right. I'm one of them. No, I wasn't baptized so I don't get But my parents were How does that work? We can We can get that done for you. Really? Should I go to the baptized? Yeah. Yeah. But should I go to like is that You should go to the Jordan up here before you start jumping. You don't think they want 10% of your income, dog? That does so fast. No, it's 15. No, no, it's Testament. That's Old Testament. You don't got to give 10%. You're released to give as much as you want. 10%. Okay. Actually, on the topic of of India and Hinduism. Oh, yeah. Did Jesus make it out to India? Yeah. What do you think of that? I don't think so. So, the claim comes So, there was a guy named um I'm going to forget his name. He was a Russian researcher in the 1800s and he made this claim that he went out to Tibet and he found a document in a Tibetan monastery that talked about Jesus studying there in India. Um his name's alerting me. It'll it'll pop in my brain. Uh yeah, Nicholas. Um so the problem is that he basically with all these things right emerald of those all the evidence disappears right and then you have like trust me bro uh and and actually a statement came out from the monks at this particular monastery and they're like we have no idea what this guy's talking about we no no Russian has ever showed up here but he made this claim that Jesus went to India and when he was in his childhood missing years got it so you have his birth story Right? And then you have a story in the Gospel of Luke where he's 12 years old and Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go to Jerusalem and then Mary and Joseph conveniently lose the son of God and they get out of there and then realize he's not with them. They go back to the temple and he's he's teaching Home Alone is the [ __ ] Jesus story, too. I know. It's all It's all the Jesus story. Yeah. Matrix is Hindu. That's my point. But Home Alone, Home Alone, you let us have that one. That's all. lost in Jerusalem is if he's the Messiah, why aren't they keeping track of everything happening throughout his entire life? Good question. So, the gospels are a form of ancient biography and when you read there are stipulations for ancient biography. So, there are guys like Lucian who writes a document called how to write good history in the ancient world, right? So he's a little bit before Jesus and he actually talks about and and some other ancient uh like biographers, historians talk about how do you write good history and the editing process they say is just as important as the what you include. So in the like 18th 19th century a lot of these German scholars looked at the gospels and they said these couldn't these can't be biographies because we know that biographies include stories of her childhood and particularly psychologize. So we have to remove these as thinking about the misbiographies. What they failed to understand is that there was already a category in the ancient world for what biographies looked like and whether the gospel authors were reading like Lucian and Celsius and um Aristophanes or not which I don't think they necessarily were it was in the zeitgeist that you include what's important and you make sure that you don't add fluff particularly because these are very arduous and expensive to write. Mhm. Uh, and so you include what's if if there's something noteworthy about. So the birth is noteworthy. The story where Jesus goes to the temple and all of these teachers in the temple are amazed by this 12-year-old boy who's teaching them stuff that's in there. And then you like fast forward to when he's 30 because so from 12 is just fluff. He's Well, he's just kind of living. So Luke says he he's um I'm thinking that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, my boy. That's some good living. Magical powers from 13 to 30, they're going to be you going to Thailand. Well, so that's come on. Come on. With all due respect, all due respect, I'm not mature enough to have this conversation. With all due respect, if you had magical powers from 13 to 30 and then at 30, like I'm on my longevity [ __ ] right now. I'm 40, right? So, I'm, you know, switching things up in my life. Obviously, lifespan was a little bit less back in the day. So, 30 comes around, you're like, now I'll change the world forever for the better. But there's got to be a time where, you know, you pop down to the Nile, see what's good over there. He's a carpenter. He's doing his job. He's laying wood. With all due respect, with all due respect, so I don't you get a pass. Um, so it's a good question. So, oh, I mentioned before when Jesus get a pass. Oh, cuz he gets hell. Anyway, I didn't say that. But you've heard it. No, you can say a lot about trying to eliminate his existence anyways, right? Yeah. Exactly. Right. He'll be back. He'll become back in the next life as a Christian. Yeah. Um, so this there's a story where Jesus goes back to Nazareth. Yes. And they're like, "Who is this guy? Isn't he don't we know his mom? Don't we know his dad? Isn't he the carpenter's son?" So there it's the equivalent of saying like, "We went to prom with this guy. What's he doing? Like how how did he end up like this?" Like they're surprised. But don't they also know that he was immaculately conceived? They may or may not. Why would they know that? Oh, that that wasn't like, you know, people talk people talk. They're not broadcasting it. You don't think that Joey didn't confide in nobody? No. You go to your boy and be like, "Hey man, I don't know what's going on. This girl pregnant. I didn't do anything." Yeah. There must have been a little conversation. Maybe some people knew. But they're surprised. And so there's an indication from the historical records of the gospels that people like Jesus during his childhood, it couldn't have been all that crazy cuz they're surprised when he's showing up and he's doing miracles. But there is a category of literature in like a 100 years plus after Jesus. Yeah. in called infancy narratives where people are coming up with stories where what would you know magical messiah Jesus yeah have done and so there's stories he's like playing on the playground he knocks dies then he raised oh no no no no these are clearly embellished and let's stick on the first hand accounts because these are the ones that are really exciting right because you can verify these kind of we would hope yeah yeah there at minimum there are only source material from the time frame that Jesus lived Okay. Why was he in uh Egypt? Why did he pop over to uh Cairo? He went to Cairo. He did go to Egypt. I went to the church that they were hiding out in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the claim that they make. That's fake. Well, I'm not saying it's fake. [ __ ] Egyptians. No, no, no. I'm not saying they charge you. I swear to God, brother, take the temple. I'm riding a donkey down the street to go see where Jesus was hidden. It's a [ __ ] You got good deal. I got good deal. If I got good deal one church, I have another church for you. This is unbelievable. No, no, no. Okay. I'm not saying it's fake. You tell me Jews built the pyramids. Now they say they uh started that was aliens. Yes. I watched that documentary. Yes, it was great. Um so it's not that that church is fake. It's just that the the stories that come up around these particular things are much later and they their reliability is iffy. Okay. I went to the anointing stone when I was in Jerusalem. Is that real? that has a lot more early proence. The stuff in Jerusalem has a lot more credibility because we have records going back to the second century of people going there in pilgrimages. So, a lot of the like locations for the holy supplr or like um like that kind of stuff. They go back to Constantine's mom who went to Jerusalem and established some of these things. Got it. But she did so based on like a oral chain of custody where she went to the places where the locals were saying we've been going here for hundreds of years and this is this is these are the connection points. Got it. So that's some word of mouth right there. It is. But it's like the chain of custody going back arguably to like there's a reliable sense. So are there questions about all these things? Sure. Okay. Um I I have a quick question on the like some of the discrepancies that occur in the Bible. That's something that I struggle with sometimes. Sure. I as a Catholic, you know, we have a little a little broader uh you know, papal authority, but I'm curious like how should Christians deal with discrepancies in the Bible, whether it's like the birth story or like the death of Judas or things like that. Yeah. What do you mean by discrepancies? Can you explain? So, they're differentiations in detail because we have four gospels. They all explain what the gospels are to people out there like me. Yeah. Good Catholics like you. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are these biographies of Jesus's life. So, two of them claim to be written by eyewitnesses. Matthew is Levi the tax collector and John is the disciple John. Luke and Mark are not. So Luke is a traveling companion of Paul who writes this two-fold document Luke and Acts. And then Mark is um in the earliest church tradition he is a traveling companion of Peter. So he gets his source information from Peter which is really interesting in the fact that Peter does not look good in Mark. Like that's where you know get behind me Satan. He's the duh disciple. Like he's continually not getting what Jesus is saying. Yeah. And he like runs away, denies Jesus. So if if the earliest source material is true, which I think we have no reason not to think it is, especially because they don't then call it the Gospel of Peter, which they could if they're like, well, this is Peter's source information. They call it the Gospel of Mark, who Mark's a generally a nobody. Um, that only gives credibility to the fact that Mark probably wrote it. And then it has this connection directly with Peter himself. So four gospels, two are claimed to be eyewitnesses who wrote them and then two claim to be like associates of second. Yeah. Yeah. So when the church is looking at all this literature and they're saying, okay, we have an old testament like testamentum just means covenant. Da in the Greek you just translated into Latin and it's testament. The old testament God's covenants are always followed up by written texts. So that's why they collected. You have guys like Pho and Josephus. They talk about this stuff. What are the books? And then the Christians see Jesus. He establishes a new covenant. He's fulfilling what the prophet Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 31:31 where he says, "I'm going to make a new covenant with my people. I'm going to write my law in their hearts." Jesus claims to fulfill those things. And then the early Christians who are Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah are saying, "Okay, here's the covenant. Here's the promise. Where are the written texts?" And so they have these conversations of canonicity which just means like canon in Greek means a rule. So it's the standard you know you have like a Harry Potter cannon and then you have stuff that's non or Star Wars cannon or Lord of the Rings cannon whatever. So the cannon of scripture and they're saying okay what's in what's out what's in what's out and these are all the stories about Jesus and his teachings at the time firstand account secondhand account thirdand account some are some rumors and they have to go through parcel through to find what has the most uh efficacy. Yeah. So what the conversations they're having is what are the documents that are either from someone who knew Jesus or someone who knew someone who knew Jesus. That's the standard. Got it. Got it. So yeah it's either was it empirical evidence or like what is one derivative away from that. Yeah. And it for the gospels in particular, like these four biographies of Jesus's life, they're the ones that the early Jesus community agrees upon the most because the disciples of Jesus had disciples. They're called the apostolic fathers, right? So there were people who like Peter and John and Paul discipled themselves. And then those people talk about, okay, I heard John say this, I heard, you know, so so and they give credibility. So there's this like direct chain of succession in line of custody to the apostolic commission. But is each sorry to interrupt here. So is each one of the apostles teaching their version of Jesus's life and do those differ slightly and is Christianity kind of like fracturing a little bit in those first few hundred years? So yes and no. So this goes to your question in terms of the differentiation in detail. So the fact is we have four biographies and sometimes they tell the same stories but they give different angles on the stories. So we have a similar thing with the emperor at the time Tiberius. So the only other person who's sort of comparative to Jesus in terms of source information is the emperor. So you have Jesus and then you have the most powerful the most well-known the richest person at the time. And he also has four biographies of himself or at least four. Don't kick that please. Thank you. Sorry, not while I'm talking. Forgive me. Um, so he so Tiberius has uh Villas Petercurculus, Sutonius, Cassillo, and Tacitus who are all writing source information for him. So if we can do like a comparative analysis for someone with Jesus, the emperor is a good guy to do it because he likewise has four individuals who are writing about his life. you're saying as an example of their importance and impact or like how can we look at source information. Now the gospels are a little bit different because they're pretty comprehensive and they're only about Jesus whereas these other guys are writing say about emperors more broadly and so it's the like snippets here and there but what I was getting at is we have differences in those stories too or like Socrates I get what you're saying three biographers that's three different sports writers writing about the game they might have different angles but at the end of the day this is the score and these are how much these people played and they're going to reference who the superstars were. Yeah. And the detail. So I would say a differentiation in detail doesn't necessarily amount to a contradiction. So I haven't found something that I think is an outright contradiction there. That's not to say there aren't hard ones. So the death of Judas is a hard one because one gospel says that he uh he went and hung himself in the potter's field. The other says that he falls headlong and his endrails fall out. He falls headlong and his like insides fall out. What does that mean? Falls headlong like like it falls on his head and then his insides fall out. Yeah. What? So that's what it says happens. So there are a few things going on here. I think it's entirely possible to harmonize that and say he hung himself and you know the rope snapped and it fell and he he like it's not you can see how you could get these kind of things even if some people think you're playing loose and fast with that kind of thing. Okay. Then we also have the fact that in Hebraic Seemetic idea your endrails like your your intestines are where your credibility comes from. Ah got it. So there's there could be a play on words in that he could have physically like his got cut open and his his intestines fell out. But there also could have been this idea for the Jewish mindset of like this is the guy that betrayed Jesus. Of course it's Andre's fallout because that's where you're like credibility is now. Is there could you argue that there is credibility in the authenticity of the gospel of the gospels because they're the gospels those are my favorite because me too it's a serial because because they're differing accounts like if every account was identical you don't need four accounts the fact that they differ slightly and they don't make the changes to make them match up offers more authenticity to me. Well, I I would say it's like if if no, like if you're gonna change it, change it. It's sort of like the the headsp space of like uh if you're like sort of cheating on a test or like uh Yeah, you have to make one thing wrong to make it not look like you got it. Yeah, I guess you can make that. So, like I don't mean it that way. I mean it almost in the way that you're correct. I've never thought about it that way that cuz the criticism from the outside is a hey, they're just changing these things to make it look the best so that they can exert power and influence over the people that they rule. That's the outside perspective from like an atheist perhaps. and on on the societal utility or not even societal like how the power structure uses religion, right? So, but I'm like, okay, well, that's not a really good one if you're putting quote unquote mistakes or differences. You're like, unless they thought it was important to maintain the authenticity of these stories, so they left them in there despite the differences. Well, if they all said the same thing, you could accuse them of collaborating and collusion. That Yeah, maybe that was a really quick way of saying what I've battled about. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But to to So, what are these circumstances that they're discrepancies that are causing you uh to have a lack of faith? You [ __ ] fraud. Wait, no. That's not what I said. That's what I said. What is that? What is that? Let me come and I'm just saying, dude. This guy's a nonom. This guy's a nonom. He's like one of those guys that was like celebrating when Jesus came in on the donkey and then when he's up there on the cross. Oh, God. Don't do that to Mark. What is truthflopper? No, no, no, no. I I So the gospels are writing so there's different authors with different intentions writing to different audiences. So some of them are clearly writing to Jewish audiences and so they're capitalizing on certain things. For example, so Matthew is making this connection between Jesus being the new David and the new Moses. So he's doing certain things in his gospel where he's capitalizing on aspects of Jesus's life where so he gives a different genealogy than Luke does for Jesus's ancestry. So some people look at that and they're like, "Well, this is a problem. You got two genealogies of Jesus." And but what we know about genealogies, particularly Jewish genealogies, is that sometimes they're not meant to be either exhaustive or gapless. What does that mean? So, we today, if I'm doing a family tree, I'm going to make sure that everybody's listed, right? Grandfather, great-grandfather, great great-grandfather. The ancient Hebrews are more concerned with the right people being named for the right reasons. So, and they also have this idea that's called gumatria, where every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a number associated with it, and your name ends up having a number. So, David ends with the number 14. if you like count up the things. Matthew's gospel starts with a genealogy that has three lists of 14 ending with Jesus. And the point of that and we know that it's not like he leaves people out because we can go back to like 1 and 2 Kings, first and 2 Chronicles where we have longer lists of these people and Matthew is leaving people out or he's like squishing whole generations into just one person. So you could look at that and say in our modern mindset, well that's that's playing loose and fast with the data. But an ancient Jew would say, okay, well why is this happening? Ah, you have lists of 14. That's David. And so he's to his audience, he's communicating this is the new David. Okay? And he's doing things that are fulfilling the expectation of who David should be like as the king, as the anointed one. And you have things like Moses goes up on a mountain and receives the law. Jesus goes up on a mountain and gives the law, a new law, right? And um so throughout the Gospel of Matthew, you have these constant insertions that are capitalizing on details to for his audience to make sure that they know this guy Jesus is this person who is the person you're waiting for. He's fulfilling the Davidic reign. He's the prophet like Moses that's predicted back in the Torah and he's accomplishing these things. Is this what you you mean when you say the Bible is written for you but not to you? I like that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz it has a different audience, right? And so understanding the context helps you. That's why the like German rationalists in the 18th and 19th centuries didn't like they did the wrong thing. They said, "This is how we would write, therefore, and they didn't look back because there's like linguistic and cultural levels to it." Yeah. Right. So, you could just translate the text directly, but it's context that's going to tell you the difference between a butt dial and a booty call, even though they might be the same words in Greek or Hebrew, right? Yes. But you could read that and you could be completely misled. A butt dial and a booty call, completely different things. Yeah. So there's versions of that in the it's ancient literature. Oh yeah, totally. And this is what some guy is just guessing at that point and just making an inference in terms of like today interpretation. Yeah. Well, you study the ancient culture. So fortunately, we have like the ability to look at things to understand idioms and people talk about stuff and that gives you a frame of reference. Like I'm sure they're using slang. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All the time. Apparently, there's all these issues with like biblical translations as they're trying to translate it in like the 20th century to all these different cultures and when they're putting in their native tongue like uh there's one specific that I remember I did this field trip to WF and it's a it's a Bible translator in Florida. Have you heard of it? I uh and one of the things in like this one specific tribal culture in Africa that there's this idea of Jesus knocking on the heart, but in that culture thieves knock. And so they're like, "Okay, we can't make it knocking cuz then they're going to think Jesus is a thief." And so what what they did is like they would cough or something like that. They would like clear their throat to indicate that there was someone on the other side of their hut. And so they had to translate it to Jesus coughs at the door of the heart or something to that effect. Yeah. And that when you're translating things, you have to be super specific to the culture that you're translating to. So this is the difference between what's called a formal equivalence translation and a dynamic equivalent translation. Yeah. This is a dynamic equivalent translation. Yeah. So dynamic is like the thought forthought idea, right? So in the gospel of Luke in the Greek, there's this line where Jesus says, "Let these words sink into your ears." Right? That's exactly what Jesus says. "Let these words sink into your ears." So if you have a dynamic equivalence like the New International Version of the Bible in English, they're going to say, "Listen carefully to what I'm about to say cuz that's what that means." But that's not what Jesus said, right? So whereas the New American Standard Bible, the NAS NASB is more of a formal equivalent. They're literally going to say, "Let these words sink into your ears." Cuz that's the words that Jesus spoke. So, it's the question of what's cuz people always ask me like, "What's what's the best translation?" Yeah. And I I don't know the answer to that. Like, the best Bible is the one you're going to read. So, just figure out the one that you're going to read and then read it. New International Version, baby. There you go. So, like, let these words sink into your ears or and this gets tricky because you have terms of phrase. So, one of the most quoted verses in the Bible of the Bible is a version of Exodus 34:6 where Moses goes up on Mount Si and God says that he is a gracious God, compassionate, steadfast and abounding love and and the Hebrew says long of nos. You're like, what? Long of nos. Well, there it's a Hebrew idiom meaning slow to anger. Are they? Yeah. That's what that means. So, so how do how do we know that that's what we meant? So, what else does it mean? So, Hebrew is a Seemetic language. We have other Get out of here. Okay. Here's why I use that illustration. Even the most formal equivalent. Okay. Well, okay. How would you say someone just got a long nose back in the day? How would they say that? Same way. Well, how do you know it wasn't just a descriptor? A descriptor? Yeah, cuz why would you describe God as long of nose? So, we have other examples within other languages and portrayals of I got a [ __ ] idea, too. Like, why wouldn't you, you know? Yeah. But this is why Jesus had the golden hair that Yeah. Yeah. They But they probably were describing the way his hair looked. That was safe. This is just God. Jesus long in that religion. Jesus is God. I don't know about his face. Oh, we are. Okay. Okay. But but I I use that example to say like even the most formal equivalent isn't going to translate like that cuz it doesn't make any sense, right? So, but long of nos. You think that they were just using a common It's an idiom. It's an idiom. Yeah. Yeah. This guy's an idiom. I'm just I it's not like an insane but Hebrews if like a Chinese guy was described as like small of eye. I don't think it would be like No, I don't think it would be an idiom, right? Like an idiom for good at math. Okay. Like one could say that or you could be like, "Oh, this might have been a descriptor." I just picked up on why you guys are laughing. How many days later? I'm slow. I'm slow. No, he's on Jesus time. And he's back. He's risen. He just resurrected his sense of humor. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like maybe it was just a description. Like for everyone's got big noses, then it wouldn't be a description. You know, I mean, if everyone's got big noses, not everyone. No, but if you're God, you want to have the biggest thing as a big nose. That's what I'm Italians or something. Yeah. Yeah, that's what you're talking about. Jew. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if So wouldn't the Jewish god also have that? Well, so this is this is an idiom that we find in other cemetic languages. So like Aadian and Aramaic and like So this is the language found languages that are in the region. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where the Jews live. You're not seeing the parallel here. I'm a historian. You got to know about this. You got to understand context. know who he's speaking to. He's saying he's one of y'all. I mean, maybe contextually, no. Listen, leave it up to the historians. Okay. Okay. Comedically, yes. Comedically, yes. Okay. Wait. Just cuz Arish Shafir looks like that today. Doesn't necessarily mean Okay. Okay. She look like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. I got to get Del here, dude. We're getting We're getting on a line right now. Yeah. Yeah, we're getting close. Okay. All right. So, you were saying so dynamic formal equivalence translation stuff. That's that's How do we start this? You brought it. You were talking about translation of uh You just said there a bunch of long noses running out. Get out of here looking for Jesus. I'm going to kick you out of your own pocket. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I thought it was disrespectful. I So, this is your podcast. I thought it was disrespectful. They were like the long noses are trying to crucify him. I'm like, you can't say Leslie Lesley. Leslie, you said something like that and we're like, we got to put a stop to this. Slow to an angry people. And Yeah. And then you were like, "No, it's an idiom for the time." Abound, love, and faithfulness. Yes. Exactly. What language was that? Huh? What was Did you speak What language was that? Abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness. Bro, I said it quickly and we were very like, "What?" That window moment. I want to stop. Did you understand what he said? I thought he was speaking Hebrew. I had no clue. Yeah. Yeah. But I I appreciate you just did bust the rhymes, you know. He roof. Okay. Okay. Okay. I twisted on you. Let's let's uh let's let's center ourselves. So, he was talking about like translation issues and that happens all the time in like you're translating the Bible into Peruvian in a culture that like doesn't know what a donkey is. Do you then say it's a llama or is that like taking too much liberty with the text? But this is stuff we run into all the time. So this is why the best commentary on the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament is going to be the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New and the Greek New Testament. Yeah. But there are things that we learn about these languages like the King James Bible translated between 1603 and 1611. There were terms that they just didn't know what they meant and they transliterated them. We now know what they are because we've like through and have they adjusted the King James Bible since Well, no, you don't. Well, new translations do. There's a new King James and KJV. Yeah. And they would So 1st Chronicles 26:18. Yeah. In the King James Bible says, "At par at Parbar westward, Fort the causeway into it parbar." You're like, "What does that mean?" Right. But if you read the NIV, this guy's favorite translation. That [ __ ] is light. The new Indian version. That's um it says, "As for the court to the west, there were two at the court and forth the road itself." I didn't even know what that meant. So parbar is not an Elizabethan English term. It's just a transliteration of a Hebrew word that they were like, "We don't know what this is, so we're just going to call it a parar." Like croissant. Yeah, that that's a I think I think he's right on this. Okay. Okay, we'll go with it. Yeah. We didn't have a word for that type like a what what gay bread, so we just called it, right? Like we don't have an English word for that. Yeah. So, we just go, "Okay, let's just call it their thing." Yeah. Yeah. Sure. We should just leave it in Latin. Why are you guys looking at me like I'm dumb? It's the exact same thing that the English did, right? They didn't have a word for it, so they're like, "All right, just leave it there." Yeah. Cultural appropriation. Yes. Yeah. But in a in like the best version of it, we want you to appropriate Christianity. We That is what Christians would hope that everybody appropriates it. Sure. But then we figure out what the word is and it's fine. And then it's fine. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I I I'm like I'm jumbled up here. We still haven't figured out your discrepancies in the Bible. No. No. I think we I think we kind of That was the only one. What were the other things? You have a biblical scholar here right now. He's a historian. He benches 240. You're you're you're lowballing. What do you put up there? 285 for five. Easy. You could have carried that cross for days, bro. Right. You guys got a bench press here. Wait. No. Okay. What? Why were you about to throw some? We could We could test it. 315. 315. I've done 404 for one. What? Yeah. Body of Christ. Jesus. Yeah. All right, guys. Take a break for a second. This episode has been brought to you by Squarespace. If you're looking to build a website, you need to look into Squarespace. They make it easy to create a beautiful website to help it engage your audience, sell anything from products and content to time, and do it on your own terms. They have Squarespace payments, the easiest way to manage your payments in one place with Squarespace. Onboarding is fast and simple. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away. Plus, give your customers more ways to pay with popular payment methods like CLA, AC Direct, debit, Apple Pay, Afterpay, and Clear Pay. Also, design intelligence from Squarespace uses cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. 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Some have said that uh the strength of a blue chew [ __ ] can um bring salvation. Point I'm trying to make is you get your first month free when you go to Bluetooth.com. Use the promo code flagrant. All you got to do is pay $5 of shipping. Okay. We'll see you soon. Let's get back to the show. I don't even know why. We'll see you soon. We are see you right now. Bye. Shifty. He has a question. Yes. We need Are you miked? Shifty knows the Bible. Okay. Shifty. Uh we were talking about translations and mistransations. And I've heard a lot of people say that gay gay marriage and gay relations are just mistransations of the verses like Romans, the ones in the Old Testament. Do you think they're mistransations and the Bible is saying that they don't ever just talk about gay marriage or gay relations in general or do you think that they're misrulations? Yeah. So the accusation is usually that the word homosexuality is it gets incorporated into the Bible in like the modern era. So the words in Hebrew in the Old Testament Leviticus, Paul particularly in 1 Corinthians 7 plays off of what the Greek translation of the Old Testament has and uses this word arenoyes which literally means to like to lie down a man with a man. And so I think it's not a mistransation because the concept is there like what it's talking about is not obscure. It might be controversial, but it's not obscure in the Hebrew and Greek. The accusation is usually that it's not talking about like sameex sex. It's talking about something like uh bo men sleeping with boys or temple prostitution. I don't think you can really rationalize that. There's a guy named Robert Gagnon. That's your last name. Yeah. Um Robert Gon except you say do you say Gagnon? Yeah. These people don't understand. Wait, hold on. Is this guy about to justify homosexuality? No. No. Robert Gon is a scholar. He did his uh dissertation um he taught at Princeton for a while on uh this like like the linguistic and cultural context of homosexuality in the Bible. So his is kind of like the volume. So he goes through all this laughing at that and talks about Mark comes from a long line of people. Long line of croissants. We just call them croissants. Okay. We just call them croissants. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So, he's a Croissan historian and then and then what did he find out? Well, these concepts are like if you went back to Moses and you had two dudes and said we want to get married. Moses is like for what? What? He would say for what? Yeah. Well, that wouldn't be He wouldn't He'd be like that's not what marriage is. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's it's not like it's just because the word homosexuality exists now in English doesn't mean that the concept isn't there. within the Bible. Yeah. Within the Bible, it was frowned upon even like whatever translation, whatever contextually. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, what happens? What happens? Um, are you guys done with the gay stuff or so? Okay. So, what do what happens? So, after Jesus comes back, what do his disciples go do? Do they go separate? They go around the world, right? And they're going to spread the gospel. Well, they hide because they think their movement's done. They think their leader's dead. That's kaputs. And so, but then he comes back. Yeah. So, that's what changes their mind. So, that's what they go from 11 scared disciples because Judas's killed himself. Yeah. In the upper room. Yeah. To then going out and being willing to actually lose their life for this proclamation. It's cuz Jesus shows up like and then teaches them for 40 days. Oh. So, they do another 40day st. They do another 40 days with Jesus. Right. That's Yeah. So that that's the uh that's what Luke talks about that this this 40-day period and then you have the mount of ascension. He goes back and then they spread out. Well, first they go back to Jerusalem and start preaching that at ground zero where it happened, which if you were trying to make it up, you wouldn't go back to the place where everybody saw the guy killed and say like he's resurrected, the tomb's empty. Like that's you go somewhere else and people check the tomb and it's empty. Yeah. I mean the they would have right. So, that's a bar that I've seen a bunch of pastors on TikTok use. It's It's fire. It's like The tomb is empty. No, no. It's uh uh If you look in Muhammad's tomb, he's in there. If you look at Moses' tomb, he's in there. If you look at my God's tomb, it's empty. That's fire. Yeah. And then they start getting I'm It's good. It's good. I've just heard it before, so it's all Yeah. They don't make any sense. I know, but they're going to be gassed up. He's still dead in the tomb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus ain't there. He ain't there. Yeah. And then uh Steven is the first martyr and he gets killed. And so the disciples know that this is risky. They still want to go do it. Yeah. So like when I was uh last week I was in Turkey. Yeah. And I went to uh Ephesus which is where the body of St. John is. and I went to uh Heropoulos which is where the body of Philip the disciple is. So like they went out and they started preaching these things and there's various stories of like some were martyed that those reports are sketchier than others. Um but we know at minimum that Peter and Paul were martyed in Rome in and around the time between 64 and 68. So every single one of them gets killed. uh not not that we can reliably at minimum they are persecuted. Some were probably killed for their faith. Uh a lot of them suffered physical harm because of it. And the idea is that they all have disciples as well. The religion continues to grow. Yeah. And you see a difference in the religion from certain areas, right? When does when do we have like the Orthodox church and the Catholic Church separate? Well, that's in like the that's a thousand years after. Yeah, but it takes time for those beliefs to separate. And what is the true one? What is the true one? Well, I mean, so I'm biased cuz I'm a Protestant, right? So, nobody wakes up one day and is like purgatory. We all believe that now, right? Like there's a slow fade for these traditions that develop over time. And so, it's not like it. So if you talk to Roman Catholics, they, you know, it's the 2000-y old church. Pope Leo I 14th is the successor of Peter and that goes right back. Yeah. From Chicago. You like that though? You like that? I mean, I'm not going to say I I influenced it while I was in Rome, but I'm not going to say I'm not. You want to be a Pakistani pope? A Pakistani. I'm in I'm in I like the Italian guy named Pizza. That was the That's what I was writing for just cuz his name is Pizza. That was that was a front runner. Pizza bolo is the funniest most Italian. It's like a madeup Italian. Yeah. Yeah. If you were to like invent an Italian pizza virus. Nice. Um [Laughter] Oh, you want Trump saying pizza though? Yes, I do. Pizza. Pizza. Uh okay. So, tell me. So, so the the the East and the West split. Yeah. Over I mean there's language divisions, Latin and Greek and all sorts of things. And then they uh ultimately disagree on the formulation. There's a bunch of things that happen but on the formulation of the nyine creed where does the spear proceed from the father. So there's a bunch of things that go on but they eventually excommunicate each other interestingly enough under a pope Leo. Wow. So so here we go. Run it back. And then Pope Leo. But how different are the religions at the time? And is there a is there enough communication between the different factions to maintain one like singularity of belief like there is a printed book at the time there is one story yet the Roman Catholics have a pope and the Orthodox do not right and so is I mean I imagine there's infighting here I would imagine there's like I don't want to say like blasphemy thrown around but I I imagine like well they excommunicate each other they excom and what year does that happen? Uh, one I don't know. Give it a Goog, thousand. So, we're pretty deep into the ex. Yeah, we're we're a thousand years afterwards. Got it. But the and that by the time you get to like 15174,54. So, by the great schism by the time you get to 1517 and Martin Luther post his 95 thesis on the castle door in Vinberg, Germany. Mhm. That and launches the Protestant Reformation. like that's then the next and he didn't want to start a different denomination like that wasn't his purpose. He wanted to reform the church. Yeah. But the church wasn't willing to get along with that and so then that created the division. So just so I can understand this, Orthodox have been holding it true this entire time. Then the Catholics kind of change it up a little bit. Well, no, it's trickier than that. And then the thing that the Catholics create gets changed up again and then it gets changed up again and gets changed up again and gets changed up again. But them Orthodox have been holding it true this whole time. I mean it's kind of crazy how that you got to talk to the cops. I'm just saying they got they got Jesus's house in the Cairo. So yeah, I was there for that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the cop deck. So they're they're another group. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you got you got a bunch of different factions, right? But but I think you have a central core which we would all adhere to approximately but then you have differentiations in like theological disagreements. The Protestant Reformation was to reform all of that and go back to the primitive church. The primitive church is well like what scripture teaches English. Well, I don't think it's necessarily closest to any of them. Like I don't claim that. Feels kind of orthodox. Feels like you don't want to admit it. Oh no, I'm not orthodox. No, this guy's like a diehard Orthodox Christian. I just went I just went to Turkey and I had a tour guide and he was breaking the whole thing down to me. I was like, "Oh, I've been lied to my whole life." And Orthodox are really the real ones. Yeah. What is that church uh in uh Yeah. Ha Sophia? Yeah. The high of Sophia. Yeah. Have you visited? Yeah. I was just there. And thoughts? I mean, it's a beautiful church. It's a mosque now. So, yeah. How'd we let that one go? That was the first one, right? The Muslims. Yeah. They they got it. They got it. We had it for a while. They got a lot. Yeah. They got a lot. All those regions were Christian. Christian and Jewish. We stopped him right there though, didn't they? Seventh century. They didn't get into Europe, you know. Yeah. Charles, you stopped. That's why we get croissants from, you know, that. Yes. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. They ate the Turks for breakfast. That was the line. Oh, because uh that's a crescent. Yeah, that's largely why we have coffee is because the the Muslims were taking over Spain and they went up and they'd grabbed all these beans from uh like Kenya cuz they were making coffee for a long time and then when they retreated they left the story that they left these beans in Spain and Portugal and then when Charles the Hammer of France he pushes them back they leave all these beans and they get some of the Muslim captives and they're like what is this stuff and they're like oh this is this drink we make and there's a lot of pressure on the pope to ban coffee as the the drink of the devil. And so the story is that the pope at the time drank it and he said this is the drink of the devil. We need to baptize for Jesus. And but there was this like this feud because it was it was pitted as the anti-wine. So wine was like the drink of the Eucharist and coffee is the drink of the infidels and so but that's largely and then the Capuchin monks in Italy they took it and they didn't like the taste. They mix it with honey and they mix it with milk and cap cappuccinos. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Hell yeah. Thank you. You could be Billy Carsoning us right now and I would totally believe every single thing. We're not facteing anything, Joey. Okay. Oh, that's awesome. So, you haven't really told me the difference between the Catholic Church and the uh Orthodox Church. Well, it would be Well, so the Eucharist is the Catholic Church has a has a papal primacy. Yes. Right. So, they have the bishop of Rome. How does that come about? Why do they decide that there is a pope and why does the Orthodox church decide that there isn't one? I mean, this is one of the disagreements between the east and the west because the the seed of Peter becomes very important in the west and the east church says, well, we have all basically every other apostle, so we're not too concerned with the bishop in Rome. But there is a point in time where like papal infallibility starts to develop and then when uh the pope chooses the emperor. So Charlemagne is crowned the Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope. I think it's the year 800. Give it a Goog. Um, and that's when I I would argue I love you. That's when it starts. Great. Fact check me. I can't remember the date. Every every once in a while the Canadian bursts out of you. That's Canadian. Give it a Give it a go. Was it 800? You got it. Um, so yeah, Pope Leo, another Pope Leo. Yes. The third. He crowns Charlemagne the Emperor. Before that, the emperor kind of had influence who the pope was. And this is where you get this like subversion. And that's where I personally would say the Roman Catholic big R big C church starts. That's controversial. Roman Catholics don't like it that I say that, but that's when you start to get this idea of a papal primacy and the magisterium as this concrete body. The East is not on board with that at all. No. Well, they don't they just don't care. They don't think that the bishop of Rome has any more or less authority than any of the other bishops. Um, so they have the patriarchs and they have that kind of setup. Which do you think is most similar to the earliest forms of Christianity? Cuz was there a pope in the earliest forms of Christianity? Well, there was a So bishops Yeah. are like the church singular bishop was there then he was just the guy or is that kind of like an invention of like well the bishops are corrupt like leaders within the church. So Paul outlines this like hierarchy of Yeah. He won't give it to us. He won't give it to you yet. Of course not. Guys hanging out in Turkey, you know, at the source. You keep going to the source. You're not going back to Rome, my boy. I know. Cuz you know, I crossed the Tyber and I I took apart my boat and I made a pulpit and I started preaching to the other side. That's what I'm talking about. Well, so at the council of Nia 325 AD, if you had to make the argument, if you had to make the argument for the Orthodox Church being the closest church toward for could you do it if you had to if you had to do it to save humanity. Sure, it's possible. What would you do to save humanity? If you just had to save humanity, you save humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Uh oh. Well, I would look at the Bible and say solos scriptor. Oo. Oh, scriptures the soul infallible rule and faithful practice for the church. That was English. That was English. Catch that one. I got that one barely. But I got barely. You got Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest differentiation when the uh Protestants come around is they say Martin Luther's reading the Bible. He's reading the New Testament in Greek and he's saying, "I'm reading this stuff and I'm looking at the church. I'm seeing a I'm seeing a big difference." And so, so the church isn't acting in the way that the book is written. There have been a lot of traditions that have developed that are at minimum non-biblical and at most anti-biblical. Like like what's an example of that? Yeah. Well, Pope Leo, another Pope Leo starts this process of indulgences. So, there's this theological idea called the treasury of merit that you can draw from. That's like the holiness of the saints and Mary and the copious outgiving of the blood of Christ that you can draw on. And so the Pope Leo in the 16th century says, "Hey, we need to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica." And so he commisss guys to go out and collect money by selling indulgences. So you can you either can get out of purgatory faster or if you have family members who are stuck in purgatory, you give the church money, they'll get so many years off purgatory. This is still a thing, by the way. Did that ever happen in the Orthodox church? You know, if they ever did anything like that? They never did anything like that. Wow. It's fascinating, dude. Yeah. I feel like you should look in more to that church cuz it feels like I got some friends who are going to be really happy you're talking like that. Yeah, you're the best friends. Um but so that's clearly like and that's what the Martin Luther is 95. We're going to get you over here, man. We're going to get you over to the one true the one true religion. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I that makes sense with Martin Luther doing. And do you think that there was there were Catholics that at the time uh respected that idea and they thought that the church had or against uh the reformation that they appreciated the reformation despite not wanting to become Protestants but they wanted reformation for their own version of Christianity. Yes. And even some of the people that like fought Luther on it um were sympathetic to some the first debate of the reformation was between a guy named Desidarius Arasmus. He was Dutch and the first debate was a written debate between him and Luther on the freedom of the will versus the bondage of the will. And Arasmus could have been like a closet reformer in some things cuz he but there were lots of people. I mean there were there was a whole period of time with popes and antipopes. Well, I mean you even hear it now like with the selection of the pope a lot of times Catholics will be like this pope isn't progressive enough or this pope isn't conservative enough. So a and the hope I would imagine is that like maybe a more conservative pope would reform the church in a way that met what they thought was most important about you know their values right and I don't know maybe that there maybe there's something really valuable to that that you that the church can kind of sway according to like what society needs at the time but maybe there's also something very um concerning about that too that if you don't have the rigidity that the religion can be manipulated ated and used in the way that you were saying. Yeah. Well, so you have another reformer guy a little bit later on after Luther named John Calvin. Ah yes, he's in France or he's in well he's French but he he's in uh Switzerland and so he's in Geneva and uh the the bishop of Geneva at the time actually writes to Celo, Cardinal Celo writes to the people in Switzerland in Geneva and says like you got to come back to the true church like you're in danger of damnation come back. And the elderly Calvin comes out of retirement. He actually writes this letter to Cardinal Celledo and he says, "You got it wrong. We are the original church. We don't need to go home. You need to come home because you have we've scraped all the moss off of the facade of Christianity and and all that tradition that's dividing you from what scripture actually is telling you, what the core of the faith adheres to. And so you've you've you've lost the script. H what do you think about Martin Luther's removal of the apocrypha from that original cannon? Yeah, great question. So he didn't but what does that mean though? So Roman Catholics and Protestants have different number of books in their Bibles. So this is part of why I was in Italy because we went to Trento in Italy where the Council of Trent happened where the Council of Trent was the counterreformation. So 1546 to 1563 I think it was. they respond to the reformation because they're like, "Okay, like Protestantism has become this big thing. We need to deal with this. So, let's try to bring the Protestants and and the the Catholics together and figure this out." So, so that we can reunite the the believers or sort of although they invite the Protestants and they say, "You can show up, but you can't vote." So, they don't really um so the Protestants hear this and they're like, "Well, we're not showing up then." and a few show up later on. Uh but part of the conversation is that there was no one Roman Catholic Bible. So you go back to say St. Jerome in the 4th century. He translates the Greek Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin. That's the Vulgate. It's the vulgate, right? It just means like common. So people weren't speaking Greek anymore. They were speaking Latin. And so Constantine says, "We need a Bible that people can actually read." So he commisss Jerome to translate the Bible into the language that everybody can read. At the time though, Jerome doesn't believe that the apocrypha, so this other group of books in the Old Testament, not the New Testament, are scripture. So Jerome argues against Augustine, who does believe they were scripture. But there's always this open conversation. The only council that makes any delineation on what scripture is is the council of Trent. So at Trent that is when the so the Catholics would call it the dudero canonical books and I'm a little disappointed that you didn't you used my term though which I'm okay with. Sure. Um uh because apocrypha typically means like it's a term for things that are out right. Um I went to Presbyterian school. That's nice. Um so the so the the Catholics have 73 books. Okay. In their Bible. I have 66 in my Bible. Um, the 39 books of the Old Testament that I have in my Old Testament are the same books that the guy that I mentioned before, Josephus, mentions as the books that the Jews considered scripture. Now, he gives a different number, but it's the same number of books. They're just in a different order. So, the Jews order them differently. It's the same today. If you buy a Tanakh, the Torah, Neb, the Ketim, what are the books of the Jewish publication, they will have the same books as a Protestant Old Testament. They'll just have them in a different order. So they group the prophets together differently. They don't have first and second Kings. They have Kings. They don't have first and second Chronicles. They have So it's all the same information. It's just the same books, just different. That's fine. Um order. So Luther says, "Okay, there's all this debate. I'm just going to stick with the core. I'm going to cut out the chaff and I'm just going to this is the Bible." However, Luther still includes them in a separate section which he labels apocrypha. And actually the first King James Bible in 1611 also did that. So did the Geneva Bible. So did the Bishop's Bible. There's a long-standing history of Bibles that include them because they're written in the intertestamental period between the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, and the first book of the New Testament. But to say that like Roman Catholics put them in or that Protestants took them out, I think is a little bit messy because there's historical precedence for both lists. M but I would say that the strongest evidence the earliest evidence is for the 66 that us Protestants stuck with cuz we said what what is scripture to the Jews? And so Paul says the oracles of God are entrusted to the Jews. And so guys like Jerome went back to the Jews and he said okay how many books do you have? And they said these. And he said have you ever considered these other ones scripture? They said no. And he's like okay well that does it for me. H is it historically speaking is it easier to maintain the authenticity of a religion if it is not in power in an area is it I don't understand the question in other words like once the religion is tied with the power structure of the area there might be bad actors that will abuse the religion to exert more power to raise finances is etc. When if the religion is a minority group in the area, there's no real way to exert power. Sure. Outside of like maintaining its authentic authenticity and you have to do the most pure form if you want to get to heaven over here. You can bastardize it a little bit. That's maybe a strong word, but like you can morph it. Yeah. I'm not going to do that ever again. Sorry. Don't say no more. Sorry. Or whatever. But you can you can morph it and and the morphing of it can kind of deteriorate the authenticity of the religion. So like what does history say about that? Yeah. I mean you do have like power corrupts, right? People are always going to use advantage. I mean that's the biblical narrative original sin. Like the the Israelites want a king. They're like, "Hey God, we want a king." And God's like, "No, that's going to kings always end badly. You don't want that." And they demand it and he gives them a king. and Saul is not a great guy and then David sleeps with everybody and kills people's husbands. So, you know, it's the the narrative of the story. I think that definitely happens. I think so. The common accusation is that like Constantine converts and then he pollutes things, right? The I think the problem with that is that Constantine if he wants to exert power by converting to Christianity, it's kind of a dumb thing to do because he's converting to a minority religion that worships a crucified Jew. Why? Why did he convert the empire to Christianity? So he converted himself to Christianity. It's only after him under Emperor Theodosius that that Christianity becomes the religion of Rome. I thought he converted on his deathbed. No, but I know what you're talking about. So you don't baptize on his deathbed. That's it. Yes. Yes. He converts after the events of 312 with the battle of Milian Bridge. So he there's this battle between Magentthius who's the leader of the west and Constantine who's the leader of the east and they fight for the unification of and so the story is whether you want to consider it reliable or not is that Constantine and his army have a vision of the Cairo what looks like a P and an X. It's the first two letters in Greek for the word Christ. and uh hear a voice that says in this sign conquer. And so he puts that on all his shields. And even though they're going against the Ptorian Guard, which is like the elite fighting force of Maxentius, they win. And so after that point, he starts to like, okay, what's going on here with this? I used the sign of the Christian God and I won. And so what's and then we do have testimony of other early Christians who seem to give credibility to the fact that he does in fact legitimately convert. And part of that is that if he wanted to exert power, he could just do what Dialesian did and say I'm God. So I'm going to kill everybody. What I go what I say goes and he doesn't do that. So it's actually it's interesting the way that this is taught. The way that it's taught, it was to me as like a kid was that there was so much momentum for the growth of Christianity within the empire that they had no choice but to convert. Yeah. It's not it's Why even teach that? Like I mean, why does anybody teach anything? And I guess I I guess but I think it does a disservice to like the the choice at the time. Like it's a pretty brave choice in that regard for Constantine. Like Yeah. And it certainly would not have been popular. I thought he was succumbing to the will of the people. No, I thought it was a train. There was there was a runaway train. There's nothing he could do about it. He's like the only way that we can keep vampire together is we start following that. And then there's all this conversation of them like including pagan rituals into this new version of Christianity, which I'd love you to speak on. Uh so that the pagans would more easily adopt it. Yeah. But you're telling me that this is just like completely false. So there are like there there there are kernels of that that's true in the sense that like uh Christians would do things like build churches over the sites of old temples in that they said like you're you're coming here anyways to worship. Now worship the true God in the same location that you're regularly aware of going to anyways. But the like uh the assimilation of pagan practices that's a myth. How do we get the eggs in Easter? Um, that's a middle-aged thing because eggs were associated with both new life and uh spring in Europe. It's a European thing. Christmas. How do we get Santa? Uh, Santa is like a combination of St. Nicholas, who is a 4th century bishop, and uh, center Claus in Germany. I think it's a New York thing. I think eventually the Dutch in New York. Uh, that's fire. Montreal. They You're going to take credit for that one? Yeah. I mean, yeah, he should. He should. Yeah. Him and him. And And so it like all comes together. Um, so this doesn't exist prior. What? The celebration of Christmas. Oh, no. Christmas goes really old. Yeah. Yeah. So, there's a guy named Julius Aricanis in the second century who's preoccupied with figuring out how old everything is and you know how he gives us the date for the creation of the world and then he like adds up. So, part of what he's doing is he's a Christian and he's like when was Jesus born? So, he looks at a bunch of different things and he he he reckons that he's figured out when Jesus was uh like when the the when Mary got pregnant and then counts 9 months and gets to December 25th. And so that's is 24th or 25th? Why did I blind? I was right. The first just ran with it. Why? When do the when do the true Christians celebrate it? January 6th. Damn it. What's going on? What is that? So, the Orthodox do it on December January 6, but it's the same date. We just use different calendars. That's why. Oh, you guys stuck with the old calendar. We went to the new calendar. It's the exact same date. We just our calendars changed. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. What about Halloween? Uh, Halloween is all Hallow's Eve and the like pagan stuff appears to have been entirely invented by commercialization. So, you're saying there's no pagan influence on Christianity? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like the accusations of Christmas is pagan, Easter is pagan, like that's nonsense. What about the accusations that like even the Jesus story was taken from other myths in other religions? I think like the the Egyptian god Rah or something like that. Like what what do you say about this? Is it is it just like a common occurrence? Like how do you is it [ __ ] Yes. Really? Well, talk that [ __ ] It's Jesus mythicism and no historian like even the people who doubt that Jesus exists don't use that argument because usually historians are aware of the primary sources. And if you look at the stories of like Horus, Ra, Mithris, Addis, they if you look at the details and then try to find the parallels, they're just not there. It was made up by largely and popularized by the Zekeist. Oh, you know the movie Zekeist like a YouTube thing. Yeah, it's made up from thin air. So if you look at the actual stories of like Horus Rah the accusations of virgin births and 12 disciples and you won't find them in those things h you won't really isn't there connectivity to some Indian uh I think the story of baby Krishna I think there's some connectivity in that he I think he was tried the king tried to kill him like couldn't do it so it's not that there aren't parallels that you can make it's that like if you look at the actual core of the details so there's a fallacy called the Texas sharpshooter fallacy where it's this idea the Texan is shooting in the side of a barn and he then finds the closest cluster of shots and he paints a target around it making himself look like a great shot. Right. So if you want to find parallels you can find them and then you make the accusation afterwards. Yeah. So that makes sense. Let me let me see if I can give you an example. So um John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were both the presidencies were exactly 100 years apart. And Abraham Lincoln had a uh he had an assistant by the name of Kennedy and Kennedy had an assistant by the name of Lincoln. Um both were assassinated by a man who who went by three names, right? John Wils Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy was assassinated in a Lincoln. Yeah. and Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford Theater. Yeah. So, like if you want to go down the rabbit trail of trying to find all these things, you could argue that John F. Kennedy never existed. He was just a copy of Lincoln. And that's interesting. The great one is that before Lincoln died, he was in Monroe, Maryland. And before JFK died, he was in Marilyn Monroe. No, no, no, no. I didn't say anything. Mark did. But, but it's these kind of things, right? So you can find you can find I saw this on like a VHS when I was like 8 years old. That's why the details are the story of baby Krishna. But this I mean the details are a little iffy but I remember growing up in such a Christian country that I was like oh they took this from the Bible cuz but I didn't know Hinduism was older and the story of Krishna was older. So that would that just came to me that wasn't like I'm trying to find the thing and that always just stuck with me that because I remember thinking like oh they stole this from Christianity which is very funny. So, so there's also like issues of correlation and causation. So, if you do find parallels and you want to assert that Christians invented it, you have to find the causitive links rather than just the correlations. Yeah. Cuz the correlations could actually exist, but things correlate all the time. And the idea of an incarnation within Christianity is very different than the idea that you would find in something like Hinduism or even like miraculous births in the ancient world. Okay. Question. Did Judas carry out the will of God by killing Jesus? Yes, because he was prophesied to do so. And was he aware of this? Did he do it begrudgingly? Um, I mean, I don't know. That's not something that the Bible necessarily. There is an interesting theory that Judas was fed up with Jesus not being the Messiah he wanted him to be, and by betraying him, he was going to kickstart the revolution. Oh. Oh. Impatient. Yeah, but it's it's hypothetical, right? You can't say one way or the other. Um, that's something you would do to be honest. No, let's go. Chop chop these New York Orthodox. Yeah, dude. New York Orthodox. That's what I think. Prior type of Christianity. I like that. I don't want to see. Yes. Yes. Go. I got something for you. Cuz when I was on Rogan, I made him a faximile papyrie. Yes. Okay. It was a very important faximile papyrie. I remember watching P-52 and it says the pilot, what is truth? I made you one. Oh, but okay. Order of importance. I also made Mark one. So, um cuz Mark likes the Apocryphal Gospels. This is uh that's the Gospel of Thomas. Oh, wow. That's the first page of the Gospel of Thomas. Mark, that's your guy, aren't you? Mark Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. And that's made of genuine Egyptian papyrie. Oh, wow. That's sick. Yours, dude. Thank you so much. So, order of lesser importance to great importance, cuz yours is far more important. Oh, wow. So, this is a Dead Sea Scroll fragment. What? Okay. Okay. I made it. Yes. And it's very important. Uh 4Q51 is from Samuel. And I got the text there for you. Make sure you make sure you read it. What does it say in Hebrew? This saysum. [Laughter] Read it. It says, "Then David sent messengers to Ish Bashiff." Yeah. Saul's son, saying, "Give me my wife Mikall." Michael McCall. Yeah. Okay. whom I betro to myself for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins. Very very important passage for you. Can you tell me what I just read? Uh I was concentrating so much on Well, I tried to find the words out without sounding [ __ ] that I didn't actually take in anything. I thought I thought Who's the call? That's his wife. David's wife. Oh, okay. Masculine name. Yeah. Saul's daughter. God is needed to find her. Got it. Got it. Got it. But I needed to find you a passage that said foreskins. Give me my wife. Give me my wife McCall Michelle whom I betrothed to myself. I betrod her to me for the price of a 100 Philistine foreskin. So he had to go out and collect 100 Philistine forces. Yeah. Did he kill him? Take their fores. We don't know if they kill He killed them. Did he kill them? 100% killed them. Yeah. Man, you can't just find some Jewish people, see if they got some stick like floating around, you know? Yeah. Start digging. Dig them up. No. No. That's not how this works. Okay. You know about diaries, right? Wow. This is old. This is Old Testament though. This is Old Testament. This is Old Testament. Yeah. Samuel. So, it's King David. King David. Wild boy. Right. Wait. Philistine. Is are those the Palestinians? Is the same people? No. Oh, still [ __ ] them up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, who are the Philistines? The Philistines are the bad guys. They are living in Canaan and they're So, like uh Goliath is a Philistine. God. Yeah. The Canaanites. The Canaanites. Wow. Why did he want the Forsakans? What did that symbolize? Uh, how'd he get them off himself? Did he get them off himself? Of course he did. He's got a sword. But the old Oh, a sword. Got it. Oh, not to bite him. Chub chubby. I mean, that sword gets dull, you know. Guys, we got to put a little bit of a pause on this brilliant Bible breakdown because um people need their picks. That was great. Brilliant. Brilliant Bible breakdown. Alliteration. That was fire. That's what I do. You know what I mean? Inspired by someone out there, you know, shout out him. Even though it might be illegal. Is it illegal in Christianity? Gambling. Gamble. We got to figure that out. It's frowned upon. Some denominations say no. But then a lot of them are like, "Yeah, it's fine." What does the What do the Orthodox Christians say? You don't know. I don't cuz I don't engage in any of that. Let's see. Christianity. No. No. Shout out y'all. Shout out to y'all. No. You know who you worship the Knicks? You know where the Mecca is? Madison Square Garden. Yo, keep talking that [ __ ] Wow, that's fire though. Hey, come on. I do go to Mecca. Low key. Yeah, as much as I possibly can. The hardwood is your church. Headline two shows at the Mecca. You know what I mean? Prodical son returned. Yo, real talk. It actually happened. You can't say I didn't do that. Yeah, you did. You know who else dominating at their home? The Knicks. They got [ __ ] rinsed. Yeah, but they're still up two-1. Yeah, but they got rinsed. His fault, bro. Whose fault? Jamal. Why? Jamal, what happened? What happened in the group chat? He had no faith. He had no faith in the Knicks, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's how you know. Listen, Knicks were an arrogant group and Nick's fans were an arrogant group. But the fact that after going up two zero, most of us were like, I think we got in six. Let you know everything. No, but game if you're up 200 happened. Dude, the Pacers got their ass beat up 200. And then game four, they won. They were by 50 at one point. thought it was insane. I didn't even understand the score. Yeah, it was was like 100 to like 56. Yeah, something ridiculous like that. So, the game three loss if you're up 200 at home. Yeah, game four is one that Knicks got it. I believe 100% Knicks got it. We got in five. Absolutely. We definitely getting that W tonight. Recording this on a Tuesday. I mean Monday. Yeah. Yeah, we were recording this on a Monday. Yeah. Yo, why don't we get back to the Bible, man? Dude, what are we doing over here? Trying to spread. You're going to need Jesus, bro. I do. If you want the Knicks to win, we came back from 220 points. I mean, that's insane. Okay, listen. We We This playoffs, the question that we have right now is, can Jimmy Butler win a game on his own for the Warriors? If he can win a game on his own, then they can get to game five at 2-2. He should be able to. He kept him in it yesterday. Kept him in it yesterday. I mean, or two days ago, I think. I guess the Wolves are better, but last year we saw, or I guess two years ago, we saw Jimmy Butler destroy everybody. He took apart the Celties. He took apart the Bucks. He took apart everybody by himself. Yeah. I just with the Heat. I don't know. He seems like he should be able to get a game off the Wolves. The Warriors are a little Yeah, it's really interesting. The Warriors are a little uh like Draymond just doesn't have it anymore offensively and then defensively you don't even really have it. Like Randall was cooking Draymond's ass. So yeah, I heard that. So if you're not if you're scoring two points a game and you can't defend, I think he Yeah, I I don't know. I think they can do it. I think if Steph was healthy, if Steph was healthy, I think they win it. But right now, they need something else. They need somebody else who's going to create the shot. Like Buddy can splash, but you got to run him around picks. Steph can go, "Give me the ball. I'll bring it up and I'll score. Jimmy can go, I'll bring the ball up and I'll score. And then no one else really can do that. Yeah. On the team. Yeah. You know, effectively. I mean, Ant is so fun to watch whenever I see anything of his. So, I I would not mind if they won. You know what series are the most interesting to me though? Celtics. Obviously, Celtics Knicks and how well the Knicks are playing and also uh the Nuggets and the Thunder. The Thunder are so good. But somehow it's two all this series. And there's only one game that wasn't close. [ __ ] what's his face is incredible. No. Joic is yeah, he's the best player in the league for years. Just unbelievable. But if that series goes seven, the Thunder are the better team, but they haven't ever played in a game seven. The Nuggets, this is small stakes relatively. Yeah. So, even though it's going to be in Oklahoma City and all that, I think if it goes seven, the Nuggets will win. Yeah. I just wouldn't bet against Joic. Yeah. He's the best. You'll just figure it out. It's crazy. It's like you don't even want to run the the You don't even want to run the offense through anybody else. Like, I would literally have him bring the ball up. Yeah. I I'm not mad at it. Just crazy. Yeah. Anyway, listen, uh, a lot of great playoff games coming, a lot of great series. Uh, you know, Stake is the leader in global betting and US social casinos, been on top sports and political events. Use the promo code flagrant for your welcome bonus. Now, let's get back to the show. What can you tell me about the gospel? So, this is awesome. You can I went to the Coptic Museum in Cairo two years ago and I saw the Nikamati library. So this is namani codex 2 which is was discovered in 1945 and includes bunch of gnostic writings including the gospel of philip but the famous one is the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of Thomas which we knew about prior to this because it had been condemned in the ancient church but we didn't have evidence for it in terms of physical documentation until in the 1800s in a place called Oxarinkus Egypt they found some fragments of this unknown gospel. This is a saying gospel. Yes. 114 sayings. This is an important one because the last saying of the Gospel of Thomas has Peter saying, "Let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life." Good start. And then Jesus says, "Don't worry. I will make her resemble a male like you males." And the last line of the Gospel of Thomas is every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Look at that. Wait, you said biting the foreskin is a modern thing. So there was one time when they were using a knife. I don't know enough about that. You said it was a modern thingical Judaism. Hold on. Go back to this right here. Gospel of Thomas is fascinating. But is is it legit? What do they say? Was he No, it's it's second century. Like so you have these So he's just saying some wild stuff in the name of God. Yeah. So it's 114 sayings of Jesus talking to his disciples and it's uh it's pretty early. It's our earliest written by a guy who's never met Jesus or any of his disciples. Yeah. Pretty conclusively. The gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas the disciple. But these other groups appropriate the names of the disciples to give credibility to their theology. So that's where you get gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Judas. It's these other groups in the subsequent centuries and they read back their theology on the lips of Jesus in order to like validate after go. So okay. And then is that what the the what is it? The book of Enoch or something like that. So that's that's preJesus. Oh, that's before Old Testament would have been. Yeah, it's it's pseudopigraphical. So it's like it's pseudo strange graph writing. So it's like like a pseudonym is you want to write a book, you don't want people to know it's Andrew Schultz until you Sam Clemens. Mark Twain. Yeah, that's your pseudonym. No, you're Mark Twain. I'm Mark Twain. Nice. No, it was a New York Orthodox who did that. Yeah. And so uh the pseudopigria are a group of writings that are associated with names that we know wasn't. So Enoch is Noah's great great-grandfather, right? So the book of Enoch we know isn't necessarily it doesn't come from that time frame cuz that would be like pre flood. It was written way after it was written in and around the three 300 years after the Old Testament, beginning of New Testament. So like in that period of time they wrote a bunch of stuff and part of it was Enoch. What do you make of of Enoch as obviously a non-cononical text but something that the people of the region might have been consuming? Yeah. Yeah. Enoch's very interesting. There's actually three Enochs first, second and third Enoch. And the only one that really has any kind of credibility is first Enoch. But even then what we call first Enoch is a collection of different. So we have fragments in Aramaic and Greek in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But then we have um later ones uh in Coptic. And so what ends up being like published as if you buy a copy of first Enoch, it's like all of this stuff put together. Some of it is like 200 years before Jesus, but some of it could very well have been written in the time frame of Jesus in the first century AD. Uh but it's very clearly like a collection of Jewish musings about what happened during the flood. It's like very theologically in-depth fanfiction. I was just about to ask that like is it is it possible that it's like uh Harry Potter? I think it's I I think it's them trying to figure and this is common with like these pseudobographical work is that there's another one called the ex x ex excgo of Moses. Um so they're looking at these Old Testament stories and they're trying to figure out okay like how do we explain some of these things? You have this weird story in Genesis chapter 6 where the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and that's where you get the Nephilim and that kind of stuff. And so the Jews are like how do we figure this stuff out? What are demons? What are angels? How do they interact with this world? There's not actually that much in the Old Testament about that stuff. So let's write something like the gospel or not the gospel, sorry, the book of Enoch to try to expand upon and extrapolate this stuff. Enoch is So you don't believe in the Nephilim? Well, yeah, they're in the Bible. Yeah, the Nephilim. Just depends what you mean by Nephilim. Well, what do you mean by it? I don't know what you mean by it. I mean, I'll tell you what I believe it. I I would love to believe that there's giants. Yeah. Well, the pro Nephilim is a tricky term because we don't really know where it originates. So, Nefal means to fall, right, in Hebrew. And so, that's where you get the idea of these are fallen angels. Fallen angels. Yeah. Um, but the Greek translation of the Old Testament translated as gigas, which is giant. Giants. Yeah. So, and then they pop up later in Canaan when uh when uh what's his face? Goliath. Goliath. Well, so not just Goliath, but um when when they go into the promised land and they like you have the story of there's these 10 spies that go to scope out the land that God has promised them and then they come back and uh no it's 12 men and 10 of them are like we can't go in there. There are giants there. And the term there is nephilim. Like they they're giants. I don't know if it's like they they could just be spooked. They don't want to go in there and so they come up with this excuse that there are giants in there. But because the idea of the flood is that they were destroyed, right? So everybody does including the Nephilim. But then you have guys like you know CS Lewis Mhm. Um like Lewis and Tolken had these ideas that these stories of like Zeus and the Greek gods, those were like echoes of cultural remembrances of these heroes of old men of renowned which is what they're called in in Genesis chapter 6. It's kind of cool idea. So I don't know what they are. Do you believe in giants? I believe that there were giants. Yeah. Wow. And when you say giants mean Yeah. I don't know. Uh Andrew's a giant. Game of Thrones. You're a giant to me. Everybody's a giant to me. 5 foot. 400. Yeah. I'm 5. I couldn't grow tall, so I had to grow wide. Fair enough. Like Game of Thrones giants, dudes who are just a little bit taller. I mean, you go down to Sudan, you see guys that are 7 feet, they look like giants. So, you know. Yeah. The Hebrew Old Testament says that Goliath was 9 ft tall, but the Greek translation of the Old Testament says that he was like, I think it was 6'5. So, it's like it's could just be a word for really tall people. He's really tall people. And I would imagine in a time it was kind of small back then. Yeah. But you don't have food readily available. And if there is a tribe that has tons of food, they grow big, then they look like giants. Is that being reductive to the religious text? I don't know. No, not necessarily. It's tricky cuz it's not like like these stories tell you what you need to know, not what you want to know. And so often we have to like speculate, which is where you get the book of Enoch. And that's like let's expand upon this stuff. Is there ever a time where or like maybe the the question I want to ask you is like how do you feel about the people who don't take it take these stories literally they take them metaphorically but they arrive at a similar conclusion that somebody who takes them literally does. I think it depends on what you're looking at and whether it's meant to be taken literally or not. Can you give me a good example of both? Yeah. So uh so there's different genre within scripture because remember 66 books written over a period of 1600 years on three different continents but close to 40 different authors in three different languages right that was English too and so it's a wide variety so don't read historical literature like you read apocalyptic literature don't read poetic literature like you read biography like you got to figure out what you're looking at and some things are descriptive they're telling you things that happened some things are prescriptive ive they're telling you what to do and some things are emotive. So you read like the Psalms and it says blessed are those who smash the childrens of our enemies on the rocks and you're like that's pretty intense. Like it's not telling you to do that. It's just this like heartache in wartime where you're seeking justice and so those type of things like are expressed and depending on what the genre is we have to be careful in trying to figure out what it's trying to say to us. And some things are history and poetic. So in Canada we have Remembrance Day November 11th. Yeah. Is it? You have the equivalent, right? Like remember World War 2 months earlier. Like Veterans Day. Yeah. Like Veterans Day. And so we uh uh read this poem by this Canadian soldier um who was uh it's it's called uh I'm going to forget it and all the Canadian people watching are going to get mad at me. Um In Flanders Fields, right? So in Flanders Fields the poppies grow between the crosses rowby row. And it's this like very passionate story about the the graves. They're burying their compatriots and the uh between the crosses in Flanders fields uh that there are these poppies that are growing. So everybody wears the poppy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So is that history or is that poetry? Well, the answer is yes. Like it's both, right? Like it's not it's not just because it's poetic. It's talking about like these dead people saw sunsets glow days ago kind of thing. So there are there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be interpreted as metaphor and they're I'm so I'm being like protective of you whenever I ask these questions because I know like if you agree to something, somebody on the internet is going to crucify. Do they do that? Oh god. Do they do that on the internet? But but has anybody ever done that to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, never. Uh yeah. Okay. So maybe that's not the wording. What would you find? There are parts of the Bible that are what you say prescriptive. Yeah. Prescriptive. They tell you what to do. So Leviticus like telling the Jews what to do. Yes. But then you read something like like uh Joshua and they're like going in Canaan and they're killing people and you're like that's descriptive. That's telling you what happened. It's not going likewise, right? Judas hung himself. That's not telling you to go hang yourself. It's telling you that Judas hung himself. So yeah, it's it's you have that's what like I knew a guy who he put little uh like sticky notes in his Bible every time someone was like or killed or murdered. He's like the Bible is so violent. No, it's just telling you things that happened, right? So, it's not telling you to do is violent. Um, so it just depends. And then there are some passages that are trickier than others. Like Genesis chapter 1 is a tricky one. Yeah. Because it's not entirely clear. Is it telling you like the mechanisms of how God created everything in the way that God created them? Is there more of an expansive explanation to that? When you look at the culture, could there be almost like a defense of the fact that you have other creation stories like the Babylonian Inumish, which has this big battle between the gods, right? And it's chaos and the the gods who die become the world and you and me. And the end theme is kind of like everything's a mistake. You don't really have any purpose. You know, you're just the product of this big battle. And then and and now you're worshiping things like the stars and the sun and the earth and and Genesis chapter 1 says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So the things you guys worship that's pretty stupid because our God created them and it's good, right? He keeps saying it's good after each refrain and created the land and it was good and created the fish and was good because that's countercultural to something like the enuma leash. And then he creates humanity in his image and they're very good. And so is that the way God created everything? Sure. Yeah, potentially. But is it also kind of taking a jab at something like these other origin stories and it's subverting them and saying the stuff you believe is nonsense because this is actually how everything started. Yeah, I think I think so too. So there's like multiple things going on in and once again difference between a booty call and a butt dial like contextual reading matters. Okay. Uh in in that regard something I've seen sprout up on the internet a debate that I never really considered as a kid that I find fascinating. There debates on the internet. Oh my goodness. Okay. Is the the murder of the Canaanites. And this is something that gets brought up a lot that basically you have uh this command by God to go into this land and murder all the people, men, women, children, and ostensibly some of them are innocent, but yet all of them need to be killed, right? And people have kind of taken a bunch of different sides as like, oh, is God justifying genocide? Right. What do you make of that that text? So, I don't think it's genocide in the way that we would understand genocide specifically because the Canaanites continue to pop up. So, if they did actually wipe everybody out, they did a poor job at it. Um, there's a few things going on in the text. God promises Abraham, Canaan, and says, "I'm going to give it to your descendants, but I'm going to wait 400 years because the sins of the Amorites have not come to their full fruition." So God gives them 400 years to repent. And by the time you get to like Joshua, they're not repenting. If anything, they've gotten worse, right? They're doing things like child sacrifice to these agricultural gods. And so then you have something unique in the Old Testament where before the monarchy before like Saul and David the kings it's a theocracy. God is the ruler of the people and he uses Israel to enact his judgment. So he enacts judgment on these terrible people in order to so like in the same vein a lot of people who accuse who say to me like look there's genocide in the Old Testament also say things to me like well why doesn't God do anything about the evil in the world. I would actually argue this is an example of God doing something about the evil in the world and that he's using his nation Israel to accomplish the wiping out of these people. So he sees that as justice for what they've done wrong. These are bad people, right? Um and and so I think there is there's an aspect of God is saying go and wipe them out. I'm I'm done with their evil. At the same time, uh there's a a friend of the the organization I work with, a guy named Paul Copan. He's in Florida. I think he teaches at Florida State University. He wrote a book called Is God a Moral Monster? And then he wrote another book called Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament? Um he and he goes through some interesting parallels in other ancient neareastern so like Canaanite, Hittite, uh Egyptian war texts where it uses similar language in terms of like wipe them out, leave none left, kill the women, the children, the goats, that kind of stuff. And Copen argues that there's an aspect of cultural wartime hyperbole that exists in the same way that I would say like the Toronto Maple Leafs murdered the Montreal Canadians, right? Um there there's an aspect of if you didn't understand what I was talking about that that was I'm talking about hockey. I'm talking about a team. When I say murdered, I don't mean like that they were like that. We use these kind of phenomenological hyperbole in our language today. Um like you killed at your last set, right? Like this kind of stuff makes sense. Yeah. Um and so in in these kind of ancient near eastern texts, you have these levels of hyperbole which could mean kill everybody but doesn't always mean that. And we can compare them with like Egyptian steelies or like wartime inscriptions from does other hyperbo hyperbole exist in the religious texts when it doesn't have to do with these type of severe situations? Like are they hyperbolic about how fruit tastes? It's a good question. I don't know if I know the answer because if that hyperbole exists in these other areas that aren't as high stakes, then it would make a lot of sense that it would exist when the stakes are high. But if it only exists when talking about genocide, it seems like people trying to scur accountability, right? No, we do we do get that in in the sense of like when you read the book of Jonah in Hebrew, you get these like there's almost like a comedic play to it where when he does eventually get to Nineveh, which he doesn't want to go to because God says go to Nineveh, preach repentance. He doesn't want to go, so he tries to hike in the other direction. And when he eventually gets there, it says that everybody repents, even the cows. And it's like it's hyperbolic where it's saying like even the cows are sorry. Like that's that's how how much they're repentant of what they've done. Okay. So, you got you got stuff like that. Can I ask a question sort of based on that? Yeah. Um I I don't know anything about the Bible. I'm very non-religious. I know nothing. But it is interesting to hear that there's something funny in the Bible. You're surrounded by a bunch of comedians. Is there? Yeah. Yeah, like in Shakespeare, have there sort of mistransated or uh jokes that don't make it to modern times while reading Shakespeare because you're not in the time period in which it took place. Are there funny parts of the Bible that are translated well or mistransated that people don't know about? That's a really great question. I don't know if I have a good answer to that in a room full of comedians. I wish I had uh Yeah, I didn't mean it like you're around, but are there parts of the Bible that are like lighthearted, funny, or like um I mean the bears killing those killing the kids is always funny. Yeah. Yeah. Elijah, go up bald head. Um and he sends the she bears after them to kill them. Uh that's I mean kind of funny. The foreskin thing was pretty good. Foreskin thing is pretty good. Yeah, you have like record of that. um when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well and she's a Samaritan. So Samaritans are like mongrel Jews. They've married with other tribes and so they um they uh the Jews in like Israel don't like them very much. They also there was a time where one of the Greek uh leaders was coming to was coming to wipe out the Jews. And the Samaritans who like live up north caught wind of this. And so they send him a letter and they say, "Hey, I know we look like Jews. I know we sound like Jews. I know we worship like Jews, but just FYI, we're not Jews. So don't kill us when you go kill them. And also, we have a temple that's like their temple, but we're actually going to dedicate it to you. We're going to start worshiping you. And so, this is like a point of contention in Jesus's day where the Samaritans, this is about the good Samaritan is kind of like a play on things, right? Who is my neighbor? And Jesus says like, "It's those people you don't like. That's who you need to love and be nice to." Um, but when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well and she's like, "Well, you guys worship in in Jerusalem. we worship uh at Mount Garazim. Jesus is kind of like, "Hey, what's the name of your temple again?" It was who do you guys worship? It's kind of like poking her, right? Because he it's call back to this story which is not a biblical one. We know it because of individuals like Josephus. Yeah. Um where they actually dedicated their temple to the to the the the Greek leader and to Jupiter. And so he's like when she says, "We worship here, you worship there," he's like, "But who do you worship?" Yeah. So, he's kind of like poking her and there's some sarcasm that if you didn't know what was going on in the background, you wouldn't actually pick it up. And actually a weird kind of comment that he makes to her otherwise. Oh, that's funny. What about him cursing the fig tree? Um, that's that's allegorical to the leaders of Jerusalem. Uh, that they look like they should. It has leaves. And so even though it's not the time for figs, it's like a it's it's it's like masquerading that it should grow figs. And he's like, I'm going to curse the fig tree and it's not going to grow any figs. He does that while he's going to Jerusalem. And he sort of the play is that the leaders in Jerusalem have all of this appearance of religiosity, but in the end they have no fruit. So they're like dead and they're it doesn't matter how good they look on the outside, right? You don't judge by what you water with, right? You the the judging is by the fruit, but everybody's looking at what you water with, all the good good things you do, but that's that's not the going to church and the reading your Bible. That's not the fruit. That's that's the that's the um that's the nutrients, that's the fertilizer, the water input. And Jesus is saying, "No, no, no. That's those are it's not that that's wrong, but you got to grow the fruit." And so if you're doing all the right things, but you're not growing the fruit, you're you might as well be a dead tree. All right, guys. Let's take a break for a second. Okay. Uh True Classic has one mission. It's to make sure guys look good and feel better. They've nailed fits, feel, and price. Very important price across your entire wardrobe. And it's not just the TE's, the hoodies, the jeans, the active wear, everything you need to level up your everyday style. But True Classic isn't just about great clothes. 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The point that I'm trying to make is black rifle coffee.com. You go there right now. You use the promo code flagrant. You're going to get 30% off today. And America, your energy. Call the call. If you're a non-Christian, can you get into heaven? Uh, important. What do you mean by non-Christian? I mean, if you just don't Yeah. Him. I'm agnostic. So I would say God is not going to force anyone into heaven in that heaven once again remember heaven is not the final destination is the new earth the final destination soft um yeah so essentially no one comes to the father but through me Jesus says right but CS Lewis once again he says that hell is locked from the inside so I would say that if you have spent your life, not living out a life that is what Jesus has called you to do to be, then Jesus is not going to force you into his presence. You're going to go. So Lewis also says, "Heaven is God's or hell is God saying, "Thy will be done." So what you want in your life by rejecting Christ is what you're going to get in the afterlife. Nobody wants hell. Well, you just accept maybe and I guess Hindus accept Jesus as um I've read like a yogi. Sure. Essentially, but maybe not the only form of God. And theoretically, I think it aligns with Christianity in some ways. If that if God is everywhere, we could all be God. Jesus is a human that she he achieved his inner god. So, so that would be the Hindu way of working it out, right? Um but then we accept Jesus. But even Hinduism is exclusivistic in certain regards. So like no one is entirely inclusivistic, right? The exclusivists have to exclude the inclusivists and the inclusivists have to exclude how would we and I'm not you look I don't know enough. So how are we exclusivists? Right? So depending on what version of Hinduism you're talking about because there's polytheistic Hinduism, there's monotheistic Hinduism and there's atheistic or non-theistic Hinduism. Theist Hindu. Yeah. So they can't all be true. So truth by its very nature is exclusive. Right? If I say 2+ 2 is four, well, I'll give it Andrew the benefit of the doubt. Andrew says 2 plus 2 is four. I say 2 plus 2 is six. One of us is wrong. Now we could both be wrong, but the truth is that 2+ 2 is four. He's right. And so in that sense, that's an exclusive truth statement. So if you look at all the world religions, I would ultimately say they're all exclusivistic at some regard. I say Jesus is exclusivistic in the most important regard. Yeah. Well, yeah. So, I would say Christianity is inclusivistic in that all are called to come. But it is exclusivistic in that Jesus loves you and calls you to come as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you where you are. And so you you the it's it's it's unconditional, but it's not unconditioned because all you have to do is give up your life and follow Jesus. I think conditioned is conditional. Yeah, it is. They're putting a condition on it. Like that was a very poetic thing you said, but it doesn't actually mean anything. Well, it does in the sense that when I say it's unconditional, it's that Jesus says all are welcome to come, but there is a condition. Yeah, there is. Right. It's it's not it's not nothing. Yeah. Um and in that sense, God is either right the universe in like an eastern mystic kind of idea or God is a personal being. They can't both be true. So we I think all world religions have these like superficial agreements, but they disagree on the fundamentals, right? Who God is, who we are, why we're here, what sin is, what the afterlife is like, how we solve the problem of human flourishing. Like all these things are important topics, but Advil and arsenic both come in pill form, but it's not the similarities that make you choose one over the other when you have a headache. It's the differences. M so as someone who has studied world religions, I would say that there is no such thing as a religion that accepts everything. Cuz even if I say Jesus is God incarnate and there's only one God, he's not just a guru and his teachings actually don't give you reason to just chop him up to a guru. Then that's that's excluding the worldview system of something like Hinduism or or Buddhism which would also include that. Yeah. I guess the difference would be we would say that's fine like in Hinduism that's okay you believe what you believe God bless there are many ways to the mountain top if that way gets you to the mountain top amazing we're thrilled for you yeah and I would say there's only one way to the mountain top yeah and that is that is a fairly big difference yes yeah it is so it's not pluralistic I guess to me and I I'm also a little I don't want to say sensitive but like you grow up getting told you're going to hell if you're in the south so it's like I would look at it as a kid more so now I'm less bothered by it but I'd be like man you guys will forgive murderers Jesus will forgive you murderers, child molesters if he believes in them or if they believe in him. But if you're a good person who doesn't fully believe in him, yeah. So to that I would say there's no such thing as a good person cuz we're all sinners. So all good people as a bad person. All good people go to heaven. That's clear biblically, right? But Jesus says no one is good but God. So we have a dilemma, right? All good people go to heaven. No one is good but God. What does that mean? No one's going to heaven. Mhm. So the the issue is is like so this is similar to the question of what do you do with the person who lives on like a random island in the middle of you know Papa New Guinea and has never heard the god the innocent you know tribes person and the biblical answer is that there's no such thing as an innocent person and that I deserve hell me Wes Huff I deserve hell 100% of the time that's like the wages of sin is death and that's the language that Paul uses in that I'm like actively ly working at a job to earn a wage and that's sin and death, right? But the second part of that line is the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. So the answer to the question is that I think we are both worse than we realize and have the potential to do much more good than we realize. However, I am not going to heaven because anything of anything I've done, right? I can't do that. That's very clear scripturally. You cannot earn your way to heaven. It's not about doing things. It's not about what I'm doing. It's about what Jesus did. So, it's up to us to get some Christianity out to that island in Papa New Guinea. Yeah. And is that why that these people are compelled to, you know, take and that's why missions existed? That's that was the motivation. And so we're talking about like the New Testament is copied like crazy in the early period. These independent writings the one of the reason for that is because they were like we need to get this out everywhere. These people aren't going to get to heaven. So I didn't really pretty quickly I didn't resent the people trying to convert me. I understood their motivation. But I did resent you know Jesus like I like your Christ. I don't like your Christians. I almost felt the opposite. And that Gandhi said that Gandhi said that. So uh and I almost felt the opposite. Like I I understand. I have empathy for the people who are trying to convert me. They're trying to save me. What is this faith that is written in such a way that a guy who's never heard of me because y'all didn't make it out to me is condemned to hell. Sure. But we both deny each other's central truth claims. Like you would deny the central truth claim that I just articulated and I would deny yours. No, I'm saying that let's say Papa New Guinea never heard of you. They're not denying. They don't know. How is that person going to hell for simply you not doing your job and going out to convert him? Yeah, ultimately I would say God doesn't owe anybody anything. So the assumption is that God owes us our salvation. And I would say that it is more if God chose just to save Abraham, he would have been more gracious than he we possibly deserve to do that. But he didn't just save Abraham. He saves a countless number in the sense that when John has his vision in the book of Revelation, it's an innumerable number. He can't even count it. That's how big it is. And so I think the message of Christianity, the good news, what we call the gospel is that you are headed towards destruction and you're actually attempting to cause the destruction. Right? It's not that you know Jesus has thrown a life preserver and you need to catch it. Now you're trying to fight Jesus. You don't want the life preserver. But apart from the saving work of the spirit, reaching into the the prophets use the language of you have a heart of stone. God is going to give you a heart of flesh. But it's God's work that does that. And so we don't deserve that freedom, that graciousness. It's a heavy weight, man. It is. But I mean the the good news is that so when I study world religions I I come up with this conclusion that all world rel or all worldview perspectives are some form of survival of the fittest in that it's a do this feel this or think this right it's do this pragmatism it's feel this emotionalism or it's think this intellectualism right you need to be the best at the the knowledge you need to you know be the most spiritual you need to do the most things. And it's one or a combination of those things, right? Christianity is the opposite of that in that it says you can't feel, think, or do good enough. O, right? So, it's not about that. It's not do and you'll be accepted, feel and you'll be accepted, think and you'll be accepted. It's God has stepped out of eternity and into humanity in the second person of the trinity in Jesus. And now you're accepted. Now you can think. Now you can feel. Now you can do. But it's not on your shoulders. I get that it's supposed to alleviate it. But in order for it to alleviate it, you first have to accept that you're a piece of [ __ ] And what if you don't feel like you're a piece of [ __ ] So now I have to stop feeling good about myself and I have to convince myself that I am a piece of [ __ ] just as much as a murderer drama just so somebody else can get me back to not somebody else God can get me back to feeling good about myself and uh I think that that really works for people who feel like they're a piece of [ __ ] all the time. But if you don't feel like a piece of [ __ ] to convince yourself that you are and the only way out of your piece of shitness is to believe in this one person. Yeah. Who will then through that belief convince you to do the good and kind acts that you were already doing prior. Yeah. I I can see how that's like a heavy weight for for people to take on. I I would say there's this dichotomy in and keep in mind I'm framing this as someone who was not raised religiously and does feel like a good person. And I think there's been this part of me um I think there's probably this part of me that's that's quite naive definitely based on your description which is that you know what cuz I do believe in something I'm like yeah God knows my heart and you know I I I try to live what is Pascal's wager what like and I try to live as if there is a God and I try to do the things that uh are good in the world and those are probably prescribed to me through religion in some way shape or form but it would be tough for me accept this and I don't think that I'm perfect in any way. I do actually accept the fact that there is like sin in me and there are these and I'm fighting those natural instincts but the only way I can be good is if I'm just like right that guy like so it's not that that's the only way you can be good and it's not simply that you're a piece of [ __ ] I think if it was that then then I think we would have a problem. I think what the Bible says particularly in that creation story right is that you are created with purpose and meaning and intention and it is good. You actually bear the image of God and there's something about that that is special. So in one sense you're more of a piece of [ __ ] than you can imagine but also you're more loved and more capable of amazing things than you can imagine. And that's the dichotomy of Christianity is that God does not need to create. Right? So God lives in a set of living loving relationships in the trinity. He has existed eternally in relationship and in love. Yeah. That's what John says in first John. God is love. And so God does not need to create in order to experience anything. Creation is an outpouring of his love. Now this is different than say a unitarian monotheistic faith like Islam. In Islam, in one sense, philosophically, God does need to create to experience love because love requires an object and a subject. And so, in order to feel love, the unitarian God of something like Islam needs the subject, right? And the object in order to feel that. That's not true for Christianity because the spirit and the father the the father has been loving the son in the power of the holy spirit forever. Yet he chooses to create as an outpouring of his love knowing full well that they the creation will rebel against him because loves us so much. So if it's only you're a piece of [ __ ] that's a problem. That's a problem theology for I think what the Bible actually says and the piece of shitness there's a theological term of course I went to seminary um is that we brought that into the world right so when when the garden and the fruit if you want to take that literally or like want to do the Jordan Peterson thing whatever what we get though is that God knows what's best for our flourishing and when it says that you will know the difference between good and evil is less of like an intellectual understanding of what good and evil are and more of a choosing the shots on our own terms. I even though God created me and knows all things, I actually think I know better and I'm going to eat the fruit because I I I think that that's better for me. And that's what sin is. You see people do this all the time. They decide what God cares about the most and then they, you know, care their life uh according to that. I guess in the circumstance with the person who lives on the island who has never heard about Christianity. But what if he lives his life as a Christian without because God is omnipresent, right? Like God maybe has given him the gospel uh in a different way than he gave it to you. The covenant's written on the heart is the people. So, it's like what if that person is living a devoutly Christian life and the the God that he's praying to might not be named Jesus Christ, but isn't it possible that God is up there like I know who he's praying he's praying to me because I put it on his his heart? Is it is it possible that he's accepted in heaven? I again I don't want to I don't want man to decide what God is capable of. And I sometimes think that like we do that and I'm not trying to skirt out the responsibility of just going, "Hey, I got to get baptized. You're going to put it on me. I'm going to put it on you." No, but like sometimes it's possible man is going like, "Hey, God doesn't know unless you do this exact thing." And then God's up there like, "Listen, I get the point what you're trying to do." But like the guy on the island who's living this perfectly devoutly Christian religious life, he gets in too because I put it on his heart. Yeah. So I I think ultimately that's a question that I don't know the answer to because it's not something that's directly outlined in scripture. However, I think you can like extrapolate certain things. In one way, part of that is still saying you can earn it and that he's he's doing the right things. And he and he he doesn't even know he's doing it. He's doing it because so I think God is not going to judge us based on what we don't know. Okay, we would hope. So I am optimistic that I personally would not damn that individual because I I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. And God is more than capable to reveal himself. I mean Paul says in Romans that God's divine attributes and invisible qualities have been shown throughout creation so that no man is without excuse. So there's an aspect of nobody can stand before God and say I just didn't have enough and I didn't know enough. Because God is saying creation is screaming at you that there's something. Yeah. And I and I think that like but the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. So that's that's where it does get tricky and there is a sense of Jesus saying I'm the way, the truth, and life. No one comes to the father but through me. I would say we have an imperative to tell that person about the God that they believe in and who that is. M and that's what Paul does in Acts 17 when he goes to Athens and he goes to the Aropagus and he says you have a shrine to an unknown god. In one sense, that's silly. But let me tell you about the unknown god so that you go to worshiping put a name to it. Yeah. And actually tell you the person that your heart is actually crying out to because you bear his image. And in that sense, we have to be careful because if we make it about like what we do and what we believe and what we in that way, it's a merit it's a it's meritorious. I understand what you're saying. And the commandments, something like the ten commandments, are less of a thou shalt not and more of a promise in that God is not a murderer. You're created in his image. Don't murder. God is not an adulterer. You're created in his image. Don't commit adultery. God is not a thief. You're created in his image. Don't steal things. It's actually calling you to live up to the standard of the image that you bear of God. even though you might feel inclined to do flourish ultimately but I would say that there's an aspect of the person who doesn't understand that sees those things as a burden and sees them as a rule and I would actually say that it's a calling by our creator to live up to the standard that he actually created us to be for the sake of human flourishing and why do you think that we would like it to be merit-based because I think that's that that we want to contribute ute humans are are very uh I also think we want heaven without subscribing to also the alternative rigidity of the religion I I think there's part of it that's there it's like hey I'm a good person yeah maybe I don't go to church and maybe I haven't accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior but I'm a good person so I still get in right it's like we still want in we still want to we want the eternity it's still begging the alternative is hell that's the issue I have if there was a first class, a business class, and a coach, I'm with it. I don't got to be first class. That's fine. But the idea that that is a like God doesn't owe you heaven, but he don't he don't need to give you hell. Well, I think part of this is that we have these understandings of hell, which might be skewed by middle. Okay, I would love to hear that. People burning. Yes, I would say hell is the concept of God's wrath against evil in eternal justice, but it's also a separation from his goodness. And so you see these depictions particularly from the middle ages of like demons uh burning people alive. And that's more both heaven and hell in the middle ages is drawn more from like Greek imagery of where the gods live and what the underworld is than it is from what scripture actually says about actually says about these things. Yeah. I feel like Dante's Inferno defined hell for us and not scripture. Sure. Sure. And that's like quintessential, you know, middleage. Yeah. Yeah. What does the scripture say? Hell is Well, it's it's separation. It's separation from God. Like God is not going to force you into his presence into that. And if if you are not choosing that, like if you are not in Adam, you're in sorry, if you're not in Christ, you're in Adam. So Jesus is called the second Adam, right? Adam brings sin into the world and taints everything. Christ comes into the world and renews everything. And so the gospel message is that you're either going to be found in Adam or in Christ. Yeah, that's it. And God is not going to force you into being under Christ's righteousness. And at the same time, I still don't deserve that. So this is where like when I was talking about before all these these religious concepts, it's about the do, the feel, the think. It's also about mercy or justice, right? So I would argue that something like the eastern philosophies, Hinduism, Buddhism, Janism, anything that has a reincarnation, that's that's just, right? You get what you deserve. The good you do in this life, you get in the next life. The bad you do in this life. Sort of. There's a difference between reincarnation, Hinduism, and Buddhism. But that aside, it's like just, right? But we wouldn't necessarily say that it's merciful. You you do get what you deserve. Oh, yeah. It's not. Yeah. Yeah. Then there are other religious systems and to a certain degree I would pin Islam in that group because every chapter of the Quran bar one chapter starts with the bismillah God the most merciful and most benevolent. So in that sense the God of Islam forgives but somewhat arbitrarily and it's at the expense of his justice. So if you if God will forgive you but the wrong you've done hasn't actually been been paid for. his law is kind of just winked at. Where Christianity is different is that the punishment that we deserve is taken on God himself in the person of Jesus. And so in that sense, justice is fulfilled. And because justice is fulfilled, his law is accomplished. And now mercy, so justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you don't deserve. So, so you because you don't get what you do deserve, which is the punishment. Mercy happens. God forgives you, but he doesn't actually and you don't deserve that either. But then he adopts you as his child. Yeah. That's grace. That's getting what you don't deserve. Yeah. Right. And so when I look at something like comparative religious studies, what I see is all of these systems of the survival of the fittest that I talked about before. Christianity is the fittest stepping down and sacrificing himself for the survival of the weakest. And that changes things in that mercy and justice are not pitted against each other. It's not justice at the expense of mercy. It's not mercy at the expense of justice. They're actually accomplished together in the act of the cross where the self volunteering of Jesus going to the cross, right? He says, "No one takes my life from from me. I give it of my own accord." This is why forgiveness is is an accomplishable goal even for the most heinous act because God has already taken on the punishment for that heinous act that that person committed. Well, forgiveness is costly, right? Like there's always a cost for forgiveness somewhere. And so I'm just saying in general that lack of perceived lack of justice doesn't exist. Yes, this person killed somebody. Yeah, Jesus died on the cross for that very thing that that person did. It's not this person killed somebody. All right, how are we going to reconcile this? Do we give him 20 lashes? What is the thing for this act? And who gets to decide that? It's already been decided. So now we can go forgive. It's not a pointsbased system either, which also gets hairy with with like so Islam is this concept within the Quran of the scales. Okay. Right. So you do bad things, you just try to outweigh them with your good things. Um the there's a weird subjectivity to that, right? Cuz he decides Yeah. And the the the actually Isaiah says that uh our righteous acts are like filthy rags. And the term there it's debated, but could actually mean something like menstrual rags. like they're like they're not just dirty and gross and it's like ritually impure with stuff you don't want to get near. And so it's like look God, look at all the good things I'm doing. And he's like, you don't understand compared to my holiness how how like far that measures up. And so once again, God doesn't need to do any of this. God doesn't need to create. God doesn't need to forgive. God doesn't need to give mercy or justice. But the fact that he does and then calls us all into that to turn away. So the word repentance in Greek metaninoate actually means to change one's mind and actions and attitudes like it's less of a just don't do it anymore. It's it's more of like metaninoia change your brain like change it entirely. your thought patterns start. It's the what I talked be about before with the ten commandments. Like you're seeing it as a command and God is saying, "No, it's a promise. You don't need to steal. You don't need to murder. You don't need to lie. You don't need to." Those are promises that God makes to you because of who you are through what he can do. And then if you don't change, you said you either become Adam or you become Christ, right? Well, you're you're Yeah. So, it's like you're when you stand before the judgment throne, you're either going to take the penalty you deserve or you're going to be covered in the righteousness of Christ and that penalty is on him and coming back as Adam would be a human who sins. So, isn't that kind of like reincarnation? No, no, you're you're not coming. It's like a metaphorical language. The first Adam, the second Adam. Uh it's almost kind of how they see it where it's just like hey until you are enlightened you're going to continue being a sinner until you are enlightened. I don't think that's the way cuz it's not it's not in like a it's not an a spiritual or intellectual awareness in that sense it's like God Yeah. So it's tricky because the the the Eastern language it doesn't compute with what's going on within the Seemetic understanding of scripture. So it's not like a Nirvana. It's not like an awakening or an enlightenment. It's it's Christ revealing to you who you really are and who he really is. What what would you say in the case of children that die on the first day of life or someone with like a cognitive disability where they're not able to function in society or have any type of like intellectual understanding of of Christ, what happens to them? Yeah, I would say everybody is born with original sin and we all deserve punishment. But from who I know God's character to be in scripture, God is free to save whom he wants to save. And based on who God is, I see no reason why he would not save children who die in infancy. He would not save people with cognitive disabilities. I don't know the answer to that ultimately. But once again, like scripture tells us what we need to know, not what we want to know. But I think based on the character of God and the fact that when the Israelites are told not to sacrifice their children, it's the only time that like a group is overtly described as the innocent, like the death of the innocents is what it's described to when these people are sacrificing their children to the the pagan agricultural gods. So I think it's like extrapolating and it's conjecture but I think based on what I see in scripture of who God is that he's loving that he's compassionate that he's merciful that he's abounding in steadfast love and kindness right that um Exodus 346 that I see no reason to not say that if my wife has a miscarriage that child I will be reunited with in heaven because of who God is and what his love and kindness is to humanity. So, couldn't you extrapolate that to the guy on the island? That's what I It could be. It could be. However, there is a kind of a cognitive reckoning. And this is where I would be careful to say that this is my opinion. Yeah, we're not. But I'm not denying that everybody is not like an orthodox Christian bishop or anything like that that we would really trust name Andrew Schultz. Yeah. Come on. Go on. So, but these once again these are like topics that are are have been discussed for 2,000 plus years, right? The Jews in the pre Jesus times were also coming up with these questions. So, there's a lot of delination literature and and like debate about these things. But I think one thing scripture that that hung me up when I was a kid is the idea of of the Pharaoh of Egypt having his heart hardened by God. that God hardened his heart so that he couldn't uh see the truth of of what was being revealed. And I'm curious why in your opinion God would step in to I guess orient him in a way that was against what God wanted. Yeah. Why doesn't he get the same forgiveness? Yeah. To accomplish God's will. So the thing is, well, I guess at that point in time, Jesus hadn't died already. Yeah. It was Old Testament. Okay. Well, God God I I would I would go to the length of saying God knows things we don't. um because he's God. And so Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 8 and N where he comments on this and talks about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. But it says both that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So there's a mutuality going on in there and God's sovereignty and our free will. Both those things exist. And God uses Pharaoh as a tool to enact his justice. And yet also God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. And so he does these things even in instances where we might not totally understand what's going on, but it's ultimately for his glorification and the purpose of God is the main character of the story. And the redemption of his people is accomplished through Pharaoh hardening his own heart and being bitter. And yet God also uses that in hardening Pharaoh's hearts to accomplish that narrative in so the book of Genesis literally ends with the story of Joseph where Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery into Egypt. They want to kill him. God restrains their evil. They sell him into slavery and he ends up climbing the ranks and being second to Pharaoh. And then there's a famine throughout the land and the only place that has food because of the wisdom of Joseph via the, you know, um, God revealing this to him is Egypt. And so Joseph's brothers go back to Egypt and they meet with him not knowing it's their brother. And eventually he reveals who he is to them and he says, you know, what you intended for evil, God intended for good in the saving of nations. And so God uses he God allows evil for good that often we don't understand. Mhm. Wowza. Karma. No. Yes. No. No, no. You know this idea like I think that we have a skewed understanding this. Yeah, sure. I think we have a skewed understanding of if Karma and Akos can speak to it more, but this idea like it's transactional. I do a bad thing and then something bad happens to me later. But it might be a little bit something more like you live within your karma. Doing bad things makes you feel bad about yourself and then you exist within this this uh this badness, right? You just feel horrible because of these bad things that you've done. And you could maybe say the same is true about Christianity. Living this Christlike life makes you feel good, makes you uh I'm not saying, you know, having heaven on earth, but that following this way not only gives you eternal salvation, but also makes your life better while you are here. Would you say that that would be true for most Christians that aspiring to live a Christlike life will actually make you feel better than a life of sin? Oh, of course. Okay. So, just just there's a pragmatism to it. I think that you I'm not trying to pin you for anything. I I swear to God, I'm not I'm not No, no, no. I get I get what you're saying and I do think there's truth to that in that like I want Canada, the US, wherever. I want laws to be based on Christian things because I think that's actually good for society and just for people in general, but I don't want then those to become a means to an end. Like don't make the laws based on the Bible because people should be doing good things. Actually, a friend of mine, Andy Bannister, who runs an organization out in Scotland called Solas, he did this debate. It was him. It was the head of the uh secular society and it was a Muslim imam. And um the topic of the discussion was what makes the flourishing society or what makes a good society. And the secular materialist guy and the Muslim basically argued for the same thing. We need to enact more rules. We need to make sure people are following them. And my friend Andy, his point was that's not going to work because everybody's going to try to find the loopholes in the rules or they're going to just do it so that they don't get in trouble. And so the more rules you put in, the more people are going to try to get around them for one reason or the other. the only way like Texas. Oh, taxes. You can make any tax law you want. We're going to find a loophole. Sure. Yeah. And and so it's not about rules. It's about changing people's hearts. They should want to do the good thing. I'm not suggesting the good thing. I'm not suggesting that we like establish these rules and that's how society should should function. What what I am suggesting is what you're saying is that like by living this life, you will feel better and ultimately have a more fulfilling life. Right. And while you a devout Christian might say, "Yeah, that might be the case like while you're here, but you're not going to get that eternal salvation." But to those people who maybe they're not believers, subscribing to the behavioral mechanisms not for eternal salvation, for happiness while on earth. They do get to attain some of that. I think, you know, it's not an either or. It's not just about the afterlife or just about this life. It's a both and, you know, uh, your will be done um, on earth as is in heaven. Yeah. Right. So, that's that's the Lord. Well, you get it now. I think that the people who take the Bible for metaphor who you would call retards, not retards, sorry, you would call idiots. Sorry. You would call idiots, but those people who take it find a Canadian, more Canadian way of saying it. Yeah. Yeah. Like that. What's a good one? Fools. I don't know. Fools. hockey pucksers. Yeah. Uh but th those that take it as metaphor but still see like immense value in it. Yeah. And living this quote unquote I wouldn't say Christian life but Christian inspired life. Yeah. They like many people for example who grow up like Catholic, you know, like my dad grew up Catholic, right? Not religious. But is he proud of you now that you're Orthodox? He's very proud. Yeah. No, no, no. but not not religious as he you know he had some kind of like uh kind of falling out with the the church not on like some like you know pedophile [ __ ] but just like he just didn't put words in my mouth everybody put something but like especially even this guy but like I don't know a person that is I don't know somebody that doesn't lead a more Christian life you if you asked him he's like I'm not I'm just being a nice guy you know I'm trying to help people when I can like he is So he still finds this immense value. Yeah. In this belief system without the belief. Now the cost could be eternal salvation which [ __ ] sucks. But while you're here on earth, it seems to have really helped him. Sure. You know, so I'm just curious how you reconcile that. Like, okay, there are these people out there that are leading these quote unquote Christian lies, but they're maybe not believing some of the things that you've said. So maybe they're not leading a Christian life, but they're following they, a matter of fact, they might be leading better lives than some of these Christians who do believe all these things. So which one does God value more? Does God value this the the Christian who's like, you know what, I'm a sinner. I am a piece of [ __ ] I believe that God is my savior. I'm going to keep on doing all this [ __ ] [ __ ] but I am a a piece of [ __ ] That's why I'm doing it. And but God died for my sins, but I'm going to try. But he's a piece of [ __ ] his entire life, and he hurts people. Or do you think God is more favorable to the person who goes, "Yeah, I don't know if I really believe it, but I really like being nice to people and kind and trying to help my neighbor and trying to help anybody I can and trying to be a positive force on the world." Well, I think at the end of the day, it's still like you're in Adam or you're in Christ. And so, like this is what I said when I was on Rogan and I was commenting on Jordan Peterson is like we need to be careful that the law, the doing good things is the mirror. Don't try to clean yourself with the mirror. The mirror shows you how dirty you are. Right. Yeah. He's Yeah. I would believe a lot of these people aren't trying to clean themselves with it. I think that they're doing it because they just feel like that's the right way to to be, right? And I would encourage them in that because ultimately I would But don't you think God recognizes? Like, don't you think God is smart enough to be like, "Hey, this person's just found a way around the system. He just said, "Yo, I believe in that guy." And then he's just out here continuing to kill people. And this other person is like, "I don't know if I believe him, but I am that." Isn't it also weird that he died for all of your sins except one? Every sin except one. Don't believe in him. Like you don't believe in him, so you're going to hell. Everything else, you're good. But you don't believe that's the one sin. Also, his own followers didn't believe in him until he came back. And now we got to believe with him. And we didn't even get to see him come back. Yeah. So I I can't like I I can't believe if his own followers, the people who saw him do all the cool stuff, the second he dies are like, "Yeah, he was bullshitting." And then he comes back and they're like, "Okay, we're on board." Yet, we have to have this this undying faith that even his own closest followers couldn't have. And he has a higher expectation for us than them. It's a It's a good point because if he did come back, I guarantee we'd be like, "Hey, I'm back. I do what all your homies did, too." But why do you have a higher expectation for us and we never even met you? So, the answer to that is that it's it's not like faith isn't simply about believing the right things, right? Because even in Matthew's gospel at the end, Jesus has been with them, right? Luke tells us 40 days. And at the end, he commissions them, go make disciples of all nations. And it says that they worshiped him, but some still doubted. You been with the resurrected Jesus. What are they doubting about? And that's where I think that ultimately I think Christianity is true because I ultimately believe that the public publicly available evidence communicates that it's true. But salvation is not merely an intellectual endeavor in that I can't just think of all the right things and that gets me to where I need to be. There's something that's different. You're making my argument. Yeah. It's not about thinking it, it's about doing it. And I think it's not about doing it either. Okay. Yeah, it's it's it's about you being changed by the spirit to not just feel, think, or do the right things, but to actually be. So, when Jesus says to Nicodemus, so what defines changed by the spirit? So, here's the thing. When Nicodemus, who's who's John, we're about to get there. We're about to get there. He gave his only son, right? The whole John 3:16, the most famous verse. Um, then Jesus says that you need to be born again. There's a play on words there in the Greek which means both born again and born from above. Yeah, it's the same term in the Greek. And Nicodemus takes it as I need to be born again. He's like, well, I can do that. Show me the bag of my mom. It doesn't work like that. And so, but there's something that goes beyond the like carnal in the life of the believer. That's what being born again means is that there's a a not an awakening in an eastern way, but an understanding of the fact that Christ has reached into your life and he's revealed something that is beyond the simple fact. Why? I guess my concern is God is all knowing, all powerful. If you feel that change or transition in you, You feeling a transition? Is that what's going on? Yes. No. No. No. Like every woman who makes herself mad. Yes. But you don't think God is aware that that's him? What do you like? You think that that person on the island or the random person that grows up in Ohio or New York or Japan or anywhere that realizes that I'm going to live a better life and I'm going to be a better person and I'm going to do all these things which now we know through scripture says will give you eternal salvation. And the one thing he doesn't say is I know that Christ is reaching in me to do it. He feels like something is reaching in him to do it. Maybe he talks it up to evolution. Maybe he chalks it up to uh his god. His god, whatever it is. But you don't think God, the one God, yes, is smart enough to go, I know who he's talking to. You think he needs us to to say him by the one specific name and then God goes, well, he said the name. Okay. To me, it seems belittling to God to assume that he's not capable of understanding all the languages that we speak to the highest power in. Yeah. So, I don't disagree with you. And I think that's where God, like what I said before, is not going to judge us on what we do don't know. He's going to judge us on what we do know. That doesn't mean that we're innocent. At the exact same time, I think there the spirit of God is constantly speaking to us and convicting us. We call it a conscience, right? So like there's an aspect of God's means of grace that is just general to everybody in that we understand that murder is wrong and that agreed arguably everybody throughout history barring a few whackados. Yep. I believes that and that is the image of God that we are created in screaming at this is yes same page. So I'm curious even in the book of James the epistle of straw as Luther would call it. Yeah. by some pious Jew. Yeah. Perhaps that in this book, God says without works, faith is dead. Yeah. Faith without works is dead, rather. Yeah. So, how do you reconcile that with this idea? Yeah. So, you're not saved for your works, but you're saved. No, sorry. You're not saved by your works, but you're saved for your works. So, that's the fruit in the cursing of the fig tree. It's like if I see a friend and he's claimed to be a Christian, but his entire life is reflecting the complete opposite. I would say to him, listen, I don't know what's between you and God. I that's not my place. However, I have no evidence to see that the things that you actually confess have an actual like outpouring in that. And I think that that should worry you. I want to grab you by your baptism and I want to say like I'm going to hold you to the standard that you you yourself are claiming. And so so what's the fruit? The fruit is that which Jesus says, "You will know you will know my my followers by their fruit." And that's why it's problematic when we see Christians doing things that are uncchristian. Right. Right. That's why people point out things like the Crusades or the Inquisitions. I think these are legitimate things that we can point to and say, you know, if you pour out the substance here, let me give you an illustration. So the uh methodology of form and substance, I said it slow so you don't think. Yeah. Thank you very much. methodology of form and substance had this idea that this is black rifle. Oh, sweet. We don't have this in Canada. You know, we don't have this in Canada. Of course not. Every time I come to American freedom, man, we don't we don't have that up north. Um, so Black Rifle Energy. Okay. Um, I come in the room, I say, "Andrew, can I drink this?" And you say, "Yeah." I say, "What is it?" You say, "Black Rifle Energy." I crack it open. I take a sip. It's gasoline. Yeah. Okay. It is Black Rifle Energy drink in form and that it claims to be, but not in substance. and that the actual contents are not what the can is describing. So when we look at the contents when we look at the what Christianity actually dictates and we see things like Jesus saying love those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other cheek and then you look at something like conversion by the sword. We can say based on the actual contents of what Christianity and the Bible claims to be that that is it in form but not in substance and that person either is in a lot of trouble and that they're claiming to be something they aren't or they really need to figure out what's what and that they're they're going down a dangerous road. Y and so I forgot the original intention of this illustration. Faith and works. Faith and works. So you explain one version then what's the inverse of that? What are the person that don't claim to be Christians yet everything in their works shows that they are? Sure. I would say all is Christian but the form is not right. So I would say that when Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment he says love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. All the good works if they're not done in the love of God that is actually a commandment that someone who doesn't believe cannot fulfill. Wait, wait. Say it again. Yeah. Say it again. Crazy, dude. Say it again. Say it again. So, so I I get asked sometimes like is is there is there something that a Christian can do that an atheist can't morally? There's something a Christian can do that atheist can't morally. No. And I would say yes. And it's love God. The atheist doesn't want to. He's not going to do it. And he can't do it. Yeah. And that is when Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment? That's the thing he points to. See I see. See, this is where like I think that we're not giving God enough credit because I think God is looking at the atheist who lives a quote unquote Christian life and the atheist goes, "I don't believe in God." And I think God's up there like, "Gotcha." Yeah. So, because but that's but that's how high I view God. Like I I feel like God is so powerful, so intelligent that he's aware of our little intellectualizing of who he is and how we behave. And he's like, it's like when your kid first starts learning stuff in school and they're like 11, they start trying to tell you what the stars are and you're like, "Yeah, yeah, sure. It's exactly what they are." And that's exactly how history is and it's adorable. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so that's what I assume God is doing. And that's how I I guess that's how I solve the problem for the person on the island or the good person that was never given Christianity or the person that was given like this horrible bastardized version of it. They were molested by some priests and like they're they're going to feel that disconnect to this beautiful source because of that horrible individual and now they don't get eternal salvation because of what this horrible person did. Like I yet the rest of their life they're being good and they're they're being pure and they're being true, you know, like despite them saying they don't. I think God is looking at that like listen, I know I know your heart and you're doing the right thing. And I think God is looking at those people who say they believe in God, but they're doing these horrible acts and they're like, you're not going to trick me. I'm not because you're acting like I'm stupid. Right. Right. I I mean I feel like that's insulting to God. There's layers to this. I think, you know, scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things who can know it. And I think there's an aspect of Should I say it slower? Yes. The heart is deceitful above all things that know it. Who can know it? Who can know it? So the idea is that even our good things are going to be done with a motivation apart from actually understanding who God is and what our relationship to him is properly. They're going to be motivating homeless people and making YouTube videos about it. I think that's profound. I think that's like I think that's a great way if if you were someone who maybe wasn't religious of understanding like our evolutionary biology and why we're inclined to do certain things and yeah I I think that's a really profound way of understanding human behavior and there's still a selfishness to particular thing which is yeah that that's what the evolution Yeah the evolutionarilist what would evolutionist yeah that's what the evolutionist would say but and and and and they could be consistent in that way. However, the the survival of the fittest doesn't actually give you a grounding standard for being moral in the sense agree that so my friend Glenn Scriber who wrote a great book called the air we breathe uh he describes in this way I mean he's British so he talks about trousers but when we say the atheists when we ask them where do you get your morality from often the response I get is the People think I'm accusing them of not being moral. I'm not doing that, right? I think atheists can be moral because I think they're created in the image of God and that's like outpouring from them. But when I say where do you get your morality from? Glenn says it's like asking Mark where do you get your trousers from and Mark going I'm wearing trousers. You're like no no where do you get it from? Like how dare you tell me I'm not wearing trousers. It's like no that's not the question I'm asking right I'm asking the origin of the morality to actually ground doing something that is good I fully believe that you can do good things I'm just asking where is the objective idea that that actually stems from because evolution doesn't get you there I I would say that uh I would say evolution gets you uh part of the way what I would say is that your evolutionary ary inclination to be moral only scratches the surface of the euphoria you can experience when you lean into the will of God or being a good person. In other words, just not killing doesn't make me feel good. I've not killed my whole life. Helping my neighbor for no other reason than to just help him. And in the moment like feels annoying. I'm like, why am I gonna go do this? Immediately afterwards, I'm like, man, I'm really glad that I did that. And like I felt connected to that person. They felt really grateful and like, "Wow, I feel really that act of altruism made me feel really good." Yeah. And this is what I would say would be walking closer to God. And I think Christianity and other religions uh give this really compelling argument for, hey, hey, yes, you are doing these things, atheists. You're already doing these good things. You could even lean further into that and feel the fruit of that connectivity. I'm just saying I think there are people who have realized this sometimes despite rel in spite of religion and sometimes without religion and they've continued to lean into it and I think God is smart enough to realize that they're getting to the same place and that might be what Hinduism is seeing. That's yeah that might be I'm not trying to make an argument for it. Yeah, I get you. Obviously, you know what side I'm on, but but I I guess but but I I I guess there is this objective beauty to it and there's so much to glean from it. Yeah. I just think that there is a um potentially I don't want to say this, but like belittling of God's ability to recognize his greatness within people. I tend to agree. But like even that idea of like you'll know my followers by their fruits. Yeah. It's like if you see a Hindu or like a a sik that's feeding people at their temple or a Muslim that's living like a very pious life, perhaps they're living a Christian life. Is it possible that that is the the fruit that you can know them by? Um a Christless Christian life isn't a Christian life. Mhm. So how do you know he's not in there? It's it's written on your heart. Sure. But if he's confessing seekism, the tenants of seekism, confessing, God's going, confessing, God's going, God's going, I listen, you could call it that. You're you're But so here's here's the thing. All religions are saying I'm I'm hating Christianity more and more. You making me, you ming me from Christ. That's closer than I was an hour and a half ago. I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. I'll pray for now. We're cooking though. the bloody living thing that Christians say, right? Thoughts and praise blessing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, all religions at their core are saying counter things, right? Like I said before, like they can't be all true. It's the equivalent of if we say like they're all true. It's the equivalent of me saying I went to the library and I read all the books and I came to the conclusion that all the books despite their differences are really saying the same thing. They all words, grammar, syntax, letters, numbers, you know, everything from one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish to mine conf, right? You could conclude one of two things. I didn't read all the books or I read the books so poorly that I'm not giving justice to what the content of the books is. I didn't read all the books or I read them so poorly that I'm Yeah. Yeah. And I would say the same goes for worldview perspectives. If we say that all of them are saying the same thing or getting to the same result, we either are not studying the religions themselves in what they actually say or we're not doing justice to the fact that they say mutually exclusive things. I think that's 100% true right now with us. And I think unfortunately in this argument and I and I don't want to speak for Mark or or or Akos because you guys are ahead speak for Mark. Yeah, but you guys are far more aware of like what your religions say and dictate. Whereas I think Alex and I were a little bit removed aware more than I am. You know more about Hinduism than I am. He just got back from India. Exactly. Is a start. Anybody's aware but like Alex and I don't know exactly what the scripture is saying. So it's very easy for us to ascribe like the most uh open-minded terms for us cuz we're like I want to guess I'm heaven. You know, God knows my heart. So I understand what we're doing is is incredibly selfish. You could frame it in that way. but remove us and whether we go to heaven or not and we can put it on other people that we don't even know that we think might be good people. We're hoping there is some salvation for them if that heaven does exist. I don't know what the point that we were trying to make here with was though. Gandhi was right. No, no, no, no, no, no. But, but I No, it is it is tricky because you were so aware of exactly what the scripture and the religion is saying the requirements are and we're here going, "Yeah, but isn't it kind of like this?" and you're like, "No, that's not what it says. We're hoping that there's a little extra room." And you're like, "Listen, there's a way. You're welcome. You're invited. Just come in the door, but these are the rules to be in there." So, it is kind of like Yeah. I wouldn't say that it's rules. But I I understand. Stop putting words in my mouth. No, no. I It's This is so interesting. It's like No, I get you. And I think I think it is possible. If you nod and agree to me saying rules, there's going to be a video of some I understand the pressure you're under. People make response videos. But you I so so like I am delicate with that but like I'm just throwing out the words that like fit my narrow mind. It's very narrowminded. Very so narrow. So narrow though I accept everybody. No no I I I get what you're saying and I think like once again I'm not saying that people of all worldview perspectives cannot do good things, cannot be good people cannot actually articulate what would be like even if it's superficial fruit. I think that's good. And I would I would implore everybody, right, of whatever atheist, Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon, um, Jehovah's Witness, even the Scientologists, even the Scientologist to do good things, right? Like I want people to do that because I think it's just better for humanity. Yeah. Ultimately though, I want everybody to confess Jesus Christ as Lord. But on a superficial level, I think just for the sake of human flourishing, for what is good for society, I want to implore people to do good things. And I think that the foundation for that is actually a Judeo-Christian one that comes from the scripture because I believe that everybody's created in the image of God and everybody is intrinsically worth in their value. Nobody's worth more than anybody else. Agreed. Agreed to that. Now, I know you have to get on a flight to go back to talking to me. No, I want you to be here for like two more hours and like talk, but you you have to be a good parent. That's the thing. You're being My son has a soccer game that I got to get to. I love this. I think this is great. Okay, so we let you get out of here. Um, last question and then you go and then we should order him in car right now just so it's waiting downstairs. Um, Jesus, heard of him. Father, son, holy ghost. Yeah, he is God. Yes. I think that a lot of time there are people going okay isn't he the son of God? He is the son of God. He gave God gave his one and only true son but like he also gave himself. So why is the language why is the language his son? Why is he giving us his son? And why does that discrepancy kind of exist? And at what point in time in like um Christian historical record, yeah, are they all synergized? summarize 2,000 years of trinitarian theology before the Uber comes. Okay. No, it's a good question because I think what you see in the biblical New Testament and the early Christians are wrestling through this because we have the benefit of standing 2,000 years down the road and they've hammered out the language we use today. Got it? So, they're wrestling through this. The father is called Yahweh God. The spirit is called Yahweh God. And Jesus is called Yahweh God. There's only one Yahweh. How do we figure this out? So what they do is eventually they come up with this language of being and person. Being describes what you are. Person describes who you are. This chair has being right. It's what philosophers called ontological status. Right? But it doesn't have personhood. I didn't ask its permission to sit on it, right? But it does exist. And so being is what you are. So God is Yahweh. And we see this in the sense that Jesus tells his disciples to go baptize in the name on Greek. It's a singular. And then he says of the father, son, and the holy spirit. So he says the singular name, but then he describes three persons. And so this is the question the early church is wrestling through and they say, okay, Jesus is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. It's an acronym, hands. The spirit is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. and the father's given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of God. There's only one God. How do we understand this? Now, the ancient Jews actually already had a concept of this in that they weren't unitarian fully. They understood that God is complex within his unity and that God can rule and reign in heaven. And yet, the ark of the covenant could still have God's presence. And we even see examples when before Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is met by three individuals. Two that are identified as angels and one that is identified as Yahweh God. The angels go off to Sodom and Gomorrah to find Lot and his family. Abraham dialogues with Yahweh. Eventually Abraham leaves and then in chapter 19, Genesis 19, it has this really interesting passage where it says that Yahweh on earth reigns fire brimstone from Yahweh in heaven. Now you only have one Yahweh. So what's going on there? Well, we would say within like a Christian framework. This is the pre-incarnate Christ, okay? He is not, you know, in fleshed in who Jesus is. But this is the complex unity. And the Jews understand this. And even early on in rabbitical Judaism, there's a concept of the shakina glory, which is the presence above the ark, that God is ruling and reigning in heaven. And yet there's also this idea that kind of gets um fleshed out in uh cabalism of the um chevro which are like the presence and spirit of God all throughout the earth. So in that sense ancient Judaism sometimes it's called the two powers in heaven. I don't love that kind of articulation but in academia that's what it's called. That God is ruling and reigning in heaven and still has a presence on earth. That God is complex within his unity. only one God, but there's something else going on there that maybe we don't fully understand, but then is teased out in its fullness in the New Testament with the son, which is a title of familiarity. It's not like a birth son. Uh, but the father and the son, those are kinship terms, but they have existed, like I said before, in a set of living, loving relationships. It has always been three, and they have existed eternally as three. the spirit is teased out a little bit in the Old Testament. You have these kind of like uh these Easter eggs of Jesus throughout um the burning bush, right? It says that the the messenger of God spoke from the bush. And so you have these sort of things. The early Christians are wrestling through these things and coming up with some good ideas, some bad ideas in order to formulate the language of this. Eventually they come up with this idea, one being in three persons. Being describes what you are, persons describe who you are. M got it got it. So the Yeah. Yeah. So this your form one three three forms. That was really good. All right. Get back to Canada. Dude, thank you so much for taking the time, Wes. I appreciate you guys are great, guy. You're awesome. So glad it worked out. I'll see you in hell, buddy. Peace. I love Great man.