Introduction to the Trinitarian Faith Course - Session 5

OK, I'm just going to, but while I introduce Paul, I'm going to

just geek out for a minute. So can everyone just say geek

out for a minute? Just say that to the person next

to you. We're going to geek out for a

minute. OK, In in studying about the

Bible and the Christian faith in Britain for some reason,

probably I think in America too, but not in mainland Europe,

there are two branches called biblical studies and theology.

Can everyone say that? Biblical studies and theology.

So biblical studies, people who are into biblical studies have a

very different conversation for some reason to than people in

theology. Yeah.

So biblical studies is when you look closely at the text, you

might be interested in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and you're

really about the Bible. You could be Hebrew Bible, Old

Testament, you could be Jesus, the Gospels, you could be Paul.

What would the Bible project be out of the two biblical studies

and theology? Yeah.

So the Bible project is classic biblical studies.

Then you get a whole branch, a discipline called theology,

which is looking at from that, those first witnesses that were

written down in our New Testament, then the church

fathers and mothers response to them, what we now think about

the nature of God after the Canon or including that, the

completion of the Canon and then afterwards.

So can we think this is a harder question?

I'm not sure you've known the answer.

Can anyone think of anyone who might be more theology than

biblical studies, Hugh? Oh, me.

No, no, no, I'm way more biblical studies.

I find theology systematic theology.

Very. I'm just a real newbie on that.

Wayne Grudem systematic theology.

Yep. Who did you say?

Ravi? Yeah, So I think he was he

apologetics. Go on.

I don't know if this is being recorded.

You know in Sorry, is it being recorded?

Oh, I was going to make a comment about something that I

don't want recorded. OK, OK, just wanted to say that

don't want anyone else to know there's no GDPR in our home.

It's terrible. So most of the teaching people

receive in these kinds of churches that most of us have

been in would be without maybe people realising it through a

biblical studies route. So they're they're engaging with

the text of the Old and the New Testament on the whole.

So a lot of the names and the books and the people that Paul

would have mentioned up front here and also Baxter Kruger

would be mentioning are more from a theology stream, which

most of us are fairly illiterate in.

So I'm going to introduce you to a little book.

Look how thin it is. And it's very big print easy

bedtime reading. It's called it.

This is the gateway drug to theology.

It's called In the Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria, and

it for the introduction alone by CS Lewis on why you should read

original books by people like Plato rather than read what

other people read about them. It's worth its weight in gold.

It's one of the best introductions to anything I've

ever read. So it's On the Incarnation by

Athanasius of Alexandria, and it's got an introduction by CS

Lewis. And that is a great start to

what is called systematic theology, which is how we come

to conclusions about God being Trinity, because that word is

not in the New Testament text, but it became a word that we now

identify as representing what the Godhead is like.

On that happy note, I'm going to introduce Paul and let's pray.

And then are we going to do this talk and then Q&A or straight,

straight into Q&A? Brilliant.

Yeah, that's great. Let's let's just take a few

seconds to quieten our heart in the presence.

Thanks, Alice. We've got another one somewhere

behind me. Oh, down there.

Cool. So we're we, we, we have tonight

really dedicated to Q and AI. Don't think anybody sent in any

queues on the Padlet or did they?

No. So it's just going to be live,

live unscripted. I have no idea what people are

going to ask. Huh.

It's fine. I could do a little magic trick

and write down. I'll write down 5 questions

because I'll do my magic trick. Yeah, it's the same question.

Generally it is, although I'm I understand there's there may be

some quantum curveballs coming from the front table.

If we really no cool Actually on looking at it, I see that it's

one of the longest chapters I wrote in the handbook was for

week 5. That's because the reason being

with the the video, did everyone watch the video for this way?

So the video obviously there's there's less new content in the

talk, but then loads of little tangents open up in the in the

Q&A's. So it's quite, it's quite a good

time to consolidate the really the first four sessions, which I

feel like have the most are the most dense in terms of the

content. And then this one is sort of a

bit of a consolidation and looking at kind of application.

And then as we go on from here, the, the the lectures are more

about application or about, OK, how does this work out in

different contexts and things. So I think I think that's nice,

but what you'll probably find, as I have done, is that the I

mean, I've, I've watched them, you know, a lot of times and I'm

always notice new things and I always think, oh, I'd rewrite

the handbook now, put different emphasis in and, and what have

you. So there's there's a lot more to

kind of draw out, but I think Kate is going to do Carl, Bart

at some point if you want to. Yeah.

Ready to roll? Got some notes on on Carl.

Well, do you want to do you want to start on Carl?

Why don't you start before, before we before we start

chasing rabbits? Yeah.

Well, everyone thinks of that question.

You can. Would you prefer to work out

your questions in your group and then someone from the group ask

a question? Or do you are you happy to just

speak out? Because we don't.

We want everyone to feel happy to do what they can.

I just put a quick hands up of those two options because we

don't want to waste Paul's time. We want to have AQ and a do we

want do we just want a straight Q&A in public like this?

Hands up after Kate does call bots, they have your questions

ready. Do you want to prefer, do you

prefer to have a private conversation than someone

represent your question? Great.

OK, Jane, give your question to Claire.

Great, right? We're just going to do 5 minutes

on Carl Bart. This is definitely theology.

Absolute theological big dog. So I did cheat on this and I

phoned a friend because my younger brother wrote his PhD on

Karl Barn. And actually this is great

because he's recently moved to Germany.

So it was like great. I mean, he loves Karl so much

that he moved to Germany. Actually, no, it was actually

because he met a lovely German girl and married her.

But Karl was like another reason for going there.

And he learnt German so that he could read Karl's church

dogmatics in the original German.

So, you know, like, massive geek fest.

And it was just really great to connect because I'd always felt

a bit guilty that I hadn't read his thesis.

So I got to ask him about it anyway.

So Carl Bart was a Swiss theologian who was born in 1886

and died in 1968. I always find people like that

really interesting, who were essentially Victorian, but then

they lived through like a lot of the 20th century.

So he studied theology in German in Germany and he was a pastor.

This is just a bit of background about his life.

He was a pastor in Switzerland for a bit and then went on to

become a professor of theology in 1934.

Does anyone know what was happening in Germany in 1934?

I think you all do. He wrote something called the

Bahman Declaration, rejecting Nazism and saying that the

Church's allegiance was to 1 Lord Jesus Christ, not Adolf

Hitler. He apparently mailed a copy of

this to Hitler and then got kicked out of Germany for

refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to him, which I

thought was pretty cool. And then he was back in

Switzerland, his home homeland during the war.

And then he was a significant voice calling for like German

penitence and reconciliation across the church in Europe post

war. Very kind of influential.

He was like on the cover of Time magazine once and people said

that his influence really went beyond just the kind of church

and theological spheres. And the other thing to know

about him, because we never liked to pay anyone on a

pedestal. He was married with five kids,

but he basically had a lifelong love affair with his assistant,

which he kind of owned. Like I'm married to this one

person, but I'm actually in love with this other person.

Just thought that was interesting from a theological

gonna be real. Let's be real, from a

theological perspective, this is where Ben came in.

He very much kind of reacted against the 19th century

prevalent Protestant liberal theology characterised by

historical criticism of the Bible and scepticism around

classical metaphysical ideas. Let me just translate that for

you. That's from Ben.

So we agree. So basically my understanding of

that is that 19th century, OK, 1800s talking like the Victorian

times when it was like the Enlightenment and there were

loads of scientific and technological advances and we

were being like pretty smart. Like we were kind of like in

Europe. We were like dominating the

world. It was the big old like colonial

times. And we're still very much like

perceived ourselves as Christian, but there was a lot

of kind of probably like really healthy, like criticism going on

of the Bible. Like for the first time, people

were like, oh, maybe the world wasn't created in seven days and

stuff like that. So all of that was kind of going

on. But also during that time, the

theology of the Trinity kind of got a bit lost because

everything was about like what you can experience and like

cognitively know and what you can kind of scientifically

prove. So I like bigger kind of

metaphysical ideas like the Trinity just kind of got

dropped. Like people just weren't really

interested in them. And Bart basically was, I think

then kind of turn of the century happened and then the First

World War happened. And Ben was describing that

basically the First World War was just like this awful

bloodbath, like European nations, like warring against

each other. And everyone basically realised,

Oh my gosh, like we're not actually civilised.

Like we're not this like amazing, like civilised, like

moral amazing people that we thought we were.

And so a lot of people are asking a lot of questions,

including Carl, sorry, Ben calls him Carl, which I find really

funny, including Bart. And he was basically really

disillusioned that the liberal, his liberal Protestant liberal

theologian teachers had supported this war that he

thought was absolutely awful. And then when kind of war was

brewing again, he really very strongly was like, no to it.

I mean, people like Bonhoeffer were really influenced by Bart

and the Confessing Church. So he would kind of reacted

against that basically and was like, no, we basically put God

in a box. Like God is so much bigger than

our kind of like western liberal ideas.

And he kind of went back and recovered, basically recovered

the doctrine of the Trinity in a way.

Like Ben would say he's like a post like a post liberal

basically because he didn't interestingly, like he didn't go

back to sort of like pre liberal ideas.

Like he was very against what's that word predestination so that

it's like when Calvin and all of that lot thought that God had

already chosen who was going to be saved and who wasn't.

So Carl was like, no, I don't believe in that.

He was really into the Trinity. He was really into God revealing

himself through Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ.

And that he thought basically that the Bible is really

important in in as much as it is like a witness and a testimony

to the person of Jesus Christ points to Jesus and Jesus

reveals the Trinity. So that was his big thing.

Yes, I already said he rejected Calvinist's doctrine of

predestination. And he did get accused of being

a universalist. And he said, quote, I do not

believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ,

reconciler of all. And most famously for me, I

listened to a talk by our friend Jared in our prayer room in

France a few years ago when we were living there.

He was talking about the cross, and he created Carl Bart.

And apparently one of his students once asked him, Doctor

Bart, when were you saved? When was the moment when you

were saved and Carl? Bart replied, I was saved about

3:00 on a Friday afternoon on a hill outside of Jerusalem in 33

AD, and I thought that was really cool.

Thanks. Thanks, Kate.

Well, yeah, great. And I think we didn't.

There's no real space in this book, but we'll often talk about

the two Karls of the 20th century, the Bart being the

Protestant 1 and Karl Rana being the Catholic one, having very

parallel conversations in the in the church.

Karl Rana influencing Vatican 2 very heavily, and Bart kind of

being the the sort of epicentre of good quality modern theology

in in my view. But that was great.

Thanks. Should we get into Q&A?

Who wants to go first? Jane, it's coming down your way.

Right. OK, you, you spoke at church

once and you said there's a bit in the Bible where it says God

sent an evil spirit to I don't know who it was.

And you said I don't believe that was true.

Do you remember so and that I've never heard someone say that

before, which really blew my mind and thought, wow, wow.

So in the Old Testament, when we read or hear what you read,

don't you don't hear them when we read God doing something

vengeance. So we've I'm thinking about lot

and solemn, you know, who was it his wife and that ran away and

she turned to salt. That's like, you know, whether

that's a story or not. But when we're reading that,

would you say that we have to read it from God is good.

Therefore, there has to be another explanation for a God

that would kill. Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And and I guess there's a lot that question sort of is a is an

umbrella for a lot of specific points.

We could, you know, go to see you mentioned Lot and his wife,

but you could you got a long list of things you could choose.

I think the one the I don't remember talking about in

church, but I think I know what you mean.

Is it when it talks about an evil spirit from the Lord went

out to Seoul? Was it about King Saul?

Yeah. And, and I probably said, which

is what I believe is that God doesn't send evil spirits

anywhere because they don't come from him.

So yeah. And I guess there are a lot,

there are lots of kind of nuanced, different, you know, we

can kind of categorise acts of divine violence or parts of the

Scripture which appear to paint God as the origin of evil and

these sorts of things. There's nuances to them, but we

could kind of try and group them all into one without sort of

spending weeks teasing out individual ones, which isn't a

bad thing to do. But I think it's more, the more

the question is, what is our hermeneutic lens?

What is our, what is the principle or set of principles

by which we come to read the Scripture?

And to pick up, you know, Kate's quote, Bart's answer to that was

well, as Christ, you know, the Sunday school joke, the person

of Christ is the lens through which we're reading everything

else. So if something doesn't look

like Jesus, then there's a problem.

And we don't immediately know where the problem is.

Maybe the problem's on our side. Maybe there's a problem on the

translation. Maybe there's a problem on the

Texas, but there is a problem. So to be to take sides with

Jesus is commit to saying to saying, well, where we come up

against things that do not look like Jesus, we have to

acknowledge there is a problem. And we kind of need the guidance

of the Holy Spirit to know how to how to process that one out.

And I think that, you know, the the confession of the church in

the Nicene Creed is that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and

giver of life, not the author of death.

So Jesus, Oh no, yeah, Jesus says this John, isn't it?

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy.

I've come that they may have life in all of its fullness.

So let's let's read that literally in the context of 1st

century Jewish people listening to.

Him they have a whole catalogue of the death and destruction and

things that are that's there and he's saying the thief comes to

steal, kill and destroy when he says I've come to give life that

is directly challenging their conceptions of God because will

they believe God gives life and death.

So will we miss that because we're not in that in their

context, hearing it how how extremely challenging that is.

So a a lot of the the first few centuries as the scriptures kind

of getting laid down in in Canon, like what's officially in

and what's out? The question of well, how do we

read it is very central. So, but, but I'm, I'm of the

view that it's also central in the New Testament.

If you come to read the New Testament with this, if, if, if

I, I would suggest it to you like this, assume you're with

the, you're with the apostles in the New Testament and you've had

your entire paradigm about who God is completely blown out of

the water by Christ. You still don't really have a

clue what that means. Like that's evident.

You look at you look at the church, even post the

resurrection, you still don't have a clue what's going on.

They're arguing about all kinds of different things that are

apparently inconsequential. And there's a development of

understanding and theology in in within even the the just the

canonised books of the New Testament.

So they're wrestling with stuff they they have not got it all

sewn up whatsoever. So the idea that now that Jesus

has risen from the dead, we finally got it all figured out.

That's not their story. So come with a come with a

thought. What, what's it look like to

read the works of the New Testament as that the, the

Apostolic witnesses trying to work this stuff out, They're

trying to process out what they have encountered and what its

implication is for how they understand everything else.

We get a lot of that in the this whole discussion of, well, what

does this mean about the Jewish law?

That's that's quite overtly how it plays out in the New

Testament. But actually, if you, if you

keep that in mind, you'll find it's not just there that it

plays out. It plays out in a lot of

different ways in the, in, in kind of the pastoral

application. They're trying to figure all

sorts of things out. Well, how are we supposed to

organise, you know, what, what's this supposed to look like?

And you even have some of that being preempted in the, in the,

in the Gospels where Jesus says things like, look, people are

going to come along and say you're not allowed to get

married. Don't believe that.

But there's anticipations of certain, you know, places where

people are going to fall off, you know, off the wayside with

this stuff. I wrote a paper a little while

ago, maybe last year even, or the year before.

It's a bit of a thought experiment.

Let's what, what do we see if we follow the, we follow the life

and thinking of the apostle Peter, assuming we accept that

Peter wrote the, his, the first epistle of Peter, which I know

is not uncontroversial, but let's just go with tradition.

Assume he wrote that it's part of the, the, you know, the

Petrine witness, Peter's witness.

What is his, Where does he begin and where does he end up?

So I, I, I wrote, I wrote a paper on that because you see,

you see kind of him going 2 steps forward, one step back,

him having a certain perspective of something.

You get this whole thing where he has the vision of the blanket

comes down from heaven and he thinks it's a demon.

He doesn't think it's God. He rebukes it.

You know, he's like, no, Lord, this can't be right.

And so clearly he is going on to have experiences in the Holy

Spirit that are so challenging to him that he thinks it's, he

thinks he might be being demonically deceived.

And they're challenging the theological paradigms that he

had inherited as a good Jewish boy in the, you know, 1st

century AD. So if that's going on with him,

I think we ought to pay more close attention to that when

we're approaching the the the Jewish scriptures.

Because what does Christ do when he appears in the backdrop of

the Jewish scriptures? Well, for the people who were

steeped in the Jewish scriptures and little else, he completely

blew that world apart. So we shouldn't then think we

get an easy ride when we kind of parachute into different parts,

you know, of the of the law prophets or anything and just

think that it will, it will kind of come necessarily fall in a

very straightforward way. So my but, but I am committed to

I'm going to side with Jesus, right.

And I think this is what's going on in the mount of

Transfiguration. You have Moses and Elijah both

appear with Jesus on the mountain.

Moses clearly represents the law.

Elijah clearly represents the prophet.

So this is unambiguous. The they they are the two

witnesses of the the broader portion of the Jewish Canon.

When they appear, Peter tries to venerate all three of them

equally by putting up 3 tabernacles.

As soon as he tries to do that, they're all obscured from view

by a cloud. He hears the voice of the Father

saying this is my son, listen to him.

And then Moses and Elijah have disappeared.

How are we supposed to read that?

I think we can read it statements like Jesus says to

the Pharisees. You think that you search the

scriptures because you believe in the scriptures.

You have life, yet these are the same that testify about me, yet

you fail to come to me to receive life.

So right there Jesus is telling us what's going on in this Canon

of of spiritual, prophetic, religious literature is all

converging on his arrival. Well, when you kind of parachute

into different stories in the Old Testament, if that's not if,

when, if we don't have that in view, we're not reading it with

Jesus as the truth. We can we can read it another,

we might be reading it another way.

Again, it's like the historical critical method or whatever.

We can be be looking at it from all sorts of different angles.

But if we're reading it in a Christian way, which is to say

we believe that there is a prophetic, metaphysical,

supernatural witness that is run coming throughout all of this

that is converging on the arrival of the person of Jesus.

And in in his arrival, all of all other visions die.

All other views are of of God are taken out of the equation

and they must submit to the the headship of Christ and who he

reveals himself and his father in the spirit to be.

Everything else has to has to be worked out.

Now, does that does that create problems for how we read some of

the Old Testament? Yes, it does.

But as you've heard me say many times, show me somebody who

doesn't have problems with something that the Old Testament

says, right? And you're going to have

problems with what's written there because there's a lot

that's problematic written there.

I would suggest you kind of get to choose which category of

problems you want to have. And I think again, I'm going to,

I'm going to side with Jesus on this one.

He, he, he's the life giving spirit.

He's not the author of death. Death is called the enemy that

is the final, the final enemy to be ultimately done away within

the New Testament. It's not that death is an

emergent property of God. And I think that I would argue

you, you go to the Genesis story.

It's conspicuous that in, in the in the, in the, the, the account

of the fall of Adam and Eve, it doesn't say in the day you eat

the fruit I will kill you. It just says in the day you eat

the fruit, you will die, not I will kill you.

Adam then immediately is afraid of God.

He's running from the one who he who he thinks is the source of

the death. And but that's not that's never

even what the curse said. The curse said it was a there

was a this is a consequence of what will happen.

But I'm not the author or the originator of that consequence.

And you see the New Testament wrestles with these ideas.

You know, no one who is tempted should say I'm being tempted by

God because God is neither tempted by evil nor does he

tempt by evil. They have these kind of

statements. So clearly people are wrestling

with us all. How am I supposed to understand

or relate to God? And they're correct.

And they're saying, no, God is not the author of any of that.

Don't, don't ascribe to him something that doesn't belong to

him. OK, well, where, where does it

come from then? Well, that's the problem.

That's called the problem of evil.

I mean, that is the problem. That's everybody's problem.

So, but, but again, I'm going to work that out.

I'm going to side with Jesus on that one, even if that means

taking sides against what I perceive the Bible to be saying

or maybe what it actually is saying.

And again, we can discuss because I don't, I don't always

know. Maybe I've maybe we've misread

it. Maybe it didn't actually say

what we thought it did, or maybe it really did and it was wrong.

I'm OK with that because all visions have to have to submit

to the revelation of God in Christ.

Thanks, Kate. Just to ask like a quick follow

up question, because that was kind of going to be my question

was like, where like how far do we take this?

Like God didn't. As far as we need to.

Yeah, God didn't actually say kill those people, but could you

comment on like from your perspective, like where is the

church on this? Because I feel like there is

this kind of like protectiveness around the word of God, which

probably is like, you know, part of that like comes from really

good intentions of wanting to like honour it.

And but I don't feel like everyone's there.

But then I don't think anyone would like a lot of what you're

saying. Like makes sense.

Like, no, we don't agree with everything in the Old Testament.

So what where do you see the church like broadly is on there?

And is it moving? Is it shifting?

It's definitely shifting. I think that I, I mean, I've,

I've had the, I, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's a

privilege or not. It's just a fact.

I mean, I've been in a lot of backroom conversations over the

years with church denomination church leaders and

denominational leaders, you know, stream leaders who will

candidly admit that they do not believe what the majority of

their denominations believe on certain key issues, but don't

tell anyone because they'll get lynched by the denominations if

they knew, right? I mean, I've, I've been in a lot

of those kind of conversations and I think that against sort of

surveying church history, that anxiety has been there.

You see that in the some of the patristics, they're like, we

don't really want to be too public about saying XYZ or

speculating about these things here because if we do, people

might take it the wrong way and then we'll have chaos on our

hands. You know, we'll have a problem.

So you see throughout church history, this this issue of

those who are whether rightly or wrongly responsible for leading

or decision making within the church community are gatekeeping

certain topics of conversation. And that's happened right from

right from the beginning. Now, what we're talking about

here is nothing new about what we're talking about here.

It's not even anything new in literal terms.

I mean, these kinds of conversations you talk about

bot, I mean, this is early 20th century.

This is not, this isn't like a recent discussion, but for many

people in the church context who've never encountered

theology without going to sort of a specialist institution to

learn it, it's like, wow, OK, I've never kind of considered

these things. But it's not that those things

haven't been there. It's that there's been some sort

of pastoral gatekeeping around. Well, do we like what questions?

What questions are valid questions that are helpful for

people at different stages of their spiritual growth?

Maybe I could put it that way, if I'm putting it kindly.

Not, not everybody needs to agonise about whether or not

Lot's wife really did turn into a pillar of salt.

That for most people, most of the time, that's not really an

important question. Except I think that right now

talking about things shifting, especially in the last 10 years,

the, the mass proliferation of, you know, the, the walls of the

gatekeeping of knowledge has collapsed across all

disciplines. So I don't think anybody can

afford to do that anymore. And hence, hence a course like

this. I mean, you would normally not

be addressing this sort of topic outside of a seminary or an

academic environment. That would be very specialist

saying, OK, we're taking people and we're, this isn't for

everybody. It's a kind of backroom

conversation, but all the backroom conversations are out

in the open. And I think that it's questions

people are asking and, and conversations they're having

anyway. So we, and I think the Holy

Spirit's behind that because I think it, it, it draws us

forward through, through points of spiritual growth.

So things are most definitely shifting, but they're also

shifting in all kinds of directions.

They're not, it's not kind of a shift in One Direction

necessarily, but there are huge shifts across all denominations.

And you know that. And especially as said, the last

10 years, acceleration that's been huge.

So Sam had a hand, then Nikki, then Tim, if I can go that way

around Sam, you, you were up first, right?

I think, I think you did. Was that right?

Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is a slightly long this

question with a run up the little the run up is I was on

I've I've been like and it sort of relates to the to the to the

law, but also just the law as an example of how God chooses

trivial himself. Right.

So was that a had AI had a sermon the other week where

which is talking about eunuchs just for some reason, who knows

why. I think it was talking about the

eunuch. The the main point was like the

eunuch that appears in Acts who's like baptised.

Yeah. And you've got like there were

like 3 reference points that were pulled out.

One was from the law, one's from the prophet Isaiah and one was

there and you have the the in the law, eunuchs are banned from

like the temple grounds, like the Tabernacle, like can't go

in, can't participate. Then in Isaiah, God's like, oh,

well, to the eunuchs, I'm going to give them a name better than

sons and daughters and they're going to be completely part of

the whole thing. And then you have Philip then

like being like teleported to run alongside A chariot and

reveal who Jesus is to this guy who's reading Isaiah and then is

like, oh, well, why don't you baptise me right here, right

now? Because you know, why not?

Why can't I be, you know, and I feel like there's I've, when

I've been trying to navigate like where, how do I, how do I,

how do I find the heart of God? I've thus far been running with

a narrative of God does some sometimes does stuff that God

doesn't really agree with or like wouldn't, wouldn't like

this. Like he's doing something, but

it's not like that thing he's doing is revealing his heart.

And I feel like the law in many respects, like has a whole load

of stuff in it, which is like not designed to reveal the heart

of God, right. But I'd still personally believe

it came from God. But like, but I don't know.

I'm, I'm still trying to place it of like, OK, some stuff can

come from God that doesn't necessarily reveal the heart of

God, which then God addresses in the same, you know, in the same

Old Testament. It's like, well, actually, you

know, I know that this is, you know, been said, but what I

really want is for these people to be my sons and daughters and

then in Christ, where everyone, you know, can be so and

everyone's welcome and doesn't really matter whether you're

welcome the temple or not, you're welcome and you know,

right with a father. So I guess like in I'm one, it's

This is why I'm a long run up because I'm trying to place

things of like, how much room is this still for God doing things

that God's not like fully behind?

Like maybe God turns someone, someone to salt in a moment, But

like that's not like, oh, that we need to study that and that's

going to reveal the heart of God or or, you know, and I guess the

bit this the next question, which is possibly like one for a

future time is, you know, if the Lord did come from God and it

doesn't really reveal God's heart, like what was it?

What was the purpose? Yeah.

Yeah. Sure.

Well, let me let me there's a there's a great point.

I mean, I think just just to try and answer quickly without, you

know, as again chasing the rabbit.

I think what was the law for? Well, Paul says that he says the

law was for the purpose of increasing sin, not for

revealing the heart I've got it's for the purpose of

increasing sin. Yes, the story is the law comes

from God, but that's not actually what Jesus says.

He says the the law. He said Moses gave you the law.

Now when he said that, is he trying to say Moses is the

originator of it or like what I mean, go, go talk to him about

it, right? Process it.

I think. I think I'll circulate the paper

I did on Peter for everyone, because my argument in the paper

is that by the time you get to Peter's epistles, you have this

very weird, what seems to be a sidetrack into a discussion of

the story of Noah with from Peter, which I've never heard

taught on well, because of the the language in it is very

strange. And you think, what on earth is

he trying to say here when he's talking about it?

And if you're not not familiar with it, it's, I mean, it's a

it's a long passage, but the the headlines are he says, you know,

for this reason, the gospel was also preached to those who are

now dead brackets, those who disobeyed long ago in the time

of Noah. OK, so we've got this.

He throws this foray out there. The gospel was preached to those

who are dead, who died in Noah's time.

Why was it preached to them? He says that that they might be

judged brackets according to man with regard to their flesh, but

live according to God with regard to the spirit.

So what what are you saying? Well, I mean, I'm not I'm not

actually sure it's that difficult if we just take a step

back without the theological bias.

I think Peter is trying to say he's trying to work out this

stuff. And I think the Noah's flood is

the ultimate one. I mean, you could say you could

pick up different, different examples, but Noah's flood is

the big one because it's the whole planet And, and he says.

He says, well, the gospel went to them even though they were

dead, so Jesus went to them. Why?

So that although according to man they died in the flesh, so

they physically died, and then according to man they were

judged. In fact, that's what he's

saying. So to paraphrase it, I think

what Peter is saying is because although in man's opinion they

were judged through physical death, actually in God's opinion

they live by the Spirit, hence why Jesus went down to them.

I think that's what Peter is saying.

I don't actually think there's another sane way to read that.

If you kind of put it together, and I think this is Peter, as

there are a number of points in the New Testament where there

are acknowledgments. If we can't.

I haven't got a logical answer for you about why the Old

Testament says this, but here's what Jesus does.

You get the beginning of Hebrews.

It's the same thing. It quotes the Psalm.

What is man that you're mindful of him, the Son of man, that

you'd even think of him. You made him for a little while

lower than God or lower than the angels, depending on whether

you're reading Greek or Hebrew. You, you, you crowned him with

love and compassion and have set all things under his feet.

And then the writer of the Hebrews says, but we don't see

that. We don't see everything under

the feet of man. It's a mess out there.

Like if you take a look out the window recently and definitely

everything is not under the feet of man.

So what do we do with that Bible verse, this promise about the

status of humanity in God's economy?

And then the writer says, yes, it's true, we don't see that.

But there is something we do see.

And we see Jesus, who is the man and we see he has ascended and

has sat down at the right hand of the Father.

So we actually see all things under his feet.

Now we're not seeing all things under our feet because people

still get sick, they still die. There's they're still suffering,

they're still evil. There's still these things that

shouldn't be there. Yeah.

And he, he or she, the writer of Hebrews doesn't even attempt to

give a rational answer to that, doesn't attempt to explain it.

It says, yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying that stuff isn't going

on, but I'm saying I see Jesus and everything is under him.

And then there's an invitation back to encounter.

So there are, there are these points where again, we, we kind

of skip over them because we're not quite in, I think in the

mind of the of the writer, what it is that they're wrestling

with. So, so I again, I put it in this

paper, I acknowledged I'm making assumptions about Peter's

authorship of these things and I put it together in in a kind of

a rough chronology of key events and things that Peter happened,

had that happened to Peter and that he said ending with the

epistle where he's addressing this question of all right,

well, now how do I, now that I've had this lifetime of

experiences of Christ and the risen Christ?

Well, how do I read this book, all these books, rather, it's

not a book right for them. How do I, how do I interpret

these stories that I've had my whole life?

Well, he's Peter's been through the ringer.

I mean, his worldview has been blown upside down multiple

times. And now he's kind of sitting

down to well, OK, I guess the only way I can process it is.

Yeah. Well, I'm he because he he he

doesn't have a he doesn't have a kind of modern worldview to say,

well, it didn't happen. I mean, he assumes it happened,

like literally it happened a flood, you know, and all the

rest. So he assumes that and he says,

I guess it's man's perspective that they were judged then, but

it's God's perspective that they weren't.

I mean, just plug, just plug it back in.

I mean, you can go see it for yourself.

Read, read the epistle and see, see what you think.

But I think, but, but to me that it's this, this stuff was always

there kind of saying to us, I'm not, I'm not giving you a neat

answer. Like Jesus hasn't given us any

answer. He's given us himself.

And and I think it's within the Apostolic tradition to wrestle

with the Bible that way. And history is also on my side,

because that's also what the patristics do, right?

The early, the early church fathers, they they wrestle with

the Bible in the same way. You know, you have origin of

Alexandria. You know, the the really the

father of biblical interpretation in among the

church fathers. His whole thing is that the the

entire scripture is a kind of allegorical code that's

revealing Jesus to you. And if you haven't seen that,

you haven't read it, right? I mean, he's, he's really strong

on that. So, so I think we, again, we,

we've had, we've inherited an approach to the book that is in

some ways out of sync with the historic Apostolic witness of

the way that we deal with the books, which is not, not, it's

not easy or convenient. It's also, it's not, it's not

great for an alpha course, right?

You know, or you, you get people in, OK, here's the AB CS.

You know, it's not good for AB CS.

So I think that it, it means people might OK pastorally, we

kind of want to avoid that sort of discussion.

Just believe it and get on with it, you know, which I can't do.

And I guess you can't either, otherwise you probably wouldn't

be here. But is that we're going to go to

Nikki, then Tim, then Pete. So I'm, I'm kind of, I'm taking

on what you're saying and you may have answered this, but I

kind of yeah, sure, go for it. My question in my head.

So kind of half listening. And so I've got a kind of, are

we picking and choosing the bits that are easier for us?

I I kind of go Old Testament God little bit kind of difficult

because there's so many things written there that you kind of

you want to brush over you don't, you know, if people ask

you and they're the points that people will ask you, what about

that? What you know, does that sound

good? Is this and I'm I don't yeah, it

just is That's Old Testament God playing up whatever it was that

kind of you kind of brush. Are we picking and choosing the

good bits of God, like the loving good bits?

And I've got a friend who had a term, he'd call it Christianity

Light. So that stuck with me.

I'm like I'm I'm Christianity liar.

I wish your friend was here. He's evangelising around South

America, so I don't know. Yeah, but he's and I've got a

kind of where does, where does heaven and hell sit in the

Trinitarian? Yeah, OK, well, that's an easy

question. Heaven and hell both sit in God

because everything's in God and can't be anywhere else.

So that that's that's a nice easy one.

As for the the the first question, I mean I I.

It's hell. It's hell like the the burning

punishment. It's that kind of kind of sense

of are we, are we going through life with the goal of.

You've given me two, you've given me two, you've given me

two different directions questions there.

Let let me No, that's fine. No, it's absolutely fine.

I'm I'm playing just just on your on your first point are are

we picking and choosing? I mean, depends on the day, you

ask me. Sometimes I want to say, yeah,

just like everybody else's, right?

Everybody picks and chooses you. You go to any any church, we'll

pick and choose scriptures at the expense of others.

Everybody does. Because you you find me any

systematic construction and I will find you verses that blow

holes in it. And I know that because I

memorised large chunks of the scripture before I was 18.

I carried a Bible around with me wherever I went.

Any time I was walking, I was either witnessing to somebody

and giving the Bible away or I was reading it and memorising

it. And as far as picking the

avoiding the Old Testament because it's got the bad bits,

there's plenty of bad bits in the New Testament.

I didn't need don't need to go to like touch the Old Testament

before you find some of the worst bits.

You know that you might find you're going to find that.

So I think it's it's quite to me, it's quite a shallow

critique. And I'm not saying you, but that

they from your friend to say it's Christianity light.

I'm like, honestly, when, when people say that, I feel like,

you know, we're not, we're not all having the same conversation

here. Like honestly, because you, you

don't want me to turn that same methodology on your, on your,

you know, doctrines because they will not stand up.

And I know that because I used to be the one who preached those

harder than anybody else, right. I mean, I was, I have a book

coming out in a couple of weeks, which is my story and it, you

know, it kind of address. Why am I saying what I'm saying

now when I used to spend my Saturday afternoons with a

megaphone in the centre of Bath telling people to turn or burn,

and I used to spend my Friday nights praying as hard as I

could for, you know, souls to get saved and all the way like,

why? Why am I here?

You know, So to me, it's not to me, nothing's off limits in

terms of what, what we're reading and what we're engaging

with. But sometimes I do want to say,

yeah, of course I'm going to pick and choose which bits do

you want to pick and choose instead?

Because I could give you a whole.

But there's, there's as much, there's as much tyranny and

bondage in that book as there is freedom if you want to go

looking for it, you know, but that also brings me back to, but

what do you bring to the table when you read it?

Because you, you never read it by itself and because you always

read it with yourself. What's what's in your heart that

is coming out when you're engaging with the scripture?

What's what, what, what existential fear, what shame,

what dysfunction, what trauma is being brought to the surface

that is then overlaying and being projected onto the page

because you get 2 people read the same book and have very

different reactions to it. Right.

Well, that's not that complicated for us to

understand. But but again, even in the

phrasing of your question, and this isn't, this isn't to kind

of put a gotcha moment on you because I know you didn't mean

it this way, but even even a question like, are we just

picking the good bits of God? God only has good bits, but God

is light in him, there is no darkness at all.

And sometimes when I'm in those kind of circles that are very

fundamentalist kind of circles, and if I get any pushback, I'm

just like, look, I'm just trying to take the Bible literally

everybody when he says I'm light and in me, there's no darkness

at all. I'm actually just trying to

believe that, you know, and I think that it exposes the fact

that people lean towards parts of the Scripture that makes

sense to them and they lean away from those parts that don't.

And that's all. That's not really that

controversial. I think everybody does it.

So again, I want to say I want to lean towards the person of

Jesus Christ and the revelation of God in Christ.

So I'm going to take sides with him because there's all kinds of

other things you can take sides with when you engage with the

Scripture. And no doubt you've seen it all.

And I mean, I've seen it all and people, what people can draw out

and what conclusions they can come to, you can dive into that

and end up almost anywhere depending on how you assemble

the particular verses of Scripture.

So I'm, I'm a little suspicious of anyone who comes with that

methodology uncritically, like who hasn't actually recognised

that same methodology turns back on you if you, if you follow it

through. And that doesn't work for me.

Like I need a gospel that works in every situation, not one that

only works in very controlled kind of environments.

So for me, God is good and he is only good.

He, he's not evil and he's not the author of evil.

You get in some of the particularly some of the

reformed circles, you tend to have this, this thing of, well,

we worship God because he's so powerful and he's so awesome and

he's so incredible and he's just up there and wow, we're so

unworthy, but he's so glorious. And for them that that

gloriousness is it's about power.

Like they like power. Oh God, and I even preach things

like this when I did a lot of evangelism, right, I would, I

would say things like this is the God who could extinguish the

universe in a moment and recreate it again in the in, in

the same moment, like he's got that power.

He could go that, that and that extinguish it and recreate it.

That was the God that made sense to me.

It was the God that I was preaching.

It was about power. Well, that's but Jesus goes to

the cross and says, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they do. He's not there calling down

legions of angels to annihilate the planet, right.

And so there is a mismatch here between the God at that point

that I'm preaching and that many are preaching in those kind of

circles. What they are attracted to says

more to me about them, which again, it's it's only a

criticism in as much as it's one that I have been fully guilty of

myself and of preaching and teaching for many years myself.

So I also, I understand it from the inside, you know, not from

the outside. And then also, if anyone thinks

what we're saying here is the easy version hasn't understood

it. I got up in Tennessee several

years ago right after the major. There was a one of the one of

the big school shootings in Nashville happened on like the

Friday and I was there on the the Monday.

So there's a within a couple of days.

So I, I thought I would use, and it was a men's conference, you

know, 120 people or something. So I thought I would use my Part

1 of my sessions to address the issue of gun violence in the US.

So I did. And you know, I said, look, the

the gospel does not allow you to have enemies.

If you, if you, if you think that that is an easy version, if

that's Christianity light, the gospel does not permit you to

have enemies. In fact, it says love your

enemies because God does. And love does no harm to its

neighbour, which means God does not harm his enemies.

I'm just being literal here, taking the book literally.

So, so therefore, how do you feel about the shooter who just

shut up the school? Because I know how I feel about

him and it's not very Christian. So that that's not light and

that's not the light and easy, not Lite, you know that kind of

light. But the other side of it is

Jesus says, take my yoke upon you because my yoke is easier

than my burden is light. So my other answer is, well,

what kind of Christianity do you prefer?

Do you prefer heavy and difficult?

I mean, I have 90% of the church is preaching that honestly.

And I called someone out who is now a nationally known figure

for the wrong reason. I called him out, but he

wouldn't respond to me because he posted something about being

a prophet. Oh, I'm a people.

Nobody knows what a burden it is to be a prophet.

You know, God shows you these things.

You have these terrible burdens you have to pray through.

And and this was on a in a group that I subsequently left and I

said, and everyone was posting, Oh yeah, that's right.

You know, right on brother and all that same man.

And I just said, well, I said, whatever happened to my yoke is

easy and my burden is light, right?

What happened to that? Because you've heard me say, if

you've heard me long enough, Jesus yoke is easy and his

burden is light. If the yoke that you're carrying

is not easy and if the burden is not light, I don't know whose it

is, but it's not Jesus. I'll leave you to fill in the

blanks as to whose it might be. So if the if the message that

we're preaching, if the approach to Scripture that we're

preaching is actually weighing people down, then I can't see

that in the person of Christ. And I haven't seen it in my own

experience of Christ because I've had the Holy Spirit speak

to me very directly and correct me on a couple of occasions over

things. It's never felt heavy.

It's only ever lifted me and elevated me.

So that's what God feels like. That's what he tastes like.

That's what he smells like. I think there's way too many

people out there who they have mistaken intellectual critique

for the gift of discernment. They don't actually know what

discernment is. They have an intellectual

exercise and they call it discernment, but that's not

discernment is a spiritual gift. It's not an intellectual

exercise in the New Testament. Doesn't mean that

intellectualism has no place, right?

Of course it has a place. But discernment is a gift of

being able to recognise somebody.

You know, it's like, oh, yeah, I know, I know.

I know what that person's like. I, I know them.

I know them because I know how they've treated me.

I know how they, what they sound like.

I know what they feel like when they're close by.

So therefore, when I'm engaging with the book, I'm looking for

them. When I'm engaging with life, I'm

looking for them. And that's what's helping me to

decide where they are in the midst of all of this stuff.

So, but I often think that those kinds of questions are really

arising from healing issues more than they are from intellectual

issues. I'm very convinced about that.

Where they're where we're kind of struggling to get around this

stuff. It's more than anything else, it

is our our own, our own pain, our own fear, shame.

It's those things that are holding us captive from being

able to come to the light in those areas.

And so it's not it's something for spiritual growth and for,

you know, the one who fears is not yet made perfect in love.

We all have further to go in love.

But but to the idea that it's kind of easy in the sense that

your friend meant it. I mean, it's, it's just

ridiculous. I think that, but, but again, I

would say look, look around if you care to at the state of

churches that preach that way. And again, I say whether it's a

privilege or not, I've been in a lot of backroom conversations

and I've also been involved in a lot of cleanups of Masses in the

church environment. And one of the things that's

very striking is to see how stunted the spiritual growth is

of congregations where people have been sitting there for 30

years and they've made no progress and the message has not

helped them make any progress yet it's been the message that,

you know, so. And I think part of that is

because at the very, the very point at which progress in the

things of the Spirit means the Holy Spirit is guiding us to be

able to recognise the Father, Son and Spirit and people who

are very different from us at that very moment.

There's a certain kind of teaching which will close the

walls down and say, but God isn't there with those people.

So you can't recognise him there.

They're the out crowd. This is one of the reasons I'm

so belligerent on the inclusion issue, because if you have

people who are excluded then that means, well, God isn't in

them and isn't with them. Therefore I have nothing to

recognise. I do not have the authentic

presence of God to recognise in that person, only the potential

and that potential leaves room for me to close the door.

So OK, I've hung out, I've tried that, I've tried that one long

enough. OK, now I'll move over to here.

That one's, they're not, they're not coming with me.

Maybe they're not really elect, or maybe there's some other

problem, but to say I'm resolutely committed to the

presence of the Father, Son, the Spirit in all people, is to say

I don't get to close the door on anybody.

I don't think that sounds like an easy Christianity light.

I do think it sounds like something that levels a very

strong prophetic bazooka at the broader consensus of the

Christian fascism that is brewing in the Western world

right now. I do think it hits that and I've

said that as well publicly and will continue to do so.

So I, yeah, I don't, that's not to say people aren't being just

shallow. There's a lot of shallowness

everywhere. I don't think we're talking

about shallowness here. So, and you asked about, you

asked about the specifically the heaven and health.

And I mean, I just refer back to .1.

What is Jesus like? What when when Jesus acts in a

certain way towards somebody, what is his intention?

He, he's the one who loves his enemies.

Love does no harm to its neighbours.

So whatever way Jesus is acting towards someone is not for the

harm of that person. It can only be for their good

because that's what he says love is.

So we have a lake of fire. Well, what does that?

What, how does that function and what what's it for?

Lots of questions to unpack about that, but.

Again, I'm resolutely committed to God is love, and therefore

everything he does is an extension of his essential

nature. He is loved.

So yes, he's a judge, but what kind of judge is he?

Well, his judgement is an extension of his love.

It's not the antithesis to his love, which is often how it's

preached. And people will say things like,

well, yes, God is loving, but he's also holy.

It's like, well, then you haven't understood holiness.

Holiness is an extension of the love of God, not an opposing

force. Justice is an extension of the

love of God, not an opposing force.

If our versions of justice and holiness do not look like the

love of God, it is us who need to repent.

Metanoia have a change and an upgrade in our thinking.

It's a carnal mind that can't accept that.

Actually, again, all of this is the the book is testifying.

That's right. And the carnal mind could not

accept the things of the spirit. It's very, very rational and

reasonable to have an idea of a retributive, A retributive

punisher that makes sense to the natural mind.

The idea that, you know, you might have a school shooter and

Christ might actually still be in that person and still be

resolutely committed to their restoration with their free

participation, by the way, not not in a coercive manner.

We've had a few conversations about that, resolutely committed

them, and you think, well, how could you possibly spend time?

How could you possibly be anywhere near that devil?

How could you go anywhere near them?

They are. There's not a person on the

planet who loves that, that guy and would not, you know, send

him to the electric chair or whatever.

No one who's really connected to life will support that guy.

Yet here we see Jesus as not just the lamb, but the baby

lamb. That's a picture of holiness

that is desperately difficult for the, the natural mind to get

a hold of. And I think a lot of this stuff

is just natural mind rationality, not really seeing

the, the, the implications of the consequences of what, of

what they're talking about. But for me, I mean, and to

summarise it, God is love. Everything he does is an

extension of his love because that's his essential nature.

So if that means we have to change our understanding of a

whole bunch of things, then yeah, that's called

Christianity. We change our understanding.

That's what church is for. I think it was Tim and then Pete

and Sarah. Thanks.

And I don't know if it's a question so much as more just an

it might be an extension of where where you're going then,

but I wanted to talk a little bit about kind of universal

salvation. I'm kind of getting stuck on

that. Yeah, I know we've talked about

it about almost every week I come to you afterwards, 'cause

I'm getting stuck on it. And I guess I guess firstly,

just to say like, I've loved of this, that's what, four or five

weeks or four or five months it's been.

But the, the, the, the sessions, I, I do feel like my mind has

been blown. I'd say thank you for bringing

this to us. And it's it, it, it has brought

a new kind of beauty to the Trinity.

And it is a beautiful thing, this kind of sense of that, that

character of God being loved. And I think you've illustrated

that really well. And, and it's brought that to

life through this course in a new way for me in, in a new way

for me. So which is, which has been

fantastic. And it feels like the kind of

gospel you'd want to preach more than perhaps one that I've known

historically, but that doesn't make it kind of right.

And I guess I feel like there's some inconsistencies with some

stuff. It doesn't feel like this is

what the the gospel that maybe Jesus preached.

And I've I've picked that a few, I've made note of a few things

and I don't know if I've got a question related to some

challenges to put to it to kind of explore it together.

Maybe if that's alright. It feels like Jesus kind of you

talked a bit about judgement then, but like judgement,

separation and accountability, which kind of feel inconsistent

with a universalist reading. And I kind of get that seeing it

through a different lens. I love that.

That was last week or last month, wasn't it, where we

talked about that like kind of the new lens?

And I've really found that as through my Bible reading since

that session And, and, and I'm now going to do that annoying

thing where I pick out a few verses to back up a particular

point, which, which, but still, I'm going to do it anyway.

In terms of like judgement. There's, there's, I mean,

there's lots I could, could, could pick on, but a few

specifics. When the Son of Man comes to his

glory, he'll separate people one from another.

In Matthew 25, the Father judges no one, but has given all

judgement to the Son. John 5 then goes on to say those

who do evil will rise to condemnation.

Again in John 5, the parallel of the net.

In Matthew 13, the wheat and the weeds.

In Matthew 13, the narrow versus the wide path in Matthew 7.

They're all about separation and then there's accountability.

Unless you repent, you will perish in Luke 13.

I just feel there's like it's inconsistently.

I'm still struggling. To yeah, OK, so I know I've just

picked out yeah, yeah. And and we, we could go through

each one. I don't want to do that, but I

don't actually think, I don't actually think it's the most.

I don't actually think it's the most helpful thing to do to go

through each one. I think that just a just a

couple of observations on those. I mean, I, I will pick on one,

which is, you know, Jesus saying you know, the one about can you

read the one again about the Father, the father in judgement.

Just let me get the wording right.

John 5 was it. The father judge is no one, but

has given all judgement to the son.

John Yeah, right. And this is the same Jesus who

says I judge no one, right. So you have the, you have the,

the judge is the one who hangs on the cross and from the cross

he delivers his judgement. Father, forgive them for they

don't know what they do, which is not a petition because Jesus

doesn't make petitions, right? He is of one mind with the

Father. When he says something, he's

expressing the mind of the Father.

So this is a declaration of absolution.

This is a high priestly prayer. Now that some of the nuances

here, we're used to thinking that salvation means your sins

are forgiven, but the word salvation means to be brought to

complete wholeness, right? In the Greek sozo, to be brought

to wholeness. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, exactly. No, he's judge, right?

But in what way does he judge? And what is the purpose of his

judgement? Yes, he's judge, absolutely so.

But but who does he judge? Well, in that verse in John, it

says those who those who do evil rise to a condemnation, right?

Well, Paul says everyone's work will be tested with fire.

I assume that means the fire of judgement, right?

I don't think anyone's going to probably contest that point.

He's talking to the Christians so and he's saying everyone's

going to the fire. So the he says for each one of

us must receive due recompense from God for the, the the deeds

done in the body, whether good or bad, doesn't exactly sound

like the evangelical message either.

Believe in Jesus and you got your ticket and you're all

right. OK, so, and this is kind of what

I mean, if you, if you, you can navigate your way through proof

text and can end up in almost any conclusion.

So hence for me, the emphasis is on all right, if God is love,

and I think that's a high watermark of Revelation in the

New Testament. In fact, when John says that, I

think that's a high watermark, he doesn't say God is loving.

He says God is love. That's very significant.

If love is the essential nature of God, we therefore then have

to ask questions. What does that mean about the

nature of God's judgement? Because we're not saying God's

not a judge, he's a judge, but what's the nature of that

judgement? What's the purpose of that

judgement? There are lots of rabbit trails

to go down if you want to begin to do things like start to

dissect language, words and all the rest.

There's and there's tonnes of resources and tonnes of

conversation to have about that. Too much, too much to even try

and dive into. But there's a, there's a lot, a

lot that's out there to get into.

I would say to try and summarise on it, I don't think any of

those things are about separation in the sense that

we've been using the word separation, separation meaning

to be absent from God. Even in the Book of Revelation,

it says the lake of fire is in the presence of the Lamb, not in

the absence of the Lamb. It's quite specific.

It says the beast and the false prophet are tormented day and

night in the lake of fire in the presence of the Lamb and his

holy angels, right? Not a nice bit, but it's very

emphatic that it's in the presence, not in the absence.

So what does, what's this concept of separation?

What is it even about? You know, what do we, what do we

mean? Is it an ontological separation

we're talking about here, meaning that the truth of their

being is that they're separated or is there something else going

on? I think that you you have and to

Chris to your point about kind of chronologies, I think this is

one of the one of the ways we can kind of get unstuck in the

New Testament because the New Testament doesn't have this

chronological idea in the way that we do in terms of the same

sequencing of things. You have John's gospel.

Now is the day of salvation. Now the Prince of this a world

stands condemned and I'm when I'm lifted up will draw all to

myself. End of the story and the the and

and then and then you won't look for it anymore because it's

better that the Holy Spirit comes.

So you have in John the moment of the judgement of the world is

the moment of the crucifixion when Christ is lifted up.

That's also the moment of his coronation.

So he's not thinking in this sort of temporal sequence.

We think very much in that sort of light.

OK, well, this follows this follows this like to that that

comment from from Bart, when did I get saved or born again or

wherever he was asked it. And he says, you know, 33 AD,

you know, and TF Torrance, who is the so Baxter Kruger, his PhD

was on the work of TF Torrance. He did it with JB Torrance, TF

Torrance's brother. Torrance is a Baathian scholar.

Torrance was asked the same question and he said, I'll give

you 3 answers. He says, I'll give you the date

and he gives the date. I consciously gave my life to

Jesus, you know, and altar call. And he said 2000 years ago on

the cross. And but yeah, even more than

that before the foundation of the world.

These are, these are working. These are all working in concert

with one another. But it's not really the kind of

the, the sequencing of it is not really the, the, the issue here.

And I have a problem with, say, a reading of Revelation that has

a different Jesus than the Jesus who came the first time.

I have a problem with that. If Jesus Christ is the same

yesterday, today, and forever, then how can you tell me that

the Jesus who's coming back is materially going to be different

than the Jesus who came the first time?

That strikes me as being a real major theological flaw, not a

minor point for debate. If he's the same yesterday,

today and forever, when we see him in the Gospels, we are

seeing him as he is. So you know, people have this

well, when he comes back, he's going to come back to judge

world. No, he's judging the world right

now. His very life was an act of

judgement. He's very his incarnation was an

act of judgement. It was a judgement against all

the darkness, all of the sin, all of the evil, all of the

destruction is judged in the incarnation.

It's judged by God saying I see all of this and I refuse to

depart. You cannot make me leave.

You cannot push me so far that my love is separated from you.

I am here present within you irreversibly.

And because I'm present here with you and in you

irreversibly, that is the judgement that that lays the

crisis, the word judgement in New Testament, etymologically,

it's the word crisis. That's the crisis point that

lands at the door saying, well, if, if that's the truth of who I

am and the truth of everything else, something's got to change.

It can't. Things can't stay the way that

they are. It's impossible for them to stay

the way that they are. Now that we've seen that we

can't put that cap back in the bag.

And that is very, in very real terms, the judgement that is in

very real terms, like, Oh my God, what have I done?

I have to put this right. This is the key of saying I need

to pay back, you know, fourfold anyone who I've defrauded.

And Jesus says, well, now salvation has truly come to this

house. It's at that point when he makes

restitution that Jesus says, OK, we see something completed here

because it's actually worked its way through in his in his

actions. So I think that it's possible to

dive into the New Testament, assemble a list of verses, and

end up with eternal conscious torment in literal fire for, for

for eternity, right? It's possible to do that.

It's possible to parachute in, work your way through a

different set of scriptures and come out with will everybody

saved. So you can you can do that.

We're using the same Bible. It wasn't my intention to kind

of I know it's not no, I'm not I understand.

I don't know. I'm just trying to I'm trying to

say from a challenge out with this.

So I think what, what I'm, what I'm trying to emphasise here is

like, do like do the journey with Jesus on this.

Like there's, there's questions you've got to ask him on it and

maybe questions you might not have dared to ask him before.

OK, Jesus, Well, what do you think about XYZ?

I mean, it's so simple. How, how often do actually, or

what do you actually think about that?

The other thing I'll do is, and I'll say, well, Tim, what do you

think about that? The New Testament says you're

going to judge angels. You'll be responsible for

judging angels. Says that right.

So, OK, you've been a Christian a while.

How do you judge you? You've got to know Jesus.

You've got what, how, how would you call it?

What would you consider to be an appropriate standard?

What would you consider to be an appropriate way of dealing with

XYZ person? What, what would you do?

Because you are actually called to do it since that's your

destiny in the future is that you're going to be there talking

about the, you know, the, the completion of the church, 24

elders on the throne like issue sound judgement.

What's your verdict? There's an there's an

invitation. Sorry.

That's going to be tough. Tough, right, Tough.

OK, I think we're all. But why is it going to be tough?

We all had a tough judgement to make today, wouldn't it?

Was pool golf Claudia? It was a close call, wasn't it

earlier, but we made the right judgement.

I don't know. Not just me, was it, I assume

it's a sport reference. Oh, traitors.

OK, so anyway, so, so my, my point is though, like go there

with that conversation because I mean, I, I this this stuff I've

got a problem with right, but it but it can't I mean, I mean,

I've shared it, I have shared it here and I don't want to again

go down. It's a couple more questions as

well. But on the on the school

shooting thing, I mean, I preach this in Tennessee.

I have shared it here, this video of the, of the, of the kid

who was arrested and they leaked the, the, the police

interrogation room and his brother goes in to see him

right. And it's just a very, very, I

have a problem with this video. I have a problem with it because

it, it offends and challenges basically everything about the

way I see the world. And it, it, it creates an

extraordinary amount of dissonance, sets me against

myself because I can look at this and say I hate this kid.

Well, his brother doesn't hate him.

His brother is apparently loving him unconditionally, even in the

midst of him having done extraordinarily evil things.

Now I have a problem. Now I have a judgement on me.

That judgement has come right back onto me.

What do you say about this? I'm like, all right, Jesus, OK,

we have to have a conversation. Well, I know what to do with

that, though. What to do with that is I need

to pray, right? I've got to pray, All right,

Jesus, I need you to enable me to see because I clearly don't

see like you do yet. And that is stirring up within

me a challenge to my own saintliness, right?

Am I what? And then there's a, there's a,

there's a decision should be made.

Will I turn away from that and harden my heart and say, now I'm

not going down there? Or will I say, actually, I, I

need to, I need to sit with that and accept the exposure of the

fire of God's judgement, which is the fire of his love, by the

way, because it can't be any other fire, right?

He only has one fire. He doesn't have multiple

different fires for different days.

That's mad, right? He has one fire and he is fire.

In fact, says he's a consuming fire.

So, and if he is love and he is fire, then that fire must be

loved, loving fire. OK, so that's judgement, right?

So I think that to to actually sit with that and allow that

fire to land on you and to really work with it is it's not,

it's not easy in that sense, you know, from, from, you know,

Nicholas, previous question. It's not easy.

Like you, you get, you get out, you kind of slip through.

Oh, that's good. Yeah.

I dodged a bullet there, guys. So you don't get to dodge the

bullet, but that bullet's coming for you.

And so how, how much better to say, well, we, let's embrace it

now. There's the, there's the

imperative to evangelism. We're saying, look, the fire is

coming. In fact, it's already here.

Embrace it. Now there's No Fear in love.

You're, you're only afraid because you don't know who the,

who it is that you're afraid of. You're afraid of Jesus because

you don't know who he is. It's just like Adam in the

garden. He's afraid of God because he no

longer knows who God is. That's the same problem we all

have. And it's a problem that Jesus

has come to solve us. Forgiveness is not our

fundamental requirement. We do need forgiveness, but we

need forgiveness in that our souls require absolution and the

alleviation of the burden of guilt.

And then we need the freedom to be able to act, to put things

right like we require that we don't need, we don't need

forgiveness in the sense of, well, the books have got to be

balanced. You know, we need the Ledger

straightened out. It's not, it's not a legal

thing. It's relational.

It's about restoring us to the, the mode of being that we were

created to be in and the I think that like camp out with those

thoughts, right? Meditate on those, pray into

those. I mean, this again, we've, we've

been talking about tonnes of books and resources and things

that I can point you to explore the sort of the conceptual side

more. And I'm telling you, I still

have problems, right? I've got problems with this

stuff because but I've come to recognise my problems correspond

to faith problems, not anything else.

Like I'm actually, do I really believe in Jesus here or do I

not? What do I imagine Jesus would do

where he's standing here right now in such and such a

situation? And the Holy Spirit is

continually breaking through to me as the Holy Spirit is for you

and all of us to bear witness to Christ because we're all we're

all making kind of incremental growth, experiencing incremental

growth in all different ways is kind of unique to us.

But but again, that's why the the the, the in many ways,

universalism is a problematic word because as soon as that's

thrown in there immediately it's like the conversations about

this thing over here. Like Bart, he does.

He said, I don't believe in universalism.

I believe in Christ. We don't we're not talking about

an isn't exactly so how how do we pass that out and work it

through. I think personally that at the

very least our vision of Christ should be able to should be able

to give us hope for everybody. At the very least that should be

the case. We should be able to see that

the revelation of God in Christ as we can have we have we have a

a confident and joyful hope for anyone and if there are people

that we don't have that hope for, that's our problem.

We need to pray. OK God, you need to help me see

what I don't see yet. You need to grow me up.

So I'm more like you because you have hope for everyone at the

very least without jumping ahead to make any deterministic

statements about where where things have to lead.

Although again, as I say, if you want to get really head fit over

it. What do you do with then every

initial bow in heaven and earth and under the earth and confess

that Jesus Christ is the Lord of the glory of God the Father.

What do you do with that so. I mean, play with it, right?

Process it and talk to Jesus about it.

But. But these are the right kind of,

these are the right kind of things that it should lead us to

wrestle with. And it should also lead us to

look back on, well, if what, when we've had these kind of

infernalistic tendencies before, What's that been about?

You know, So. Yeah, huge topic.

And I and again, I I'm not dodging any Bible verses, right.

But Pete, I think is next and then Sarah and then there's any.

Yeah. Cheers.

Yeah, that's fine. There we go.

I can do what I want in these shiny shoes.

Hey, OK, I'm going to get there. I realise we haven't got much

time. My question is actually quite

quantum, quite Mystics. You went there.

I went there. Yeah, I let's accept I'm.

I'm more than happy and fully endorsed with the idea that

we're fully in relationship. It's all about relationship.

And I don't care what really what's right or wrong, whatever

Jesus says, that's what's that Bible.

Fine, cool. You know, put me in that camp.

My question kind of I'm a little preamble and then I'll get to a

question is I think we're all in pursuit of life in all its

fullness. Jesus said I come that for life

to give you life in those for us.

We're all trying to hunt for that and we do that through

hunting theology that can help bring about the fruit that

brings us that right in some capacity, right.

I, I think we'd probably all maybe in some way say that and I

think there's that hung which raw into the hunger of the thing

and for me, and I'll speak for you, maybe here you can shut me

down if I'm wrong. We're really magnetised to this

because it feels like there's so much life and freedom and

fullness in this, unlike anything I've heard or felt

before. Really drawn to it, even though

I'm now like the village idiot compared to maybe something I

had a bit more confidence in only before now.

Quantum mysticism. Let's accept we've got we've

rationalised it all. Jesus said great things.

Will you do? He did some pretty amazing stuff

with his life and the people around him did some pretty

amazing stuff. Dave Vaughn, he was a drunk

monk, wasn't he? He came second place in Big

Brother 1 year. But he's, he's a proper Mystic,

or he was at the time. He said, I remember going to a

conference and he said something that blew my mind and he still

does. He goes, if I am, I am in God

and God is in me and God is everywhere, where am I?

So my question goes translocation.

OK, so here I here's my thinking.

Like there are areas of life that we're still, we're

scrapping around the kind of like what's right, what's wrong,

what's in cool, important conversations, But life in all

its fullness, we're missing this spectrum of like what could be

in life if there are things like miracles, diamonds appearing.

And I'm not saying chase the miracle, don't chase the signs,

don't chase the wonders, chase the Jesus, right?

But translocation, you hear Mystics and talk about all this

kind of stuff. Like I haven't quite formulated

a question really. I'm like, can we have more of

those conversations? Because I'm like, we're missing

something. If we're just mulling around, am

I in? Am I out?

I'm I'm bored by it. Like let's do something cool

with this. Like, like how do we have those

conversations where it's just like, and I'm not looking for

the treat code to be like, right, I'm in China, boom, let's

go. I just like if that's part of

what life can be, where's that conversation happening?

And I think this Trinitarian world seems to have these

conversations more than other streams I've heard.

And I, I know that that's probably opening up a much

bigger conversation for another time, but if that's the kind of

the fruit of life in its soul, its fullness, like, you know,

maybe I'm just being a bit weird and like, I'm a bit bored with

my middle class life. I'm.

All for it. Like, yes, you know, I'm all,

I'm all for it, you know Me. Yeah.

You know, I'm from a you know, I was said for years, Grace and I

were the last stop before you really drop off the deep end

with the other other friends in in the kind of mystical

conversations. But I mean, to quote Carl Rana,

he said if you know, if I mentioned him earlier, famous

quote in the 21st century, a devout Christian will either be

a Mystic or nothing at all. So, yeah, this is, this is I'm,

I'm of the belief, the firm, committed belief that there is

no such Christianity other than mystical Christianity.

How that works out, I, I prefer, I prefer a kind of simplicity to

it. You know, for me, the mythism

starts and ends is the image of Mary at the feet of Jesus, Mary

and Martha, you know, so that, that's a really key text for me.

She's found the face of Christ. She's not going anywhere else.

And the face of Christ is everything.

Yeah. You can make contact with

anywhere from there, and we do. Isn't that what prayer is?

I mean, sometimes if I'm praying for somebody, I might be like,

OK, Holy Spirit, I'm making contact with you consciously.

You're always in contact with me, but I'm reciprocating making

contact with you. OK.

How do we make contact with that person and that situation?

Let's hold them. And it does.

Does that mean there's some trans dimensional contact?

Well, I guess, yeah. I mean, you could call it that.

Isn't that what prayer is? So yeah, if I think if it, if it

helps to, if it helps to connect us with faith in the reality of

what we're engaging with, then I'm then I'm totally game.

And I think that my one caveat around having also been around a

lot of those Mystic circles is sometimes there are people who

are, there's a term called spiritual bypassing in

psychology, which is people who've got unresolved trauma or

issues and they can latch onto a spiritual practise as a way to,

rather than address the problem is to, is to bypass the problem.

And this is again, is quite well described.

And I, I've spent a long time in the inner healing space and I've

quite, I've got quite a good sniffer, if you know what I

mean, when I'm around that. So, you know, you just, it's

fine, like people, people where they're at, there's no need for

them. You know, it's not not a just an

observation, right, That sometimes people can gravitate

into those places that are quite phenomenal because that's a kind

of safe refuge for them. But whether that's always the

thing that they need. Sometimes I think I would say I

like mysticism where get your head as far in the clouds as you

want to go, but keep your feet on the ground because there's a

reality here as well. So so that's just my only

caveat. But otherwise, I'm, I'm, I'm

good with it. You know, I mean, Justin

Abrahams and I are friends. You know, obviously Brian

Simmons wrote the one of the forwards for my coming upcoming

book and we've done conferences and things together.

So I mean, I'm, we're, we, we love that.

And I mean, in times past I've majored a lot on it.

I think that why why this? I think because I've found it's

the, the, this is the North Star, right?

You know, my analogy of crossing the, the, the Atlantic, this is

the North Star. You get the revelation of God in

Christ. OK, That stuff will fit in, fit

in around that. And yeah, it's like, like, go

for it. What's in your heart?

If it's healing, if it's miracles, whatever it is like,

let's, let's do it. You know, I'm, I'm there.

And we should, we should be expansive and joyful and open

and, and our theology should help us go there, not hinder us.

Yeah. Good one, Sarah.

I think it's the last, last question to you.

OK, so I wanted to ask a question about spiritual like

protection because I kind of feel like a little while ago

when I was thinking about this, I kind of thought to me, prayer

sort of feels a bit like a protection racket of sort of

like it kind of I was just thinking about prayer and I was

like, I kind of feel like if something goes wrong, when

something goes wrong, I guess my like instinctive response can be

like, oh, I didn't pray hard enough.

I didn't pray enough. I know there's like, I think it

was, was it Seth Wigglesworth who had the kind of more like

the theology where it's like, oh, I've prayed for it once.

OK, now it's prayed for. But also even like sin as well.

Like, you know, kind of if you know, it almost feels like, I

know it's a funny way of looking at it, but it almost feels like

there's some kind of like strings attached with prayer.

And I was like, what is the actual purpose of prayer?

Because it feels, you know, I've definitely felt the impact and

the benefit of prayer. There's no doubting that.

But I, I'm struggling to understand now what, what the

purpose of prayer is. And like, it kind of feels like

some of the prayer that I've experienced has felt very like

forced and very like petitioning and a kind of like AI need to

make sure I pray enough. I need to make sure that I'm

thoroughly covered and I'm absolutely thoroughly covered.

And oops, maybe we weren't thoroughly covered and kind of

almost like it. It doesn't feel very relational

and very sort of Trinitarian, of course.

I just wanted your take on that. Yeah, Well, I mean, again, huge,

but really very, very good question.

I mean, I, I've wrestled, I've wrestled with that sort of thing

for years. I mean, I, I would say I started

in evangelism and intercession. That was, that was my ministry

and intercession for me was the Charles Finney Smith

Wigglesworth style where you pray till you get the

breakthrough. And once you got the

breakthrough, that's the breakthrough.

You know, the breakthrough is that depends on you getting that

bit right. And if you sin on the way, you

might lose the breakthrough or if you confess the wrong thing

or something like that. I mean, I, I'm kind of dead to

all of that because I just can't do it.

I did it for a long time. I just can't do it anymore,

honestly. It's like that, that thing well

and truly burnt out. But I really believe in prayer.

And for me, I think, and I've had lots, I still maintain and

continue to have experiences on in terms of prayer, even with

things like, you know, I was joking with somebody about

spiritual mapping, you know, what's the demonic power of it?

I mean, sometimes I still even bump into it.

I just don't look for any of that stuff.

But but it's not that there isn't some reality there to

engage with and address, but I think in the past we would go

hunting for it. Jesus said, look in this world,

you'll have trouble. Take heart.

I've overcome the world so you can do everything right and

stuff can go wrong. That's one of the hard realities

of this planet, right? And this, this paradigm, this

age, it's part of what we need to be saved from.

Is that that fact? But we have been because in the

cross we see he's already overcome the world.

Take heart, I have overcome. It's like back to Hebrews one.

Ah, we see him. He's already gone there.

And if we can recognise he's gone there, and therefore that's

where we are too, then we realise all spiritual that then

there's the power that's overcome everything.

And when you read Athanasius, you see this is Athanasius

ultimate argument for why the gospel must be true.

His argument is if you, he basically says words to the

effect of if nothing else I've said has persuaded you, if none

of the miracles have persuaded you, if none of this stuff has

done, then my, my, my final answer on the matter is why are

none of our people afraid of death?

And that that is his final argument if the why the gospel

must be true, because he says everybody's afraid of death

except our people. It's like even our kids are not

afraid of death. They go to the lions, you know,

and they they're like singing along the way, filled with with

invincible life. And so, you know, they had a

different attitude. They were tapped into something.

I want to tap into that, right, Or I wanted to tap into me.

I want to engage with that. So I think we, you know, we like

we can come. I'll leave you with a testimony

because I think it's the best thing I can give you to kind of

illustrate it without doing huge thing on prayer and all the

rest. And apart from saying, you know,

I think prayer should be relational and it should be

about we, we need to pray that, that we can see better because

that's what the Apostle Paul always prays for.

I pray that you would have a good revelation.

I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened,

right? That's what he always prays for

them for, not anything else. Pray that you can see the way

things really are. Because if you get that,

everything else falls into place.

But when I was at when I was still at E5, there was a family

there. In fact, he, I think he was

Russian, she was Ukrainian. Obviously, this is years ago

before the war. And they came up to me one day

and their oldest daughter was interpreting because they didn't

speak good English and a little bit of English.

And they're basically saying, look, we need you to cast a

demon out of our younger daughter.

So they have their younger daughter who's maybe like 8 or 9

years old, and she's just off there playing by the side, just

looks like an ordinary girl. And I'm like, OK, what's the

situation? So I'm asking questions and

they're saying, well, she has a she has a demon.

The demon makes a go go into a complete rage.

She destroys everything. It happens at home, it happens

at school. Social services think we're

abusing her. We're not abusing her, but

they're threatening to take her away.

We know it's a demon because the older daughter had it is the one

who's interpreting and she got delivered and the mother had it

and she got delivered and the grandmother had it and she got

delivered. So it's some demon that's passed

down the generations, right? So they're telling me this

story. Anyway, I'm asking questions and

they're like, well, the, the, the husband sits on that side of

the church. The wife sits on this side of

the church. They do not get on right.

They've got major problems in their family.

And they're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, we have big problems

in our family. We don't get on, but they're

standing. But we want, we need you to cast

a demon out of our, our daughter, you know, and I'm

sitting there, the more I'm talking to them, the more I'm

thinking like, my, my gosh, can I put them through 2 1/2 years

of like and multimodal counselling to try and sort

these things out? Like I'm, I'm very much like my,

my scepticism metres through the roof.

And what were you talking about? Demon?

You don't need a freaking demon to be in this environment.

It'll be kicking off. You know, that's, that's what

I'm thinking. So I'm there about 10 minutes,

I'm having this conversation, I'm asking questions.

I'm a little bit like, I'm still at a loss.

Anyway, I said to them, all right, OK, let let's pray then

because they, they would go into the Bible when Jesus casts out

the, the demon from the boy and they say we want you just to do

that. Well, just do that, just do

that. And I'm like, OK, And I said,

should we pray then? And they said, yeah, that's what

we wanted you to do in the 1st place.

So I said, OK, so we just sat and stood there quietly for a

moment and internally I said, Holy Spirit, I have no idea what

to do. To me, this looks like this

looks like a major problem, you know, and how on earth am I

supposed to do anything about that?

And I to me, I'm like, I acknowledge all of that.

So I see all of that. I'm not trying to deny it.

That's how it appears to me. So it's the Holy Spirit.

That's how it appears to me. Now I've acknowledged that I'm

putting that to one side blank slate.

What do you say? And all I had was the thought

that came to me was an old is an old Celtic prayer, which is

called the circling prayer, where they used to walk around

in a circle and pray. So that's all that came to me.

And it was just some I just said to them, OK, I felt I felt like

I should do a circling prowl. I'll walk around you and just

pray. And they do you like that.

They said, yeah, that's good. Let's do it.

So I walked around them and I stopped and I just declared in

Jesus name this done. OK, Nothing.

Fine. They were just happy they went

away. From that day, their daughter

never had another episode, which is just better.

I saw them years later. Even to this day, I've bumped

into them occasionally. They always run up to me.

Oh, it's good. Great to see.

It's great to see. Never another problem with the

daughter again. I have I still to this day don't

know what happened. I don't know.

Was it a demon? Wasn't it a demon?

Like what's the deal? I don't know.

I don't understand about any of those things.

But I do know that you can ask Kylie Spirit, how should I pray?

And you can just kind of go with that.

And I feel like we'd get to do the simple.

He gets to do the hard and again, it comes back to the

question of simplicity and I just find this face and go with

that. I've done the complicated and

the complicated doesn't work. It gets more and more

complicated the more you do it. So I can't do it anymore.

Now if some people are getting life from the complicated and

stuff's working for them, all right, God bless you.

I'm not coming to try to say to you don't do it.

I'm just saying I can't do that stuff.

Maybe you need to pray for me and I'll get something.

I'm also cool with that, right? I've got no, I've got no

problem. But but yeah, for me, I'm like,

I'm, I'm praying for good outcomes.

I believe for good outcomes, but I also recognise that not all

outcomes are good. But it's not the end of the

story because Christ has the final word and he had the final

word the day he rose from the dead.

And that still speaks right now. And so there's an opportunity

there to say, all right, what does this is the victory that

has overcome the world, even our faith.

Not that our faith means that everything suddenly is OK.

No, he's made it OK in the resurrection.

We've seen the end. Now there's therefore should be

no more fear of death. If there is fear of death, it's

still because the one who fears is not yet made perfect in love.

So let's pray along those lines. OK, Father, I need more of a

revelation of your love today because I'm not living out of

it. And it is diverting me to a

lower form of prayer. So can you upgrade that again

for me? That's how I would that's not

how I would. That is how I how I approach it,

but I can't. I did all the all the books, you

know, pray this way, do that thing.

You know, here's here are the 100 keys to dealing with 100

different demons. You know, all of it.

And it is just just leaves me cold.

But yeah, I mean, if it's if it's working for you, cool.

I mean, I'm I'm happy if people are getting free and good stuff

happening. I suspect it will even if it is

working for you, it will probably break down at some

point because that's what happened to me.

It worked for me to an extent for a while and then didn't.

So I think that's probably where it's going.

But I mean, I don't know, I might be wrong.

You like, give me, give me what you got.

You know, that's my take. But we pray to see, we pray for

revelation of, of love, because that's that is what transforms

everything when we recognise that.

And you know, if you, if you feel like you need somebody, lay

hands on you, then do it. And if you feel like you need to

talk to US, one of the one of the Saints in the cloud of

witnesses and do it. You don't have a conversation

with Archangel Raphael. I don't care.

Like just do it in Christ right then you're, you make make

contact with whatever the whatever the vehicle of grace is

for you right now. And it might look different

today than tomorrow. Is that enough?

9:45 Cheers, everyone. Thank you.

Thank you.