Speaker 1: Dirty hands means clean theology.
Speaker 2: Can you dig it?
Speaker 1: What's going on on my local guys and gas and
Speaker 1: long distance paths?
Speaker 3: We're back, We're back.
Speaker 4: Yes, we are.
Speaker 1: Had some technical difficulties starting this one, as usual.
Speaker 4: It's one of those things. It can go great for
Speaker 4: three or four times in a row and then just
Speaker 4: something weird happens.
Speaker 1: And well, I mean also too, we're treading the new
Speaker 1: territory here, we're doing the whole video thing, so it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a learning curve, no doubt.
Speaker 3: No doubt.
Speaker 4: But it's getting better. It's getting better.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, we'll be in house work being they let
Speaker 1: up on you, Anye a little bit.
Speaker 2: They've let up on you.
Speaker 1: They've hammered down on me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're about getting everything called up. It's funny. We'll
Speaker 3: change well, we'll get one unit running. It's like instantly,
Speaker 3: no one goes down somewhere else. It's it is what
Speaker 3: it is, Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's uh job security.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They've moved us on twelve hours and I've had
Speaker 1: like two days off in thirty days. It's been good money,
Speaker 1: but been pretty ill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been pretty ill.
Speaker 3: I guarantee it I think I kept my hair a
Speaker 3: little like two weeks too soon.
Speaker 1: You know you're unrecognizable. Yeah, yeah, you don't even look
Speaker 1: like your lego anymore.
Speaker 3: I know it.
Speaker 1: I don't even look like Ben. He went from looking
Speaker 1: like doctor Judd Burton too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think I might have had my beard, might have
Speaker 3: had his beat. I don't know, man, it mine's pretty
Speaker 3: bushy when it's untamed. But yeah, it's I've been walking around.
Speaker 3: It feels like the air conditioning has been on.
Speaker 1: You know you're cold all the time now, yep. But
Speaker 1: for you guys, that's been your wanted us on this
Speaker 1: walk through. We're going through the Book of Acts and
Speaker 1: we're now in chapter seventeen. We got a great guest
Speaker 1: for you guys. So before we dive into that, we'll
Speaker 1: open up in prayer. Who's I think you prayed last time,
Speaker 1: wasn't it?
Speaker 3: Or go ahead there, Lord, Thank for today, Thank you
Speaker 3: for this time of fellowship together, study and your word. Lord,
Speaker 3: please speak to us, give us some discernment and understand
Speaker 3: what you're trying to say to.
Speaker 2: Just name him.
Speaker 1: In you'll introduce our guests Steve Well.
Speaker 4: Today we have one of my favorites because he's part
Speaker 4: of a group that I love to listen to from
Speaker 4: the Iron and Myth podcast. This is where one of
Speaker 4: the first places I found out about him. But we
Speaker 4: have Brian Goadwah with us, who he's a screenwriter author,
Speaker 4: has written multiple screenplays To the End or To the
Speaker 4: End of All Wars, The Visitation and co wrote My
Speaker 4: Son Hunter, which has kind of been one of the
Speaker 4: more popular ones lately.
Speaker 5: And also actually I wrote it.
Speaker 4: Wrote it. Oh, I was sorry, I wrote it. My
Speaker 4: fault also wrote multiple books, The Nephelin Chronicles, the Chronicles
Speaker 4: of the Apocalypse, the Chronicles of the Watchers, and like
Speaker 4: I said before, one of the four guys that we've
Speaker 4: actually you're the last one we've gotten to talk to.
Speaker 2: Last piece of the post, last piece of.
Speaker 4: The puzzle from the Iron of Myth podcast, which is
Speaker 4: one of my favorite things. And I love the way
Speaker 4: you guys are able to talk about things from a
Speaker 4: different standpoint, because you guys all have different ideas in
Speaker 4: different ways that you viewed things, but you guys can
Speaker 4: do it in such a civil way that most people
Speaker 4: just struggle with that. But I love listening to it
Speaker 4: because there's just every one of you guys has such
Speaker 4: a wealth and knowledge.
Speaker 5: You know, we're a group of four heretics.
Speaker 4: Oh you know, I love it.
Speaker 6: We're used to that, so you know, we're used to
Speaker 6: being treated that way. So we're trying to treat each
Speaker 6: other more civilly. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess for those that's living under a rock
Speaker 1: and don't know much about you, what got you into
Speaker 1: writing and what is the baseline of your books and
Speaker 1: give people a feel of who Brian Goodowell is.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 6: So I started out as a writer as a screenwriter, actually,
Speaker 6: so many years ago.
Speaker 5: That was my passion.
Speaker 6: I love movies and I wanted to make movies that
Speaker 6: would actually would honor God with a Christian worldview.
Speaker 5: But I wanted to make movies in Hollywood, not Christian.
Speaker 6: Movies, and so I said about doing that, And you know,
Speaker 6: I've made a few movies.
Speaker 5: It's been tough over the years.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Two und All Wars was my first movie that
Speaker 6: got made, and that was like twenty eleven or no,
Speaker 6: what was it, two thousand? No, it was a two
Speaker 6: thousand Oh my gosh, like two thousand and one. So yeah,
Speaker 6: almost twenty years ago, that movie still holds up. Its
Speaker 6: still I'm I'm the most proud of that, and that's
Speaker 6: because I was the sole writer and we didn't have
Speaker 6: time to get screwed up by studios and they, you know,
Speaker 6: they had to stick to budget and keep going, and
Speaker 6: so they didn't have time to keep working on things
Speaker 6: until they're bad, you know.
Speaker 5: And I think that.
Speaker 6: But also the director of the producer, and me is
Speaker 6: the writer. We all worked cohesively together really well, and
Speaker 6: I really respected the director's directing abilities as well.
Speaker 5: So that was really fun and exciting.
Speaker 6: But over the years, what happened was, I, you know,
Speaker 6: you have you have some bad years in there. Everyone does,
Speaker 6: even the most successful people do in Hollywood, you know,
Speaker 6: and it forced me to sort of like consider other
Speaker 6: writing possibilities. But what happened was was that I had
Speaker 6: written a script about a Bible story that I thought
Speaker 6: would be great for Hollywood.
Speaker 5: Hollywood would and.
Speaker 6: It would be great for Christians because they would have
Speaker 6: both that ancient world and you could get in some
Speaker 6: mystical things and stuff that would be cool, and both
Speaker 6: sides would be willing to accept it because it could
Speaker 6: be big budget, et cetera. And that was a story
Speaker 6: about Noah, and I'd done I'd done the research, and
Speaker 6: then I found out that that Darren Aronovski was making
Speaker 6: his movie. So I thought, well, you know what I'm
Speaker 6: you know, I'm just a little guy. So I thought,
Speaker 6: how can I get my story out? I know, it
Speaker 6: probably wasn't going to be made as a movie, and
Speaker 6: I realized, you know what, I need to make it
Speaker 6: into a novel. And then that launched in That first
Speaker 6: novel was called Noah Primeval that was based on the
Speaker 6: original screenplay.
Speaker 5: And what happened was that it really took off.
Speaker 6: And of course, you know, I had the nuffling giants
Speaker 6: in there, the watchers and you know, showing the supernatural
Speaker 6: spiritual realm, which I had learned that in the process
Speaker 6: of doing the research for the script. I had discovered
Speaker 6: Michael Heiser at that time, just before that actually and
Speaker 6: so and this was before his book on Seeing Realm
Speaker 6: was even It was actually just he was working on
Speaker 6: it and it was free online. You could just read
Speaker 6: it as he was working on it. It was called
Speaker 6: The Myth That Is True or something like that. So
Speaker 6: that was that opened my eyes because also he's an evangelical.
Speaker 6: He was you know, he recently passed away, of course
Speaker 6: sadly but so he was an evangelical scholar who believed
Speaker 6: the Bible's God's word, but he also did not avoid
Speaker 6: the more difficult passages, passages in the Bible that a
Speaker 6: lot of evangelical scholarship does, you know, case and point
Speaker 6: number one, case in point gens to six one through four.
Speaker 6: And of course, you know, many scholars see the connotations
Speaker 6: of connections with other ancient cultures like Greeks and surrounding
Speaker 6: Canaan and such, and they get frighted, they get frightful,
Speaker 6: and they try to, you know, do word salad and
Speaker 6: sort of cover up the similarities between pagan religions. And
Speaker 6: then liberal scholars on the other hand, or critical scholar
Speaker 6: that don't believe in the Bible, you know, they just go, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's all the same thing. They're all saying the same thing.
Speaker 6: They're just getting their ideas from Greece and all this,
Speaker 6: you know, which, interestingly, the truth is is the other
Speaker 6: way around. Actually, Greece got their ideas from the ancient
Speaker 6: Near East, so all the Titans and all that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff comes from the Refeime and Canaan. But anyway,
Speaker 6: you know, these so my point is is that these
Speaker 6: similarities that are the oddities is Michael Heist would often say,
Speaker 6: you know, if it's weird in the Bible, it's probably important.
Speaker 6: And those those were His work opened up my eyes
Speaker 6: to all those passages that I would just read, op
Speaker 6: and go, that's weird.
Speaker 5: I don't understand it.
Speaker 6: I'll just keep moving, you know, deal with it some
Speaker 6: other day, right or you know, you don't have to
Speaker 6: understand it everything. So but I would avoid those things. Well,
Speaker 6: so reading his work really opened my eyes, like I said,
Speaker 6: in fact, I dedicated the first novel to him, and
Speaker 6: I said that his work opened my eyes like Ilicia's servant,
Speaker 6: you know, was open to see the spiritual realms and
Speaker 6: so to speak.
Speaker 5: And that launched my my writing into that that world.
Speaker 6: And when I saw that storyline in the Bible that
Speaker 6: I now call the War of the Seed, which is,
Speaker 6: as you know, the seed of the Serpent versus the
Speaker 6: Seed of Eve, which is ultimately a messiah, right, well,
Speaker 6: I saw that, but I also saw that dimension where
Speaker 6: you know, giants like Goliath, they're not just anomalies or
Speaker 6: the nepheling you know that you hear about in Genesis six.
Speaker 6: And then they, of course the Anakin come into the
Speaker 6: Promised Land and such, but very little is explained about
Speaker 6: that stuff and and and and it's not just a
Speaker 6: strange anomally. When I saw that it's all connected in
Speaker 6: a theological messaging, that's what really opened.
Speaker 5: My eyes and said, wow, I I could write. I
Speaker 5: could write like a four four book series on this.
Speaker 6: Well, now I've up to I'm up to like twelve books,
Speaker 6: you know, because there's a lot to write about, you know.
Speaker 6: And so that that that's where it began. And and
Speaker 6: that was right when you know, Amazon kindall was just
Speaker 6: it was, it had been out, but it was starting
Speaker 6: to break away, and that my book did so well
Speaker 6: that I realized, you know, I can I can make
Speaker 6: a living off of this. I can do I can
Speaker 6: make make some money and do what I really love
Speaker 6: and make a living. That's that's a blessing that not
Speaker 6: everyone gets, right, But I was just starting out, and
Speaker 6: you know, I'm I'm not I'm not a great American novelist. Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm a Hoigawood screenwriter. So I bring that kind of
Speaker 6: sensitive sensibilities by writing. So I write my novels like
Speaker 6: big Hollywood epics, you know, kind of like you're watching
Speaker 6: the movie, right, So that was my idea, and then
Speaker 6: you know, Chronicles and the nepheline was born, and that
Speaker 6: went up to eight books, and it went through Abraham, Enoch, David,
Speaker 6: a bunch of the characters through the Bible. And then
Speaker 6: I realized, I'm not yet done, because I wanted to
Speaker 6: bring in you know, the Book of Revelation, of course,
Speaker 6: is very supernatural, right, and I thought, how does this
Speaker 6: apply to the supernatural and my unique understanding of eschatology
Speaker 6: and the Book of Revelation, And so I wrote a
Speaker 6: four book series called Chronicle, so the Apocalypse, and then
Speaker 6: that follows the Chronicles of nephiling But then I realized
Speaker 6: there are some stories in the Old Testament that I
Speaker 6: didn't touch on that I need to address and then
Speaker 6: maybe bring it also into the future into like other countries,
Speaker 6: say China or you know, Great Britain, that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: So I started Chronicles of the Watchers, and that's sort
Speaker 6: of interwoven with Chronicles and Nephilinges. So like I wrote
Speaker 6: a story of Moses against the Gods of Egypt under
Speaker 6: Chronicles the Watchers, but you can like read that before
Speaker 6: you read Joshua Valiant in Chronicles and neo flings. So
Speaker 6: they're all woven together and it's become this best selling
Speaker 6: series and such and all that long windedness. But you know,
Speaker 6: the I've always been an artist that was a visual artist,
Speaker 6: and then my writing career was interested in Hollywood, and
Speaker 6: then writing novels just came out of.
Speaker 5: My love for for theology.
Speaker 6: I wanted, I love to incorporate theology into my storytelling.
Speaker 6: But the problem is most Christian movies and Christian books
Speaker 6: and Christian music novels, that kind of stuff has been
Speaker 6: rather poorly done and very preachy, etc. You know, And
Speaker 6: that's because they don't value the craft as much as
Speaker 6: the message. And over my years as a Christian, as
Speaker 6: I studied the arts, and I was heavily influenced by
Speaker 6: Francis Schaeffer.
Speaker 5: Many of you probably don't even know who.
Speaker 6: He is, but they Christian philosopher for back in the seventies,
Speaker 6: and he opened my eyes to understanding.
Speaker 5: How does my art glorify God? How does it connect
Speaker 5: with God?
Speaker 6: Not in terms of like, oh, I'm preaching the Gospel
Speaker 6: through it, but how does art?
Speaker 5: How does God himself see art?
Speaker 6: Well, I developed what's called my esthetic in all those
Speaker 6: years and particularly studying Hollywood storytelling, and so I came
Speaker 6: out with some books.
Speaker 5: One was called Hollywood world Views, How to Watch Movies
Speaker 5: with Wisdom and Discernment.
Speaker 6: That was for Christians, how to appreciate movies and storytelling better.
Speaker 6: And then I wrote a couple other books on just
Speaker 6: the imagination. One's called The Imagination of God and the
Speaker 6: other ones called God against the Gods. And there I
Speaker 6: go into the Bible talk about how God loves imagination,
Speaker 6: how he uses in other words, it's not just reason.
Speaker 5: Reason is a part of our faith.
Speaker 6: So we have faith as a foundation, then we have
Speaker 6: reason that is, you know, based on that foundation of
Speaker 6: faith and works with it and balances each other out,
Speaker 6: so to speak. But then there's the most neglected component,
Speaker 6: you know. So you've got the overly rational people who
Speaker 6: you know, just intellectualize everything. But then you also have
Speaker 6: the emotional Christians who are just you know, bouncing around
Speaker 6: off the chandeliers and stuff, thinking that, you know.
Speaker 5: Religion is an emotion.
Speaker 6: But somewhere in between is the Christian life incorporates both
Speaker 6: of those things in balance, hopefully. But there's a third
Speaker 6: one that's often left down. That's the imagination. And that
Speaker 6: was That's been my purview because as an artist that
Speaker 6: I just I love the imagination. But I always had
Speaker 6: a hard time understanding, you know. I sought to understand
Speaker 6: how my imagination worked with me as a Christian and
Speaker 6: my art. But my later step, in my later years
Speaker 6: of life was realizing and learning and studying how God
Speaker 6: incorporates imagination into our understanding of Him and our theology.
Speaker 6: It's not just the oh, it's okay to be creative,
Speaker 6: it's no. Creativity is part of a necessary component of
Speaker 6: understanding God. And that's why I wrote some of my
Speaker 6: other books to try to explain that that understanding, and
Speaker 6: that led me, of course to the chapter we're going
Speaker 6: to talk about, Act seventeen. Many years ago I wrote
Speaker 6: an article on it. You can I put the article
Speaker 6: in those books. You can read it in both both
Speaker 6: of my books, The Imagination of God or God against
Speaker 6: the Gods, which we'll talk about, but description, okay, sure,
Speaker 6: so Act seventeen, you know was I also along the
Speaker 6: many years of being a Christian, I have always had
Speaker 6: a love for the intellect and for philosophy and apologetics.
Speaker 6: In fact, I learned a lot of my theology through apologetics,
Speaker 6: you know, studying the polts and false ideas and false
Speaker 6: philosophies of man and then encountering it with God's word
Speaker 6: in his Bible, and how does that integrate? And I've
Speaker 6: always been drawn to that, And so when I came
Speaker 6: to Act seventeen, I always understood there's many different, you know,
Speaker 6: Christian apologetic schools of thoughts. There's several that are dominant,
Speaker 6: and everyone tends to, you know, go to Act seventeen
Speaker 6: as a model for how we should preach the Gospel
Speaker 6: the Pagans, but also you know, sort of as a
Speaker 6: model for apologetics.
Speaker 5: Well, I understood that, and have learned a lot from that.
Speaker 6: But I began to say, through the eyes of the
Speaker 6: imagination and through the eyes of storytelling, and I came
Speaker 6: up with a slightly different understanding I thought was a
Speaker 6: little bit more appropriate to the ancient, original context in
Speaker 6: which Paul was preaching. And it was an understanding of
Speaker 6: that Paul was not just Paul was not was not
Speaker 6: merely preaching the Gospel, and he was not merely you know,
Speaker 6: using rational argumentation for the faith with unbelievers. He was
Speaker 6: actually doing what I called subversion.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 6: Retelling the ancient Stoic narrative, which was his audience. And
Speaker 6: we'll go over these details, of course, but the big
Speaker 6: picture is he was retelling the Pagan narrative, their narrative
Speaker 6: of creation, fall and redemption, retelling it but using it
Speaker 6: with redefined Christian categories of understanding. And now, of course
Speaker 6: some of them have things in common. But well we'll
Speaker 6: go through that and see how he made the difference.
Speaker 6: But that's the big picture of you know, what Paul
Speaker 6: was doing is he's retelling a story. He's not just
Speaker 6: merely engaging rational argumentation. In fact, you know, you could
Speaker 6: make the argument that there's more of storytelling than rational
Speaker 6: argumentation in that in that passage, but there's definitely the
Speaker 6: context that set up in Acts seventeen. You know if
Speaker 6: we go there, Well, first of all, before we start
Speaker 6: launch onto that, did you guys want to address anything
Speaker 6: of that that I had said, I don't want to
Speaker 6: just keep talking until.
Speaker 1: Well, no, that's a conclusion that I drew from it.
Speaker 1: When I was reading, I was like, you know, how
Speaker 1: great was it that he met them where they were?
Speaker 1: You know, you see Christians nowadays that are you know,
Speaker 1: standing outside the abortion clinics and the gay bars with
Speaker 1: their picket signs and screaming hate, you know, and things
Speaker 1: like that. You know, you're not going to win souls
Speaker 1: that way. You know, he met them where they were,
Speaker 1: told them stories that were familiar to them, and just
Speaker 1: kind of repackaged it in a way that they could understand.
Speaker 2: I mean, and they accepted it so much.
Speaker 1: I can't remember because I don't have the text in
Speaker 1: front of me, but they took him. The place they
Speaker 1: took him to was the place where all the philosophers
Speaker 1: gathered on this heel and pitched their ideas. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: because of his presentation, they accepted him and they were
Speaker 1: willing to listen, just like those in Thissalonica. You know
Speaker 1: that they were eager to hear what he had to
Speaker 1: say because of the way he packaged it.
Speaker 2: I thought that was really really cool.
Speaker 6: Exactly, So, the Areoplogus is where is the hill there
Speaker 6: in Athens? There, and it was where they commonly went
Speaker 6: to exchange. It's like the marketplace of ideas in a way.
Speaker 6: It's kind of like Hollywood, right or you know, it's
Speaker 6: it's or nowadays social media, I guess, in some ways.
Speaker 5: But yeah, So so that was where.
Speaker 6: They exchanged their new ideas and critique them, et cetera.
Speaker 6: But you're right, that's also where the Pagans were. And
Speaker 6: really it's the I believe it's the only presentation of
Speaker 6: the Gospel to Pagans that is in the New Testament,
Speaker 6: which's very interesting. That's why a lot of people go
Speaker 6: use it as a as a model, which is fine,
Speaker 6: you know, but yeah, so what's interesting is, you know Paul,
Speaker 6: you know you mentioned Paul is is uh, you know,
Speaker 6: reaching them at their level, and this.
Speaker 5: Is where they went.
Speaker 6: Well, Luke is also depicting Paul as a kind of Socrates,
Speaker 6: you know, and he's drawing from some images and some
Speaker 6: concepts that were well known about Socrates.
Speaker 5: So so he is sort of.
Speaker 6: Depicting Paul within this Socratic context, you know, because for instance,
Speaker 6: Paul starts out in Acts seventeen twenty two, he's standing
Speaker 6: in the midst of ary Apagus. You know, he goes,
Speaker 6: men of Athens. I perceive that in every way you
Speaker 6: are very religious. Well, this statement men of Athens has
Speaker 6: been is noted in several Greek writers like Aristotle and Demosthenes,
Speaker 6: and that's they would always begin their discussions men of Athens, right,
Speaker 6: and then he says, I perceive you are very religious.
Speaker 6: And this is also another something that that that the
Speaker 6: uh example, the Athenian dramatist Sophocles, he said the same thing.
Speaker 6: Ethens is a head of states, the most devout. You know,
Speaker 6: you are such a religious people. So Paul is sort
Speaker 6: of using their language and and and Luke is depicting
Speaker 6: them that way. But I want to I want to
Speaker 6: bring out something too, is that there are two dominant
Speaker 6: streams of thought here at the time, and that was
Speaker 6: the Stoics and the Epicureans. And Paul actually focuses on
Speaker 6: the Stoics storytelling.
Speaker 5: He's you know, why, why is that the most important?
Speaker 5: Is that?
Speaker 6: I don't know, maybe there was another time where he
Speaker 6: focused on Epicurean storytelling, but but this particular passage, we're
Speaker 6: going to look at a lot of his points and
Speaker 6: a lot of his ideas, and they are very.
Speaker 5: Stoic related, you know. So the Epicureans had.
Speaker 6: A different, slightly different worldview, but the Stoic narrative was
Speaker 6: probably the more dominant view at the time. So I
Speaker 6: think that that's probably why he's focusing on that for
Speaker 6: this sermon.
Speaker 5: Right, but he's he's going along. He talks about you.
Speaker 5: I saw an inscription to the unknown.
Speaker 6: God, and what you worship is unknown, I proclaimed to you,
Speaker 6: you know, And he goes for the God who made
Speaker 6: everything in the world does not live in temples made
Speaker 6: by man, nor is he served by human hands, and
Speaker 6: as though he needed anything. Well, we know that this
Speaker 6: has a this understanding has a tradition within the Judaism,
Speaker 6: right of the Bible. You know, God does not God
Speaker 6: himself said to David, you know, I don't dwell in.
Speaker 5: The temple, right.
Speaker 6: But specifically the Stoics as well made this reference a
Speaker 6: lot because Stoicism was it was a belief system that
Speaker 6: used the common concepts of the Greeks, like the logos,
Speaker 6: which was logos was the underlying order of the universe.
Speaker 5: But what they did was they that's.
Speaker 6: Sort of like a rational principle, right, So the Stoics
Speaker 6: were more rational than religious, but they use the religious
Speaker 6: concepts like Zeus et cetera. They would refer to them
Speaker 6: in as stories, right, but they invested Zeus with a
Speaker 6: new meaning as Zeus is logos or logos, right, which
Speaker 6: means they were subverting the Greek religious culture and sort
Speaker 6: of investing it with their own meaning, you know, and
Speaker 6: they would say, ah, Zeus, you know, so Zeus is
Speaker 6: in all things, Logos is in all things.
Speaker 5: Zeus is the.
Speaker 6: Underlying order of all things. Right, And so they are
Speaker 6: in themselves sort of subverting the Greek religion with their
Speaker 6: more rationalistic approach, but nonetheless they still have a religiosity
Speaker 6: to them. And you know, Zeno, for example, he was
Speaker 6: the founder of stoicism. He said temples are not to
Speaker 6: be built to the gods. That was one of his
Speaker 6: famous sayings. Euripides the Athenian Tragedian, he said what house
Speaker 6: fashioned by builders could contain the divine form within enclosed walls.
Speaker 6: So this Stoicism was very much critical at the points
Speaker 6: of the Greek religion as they were trying to bring
Speaker 6: along the you know, the ignorant Plebeians into a better understanding, right,
Speaker 6: So they would talk about Zeus, but that's logos. And
Speaker 6: then they would also say, well, you know, gods don't
Speaker 6: live and tells me by hands. So Paul's going down
Speaker 6: that same path, that same passageway, referring to the similar
Speaker 6: concepts using similar words as well. He says in verse
Speaker 6: twenty six, and he made from one man every nation
Speaker 6: of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,
Speaker 6: having determined allotted periods and times and the boundaries of
Speaker 6: their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and that
Speaker 6: perhaps they might feel their way towards Him, grope for him,
Speaker 6: and find him. And so this is also another there's
Speaker 6: concepts here that are very.
Speaker 5: Familiar to the Stoics.
Speaker 6: Cicero talked about the universal brotherhood of mankind. This was
Speaker 6: a common theme in Stoicism of how you know we
Speaker 6: are all brothers, we all come from the same source, right,
Speaker 6: like Paul saying one man, from one man, came every
Speaker 6: nation of mankind. Now, of course he's not saying he's
Speaker 6: not saying that it's Noah. He's not saying it's Adam.
Speaker 6: He's not saying it's Noah. But he's deliberately, I would argue,
Speaker 6: he's deliberately keeping out his specific Jewish concepts are definitions
Speaker 6: and understandings, in order to be able to draw them
Speaker 6: in to the story.
Speaker 1: Right. Also, we talked about the dividing of the peoples
Speaker 1: and nations and stuff.
Speaker 2: I thought of that when I read that.
Speaker 6: Yes, but it's interesting because they weren't the only ones
Speaker 6: that thought that way. The Greeks also had a concept
Speaker 6: of the gods as being over like.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's in Plato.
Speaker 6: Plato writes of it as well, that the belief that
Speaker 6: there were gods over various nations.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So it's interesting how some Pagans have the same concepts
Speaker 6: of the the watchers and the territorial spirits over the nations, right,
Speaker 6: and so, and a lotting of the boundaries. For example,
Speaker 6: Epictetus in his discourse, he writes, how else could things
Speaker 6: happen so regularly by God's command?
Speaker 5: As it were?
Speaker 6: He tells the plants to bloom, et cetera. And then
Speaker 6: Zeus maintains a distribution and oversees everything. And Cicero adds
Speaker 6: that the seasons and the zones of habitation, the boundaries
Speaker 6: of habitation are evidence of God's existence. So yeah, they's
Speaker 6: He's appealing to.
Speaker 5: These common concepts. And this is this is.
Speaker 6: The first one of the first dramatic I would say,
Speaker 6: are apologetic points that I think you know, is is
Speaker 6: important to understand or or even if you're just evangelizing,
Speaker 6: whatever word you want to use. First is that he
Speaker 6: compliments to me. I see you are religious people.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Now he acknowledges what they believe, you have an unknown God. Well,
Speaker 6: I'm going to proclaim to you that that which you
Speaker 6: don't know but you want to, you know. And then
Speaker 6: secondly he you know, he goes and he says or
Speaker 6: I'm sorry. He's finding common ground with them, and it's
Speaker 6: important to say though that he's not making the distinctions
Speaker 6: yet between his faith understanding and theirs. Not only that,
Speaker 6: but he's not. He's using words and concepts that they
Speaker 6: would understand differently, right zeus uh set the boundaries and
Speaker 6: the habitations, not yaweh right, not living in temples made
Speaker 6: by man et cetera, made by hands. Uh they're thinking,
Speaker 6: you know, they're thinking in their Greek version of that.
Speaker 6: But he's not making the distinctions yet. He will eventually,
Speaker 6: but he's not. And that's an important thing because I
Speaker 6: think all too often as a Christian I'm I'm very
Speaker 6: eager to point out where I disagree with with non
Speaker 6: Christians or unbelievers, you know, where they're wrong or.
Speaker 5: How God's different, et cetera.
Speaker 6: And I think that this goes a long way towards
Speaker 6: affirming the fact that we need to connect with on
Speaker 6: common ground as much as we can without going into details,
Speaker 6: without going into the contradictions, and just connect with our
Speaker 6: fellow pagans, who are human beings created in the image
Speaker 6: of God.
Speaker 5: We have that basis to do that, right, And so
Speaker 5: that's what I think he's doing there.
Speaker 6: Then he launches into the couple passages that is most known.
Speaker 6: In this passage where he says, well, first of all,
Speaker 6: let me point one other cool little connection here. He goes,
Speaker 6: you know, God determined the boundaries that they should seek
Speaker 6: God and grope for him that they may find him. Well,
Speaker 6: it's interesting because this phrase of groping for God is
Speaker 6: the same phrase that she used of the Cyclops in
Speaker 6: the Odyssey, groping, you know, for the men that blinded him, right,
Speaker 6: And so I think he's he might be making this
Speaker 6: sort of allusion to that. You know, you're like the
Speaker 6: Cyclops groping you've been blinded, right, But he hasn't said
Speaker 6: that explicitly. He's just sort of hinting at that. And
Speaker 6: then he goes, we're all groping for God in a way, right,
Speaker 6: And he goes, yet he is actually not far from
Speaker 6: each of us.
Speaker 5: In him.
Speaker 6: We live and move and have our being, as even
Speaker 6: some of your own poets have said, for we are
Speaker 6: indeed his offspring.
Speaker 5: So here's the point where most people will understand.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, here's he is quoting some actual Stoics, for example,
Speaker 6: that we are as offspring comes from Aratus in his phenomenon,
Speaker 6: and he talked, Ratus says, let us begin with Zeus. Never,
Speaker 6: oh men, let us leave him unmentioned. All the ways
Speaker 6: are full of Zeus, all the marketplaces of human beings.
Speaker 6: The sea is full of him, so are the harbors.
Speaker 6: In every way, we all have to do with Zeus,
Speaker 6: for we are truly his offspring. And then actually Aratus
Speaker 6: is probably rephrasing Cleanthes him to Zeus where he says
Speaker 6: we live and creep upon the earth, We who live
Speaker 6: and creep up on the earth are all his, are
Speaker 6: all thy children, so children of Zeus. Right, So this
Speaker 6: is what's interesting again, where even your own poets have
Speaker 6: said we are his offspring?
Speaker 5: Well, what do there are, poets?
Speaker 6: What did the Stoic poets Clanthees and Aratus, What did
Speaker 6: they mean by we are his offspring? Not at all
Speaker 6: what Paul believes, right, I mean, no, we're not, you know,
Speaker 6: the stoic notion was. First of all, I remember Zeus
Speaker 6: is the pantheist. He's more of a panentheist in that
Speaker 6: the logos is the underlying order of all the universe,
Speaker 6: and that's God, and that is in everything, right, and
Speaker 6: that unites everything. So they had a very panantheistic view.
Speaker 6: And so being his offspring is that we all come
Speaker 6: from this, you know, panentheistic logos. That's not at all
Speaker 6: what Paul believes. But he's say quoting him as if
Speaker 6: he does. And I'm not saying he's deceiving them, but
Speaker 6: he's followed. But think about it, we as Christians can say, well,
Speaker 6: the Bible says that in a sense, there's two kinds
Speaker 6: of children of God. Right, there's a sense of we're
Speaker 6: all created by God. So in that sense where his
Speaker 6: children created by him. But there is a definer distinction,
Speaker 6: which is children of God are those who are redeemed
Speaker 6: and have a connection with the Creator, and those who
Speaker 6: are not are not. But there is a universal sense
Speaker 6: in which we're all created by God. And so you
Speaker 6: can see why they can say, hey, yeah, God created,
Speaker 6: It's like offspring, right, And.
Speaker 5: He says in him we live and move and have
Speaker 5: our being.
Speaker 6: Well, that comes from Epimendes in his Credica, he talks
Speaker 6: about you know, he's talking about Zeus again they fashioned
Speaker 6: a tomb few, But thou art not dead, Thou livest
Speaker 6: and a bidest for in you we live and move
Speaker 6: and have our beings.
Speaker 5: So he's literally quoting.
Speaker 6: But again this is the panentheistic view that God is
Speaker 6: in everything, in him we live in with ever being.
Speaker 6: And of course Paul believes God is sovereignly in control
Speaker 6: of all things and there's nothing outside of his presence.
Speaker 5: But he's not.
Speaker 6: Invested in the universe like the Stoics believed. And yet,
Speaker 6: like I said before, even more distinctly, it's interesting he's
Speaker 6: not saying, he's quoting as if he agrees with them,
Speaker 6: because in a shallow sense he does with the words.
Speaker 6: But this is the power of words and definitions and meanings.
Speaker 5: It is he.
Speaker 6: We know he has a different meaning. He'll get there,
Speaker 6: but it's just not yet. Give it some time, invest
Speaker 6: get into the story, bring them into the story, join
Speaker 6: with them in the story. Right, This is what I
Speaker 6: do as a storyteller in the movies. You know you
Speaker 6: talk about you write stories about heroes who who you
Speaker 6: go on a journey with the hero and you begin
Speaker 6: with them, and then by the end of the movie,
Speaker 6: the hero has gone through enough experiences that he learns
Speaker 6: and grows and becomes a better person. He didn't realize
Speaker 6: he needed to write.
Speaker 1: You're building a collection with the audience.
Speaker 6: Exactly exactly, so you're you're pulling them in and agreeing
Speaker 6: with them as much as possible in a shallow sense,
Speaker 6: but in enough to make a connection. And that's what's
Speaker 6: very you know, imagine some of the evangelists of today
Speaker 6: are the apologists of today. If they were there, they
Speaker 6: would probably criticize Paul for you know, you're not making
Speaker 6: enough of a distinction Paul, right.
Speaker 1: And that's where they get it wrong. I just took
Speaker 1: an apologetics class that was so eye opening for me.
Speaker 1: Rick Hasty, a guy we had on the show, done
Speaker 1: an apologetics class. It was six weeks and he said,
Speaker 1: the common misconception is everybody thinks apologetics is the art
Speaker 1: of arguing and winning.
Speaker 2: He said no, he said, apologetics is the art of relationship.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: You ask questions, he said, not to get the answer
Speaker 1: you want out of them, or to prove your point right, know,
Speaker 1: to see what that person thinks, see how they believe.
Speaker 1: To build a connection, he said. And then it's also
Speaker 1: an invitation, he said, ask him out for pizza or
Speaker 1: go out, you know, for coffee, he said, And then
Speaker 1: you slowly have these conversations and build a connection with
Speaker 1: that person.
Speaker 2: That way they're more open to receive what you have
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 1: And that that was always seen apologetics is like a man,
Speaker 1: I want to learn how to you know.
Speaker 6: W yeah, you know, yeah, And boy, I tell you
Speaker 6: I've been too often guilty of that very thing of
Speaker 6: just wanting to win an argument.
Speaker 5: And it's you know.
Speaker 6: I think probably two of my favorite apologists for embodying
Speaker 6: that very graciousness that you're describing that we should all
Speaker 6: be like but very few of us are is Greg Cochel,
Speaker 6: which I highly recommend.
Speaker 5: His book Tactics on It's it's it's about.
Speaker 6: Apologetics as relationship, not as arguments. And Sean McDowell, who
Speaker 6: like these guys they speak the truth, but man, they
Speaker 6: speak with graciousness to unbelievers and patients and such that
Speaker 6: I certainly don't have. But yeah, so this is, you know,
Speaker 6: this is we're going on that path with him. He's
Speaker 6: drawing them in and and he's not made any distinctions yet.
Speaker 5: He's trying to find that common ground. And in a sense,
Speaker 5: isn't it true?
Speaker 6: You know, like don't we all like know, movies that
Speaker 6: are partly true but not we wouldn't agree.
Speaker 5: With the worldview.
Speaker 6: Or songs that have some really truthful lyrics about maybe
Speaker 6: pain or suffering, but they don't know God and they
Speaker 6: don't have the full picture, but there's enough truth in
Speaker 6: there that you can say, yeah, you know, I like
Speaker 6: this song, or you know, one of one of my
Speaker 6: fair examples was you know, my gosh, it's an old
Speaker 6: classic now, but I always used to love to refer
Speaker 6: to the Matrix, you know, the Matrix movie, because the
Speaker 6: Matrix when it shows you know, Neil waking up and
Speaker 6: realizing that everyone's a slave and they don't know it.
Speaker 6: And he was a slave too, right because he took
Speaker 6: but then he took the red pill, he got repilled.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 6: And that waking up experience was exactly what I experienced
Speaker 6: as a born again Christian when I became a believer,
Speaker 6: when the Holy Spirit actually came into my life and
Speaker 6: changed me from and I began to see around me
Speaker 6: just what Neo was like, you know, so I would
Speaker 6: use that all the time as one of the best
Speaker 6: examples of what it of, at least the existential experience
Speaker 6: of being born again.
Speaker 5: Now, of course, the Matrix.
Speaker 6: Movie, which I've written a whole article on it, it
Speaker 6: is anti Christian. Actually they used Christian imagery in the movies,
Speaker 6: in the whole series. But they're very specifically self avowed
Speaker 6: Nietzschean nihilists. Who are you who are burning Christianity by
Speaker 6: using our concepts and images and investing with a new
Speaker 6: meaning of self salvation?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 6: So yeah, and Young Young and Nietzschez is one of
Speaker 6: their dominant influences. But what I'm suggesting is Paul is
Speaker 6: actually doing the same thing. And and this this could
Speaker 6: be a little controversial because some people think, oh no,
Speaker 6: this is a worldly view. No, no, actually, uh, this
Speaker 6: is what I call subversion.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: You you enter into the story of your opponent, you know,
Speaker 6: you enter into it, you retell it, you repackage it,
Speaker 6: but you invest it with new meaning. Now that new
Speaker 6: meaning you don't necessarily explain upfront because it would make
Speaker 6: it would be it would stop them. You want them
Speaker 6: to get into the story and go along with you.
Speaker 6: Then you uncover the the new meanings, which, by the way,
Speaker 6: this is what most everybody does. This is what's going
Speaker 6: on right now in our culture. You know, as we
Speaker 6: see you know, the woke culture is lit and postmodernism
Speaker 6: is literally their goal is to control language, and this
Speaker 6: is why you see them changing words and definitions all
Speaker 6: the time. They're using words and definitions and changing them
Speaker 6: because they know the power of language to influence us, right,
Speaker 6: and so consequently, you know, uh, this is what people
Speaker 6: do with euphemisms like you know, oh it's it's it's
Speaker 6: not abortions, just you know, it's not killing human being,
Speaker 6: it's just you know, taking care of beetle tissue, you know.
Speaker 5: That kind of thing.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, celebration and and same thing with the transideology,
Speaker 6: you know, where there's a taking control of the definition
Speaker 6: of the word gender, which has always been you know,
Speaker 6: intimately linked with sex, and divesting them from each other
Speaker 6: and giving them different definitions. Now sex is your physical,
Speaker 6: but gender is your internal. But now as they've redefined words,
Speaker 6: now sex too has become a assigned rather than an
Speaker 6: intrinsic bio logical reality. Right, So they redefine reality by
Speaker 6: redefining language, which is what changes people's minds and understanding
Speaker 6: of the world. And look, I mean, obviously a lot
Speaker 6: of people are not accepting it, but it's it's growing,
Speaker 6: it's gaining weight, because that's the power of reinvesting known
Speaker 6: concepts with new meanings. And what I'm arguing is this
Speaker 6: is what everyone does, even God does it in the Bible.
Speaker 6: You know, one of my favorite examples is Leviathan. You know,
Speaker 6: if you study Leviathan through the Bible. You know, some
Speaker 6: people think, oh, that's just that's a literal, a dinosaur
Speaker 6: or something.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 6: No, if you study the notion of Leviathan, it's very
Speaker 6: much a symbol, a symbol of chaos. And Yahweh crushes
Speaker 6: the chaos in order to establish his covenanted order.
Speaker 5: So he describes crushing.
Speaker 6: The heads of Leviathan when he creates when he takes
Speaker 6: Moses through the Red Sea in Psalm seventy four and
Speaker 6: he establishes the Old the Old Mosaic Covenant, he describes
Speaker 6: that as him crushing the heads of Leviathan because he's
Speaker 6: crushing that disorder that was Egypt and the chaos, and
Speaker 6: he's going to create his order. And that's a very
Speaker 6: common notion in the ancient Near East. Well, that's the
Speaker 6: same thing. Is God uses a notion that was very
Speaker 6: well known in the Middle East. You know, Egypt had
Speaker 6: Apophus the sea dragon, Haynain had Leviathan as well Humot
Speaker 6: in Mesopotamia. All of them used sea dragons as symbols
Speaker 6: of chaos. So God uses the same symbol, but he
Speaker 6: invests it with his meaning. He is the crusher of
Speaker 6: the dragon, not bail right or baal. And so this
Speaker 6: is this is what God does. What I'm saying is
Speaker 6: this is not just a trick. This isn't even evil
Speaker 6: or wrong. This is just how we operate as human beings.
Speaker 6: And so Paul is doing the same thing as well.
Speaker 6: Let's keep going there. Now, we're going to get closer
Speaker 6: to the where we're almost near the twist there. Okay,
Speaker 6: So verse twenty nine being God then therefore being God's offspring.
Speaker 6: We ought not to think the divine being is like
Speaker 6: gold or silver or stone and image formed by the
Speaker 6: art and imagination of man. Again, the Stoics, you know,
Speaker 6: railed on this all the time. You know, you are
Speaker 6: a fragment of God. You are you have within you
Speaker 6: a part of him. So they believe that God was
Speaker 6: inside of us, all beings, all created beings, We were
Speaker 6: a part of God. God was in us in that sense,
Speaker 6: and therefore you can't build a house of stone for them, right.
Speaker 6: So the Stokes had that same notion. Now, this also
Speaker 6: is an Old Testament concept that the prophets as well
Speaker 6: mocked and often put down the Pagans.
Speaker 5: But he's.
Speaker 6: Taking a point of contact, a point of agreement, right,
Speaker 6: And he says the times of ignorance, God overlooked Ah.
Speaker 6: That's another Stoic concept, the notion of ignorance and knowledge.
Speaker 5: This was a very.
Speaker 6: Stoic, a gnostic form as well. But the idea is
Speaker 6: they believe.
Speaker 5: That that.
Speaker 6: The Stoic's literally like believe that that we were ignorant
Speaker 6: of the first of all, that God was in all things.
Speaker 6: That's how that's the creation notion in terms of the
Speaker 6: story of the narrative. God is in all things, He's
Speaker 6: the logos. He infuses all things, and he creates and
Speaker 6: establishes all things. But humanity becomes ignorant of this God
Speaker 6: within us. So ignorance was literally in the Greek that
Speaker 6: was their concept that they dealt with. What's wrong with man.
Speaker 6: He's ignorant of the God within him, so therefore he
Speaker 6: treats one another poorly. You know, he does evil, et cetera.
Speaker 6: So we need to learn that we are a fragment
Speaker 6: of God. Redemption is then found in in you know,
Speaker 6: understanding this unity of the brotherhood of man, and that
Speaker 6: God is the logos is within in all of us.
Speaker 5: Right, that's the stoics.
Speaker 6: So he's saying God looked over over. God has overlooked
Speaker 6: the times of ignorance. So he's connecting with that notion
Speaker 6: of enlightenment, so to speak. And again it's partially true,
Speaker 6: isn't it. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Okay,
Speaker 6: now comes the point where Paul is going to twist.
Speaker 6: He's going to bring like the twist in a thriller movie,
Speaker 6: you know, where all of a sudden, the meaning of
Speaker 6: everything you've heard is different than what you thought. Remember
Speaker 6: when you saw the first time, Remember when you saw
Speaker 6: the movie the sixth sense.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking, I swhere.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the best example of it's like because it's
Speaker 6: so worked, you know, I remember, in fact watching it
Speaker 6: as a screenwriter. I'm watching the movie I'm going this
Speaker 6: is this story is weird. It's not working right, He's
Speaker 6: not like he's meeting with her, but they're not connecting,
Speaker 6: they're not what's going on here. It just didn't make
Speaker 6: sense to me, and I never it never crossed my
Speaker 6: mind until like you realize, oh, he's dead, and then
Speaker 6: you realize everything you've been watching was the opposite of
Speaker 6: what you thought it was. That's the twist, and that's
Speaker 6: what subversion is. When you show you start to show
Speaker 6: them there's a different reality, and it changes the way
Speaker 6: you see things. So Paul says, then this way he
Speaker 6: brings in repentance, repentance. So the Stoic ignorance was unwitting, right,
Speaker 6: they can't.
Speaker 5: They don't.
Speaker 6: We've been blinding by layers of creation, you know, so
Speaker 6: we're blinded. But according to Christianity, we are will. Our
Speaker 6: ignorance is wilful. Paul even says that in Ephesian four, right,
Speaker 6: our will ignorance is wilful. So that's a difference. And
Speaker 6: then he says the first thing that is actually a
Speaker 6: contradiction with Stoicism. It says, because he has fixed the
Speaker 6: day in which he will judge the world in righteousness
Speaker 6: by a man whom he has appointed.
Speaker 5: Now, the Stoics believed in a.
Speaker 6: Great conflagration of fire where the universe would was created
Speaker 6: out of fire, and then it would go back into fire.
Speaker 6: But that wasn't judgment. It was it was like the
Speaker 6: oscillating universe. It would go back and then rise like
Speaker 6: a phoenixide of the ashes, the phoenix out of the
Speaker 6: ashes again. So it was a conflagration, that was an
Speaker 6: oscillating return.
Speaker 5: Right. So when Paul says.
Speaker 6: He's fixed a day in which he will judge the world,
Speaker 6: that would be offensive to the Stoics. There was no judgment,
Speaker 6: There is no judgment, and the fire is not a
Speaker 6: fire of judgment for them.
Speaker 5: But he's saying it.
Speaker 6: Is, and he's going to do it by a man
Speaker 6: whom he has appointed. That would also be offensive to
Speaker 6: the Stoics, because no man judges the universe right, no
Speaker 6: man judges mankind right. If anything, only Zeus could, only
Speaker 6: Logos could. And then he says, and he's given assurance
Speaker 6: by raising him from the dead. Well, that would be
Speaker 6: the ultimate offense to the Stoics. Because Eschylus wrote in
Speaker 6: his Humanities poem, when the dust has soaked up a
Speaker 6: man's blood once he is dead, there is no resurrection.
Speaker 5: So the Greeks very.
Speaker 6: Clearly, and a lot of all of their literature as well,
Speaker 6: they believe that Hades was it.
Speaker 5: You could never come back.
Speaker 6: Now, there would be an occasional person that came back
Speaker 6: for the sake of a story, but the belief was
Speaker 6: there is no resurrection. So to say that make this
Speaker 6: claim was would be truly offensive, I guess would be
Speaker 6: the modern word to use for it. But it's interesting
Speaker 6: because so this is the twist. But even then, again,
Speaker 6: modern apologists and evangelists would probably critique Paul, or at
Speaker 6: least Luke by saying, not once does he ever use
Speaker 6: the name Jesus?
Speaker 5: Does he?
Speaker 6: Now you can say, oh, he did, but he left
Speaker 6: Paul Luke just didn't say it's possible. Sure, But we're
Speaker 6: reading the story Luke is writing for with a very
Speaker 6: specific point in mind as well.
Speaker 5: He's he's telling us a narrative, he's.
Speaker 6: Communicating something specifically to us, and Luke specifically makes the
Speaker 6: point that Paul does not he will alludes to Jesus.
Speaker 5: Yes, obviously, Now why what you know?
Speaker 6: Evangelists would say you're a bad evangelist Paul And you
Speaker 6: got to say the name of Jesus again.
Speaker 5: I think there is power.
Speaker 6: I'm not I'm not against them, just so you know,
Speaker 6: I believe in saying, you know, telling people about Jesus.
Speaker 6: Sometimes that specific name can be a great way to
Speaker 6: break break through walls and start to communicate, for sure,
Speaker 6: but it's it's important to understand that sometimes it could
Speaker 6: be a very important means of connecting with with Him
Speaker 6: by letting them come to their own conclusions.
Speaker 5: That's the power of storytelling.
Speaker 6: He's going through the narrative, creation, fall, redemption, but he's alluding.
Speaker 5: To a new, a new way of understanding.
Speaker 6: But he's not getting super specific why so that the
Speaker 6: audience can understand for themselves and if they realize that,
Speaker 6: it will be more powerful for them. And this is
Speaker 6: where you know, again, as a storyteller, I can say,
Speaker 6: this is where we were read a movie and we
Speaker 6: feel like we're being preached. At a lot of times,
Speaker 6: Christian movies are bad doing this.
Speaker 5: They do this a lot.
Speaker 6: They're preachy because they feel like they have to have
Speaker 6: that clarity of explaining something you know in every detail
Speaker 6: or people won't understanding. And that gets preachy and that
Speaker 6: turns people off. But if you've ever noticed it when
Speaker 6: you're watching a movie and you've seen the hints but
Speaker 6: it hasn't been explicit, but you make the connections and
Speaker 6: you discover it for yourself. You feel like you have
Speaker 6: grown in your own ability because you've figured it out
Speaker 6: for yourself. Someone didn't tell you there's some there's a
Speaker 6: lot of value in that approach.
Speaker 2: Just like Narnia.
Speaker 1: You know, the lion, you know, sacrificed your sale and
Speaker 1: come back. He didn't come right out and say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a you know, archetype of the Messiah. I
Speaker 1: know we've figured it out for ourselves and it meant
Speaker 1: a whole lot more to us, you know, for me personally.
Speaker 6: You know, it's interesting because and I do believe that
Speaker 6: that this is this is often a very effective means.
Speaker 6: It really is, because that's the power storytelling where if
Speaker 6: if you let the audience figure it out for themselves,
Speaker 6: it's going to impact them. So let me give you
Speaker 6: an example. My movie Twinned All Wars, which is a
Speaker 6: true story about Allied prisoners of war underneath the Japanese
Speaker 6: in World War Two and they're being beaten and brutalized
Speaker 6: and just unbelievable suffering at the hands of the Japanese.
Speaker 6: And the men in the camp are struggling and some
Speaker 6: of them want to fight back, someone want to escape,
Speaker 6: someone want to kill the guards.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: But Christianity enters the camp and it affects them and
Speaker 6: changes them. So we we we were telling this to
Speaker 6: the story. They get a Bible and they want to
Speaker 6: give men hope. So they also had Shakespeare and Plato,
Speaker 6: so they decided to start a university and teach them. Right, Well,
Speaker 6: that's what we show. We show them teaching Plato and Shakespeare.
Speaker 6: But then we have a moment where they're reading from
Speaker 6: the Bible. And it's interesting because in the movie we
Speaker 6: cut out the part where it said Jesus said, because
Speaker 6: he's reading the Bible and they're studying it, like of
Speaker 6: doing a Bible study. Jesus said, love your neighbor, you know,
Speaker 6: et cetera, love of those who hate you, love your enemy. Right,
Speaker 6: we cut out the phrase Jesus said. We just cut
Speaker 6: to them and he just says, love your enemy and
Speaker 6: pray for those who persecute you. Right, And it was
Speaker 6: so much more powerful because people knew where it was
Speaker 6: coming from. But they weren't told, they knew it for themselves,
Speaker 6: and I think the impact was much heavier on people
Speaker 6: because of that, because we didn't say that name. Now, yeah,
Speaker 6: there would be some people who may may not know
Speaker 6: where that comes from.
Speaker 5: That's possible.
Speaker 6: But the purpose of art and story tells is not
Speaker 6: to preach a sermon and make everything super clear. Purchase
Speaker 6: of art is to you know, stir the soul and
Speaker 6: get people thinking about their.
Speaker 5: Need for truth and redemption.
Speaker 6: So so yeah, so this this idea of naming Jesus
Speaker 6: is not always the best thing at times, if it's
Speaker 6: the appropriate situation. Again, I'm all for the name of
Speaker 6: Jesus for sure. And then he says, now, when they
Speaker 6: heard of the resurrection the dead, some mocked, This.
Speaker 5: Is what I want to tell you.
Speaker 6: Like something you were mentioning earlier before was that you know,
Speaker 6: people accepted him because he came in on their territory
Speaker 6: and told you know, yeah.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, when you get to the truth, you're still
Speaker 6: going to have people who reject you. And some mocked,
Speaker 6: but others said, we will hear you again about this,
Speaker 6: and isn't that life. Some people mock you and hate
Speaker 6: you and reject you, no matter how gracious you are
Speaker 6: in telling seeking to connect with the truth. But then
Speaker 6: the more winsome you are, the more opportunities you let
Speaker 6: people say, you know what, I want to hear more
Speaker 6: about this, But doesn't mean they're gonna get saved at
Speaker 6: the moment. What it means is you're planting seeds, your
Speaker 6: watering plants, and and God's doing the growth and the
Speaker 6: work in them. And You've advanced it to that, you know,
Speaker 6: to that degree, and so you know, that's that's sort
Speaker 6: of the.
Speaker 5: You know, the the quick.
Speaker 6: Version of that passage that I've given actual whole lectures
Speaker 6: on it because it was so influential an influence on
Speaker 6: me in my own understanding of God through my imagination
Speaker 6: and how to how to get the Gospel to people,
Speaker 6: because I'm a storyteller and I want I have the
Speaker 6: Gospel of the Kingdom, and that's that's my answer. So
Speaker 6: I want to seek to communicate that Kingdom in a
Speaker 6: winsome way and in a way that is entertaining and
Speaker 6: fascinating to people and draws them in.
Speaker 5: So I use this this motif of.
Speaker 6: You know, trying to to tell stories within a vein
Speaker 6: that that that people can relate or connect to. This
Speaker 6: is where genres, for example, is something that is really helpful.
Speaker 6: In about a month, I'm going to be releasing my
Speaker 6: latest novel and it's a change of pace for me.
Speaker 6: It's called Cruel Logic, The Philosopher Killer, and it's a
Speaker 6: it's actually a serial killer story, a thriller about a serial.
Speaker 5: Killer at a woke university and.
Speaker 6: He, uh, it's quite an interesting the philosopher actually, and
Speaker 6: so he's killing people and he's philosophizing with him. But
Speaker 6: so I'm telling a story about a typical genre of
Speaker 6: a thriller with a serial killer, you know, and and
Speaker 6: the detective has to you know, hunt him down. But
Speaker 6: I'm dealing with these questions of morality, the existence of
Speaker 6: God and the existence of evil and all that. But
Speaker 6: I'm doing it through this. This serial killer who is
Speaker 6: is actually capturing university professors and he's videotaping them and
Speaker 6: he's debating them and the topic of the debate is
Speaker 6: his moral right to kill them. So he says, well,
Speaker 6: what you say say is true about the universe, and
Speaker 6: give me one valid reason why I shouldn't kill you,
Speaker 6: and I'll let you go, and none of them can
Speaker 6: because without God there, all their philosophies are humanistic and godless,
Speaker 6: and they have no foundation for their morality, and so
Speaker 6: they don't get away. So that's one creative way of
Speaker 6: using the serial killer genre, for example, to talk about
Speaker 6: true moral issues of life and reality, you know. And
Speaker 6: so that's how how we can enter into the storytelling
Speaker 6: of the world, so to speak.
Speaker 5: And that's what a lot of.
Speaker 6: Us Christian storytellers are doing, you know, whether it's fantasy
Speaker 6: or thrillers or movies or what have you, that's.
Speaker 5: What we're doing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I love that.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really I'm not into the serial
Speaker 4: killer type stuff. I've never liked those shows or those
Speaker 4: but that I actually that sounds extremely interesting. I actually
Speaker 4: think I might have to pick what up and reading
Speaker 4: that one because even though it's a little out of my.
Speaker 5: Fair enough. But you know, there's another example of that
Speaker 5: is a movie that's out right now. It's Nefarious. I
Speaker 5: highly recommend it.
Speaker 6: If you haven't seen it, try It's not at a
Speaker 6: lot of theaters, but it's a story about a psychiatrist
Speaker 6: who has to go to prison and examine a guy
Speaker 6: on death row to make sure he's not insane before
Speaker 6: they execute him.
Speaker 5: And the man claims to be demon possessed.
Speaker 6: And as we're watching the movie, of course that psychologist
Speaker 6: doesn't believe in that, right, but we're watching the movie
Speaker 6: and we can see he probably really is right.
Speaker 5: And it's it's kind of like screwtape letters. He's just talking.
Speaker 6: The whole movie is them talking. But it's so fascinating
Speaker 6: because it's like screwtape letters. The demon is revealing truths
Speaker 6: about reality that this guy doesn't even believe it's a demon,
Speaker 6: so he doesn't believe what he's being told. He doesn't
Speaker 6: even realize it, right, And it's just a very powerful
Speaker 6: way of showing the truth how people are blinded by
Speaker 6: their truth, by their own secular god world views.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I think that's another great example. But it's done as
Speaker 6: a traditional, you know, horror film. There's no gore or violence,
Speaker 6: violence really in it. It's very mild. It's like TV,
Speaker 6: but it's it's it's that interesting concept of what if
Speaker 6: you didn't believe in demons and your you're psychologists and
Speaker 6: you're talking to this guy, and what would he reveal?
Speaker 5: You know, that kind of thing. So I highly recommend
Speaker 5: that movie.
Speaker 4: I eventually will probably watch that. It's one of those
Speaker 4: things where it's just not my Ben shaking his head,
Speaker 4: it's not one of my it's not my normal genre.
Speaker 4: But I and for one, yeah, I guess understandable more
Speaker 4: so than more so than even the serial killer thing. Because,
Speaker 4: for example, if if a man comes at me, you know,
Speaker 4: I I can physically defend myself. But when you talk
Speaker 4: about the demon, you know that the world of demons,
Speaker 4: in the world of of you know, the spiritual realm,
Speaker 4: things that I can't see that I can't control, that
Speaker 4: you know are there, Like you know, without God, you're defenseless.
Speaker 4: So when you can you look at that, that's truly terrifying.
Speaker 6: So but yeah, oh absolutely, And that's why that's why
Speaker 6: I'm kind of fearful of some demon some demon movies.
Speaker 6: Some of them are just Hollywood goofy. They're not they're not.
Speaker 6: They really aren't frightening. A lot of the typical ones aren't.
Speaker 6: But when they are more realistic, like the Conjuring Demon Possession,
Speaker 6: it's like, you're right, it's it's scary for me to
Speaker 6: watch those movies because I know there is a reality
Speaker 6: behind it, right, this movie Nefarious isn't like that because
Speaker 6: it doesn't have you know, he's you know, he doesn't
Speaker 6: there's no special effects and stuff like that. But it's
Speaker 6: the idea is it's screwtape letters, you know, if you
Speaker 6: ever read that classic book. Yeah, it's you know, one
Speaker 6: demon revealing how he how he brings humans down into temptation.
Speaker 6: And it's really you're seeing through the back door of
Speaker 6: how they do it type of thing. And that's kind
Speaker 6: of what this is all about. But you're right not
Speaker 6: and and by the way, that's why we need many
Speaker 6: kinds of movies and many genres with the Christian worldview.
Speaker 6: You know that Jesus Revolution was another great movie that
Speaker 6: came out. I'm normally I normally don't care for most
Speaker 6: Christian movies, but Jesus Revolution was fantastic. It was a
Speaker 6: great not preachy, and it was just a look into
Speaker 6: this subculture of Jesus, the Jesus movement back in the seventies.
Speaker 5: That was really fascinating. But it was very honest and fair.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, and then we've got other you know,
Speaker 6: we've got you know, romances and stuff like Redeeming Love.
Speaker 6: That's another one that was sort of a retelling of
Speaker 6: the story of of what was it who's the one
Speaker 6: who married a prostitute?
Speaker 5: Gom or was it Josea the.
Speaker 6: Prophet who married the prostitute? Yeah, so retelling of that
Speaker 6: story in a modern day like Western context, you know,
Speaker 6: which is kind of interesting. So, yeah, we need many
Speaker 6: different ways of telling stories.
Speaker 5: Absolutely in some people. It's not for everyone.
Speaker 6: My own books, my wife doesn't watch my doesn't read
Speaker 6: my books, you know, because they're big epics and there's
Speaker 6: a lot of steps of violence in there and it's a.
Speaker 5: It's a little harsh for her. So and I get that.
Speaker 5: That's fine.
Speaker 4: Jumping back to the screw tape letters I had, you know,
Speaker 4: as as kids, we were given that. They made a
Speaker 4: comic book version of that, if you remember that, And yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm fairly certain it was done by Marvel. If I
Speaker 4: look back, I have to go look. But really, and
Speaker 4: then I have another comic book that was Stories of
Speaker 4: the Bible that was done by d C. Too, And
Speaker 4: I mean these are older. The Screwtape letter was one,
Speaker 4: it's not it has to probably be the eighties when
Speaker 4: it was done, but the the DC Yeah, exactly, Well
Speaker 4: that's what you think about that, and you were in
Speaker 4: that now, but that's what was hitting me earlier when
Speaker 4: you were talking about that, and you were talking about
Speaker 4: the how things are kind of being pushed on us slowly.
Speaker 4: We're polarized, and it's you look at those Marvel movies
Speaker 4: and you look at the superheroes, you look at the
Speaker 4: you know, people don't understand the concept of who Thor
Speaker 4: was or who you know, who low he was or
Speaker 4: or is for that matter, and you go through and
Speaker 4: there's and these are people that were we're being looked at,
Speaker 4: you know, favorably.
Speaker 5: Now, these are these are hero heroes.
Speaker 4: They're the ones, they are the you know, we go
Speaker 4: back to the idea of Prometheus.
Speaker 6: You know, they're not hero you guys, they're gods. They're
Speaker 6: they're the gods of this culture.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, the.
Speaker 6: Comic book and the Marvel movies are the gods of
Speaker 6: this culture. And because the Greeks, a lot of the
Speaker 6: Greeks didn't believe the gods either, they use them in
Speaker 6: the same way. They use them as their their comic
Speaker 6: book means of explaining their their beliefs about the universe.
Speaker 6: And they a lot of them didn't believe in those
Speaker 6: gods either, no more than the people do in comic books.
Speaker 5: But it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6: It's still their religion and it still is a systemic
Speaker 6: The Marvel universe is a religion.
Speaker 5: Whether people know it or not.
Speaker 4: Well there, but people are letting them. That's exactly it.
Speaker 3: People.
Speaker 4: It's affecting people and they don't even know it. And
Speaker 4: that's that's where a lot of those things came. And
Speaker 4: when you're talking about some of those more like you said,
Speaker 4: the Conjuring or Bend, the Insidious, and and you know
Speaker 4: some of these other demonic movies where I think that
Speaker 4: that's the same thing where you're kind of opening a
Speaker 4: door a little bit. You're opening the window at least
Speaker 4: and and potentially letting something in. And it's to me,
Speaker 4: it's scary that you're you know that we start, I guess,
Speaker 4: entertaining those ideas because it slowly does, whether or not
Speaker 4: we realize that all those things are affecting us.
Speaker 5: One way or another.
Speaker 3: You get watching it and then it's oh, it's not
Speaker 3: as bad. It's where you're getting desensitized to it.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to do that is future just
Speaker 2: talk about all that.
Speaker 1: You know in Hollywood and the movies and how they're
Speaker 1: planting that seed and the culture and the minds of
Speaker 1: our children.
Speaker 5: Sure, absolutely.
Speaker 6: Well, And you know well, I mean that's how the
Speaker 6: world has always operated, right, So Hollywood just seems to
Speaker 6: be a particularly powerful means of doing that.
Speaker 4: You know, well, Brian, why don't you go ahead and
Speaker 4: tell everybody where they can find your books, find anything
Speaker 4: that you've put out. Go ahead, give yourself a good
Speaker 4: plug here.
Speaker 6: Well, a couple of things is one, all my books
Speaker 6: are exclusively First of all, all my books are in paperback,
Speaker 6: ebook and audiobook, and they're all exclusively on Amazon. And
Speaker 6: so you can just go there and find my name
Speaker 6: and you see, you know, a whole bunch of you
Speaker 6: can find my author page. But if you're also interested
Speaker 6: in more things, Mygodawa dot com website. I sought to
Speaker 6: make a creative and interesting website that's worth your time.
Speaker 6: If you go, there are lots of articles related to
Speaker 6: all these issues, the enough leam and all kinds of
Speaker 6: stuff that my books are based on. I like to
Speaker 6: have the scholarship that people can look at. But also
Speaker 6: I've done something that I've been recently updating, and that
Speaker 6: is I'm i cast all my novels, all most all
Speaker 6: the major characters and villains. I cast them and where
Speaker 6: I have an artist, Cam Harless, who who uh is
Speaker 6: a great ai RS. He uses mid Journey and I've
Speaker 6: been working with him to recast all my novels and
Speaker 6: we're more than halfway through right now.
Speaker 5: And I put them on the website, so you.
Speaker 6: Know, you can go there and if you read my novels,
Speaker 6: you can see them and they're just amazing artwork, you know,
Speaker 6: they and they're.
Speaker 5: Photo realistics, so there, it's like it's like they're photos, right,
Speaker 5: It's like it's like a movies. It's like it's like
Speaker 5: we're casting a movie, you know.
Speaker 1: And what's that You shared those on Facebook? Didn't you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I did. I'm still in the middle of that right now.
Speaker 6: And for fans of the series, I'm gonna be putting
Speaker 6: out as a book. But yeah, So you can find
Speaker 6: a lot of cool stuff at the website as well,
Speaker 6: but you know, everything you need to look further and
Speaker 6: by is at Amazon.
Speaker 3: I'm digging the audio books. I hate to read. If
Speaker 3: somebody can read it for me, I'm good to go.
Speaker 5: I hear you.
Speaker 1: And I've seen pictures too online that you actually met
Speaker 1: up with our buddy Kenny c at the memorial service.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kenny's our buddy.
Speaker 1: We met him at a conference and was Ohio.
Speaker 4: And uh, it was on the board, it was. It
Speaker 4: was in Louisville, Yeah, Jeffersonville, at David Hefner's church that he.
Speaker 5: Had over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had just started our podcast. We'd only been
Speaker 1: out like a couple of months, and we went to
Speaker 1: that Spiritual Warfare conference and we had our DIG shirts
Speaker 1: on and we walked in and Kenny, he's just so cool.
Speaker 2: He just walked up to us.
Speaker 1: He's like, man, you guys listening to the Dig too,
Speaker 1: And he was like, yeah, we're the we're the guys
Speaker 1: that do the DIG. And it's like, oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: I love y'all stuff. And me he was like, somebody
Speaker 2: knows who we are.
Speaker 5: It was that's funny, that's hilarious.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for having me guy, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: This was very enlightening. It was very non gnostic way, in.
Speaker 5: A non stoic way as.
Speaker 4: Well stoic and non stoic, a little bit of all.
Speaker 4: You have a good one, and thank you so much
Speaker 4: for coming on.
Speaker 5: But we'll be in touch.
Speaker 2: Thanks Ryan, really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. Guys, we steal the.
Speaker 7: Pial not true, not sorry, just to see through smoke
Speaker 7: getting heroes and call beat my name true. Will costume
Speaker 7: fans confide me somebody the same re well softer face
Speaker 7: swim files let us