This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 545: Read the Bible for Yourself 12: How to Read Acts by Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

00:08
Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today.

00:24
Acts is an action-packed book full of excitement and wonder. We learn about the early expansion of the church from a small group of Ragged Christ followers to dozens of house churches throughout major cities in the Mediterranean world. How did Christianity go?

00:43
The book of Acts tells that story in this episode, you'll learn four major emphases and acts, as well as how to think through application for us today. Here now is episode 545. Read the Bible for yourself. Part 12 how to read acts.

01:08
Acts is an extraordinary book worthy of your reading and attention.

01:15
It says in acts chapter one, verse one in the first book, Theophilus I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles whom he had chosen. Acts is Luke's second volume.

01:36
For a fun reading project, read Luke and then Axe one right after the other and you'll see how they fit together very nicely within the book of Acts. There are a number of major historical events.

01:50
I've outlined for you 16 of them here. Number one, we have Jesus commissioning his disciples. I'm going to come to that verse in just a moment. Acts 1/8 is extremely important verse for understanding the book of acts. And then he ascends into heaven. So the first thing that happens in the book of acts.

02:08
Is Jesus leaves.

02:10
So now what?

02:12
Peter initiates replacing Judas. Judas had killed himself. So they're like, alright, we need another guy to replace Judas and they figure that out in the second-half of chapter one.

02:22
Then the spirit is poured out. That's the day of Pentecost, and Peter preaches converting 3000 people.

02:30
Then in Chapter 3, Peter and John heal a lame man, and Peter preaches 5000 people believe then. And then we have this interesting section from Chapter 4 through Chapter 6 at least the beginning of Chapter 6.

02:43
Which is just communal living in Jerusalem.

02:47
It has a lot of different stuff in here. Some of their struggles with analysis sephira if you're familiar with that and also just like what life was like for the earliest Christians as they're living in Jerusalem, then we have Stephens. Martyrdom. And that is really the hinge point of the book of acts. Whereas before this land, including that.

03:08
All of this is in Jerusalem and the general vicinity of Jerusalem. Once we get past Stevens. Martyrdom. It's everywhere else.

03:18
I mean, we do take a trip to Jerusalem in Chapter 15, but like other than that, the action is elsewhere.

03:25
#7 Phillips expansion to Samaria in Ethiopia. So now we start to see this idea of expansion and acts is all about expansion, expansion to a new location, sort of like opening a new franchise. You know, like expansion, expansion, expansion, grow, grow, grow. This is the book of acts.

03:42
Then pull is converted and we have an expansion to Damascus. It's it's incredible all the way up in Damascus. In Syria, there are Christians there and Paul's like I want to go persecute these people. The priest says, alright, go ahead. Go. And then of course, Paul gets converted to become one of them himself. But then we don't actually switch to Paul yet.

04:04
We're still really focused on Peter acts Chapter 9. The second-half is Peter's mission to Lida and Joppa, which is major cities in Judea.

04:15
Then in Chapter 10, Peter converts and 11 Peter converts Cornelius in Cesaria.

04:21
Then in Chapter 11 Barnabas brings Paul to Antioch and it's kind of a brief little snippet. So we're still not really ready to switch to Paul yet.

04:31
Then we go back to Peter in Chapter 12, Peter's arrest and miraculous escape. Then we finally switched to Paul and we stay on Paul for the rest of the book. So chapter 12, Paul begins his first missionary journey, chapter 16. He begins his second missionary journey, Chapter 19. He begins his third missionary.

04:52
Journey and then at the end of that he gets arrested.

04:55
And there's a fourth journey, but it's not a missionary journey. It's a transportation of an arrested accused person to get to trial in Rome.

05:07
But it is Paul. So it's kind of similar. Now if we look at all 28 chapters of acts at once, what we can see is that there's a couple ways to really think about this. And one of those ways is to say, all right, well, the 1st 12 major points here, the first half really of the book of Acts.

05:28
Chapters one through 12, the focus is mostly Peter.

05:34
And then the focus of the second-half of the book of Acts is mostly Paul. Now Paul does have a couple of parts early in Peter's section.

05:44
But generally, as Peter and the Jerusalem believers is the main focus.

05:50
So that's one way to think about it. Another way to think about it is to look at this first. Here acts 1/8. This is Jesus speaking, he says. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So this.

06:10
Starts in Jerusalem, moves to Judea.

06:14
Then Samaria.

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And then the ends of the earth.

06:20
That's the whole book of acts right there. Look at that.

06:23
So we start in Jerusalem and we stay in Jerusalem for about 6-7 chapters and then it's like, alright, persecution, let's get out of.

06:32
Here. So now they move to Samaria. And then we also get some incidents of Peter doing missionary work in Judea. So we hit Judea and Samaria, kind of out of order. But, you know, very near each other in time. And then it's to the ends of the earth. And that's Paul the apostle. He is the missionary that just he's like the old Energizer Bunny commercials and.

06:52
Keeps going and going and going and he cannot be stopped.

06:58
Within the book of Acts, there are 4 main emphases. One is the leading in the experience of God's spirit, another is the rapid expansion through conversion and then perseverance through persecution and then lastly, respect of authorities. These are not the only.

07:16
Topics in the book of acts, but these are special emphases that I want to look at with you. So the.

07:21
First one up.

07:22
There is the leading and experience of God's spirit and we we see this in a lot of places.

07:31
The book of Acts is a spirit saturated book, so oftentimes the spirit of God is described as if it were a liquid.

07:43
You can be baptized in.

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It.

07:45
You can have it poured on you. You could be filled with it. You know, these are kind of metaphor. Obviously the spirit is not liquid, but it's spoken of using that kind of language. Or you could just be very neutral, say, receive the spirit.

07:59
So you can see it's all over the book of acts. Then you have manifestations of the spirit speaking in tongues and prophecy.

08:06
Throughout the book of acts.

08:08
Then you have exorcisms that's casting out unclean spirits. It doesn't just happen once or twice, it happens quite a few times in the book of acts.

08:16
Then there are healing and miracles.

08:20
There's a lot of references to healing and miracles in the book of acts, and also a lot of references to supernatural direction where God or an Angel or Jesus or just Spirit says to somebody go and do this or go over here.

08:34
And do that.

08:36
So like I said before, the book.

08:38
Of acts is the spirit saturated book.

08:41
2nd emphasis in the book of Acts is conversion.

08:46
All about the conference. Let's take a look at that on the day of Pentecost, I mentioned this before 3000 people converted Chapter 2 in chapter 45000. People converted after healing a lame man at the temple, and it seems like whole towns convert in Chapter 8, Samaria, a town of Samaria, in Chapter 9.

09:07
Vida and Joppa.

09:09
Then there are conversions of key people. There's the Ethiopian treasurer in Chapter 8.

09:15
Now that guy is a very significant guy. You're in charge of the money for.

09:18
A.

09:18
Country you probably have connections and becoming a a Christian probably had an effect on his entourage and his people back home. Paul Tarsus becomes a Christian in Chapter 9.

09:33
And then he becomes like the star of the show. You like? You just don't like. I know a lot of us as Christians. We're used to, like, we all know Paul as a Christian. But like, he didn't start as a.

09:41
Christian.

09:42
He started as a persecutor and then he flipped.

09:47
I always think of Jesus as looking down at Paul while he's, like, running around or resting all of his people.

09:53
Kind of scratches his beard and says.

09:55
You know, I could use somebody like that, but that kind of.

09:58
Tenacity.

09:59
Let's let's recruit him because Jesus literally appears to the guy, knocks him off his animal, blinds him with the light. It says it's hard for you to kick against the ******.

10:10
It's like what? What are you gonna do, buddy? And you know Paul has an existential crisis and then works it around to believing.

10:19
Unbelievable.

10:20
Then we have Cornelius, a Centurion. In Chapter 10, Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus, and Chapter 13, Lydia, a wealthy philippian merchant. In chapter 16, Crispus, A synagogue leader in Corinth and Chapter 8, and Publius of Malta in Chapter 20.

10:36
8.

10:37
Probably not. The only people in the book, just the ones that came quickly. There are different elements to conversion experiences in the book of acts. There are 4 main elements. There's faith, there's baptism, there's repentance, and there's receiving the spirit typically.

10:54
You don't get all four in any one specific incident. You'll get like faith and speaking in tongues like receiving the spirit, or you'll get baptism and repentance, or you'll get faith and nothing else. It's not very systematized, but like, if you look at all the conversions together, you'll come up with those four main elements.

11:12
And and the ordering is different too like.

11:15
Sometimes they receive the spirit before they get baptized, or the other way, right? So then we have #3 perseverance through persecution. Man, there is a lot of persecution in the book of acts. Holy smokes, the Sadducees arrest Peter and John in Chapter 4. Then they arrest the apostles in Chapter 5.

11:36
A mob stone, Stephen in Chapter 7 Paul leads persecution in Jerusalem. In Chapter 8, King Herod executes James in Chapter 12 and also imprisons Peter.

11:46
The Jewish leaders expelled Paul Barnabas from Pacinian Antioch in Chapter 13. Then they stoned Paul at Lystra and to be stoned in the book of Acts and has nothing to do with marijuana. That means somebody threw rocks at you until they thought you were dead, threw stones at you. City magistrates arrest Paul and Silas.

12:07
Philippi in Chapter 16, a mob attacks Jason in chapter 17. Paul gets accused in Chapter 18, the pro console there, a guy named Glio. Very important guy for dating because we actually know when he was the Pro Counsel in.

12:23
Right.

12:24
And you're only a.

12:24
Pro Council for a year or two, so.

12:27
This helps us to.

12:28
Figure out the timeline for Paul in the missionary journeys because we know when he was there and then we can work.

12:34
Out from there other dates.

12:36
Then we have Demetrius instigating a riot and Ephesus, chapter 19. The mob attacks Paul at chapter 20. You notice that Paul is getting persecuted a lot, a lot, right? And then it keeps going and going. He gets arrested and he has these trials and so forth. So there's a lot of persecution in the book of acts.

12:56
And yet nobody quits.

13:00
Nobody, not even one. There's not even one mention of a person said. And the persecution was too much, so he stayed home.

13:09
No, that never happens. They just keep going and going. Maybe they'll flee. There's no like suicide attempts where it's like, hey, I'm a Christian. Kill me. There's none of.

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That.

13:20
But there's either stay or flee. There is no.

13:24
Sit down and quit.

13:27
Then we have respect of authorities. I wonder if you thought about this while reading the book of Acts.

13:32
There's an incredible amount of respect shown to Roman authorities in the book of Acts.

13:37
Nobody ever challenges Roman authorities in the book of acts.

13:42
The persecutions that occur happened because of jealousy and they happen from the Jewish leaders, not from the Roman leaders.

13:52
So Paul is respectful to his arresting officer, Claudius. In Chapter 21, he asserts his Roman citizenship. Paul's a good Roman.

14:00
Listen.

14:01
He cordially converses with Felix, the governor of Judea. Paul appeals to have a trial before Caesar and the Roman authorities grant it.

14:09
Paul interacts respectfully with Festus and King Agrippa, and a couple of their wives too.

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King Agrippa says Paul should have been set free.

14:19
So you have.

14:19
Roman authorities that are saying this guy.

14:22
Shouldn't even be arrested?

14:24
Right. So the the impression you get?

14:27
Oh, theophilus. Mr. Roman, authority.

14:30
Is that these Christians aren't a threat.

14:32
To the Roman Empire, there's no need to persecute them.

14:36
You see how the book would accomplish that goal, which obviously is an important goal for us early on.

14:42
Paul complies on the whole journey while under arrest.

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Which brings us to the Gentiles.

14:49
The Gentiles is it's it's a major, major controversy in the book of.

14:54
Acts.

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What do we do with these people? What do and what are Gentiles? Anyone that's not Jewish. So basically everyone is a Gentile except for the Jewish people. These people start believing in Jesus.

15:09
And it's really kind of undeniable that God's behind it.

15:14
Because who is the person that first brings Christianity to the Gentiles?

15:19
Is first Phillip with this guy in Ethiopia, Dennis Peter with this Italian soldier.

15:27
And then you have these others preaching in Antioch and they start preaching to the Greeks and they believe and then Paul goes on his trips and all these Gentile. And it's just like it starts like a little bit here.

15:38
Like, OK, we'll, we'll.

15:40
We'll allow the Ethiopian because he went home to Ethiopia, we don't have to deal with him.

15:45
And figure out how to.

15:47
Be a community with him. Ohh, we could deal with Cornelius. He's no big deal. He's just going to stay in Cesaria. He's got his Roman life. You know, we don't need to worry about him. He's he's an Italian. He'll be with the Italians. Right? But then in Antioch.

16:03
In Antioch, something new happens. Christian Jews.

16:09
And Christian, non Jews start having community together, start having meals together. And the big question comes up.

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Do Gentiles need to keep the?

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Law.

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Do Gentiles need to become Jews? They need to get circumcised, they need to. They need to become Jews in order to be Christians.

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That's a big question in the book of Acts. It's not a really straightforward answer at first. Now let me add one other thing to this something you might not have heard of before.

16:43
And that is the God fears.

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This is a kind of a special term we see in the book of Acts and the way I want you to think of it is you have all these different cities that Paul visits and Paul loves cities, by the way. He's not so much into the country, he wants to go to the city and he wants to go to the biggest city in the area.

17:03
He is not afraid. Paul is a first rate. The term would be rhetorician. Somebody who is educated and skilled at the art of persuading other people and he knows it.

17:15
And he's taking advantage of it. He is going to speak in such a way that the people in the synagogue are going to be.

17:20
Well, yeah, I don't know if I agree with them, but I sure do like how he sounds, you know? And then he goes over here to the school of Tyrannus, and he's over here in the marketplace in Athens. He's up there debating with the philosophers holding his own.

17:34
Right. So I mean this is this is not something that's like easy to combat. Jesus was like let's.

17:39
Just flip that guy.

17:42
Do a lot of good anyhow so.

17:45
Paul's there and he goes from town to town.

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To.

17:47
Town and he always does the same thing. He starts in the synagogue and he preaches in the synagogue.

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And there's not just Jewish people in the synagogue. He's not. He's not in Jerusalem. He's not in Judea. He's not in Galilee. He's in Macedonia. He's in acaia. He's in galatia. He's in all these other regions. Pamphylia. Amphipolis. You know, he's all these other places.

18:09
And so he starts in the.

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Synagogue.

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And he preaches, and it and it says there are Jews. And then it says.

18:15
There are God fearers.

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God fears are gentiles.

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Who are interested in the Jewish scriptures and are interested in the Jewish God?

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And who are hanging?

18:29
Around the synagogue, but they haven't converted.

18:32
And here comes this guy through town who says you could become a Christian and you don't have to.

18:40
Become a Jew.

18:42
Do you think that might cause some jealousy among the people who are like, no? Really. You should become a Jew and join this. Right? So he's giving these God fears an easy way into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. That is not available to them unless they convert to Judaism. And if they're God fears, they fear God. They worship God, but they're not.

19:03
Following the law of Moses, so Christianity is incredibly attractive to this group of people.

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Much of this has worked out in the Epistles of Paul, the theology. But what is up happening is acts 15, verse one. Then certain individuals came down from Judea, and we're teaching the brothers. Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses.

19:30
You cannot be saved.

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And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the Apostles and the elders.

19:47
So there's a Jerusalem church which is at this time no longer led by Peter. I'm not really sure where Peter is at the time of Acts 15, I.

19:56
Mean he's there?

19:56
But it doesn't seem like he's calling.

19:58
The shots, James.

20:00
The brother of Jesus is calling the shots.

20:03
And he is dealing with this controversy, this strife, and you have these all these Jews that believe in Jesus, and they all keep the law. And then you have all these Gentiles who are now believe in Jesus and they don't keep the law. And the question is, well, don't we have to make them keep the law and what they decide after deliberation?

20:24
Is no, they don't have to keep the law. They can remain gentiles, and they can be full members of the family of God.

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And a lot of.

20:34
This.

20:35
Depends on the spirit as well, which I can't really get into, but because God had testified that he had accepted them through giving them this spirit.

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The people had to say, well, I guess God accepted them. I guess we'll accept them.

20:48
This was a massive decision. Think about it for a moment. If this decision had not happened in acts Chapter 15.

20:55
Christianity would not have spread so far and so fast.

21:00
It was spread about as far and fast as Judaism has spread.

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Because it would just be Judaism that also believes in Jesus.

21:09
But instead, Christianity is able to spread without converting people to the law of Moses. Now, like the historical books of the Old Testament acts provides the spine into which many of the vertebrae of the epistles fit.

21:25
And so as Paul travels from place to place.

21:28
In the book of Acts, we get familiarized with these locations that eventually get letters written to them.

21:37
So in his second missionary journey, he goes to Ephesus, he goes to Galatia, he goes to Philippa and Thessalonika and to chorus. And then we look in other parts of our New Testament and we see a letter to the Corinthians and a letter to the Ephesians, and a letter to the Thessalonians and so forth.

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So these trips that Paul makes to these places can help us and we'll we'll talk about this later next time. But when we are reading the epistles, the church epistles in particular, sometimes we can go to the book of acts and see how that church started.

22:12
And that could be helpful.

22:14
On to my last major point, which is prescriptive or descriptive.

22:23
Is acts prescribing how you should live or describing what they did?

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You know what a prescription is at a doctor? The doctor gives you a prescription that he's telling you what to do. He's saying take take two of these and call me in the morning. Right. They never say that.

22:43
It's just in the movies.

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Whereas a description is like what news reporters do, they describe what happened in a particular situation.

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One exercises authority over you and the other just informs you. So the question about the book of Acts is descriptive or prescriptive. It says in acts chapter 2.

23:01
Oh.

23:03
Verse 44. All who believed were together and had all things in common.

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They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

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Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous heart.

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This.

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If all of acts is prescriptive, then all Christians should practice voluntary communism. That's what this is. You see that, right? It even has the word common there.

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All right, so they're holding everything in common. They're selling their possessions, and they're distributing, as any has need.

23:46
This presents some challenges.

23:50
He and Stewart say unless Scripture explicitly tells us we must do something, what is only narrated or described does not function in a normative IE obligatory way unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds that the author intended it to function in this way.

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So acts is not telling you what you have to do. As a Christian, it's telling you what they did do.

24:19
As Christians.

24:21
Now it doesn't mean that it doesn't have relevance to your life, because the miracles in acts tells us if I could just pick one thing like the miracles they tell us, what's.

24:33
Possible.

24:35
And I don't think we should just like brush that aside, they're like, oh, well, that was just them. We don't need to pursue any kind of miracles in our lives today.

24:43
No, I don't think that's an appropriate thing to do. I also don't think it's appropriate for you to go to a hospital and cast your shadow upon the sick because so many in the book of acts did that and healed those people. So obviously it must work for you.

25:02
Now look if God's leading you to do that.

25:05
Go for it.

25:06
But you can't just imitate exactly what they did. You can't, like, just establish communism and start blessing aprons and think that everyone's gonna be healed. God has to lead you. Just like he led them in that situation.

25:18
How about this one? Peter rebukes Ananias and Sapphira. They dropped dead.

25:27
Or Peter healed the the sick with the shadow. I missed that. How about this? Paul miraculously blinded elements.

25:35
On Cyprus, it's it's a reverse healing. He could see and then he couldn't see.

25:41
He called him the son of the devil and he said you're going.

25:43
To be blind for a season.

25:45
Well, that shows you what's possible, but it doesn't guarantee that as Christians, this is part of our ministry that on like Thursday nights, there's like blinding services that people are invited to attend. You know, that's just ridiculous.

26:00
People and emphasis touched the handkerchief.

26:04
And then touch it to.

26:05
Paul's skin and it made demons flee.

26:08
Out of people.

26:10
This is the things that happened.

26:13
Again, it's descriptive, not prescriptive, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again today. If God is still alive and there is a a need and a situation, and there's a willing person who has faith, why couldn't something like this still happen today?

26:31
All right, let's review.

26:33
Acts as a history of the church that Luke wrote to follow his biography of Christ.

26:39
Acts describes the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth, and by the ends of the earth they mean the Mediterranean world. OK, they didn't have our sense of how big the world is yet.

26:54
In acts, Luke is interested in the activity of the spirit.

26:59
Conversions, persecution and how Christians are respectful to Roman authorities.

27:06
The inclusion of the Gentiles into the early Christian movement caused a significant controversy, resulting in the decision that they did not need to keep the.

27:15
Law.

27:17
In order to become Christian.

27:19
Acts provides the historical backbone into which fit many of the epistles of the New Testament.

27:26
Luke tells of Paul's three missionary journeys, as well as his final treacherous journey to Rome under arrest.

27:38
Although acts shows us what is possible as we walk with God, it does not prescribe that Christians today must do everything the way they.

27:45
Did.

27:45
It it's descriptive, not prescriptive. Now I do want to mention something else about the book of Acts.

27:53
Just so I actually have a couple of I have about one minute.

27:57
Extra so I'm going to use it, OK.

28:01
In the book of Acts unlike.

28:02
Any other book of?

28:03
The Bible.

28:04
There are so many places.

28:09
So many locations mentioned it's really helpful to read it with a map.

28:15
Is really helpful to read it with a map, otherwise these like you'll read, you'll come across these city names and you'll just.

28:20
Be like blah blah blah.

28:23
Though these are real places.

28:25
And they exist on this planet, and you can go to most of them.

28:31
And I recommend you do that at some point in your life that you take a Bible Lance tour. Some of us have have gone to some of these places, and when you go there you you see how the sun is in that location. You see what the rocks look like and you see what kind of plants grow there and you see the ruins. And this is a whole enterprise. It's a big.

28:51
Big area of scholarship called Archaeology.

28:56
When they have dug at these.

28:57
Sights.

28:59
Did you know that there was a city buried by a volcano in the year 79? Talk about a time capsule that could help us imagine what city life was like in the 1st century. Isn't that tremendous? It's called Pompeii. You can go to Pompeii and you can see the walls. You can see. And so.

29:19
And because of how everything got buried, they're able to to blow casts of the of the people who died you could see.

29:28
The positions they were in that you can even see their clothing and they have had science you this is going to blow your mind. They've had scientists examine the latrines to see what kind of bacteria and what kind of food they ate and what kind of diseases they had. And they studied the bones. I mean, the amount of knowledge we have.

29:47
About the 1st century in the Roman Empire is a lot.

29:53
And so there are Christian resources that you can use.

29:58
And non Christian resources as well to learn about these places and learn about this time period. And we'll come back to that in a future session.

30:09
That brings this.

30:11
Teaching on acts to an end. Next time we'll look at the epistles instead of just taking all the epistles as one. I'm going to break them into three sections, the church epistles, the pastoral epistles, and the General epistles. Some of the most quoted and significant books of the entire New Testament, so that's that's going to be awesome.

30:29
So that's what we'll do next as we continue in our class, read the Bible for yourself.

30:42
Well, that brings this session to an end. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org. Find episode 545 how to read acts and leave your feedback there.

30:54
On our last episode, how to read the Gospels, Michael wrote in saying I love the Gospel of John. I also enjoy reading the LSB because of the name of God, Yahweh. It is so much more personal to know God by his name.

31:10
I believe that the New Testament writings were completed before the destruction of the temple in AD 70. It is not mentioned by any of the authors, not even Luke the historian Eric Michael. I just wanted to comment on what you wrote there. First of all, I too love the Gospel of John.

31:28
I think it is a really helpful addition to the other three gospels and it gives us a lot of fresh insights into Jesus, his inner state, and his conflict with his antagonists as well.

31:45
As far as the LSB, which I think refers to the legacy standard Bible of John MacArthur.

31:53
I do have a couple of thoughts I would like to do a thorough review of it. At some point. I haven't gotten around to it yet, but as I understand it, the NSB embraced gender accuracy for the 2020 edition against which John MacArthur rebelled.

32:13
In producing this legacy by.

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Table.

32:17
And for that reason, I'm suspicious of it. My guess is that he employed heavily masculine language even when it's not necessary in the text. Like for example, when the text reads entropy, which is the word is the plural for.

32:37
Humanity, meaning people.

32:39
And my guess would be the LSB would insist on only using masculine plurals, but I I don't. I don't know. I have to look at it. That's just what I've heard about it, is that it's it's it's a reaction against gender accuracy where the NSB 2020, which by far is more masculine.

32:59
Heavy than pretty much any of the other more recent translations did make a couple of small efforts towards including women in genuinely ambiguous phrases.

33:12
Like when it says people instead of translating it men and hoping that your old English skills are good enough to translate that in your head to men and women or interested in trans as Alfie, as brothers, translating as brothers and sisters and so forth. So I think that's the issue.

33:32
That the LSP is reacting against, which sounds to me very John MacArthur, very fundamentalist, very much like, let's dig in our heels and and fight against the change in the English language. Here's my problem with that.

33:48
My problem is that whether we like it or not, the English language has changed. It has.

33:56
So you can you can say. Ohh well, we're not gonna change because it's an ungodly change. Well, whether it's a godly or an ungodly change, if you're going to communicate to people and there are women that are going to read this book, this translation. OK then.

34:14
You have to communicate in a way that makes sense. Now, obviously, older men and older women are used to a world where there was a standard singular masculine pronoun for hypotheticals. He you could tell a hypothetical illustration using just he as a masculine pronoun and everyone understood that.

34:35
That meant he or.

34:37
That world is gone, at least for the younger generations. If you say he, you mean a male human being. And if you say she you mean a female human being, they don't have this idea anymore of a generic. And if you say men, people are not thinking men and women, not anymore.

34:58
Now they're thinking just men. They're taking it literally. They don't have this old English way of masculine plural and.

35:06
Inclusives, now Hebrew, does and Greek does. So the translator is actually seeing the word men or brothers and their literal translation philosophy saying, OK, well, if it says men in Greek, regardless of the fact that everyone in their culture would have read that as men and women, in other words as people.

35:27
We're going to translate it as men, and so I think that's really what's going on with the LSB translation. As far as using the name Yahweh.

35:35
I I'm honestly shocked that John MacArthur would allow that because that is, that is one of the surest ways towards a Unitarian as opposed to Trinitarian understanding of who God is. And I've heard John MacArthur multiple times say that non Trinitarians are not Christians. He's very dogmatic.

35:55
On that point, he thinks you have to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity in order to be a legitimate Christian. I disagree with him on that. I think that's not a biblical here's what's ironical. It's not a biblical stance to say that there's no Bible verse that says.

36:09
Says one must believe in the Trinity because the Trinity is a later development, and if you think it's the best explanation for.

36:16
The data of Scripture, OK, that's your view.

36:20
I don't see it as the best explanation. I think we have better explanations, so I'm sticking with that. Whatever. But John MacArthur is the type that says no, this is unquestionably biblical. It is unquestionably true. Doesn't matter if we can't find it in the Bible. You have to believe in it. But yet his version.

36:40
Has Yahweh all over the Old Testament, and as soon as God has a name, you think to yourself.

36:49
Seems like God is a singular individual, a mono personal being, because that's what names do. They identify an identity, they identify a person, not a substance. Everybody knows that.

37:04
Anyhow, some interesting thoughts and I would like to review MacArthur's Bible a little later and see more into the legacy standard Bible. In particular, I'm interested in Old Testament translation. Most New Testament translation is the same between the different translations, at least the ones that are standard, that are trying to be literal.

37:25
But I do like to evaluate the Old Testament too, so stay tuned. I may do that.

37:30
Down the line, he goes on to say it is more personal to know God by his name. Totally agree, Michael, I think you're absolutely right about that. I agree. I would love to see all translations stop hiding the name of God because at this point, that's what they're doing. People in the pews know at least some of them.

37:50
That God's name is Yahweh, and yet the translators are literally changing the text.

37:59
And this doesn't make any sense for a literal translation.

38:04
The literal translation is supposed to render in the target language, the source text, the source text says Yahweh. I know I read it in Hebrew, it says Yahweh right there.

38:14
Although there's some discrepancy on exactly how to pronounce it, grant it and we don't need to get into the complexities of that right now, but to change that to Lord is really hubris at this point in the game. So I'm delighted to see that the LSB is doing that.

38:32
And then Michael also makes a point about the dating of the Gospels and kind of my position on the dating of the Gospels is I do not know. I am very skeptical of so-called critical scholarship that dates everything after the destruction of the temple because they cannot because of their worldview, they cannot.

38:52
Allow the possibility that Jesus could have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in particular.

38:59
So as a result of their commitment to the philosophy of naturalism, they're dating everything after the destruction. In 70, I tend to agree with you, Michael. If the temple was destroyed in 70, there's no way in the world that the gospel writers wouldn't trumpet that prophecy in a much bolder.

39:19
And clear manner. And they don't. It's just in there and then they move.

39:24
Come on. So I think Mark is early. I tend to think of Luke as writing fairly early as well because it ends with Paul under house arrest, not Paul executed. And to me it would make sense that Luke would narrate Paul's death as well. In the book of acts.

39:45
If that had happened before, he wrote.

39:49
And of course, he would not have written the book of acts prior to the Book of Luke. He would write the book of Luke 1st and then the book of Acts, because acts is Part 2 of the two volume series. So I think that puts it all in the 60s. I I tend to agree with you on that, but look, if I if it turned out to be the other way around, it wouldn't ruin my day, OK?

40:09
So I I don't put a lot of stock in data.

40:12
I think that those who are absolutely sure that it's in the 80s or the 90s or even in the 2nd century, they've been proved wrong over and over again throughout the years. And who's to say there's not some scrap of a manuscript somewhere in the desert that isn't going to prove an earlier date, which is literally.

40:32
Already happened once with P52, which was I think dated to what 115 to 135 something like that based on paleography.

40:40
So the Gospel of John is not late 2nd century, it's not mid 2nd century. It's likely not early 2nd century, although it I guess that's possible. This is 1st century is what scholars have come to conclude and I don't know if John had the other gospels in front of him or not. He doesn't tell us. So I think when it comes to what we don't know, we just have to be honest to say we don't know when the Gospels were written.

41:03
They're written sometime between 50 and 100. Everyone can agree on that. And when it comes to.

41:10
Print dating of documents? That's a great range. A lot of times you'll have a range of 100 or more years. Narrowing it down to 50 years. I think it's fantastic. So I think we just have to be thankful for what we do know and not get dogmatic on speculations.

41:30
When we can't really know one way or the other.

41:33
Well, I also wanted to briefly promote our upcoming family camp, a family camp for us this year. This is an event I coordinate is June 30th to July 6th and we are kind of coming down to the wire with our registrations. The venue is.

41:53
Insisting that people register by May to guarantee a room now registration will remain open for another month after that. But if the rooms are filled, then they're filled and they can be filled by other groups. So suffice it to say, if you are interested in family.

42:09
Sam.

42:10
Then you should sign up. It's lm.org that stands for living hope internationalministries.org. This is an event I coordinate with Will Barlow. We have a variety of Bible teachers. Excellent worship music, lots of activities for kids. Tons of free time and endless.

42:30
Opportunities to meet fellow believers and share.

42:33
Meals you don't have to be married. You don't have to have kids in order to go to family camp. We have tons of single people go of all different ages. Tons of married people who don't have kids, married people who do have kids, grandparents. It's truly multi generational. We've got over 110 people signed up so far and we'd love to have some more come in.

42:54
Even if you live outside of New York State, a lot of people fly in and they can get up to the YMCA facility. It's absolutely gorgeous on Lake George, surrounded by the Adirondack Mountains on a very picturesque campus. Very nice campus right on the lake, with the mountains to our back.

43:12
So if you are interested, I would love to meet you. Love to see you come to this event. Lots of good Bible time, lots of good recreational time and rest time as well. You can get more information and register at lim.org if you'd like to come to family camp this year. And if you're listening to this podcast.

43:33
And it's not 2024. That's totally fine, because guess.

43:38
We do this event every year and have for decades, so come on over if you are interested. It's always great to have lots of first timers come and check it out, so take a look at lim.org For more information on that event. Also, just two other quick events I want to mention.

43:58
Since I'm kind of doing a little event time at the end here, one is the the Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference in in Windsor, England.

44:09
Center is just outside of London to the West, very close to Heathrow airport, so if you want to fly in, it's very convenient.

44:19
And the UK Committee for the UCLA has rented a church there to hold this event and let me tell you.

44:27
If you live in England, if you live in Scotland, Wales.

44:32
Those.

44:33
Or you're one of my people in Ireland. You should definitely come to this event. There are people on the continent also coming, so I don't want to forget the Scandinavians, the Germans, the French and so forth. You should all come because this is really a historic event. This is the first.

44:50
Unitarian Christian Alliance conference in Europe.

44:54
And it is going to be awesome. I know that Dale Tuggy is going to be attending. He's the chair of the UCLA. I know that they also have Andrew Perriman, who wrote a fantastic book in the form of a God and he is, I believe, a Trinitarian. But he said he is. He's a professional scholar.

45:14
And he has a lot of good contributions to make to Unitarian readings of Scripture and exegesis, especially within Pulse writings, where, interestingly enough, as a Trinitarian, he sees no pre existence in the.

45:28
Epistles of Paul.

45:30
And then I've also heard that Dustin Smith is likely to be attending and presenting at this event, as well as Thomas Gaston, the author of Dynamic Monarchianism and very famous Chris Adelphian, pH. D from Oxford University, along with a number of other.

45:50
British folks that are going to be attending. So hey, if you can make it, you should definitely go. More details about that at Unitarian Christian alliance.org registration is open.

46:04
Is July 25th to the 27th in the year 2024. One last thing is that the American Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference is October 17th to the 20th at the Vine Center in Little Rock, AR. This year. We've done this event in Ohio for two years.

46:24
Before that, it was in Tennessee. So now we're moving a little South and West to Arkansas. For those not familiar, Arkansas is the state is one of the states bordering the country of Texas.

46:36
Just kidding. But yeah, Arkansas is is a different location for us, but it's going to be a great conference. The reason why we decided to move it to Arkansas is because of the issue with hotels and people struggling to have more social time at when they're all going to their own hotels.

46:57
Hotels are expensive as well, so this is an all inclusive Conference Center that we can.

47:05
Sleep at and have our meals at and have our meetings at as well. So if you are a scholarly type who would like to submit a paper, the deadline for the UK conference is May 24th. To submit a paper and I'm not quite sure when the deadline is for the US conference. My guess would be.

47:28
In August.

47:30
Anyhow, if you are interested in any of that and you want to submit a paper to present, they are all blind reviewed by reading committees that rank them anonymously and then are judged based on their own merits. So even if you haven't presented before, even if you're from a different group.

47:50
Or from a different background, you can still speak at these events if your paper is able to pass muster, so if you're interested in any of that, go to Unitarian Christian alliance dot.

48:01
Org if you are just coming to attend and meet people and hang out awesome, the American one is October 17th to the 20th and the UK one is July 25th to the 27th. Now I'm going.

48:16
To add a.

48:17
Third, OK, because we're doing announcements and you know it's easy to get out of control.

48:21
But hey, I'm on A roll. I can't be stop.

48:24
Not.

48:25
I have it on good authority this is unconfirmed, but I have it on good authority that.

48:30
There's also going to be a UCA conference in New Zealand this year, November 22nd, to the 24th. That's all I can say is that it's likely to happen. So if you are saying to yourself, yeah, Sean, that's great, that in America there's that conference. That's great that in England there's that.

48:50
Conference. What about me? I live in Australia. I live in the Philippines. I live in New Zealand. Brother or sister? Let me tell you something.

48:59
It's coming down under and it's going to be hosted by the Kiwis themselves. It's going to be awesome and I'll tell you more about that once more information becomes public. Actually, this information is not really public either, but I can't help it. I'm telling everybody.

49:15
There's a there are three UCA conferences this year, Arkansas, England and New Zealand. All the details once again at Unitarian Christian alliance.org check it out. That's going to be it for today. Thanks for tuning in. If you'd like to support restitutio, you can do that at our website, restitutio.org. I'll catch you next week.

49:36
And remember the.

49:37
Truth.

49:38
Has nothing to fear.