This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 569: The Cost of Truth with Seneca Harbin This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 569 Seneca Harbin - Cost of Truth.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan Seneca Harbin became a Christian later in life through reading the Bible. However, when he was attending a mega church in Indianapolis, he started hearing the pastor preach about Christ in a way that seemed bizarre and unbiblical. To his surprise, Seneca discovered that the vast majority of Christians held to these extra biblical speculations. 00:33 Sean Finnegan About multiple persons in the Godhead. 00:35 Sean Finnegan And dual natures of Christ. This set him on a quest to find others who, like him, prefer to stop where Scripture stops and understand Jesus as the Messiah, not a God man. After relating his own spiritual journey, he talks about his recent book The Cost of Truth, which adds in the testimonies of several others, including. 00:56 Sean Finnegan Bill Schlegel, will Barlow, Johnny Barnes, Seth Ross, Suzanne Lakin, Candace Tuggy and Ryan Russell. I believe this book will fire you up. It's easy to get complacent, but this little book of testimony shows us that God is not done yet. 01:13 Sean Finnegan He's reaching people in our time, calling them out of darkness and confusion into his marvelous light, and Seneca does a great job talking about this book here Now is episode 569. The cost of truth with Seneca Harbin. 01:35 Sean Finnegan Welcome, Seneca Harbin to restitutio. So glad to talk with you today. Thanks for joining me. 01:41 Seneca Harbin Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. 01:43 Sean Finnegan To start with, it would be good just to hear your back story a little bit. So could you tell us about your spiritual journey? Like for example, were you raised in a Christian home and could you share with us a little bit about? 01:57 Sean Finnegan How you came to faith in Christ? 01:59 Seneca Harbin Yeah, I'd be happy. 02:00 Seneca Harbin To I wasn't raised in a Christian home. My family was their pagans and Wiccans. My mom's a a witch and all that kind. 02:08 Seneca Harbin Of stuff and. 02:09 Seneca Harbin I think my dad if if he would put a label on anything, he'd probably call himself a Buddhist. 02:15 Seneca Harbin But I think it's just he doesn't really care enough to take a religion or anything. 02:20 Seneca Harbin He's more of the guy that's like, well, you know, I'll probably just find out whenever I die or what. 02:24 Seneca Harbin Or. 02:26 Seneca Harbin But yeah, so I didn't. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I didn't. I never heard anything positive about Christianity. The the wicked now. 02:33 Seneca Harbin This this broad stroke. 02:34 Seneca Harbin Paintbrush here, but that we can community that I'm familiar with has a very negative outlook on Christianity. So I've pretty much only ever heard negative stuff. You know, those people are judgmental, they're hateful. They're hypocritical. Stuff like that. Yeah. Meanwhile, I didn't really know any Christians or anything like that, so I wouldn't know any different. 02:55 Seneca Harbin Anyway, so that's kind of how I grew up. And then I don't know how far you want me to go, but as my story progresses, I kind of saw the weaponized version of religion. I didn't really know anything about organized religion. 03:09 Seneca Harbin And then I saw it used as a weapon, and so I wasn't real, wasn't in a big hurry to get involved in that. 03:17 Seneca Harbin But then I came to find Christ on my own later on. 03:20 Seneca Harbin And. 03:21 Seneca Harbin It's a beautiful thing. I'd recommend it to everybody. 03:24 Sean Finnegan So you were kind of in a gang? 03:26 Seneca Harbin Yeah. So there's normalized gangs and then there's clicks. It depends on how big the organization is and what the region is. You know, it's it's games are surprisingly, extremely well organized and they have a hierarchy and they're very. 03:42 Seneca Harbin The community I was involved with, I was probably the youngest kid that I ran with by maybe like 10 years. And when you're a young child that is a a massive gap. 03:53 Seneca Harbin So yeah, I just ran around with criminals and and drug addicts and drug dealers and gang members and good gang activity and all. 04:02 Seneca Harbin That good stuff. 04:03 Sean Finnegan Yeah. And then at some point, you joined the military and you spent a long time in the military. How many years was that? 04:13 Seneca Harbin Along to Sam Short to others, I spent seven years active in the United States Army of entry. Out of those seven years, I did 6 tours overseas. 04:23 Seneca Harbin So kind of a busy career, didn't have a lot of time to sit back and enjoy it and all. 04:28 Seneca Harbin That good stuff. 04:30 Seneca Harbin But the job I had in the military is hyper specific and so if I'm not overseas. 04:37 Seneca Harbin I wasn't doing anything really useful anyway, so not all bad. 04:43 Sean Finnegan And you had gotten married. I don't wanna give away all the details of your story because it's in the book. You got married and eventually left the military and had to figure out how to do life. You know, suddenly you didn't have all the structure and the mission. 05:01 Sean Finnegan What was that like? Maybe you could just talk about that a little bit. Just coming home and facing reality with a wife and these and these kids. 05:10 Seneca Harbin Yeah, it's extremely difficult. One of the hardest things you can ever do in. 05:14 Seneca Harbin The military is get out. 05:17 Seneca Harbin And that sounds really silly, especially to some people. 05:21 Seneca Harbin Because they they've strived their whole life and they've built their careers and they've done all these crazy hard things. 05:28 Seneca Harbin And if you looked at my military career and all my little silly awards and all that, you'd think, wow, that he must have done hard. 05:34 Seneca Harbin Stuff. 05:35 Seneca Harbin But really, for me, the one of the hardest. 05:38 Seneca Harbin Parts was getting out. 05:40 Seneca Harbin You go from an extremely hyper focused, goal oriented mission driven, highly focused organization with tons of support. 05:50 Seneca Harbin To nothing overnight. And that's a big change. 05:55 Seneca Harbin One of the unique things about the military is. 05:58 Seneca Harbin When you go in, most people are very young and so you go in and you have this kind of young, rebellious, headstrong mentality and they break you of that and rebuild you into a useful tool in their machine. 06:13 And. 06:14 Seneca Harbin Then you gain all this skill and you, you spend your life developing the skill set that's hyper specific for the environment you're in. 06:23 Seneca Harbin And then one day you get out, and so you're no longer the kid that went in. You're no longer the identity that you built throughout your whole adult life, and now you gotta go figure out life. Some people fall outside on this, but for most people, however long you've been in the service, you're just that many years behind your civilian counter. 06:43 Seneca Harbin Once. 06:44 Seneca Harbin Because they didn't go off and fight a war, they went to work where they went to school or they started raising a family. So all those years that they've been building. 06:53 Seneca Harbin You done amazing, wonderful things. 06:57 Seneca Harbin But in the civilian sector, you're kind of just behind the times. 07:01 Sean Finnegan And what was it like on the home front? 07:03 Seneca Harbin It wasn't great, so I actually got injured overseas and. 07:08 Seneca Harbin That led to me getting out of the military. So am I getting out was very abrupt. I got out of the military from a foreign country. And so when I came home, it was like overnight and it was culture shock. And it was. 07:20 Seneca Harbin Everything that they would advise you know if you read any manual, they would say don't do this because it's gonna ruin this. It's gonna very much shorten the proposed success rate of this individual. 07:33 Seneca Harbin But now I got home and I didn't like. 07:36 Seneca Harbin What I saw, you know? 07:37 Seneca Harbin In the in. 07:38 Seneca Harbin The soil was good or bad. I mean it's. It is a very specific. 07:43 Seneca Harbin Very niche and different culture. 07:46 Seneca Harbin But the culture is super tight. 07:49 Seneca Harbin And so when you get out here, you see things like. 07:53 Seneca Harbin Socioeconomic division and racial division and and nowadays gender division. 07:58 Seneca Harbin And all that stuff. 08:00 Seneca Harbin And military and no one can you don't have time to care about that stuff. So it's just you're all part of the same team. You're all part of the same Commission. You wanna achieve the same goals? So it's a very united core. 08:12 Seneca Harbin And then you get out and it's just a mess. Everything seems backwards. Everybody's out to get everybody else instead of having one individual mission that everyone's working towards, it's 8 billion missions, and they're all working towards that, and they're all very self-centered and self focused. 08:32 It's just it's. 08:33 Seneca Harbin Really hard to get. 08:34 Seneca Harbin Out. It's such a culture shock. 08:37 Seneca Harbin But if you live in a foreign country for 40 years of your life, when you came to America, it wouldn't be what you remembered it being right. 08:46 Yeah. 08:47 Sean Finnegan And what about your your wife and family talk about that a little bit, readjusting to being there. 08:54 Seneca Harbin The wait. No, I don't wanna say this to offend people. 08:59 Seneca Harbin Because I recommend you know every fun thing I do is because I have children. All the fun stuff, the camping trips, the memories, the you know, going. 09:09 Seneca Harbin To the zoo. 09:10 Seneca Harbin All the fun stuff. And I'm gonna remember throughout my life and the stuff I'm gonna miss. 09:15 Seneca Harbin All of that, that's because of the family. 09:18 Seneca Harbin However, with that being said, the weight of a family is crushing. 09:24 Seneca Harbin And so. 09:26 Seneca Harbin Not only did I what I spent several years outside of this country. 09:31 Seneca Harbin So I came back. I didn't recognize the country anymore. I didn't really like what I saw. I felt very isolated. 09:38 Seneca Harbin And everybody who gets out, you think you're the only person that feels that way? You're not a lot of people get out every day and a lot of people feel isolated and individualized and marginalized and all that kind of stuff. 09:52 Seneca Harbin But then I had a wife. I had a small child. 09:56 Seneca Harbin I I was very fortunate. I got to see my first daughter be born. 10:01 Seneca Harbin But then I shipped out. I met her. 10:02 Seneca Harbin Again, when she was 2. 10:04 Seneca Harbin And so there's no real attachment there. There's no established. 10:10 Seneca Harbin Relationship all the stuff that makes them them. You don't know why they're acting like that. You don't know all their personality traits. You don't know what they like and. 10:19 Seneca Harbin Don't like and all that. 10:21 Seneca Harbin And then you know and then I. 10:22 Seneca Harbin Just had all my bags. 10:24 Seneca Harbin So my story is not as crazy as some people like I I wasn't, you know, Black Ops. I wasn't U.S. Navy SEAL or whatever even though. 10:34 Seneca Harbin I did write a. 10:34 Seneca Harbin Book. And that's the big joke against Navy SEAL. But no, I wasn't. I wasn't a cool guy. Was just a Rifleman. I was a shooter and I was an infantryman, but I was big. 10:43 Seneca Harbin Arm on big unit tactics. 10:45 Seneca Harbin So I wasn't one of the cool guys with all the funding and the gear and all the, you know, the good stuff. 10:51 Seneca Harbin We were just on the move all the time but. 10:55 Seneca Harbin So I got back home. I didn't really know who I was. I had all my baggage because I did 6 tours overseas, 4 are gonna be in combat tours. So those kind of they just change you fundamentally as a person and and as a mindset. 11:09 Seneca Harbin So I didn't really know who I was. I didn't know who my family was. 11:13 Seneca Harbin I've been with my wife since. 11:14 Seneca Harbin I was 15. She was 16. 11:17 Seneca Harbin And we've always been single income and we still are today, man, I'm a public servant. So no, I mean, nobody's balling. 11:23 Seneca Harbin Over at the Harvey Nichols Hole, you know? 11:26 Seneca Harbin It was so hard for me because I didn't know who my family was. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know how I fit in society. 11:34 Seneca Harbin And I just did the best. I knew how to work really hard, and so I just applied that. 11:41 Umm. 11:41 Sean Finnegan So why did you start going to church? 11:44 Seneca Harbin Well, my wife and I both agreed that we were trashed and we were not good examples for what we would want our children to be raised as we didn't really have, like, you know, any of the core foundational values that you want to see in a human being. 12:00 Seneca Harbin We were people and I don't think we were bad or anything, but we we didn't know what right looked like. And so we thought. 12:05 Seneca Harbin The church could hopefully show us. 12:08 Seneca Harbin Yeah. 12:09 Seneca Harbin Funny story is, you know, in in Indiana where I live, you can throw a rock and you can hit five churches and they're all like 3000 plus member churches. 12:18 Sean Finnegan Ohh wow. 12:19 Seneca Harbin And you can hit even more churches that are like 200 people you. 12:23 Seneca Harbin Know a A. 12:24 Seneca Harbin Very small church around here is about a. 12:26 Seneca Harbin 150 people. 12:27 Seneca Harbin You drive by and you're like, oh, yeah, they might not be there in six months. You know, really, it's a thriving community. 12:33 Seneca Harbin But we're just so used to the vanilla, non denominational faith Christianity that you can pop the house. You know, if you don't ever tell them anything that's in the Bible, you can really get a. 12:43 Seneca Harbin Lot of people to show off. 12:46 Seneca Harbin But so I know we wanted to go to a church, and so I called the the only guy I knew that was even had ever even spoke about his faith or anything like that. 12:55 Seneca Harbin I called him. 12:56 Seneca Harbin And I said, I'm new to this. What do? 12:58 Seneca Harbin You think about. 12:59 Seneca Harbin This place he's like. 13:00 Seneca Harbin Oh, I've. I've been a member there for 20 years. Come on by. So he showed us around and I talked about him a little bit briefly in the in my chapter in the book, but super Nice guy and just introduced us to everybody. And then that really let him match the church. 13:15 Seneca Harbin Itself and the service and all this. I didn't like that. But I did like the community. It's right back to the military, thinking it's group thing mentality. 13:27 Seneca Harbin It's group identity. You have fast friends who have common interests and they want to see you do better in life. 13:34 Seneca Harbin And all that good. 13:35 Seneca Harbin Stuff. 13:35 Seneca Harbin So is very familiar with the types of mindsets that, like sell with. 13:41 Sean Finnegan You talk about how. 13:43 Sean Finnegan You kind of became a Christian in the church and maybe you could explain your impression of that experience of just like going through the standard hoops that they they have for you. 13:57 Sean Finnegan And also talk about your confusion like what were the things that that confused you you were like, this is weird. 14:04 Seneca Harbin Yeah. So a very unique thing about my wife and I, we had no presuppositions. We didn't have a contest or a lens to look through. 14:14 Seneca Harbin Because we were both wildly unfamiliar with the Bible and I've I've got, you know, kind of a bunch of older jokes and stuff, I'm trying not to put in here because I don't, you know, I'm sure kids, they're gonna watch this or whatever, but. 14:26 Seneca Harbin And then I won't get picked to do youth ministry at the next conference or whatever, but you know, so my kids were like, hey, you know, Dad, this, this sucks. I'm so bored and this guy's not funny. It's not appealing to me. I don't want to sit in the circle. It's not like, well, me and you. 14:42 Seneca Harbin Both. 14:42 Seneca Harbin Kids. But I didn't know that I was just there for my wife. 14:46 Seneca Harbin You know, she wanted to. 14:47 Seneca Harbin Do it. It was OK, whatever. 14:49 Seneca Harbin As every church would have it, if you have a. 14:52 Seneca Harbin Pulse so you can serve in children's ministry. 14:55 Seneca Harbin I did have a pause, but I'd never read the Bible and didn't believe. 14:58 Seneca Harbin In Jesus and. 14:59 Seneca Harbin They just, you know, it was whatever, but all went over her again, going back to my ignorance. 15:05 Seneca Harbin I had only heard negative things about Children's ministry and what happens to kids at church and all that stuff, so. 15:12 Seneca Harbin I was like, well, if you're not ever going to be out of my sight in this building. 15:18 Seneca Harbin Well, they didn't have to be cause like the next weekend, you know, they had the booth up with the balloons and like, we need children's pastors or whatever and come join kids ministry. 15:28 Seneca Harbin So I did. 15:29 Seneca Harbin And it's so funny, you know. 15:30 Seneca Harbin Just like all throughout my life and my my walk with God and. 15:36 Seneca Harbin He knows what he's working with, so it's just slow pitch softball. I mean, he's not giving me hard. 15:41 Seneca Harbin Ones you know. 15:42 Seneca Harbin He's kind of really take. 15:44 Seneca Harbin Yeah. 15:45 Seneca Harbin So yeah, I started studying cause on Sundays I was like ohh, I'm militant. I'm wearing a full suit because I don't know what Children's ministry is. So I'm in a full suit and I'm, I'm. 15:55 Seneca Harbin Studied up I've. 15:56 Seneca Harbin Got all the PowerPoint presentations built. I've got curriculum like I'm hitting this thing hard. 16:03 Seneca Harbin Everybody else could just go in there and feed them some snacks. We're going to sing some songs. These kids aren't. We're not here to talk about God because it's a big church and I didn't know that they weren't actually, like into the Bible or whatever. 16:15 Seneca Harbin So. 16:16 Seneca Harbin Oh. 16:17 Seneca Harbin So anyway, children's Ministry, God's help in my heart and through building presentations to talk to these. 16:24 Seneca Harbin I think it was third and 4th grade kids. 16:27 Seneca Harbin That's how God broke my heart and he was able to circumcise my heart and my my I found God and I found his son Jesus and I got baptized in Jesus name on my 32nd birthday. It was a beautiful thing. So I absolutely love it. But I owe it to to not wanting my kids. 16:48 Seneca Harbin To, you know, like be molested. 16:50 Seneca Harbin In a church or whatever. So. 16:52 Seneca Harbin And that's that's how God brought me to Christianity. He's like, hey, look, I'm. I'm obviously you're not working with the full toolbox, but here, let me just go easy on you and give you. Let me start you off where the kids are at. So you can build a foundation. 17:08 Sean Finnegan Were you learning in the Children's ministry, just like sitting in the back or you were actually teaching and you were like, learning as you're teaching? 17:15 Seneca Harbin Yeah. The first time I'd ever read a Christian Bible was to give a Sunday school class to a bunch of kids. 17:22 Sean Finnegan So they really didn't care that you weren't even a Christian yet, and that you're just totally. 17:29 Sean Finnegan Uninformed on how how things are supposed to go. They're just like alright? 17:33 Sean Finnegan You're alive and you're willing, so why don't you do? That's incredible. 17:37 Seneca Harbin Yeah, they said hey. 17:40 Seneca Harbin Yeah, well, I'm. I'm covered in tattoos. I've got a long. 17:43 Seneca Harbin Beard to shave. 17:44 Seneca Harbin Head, you know. 17:44 Seneca Harbin I look like I'm fresh out of prison. 17:46 Seneca Harbin And and it's on purpose. 17:49 Seneca Harbin Because back where I used to be in life, the tougher you looked, the less people were likely to mess with you. I call it urban camouflage. 17:58 Seneca Harbin So I you know, I wanted to look tough all the time and now I'm just like a teddy bear and I eat ice cream. You know, I got three kids and I'm doing kids sports, and I'm as soft as you can be nowadays. 18:09 Seneca Harbin But I still look like a jerk, and so they said, well, we gotta do a background check on you. But if it comes back clean, we'd be more than happy that you're back there. Do we need anybody? You know, boots on the ground we need. 18:22 Seneca Harbin It's 100 people back in that hole. 18:24 Seneca Harbin Like. 18:25 Seneca Harbin Yeah, I mean, I've I've never been in trouble as an adult. I I was in a. 18:28 Seneca Harbin Ton of trouble as. 18:29 Seneca Harbin A youth spent, you know I I dropped out of school because I spent so much time in juvenile and I was in and out of, you know, juvenile all the time. And when I was in or out, I knew everybody who was in and out. And so I was making poor decisions. 18:45 Seneca Harbin But as an adult, after the military, I mean, that really changed my whole life. Like I shaped up. 18:50 Sean Finnegan So after you became a Christian, you started to at some point listen to the sermons of the the preacher. 18:59 Sean Finnegan Is that true? 19:00 Seneca Harbin No. I spent about a year and a half back with the kids and I was just burning it up. I so I started reading the Bible the first time I'd ever read the Bible was to give these presentations to the. 19:02 OK. 19:10 Seneca Harbin Kids. 19:11 Seneca Harbin And once I started reading about it, it was blowing my mind. You know, you read the New Testament for me, servant leadership is the foundation of everything I want to do in my life. It it just. I love it. It is a fire for me. 19:31 Seneca Harbin My degrees and stuff, they're doing ministry, but also in leadership. I'm in a graduate leadership program right now. I want to get a PhD in organizational leadership but. 19:42 Seneca Harbin Couple of years off from that. So what I'm working on but anyway, so I started reading the Bible just because I wanted to give a good presentation to these children. 19:51 Seneca Harbin Wasn't their fault. They had to be there for an hour. But while they were there, we were gonna learn the Bible, because that's what I thought you did. 19:58 Seneca Harbin In church. 19:59 Seneca Harbin So I started reading this stuff and I was just blown. I couldn't put it down. I loved it and it just it it little fire in me. I accepted Christ, I got saved. 20:09 Seneca Harbin And I just kept doing the kids stuff. I was back there in the children's wing. Stuff was fun. I was coaching youth sports through the church. I I still do to this day. 20:18 Seneca Harbin Even though I left the church, you know, many years ago. 20:22 Seneca Harbin But yeah, I I just absolutely loved it. And once I found out who Christ was and what he'd done for us through his finished words, they just radicalized my whole life. And so I was both could beat in, and I and I have. 20:38 Seneca Harbin Been ever since. 20:39 Sean Finnegan So tell us about how you first encountered some of these ideas about the Trinity, or the idea that Jesus is both God and man at the same time. Where did you hear those, and how did it seem to you? 20:53 Seneca Harbin One of the weirdest thing for us. 20:55 Seneca Harbin Was. 20:56 Seneca Harbin The only time. 20:56 Seneca Harbin We would hear that stuff like we would go to Easter service or Christmas or those. 21:00 Seneca Harbin Are the big ones cause? 21:02 Seneca Harbin I was teaching 3rd and 4th graders and my wife was down with. 21:07 Seneca Harbin I think 1st and 2nd grade I think she was younger kids. She's got a bigger tolerance than I do, but we were pretty much in the children's wing and we were loving it. We had friends and had a community and all all this good stuff and we were both just ripping through the Bible and just loving it. But then we would go to main service on the big ones. 21:29 Seneca Harbin For. 21:29 Seneca Harbin We would. 21:30 Seneca Harbin If we were teaching in the mornings, maybe we would then go in the afternoon service and and do the main service. 21:37 Seneca Harbin And it we were just. 21:39 Seneca Harbin Like dumbfounded, we didn't know. 21:41 Seneca Harbin What they were even talking like. 21:42 Seneca Harbin They would say these ideas. 21:44 Seneca Harbin We're like, what? What is this person even like? Well, that doesn't make sense to anybody. 21:50 Seneca Harbin Well. 21:52 Seneca Harbin We were incorrect. 21:55 Seneca Harbin I guess that makes sense to a lot of people, but we would hear these ideas. 21:59 Seneca Harbin That I remember the last church service. My wife went to and she got up and we walked. 22:05 Seneca Harbin Out it was Easter service. 22:08 Seneca Harbin And they said God died. 22:10 Seneca Harbin And she's like, no, I'm good. I'm outta here. I'm OK. Or whatever. You know, I also don't want to be in here. So. So. 22:17 Seneca Harbin We won't be out. 22:19 Seneca Harbin But yeah, we hear things like. 22:21 Seneca Harbin The the standard Christmas service, where God was born. I don't. I've never read that anywhere like and we understood like, hey, we're new with this. Maybe we're just not getting something right. So I would ask questions about it. And so by this time, I was already on the they called the leadership and development team of the church. It's it's what. 22:41 Seneca Harbin Most people call elders, but this is a mega church, so it all sounds funny, but I was on the leadership team I was teaching Sunday school. I was running my ministry. 22:50 Seneca Harbin Out of the. 22:51 Seneca Harbin Building veteran support Ministry coaching the kids. 22:56 Seneca Harbin Stores all that stuff. 22:58 Seneca Harbin And so I had been assigned a mentor. 23:01 Seneca Harbin For the leadership and development team, because you you work your way through the order and then you're like the. 23:07 Seneca Harbin Senior elders and your assistant to the pastors and all that stuff. Now is the Deacon of Outreach ministry for him as well. 23:14 Seneca Harbin And all this time I didn't understand. I didn't know enough to know that I was different. 23:20 Seneca Harbin I just thought what they were saying. 23:22 Seneca Harbin Wasn't really making sense. 23:25 Seneca Harbin And then I'd ask him about it and you get the standard responsive. Well, you gotta take it all or leave it all or, you know, this is foundational doctrine. That's alright, man. Here's the thing that I want. I want to know better. 23:40 Seneca Harbin And you're telling me there's a different way, so. 23:42 Seneca Harbin Just walk me through it. 23:44 Sean Finnegan Right. 23:44 Seneca Harbin And then they would just give some crazy unexplainable the mystery of the faith and all this stuff. And I was like, Nah, man, I'm. 23:53 Seneca Harbin That doesn't say that in the Bible. And then so you see that enough times. 23:59 Seneca Harbin And as you've known, I I just didn't know you have the doctor in the Trinity. 24:04 Seneca Harbin To me, it's a different religion. To me it's a different. 24:07 Seneca Harbin God, it's a false God. 24:09 Seneca Harbin But to them, it's the foundation of their faith. And so if you're asking questions about it and saying things like it's not real. 24:18 Seneca Harbin They view you as not a Christian. Yeah, even though I had been baptized in the name of Jesus. 24:24 Seneca Harbin I was obviously all the fruit of my words is like positive Christian stuff. 24:30 Seneca Harbin But because I didn't believe in the Trinity and idea that they could not explain to me, I was somehow not a Christian, you know? And so so we're both starting to take offense and at that point I came. I'm sorry, this ain't for me anymore. You're not going to preach what the Bible teaches. 24:49 Seneca Harbin And you're gonna get offended and and not trust me because I believe in the word of God instead of the pastor. 24:57 Seneca Harbin Then it's just not gonna fit, you know. 25:00 Sean Finnegan So would you say that you were a biblical Unitarian by default just from reading the Bible? 25:06 Seneca Harbin Yeah, it was. It was. It was from the general. We didn't know any better. We didn't know modalism. We didn't know Trinitarianism. I I didn't have any clue what that stuff was. 25:17 Sean Finnegan Not that you would use that word because you wouldn't say Unitarian. You would just say this other stuff doesn't. 25:24 Seneca Harbin Yeah, I was like, dude, we're just really passionate Christians. Like, we're into this thing. The Bible is. It's what we do. This is my like, this is my hobby. You know, this. I read the Bible for fun. So my wife talks about it, and Mark Cain's podcast The the UCLA podcast. It was a big moment for her. 25:43 Seneca Harbin And I didn't. Again, I didn't know any difference, she said. Man, why? 25:47 Seneca Harbin Why do people say that Jesus and God are the same thing? If Jesus is talking to God and praying to God, and when when he's baptized God says something about Jesus, I'm like ohh well back then I'll use a little cruder language and I'll use here. But I was like, oh, they're just I was just like man, you know me better. You know, they're just they're not reading the same. 26:09 Seneca Harbin What we are against? 26:11 Seneca Harbin Turns out you know 99% of Christianity actually believes that that we were just the ones who did it. 26:19 Sean Finnegan So how did you first come across the idea of Biblical Unitarianism and like getting to learn about more people that were like you? 26:27 Seneca Harbin Well, it was a year or two of isolation. And because we we understood that we couldn't be part of the mainstream Trinitarian Christian Church, even though we didn't even still at this point we didn't know they were Trinitarian. We just thought that all churches. 26:44 Seneca Harbin I don't even know how to explain it. Back then we just. 26:47 Seneca Harbin What we heard at the at every we tried a ton and what we heard at all the church services were not what we were reading in the Bible. So we just said, well, we're good. We'll just do our own thing. And you know, I guess we didn't get this Christian thing figured out. 27:05 Seneca Harbin My wife somehow came across a book by a guy named John Lynn. 27:11 Seneca Harbin And it was. Don't blame God. And there was a lot of stuff in that book where she was like. 27:16 Seneca Harbin Oh my God, this dude gets. 27:18 Seneca Harbin It he sounds like us. And so, yeah, funny story. You know, I just haunted him down. I I tracked him. You know, I found them in. 27:28 Seneca Harbin The real world. 27:29 Seneca Harbin And and I said, hey, do you want to have? 27:32 Seneca Harbin Center. You know, I've got a lot of questions. 27:34 Seneca Harbin He said sure, what day do you wanna meet tonight? And you know what? What day of the week do you wanna meet up? Because he's from Indianapolis and so are we. 27:44 Seneca Harbin We didn't know at that point and I don't. I don't want to bad mouth all these other things in these groups or whatever. Everybody's got good contributions, but I didn't know what the way international was. 27:55 Seneca Harbin And to me. 27:58 Seneca Harbin John Ryan was a very good friend and a very good person. 28:03 Seneca Harbin Before I met him way later in life and I was actually friends with him when he died. 28:09 Seneca Harbin Knowing what I know now, that relationship would have eventually turned South. 28:15 Seneca Harbin Because I'm not a tongue speaking dispensation like I don't hold the doctrines in the way and all that. 28:21 Seneca Harbin Stuff. 28:22 Seneca Harbin And I think that they're like false teaching and I I don't like that group at all. But but back then, he was just a really good person who wanted to see us grow in our faith. 28:33 Seneca Harbin And so I think through him, we found the term biblical Unitarian. 28:37 Seneca Harbin Well, once you have the proper Google search term, then you can find guys like Jayden and Gill and Anthony Buzzard. And there's like a video of you and your 14 talking to Jade and Bill and Sue. 28:52 Ohh man. 28:53 Seneca Harbin But once so, once you find the culture. 28:56 Seneca Harbin Then you feel like Oh my God, we're not alone. There's more people out there that we're not just kooky. You know, people who aren't getting the Bible right. 29:06 Seneca Harbin Now we can actually have foundation of sand on and say no, there's more people that believe this coming. 29:13 Seneca Harbin And that's how it all started. 29:15 Sean Finnegan Yeah, very good. So let's talk about the book. It's called the cost of truth stories of biblical Unitarian Christians with Seneca Harbin and contributors. You've got Bill Schlegel, will Barlow, Johnny Barnes, Seth Ross, Suzanne Lakin, Candice Tuggy and Ryan Russell. 29:33 Sean Finnegan Endorsements myself, Dale Tuggy, John Shane, height, and. 29:39 Sean Finnegan Did you know that you are the number one new release in Unitarian Universalism? Congratulations. This book has nothing to do with Unitarian universalism. And yet you have dominated the the you U charts. So, you know, let me be the 1st and probably the last to congratulate you. 29:59 Sean Finnegan On that. 30:02 Seneca Harbin There's this guy. 30:04 Seneca Harbin And he's a motivational speaker and his names ET. 30:09 Seneca Harbin And he's he's famous for saying winners win. And so whether we win in new book releases or just in Unitarian Universal, it's a victory. I'm gonna take it. You know, I'm. I'm still. 30:20 We'll just take. 30:21 Sean Finnegan It, yeah. 30:21 Seneca Harbin Proud of you? 30:22 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I think if a Unitarian Universalist picked up the book well, first of all, the the title of the book is very non universalist. The cost of truth it it presupposes that there is such a thing as truth and that it costs. 30:35 Sean Finnegan Something. And then, yeah, if they do pick it up, they'll be really shocked by the content, but let's let's talk about this book. Who did you have in mind when you were putting this together? Like, what sort of person were you thinking would really benefit? 30:49 Seneca Harbin So I'll tell you the back story. I gotta kind of go a little further back than that question, OK, my, when I became, you know, a ******** Christian, I really got lit on fire. 31:01 Seneca Harbin I approached one of my back then. 31:03 Seneca Harbin He was my buddy. 31:05 Seneca Harbin I said, hey, man, you you do this thing, you know, because I wanted to break in the ministry and I didn't know how. 31:12 Seneca Harbin And so I would meet with pastors, and then I'll go. All you gotta do is just go get a doctor, you know, become some PhD, spend the next 20 years of your life. I was like, hey, I don't have time for that. And Jesus, didn't you. And so how do we figure this out? 31:27 Seneca Harbin And so I I talked to. 31:29 Seneca Harbin This guy who ran the homelessness. 31:32 Seneca Harbin And the only reason I'm. 31:33 Seneca Harbin Telling the story is because it leads. 31:35 Seneca Harbin Into it, but so he's like, well, what do you feel like you? 31:37 Seneca Harbin Have authority and what are you comfortable with? 31:40 Seneca Harbin I say well, all I know is the veteran community. 31:43 Seneca Harbin Because in my I'm a I'm a secular, you know, I work in the secular environment. I'm the director, electron repairs. 31:49 Seneca Harbin All I do is. 31:51 Seneca Harbin On a board member of Veterans Core not you know all this stuff. So I was like, well, I feel comfortable in the veteran community. That's my people. You know, I get, I get that environ. 32:00 Seneca Harbin And he's like, well, then, why don't you just do that? 32:04 Seneca Harbin OK. So on the ride home, I call my wife. Hey, I'm starting a veterans ministry. 32:10 Seneca Harbin We're starting a nonprofit, yes. 32:12 Seneca Harbin No. 32:14 Seneca Harbin She's like, ohh. Alright, that's great. You know, I hope it works for you. Yeah, whatever. She's always really supportive and I just go off on these random like, hey, we're doing this. 32:23 Seneca Harbin You know and and and God has blessed it and it's worked out. So anyway, years ago I started that thing, veteran support Minister. 32:30 Seneca Harbin Then. 32:31 Seneca Harbin Years later, this guy split off from the church. He was going to and started his own. 32:37 Seneca Harbin And he was like, hey, will you come be one of the ministers here at the church? Will you do run the children's ministry and I'll be the main preacher? 32:46 Seneca Harbin I was like ohh dude, what? Anything. You know it's cool. And at the time I told him I said well, hey, I'm a licensed pastor for the Church of God General Conference. I'm a Bible being material. 32:56 Seneca Harbin He's like, great. 32:58 Seneca Harbin I believe in Jesus too. I need a pastor. Can you just come over and help? 33:02 Seneca Harbin Me out and there's. 33:03 Seneca Harbin No pain. OK. Yeah, I'll be there, dude. 33:07 Seneca Harbin So. 33:08 Seneca Harbin Anyway, so I'm just helping a friend out. 33:11 Seneca Harbin Well, a stupid thing I do on Facebook is I I love. I don't watch television. 33:17 Seneca Harbin So I always just read books instead, and when people meet me in person, they're like oh. 33:22 Seneca Harbin I didn't know you could read. 33:23 Seneca Harbin So but I I always. 33:25 Sean Finnegan And you, you do read a lot of books because you're always. You always post what you're reading. 33:29 Seneca Harbin Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. But a lot of these books I'm reading aren't mainstream stuff, and they're they're kind of far out ideas. 33:38 Seneca Harbin I do a lot of chaplaincy work in part of my several ministries that I do. 33:42 Seneca Harbin Now. 33:43 Seneca Harbin But I do a lot of chaplaincy work and I feel that it's important for me to be able to meet you where you're at. 33:50 Seneca Harbin So that we can go forward together like I don't have to agree with you, but if I don't understand where you're coming from, I'm going to miss a lot of. 33:57 Seneca Harbin What? 33:57 Seneca Harbin You're saying and so I read a lot of books that maybe I don't necessarily agree with. 34:02 Seneca Harbin So anyway, I was posting this review like hey, I just read this book. It's great whatever. Here's some key points of it. 34:09 Seneca Harbin And one of the members of that church. 34:14 Seneca Harbin Took offense to whatever I think that book was about Christian universalism or whatever, which is the most beautiful lie that I could ever come. I mean, it's. It sounds so good. 34:25 Sean Finnegan It's a beautiful idea, yeah. 34:27 Seneca Harbin Yeah, it sounds beautiful, but it's alive. And so a lot of those people are going to find out the hard way that maybe it ain't so, but. 34:38 Seneca Harbin So anyway, they did kind of a deep dive into me and Church of God and and what Unitarianism was so that that if I find myself in a meeting. 34:49 Seneca Harbin Buddy calls me up. Hey, brother, can we get lunch? I need. 34:51 Seneca Harbin To talk. Ohh. 34:52 Seneca Harbin Yeah, cool man. I thought this dude was gonna confide in me and like, we were gonna work through some stuff. Maybe maybe there was budgeting issues at the church or, you know. 35:00 Seneca Harbin The standard Christian stuff. 35:03 Seneca Harbin Well, it was not there. It was a, you know, when you told me you were a Biblical Unitarian, I didn't know. 35:10 Seneca Harbin What that meant? 35:12 Seneca Harbin What are you teaching the kids? 35:15 Seneca Harbin And I was. 35:15 Seneca Harbin Like, well, you have my syllabus every week. Like we were literally going chapter through chapter of Matthew that, that, that, that we're only speaking about the Bible. I'm not giving them my opinion as. 35:27 Seneca Harbin Because it's different than yours. But I'm preaching at your church, so I respect your boundaries and all that good stuff. 35:34 Seneca Harbin And he was like, yeah, man, I've been reading about Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, and I was like, dude, I'm I'm not a Mormon. I'm not a Jehovah's witness. It's not any of that stuff. I was like, we agree on most points. I think, you know. 35:50 Seneca Harbin We agree that. 35:51 Seneca Harbin You have to confess faith in Jesus. We agree that you should take communion. We agree that. 35:55 Seneca Harbin You should get water baptized. 35:58 Seneca Harbin I said to the key on that stuff. 36:00 Seneca Harbin We're pretty much the same. 36:03 Seneca Harbin And he was like, hey do. 36:04 Seneca Harbin You can't teach anymore. 36:06 Seneca Harbin I was like, that's weird because you asked me and I told you all this stuff up front and it's like, hey, it is what it is and he's like, I'm. I'm either you can get fired or we can both. 36:15 Seneca Harbin Get fired and it's not worth it to me. 36:18 Seneca Harbin Alright, cool. I respect it, you know. 36:21 Seneca Harbin Whatever. It's cool. 36:23 Seneca Harbin So that was like. 36:23 Seneca Harbin The 4th or 5th church that we've been asked to leave for the belief system we had. 36:30 Seneca Harbin And so I was like, you know what, dude, this is not an isolated event. By that time we knew so many people in the Unitarian community. 36:37 Seneca Harbin I was like Dave, let's just all get together. 36:40 Seneca Harbin And write a book about our experiences. 36:43 Seneca Harbin So the end user I had in. 36:45 Seneca Harbin Mind was creeping people. 36:47 Seneca Harbin It was people who had not yet come to the faith of Unitarianism, didn't understand it, and thought it was some crazy, evil, wicked thing. 36:59 Seneca Harbin And I just wanted to clear that stuff up like, no, these are the most devout Christians you can find. These people are into what they're into. 37:07 Seneca Harbin The second one was for people who had been in the community for a while, and they can just get a good laugh about all the dumb stuff that happened because we've all been there. We've all had. 37:15 Seneca Harbin Our. 37:16 Seneca Harbin Little you know, we everybody's lost a degree or been thrown out of a church or just kicked out of Thanksgiving dinner. You know, whatever. Whatever it may be. 37:26 Seneca Harbin And then also, for someone who may might be considering like hey I. 37:31 Seneca Harbin I don't feel that what I'm being taught is right. I think there's something. 37:35 Seneca Harbin Else out there. 37:37 Seneca Harbin But I I don't want to jump all the way in and so hopefully those 3 segments of people can really benefit from the book. 37:45 Sean Finnegan OK. And you talk about different stages that people go through? 37:50 Sean Finnegan When they become biblical Unitarian, could you share a little bit about those? This is the part 5 easy steps to lose friends and isolate yourself. 38:00 Seneca Harbin Yeah, I'm the type of guy. 38:03 Seneca Harbin And again, it just stems from the military culture. 38:06 Seneca Harbin There, everything's a joke. The more serious the situation, the more you're making fun of it. And it's really just a coping mechanism. So in the book. 38:16 Seneca Harbin Like the original title and the original idea and all this stuff that I had was I was gonna do a a spoof of the book how to win friends and influence people. 38:26 Sean Finnegan But yeah. 38:26 Seneca Harbin So my spoof, yeah, my spoof was had to lose friends and isolators. So yeah. And I thought biblically and materialism was a good way to do that. 38:36 Seneca Harbin So step one. 38:38 Seneca Harbin Finding fault in the current belief system, everybody's had that aha moment where they thought. 38:45 Seneca Harbin That's not what the book said, like I know what that guy just said. 38:50 Seneca Harbin But what is dual of naturism? Like what? Why? Why would God have to put on flesh like this stuff done on out? And so just everybody has that moment. 39:03 Seneca Harbin Well, that moment can be a great thing, or it can take you on a ride that you're not ready for, and so. 39:10 Seneca Harbin That's Step 2 searching for truth when you get into the searching for truth. 39:17 Seneca Harbin Ohh my goodness, I know that you have met a lot of people. I think a. 39:21 Seneca Harbin Lot of people find you. 39:23 Seneca Harbin First, you're you're 1, and I don't mean none of this. Like I'm I'm being telling when I say this kind of stuff, but there's probably 4 celebrity biblical Unitarians, and you're one of them. 39:35 Seneca Harbin And so a lot of people cause you you put out so much content that people are going to run into you as one of the first people. So you meet a lot of people who are searching for truth and they're on fire and they're ripping through everything they can believe and they're just soaking. 39:51 Seneca Harbin All up. And so that oftentimes unfortunately because we're humans that leads us to Step 3, which is. 39:59 Seneca Harbin Gaining knowledge and becoming prideful. That is a really tough step for a. 40:04 Seneca Harbin Lot of people. 40:06 Seneca Harbin And just to throw another dig at the way international, that's where I think those dudes are stuck. They are so prideful and just uppity it it blows my mind that you can't have a conversation. 40:20 Just. 40:21 Seneca Harbin Once you find fault and then you search for the truth and find it. 40:25 Seneca Harbin Then you can. 40:27 Seneca Harbin Ohh now I've gotta share this with everyone. 40:31 Seneca Harbin No, you don't. You should give it a couple years. Get a good foundation. Let yourself work through a lot of things that you won't believe in six months anyway. And don't don't burn every bridge you have when you first become a biblically internal, just save yourself that hard level. 40:50 Seneca Harbin So Step 3, finding truth and becoming find goal leads directly to Step 4. Trying to share your faith with others and being obnoxious about it. 41:01 Sean Finnegan And you could testify to having gone through that stage. 41:05 Seneca Harbin All of them, every one of them, argue them all. I made all the worst mistakes. I left a lot of stuff out of this book because. 41:14 Seneca Harbin I'm gonna tell you this, and I know most people spit on. 41:17 Seneca Harbin The floor, when they hear it. 41:18 Seneca Harbin I think if your book is over 200 pages, you. 41:21 Seneca Harbin Need to refund. 41:22 Seneca Harbin It you don't have a well refund idea, so don't sell it to me you. 41:27 Seneca Harbin So I wanted the book. 41:28 Seneca Harbin To be sure. 41:29 Seneca Harbin And so I left a lot of stuff out, but I butchered every stuff in this book and I think. 41:34 Seneca Harbin A lot of. 41:34 Seneca Harbin People do. But yeah, when you first, when you get to step forward. Oh my God, these people aren't saved. They believe in a false God. They're Greek Pagan worshippers. 41:45 Seneca Harbin That conversation has never went over good, ever. You're not gonna win anybody with the apologetic. I think Anthony Burger used to say you can't get to hear from there. 41:56 Seneca Harbin There's so many things in the Unitarian world. 42:00 Seneca Harbin If you take. 42:01 Seneca Harbin All the lenses off and just read the bio. 42:04 Seneca Harbin Devil. 42:05 Seneca Harbin You know when you talk about the coming Kingdom of God and the sleep of the dead, and that Jesus was a man. 42:13 Seneca Harbin They cannot handle all that in one spoonful. I mean, it's too much. You can't give it to them like that. 42:21 Seneca Harbin You tell somebody that you think when you die, you die and the whole point of Jesus coming back is the resurrection. 42:28 Seneca Harbin Of the dead. 42:30 Seneca Harbin They cannot meet you there. They that's too far for them. They just can't do it so. 42:36 Seneca Harbin But then, since Step 5 unfortunately is losing trend, isolating yourself. 42:42 Seneca Harbin And it's a 2 fold thing. 42:44 Seneca Harbin One is because no one else shares the same truth as you, and you're just too obnoxious and everyone else is wrong about you and. 42:53 Seneca Harbin And we've all lost friends to that, and I think maybe that's part of growing older. You just get so hard blinded in your rigid faith that no one else can be right. 43:03 Seneca Harbin Or you just say, man, there was no one to fellowship with, so why even try? And you become one of the Internet trolls that we all love so much. And I'm surprised that you see a web page. Even the Facebook page even exists because of all the unitary controls. 43:25 Sean Finnegan Yeah. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about the recruitment process. Why did you decide to recruit others to share their stories and how did you figure out all that? 43:36 Seneca Harbin That was actually really easy process for me and the only person that said no to the book. 43:42 Seneca Harbin Only said no to it because he's working on a project that he didn't want it to scratch from. 43:48 Seneca Harbin So Jaden gill. 43:50 Seneca Harbin I really wanted A1. 43:52 Seneca Harbin That's. 43:52 Sean Finnegan Oh yeah. 43:53 Seneca Harbin Person in there. I wanted a former one that's person in there. 43:57 Seneca Harbin But I couldn't get it and So what I what I really wanted to do was Biblical Unitarian. 44:03 Seneca Harbin God, that's a broad term. 44:05 Seneca Harbin That that you. 44:05 Seneca Harbin Could understand that the Trinity is not a a true Christian doctrine. 44:10 Seneca Harbin And still be on a whole spectrum of other. 44:13 Seneca Harbin What you would call truths, you know that I don't think are listed in the Bible, but so it's really important so that they're in the recruitment process. I said, well, let me get. 44:23 Seneca Harbin Somebody from each category that I can think of. 44:27 Seneca Harbin I failed in two regards. 44:31 Seneca Harbin One was Christadelphians. I didn't get one of those in there and I didn't get a former oneness person in there. 44:39 Seneca Harbin But the other broad spectrum of Unitarianism, I think we did a really good job bill piece from the most strict for this to conservative group and Master Seminary, will borrow the former way. I actually had a ton of people I really wanted for that chapter, but I didn't want the whole book. 44:59 Seneca Harbin You sound like X-ray converts or whatever. 45:04 Seneca Harbin So if I left you out, I didn't mean to. A couple of people know who I'm talking about. I'm really good friends with a lot of people who have. 45:09 Seneca Harbin Since left that organization but. 45:12 Seneca Harbin Johnny Bones, that's a great story. It's. 45:14 Seneca Harbin Tragic, but it's true. 45:17 Seneca Harbin Put in all this work and then. 45:19 Seneca Harbin Through the seminary, I actually figured out. Ohh wow, this is incorrect. Is it all wrong? Yeah, Susan, that's a that's a just to put your seat belt on for that chapter. It's all over the place. It's such a good story. She sheds a lot of light. 45:36 Seneca Harbin To several cultures, which I really appreciate, Candace is such a unique story. I know that she had to leave a bunch out because they're kind of a they're one of the celebrity, you know, groups and all that stuff. 45:54 Seneca Harbin And it's just a lot of these people. I gotta understand this book is in print forever. Like, this is always a thing. Yeah. And so while I was willing to share a lot of the gritty details about my life, I left a lot of stuff out. 46:09 Seneca Harbin Too, and we all did. 46:11 Seneca Harbin So Candice's story is beautiful, and then Brian, he was ex Jehovah's witness. And so we really covered a whole spectrum of biblical Unitarianism, and that was kind of the recruitment process. Seth was one of those guys where I thought, OK, I've, I've only covered negative aspects. 46:31 Seneca Harbin This guy is at the top of the top for his denomination. 46:36 Seneca Harbin And it always went right. It was all good. It was loving home. It was faith from birth. 46:43 Seneca Harbin And now he's at the top of the organization and you know God's hand was in it. Everybody was just like Dave. I again, you know, it went back to. Well, I'm surprised you can read and you're writing a book. Yeah, sure. I know that your chapter is gonna make mine look so good because you can't even speak English. 47:01 Seneca Harbin So I'm going to look like a theologian if I'm in. 47:03 Seneca Harbin This book. 47:06 Seneca Harbin So everybody said yes to it and I was really, I'm really thankful that they were all willing to be part of. 47:12 Sean Finnegan What's your hope for the book? What would you if you could dream and talk about what this book would do in the world? What would you like to see? 47:21 Sean Finnegan And also let me ask you, have you already started to think about future additions with other stories of folks? 47:30 Seneca Harbin I'll loop back into that second part, but So what I would like to see for the book. 47:35 Seneca Harbin I want people to know it's OK to be different. I want people to understand that just because what you see isn't what everybody else sees doesn't mean it's wrong. And if you're willing to endure. 47:47 Seneca Harbin It's painful if you don't have a community. 47:50 Seneca Harbin To support you. 47:52 Seneca Harbin It'll prune them. You're gonna get a lot of branches that are, but it's not a band thing, and it's all worth. 47:59 Seneca Harbin So that that would be my hope. 48:01 Seneca Harbin And then also. 48:02 Seneca Harbin I don't know if this isn't public. 48:05 Seneca Harbin And not that it's like reserved or anything but. 48:07 Seneca Harbin 100% of any dollar that I ever received from it in any way. 48:13 Seneca Harbin I don't gain anything. I immediately turn it back into the Lords Harvest International. 48:19 Seneca Harbin The people overseas are, you know, overseas is a hard life. It is a life that I don't have to live just by a geographical blessing by itself. I'm not saying, you know, God isn't with them or nothing like that, but just geographically in America. I I don't have needs or wants. I don't have real problems. 48:39 Seneca Harbin I've got Western problems. 48:42 Seneca Harbin But I didn't get eaten by a lion yesterday, and I know where my making was going to come. You know, all this I've got running water, I've got electricity and the Lord's harvest is just such a blessing to a lot of people that wouldn't ever they wouldn't otherwise be able to exist. And so 100% of the money from this on my end is going straight to them. 49:01 Seneca Harbin And I'm like. 49:02 Seneca Harbin Allergic to money anyway, so you know I don't. 49:04 Seneca Harbin Even want it? 49:06 Sean Finnegan But your wife might not be so. 49:07 Seneca Harbin But this time. 49:09 Seneca Harbin Ohh God, is she? She is she is. She is. She's a financial advisor of the relationship. 49:13 So. 49:16 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 49:18 Sean Finnegan So I was thinking about folks that have either grown up with this idea about the oneness of God and Jesus being a human being instead of a. 49:33 Sean Finnegan You know God, man, and also others that have just believed in it for a long time. And I think this book too can be super encouraging. 49:43 Sean Finnegan And challenging to folks who are complacent and who are saying ohh yeah, I already know that I already believe in that because what the book documents is all these really powerful stories of real people in recent history that are changing their mind on this issue. And so I think it might encourage. 50:04 Sean Finnegan Maybe light a fire under some of us to to get out there and open our mouths a little bit and not just be like, oh, well, who cares or it'll all be fine. So hopefully that will occur as well. Do you have any future projects you're working on that you can share about or what are you up to these? 50:21 Sean Finnegan Days. 50:22 Seneca Harbin Well, I just in the in the ministerial world, I preach at a senior citizens community. I'm a local police agency, Champlain I do youth Christian sports. 50:35 Seneca Harbin Iran veteran Support Ministry Christian Center counseling. 50:39 Seneca Harbin And some other things that I'm leaving on, but what I'm actually about 80% down with my second book, it's the lost truth of Biblically Unitarianism. 50:50 Seneca Harbin I'm republishing John Biddles 1654 catechism. 50:56 Seneca Harbin And just given a summary of each chapter and then at the conclusion of the book. 51:00 Seneca Harbin Is going to be. 51:01 Seneca Harbin Where I think we went astray. We've put so much additional doctrine and emphasis on. 51:07 Seneca Harbin Things that. 51:08 Seneca Harbin The father of English Unitarianism didn't value for whatever reason. And So what the original mindset and foundational doctrine that we're supposed to care. 51:19 Seneca Harbin Sorry. 51:20 Seneca Harbin Most people like I can ask 8 out of 10 biblical Unitarians. They don't even know who John Biddle is like this. This is this is everything you should believe. Like it's so good. It's so rich. Yeah. I'm gonna finish that this month and then have it all to the person. I've got two people in mind that I want to do the. 51:41 Seneca Harbin Forward, forward and they both knew, so I used the 2001 recipe that Alan Maxwell did of the 1650. 51:51 Seneca Harbin For. 51:51 Seneca Harbin Cause as as you know. 51:53 Seneca Harbin It's it's pretty rough. Couple of English letters didn't exist back then, so it kinda sounds goofy when you read. 51:58 Seneca Harbin It. 51:59 Seneca Harbin Kind of Maxwell. 52:01 Seneca Harbin What did a 2001 retype? So I'm using that for the base back. 52:06 Seneca Harbin And then I've got two people that actually knew him in real life. I only emailed with him back and forth because he lived in Australia when I met him. I don't. 52:13 Seneca Harbin Know if he. 52:13 Seneca Harbin Always lived there? No. So I've got two people that knew him in real life. I want them to write this forward for the book. 52:21 Seneca Harbin But yeah, that that'll be done this year. So I'm excited about that. And then what I learned in the. 52:28 Seneca Harbin Book was that when I'm done with the book and when it's a finished product is two different phones, I'm giving someone a piece of coal and they are refining it and and making it look good and timeless and evergreening it. And so that's just something that I'm very thankful for and I'm very appreciative of. 52:49 Seneca Harbin But it wasn't. I just didn't know what I didn't know. And so when I get done with the book and turned it off to somebody. 52:57 Seneca Harbin You know, maybe 2025 ish 26. It'll come out. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually hoping that book will be used at Atlanta Bible College later on in life. I hope that it's important enough to teach. 53:12 Seneca Harbin People who are going to then teach people how biblically Unitarianism came to be in the West, at least, so that they could, even if they don't agree with it, they could still understand where it came from. 53:24 Sean Finnegan Yeah. And we should give Anna Brown a shout out who did a lot of work on the cost of truth in that turning coal to diamonds process and just wrangling all these specialists and professionals to do all this. The work that goes into a project like this. 53:42 Sean Finnegan And so, thanks to Anna Brown for that. I encourage all of you out there to get your copy of the cost of truth. It's a it's a great book. It'll encourage you. It'll challenge you. And I think it's the sort of book you can. 53:55 Sean Finnegan I don't know if you could give it to like just a a random evangelical and see what they think, but it definitely has evangelistic potential. What? What do you think, Seneca? You think you just hand it to like a Baptist and see what they do? 54:08 Seneca Harbin I think so. I didn't know that when I wrote the book, but since I've talked to people who have read it, it's such a soft entry into the world of the book being italianism it's not a 600 page tome of of doctrine. It's just real stories of real people. And it's, hey, this this is another option and. 54:22 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 54:27 Seneca Harbin You've never heard of it or considered it. It's a real thing. It has. 54:31 Seneca Harbin Real biblical basis. 54:33 Seneca Harbin And maybe check it out and so I hope it'll be a soft enough entry to where people then they're kind of the the where the first book came from, where the second book is going. 54:44 Seneca Harbin Very quickly, the soft entry into overall biblical Unitarianism. The second book is going. 54:48 Seneca Harbin To be this. 54:49 Seneca Harbin Is what the foundation started in, and whether you're still there or not. That's OK. I'm not saying you're right or wrong. 54:56 Seneca Harbin Wrong. 54:57 Seneca Harbin But at least. 54:58 Seneca Harbin Know what you're supposed to know first. 55:00 Sean Finnegan I I think with your early material like introduction, chapter one, that really does define well what biblical Unitarianism is as far as like what we think we are and. 55:16 Sean Finnegan Here's here's a funny thing we we bought a Facebook ad living Hope did. Who was the publisher of the book and on the Facebook ad for the book, there were multiple Trinitarian trolls came on and said Booker Unitarian. Ha ha ha. What a what? A contradiction. 55:35 Sean Finnegan What they're laughing at is that, like, Unitarian is so often associated with people who don't believe in the Bible, say biblical Unitarian, you know rubs them the wrong way. Or perhaps they think, wrongfully, that the Trinity is the biblical teaching. And so Unitarian can't possibly be biblical. There was another person. 55:55 Sean Finnegan On there, that also made a very negative comment. 56:00 Sean Finnegan And it's like. 56:01 Sean Finnegan Struck me as so ironic because here you have people that are justifying the need for this book by doing the thing that the book is sent is sort of like making the public aware of, like, hey, we're this truth costs you something you're gonna get made fun of. You could get kicked out of a church, you could lose job opportunities, especially in ministry. 56:21 Sean Finnegan And lots of other consequences. So I think it it's, it's definitely proved its its value even just in that ad which is funny. But thanks so much for talking with me today. Seneca, I wish you the best with this project and the next one and the next one and the next one. 56:39 Sean Finnegan You don't seem like the type to just slow down and just say, alright, that's good. It's a good thing. I appreciate you talking with me. 56:48 Seneca Harbin I would like. 56:48 Seneca Harbin To end on just a note of gratitude you mentioned Anna Brown earlier. 56:55 Seneca Harbin I mentioned it in the book. There's a couple of people. I threw their names out there because no matter how our relationship ends up. 57:04 Seneca Harbin At the point in time, they were so helpful and so foundational and and all that good. 57:10 Seneca Harbin Anna Brown has helped me in so many aspects of my life. She is a bedrock of positivity and a growth mindset. She's extremely assertive and just has this driver mentality and and that's the group of people that I'm always. 57:31 Seneca Harbin Attracted to the most, I always want to be in their presence. 57:35 Seneca Harbin Which is unhealthy because you can't have a room full of drivers. But I just love the thought process and then the totality of yes, here's an idea. Let's get it, you know, let's get. 57:45 Seneca Harbin After it, yeah. 57:46 Seneca Harbin And so with this book, with a little Bible study we had in the house back a couple of years ago with Christian Center counseling, Anna has. 57:55 Seneca Harbin Been there in my corner, the. 57:57 Seneca Harbin Time and a lot of things that are successful today are successful because of the and so I really appreciate it and I really appreciate everybody who is a co-author in the book. 58:08 Seneca Harbin And have any. 58:09 Seneca Harbin Obviously, living home, the publisher, we couldn't do it. 58:14 Seneca Harbin A lot of things. 58:16 Seneca Harbin In life, people think because we live in this Western culture where we think maybe me all the time. 58:23 Seneca Harbin That's not real. Like I couldn't be where I'm at today without all the people in my corner and my family and the people like Anna Brown and living hope. As the publisher and the co-authors who are willing to do it, and all the people who come way before me, all the theologians and you know John Biddle, for him to publish that work that he did. 58:44 Seneca Harbin Back in 1600. 58:45 Seneca Harbin It it was the cost of his life. 58:47 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it cost him his life. 58:48 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 58:49 Seneca Harbin So and today's October six kendale he got smoked for translating the Bible into English. So like all the people who came before me. 58:59 Seneca Harbin I'm just trying to recirculate some of the truth that I believe should be out there. Yeah, it's not my idea. It's not something I came up with and I couldn't do it without all the support of everybody else. So I really appreciate everybody. 59:20 Sean Finnegan Well, that brings this interview to an end. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find episode 569. The cost of truth and leave your feedback there. Also, if you don't mind, please share this episode with others who you think would benefit from listening to it. 59:37 Sean Finnegan On last week's episode called The Witch of Endor and the Rich Man and Lazarus Parable with Dustin Smith, the same two men. 59:45 Sean Finnegan Someone using the moniker tax paying Christian says. Thanks for hosting this cordial discussion. Well, let me just let me just pause it there. We had a comment come through the week before. 59:56 Or. 59:57 Sean Finnegan By someone using the name, tax evader or something like that. So this person is playing off of that. You have to check out the episode from last week if you if you missed that. 1:00:08 Sean Finnegan Anyhow, this person says it's not every day that we can hear two to three people respectfully disagreeing on important subjects and still be able to walk away as friends. 1:00:18 Sean Finnegan My question has to do with the correct method for understanding difficult Bible verses. At the conclusion Sean praised Sam for taking Luke 16 at face value, Mr. Smith on multiple occasions attempted to set the passages in their context, EG the poetry that dominates the Prophet Isaiah, the Deuteronomistic history of First Samuel as it relates to the theology of Deuteronomy. 1:00:43 Sean Finnegan The contemporary Egyptian parallel story to Luke 16 and the prodigal sons death and resurrection. Can you help me understand why taking a difficult passage at face value is the better method than striving to set verses in their context? Please help me see what I am missing. Thank you for the good show. 1:01:04 Sean Finnegan Well, the simple answer is that it's not a difficult text. If you believe the afterlife. Jesus described in the parable is the afterlife that the Bible teaches in other places, and that everyone's going to experience. 1:01:17 Sean Finnegan It's always a kind of special pleading when we say this or that is a difficult text and therefore we need to employ extra moves to explain it, and Sam doesn't do that. He just reads the passage as it's written and then says this is what I believe. Since I disagree with Sam, I'm going to go on the record as saying. 1:01:37 Sean Finnegan The problem with doing that is that it goes against what Jesus explicitly says in other places, in particular with respect to the historical Lazarus, whom he says is asleep when he's dead. 1:01:50 Sean Finnegan And if somebody's asleep, they're not awake, which is what the Lazarus and the parable and the rich man were. They were both awake. They were not asleep in them, intermediate state, taking at face value is generally a good approach. But when you do have a contradiction where you will either have to say that Jesus is contradicting himself and. 1:02:10 Sean Finnegan Just making mistakes or. 1:02:13 Sean Finnegan One of the two is being misinterpreted. I'm going to go with number two of those two options, so I think that's my hermeneutical justification for taking a deeper look at the exegesis and then when we do find out about this floating story of two dead people whose fates are reversed and the popularity of this. 1:02:35 Sean Finnegan Fable or parable? 1:02:37 Sean Finnegan Not only in Egypt but also in Israel, where it was commonly told we do start to justify not taking the parable as describing actual events in the underworld. So that would be my approach and I hope I clarified where I was coming from in my remarks about Sam having the advantage. 1:02:58 Sean Finnegan In taking the passage at face value. 1:03:01 Sean Finnegan Suzanne Lakin writes in saying, well, very insightful. I was delightfully surprised to find I am in disagreement with all three of you regarding the Witch of Endor account. 1:03:12 Sean Finnegan Well, first of all, Suzanne, I don't know why that makes you delighted. 1:03:16 Sean Finnegan But maybe just enjoy the struggle, she goes on. I am absolutely a physicalist and I take Yahweh at his word when he tells humans from dust you are and to dust you will return. 1:03:28 Sean Finnegan I'd like to suggest, as I've heard, many proponents of open theism, which I also embrace, we should avoid limiting God those who oppose open theism state that God couldn't possibly create a world in which he limits his very own knowledge in order to have authentic relationships with his humans. Yet he must to allow for free. 1:03:48 Sean Finnegan Go. 1:03:49 Sean Finnegan And I believe the Bible provides incontrovertible evidence that God chooses to not know the future, to react in real time, to how his creatures act. Similarly to, say, God is incapable of recreating an individual from the dust, giving her all her prior memories, and making her the same person and not a clone is to limit. 1:04:09 Sean Finnegan 9. 1:04:10 Sean Finnegan There truly is, from my humble perspective, nothing at all, anywhere in Scripture that indicates humans are in some conscious state or actually exist in any form at all if we are but dust in return to dust, we need to ask what is the sleeping or subconscious state of dust. 1:04:29 Sean Finnegan Does the Bible say dust has some secret actual conscious or sleeping state? Wouldn't God have told his creatures from Adam onward that when they die some part of them is really still in existence? 1:04:44 Sean Finnegan Why can't we allow for the euphemism of sleep to be merely a descriptor to indicate humans are not eternally gone, but still exist in God's mind such that he can at any time and he has said a time, recreate them as if awakening them from sleep so much more to be said on this. But if you are going to do a 4 views book, I volunteer to give an alternative. 1:05:06 Sean Finnegan You that I believe is aligned with the entirety of Scripture. 1:05:10 Sean Finnegan Oh, and a lot to say about the parable of the rich man. Too grateful for these wonderful, respectful dialogues. And for all three of you humble men of God. 1:05:18 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks for writing in. Suzanne Lakin, I have to admit I am unsatisfied with your explanation of the clone problem. Now once again, let me explain it. I scan your DNA and I make another body that is identical to your current body at its current age. 1:05:38 Sean Finnegan Every facet exactly the same. I make this in a laboratory of regular human biological. 1:05:46 Sean Finnegan Material. And then I scan your brain and I ensure that the brain of the clone has exactly the same memories and wrinkles or however brains work. I don't know. 1:06:02 Sean Finnegan And then I wake up that person and I say hello Suzanne. Good morning. 1:06:10 Sean Finnegan Is that is that Suzanne Lakin. You? No, of course not. You're you're in your home in California. Just leading your life, doing the things. This is another you. It's a clone. It is not you. It is a copy of you that has the same memories and thinks that she is Suzanne as well. But she's not Suzanne because you already exist. 1:06:32 Sean Finnegan In another place at the same time, that's the clone problem. So how does that relate to resurrection? Well, all we do is allow for time in between those two. 1:06:43 Sean Finnegan Events. So if somebody dies and then they're resurrected and the resurrection involves recreation, then that is the same thing as just having a clone, not at the same time as you, but as at a different time than you. And then saying that to you. But it's still a clone that's easy to see. 1:07:04 Sean Finnegan Because there is no you that survived to become the clone to become the resurrected person. So that is a problem. And look, if God is just going to clone us in resurrection then. 1:07:17 Sean Finnegan You know, I'm sure the clone of me will have a great life in the resurrection, but what about me? 1:07:23 Sean Finnegan What about my faith and everything else? This is also called the transporter problem from Star Trek just to just throw that out there where basically you break somebody down and their into their constituent atoms and then you beam the information and that person is essentially recreated in a transporter in another location. 1:07:44 Sean Finnegan So basically the transporter problem is is the same idea where somebody dies and is recreated over and over and over again. But like that person has. 1:07:56 Sean Finnegan Not experience continuity throughout. So like you're just killing and cloning the person over and over and over again, which I think is not really what people want. 1:08:07 Sean Finnegan When they're just looking for transportation. 1:08:09 Sean Finnegan Now Suzanne makes some interesting points about you come from dust and you go to dust. I'm not disputing that. We certainly do come from dust. What? What of us comes from dust? Our bodies? I think that's. 1:08:21 Sean Finnegan Ear our bodies and our brains and so forth come from dust, but I think we have something more than just a body happening. I think there's also a mind in some ways clearly relates to the brain, but it's not exactly 1 to one equivalent. And I think there that's a spiritual entity. 1:08:42 Sean Finnegan You could call it a soul. I'm not super comfortable with using that term. I'd just rather prefer to use mind and that seems to also be the case and how that relates to the brain that's deeper than what I'm looking to get into here. I'm just saying, look, if there is such a thing as a mind such a thing as your consciousness. 1:09:00 Sean Finnegan That can be stewarded by God throughout the intermediate state and whatever way he sees fit to do that. Obviously in a dormant sense, because it's described as sleep. Then you can have the same person in the resurrection so long as the mind part of the person or some part of the mind of the person. 1:09:21 Sean Finnegan That would represent their consciousness, is able to survive the death state. 1:09:28 Sean Finnegan She talks about to dust and so I I don't really struggle with that. And then she says nothing anywhere in scripture indicates humans are in a in some conscious state. Well, I I think you that's arguable the term sleep as she rightly points out, is a euphemism. You're not actually asleep when you're dead, but asleep. People aren't dead. Right. So. 1:09:47 Sean Finnegan There is possibly a hint here in the term sleep and the Jews did have this idea of shell. 1:09:54 Sean Finnegan And it was a place where the dead are, even though their bodies are decaying in their tombs, the people are in this storage chamber or whatever you want to call it. So I I think there is something there. I don't in scripture. I don't think this is just like made-up whole cloth. 1:10:13 Sean Finnegan By the philosophers, and then she goes on to say. 1:10:17 Sean Finnegan The Bible doesn't talk about a secret conscious or sleeping state. Well, I think it does. I mean, it wasn't that kind of Sam's point about Isaiah 14 and the Witch of Endor. Well, I think Sam's point is that they both talk about consciousness in the intermediate state, but I think Dustin's point, which was even more strongly sustained, was that actually these both give evidence that you're normally. 1:10:38 Sean Finnegan Unconscious in the intermediate state, but in a hyperbolic Isaiah 14 kind of way you could be awakened, or Isaiah could see somebody as being awakened. Oh, here's the tough guy that terrified everybody on Earth, and now you're just like the rest of us who are just awaiting. 1:10:55 Sean Finnegan The final judgment, who are awaiting our resurrection. It's not that Isaiah thought this actually happened, but like in order to write in order to write that sort of poetic scene in Isaiah 14, you have to sort of have something to work with, I would say. And so if there are consciousnesses. 1:11:15 Sean Finnegan Or whatever that descended into another realm, another dimension, another reality. Who knows how to describe this? I have no idea. You have something to work with to, like, wake them up and have them say, oh, here comes this other person who's now in the death state with us. 1:11:33 Sean Finnegan And so also with the Witch of Endor we're we're Samuel appears to get awakened from sleep and he's rather disturbed by that and speaks and so forth. So that indicates that he is able to be awoken in the intermediate state, but it's really bad to do something like that. 1:11:53 Sean Finnegan Saying that, there's no scriptures about this is not necessarily the case. It depends on your interpretation. 1:11:59 Sean Finnegan And then she goes on to say, wouldn't God have told his creatures from Adam onward that when they die, some part of them is really still in existence? Not necessarily. I I think that's up to God. What he tells us. You know, a lot of this is speculation as far as, like how God can preserve identity through the death experience. He doesn't owe us an explanation on how he's going to do that. 1:12:21 Sean Finnegan And we might be able to think of other ways to do it, and maybe God's not using any of the ways that we're thinking of and he's doing something else that we have no idea anything about that we don't even have the capacity to image. 1:12:35 Sean Finnegan That says prerogative. The point is that when God resurrects you, he resurrects you, and not just recreating a copy of you. And that we certainly saw with Jesus, with Jesus, he descended into Hades, he was dead for three days. And then when he came back, it wasn't like. 1:12:54 Sean Finnegan He constructed a new body out of nothing. He used the old remains of his previous body, and it was the same Jesus. He recognized people and he said I was dead and now I'm alive. You know, like there there is certainly the impression that we get of continuity there of identity. 1:13:15 Sean Finnegan So yeah, I don't think God is under any obligation to tell us. And then she says, why can't we have the euphemism of sleep to indicate humans are not eternally gone but still exist in God's mind such that he can at any time recreate them, as if waking them from sleep. Actually, that Suzanne, I think that's what I'm arguing. 1:13:35 Sean Finnegan I I think I think we're just arguing the same thing here. 1:13:39 Sean Finnegan You say still exist in God's mind. That's what I'm trying to say. We have to still exist in some capacity, whether it's in God's mind, whatever that is, or as a disembodied soul in an underground chamber or something, or in some other way. 1:13:59 Sean Finnegan Some other technology we don't understand or we don't have access. 1:14:03 Sean Finnegan Is to whatever that's not important. The how. My point is we have to still exist, because if you completely cease to exist in every sense of the word, the only thing that can happen in resurrection is a clone. And it's not a limitation on God. It's not me saying, oh, God, can't do it. God can't make a square circle. 1:14:23 Sean Finnegan That's not a limitation on God. There's just no such thing as a square circle to be a square is to have four sides, and circles only have one side, so you can't. It's not like, oh, I'm limiting God here. No, I I think if everything of you is completely dead. 1:14:40 Sean Finnegan There is no way to preserve your identity through death. 1:14:44 Sean Finnegan And it's not a limitation on God. 1:14:47 Sean Finnegan So fussing about how exactly God does that, how does he preserve us through the intermediate state? I'm totally comfortable with just using the word sleep. We are asleep in the intermediate state, and then he wakes us up in the final state in the resurrection. 1:15:02 Sean Finnegan For life and the age should come. So maybe that was more than anybody wanted to hear. Suzanne, we'll definitely keep you in mind for a book on this subject. If something like that ever did come along, I really appreciated your contribution in the cost of truth. And if anyone of you out there didn't have not yet read Suzanne's chapter in the cost of truth, you got to read it. 1:15:23 Sean Finnegan It's got UFOs. It's got Jehovah's. 1:15:25 Sean Finnegan This is it's got atheists and and Suzanne growing up as a Jew in Beverly Hills. I mean, it's got, it's just got everything. So you should definitely pick up the cost of truth and read Suzanne's chapter actually read the whole book. That would be my recommendation. All right, well, that's gonna be it for me, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope to see a number of you at UCA. 1:15:48 Sean Finnegan Con 2024 coming up in a week, that's going to be a great time looking forward to that going to be presenting on Isaiah 9/6 and I will be posting my paper on Restitutio dot org. 1:16:05 Sean Finnegan Next week, at some point, so if you would like to read it, you can see what you think about my take on Isaiah 9/6. 1:16:13 Sean Finnegan Thanks everybody for listening to the end. If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitutio.org. We'll catch you next week. And remember, the truth has nothing to fear.