This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 657: Read the Bible for Yourself with Sean Finnegan This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 657 Anna Brown - Read the Bible.mp3 Transcript 00:01 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan and you are listening to Restitutio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan I have a new book out and I'm excited to tell you all about it. 00:15 Sean Finnegan In order to do that, Anna Brown is hosting Restitutio today and putting me in the hot seat. 00:21 Sean Finnegan In this interview, she asks me about Read the Bible for Yourself, a book I've been working on for the last three years. 00:28 Sean Finnegan In our conversation, we talk about whom the book is for and how to use it more effectively. 00:33 Sean Finnegan I share about the chapter you won't want to miss, and I reveal a publishing error that inadvertently promoted marijuana. 00:42 Sean Finnegan Wait, I know what you're thinking. 00:45 Sean Finnegan I thought this book was about reading the Bible. 00:47 Sean Finnegan There's no marijuana in the Bible, right? 00:50 Sean Finnegan You're right. 00:50 Sean Finnegan I guess you'll just have to listen to the interview to find out the details on that one. 00:55 Sean Finnegan But seriously, even if you've been reading the Bible for years, this book will help you read it better by providing you with key techniques and overviews to make sense of what you read. 01:06 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 657, Read the Bible for Yourself. 01:18 Anna Brown Hello and welcome to Restitutio, a podcast seeking to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 01:25 Anna Brown My name is Anna Brown and I'm guest hosting today. 01:28 Anna Brown Our guest is none other than Pastor Sean Finnegan of Living Hope Community Church in Latham, New York. 01:35 Anna Brown He's written a book called Read the Bible for Yourself that we'll be talking about today. 01:39 Anna Brown Sean, welcome to Restitutio. 01:41 Anna Brown Good to have you on the show. 01:42 Sean Finnegan Hey, well, isn't this a fun way to flip the mic? 01:45 Sean Finnegan Thanks for having me today. 01:47 Sean Finnegan Glad to be here. 01:48 Anna Brown I'm pleased. 01:49 Anna Brown Can you give me a little background on the whole series? 01:53 Sean Finnegan Okay, sure. 01:55 Sean Finnegan So what we have worked on, myself, Victor Gluckin, and Will Barlow as the three main authors, and Anna Brown as the project manager, Rose Rider as the designer, just to mention, David Yarnell as the proofreader, just to mention a few of the people involved, and there are others too, is a series of three books 02:15 Sean Finnegan that is designed to give a comprehensive overview to Christianity. 02:20 Sean Finnegan In other words, how to ensure that somebody gets a fully orbed understanding of the basics of Christianity. 02:29 Sean Finnegan And so these books are really designed to be done with someone else, not just by yourself. 02:37 Sean Finnegan Of course, you could always just read any of these by themselves, but the three books are called Follow the Way of Jesus, 02:44 Sean Finnegan read the Bible for yourself and explore what we believe. 02:48 Sean Finnegan And you can just get one of these three books. 02:51 Sean Finnegan You can buy all three. 02:52 Sean Finnegan You know, they're sold separately on Amazon. 02:53 Sean Finnegan But the idea is to provide Christians with resources, discipleship resources that they can use to help others get a comprehensive understanding of the basics of Christianity. 03:05 Anna Brown I love it. 03:05 Anna Brown And it's available on Amazon today, right? 03:08 Sean Finnegan It is. 03:08 Sean Finnegan It is. 03:09 Sean Finnegan It's out. 03:10 Anna Brown That's so exciting. 03:11 Anna Brown So your book is called Read the Bible for Yourself. 03:14 Anna Brown It lands right in the middle of the other two, and it's both an introduction and a guide to the scriptures. 03:20 Anna Brown Why did you choose this topic? 03:23 Sean Finnegan I believe that because God's behind scripture, that he worked with the authors such that what they wrote is what he wanted written, and that he preserved these writings over hundreds of years, thousands of years, that the Bible is really a big deal. 03:40 Sean Finnegan The Bible is really something that gives you insight into the mind of God, that you can think the thoughts of God after Him. 03:50 Sean Finnegan As a result, I think it's just supremely worth your time, all of our time, to read. 03:57 Sean Finnegan So I have a high view of scripture on the one hand. 03:59 Sean Finnegan I believe the 66 books of the Bible are inspired by God. 04:02 Sean Finnegan But I also believe in something called perspicuity, which is the idea that the Bible is designed to be understood, read and understood by normal people. 04:14 Sean Finnegan Because the original authors and audiences of scripture were farmers and fishermen and 04:22 Sean Finnegan just ordinary people. 04:24 Sean Finnegan I mean, there were some more educated folks in the mix too, but by and large, the Bible is for normal people. 04:33 Sean Finnegan One of the greatest tragedies, in my personal opinion, in Christianity today is people who buy Bibles. 04:39 Sean Finnegan and those Bibles sit on the shelf and collect dust and people don't read them. 04:44 Sean Finnegan Or who get a Bible app on their phone and they never open it and their phone gives them notifications occasionally that certain apps are slated for deep sleep and the Bible app is one of them because you haven't used it in so long, right? 04:59 Sean Finnegan So this is all just heartbreaking to me. 05:02 Sean Finnegan Like my wife wrote me a lovely 05:06 Sean Finnegan card for our anniversary. 05:07 Sean Finnegan We've been married 23 years. 05:09 Sean Finnegan And that was, let's see, 12 days ago. 05:11 Sean Finnegan So almost two weeks ago, she gave me this card. 05:13 Sean Finnegan And Anna, I value this card. 05:15 Sean Finnegan You know why? 05:16 Sean Finnegan Because my wife wrote it. 05:17 Sean Finnegan She expressed herself. 05:18 Sean Finnegan She put a feeling. 05:19 Sean Finnegan She drew a little heart. 05:20 Sean Finnegan She wrote my name. 05:21 Sean Finnegan She drew a little heart. 05:22 Sean Finnegan And so I cherish the card. 05:24 Sean Finnegan You know, I'm still driving around with it in the door pocket of my car because I, you know, I don't, she loves me. 05:30 Sean Finnegan I love her. 05:31 Sean Finnegan So if somebody that's valuable to you, 05:34 Sean Finnegan writes something, you want to read it. 05:36 Sean Finnegan Okay? 05:37 Sean Finnegan God wrote, well, God didn't write, but you know, God inspired, worked with human authors to write these 66 books. 05:44 Sean Finnegan And it's like, my goodness, we just need to recognize the value of that. 05:49 Sean Finnegan And it's heartbreaking to me to know that so many people will pick up the Bible, they'll read it, and they're just like overwhelmed, or they read it and they don't understand it. 05:57 Sean Finnegan It's confusing. 05:59 Sean Finnegan and they put it down and then they quit and they don't get to benefit from the treasures in scripture. 06:04 Sean Finnegan So that's kind of where I'm coming from with the whole thing. 06:07 Sean Finnegan I'm A Bible guy. 06:07 Sean Finnegan I've been reading the Bible for a long time, but especially since I was 19 and I really repented of my sins and became a legitimate Christian. 06:17 Sean Finnegan I mean, I think I was a Christian when I was like a little kid and stuff. 06:19 Sean Finnegan But, you know, when I really made the decision for myself, one of the first things that happened, 06:24 Sean Finnegan One of the very first things that happened for me personally was that God gave me a hunger for scripture that I never had before. 06:33 Sean Finnegan And I started reading it. 06:34 Sean Finnegan I started really saying, this is incredible. 06:37 Sean Finnegan And I could understand it. 06:38 Sean Finnegan And I was just like, this is awesome. 06:41 Sean Finnegan I want to learn more. 06:42 Sean Finnegan I want to read more. 06:43 Sean Finnegan So that's a little bit about where I'm coming from with it. 06:47 Anna Brown I love that. 06:47 Anna Brown You know, Tim Keller, in his book on preaching, he says that the scripture is what changes people's hearts. 06:54 Anna Brown And so when you're teaching the Bible, he basically says you can relax because your whole job is just to facilitate an encounter with the scripture, because an encounter with the scripture is where the power lies in the Christian life. 07:08 Anna Brown And I think that's a really powerful thing that you're talking about. 07:11 Anna Brown I love hearing about your passion for the scripture and your belief that people should get to read it. 07:18 Anna Brown I want to ask you, if you were to say, everyone needs to read one chapter in your book, which chapter is it? 07:27 Sean Finnegan That's a tough one. 07:28 Sean Finnegan Let's see, it was like 260 pages. 07:30 Sean Finnegan So you're making me, you're making me choose. 07:34 Sean Finnegan That's your prerogative. 07:36 Sean Finnegan I'm in the hot seat. 07:37 Sean Finnegan You're the host. 07:38 Sean Finnegan You're calling the shots. 07:40 Sean Finnegan I'm going to save my chapter on Psalms. 07:42 Sean Finnegan I'm going to, I would save my chapter on the Psalms. 07:45 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 07:45 Anna Brown That was the one I would say too. 07:48 Sean Finnegan It was probably the one that took the most work. 07:50 Sean Finnegan I don't know if that's really true, but it took a lot of work. 07:52 Sean Finnegan I'll just say that. 07:54 Sean Finnegan And part of that was because I searched and searched online to find somebody who categorized all the Psalms. 08:02 Sean Finnegan And that's part of like the analytic mind I have is like, I want to know like how many different kinds of Psalms are there and what are the different categories and 08:12 Sean Finnegan Also, when should you read this Psalm? 08:16 Sean Finnegan When should you read or pray that Psalm? 08:18 Sean Finnegan I really got a lot of insight in Bible college from a book by Walter Brueggemann. 08:23 Sean Finnegan I forget what it was called, but he talked about three kinds of Psalms, Psalms of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. 08:31 Sean Finnegan And those aren't the only three categories of Psalms, but you can categorize the Psalms into those 3 categories where they would be kind of like the larger categories and you'd have subcategories under them. 08:42 Sean Finnegan Anyhow, I did all the work. 08:44 Sean Finnegan I read through all 150 Psalms. 08:46 Sean Finnegan I categorized each one and I came up with what I thought were the main groupings. 08:52 Sean Finnegan I posted it on Restitutio on the web page, because it's also a blog in addition to a podcast. 08:59 Sean Finnegan And that post every single day gets more traffic than the whole rest of my website combined. 09:08 Sean Finnegan And I was like, 09:10 Sean Finnegan So weird, such a random thing. 09:13 Sean Finnegan Like I've got so many different podcasts, episodes. 09:16 Sean Finnegan I've got YouTube videos. 09:17 Sean Finnegan I've got lots of written stuff on there, full-length scholarly articles and shorter blog type articles. 09:24 Sean Finnegan But like the one I wrote, 150 Psalms categorized. 09:27 Sean Finnegan If you type that into any search engine or AI, it's going to lead you to Restitutio, which is crazy, but also pretty cool. 09:35 Sean Finnegan And that's when I realized, like, people are looking for this. 09:39 Sean Finnegan The only reason why that is the case is because people are saying, they encounter the 150 Psalms in their Bible and they're like, all right, this seems like a lot of data. 09:49 Sean Finnegan How do I use it? 09:50 Sean Finnegan How do I find my bearings? 09:52 Sean Finnegan What are the different categories? 09:53 Sean Finnegan So I recommend that chapter in the book on Psalms. 09:56 Sean Finnegan I have chapters on like different sections of the Bible. 09:58 Sean Finnegan So there's like a chapter on the law, chapter on history, 10:03 Sean Finnegan chapter on wisdom literature, and then I did Psalms as his own chapter, and then also through the New Testament as well. 10:10 Sean Finnegan So the idea is that the Bible is not just one simple monolithic thing. 10:15 Sean Finnegan It has different genres, different sections to it, and it's organized. 10:21 Sean Finnegan Like the Old Testament, how we as Christians organize it is history, poetry, prophecy. 10:28 Sean Finnegan The history section is like Genesis all the way through 10:31 Sean Finnegan Joshua, Judges, Ruth, right? 10:33 Sean Finnegan And into the kings and all of that, into the exile, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, right? 10:39 Sean Finnegan So that's all history. 10:41 Sean Finnegan And then we get into the poetry section or the wisdom literature, which is like Song of Solomon, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. 10:49 Sean Finnegan We have that sort of like in a middle section. 10:51 Sean Finnegan And then we have all the prophetic books, the five major prophets, the 12 minor prophets. 10:57 Sean Finnegan So, there is a structure to the Bible. 11:00 Sean Finnegan People don't even realize this. 11:01 Sean Finnegan We just read it. 11:01 Sean Finnegan We focus on just what we're in, what chapter we're in, what verse we're on. 11:05 Sean Finnegan We're not seeing like the bigger picture, which I think could help. 11:08 Sean Finnegan So yeah, I would say the chapter on the Psalms would be my go-to. 11:12 Sean Finnegan If I had to pick a second one, I'd say I got the most positive feedback from those who looked at it prior to publication on my chapters that are introducing the New Testament. 11:25 Sean Finnegan So I have two chapters. 11:27 Sean Finnegan introducing the New Testament. 11:29 Sean Finnegan You see, they're called Historical Introduction to the New Testament, and then Political and Religious Introduction to the New Testament. 11:36 Sean Finnegan This is where I talk about the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the 4th philosophy, also called the Zealots. 11:42 Sean Finnegan and talk about all the Herods and Pilate and all the stuff that is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but it's suddenly there in the New Testament and people are like, wait a second, I didn't read about Sadducees in the Old Testament. 11:55 Sean Finnegan Where did they come from? 11:57 Sean Finnegan So just kind of giving those intros. 11:58 Anna Brown And the gospels are just like assuming that you've heard of this. 12:01 Sean Finnegan Right, because they're written to a people in a time when that was all common knowledge. 12:06 Sean Finnegan people will really benefit from that. 12:08 Sean Finnegan It'll just like help you, especially the gospels, be able to read and understand the gospels a little more comprehensively. 12:15 Anna Brown That's cool. 12:16 Anna Brown Something that I really appreciate about your book that has come to mind a couple times has been how encouraging it is to just get in there and read the scripture. 12:28 Anna Brown You go through 12:30 Anna Brown different things that you should be considering, context, historical context, cultural context, context within the scripture, genre in each section. 12:39 Anna Brown And then at the end of the day, the book says, and you know what, if you don't understand what you're reading, just keep reading. 12:47 Anna Brown Which personally I can say is the best reading advice that anyone has ever given me about any book, period. 12:57 Anna Brown But to hear that about the scripture repeatedly, I think is just going to be really encouraging for people. 13:03 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 13:03 Sean Finnegan Well, I mean, the whole idea of the book is that it's for beginners, it's for people that are just starting in their journey. 13:10 Sean Finnegan A lot of Christians, they know the basics of like salvation. 13:15 Sean Finnegan And maybe they also know how to like live out their faith, like the various practices of Christianity. 13:19 Sean Finnegan But the Bible is just sort of like an immense collection of literature 13:25 Sean Finnegan that it's like an ocean to them. 13:26 Sean Finnegan They, once you push off far enough from the land, you can't really see where you're going. 13:32 Sean Finnegan It can be overwhelming. 13:34 Sean Finnegan And so you're right. 13:35 Sean Finnegan You know, that's one of my main encouragements in the book is like, look, you can do this. 13:39 Sean Finnegan You can do this. 13:40 Sean Finnegan These people were not smarter or dumber than you. 13:42 Sean Finnegan This is meant to be read and understood. 13:45 Sean Finnegan You might need some background information here or there. 13:48 Sean Finnegan You might need some reading techniques here and there to help you. 13:52 Sean Finnegan It's all about like, 13:54 Sean Finnegan getting more out of it. 13:56 Sean Finnegan I think you take even just like an atheist that has no exposure to Christianity and put that person in front of like Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, right? 14:07 Sean Finnegan Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death, he will be, you know, even that person will understand much of that, okay? 14:14 Sean Finnegan Now you take somebody that has a relationship with God, who's been through suffering, put them through Psalm 23, they get more out of it. 14:22 Sean Finnegan right? 14:22 Sean Finnegan Somebody that has the Spirit of God working in them is going to get more and has life experience walking with God is going to get more. 14:29 Sean Finnegan Now, if we talk about the historical context and we integrate that with the Samuel narratives of David's life, you're going to get more. 14:37 Sean Finnegan And so this is kind of like how they make wine sometimes, where they have like the first pressing, the second pressing, third pressing of the grapes. 14:44 Sean Finnegan Wherever you're at, this book can help you get more than what you already have reading it on your own. 14:51 Sean Finnegan and just read, read, read. 14:52 Sean Finnegan that's really the way to develop it. 14:55 Sean Finnegan But also having some technique will really help. 14:58 Anna Brown I love it. 15:00 Anna Brown I want to change gears a little bit and ask you about how you envision someone using this book. 15:04 Anna Brown So let's say somebody's thinking like, okay, I want to do this optimally. 15:07 Anna Brown I just got my copy. 15:09 Anna Brown How is it intended to be used? 15:11 Sean Finnegan I'll say a couple things about that. 15:13 Sean Finnegan The most use of any book is that you actually read it. 15:19 Sean Finnegan So many times, 15:21 Sean Finnegan And I'm such a realist on this. 15:23 Sean Finnegan I'm an idealist overall, but a serious realist on this one point. 15:27 Sean Finnegan So many times people buy books, they read the first chapter or less, and then they just put it on the shelf. 15:34 Sean Finnegan So if you're going to get it, please read it. 15:36 Sean Finnegan But as far as the best use, I would argue the best use, and I've said this other places, but I'm probably going to say it again, is to have it with three people. 15:45 Sean Finnegan What I would say is that you want to have 15:49 Sean Finnegan a student, somebody that's like learning. 15:51 Sean Finnegan And then you want to have somebody that's mentoring, probably whoever it is that bought this is going to be the mentor. 15:59 Sean Finnegan And then somebody else that you're training as well. 16:02 Sean Finnegan So for example, I'm working with somebody that's new right now in our church and I'm meeting with her on a weekly basis and we do a chapter a week. 16:14 Sean Finnegan And then I have somebody else, another lady that is 16:18 Sean Finnegan she already kind of knows this stuff, but she is learning how to work with somebody else. 16:23 Sean Finnegan This way, I'm working with somebody, but I'm also helping somebody else to gain confidence so that person can work with others in the future. 16:34 Sean Finnegan And I believe that this can have a multiplying effect over time for us making disciples in our churches, but also just in your own life, that if you have three people, I think it's a really good number, you could do it with two, or you could just read it by yourself, right? 16:46 Sean Finnegan But I think optimally, if you have 16:48 Sean Finnegan three people is the best because you're going to get to these questions and it's just sometimes a little easier if you have a third person there to give another point of view. 16:59 Sean Finnegan So I think three people is great. 17:00 Sean Finnegan Read a chapter, read it out loud. 17:02 Sean Finnegan I have all these different discussion questions in the book that when you get to them, it's a 17:08 Sean Finnegan It's a different color in the book. 17:10 Sean Finnegan It's got this box here. 17:12 Sean Finnegan You know, have you ever heard of any of these books before? 17:14 Sean Finnegan If so, which ones? 17:15 Sean Finnegan And so each person is going to have a different answer to that question. 17:18 Sean Finnegan These are not test questions. 17:19 Sean Finnegan These are questions that are like, hey, what's your opinion on this? 17:23 Sean Finnegan Or how do you understand that? 17:24 Sean Finnegan They're open-ended questions that are designed to foster discussion so that you can enjoy the process of reading this book together as a super small group. 17:34 Sean Finnegan So that would be my advice on it. 17:35 Anna Brown I love that. 17:36 Anna Brown I think that sounds really fun. 17:37 Anna Brown You brought up the green in like a blue box that's inside the book. 17:43 Anna Brown Can you tell me a little bit more about the design? 17:46 Sean Finnegan We had an incredible designer work on this project. 17:50 Sean Finnegan I mean, yeah, it's got a nicely designed cover. 17:52 Sean Finnegan Read the Bible for yourself. 17:54 Sean Finnegan what's really fascinating about this book is these other design elements, which I'm just going to skip ahead to here. 18:02 Sean Finnegan So, I mean, first of all, it's pretty. 18:03 Sean Finnegan We have this cool background at the top of each chapter, right? 18:07 Sean Finnegan That's really cool. 18:08 Sean Finnegan Okay, but then you have these design elements for discussion. 18:12 Sean Finnegan There's something about having a visually attractive book that I think just encourages you to read, you know, because we're reading with our eyes. 18:24 Sean Finnegan And when we see color and we see fonts and we see little decorative items, I think it does help us to get through it and enjoy the process a little more. 18:33 Sean Finnegan And I'm just so pleased with Rose Rider and the work she did as our graphic designer for this project and how attractive it is to the eye just to work through it. 18:44 Sean Finnegan I've shown the books to so many different people at this point now that they're out. 18:48 Sean Finnegan And over and over, people are saying the same thing, like, this is just a really good-looking book. 18:54 Sean Finnegan So I wish I could take credit for that, but I had nothing to do with the design. 18:58 Sean Finnegan I just really appreciate you, the work you've done, Anna, working with Rose and the other folks that were involved on the design side of things. 19:06 Sean Finnegan I think Victor Gluckin had quite a few opinions that, you know, as far as this or that, and you know, he's a very stylish guy, so that's helpful to have people like that on the team. 19:16 Anna Brown That's great. 19:17 Anna Brown Yeah, Rose really nailed it. 19:18 Anna Brown was so fun. 19:20 Anna Brown the whole thing's just been really a pleasure. 19:21 Anna Brown So I'm glad to hear you talk about it and get us a chance to look at it. 19:26 Anna Brown What was the writing process like? 19:28 Sean Finnegan The writing process was kind of interesting because I had already taught this as a class. 19:36 Sean Finnegan And so I had my class notes and I just needed to turn those into sentences that made sense. 19:45 Sean Finnegan In a lot of cases, I did further research and 19:50 Sean Finnegan confirmed things or added things to it. 19:53 Sean Finnegan But, I was able to write it fairly quickly. 19:56 Sean Finnegan But here's the thing. 19:58 Sean Finnegan I wanted this to be part of a series. 20:01 Sean Finnegan I didn't want to just write a book and have a book out there. 20:05 Sean Finnegan I wanted to have three people write three books and have three books out there that would all fit with each other and be used in each other's churches. 20:17 Sean Finnegan So 20:18 Sean Finnegan What I ended up doing was meeting with Victor Gluckin and Will Barlow at Victor's Church in Rhode Island. 20:25 Sean Finnegan I think that was in maybe late 2023 or early 24. 20:30 Sean Finnegan I just kind of laid out the whole project and I said, look, let's do this. 20:34 Sean Finnegan What do you guys think? 20:35 Sean Finnegan And they're like, yeah, we're in it. 20:36 Sean Finnegan And so as we were each writing at the same time, we would have usually one a month, sometimes more than one a month, Zoom meetings. 20:46 Sean Finnegan where we would edit each other's content. 20:49 Sean Finnegan So every single chapter of this book, Read the Bible for Yourself, has been edited by two other pastors. 20:57 Sean Finnegan And they said to me sometimes things like, oh, well, this word is difficult. 21:03 Sean Finnegan Many people are not going to understand it. 21:05 Sean Finnegan You should change it to an easier word. 21:07 Sean Finnegan They said it to me a lot. 21:09 Sean Finnegan They also said things like, this question is too hard to answer or too easy to answer, or it's a yes-no question. 21:15 Sean Finnegan So, it's just like a lot of feedback on the nuts and bolts of the book to improve it. 21:23 Sean Finnegan Then, of course, it was also proofread. 21:25 Sean Finnegan I certainly appreciate Dave, our proofreader, for working through that and making it a little better. 21:31 Sean Finnegan And then I proofread it again after that. 21:35 Sean Finnegan Can you tell I'm a perfectionist? 21:37 Sean Finnegan So, I mean, it's just been revised and revised and revised, and hopefully it is really smooth and really good. 21:45 Sean Finnegan And if you have further revisions, who knows, maybe we'll have a 2.0 version in a year or something. 21:51 Sean Finnegan Yeah, do send in any corrections to me, sean at Restitutio.org, so that I can make them. 21:57 Sean Finnegan I appreciate that. 21:58 Sean Finnegan sounds great. 21:59 Sean Finnegan It was an incredibly long process, and I'm not going to lie, I was running thin on patients. 22:06 Sean Finnegan And then it took a year or so to get the publishing part of it done. 22:12 Sean Finnegan Somewhere in 2025, we finished our edits and went to publishing. 22:17 Sean Finnegan And then now it's June 2026 and it's out. 22:21 Sean Finnegan So it's just been such a big project over such a long period of time. 22:26 Sean Finnegan I think if I had just written a book, 22:28 Sean Finnegan and published it. 22:30 Sean Finnegan would have been out a year ago probably, but since it's part of this bigger project and we really wanted to make sure that the other pastors would be willing to use it in their churches, which what I said to them was like, look guys, if anything in this book makes you cringe, tell me. 22:46 Sean Finnegan I want to know because I'm not trying to be controversial. 22:50 Sean Finnegan I'm not trying to be taking positions 22:53 Sean Finnegan that are fringe or idiosyncratic. 22:56 Sean Finnegan I'm trying to lay out the basics on how to read the Bible in a way that is accurate and true and enjoyable. 23:02 Sean Finnegan You know, I did change a bunch of things here and there that they were like, oh, this seems a little too much this way or too much that way. 23:10 Sean Finnegan And so I hope the finished product is something that, you know, will have wide appeal and that people will enjoy and ultimately help them read the Bible for themselves. 23:19 Sean Finnegan Because if it doesn't do that, then it's, there's no point. 23:22 Sean Finnegan That's the goal. 23:24 Anna Brown What I hear you say is that there was so much revision and so many different layers and so much feedback, which I think is something that's really helpful, especially for a book like this that you're hoping to appeal to a lot of people. 23:39 Anna Brown Can you tell me about the thing that you found in the book when you got your author's proof right before it went to publishing? 23:48 Sean Finnegan Yes. 23:50 Sean Finnegan I 23:52 Sean Finnegan was flipping through the book. 23:54 Sean Finnegan All right, let's be honest. 23:55 Sean Finnegan I was feverishly reading every word in the book to make sure that it was what I wanted it to be. 24:02 Anna Brown Yeah. 24:02 Sean Finnegan Because after there are so many layers, you know, you finally see the end product and you're like, is this even what I wrote? 24:08 Sean Finnegan So I just wanted to make sure that it was what I was happy with. 24:13 Sean Finnegan I came across a marijuana leaf. 24:15 Sean Finnegan Now at the bottom, at the bottom of each page, I have that 24:21 Sean Finnegan copy of it around here somewhere. 24:23 Sean Finnegan Occasionally at the bottom of certain pages, there's a white space. 24:27 Sean Finnegan There's just like an empty area because of layout constraints. 24:31 Sean Finnegan A lot of times you have these colored boxes and you don't want the box to split over 2 pages, right? 24:37 Sean Finnegan So you put it on the next page and then that creates a space. 24:41 Sean Finnegan And so what our designer did, and I just so love her work, is she put all of these 24:49 Sean Finnegan Botanical, yes, designs. 24:52 Sean Finnegan And I'm flipping through and I come across a marijuana leaf. 24:56 Sean Finnegan What I did first is I just typed in marijuana leaf into my search engine, which now that's part of my history for life, I guess. 25:05 Anna Brown Oh man, sorry. 25:06 Sean Finnegan And it was exactly the same like number of petals or whatever. 25:11 Sean Finnegan And I was like, that is it. 25:12 Sean Finnegan So I showed it to my dad and he's like, son, that's a pot leaf. 25:17 Sean Finnegan I showed it to some other guy and I'm like, do you think this is really a marijuana leaf? 25:22 Sean Finnegan He's like, Sean, you've got to change that. 25:24 Sean Finnegan And I was like, all right, that was my instinct. 25:27 Sean Finnegan But like, you know, I tend to be too uptight with things like this. 25:31 Sean Finnegan But like, I wasn't sure if Rose was messing with me either. 25:35 Sean Finnegan And just like threw a marijuana leaf in there just to see if I was looking or, you know, there was some other subverse, you know, because those of you who don't know Rose, she's very, 25:45 Sean Finnegan wholesome, has a very wholesome upbringing. 25:48 Sean Finnegan I don't think she knew what it was. 25:52 Anna Brown No, and I, in my defense, I didn't either. 25:54 Anna Brown You know, I've been overseeing Rose and Rose and I kind of got together and we went, is that marijuana? 26:00 Anna Brown And then we went, we're both homeschooled. 26:03 Anna Brown How are we supposed to know about this design? 26:06 Anna Brown I had thought that it was an aloe vera plant the whole time. 26:08 Anna Brown And so 26:09 Anna Brown When Rose and I went through and we cleaned them all up, I put notes all over every one of the books wherever it had a marijuana plant. 26:18 Anna Brown And I had to make a note that said, please remove this suspicious aloe vera plant and turn it into something into something else. 26:27 Sean Finnegan Hold on. 26:28 Sean Finnegan I have the original book. 26:30 Sean Finnegan I found it here on my shelf at the bottom. 26:32 Sean Finnegan I wrote the word marijuana question mark next to it. 26:38 Sean Finnegan And I'm happy to say that it's not in the current version that you can purchase online on Amazon.com anymore. 26:47 Anna Brown I'm glad you, I'm glad you got it, Sean. 26:50 Anna Brown That was one of those big snafus that happens. 26:54 Anna Brown And it was. 26:54 Sean Finnegan I probably would have like a whole bunch of people thinking, oh, Sean's one of us. 26:58 Sean Finnegan You know, he spoke sweet too. 26:59 Sean Finnegan You know, look at his book. 27:00 Sean Finnegan He's got a mirror. 27:01 Sean Finnegan And it's like, no, I don't. 27:03 Sean Finnegan And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to 27:06 Sean Finnegan push that in any way. 27:07 Sean Finnegan It's such a funny thing. 27:09 Anna Brown I love it. 27:10 Anna Brown So you were mentioning that Read the Bible for Yourself really comes out of your experience doing a class by the same name. 27:18 Anna Brown Why would you recommend, I'm assuming that you would recommend that it's somebody get the book and not just watch the class online. 27:25 Anna Brown Is that right? 27:25 Anna Brown If so, would you tell me why? 27:27 Sean Finnegan Yeah, there's really two aspects to the book that are 27:32 Sean Finnegan worth getting the book, even if you've already done the class. 27:35 Sean Finnegan One is that the book is just more extensive. 27:38 Sean Finnegan There are whole new paragraphs and sections that I didn't do in the class and expansions. 27:47 Sean Finnegan And a lot of times when you write something down in full sentences, you clarify your thinking and you find ways of saying things that are even better or more compelling. 27:58 Sean Finnegan Also, the appendices in the book go far beyond what they were in the class. 28:04 Sean Finnegan So that's the first thing. 28:04 Sean Finnegan The second thing is that this book is really not just, like I was saying before, to read. 28:10 Sean Finnegan It's a tool to help you help others. 28:14 Sean Finnegan The fact of the matter is, if I send somebody a YouTube playlist or, you know, on Restitutio, there's like an audio playlist of this class, 28:26 Sean Finnegan People get through like one or two episodes and they'll be like, all right, as soon as I get to some place in the material where they're like, what, this is boring or this is not what I'm interested in, whatever, then I lose them. 28:38 Sean Finnegan But if you are working with somebody in a book and you're like, all right, we're going to go through a chapter a week or two chapters a week. 28:44 Sean Finnegan We're going to meet Tuesday, Thursday every week or Tuesday, Saturday, whatever. 28:47 Sean Finnegan And we're just going to sit and we're going to read a chapter together, especially with parents with children. 28:53 Sean Finnegan I think this is useful, but also just like working with people who are new to Christianity that are coming to your church or your home group, you could just say, hey, you want to work through this book together and learn how to read the Bible better. 29:04 Sean Finnegan I think a lot of people would say yes. 29:06 Sean Finnegan And because it's interactive and there are discussion questions, I think we're going to be able 29:10 Sean Finnegan able to hold people throughout the process and really get all the way to the end of the book, which I think is really helpful because Revelation, which is the last book of the Bible, is also the last chapter in the book. 29:27 Sean Finnegan Revelation, yeah, how to read Revelation, I just had to confirm that. 29:29 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I wrote like a little afterward, after that, but it's not really a chapter. 29:33 Sean Finnegan So Revelation is like the last main chapter in the book. 29:37 Sean Finnegan That's actually one of the hardest books in the Bible to read. 29:40 Sean Finnegan So going through all the way to the end, get to the part on Revelation, see how to read Revelation. 29:47 Sean Finnegan There's so much symbolism and metaphor that it's really helpful to consider how to read Revelation well-being able to get through the whole book is really the goal. 30:02 Sean Finnegan And 30:03 Sean Finnegan I think as a discipleship tool, it's more effective than sitting there and listening to lectures. 30:09 Sean Finnegan Like people struggle with that. 30:13 Sean Finnegan So having the content broken up into chunks where there are discussion questions, I think just pedagogically, it's a winner and it's more effective, even though it is more time consuming, more hands-on, more of a manual process than just like sitting and passively receiving the benefit 30:33 Sean Finnegan is stronger there. 30:35 Anna Brown So since it's about scripture and you start in Genesis with the Torah and you go all the way through Revelation and you cover all this content, you cover how to read it, you cover different tools and tips for how to experience and understand the Bible, do you talk about the original languages, Hebrew and Greek? 30:53 Sean Finnegan Yep, yes I do. 30:54 Sean Finnegan So I wrote the book for people who don't know Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic. 31:00 Sean Finnegan I wrote the book for people who are English only readers. 31:03 Sean Finnegan But I am on a quest to convince people that it's worth their time to learn the biblical languages. 31:11 Sean Finnegan And so I included in the book an appendix called, hold on, let me get to it here. 31:19 Sean Finnegan Learn Hebrew and Greek. 31:22 Sean Finnegan That's my first appendix. 31:25 Sean Finnegan And what I do in there is I explain why it's valuable. 31:30 Sean Finnegan But then 31:32 Sean Finnegan how to do it. 31:33 Sean Finnegan Like specifically how to do it. 31:34 Sean Finnegan Like you could take a class at school. 31:36 Sean Finnegan You could use software or an app on your phone. 31:40 Sean Finnegan You can develop your skills in an intermediate fashion or learn from a grammar textbook, whatever. 31:46 Sean Finnegan You know, there's lots of different ways to go about acquiring biblical languages. 31:51 Sean Finnegan I've been doing it for a long time. 31:53 Sean Finnegan I put myself on the 10-year program for Hebrew because I was already old when I started Hebrew. 32:02 Sean Finnegan And, people say, you can't learn, you can't learn a new language when you're in your 40s or when you're old. 32:09 Sean Finnegan you can only do it when you're a kid. 32:10 Sean Finnegan Like after you're 20, you're cooked, you're useless, you know, your brain doesn't work. 32:14 Sean Finnegan Nonsense. 32:16 Sean Finnegan That's crazy. 32:16 Sean Finnegan You can learn a biblical language at any age. 32:19 Sean Finnegan It's just a matter of motivation and stubbornness. 32:24 Sean Finnegan I said, when I started learning Hebrew, I'm like, I'm putting myself on the 10-year program and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. 32:29 Sean Finnegan I'm just gonna, and I'm not even gonna really stress about it and I'm not gonna work too hard because I got real life. 32:34 Sean Finnegan I've got four kids, I got a mortgage, you know, like, got a full-time job, too many hobbies, everything. 32:40 Sean Finnegan So I'm not gonna stress about it. 32:42 Sean Finnegan I'm gonna go kind of slow and steady, like the tortoise. 32:45 Sean Finnegan I'm just gonna go slow and steady and I'm gonna learn Hebrew. 32:48 Sean Finnegan And I did. 32:49 Sean Finnegan I learned Hebrew. 32:51 Sean Finnegan And I'm still developing my vocabulary. 32:53 Sean Finnegan my vocabulary is getting a little better day by day. 32:56 Sean Finnegan I do my flashcards every day on my phone. 32:59 Sean Finnegan I don't use actual like pieces of paper. 33:01 Sean Finnegan You know, and you can too. 33:02 Sean Finnegan People can learn the biblical languages. 33:04 Sean Finnegan And let me tell you something, you're gonna see so much more when you read it in the original language than when you read an English translation. 33:11 Sean Finnegan It's unfiltered and there's no way to translate 33:16 Sean Finnegan from the original languages into English without making interpretive decisions. 33:21 Sean Finnegan There's no way to do it. 33:23 Sean Finnegan It's impossible. 33:24 Sean Finnegan You have to make interpretive decisions all the time. 33:26 Sean Finnegan And it's not nefarious, it's just the nature of languages that don't line up perfectly with each other. 33:33 Sean Finnegan We're dealing with like really ancient languages here. 33:36 Sean Finnegan They just have different ways of saying things and different kinds of, just like different grammar, really. 33:42 Sean Finnegan So I encourage people to do it. 33:44 Sean Finnegan Take a look at that appendix. 33:45 Sean Finnegan My next appendix is like sources of the Bible where I go through textual criticism and critical editions. 33:52 Sean Finnegan So basically, like if you did learn Hebrew or Greek, then you can get a critical edition of the Hebrew or Greek and be able to use that for daily reading. 34:01 Sean Finnegan And then the next one after that is talking about translations. 34:05 Sean Finnegan And this is like the number one question I get asked over and over and over again. 34:09 Sean Finnegan Sean, what's the one translation to rule them all? 34:12 Sean Finnegan Like we're in the Lord of the Rings or something. 34:14 Sean Finnegan And it's just like, honestly, it gets a little frustrating. 34:20 Sean Finnegan Because I can't say, this one translation is the best and just use this one translation and you'll be fine for the rest of your life. 34:28 Sean Finnegan Like my answer is always the same. 34:29 Sean Finnegan It's like, no, get translations from different camps of translators and read the English translations over against each other so that you can see the various biases pop out. 34:42 Sean Finnegan So yeah, get an evangelical translation. 34:45 Sean Finnegan I prefer the standard ones. 34:47 Sean Finnegan New Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, whatever. 34:51 Sean Finnegan Any of those standard ones, Christian Standard Bible, whatever. 34:54 Sean Finnegan That's just the evangelical side. 34:55 Sean Finnegan All right? 34:56 Sean Finnegan Now you need to get yourself a Catholic Bible and a Jewish Bible. 34:59 Sean Finnegan And I would also add to that the revised English version. 35:02 Sean Finnegan Get yourself a Biblical Unitarian Bible so that you can see that perspective, which is where I'm coming from. 35:07 Sean Finnegan So that's what I think is, you know, you need multiple translations. 35:11 Sean Finnegan There's not one that just like does it right all the time. 35:15 Sean Finnegan In my opinion. 35:16 Anna Brown You just mentioned getting yourself a Unitarian translation, and I know that a lot of your listeners are from, are part of the Unitarian movement. 35:24 Anna Brown I'm really passionate about it myself. 35:26 Anna Brown I want to know what you think, or if you think this book is going to contribute anything to the Unitarian movement. 35:32 Anna Brown It's not just a book about Trinitarianism versus Unitarianism. 35:38 Anna Brown So do you think it has something to add? 35:41 Anna Brown If so, what? 35:42 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 35:43 Sean Finnegan The way I would answer that question is to say two things. 35:46 Sean Finnegan First of all, if you're a Trinitarian or you have Trinitarian friends that you want to introduce to this book, this book never gets into that subject. 35:54 Sean Finnegan So they're going to be totally fine. 35:57 Sean Finnegan It just wasn't something that came up throughout the reading of the material. 36:02 Sean Finnegan I mean, at least not that I could think of off the top of my head, because it's not a book on doctrine. 36:06 Sean Finnegan It's a book about how to read the Bible for yourself. 36:10 Sean Finnegan Now having said that, I think it will have tremendous benefit, hopefully, for the BU movement at large because as biblical Unitarians, we are uncomfortable using other biblical resources and discipleship tools because they always are pushing this Trinity idea just sort of like casually or sometimes in a more forceful manner. 36:34 Sean Finnegan And to have a book that is not written from that perspective, I think is going to be really helpful to people. 36:40 Sean Finnegan But this has really got nothing to do with Trinity or one God or any Christology at all. 36:48 Sean Finnegan It's more just like how to read and understand the Bible for yourself. 36:52 Sean Finnegan It will really add to the resources available to biblical Unitarians to make disciples. 37:00 Sean Finnegan And let's face it, 37:01 Sean Finnegan We want to have big colleges, we want to have seminaries, and we want to have publishing houses, and we want to have all the things, right? 37:09 Sean Finnegan How do you get those things? 37:10 Sean Finnegan You got to reach people. 37:12 Sean Finnegan We got to grow. 37:13 Sean Finnegan We got to expand, okay? 37:16 Sean Finnegan Because all that stuff takes, it takes people with talent, it takes money, it takes logistics, it takes time, okay? 37:25 Sean Finnegan And so I believe that 37:28 Sean Finnegan Biblical Unitarianism as a movement has been stunted repeatedly by persecution. 37:33 Sean Finnegan Those days are largely over. 37:35 Sean Finnegan The persecution that most of us face, at least in the West, is very minimal in comparison to what has been in the past. 37:43 Sean Finnegan And as a result, I believe that this, the 21st century, is a time for building. 37:48 Sean Finnegan I believe that we are the builders. 37:50 Sean Finnegan The foundation is built. 37:51 Sean Finnegan Now we're building the buildings, right? 37:53 Sean Finnegan And how are we going to do that? 37:54 Sean Finnegan Well, we need to make disciples. 37:56 Sean Finnegan And there's more to Christianity than just like who God is. 38:00 Sean Finnegan he the father? 38:01 Sean Finnegan Is he the father, son, and spirit? 38:03 Sean Finnegan You know, I think he's the father. 38:04 Sean Finnegan But like that, you know, the demons understand that and they shudder. 38:08 Sean Finnegan There's more to life than just that. 38:09 Sean Finnegan So I think this is like one of those resources that can just kind of help make disciples. 38:16 Anna Brown I love that, Sean. 38:17 Anna Brown This reminds me of, as a biblical Unitarian myself, my husband and I, we had not yet moved to Kentucky, so this was like seven years ago. 38:25 Anna Brown No, it was like five years ago. 38:27 Anna Brown We were about to move to Kentucky. 38:29 Anna Brown The year before, we learned a little bit of information about this group, and they had like a messianic Judaism approach to the Bible. 38:39 Anna Brown They would give you like these booklets. 38:42 Anna Brown They were really interesting. 38:43 Anna Brown So I was like, what do I have to do to get these booklets? 38:46 Anna Brown I really want all this information. 38:47 Anna Brown Turn out to get the booklets, we had to sign up, pay money, and commit ourselves to going to a weekly group every week for like a year. 38:56 Anna Brown So my husband and I were like, we'll do it. 38:58 Anna Brown We want these booklets. 39:00 Anna Brown We'll do whatever it takes. 39:01 Anna Brown We want the information that's in this. 39:03 Anna Brown You know, hear me, I'm thinking, 39:05 Anna Brown Messianic Judaism. 39:06 Anna Brown Like they're not going to feel like they need to talk about the Trinity. 39:09 Anna Brown I'm probably not going to have any trouble in that area. 39:13 Anna Brown And I'll tell you that the first booklet that we received, the first one was on John 1:1. 39:20 Anna Brown And it was this long, like really difficult to read exposition on the Trinity. 39:31 Anna Brown And 39:32 Anna Brown it's just so frustrating how there's so frequently just like a need, a reflex to include the Trinity in every context, no matter how remote, and make sure the Trinity lands. 39:49 Anna Brown And the end result is that as biblical Unitarians, we just, I feel you, we don't have a lot of resources. 39:56 Anna Brown Even things that are not about the Trinity, we don't have them because everything is about the Trinity. 40:01 Anna Brown in so much of mainstream Christian discourse. 40:05 Sean Finnegan And I think we've done so well producing One God books, resources, and classes, and so many debates. 40:16 Sean Finnegan That's great, but I think as a movement, we also need to do regular Christian stuff. 40:23 Sean Finnegan This book, my book, Read the Bible for Yourself, plus the others in the series, the discipleship series, 40:28 Sean Finnegan This is really something that anybody within the movement, I think, can use and have the luxury, if I can put it that way, of not throwing up in their mouths when they come across God in the flesh or God-man language, which is not in my book because I don't believe in those things. 40:45 Sean Finnegan So hopefully this could be a relief and an enjoyable resource for people, my people, your people, our people in the BU world. 40:56 Anna Brown Cool. 40:57 Anna Brown Sean, you're the visionary. 40:58 Anna Brown What do you hope the books will do? 41:00 Sean Finnegan Well, I hope they're going to be used. 41:02 Sean Finnegan And I'm a book guy, as you can see from the books behind me, and I've got more books over there. 41:08 Sean Finnegan I love books. 41:09 Sean Finnegan I love the way they feel. 41:10 Sean Finnegan I love the way they smell. 41:12 Sean Finnegan I love to write in them. 41:13 Sean Finnegan I love to, some people are going to be mad at me, but I love to dog ear them and just interact with them physically, right? 41:21 Sean Finnegan Love all that stuff, right? 41:23 Sean Finnegan What this book though is, 41:25 Sean Finnegan is something different. 41:27 Sean Finnegan Yes, you can do all that, okay? 41:28 Sean Finnegan But this is plus a discipleship tool, something that you will sit with somebody and you can read out loud together. 41:37 Sean Finnegan And I don't do that with most of my books. 41:40 Sean Finnegan Most of my books, I read alone and I have my pen. 41:43 Sean Finnegan And I write in my books and I have my yellow highlighter and I highlight in them, right? 41:47 Sean Finnegan And I just enjoy that process and I'm learning, right? 41:51 Sean Finnegan This is not that. 41:52 Sean Finnegan This, I mean, you could do all that, but this is something to be done with somebody else. 41:58 Sean Finnegan That's what it's designed for, to be a teaching tool to help somebody else to read the Bible for themselves. 42:04 Sean Finnegan So even if you're somebody that is really experienced with the Bible, even if you already read it in Hebrew or Greek, 42:11 Sean Finnegan God bless you, you're my people. 42:12 Sean Finnegan But this book can still be useful for you to help somebody else. 42:17 Sean Finnegan I'm using this with lots of people in my church, using it with my kids. 42:22 Sean Finnegan This is something that I believe can really help us solve two major problems. 42:29 Sean Finnegan Problem number one, how to make disciples of people who are 42:33 Sean Finnegan who are lost, who are non-Christians, that are coming to Christianity. 42:36 Sean Finnegan All right, this book is going to help them to learn how to read the Bible. 42:39 Sean Finnegan Problem #2, so often, the next generation, we fail to pass on our faith to the next generation. 42:46 Sean Finnegan I've seen it so many times as a pastor for over 20 years. 42:50 Sean Finnegan My heart breaks when I see really devout and dedicated parents, and then their kids are just like nowhere to be found. 42:56 Sean Finnegan They don't care about the things of God, right? 42:59 Sean Finnegan I understand people have free will, and God didn't set up 43:03 Sean Finnegan Christianity to be genetic, such that if the parents believe the kids are programmed to believe or genetically predisposed, like everybody still has their own choice. 43:15 Sean Finnegan If you don't believe me, read Ezekiel 18, which talks about that. 43:17 Sean Finnegan But my point is, this can empower parents to sit with their teenage children, and that's really the age I think would be appropriate for my book, like high school teenagers, to patiently and carefully 43:33 Sean Finnegan go through how to read the Bible so that this child of yours can really develop a hunger and a thirst and a passion for scripture, which if you have that, you're going to be all right because you're going to be constantly reading the Bible throughout your life and it's going to be informing your decisions and it's going to be warning you of moral problems or missteps that would otherwise cause a lot of suffering and pain. 43:59 Sean Finnegan And it's also going to help you to have hope in times of suffering. 44:03 Sean Finnegan And so many more benefits that I can't get into right now. 44:06 Sean Finnegan But that's really my goal for these books, strengthening the next generation, reaching the lost, helping us to really fulfill the mission Jesus gave us. 44:16 Sean Finnegan Jesus didn't say go and have church services. 44:20 Sean Finnegan Jesus said make disciples. 44:23 Sean Finnegan I mean, I think having church service is great. 44:26 Sean Finnegan I am part of church service every Sunday. 44:28 Sean Finnegan But 44:29 Sean Finnegan That's just part of the picture. 44:30 Sean Finnegan Like if people are going to church services, but they're not actually following Jesus and they're not actually reading their Bibles and they don't know what we believe, then, it's just like going to the movies. 44:41 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 44:42 Anna Brown Sean, I've asked you a lot of questions about your book. 44:46 Anna Brown Is there something that we missed that you want to talk about? 44:49 Sean Finnegan Yes. 44:49 Sean Finnegan Let me say two other quick, really quick things. 44:52 Sean Finnegan At the end of each chapter, I have a chapter review. 44:56 Sean Finnegan That can be very helpful for different kinds of settings, but it's also helpful if you're just not sure if you want to do the chapter or not, and you jump to the end. 45:08 Sean Finnegan It has a little review. 45:09 Sean Finnegan It tells you all the things that I'm going to say in the chapter. 45:12 Sean Finnegan So that's super helpful, I think, for certain situations, especially like small groups or Sunday school type settings. 45:19 Sean Finnegan And also, when I originally did this, produced this content, 45:23 Sean Finnegan I generated 3 questions per chapter for our just like online class. 45:30 Sean Finnegan And I was like, what? 45:31 Sean Finnegan I've already got these three questions per chapter. 45:33 Sean Finnegan I'm going to just combine them all together. 45:35 Sean Finnegan And I put together a cumulative test. 45:37 Sean Finnegan And so if you are a homeschooling parent and you're going to do this book as part of a curriculum with your kid, I have like just the whole test at the end, 48 question test, and then I have the answers on a separate page in the book. 45:53 Sean Finnegan And, people can use it for that. 45:56 Sean Finnegan I have never written a book that had a test in it before, but I figured, there are some people that are going to use it for that. 46:02 Sean Finnegan So it has a test that you can use, a cumulative test. 46:05 Sean Finnegan You can use it with your kids. 46:07 Sean Finnegan You can use it in Bible college. 46:08 Sean Finnegan You can use it in a Sunday school environment. 46:11 Sean Finnegan So hopefully people will enjoy getting to use the book. 46:14 Sean Finnegan And please get it for your friends, too. 46:17 Sean Finnegan Get it for people that you think might be interested in 46:22 Sean Finnegan learning how to read the Bible. 46:23 Sean Finnegan Sometimes non-Christians are interested in reading the Bible. 46:28 Sean Finnegan A lot of my motive, I'm sorry to go on and on, Anna, but just like a lightning bolt came to me. 46:34 Sean Finnegan No, let's do it. 46:35 Sean Finnegan There's a guy named David Helm who wrote this book called One to One, I don't know, Discipleship or something. 46:42 Sean Finnegan And he's out of Chicago, evangelical reform guy, really, really great preacher. 46:46 Sean Finnegan But his whole concept was, look, you can just invite people to read the Bible with you. 46:51 Sean Finnegan And even if they're non-Christians, they'll do it. 46:53 Sean Finnegan And so I think there is just incredible interest in the Bible. 46:56 Sean Finnegan There always has been. 46:58 Sean Finnegan Even if like your neighbor or somebody is like, okay, well, I'm not a Christian, but be like, hey, 47:04 Sean Finnegan would you like to go through this book with me to learn how to read the Bible for yourself? 47:08 Sean Finnegan And then, once we go through this book, then you can read the Bible on your own and you can make up your own mind what you think about it. 47:14 Sean Finnegan You know what I mean? 47:15 Sean Finnegan Like it could be a really powerful evangelism tool, or maybe not powerful, but very effective evangelism tool, even for people that aren't even Christians, but they're just curious what the Bible says. 47:26 Sean Finnegan I mean, even if you don't believe in it, is the foundation of so much of Western civilization 47:34 Sean Finnegan It explains so much of Western history and so much of our morality and legal codes and the way that our world is today. 47:44 Anna Brown That's great. 47:45 Anna Brown Well, Sean, thank you for letting me host Restitutio today. 47:49 Anna Brown My husband told me when I told him about it that it was going to be good for my spiritual formation. 47:55 Anna Brown He said that it's because Yahweh is the Lord of hosts. 47:59 Anna Brown And I think that's great. 48:00 Anna Brown I appreciate him. 48:03 Anna Brown But I'd like to thank you for being on the show today, Sean. 48:06 Sean Finnegan Well, thanks for having me. 48:08 Sean Finnegan And I certainly appreciate you, all the work you did on this project, being the project lead and getting it published and getting the endorsements and working with the proofreaders and the designers and the covers and all the other stuff. 48:21 Sean Finnegan So thank you so much for your work on that as well. 48:24 Anna Brown So fun. 48:25 Anna Brown Thank you, Sean. 48:29 Sean Finnegan That brings this interview to a close. 48:31 Sean Finnegan What'd you think? 48:32 Sean Finnegan Come on over to Restitutio.org and find episode 657. 48:36 Sean Finnegan Read the Bible for yourself and leave your questions and comments and feedback there. 48:42 Sean Finnegan I got an e-mail from Kimberly entitled Considering Preterism, where she writes, Good evening. 48:49 Sean Finnegan My husband and I have been watching your teachings and admire your passion for historic Christianity. 48:55 Sean Finnegan We are full preterists and wonder if you have considered preterists everything fulfilled in 70 AD. 49:05 Sean Finnegan And then she quotes from Matthew 5, 17 through 20, which talks about how Jesus did not come to destroy the Lord, but to fulfill it. 49:13 Sean Finnegan And she says, Jesus says he came to fulfill then not later. 49:18 Sean Finnegan If you do a search of what heaven and earth meant to the Israelites, it was the temple and the Mosaic system, which did pass away in 70 AD with the destruction of the temple. 49:28 Sean Finnegan If not, then shouldn't we believers be keeping the law and when we die without the resurrection, when we die, we still be going to Sheol awaiting the resurrection. 49:40 Sean Finnegan Jesus came to fulfill all prophecy and did return at the destruction of the temple. 49:48 Sean Finnegan See Josephus's account of that war. 49:51 Sean Finnegan And then she quotes Luke 21, 22, For these will be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. 49:57 Sean Finnegan Interested in your thoughts. 49:58 Sean Finnegan Thanks for your teachings. 50:00 Sean Finnegan Well, Kimberly, this is certainly a big topic, the topic of prophecy and the three main positions being futurism, historicism, and preterism. 50:14 Sean Finnegan and then preterism being divided into partial preterism and full preterism. 50:20 Sean Finnegan I think most people, at least in the United States, are familiar with the futurism position. 50:25 Sean Finnegan That's the idea that the prophetic statements Jesus made about the coming of the kingdom will find their fulfillment in the last days, whenever that happens to be. 50:36 Sean Finnegan The historicist position really pertains to the Book of Revelation, 50:42 Sean Finnegan in particular, seeing the various seals and trumpets and bowls of wrath as future prophecy from the perspective of the Book of Revelation, but past prophecy from our perspective today. 50:56 Sean Finnegan In other words, these all found their fulfillment during the last 2,000 years. 51:02 Sean Finnegan And then you have Preterism, which argues that all of these things found their fulfillment in the year 70. 51:11 Sean Finnegan partial preterism, understanding that all to exclude the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom, which are yet future. 51:20 Sean Finnegan Whereas full preterists would say Jesus already came back, everything that needed to be done has been done, and I guess we're in the kingdom now. 51:29 Sean Finnegan It's a little bit hard to take seriously the full preterism position for me personally. 51:36 Sean Finnegan Maybe just because I don't fully understand how it works, if you believe the kingdom of God is defined as fulfilling the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, in particular, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, like where is the resurrection of all the saints? 51:56 Sean Finnegan Where is the Messiah ruling in Jerusalem? 52:00 Sean Finnegan Why are there still deserts? 52:02 Sean Finnegan Why are there still people with disabilities? 52:06 Sean Finnegan Why is there still injustice in the governments of the world? 52:11 Sean Finnegan Why is there still death? 52:13 Sean Finnegan These are all just continuing on as they have been since the fall. 52:19 Sean Finnegan And I don't see how you could possibly say that God, through his Messiah, is ruling the earth today. 52:28 Sean Finnegan It just baffles me. 52:30 Sean Finnegan Now, I have met a full preterist before who did not believe in the kingdom, instead believed that everyone just goes to heaven when they die. 52:38 Sean Finnegan And if that's your belief, then I think it does fit. 52:42 Sean Finnegan It does work. 52:43 Sean Finnegan You just die. 52:44 Sean Finnegan You go off to another place to enjoy eternal life. 52:49 Sean Finnegan There are just so many scriptures that militate against that off-planet understanding. 52:56 Sean Finnegan For example, Jesus saying, blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth, which is actually a quotation from Psalm 37, which repeatedly says the wicked are the ones that are going to be cut off from the land, not the righteous, and that the righteous are going to inherit the land and live upon it forever. 53:16 Sean Finnegan And Jesus' prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 53:22 Sean Finnegan So when God's kingdom comes, his will will be done on earth. 53:26 Sean Finnegan His will is not done on earth many times and in many places and by many people today. 53:31 Sean Finnegan So I don't think this could possibly be the kingdom. 53:34 Sean Finnegan I don't understand a way of thinking about full preterism that could possibly work, and that I recognize could be my own limitation. 53:44 Sean Finnegan I also am not sure why a full preterist would even want to follow Jesus, because Jesus already came back, already did whatever he's going to do, and there is nothing to look forward to in the future. 53:55 Sean Finnegan Again, unless you have that heaven idea, which I think makes a mess of the Bible. 54:00 Sean Finnegan If you are curious about the kingdom of God, you haven't heard much about it, this idea of God renewing the earth so that people can live on it forever and making everything wrong with it right, take a look at my Kingdom Journey book, which is a book I published a few years back that goes through the scripture and church history to show what the Bible teaches about the final state of the righteous. 54:25 Sean Finnegan and that might be helpful to some of you. 54:29 Sean Finnegan As far as partial preterism, I have a lot of respect for these people. 54:34 Sean Finnegan I think I lean in some ways in that direction, probably not as much as others. 54:41 Sean Finnegan I prefer a two horizons approach, which I know is like a totally idiosyncratic way of saying things, where I affirm the 54:52 Sean Finnegan meaningfulness of the Book of Revelation for those original 7 churches that received it in the 1st century. 55:01 Sean Finnegan And I also affirm the future realities that 55:06 Sean Finnegan the book describes as far as Christ coming back and waging a war and ruling the nations on behalf of God with his resurrected followers, which all seems to me to be events yet to occur. 55:21 Sean Finnegan I think we would have noticed that if that happened in history somewhere. 55:25 Sean Finnegan So I don't know if you want to call that futurism. 55:28 Sean Finnegan I don't know if you want to call it partial preterism. 55:31 Sean Finnegan I kind of coined this phrase, 2 horizons. 55:33 Sean Finnegan And if you want to know in more detail what I think about that and what the other possibilities are, get my book, Read the Bible for Yourself, and take a look at that last chapter where I talk about the book of Revelation in more detail. 55:46 Sean Finnegan So I'm going to have to leave it there. 55:48 Sean Finnegan Thanks so much, Kimberly, for writing in on a previous 55:52 Sean Finnegan interview, Julie wrote in saying, this is great for people who follow your churches online but don't have a church that is close to attend, very helpful to work with others. 56:00 Sean Finnegan That's referring to the Discipleship book series. 56:04 Sean Finnegan Thank you, Julie. 56:05 Sean Finnegan And yes, indeed, this is exactly what it's for. 56:11 Sean Finnegan It's for both. 56:12 Sean Finnegan These books are both for people who are in 56:16 Sean Finnegan my church and other churches that are similar to it, and also isolated individuals who are interested in reaching others and want to sit with them and read through the book together. 56:26 Sean Finnegan Zach Mayo wrote in of New Zealand. 56:29 Sean Finnegan Awesome work, guys. 56:30 Sean Finnegan These will be such valuable resources. 56:33 Sean Finnegan Thanks so much, Zach, and those of you who have been writing in about these books, they're still very new and we haven't had any reviews yet on Amazon, at least at the time of this recording. 56:46 Sean Finnegan And that would certainly be helpful if you do get the book or any of the books that you would write a review on Amazon. 56:55 Sean Finnegan Please share them with your friends. 56:56 Sean Finnegan We are not a huge budget ministry with millions of dollars or even really $1 million to put together a big marketing budget or whatever. 57:06 Sean Finnegan So we really do depend on word of mouth 57:09 Sean Finnegan And people just letting their friends know I post on social media and people share that. 57:15 Sean Finnegan And that's honestly a lot of where people see the books and learn about my recent book, Read the Bible for Yourself. 57:23 Sean Finnegan So if you do see a social media post or if you don't mind sharing the Amazon link as a post, 57:30 Sean Finnegan That's just such a big support and such a help for getting the word out. 57:34 Sean Finnegan So thanks everybody. 57:36 Sean Finnegan Next week, I'll be interviewing Will Barlow about his book, Explore What We Believe. 57:42 Sean Finnegan And this is the book on doctrine that I think a lot of us 57:47 Sean Finnegan are eager to have in our hands so that we can work with folks from other Christian backgrounds to introduce them to more of a restorationist ideal of sticking with the Bible rather than a lot of the later traditions and creeds that come up. 58:02 Sean Finnegan So stay tuned for that next week. 58:04 Sean Finnegan If you'd like to support us, we so appreciate that. 58:06 Sean Finnegan You can do that. 58:07 Sean Finnegan You can make a monthly recurring gift at Restitutio.org. 58:11 Sean Finnegan I'll catch you next week. 58:12 Sean Finnegan And remember, the truth has nothing to fear.