Reading The Bible In Context: Moving Beyond Doctrine and Out-of-Order Chapters

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Imagine walking into a movie 45 minutes late then trying to

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explain the plot to someone else.

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That's how most of us.

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Read the Bible.

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We know the characters.

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We quote the lines, we quote the scriptures, but often we're

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missing the story because no one ever told us it's a story.

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We weren't taught that it's a story and we haven't read it as a story.

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And here's the wild part.

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The chapters in this book in the Bible aren't even in the right.

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Order.

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Welcome to Seek, go Create.

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This is Tim Winders and this is episode three of the five

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part series that we're doing.

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Why The Bible doesn't make sense yet, and it's really part of the journey that I've

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been on over the last, you know, we could say 10 years, maybe even longer than that.

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But definitely in the last few years where I have taken a lot of things that

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I thought I knew I've had to unlearn it.

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I've spent a lot of quiet time.

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I've spent a lot of time actually reading the Bible instead of listening to other

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people tell me what's in the Bible.

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And I've just come to what I believe is a better understanding.

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I'm not saying that I know it all.

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I'm not saying that I understand everything.

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But I do believe that I have a better context and a better understanding

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than I did yesterday, last year, and definitely 10, 15 years ago.

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So anyway, let's dive in.

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Last time, last episode, episode two, we talked about what we often

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have to do, which is unlearn.

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What we knew.

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And that kind of goes to what I just said earlier, you know.

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Much of what we get about the Bible comes from other people.

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It comes from teachers, preachers that are all well-meaning,

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but often they've got their interpretations, their understandings.

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And then we also layer that with doctrines and theologies and systems and ways

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that people have attempted to explain the Bible for the last 2000 plus years.

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And so we have all of that.

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And then we pick up the Bible or we open up, to a scripture and we have

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all of that stuff floating around.

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It just makes it difficult to understand or worse, we fool ourselves

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and we think we understand it.

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We're convinced, we understand it.

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We tell other people we understand it, but yet we are missing some

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key pieces and key context.

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the example we used in the last episode was.

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the matrix.

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It's the red pill or the blue pill.

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Which one are you gonna choose?

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You choose one of them and you just stay sort of blinded and trapped within that

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structure that you've always been in.

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But some of the things that I've experienced and read and studied over the

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last few years, it's going down that path of seeing beyond the matrix and seeing

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that there's a bigger picture, there's a bigger story, and it is uncomfortable.

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It's been, challenging at times because it's kind of taken some of the things

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that were, I thought, core of who I was.

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And my wife, Gloria and I have gone through this where we've sat many

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a morning with a cup of coffee and her comments were something to the

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effect of, I'm not sure that I could keep going down this path because

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what I thought that I knew is being busted up and these paradigms and all.

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It's like that, that pain of stepping out of the matrix and looking back

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in and going, Hmm, I was deceived, or I was wrong, or I was slightly

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off, and just being slightly off.

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Is almost worse than being completely wrong.

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And that's something that we have realized.

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Here's what we're gonna do In this episode, I'm gonna share kind of the

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biggest lens shift of my journey.

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the biggest thing that's kind of helped me understand, what I believe, or at

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least to put me in a better place to understand what the Bible is all about.

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it's really this.

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it's simple, but it's not, and that is that the Bible.

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Is a story, it is an actual story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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And if you don't understand the beginning and the middle, then it makes it

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very difficult to understand the end.

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And so we're gonna discuss that there's chronological aspects to it

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and we need to understand there's chronological portions of it.

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And if we are to read it out of order.

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Or to take it out of context or to read sections of it and attempt to make that

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the story, then it won't make sense, or it won't make as much sense, or

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it'll cause us to skew the truth or to skew what it really is talking about.

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And listen.

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Guilty, I've done it.

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I know many people that are speaking from pulpits and teaching and

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preaching that may not be aware of it.

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They're doing it and it's happened time and time again.

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And you know, we could, we could sort of say, well, maybe it's the

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enemy, you know, that old devil that's trying to just confuse us.

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Or it could be that we just aren't doing some of the hard, difficult work of taking

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the scriptures, taking the Bible, studying it so that we understand it better.

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I will say I'm guilty of that.

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I spent time under preachers, I would take what they said, I would repeat it.

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Sometimes I would repeat it with confidence.

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Sometimes I would look it up and check and study.

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Sometimes I wouldn't.

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I spent a few years in Bible school and I assumed that some

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of the people teaching and.

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Sharing there knew what they were talking about.

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Some of them did.

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Some good people, some of them didn't.

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Some of them were taking things out of context, and that

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happens time and time again.

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I guess if there's one underlying message that's important in this, that's.

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Kind of aside from the fact that you need to understand the Bible is

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the, is a story, and that is taking personal responsibility for getting

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to know and understanding it yourself.

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Don't even take my word, don't even listen to what I'm talking

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about here, just about my journey.

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You need to take the time to study yourself.

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You need to take the time to dig into this Bible, to these

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scriptures and learn it yourself.

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You need to spend quiet time and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal things to

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you, ask questions, poke at things that you think you believe, but may not be

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lining up with what's in the Bible.

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Or that you've heard that it bothered you?

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There were so many things that I heard and they, they sort of bothered

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me, but I just kind of accepted them and just kept kind of going along

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until over the last few years where truthfully, my journey is this.

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I sort of disconnected.

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I mean, most of you know, my wife and I for the last six, six and a

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half years have lived in an rv and I haven't, we haven't been totally

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isolated from the world, but we've been.

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we've had a lot of quiet and still time we, as we traveled, we didn't really plug

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into some churches or anything like that.

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I didn't really go to YouTube and listen to this minister and that minister.

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I really allowed the Lord to be my teacher, I believe, and the

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Holy Spirit to lead and guide me.

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And it really freed me up to ask some tough questions that I do not think

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I would've asked had I been sitting.

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Under someone's teaching or in a ministry or in a Bible school.

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And so it really kind of helped me go down this path and so, so that's what

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we're gonna do in this episode today.

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We're going to kinda walk through that journey that I went on.

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Some of you may be going on something similar.

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I'll give you some glimpses of what I think, but again,

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it's your responsibility.

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You have got to do this on your own, and some people are uncomfortable

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with me saying this, but it might.

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Means spending alone time doing it, not plugging into the charismatic

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preacher teacher that sounds so great, and we all say, oh yeah, all

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he does is preach from the Bible.

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But then when you do your study, you realize, Hmm, that actually wasn't

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in the Bible or worse, it was out of.

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Context.

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So check me on this, put it down in comments if you're watching

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this on YouTube or email, because I'm not pretending to know it all.

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I'm just sharing my journey and the process I've been on and how

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much it bothers me that years ago.

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I didn't think I knew it all, but boy, I thought I was

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really close, but yet I wasn't.

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So let me give you my Bible experience.

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This was back in the early nineties, so 30 something years ago, I was

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saved and I knew that I needed to study and learn more about the Bible.

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But here's what I did.

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I treated the Bible like it was a manual.

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Or a devotional and I read portions of it and I attempted

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to understand the bigger picture.

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I'm kind of a bigger picture guy.

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I love to understand the bigger picture if I can, but I pulled out pieces of

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it and what I did was is I attempted to apply it to whatever I was dealing

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with or going through at the time.

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Now, that's not a bad thing necessarily.

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However, what it does is it causes us to, possibly twist some things around,

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I was actually saved in a business setting, so I was sort of wired to be

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pursuing and going after making money and.

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being more successful in that financial area.

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And so the scriptures initially that I started pulling out were those scriptures

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that looked like scriptures that said I should prosper and be in good health

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that I should, do well financially.

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You know, I took a lot of the money scriptures and kinda made those fit

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what I was going through at the time.

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I took a lot of the sowing and reaping scriptures and made them apply.

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And some of them I was probably close.

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Some of them I was probably maybe accurate, but there was probably a lot

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of them that I was taking them away outta context and taking them in a wrong way.

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So I would just grab isolated versus just to kind of make myself feel

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better, do better, or latch onto.

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And I really did not understand how it all.

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Fit together.

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I mean, I would try to understand the creation, story and then I would try

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to understand the ending story, and I never really liked either one of those.

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I'll be upfront with you the creation story, being an engineer and someone

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who kind of likes to see things and maybe didn't have a lot of.

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Faith that that just, it is the way it is.

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I wanted a little more information about that creation, and if you don't

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understand creation and the things in the middle, then I'll tell you, you

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definitely won't understand how it ends.

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And that's really one of the catalysts for a lot of where I'm going now

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that we'll talk about in a future episode is that ending that a lot of

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people are trying to explain with.

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With headlines and all this going on in the world, it really started bothering me

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more and more, and that's when I realized that if you don't know how it fits

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together, then it, it's just all jumbled.

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One of the problems with the Bible also, let's just go ahead

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and get this out, out here.

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the chapters are not written in order.

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You know, I've written a novel myself.

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I think it had 39 chapters.

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It's fiction.

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If I took those 39 chapters that I wrote to be in a specific order, I had

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some flashbacks and things like that.

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But if I took those 39 chapters and let's say I took the first two

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thirds of those, and I just sort of rewrote some of the chapters to tell

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the same story over and over again.

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And let's just say there was some perspective from some people during

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those storylines, those story and plot points that may have had another

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perspective and those were added in, and all of that would've sort of looked

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like what the Old Testament looks like.

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And then let's say I would've taken the last two thirds of that novel,

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and instead of putting it entirely in order, I took the overarching

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story of the main character.

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And I put it in the first four chapters of that, second of

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that last third of the book.

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And then the last portion of the book, I actually just listed

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it out by length of chapter.

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Well, that's what is going on in the Bible.

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We have in the Old Testament, if you want to try to read it in order,

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you do have some of the creation and things that are in order.

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But once you get into Kings and Chronicles and all the prophet books, some of those

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overlapped, Before I realized that Kings and Chronicles are basically telling

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the same stories, and then there's Isaiah and some of the others that are

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telling some of the things that are going on also in Kings and Chronicles.

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And if you don't understand that, then man, it's hard to fit it together.

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then you get over to the New Testament and you've got.

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Some of the epistles that really occurred before.

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Some things in the Book of Acts.

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You've got Revelation here that we like to think is the end.

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and it is in some ways, but it's not the end as many of us think.

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And then you've got Paul Anyway there, there's just a lot of.

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Things that go on there.

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It's like watching, this is the example that I like to use.

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I'm a big Star Wars fan.

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Most of you know Star Wars.

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George Lucas started with what he called episode four, which is a new Hope.

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It was the original Star Wars movie came out in 19, I think it was 77,

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if I'm remembering correctly, and And that movie was awesome, man.

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It was something like we've never seen and it was incredible.

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Well.

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As incredible as that movie was, the next movie that was

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released almost three years later.

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By the way, it was like excruciating when we realized that this

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other movie was coming out and it was The Empire Strikes Back.

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And let me tell you, one of the best movies.

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Is the Empire Strikes back.

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It started awesome.

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It dropped us off a cliff at the end, and everything in between was incredible.

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had we not seen a new Hope, the original Star Wars before then that movie never

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would've had the impact It had the Empire strikes back because we had

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to have that context of that before

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Some of you're gonna get upset that I'm comparing the Bible to Star Wars.

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I'm not.

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I'm just saying that is the storytelling challenge that we, that we have.

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It's what I just mentioned about my book.

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we've done this time and time again and we just haven't understood the order.

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So for me, my.

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I guess first sort of ahas about something odd is going on here is

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when I, a few years back, decided to do a read through the Bible.

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Actually, my wife decided and she allowed me to go along with her, and we went

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through the Bible in chronological order.

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Okay.

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Not the order it was written necessarily, but in the historical

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chronological order that it went in.

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And I won't say that the New Testament impacted me that much at that time.

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I'll talk more about that in just a moment.

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But what it did do was allowed me to really understand the Old Testament better

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as I put those pieces together, like I said earlier, of Kings and Chronicles

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and the prophets and all the overlap and the story of the Old Testament.

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And so that really started me.

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Thinking about maybe I'm missing some things because of the chronological

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nature that I'm missing out on just reading these 66 books in the order

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that they're placed in the Holy Bible.

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So here's some things that I saw though.

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These are some things that were revealed to me.

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One was just how confusing the Old Testament, can be.

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If you just read it in the order that it's listed and how much more sense that

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it makes if you read it chronologically.

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And when you do that, you really do understand the buildup and the leading

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to the coming Messiah, which is Jesus.

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The Old Testament is a lead up and buildup to what occurs.

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In the New Testament and many times it's, we can sort of disconnect

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those if you don't understand the chronological nature of it.

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As I started looking at the New Testament.

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And in the same light started looking at what was going on during that time.

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We'll talk more about this in a later episode, but the importance of the first

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century, specifically a 30 around the time of the, death, the cross, and the

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resurrection of Jesus Christ up to 80 70, which was the destruction of Jerusalem.

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You actually realize, the New Testament primarily was in between

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those two, those two dates.

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You understand the urgency that was involved in the writing of many of the

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epistles, the letters, even the gospels.

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There was a real urgency there that we don't get if we don't understand

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that context, the context of acts.

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Being before Paul's letters is very important because Paul's letters really

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are sprinkled throughout the book of Acts.

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And Dr. Luke, Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and then he wrote the Book of

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Acts, which are meant to go together.

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That's the.

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Chronology of, the early church leading up to, Paul's.

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Really not even then.

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It's kind of most of Paul's ministry in the spreading of

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the gospel in the first century.

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So that's important to understand.

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And then, like I mentioned earlier, you start to see that

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The end begins to look different.

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if you understand that urgency that's going on within the gospels and also

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within Paul's letters, if you understand what is happening and most of the

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epistles that Paul has written, if you understand what's going on with the early

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churches, then you begin looking at what most of us have looked as the ending.

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Of the vision of, of John, the revelation of the Christ.

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You just, you kinda look at that differently, and that's not what we're

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gonna talk about here, but I'll tell you that it just all begins to fit differently

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and this is why story really matters.

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And it's something that I didn't do with the Bible for a long period of time,

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and I noticed that many people don't.

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I went to Bible school for a few years.

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I spent time around not just your average run of the mill.

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Bible reading people.

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These were people that studied it more.

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These were people that taught it and, and I can tell you that my observation

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is that many people don't really understand that flow, the beginning,

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the middle, and the end of stories and storytelling or the narrative.

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And again, I'm not saying that the Bible is fiction.

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I'm not telling you that it's just a story, but I will tell you it's got a

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narrative that we need to understand and stories will then give meaning.

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To the events, not just commands or not just things that we can kind of

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grab and totally apply in our lives.

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We need to understand that context of what is going on.

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God is telling a story of covenant exile.

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Rescue and then restoration or, or bringing everything back to him.

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And I, I've heard this said, and I do believe this, that the story

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of the Bible is the story of God.

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I. Really wanting a family, really wanting sons and daughters that are his,

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and some would say, well, why didn't he just create that in the first place?

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Well, he did.

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Things changed things, went through various iterations, and that's

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what we're moving back towards.

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The kingdom.

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The kingdom of God is the central theme.

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The Kingdom or the Eden system or the new Jerusalem.

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That is the theme that we see throughout the Bible.

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many people, especially Americanized people that are westernized, we have

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this thought that the theme of the Bible is punching our card to get to heaven.

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That's all it's about.

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We're trying to get to heaven.

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That's all that matters, and that may be part.

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Of it, but that's really not the theme of it.

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If you really understand the story, that is not what's going on.

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It's about the kingdom, the kingdom of God, and that kingdom growing and

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expanding through us, and because of what Jesus Christ did and because

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of what happened with creation.

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So the kingdom is the central theme.

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So let's talk a little bit more about the big picture.

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And then we'll, uh, we'll kind of wrap up a little bit with, uh, with some

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thoughts and some things that I believe I've started to see that have helped me.

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Old Testament, fairly simple creation, covenant.

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Exile, promise creation, covenant exile, and then the promise of something coming.

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And that promise, came in a lot of shapes and sizes.

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That's one thing that gets a little bit confusing at times, is that

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promise is coming from the prophets.

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It's coming from all the way back, really from the beginning,

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all the way back to creation.

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And that promises the buildup and it occurs over.

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Thousands of years.

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And that was something that was sort of interesting for me, especially with

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people in our today's world that, begin to say things like, well, you know,

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I'm, I'm praying for something and I expect something, and if it doesn't

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happen next week, then you know, I'm starting to get impatient about it.

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Well, I am always amazed when I look at the Old Testament and read

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through it chronologically, how there were certain timeframes.

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Where people were promised that a messiah is coming, everything will

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change, everything will be better, and that better occurred 400 years later.

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So let's put that in perspective.

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Right now, someone told you, let's just say you're in a difficult situation.

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Let's say things look bleak, things look bad for you, either financially or your

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health, or just something that's going on bad and someone that you believe

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that they've got a good word for you.

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They say something to the effect of, oh yes, it's going to be resolved.

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Be patient.

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It's gonna get better.

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And you later find out that that better is 400 years from now.

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I mean, I've just, my head it was kind of hard for me to wrap around that.

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It kinda let me know that we don't understand time.

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The way God understands time or the way God, reveals time might

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be a better way of saying it.

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But, so anyway, so that's Old Testament creation, covenant exile, promise.

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The gospels.

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Are the kingdom arriving in the person of Jesus Christ, and

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that is of course, that's God.

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That's Jesus.

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He was man.

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He was also God, and that is the kingdom.

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Jesus said it many times.

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I've studied the kingdom of God.

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I'll mention that in the next episode we'll talk about the

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kingdom and the kingdom of God.

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Those terms are mentioned over a hundred times in the New Testament, and Jesus

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said, I have come to bring the kingdom.

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That is his purpose, one of his purpose.

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And in acts, when we look at the book of Acts, the kingdom continues to expand.

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Through the believers in Jesus Christ, through that church,

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through that Ecclesia that was established, truthfully at Pentecost.

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That's when that started.

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So the letters, the ones that came from Paul and others, is really,

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and I love this term, coaching believers on how to live in that

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kingdom and then also preparing for.

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The ending of the old covenant and the time when there will only be

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one covenant, which is that new covenant of Jesus Christ, the Messiah

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Covenant, if you want to call it that.

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And so a lot of the letters, and this is where we really have to

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understand this and not take Paul's letters and try to apply them 2000

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years later to what's going on here.

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we also have to do this while understanding that these were letters

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that Paul and others wrote specifically to coach these believers on how to

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live in that kingdom during that time.

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Also with an old covenant that was still in place.

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And then of course we get to Revelation that again, we're gonna talk about

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in the last episode of this series.

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It's really that final hope that restoration and, a lot of people like to.

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Say that it's, it just shows that we win, that Jesus wins, and I'll

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say, in many ways, it shows that Jesus won and that he's continue

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winning and we're winning through him and with Him and in his kingdom.

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But we will, look at that again later in a later episode.

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Here's what I, I do want to kinda look at what happens when you ignore the order.

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And the context it leads to and, and probably a lot more than

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this, but at minimum it leads to confusion, contradiction.

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'cause a lot of people say, oh, the Bible contradicts itself.

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No, it doesn't.

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Not if you understand the story, not if you read through it chronologically,

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not if you look at what it was doing at the time it was written, when it

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was written and who it was written to, it does not contradict at all.

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At all.

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It doesn't.

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but if you're out of order, if you're out of context, you can

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misuse a lot of scriptures and that's one of the things that spurred me

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on to do this group of episodes.

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the more I started seeing and interacting and seeing people on

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social media and, some people that I had been around a long period of

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time, some I'd gone to Bible school with I'm like you know what, not only.

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Are they not using that scripture correctly?

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They really are misusing it.

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and I think that that's where it starts becoming, I'll use the word

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dangerous, that may be strong.

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But misleading might be a softer word, but it could be dangerous.

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There are people that are doing things with scriptures out of

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context that I believe are, misuse.

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We'll just say it that way and we will often miss the why behind.

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The what?

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And we'll, we'll, we'll use the what?

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We'll try to establish rules and regulations and good and

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bad based on things without understanding the why and that bigger

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picture, I know you've seen it.

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We see it in the political arenas here in the United States.

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Probably in other parts of the world.

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We see it with one denomination versus another.

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We see it with groups of people against other groups.

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We debate doctrines that would make sense and not be as divisive as they are.

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If we really understood the story of scripture, and so that's something that

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I'm attempting to make sense of myself and maybe share that as I'm learning this.

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Jesus read it as a story and Luke.

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24, 27, he explains the story from Moses through the prophets.

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In Hebrews one, we see that God used it to speak one way and

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now he speaks through his son.

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And then I love the beginning of John one.

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The word became flesh to fulfill the story that is the Holy Bible.

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And so that's the scriptures that back up some of the things

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that we're talking about.

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Many times we've heard scriptures like, for example, John 5 39 and

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40, where Jesus is saying, you study the scriptures, but you miss me.

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And often we will see people and we have studied the scriptures, but we've missed.

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What it's all about.

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All scripture is useful, but it must be read in context.

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That's from two Timothy three 16.

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So just to kind of close this out, to kind of prepare for the next

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episode, the Bible isn't a textbook.

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It's not a rule book, it's not the law.

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It is a narrative that includes some of those things, but it's a narrative

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and if you don't understand the narrative, then you don't understand

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how some of those other things fit.

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I. Read it as a story and you'll begin to see the heart of the author.

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And I do believe this word is divinely inspired by the author and creator

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of the universe, but you won't understand the heart if you don't.

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Understand the story.

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If you take things out of order and out of context, when you see

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it, the confusion begins to lift.

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You're stepping out of the matrix and the kingdom starts to come into view.

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And I'll tell you, it's so liberating when things at one point were.

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Just kind of fuzzy and you would just sort of explain things away with statements

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like, you just gotta have faith, you just need more faith, brother, come on now.

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Just, you know, the, that creation, you just need to have faith or

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some of the things from Revelation.

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Well, you know, you just need to understand we win.

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That's all.

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there's more to that.

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And if you read it in context.

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And in the order that it was written at times and understand it.

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Uh, then that's gonna help in the next episode, episode four, we're

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gonna zoom in and go into the first century, and this is where I've

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been living for about a year or so.

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I've just been hanging out there studying the history of it.

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Reading some of these, epistles and letters and gospels and trying to

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understand when they were written, the audience they were written

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to, and all of those things.

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And boy has that helped.

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We wanna understand the real people and the real audience and why understanding

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who the Bible was written to, may the key to unlocking what it's really saying.

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To us today, and I've been having fun with that.

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I've actually been writing some things sort of in the fiction space.

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Related to some of the things I've been learning.

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So I love that.

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So anyway, thanks for joining me on this journey.

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It's been a fun journey for me.

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I am hopeful that you're on a similar journey.

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It doesn't have to look like mine, but I'm hopeful that you are digging in,

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that you're spending more time in the word, in the scripture, you're spending

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quiet still, time just to hear the Holy Spirit and allow yourself to be led and

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guided to where God wants you to be.

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Not where Tim wants you to be.

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Not necessarily where, you know, a TV preacher or YouTube preacher wants you

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to be, but where God wants you to be.

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That is my desire for maybe pushing along this topic.

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So hope you've enjoyed this.

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Leave comments, love to hear from you down in the comments if, if you're watching

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this or, or listening on YouTube or on any of the other platforms, if you're catching

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some of these clips on social media.

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Let me know what you're thinking on this.

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I'd love to get your feedback.

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Until next time, next week, we'll see you for episode four of the series.

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Why The Bible Doesn't Make Sense yet?