The Berean Manifesto

S4EP12 - On the Seventh Day

 

Summary
Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms discuss the chapter breakdown of the bible, stating that it is often split up like bad television, with no real reason for it. They acknowledged the need for it in order to make it easier for churches and groups to talk about, but were still frustrated by it. They then moved on to discuss Genesis two, which Pastor Bill noted should technically be the end of chapter one. They then discuss the poetic implications and deeper meanings behind the words of Genesis one, before moving on to talk about the start of chapter two.
Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms discuss the translation of Genesis 2:1-3, which states that God completed His work on the seventh day and rested, declaring it holy. Pastor Newms mentioned the Greek Old Testament, which is the one Paul used when he wrote the New Testament, reads that God had completed His work on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day. However, the majority of manuscripts say that God completed His work on the seventh day and rested on the seventh day. Pastor Newms suggested that the NASB translation bridges the gap between the two translations.
Pastors Bill and Newms discussed the idea of God resting on the seventh day. They looked at two different manuscripts that present the idea differently, but are not contradictory. The first one Sez that God finished his work on the sixth day and then rested on the seventh day, while the other one Sez that he completed his work by resting on the seventh day. They also discussed a conversation they had with a Muslim gentleman who scoffed at the idea that God would need to rest. Pastor Bill explained that the Bible does not say that God needed to rest, but that he chose to rest.
The conversation discusses God resting on the seventh day, as described in Exodus 30:17. Pastor Bill explains that the Sabbath is not a legalistic observance, but rather a day of rest and refreshment to help people reset and refocus after six days of work. He further explains that research has shown that a day of rest is essential for the human mind in order to prevent it from schisming. The day of rest is an opportunity to reset and recharge in order to do one's best work.

Timestamps
0:21:29 Conversation Summary: Exploring the Meaning Behind Genesis One and Two  
0:25:20 Conversation on Genesis 2:1-3: God's Rest on the Seventh Day  
0:26:42 Heading: Exploring the Meaning of the Sabbath in the Bible  
0:30:22 Conversation on the Significance of the Sabbath Day  
0:33:54 Conversation on the Importance of Rest and Self-Care  
0:40:34 Conversation on Self-Care and Rest: Taking Time for Yourself  
0:43:10 Conversation between Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms on the Importance of Resting and Manual Clocks  
0:45:14 Conversation between Pastor Newms and Pastor Bill on the Brian Manifesto Podcast  
0:48:53 Heading: Podcast Discussion on Meeting Over a Meal and Feeding People  
0:50:14 Conversation on Tennessee's Political Climate and Drag Queen Story Time  

Transcript
[0:00:00]  Pastor Bill: He's got a roll of toilet paper on top of his head with the sheets draped down over top of his face.
[0:00:07]  Pastor Newms: You haven't said hello and welcome. This is going to get edited out.
[0:00:12]  Pastor Bill: Oh, man. Hello, and welcome to season four, episode twelve of the Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian. I'm Pastor Bill, and Pastor Newms with a roll of toilet paper on top of his head has joined, as always.
[0:00:30]  Pastor Newms: Lies. Go back and watch the Twitch. There is not a toilet paper roll on my head.
[0:00:34]  Pastor Bill: He took it off as I was doing the intro because he was like, you haven't done the intro yet, so I'm cutting this part out where they're not going to hear you telling them, I've got a toilet paper roll on top of my head.
[0:00:44]  Pastor Newms: I never said most of that.
[0:00:50]  Pastor Bill: All right, maybe you didn't use all those words exactly.
[0:00:54]  Pastor Newms: That's why I said most of that. Some of those words were words I used. All right, Pastor Bill.
[0:01:02]  Pastor Bill: All right, pastor Newms, how was starting with your week?
[0:01:05]  Pastor Newms: No, I already said it.
[0:01:11]  Pastor Bill: How was my week? This was spring break for our kids.
[0:01:15]  Pastor Newms: Well, two weeks, really, because we didn't do last week because it was yo mama's birthday and Sez, his birthday, and Groggy's birthday.
[0:01:30]  Pastor Bill: I don't remember the week before this last one that we just had. I don't remember it.
[0:01:38]  Pastor Newms: I just turned your face off. I didn't turn your face off. No one saw that.
[0:01:43]  Pastor Bill: Um, the Gergs Theater competition, they got perfect marks all across the board. All three judges in all categories.
[0:01:59]  Pastor Newms: Yay.
[0:02:00]  Pastor Bill: They're moving on to what's called bi-district.
[0:02:03]  Pastor Newms: Bi-district.
[0:02:05]  Pastor Bill: That's called bi-district.
[0:02:08]  Pastor Newms: See that right there? That right there is what happens when you have independent school districts and not just counties, where you got to do by districts in order to then have regionals after that. That's insane. You got too many schools in that state.
[0:02:25]  Pastor Bill: Technically, it's bi-districts. And the top two schools from each of those go on to state.
[0:02:35]  Pastor Newms: They don't just call those regional.
[0:02:38]  Pastor Bill: No bi-district.
[0:02:40]  Pastor Newms: I hate Texas sometimes your guys' independent school districts are like the bane of everyone else's existence. You all are just special out there.
[0:02:53]  Pastor Bill: It's the UIL that administers it all. The University Scholastic League. They organize all the football, everything. And they organize all the education competitions and all the band competitions, all the choir competitions. They organize all that. So they make all those calls. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So that happened a week before last, and then this last week was spring break, like I said, for our kids. And you'd think that would make life easier, not having to get up every morning and take the kids to school. But no one grandma wants kids on some days and the other grandma wants things on some days. And I'm running all over town trying to get things done during spring break. Because the kids are wanting to do all kinds of things. I like all that, though, is Hello Fresh was running a Hulu promotion and I was able to get like six meals for four persons per meal for like 90% off because it combined the Hulu promotion with like a first time buyer promotion. And so we ate some really good recipes this week. That was fun.
[0:04:28]  Pastor Newms: Okay.
[0:04:29]  Pastor Bill: Yeah. So how was your week?
[0:04:33]  Pastor Newms: I'm going to do the thing you're never supposed to do and touch your microphone because there's something on it. It looks like a cat hair, and it's driving me batty because it's right out of the corner of my eye. 1 second. I feel like you need to talk.
[0:04:43]  Pastor Bill: I'm sitting too high.
[0:04:46]  Pastor Newms: I feel like I'm not sitting high.
[0:04:48]  Pastor Bill: Enough, like more than my head should be going or something. But if I move my camera, the clock here is going to be in the wrong place. The clock is supposed to be done.
[0:05:02]  Pastor Newms: Okay. How was my week? So my two weeks was pretty good. It's been an eventful two weeks. Last weekend we had a church work day during on a Saturday. And that is more how you normally sit. Yes.
[0:05:20]  Pastor Bill: And.
[0:05:26]  Pastor Newms: It hurt the church work day? Yeah. Just because there's so much I got some physical issues. We all know I've got some physical issues, right? And so, yeah, it was rough. Some of the I worked real hard because it's church work day. So I got in there and was like, get it. And then I was like, get it. And I slightly twisted my knee, which is not uncommon. This isn't like, oh, Newms. Is getting old and injured. No. I've been twisting my knees since I was 14, so it made me stop playing sports. Was knee pain. Knee pain is normal.
[0:06:23]  Pastor Bill: Like me spraining my ankles.
[0:06:24]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, exactly. Or like Zaydie spraining her stepping wrong and popping her foot. And then she swings her foot around to repop it because she sprained them so many times that they just it's like a pop and lock Barbie.
[0:06:39]  Pastor Bill: Pop and lock Barbie.
[0:06:42]  Pastor Newms: No, she freaked out her coworkers because it happened the other day and her ankle popped. She goes, oh, that doesn't feel right, and swung it around and popped it and she goes, oh, that feels better. And they're all staring at her like wide eyed and like, this girl's a robot. She just popped her ankle at will to walk straight. I don't even know if she's on right now hearing me call her out because she's done her making dinner. So I don't think she's turned on the live, so ha. She won't even know I'm talking mess about her. He'll tell her. And so that was interesting. So then when you texted me and you were like, let's not have church to allow for oh, she's here. I was wrong.
[0:07:26]  Pastor Bill: Your wife was here hearing you talk smack about her.
[0:07:28]  Pastor Newms: When you were like, I was actually sitting at the table with Sez, and you were like, let's not let's celebrate birthdays. And I was like Sez, we're not celebrating, so I love you, and I'm going to bed early. He's not listening to us. I can see his screens. He's watching YouTube. Anyway, so that was good. And then this week was busy. Just been very busy. I just feel like I'm just busy all the time right now, and I don't like it, but it's good. We had a close friend of ours mother passed, and so we had went to her funeral in Memphis yesterday to support him. And that's, of course, real emotional because they were super close, so that was rough. And then went out to lunch with friends today, which is also weird because I don't do things like that. So I was emotionally more than drained. And so I just went to bed. When I got home, it's been a day.
[0:09:06]  Pastor Bill: I'm up, and I'm headed up there.
[0:09:09]  Pastor Newms: Zaydie actually ran to the store, and she comes and I partially hear something, and I'm like, Whatever. No, he has to get up. And then they're coming in my room.
[0:09:28]  Pastor Bill: No, you have to get up.
[0:09:29]  Pastor Newms: It's this time. And I'm like, so, yeah. So that's what's going on. That's how my week was. Is it your week to read a card or my week? I think it's your week.
[0:09:48]  Pastor Bill: It is my week to read a card. And I have my deck here ready to pull one. All right, here we go. How much would someone have to pay you to eat a live spider?
[0:10:09]  Pastor Newms: Well, Biggs just threw up in his mouth. Almost guarantee that.
[0:10:21]  Pastor Bill: A live spider.
[0:10:22]  Pastor Newms: How Biggs of a spider are we talking? Here comes the qualifying questions, where newoms hustle lawyers, way out of everything qualifiers.
[0:10:28]  Pastor Bill: Every time you're like, now, you'll see the spider here in question.
[0:10:35]  Pastor Newms: So, like, if we're talking, like if we're talking, like, some little, like, spider, we're talking like I do it for you.
[0:10:45]  Pastor Bill: Talking about the little tiny ones that you already eat twelve of a year or whatever it is while you're asleep.
[0:10:50]  Pastor Newms: See, that's inaccurate. That's not what it is. So that's an average, not a median or a mean. What that means is there's one dude who he's eating them all the time.
[0:11:02]  Pastor Bill: He's eating them all the time in his sleep. He lives in the spider den.
[0:11:05]  Pastor Newms: Thousands of spiders just go in and out of his mouth every day. So the rest of us, we don't eat any. That's how I take that. Yeah, that's how I process that, because it counts. Australia with us.
[0:11:18]  Pastor Bill: You just skew the data until you feel comfortable.
[0:11:21]  Pastor Newms: That's right. As Biggs says, there is not enough money in the world. Okay? So if we're talking, like, a little spider did it say live? Did it say it had to be alive?
[0:11:31]  Pastor Bill: No, not live. I don't think it said live. Did it say alive?
[0:11:36]  Pastor Newms: I don't remember.
[0:11:38]  Pastor Bill: Oh, yeah, it says live.
[0:11:39]  Pastor Newms: Okay.
[0:11:39]  Pastor Bill: A live spider.
[0:11:40]  Pastor Newms: So if we're talking like a little spider, like this spider, like that spider, like a real little spider, like that kind of spider. You see what I mean? Look at the camera. Like that. We're talking about that.
[0:11:50]  Pastor Bill: I see it.
[0:11:54]  Pastor Newms: I'd do it for a couple of grand.
[0:12:00]  Pastor Bill: Now, my only qualifier here is two things. One, is this a poisonous spider? I'm going to get sick and fade it.
[0:12:11]  Pastor Newms: Well, poisonous or venomous?
[0:12:14]  Pastor Bill: Well, venomous. It affects me when it bites me. Poisonous. I get sick when I bite it.
[0:12:19]  Pastor Newms: But I don't want venomous either, because it could bite me in the process.
[0:12:22]  Pastor Bill: Of me eating it. Well, that's why you start at the butt first and bite it in half so that it dies, so it can't bite you on the way down.
[0:12:29]  Pastor Newms: You got to then hold the front.
[0:12:30]  Pastor Bill: Of it right where its fangs are. Just chill. There's ways to hold spiders. Okay? One, is it poisonous? And two, is this something that people normally eat because it's got a good flavor, or is it going to be nasty as I all get out of my mouth? Those are my two qualifiers. Now, if it's not poisonous and people enjoy eating it, I'll just do it for a dare. No, if people don't I'm going to need at least, like, $10.
[0:13:06]  Pastor Newms: No, homie. No.
[0:13:10]  Pastor Bill: Listen, brother.
[0:13:12]  Pastor Newms: No.
[0:13:13]  Pastor Bill: I've eaten a peanut butter and maggot sandwich just for role play.
[0:13:19]  Pastor Newms: I understand that. That's different maggots are nutritious. Like, that's different. Spiders are spiders are nutritious. You can't no. Have you seen the TikTok where the lady dips it and I got salsa and then eats it silky?
[0:13:36]  Pastor Bill: That silky texture on the inside when all that webbing comes and the ichor.
[0:13:42]  Pastor Newms: No, dude, get out of here. We're not friends no more. This is the last episode of The Berean Manifesto, faith, hope, and love for the Christian of last week.
[0:13:52]  Pastor Bill: Because Pastor Bill, isn't it ick-or?
[0:13:55]  Pastor Newms: No, it's I-core.
[0:13:57]  Pastor Bill: It's ick-or.
[0:13:58]  Pastor Newms: I-core.
[0:13:58]  Pastor Bill: I thought that was pronounced ick-or.
[0:14:00]  Pastor Newms: I don't care how it was pronounced. It's icky, so it has to be an I.
[0:14:04]  Pastor Bill: Like ick-or.
[0:14:05]  Pastor Newms: No, icky.
[0:14:06]  Pastor Bill: So ick-or.
[0:14:07]  Pastor Newms: No, it's icky. So I-core. I have to be right on this. It's just how it is. I actually don't know. How do you pronounce icore? Just like I always say. No, not what what word is that? That's not a that that's some kind of, like, eldritch horror word that I looked up. How do you spell icore? I don't know how to pronounce I don't know how to spell icore to then ask how to say icore. How do you pronounce spider blood? Is it not I-core?
[0:14:59]  Pastor Bill: It's I-C-H-O-R.
[0:15:01]  Pastor Newms: But that doesn't nothing goo.
[0:15:06]  Pastor Bill: It is a noun that is pronounced okay. I-core.
[0:15:08]  Pastor Newms: All right, here we go. Ready? Here we go. Here we go.
[0:15:12]  Pastor Bill: I-core I-core.
[0:15:14]  Pastor Newms: Bam. I-core.
[0:15:17]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, I-core. That's what I just said.
[0:15:20]  Pastor Newms: I was right, you were wrong.
[0:15:21]  Pastor Bill: I think that's what that pronunciation?
[0:15:23]  Pastor Newms: I was right, you were wrong. I-core. Okay, Biggs, here's the problem. Best spider is a dead spider barbecue.
[0:15:30]  Pastor Bill: So you're saying you need a dead.
[0:15:31]  Pastor Newms: Spider, but not a live spider? Biggs, I know you ain't actually going to know. There's no way. I've seen you squeal like a little girl and run across a room as a six foot three factory worker. Like you are not out here trying to post on the Internet that you're going to eat a spider. I call shenanigans. That's the word. I can say.
[0:15:56]  Pastor Bill: So on the free Wiktionary for the word I-core. It's got pronunciations. I-core, I-kar and ick-or are the three different pronunciations.
[0:16:14]  Pastor Newms: So read Psalms 22:16 and Isaiah 53:5. Thank you for chatting for the first time. We saw you join us last month, so welcome back. Posted a bunch of things called hyper creeps. And they're just spiders. They're just spider like little spiders. Just a whole line of little spiders.
[0:16:33]  Pastor Bill: Just this hype creep on my end.
[0:16:36]  Pastor Newms: They're little spiders. They're little spiders.
[0:16:38]  Pastor Bill: Over and over again what these were to say. Psalms 22:16.
[0:17:08]  Pastor Newms: It's an interesting aspect of life. Now, I'm just going to call you Read as opposed to saying your whole name each time. So neither one of us have a denomination per chance. And the Ecclesian House, which is the ministry that we are both from in this respect, is an interdenominational ministry. So we work with multiple people all the time. So neither one of us are in a denomination per se. The church I attend on Sundays is non denominational. And the church Pastor Bill attends is also non denomination, is technically interdenominational because he's the pastor of the church that you're currently at.
[0:18:08]  Pastor Bill: This is the service of the church.
[0:18:12]  Pastor Newms: So technically interdenominational. Now I lost my so Biggs would.
[0:18:26]  Pastor Bill: Eat a dead barbecued spider.
[0:18:30]  Pastor Newms: How much money, though? We talkin’ Biggs because I'm willing to pay you some money to watch you have to eat a spider just because you said so. And we'll record it to put it on here just because you hate them so much. I want to know what amount of money to see if I can pull off getting it. And see, now he's going to give us some crazy amount of money that no one would ever do just so he doesn't have to.
[0:18:51]  Pastor Bill: But we'll start a crowdfunding campaign of some kind. We'll figure it out or something. We'll start a kickstarter. We'll be like we'll give you pictures of Biggs trying to get the spider on a shirt, all kinds of stuff for the Kickstarter. We'll get the money.
[0:19:17]  Pastor Newms: Oh, man. All right. Yeah, we're good. All right.
[0:19:29]  Pastor Bill: You just wouldn't do it, Pastor Newms. You just wouldn't eat.
[0:19:31]  Pastor Newms: No, I would. I said a couple of grand for a small one and a whole lot of money. It's going to depend on the size of the spider. Like, you're going to show me the spider and I'm going to be like, no. You talk about them Biggs old translators where it's going to take multiple bites and I can't just swallow it. You got me almost ready to cuss here. I know we keep it family friendly. There was this part but no.
[0:20:02]  Pastor Bill: And they would have no weird things, right?
[0:20:04]  Pastor Newms: No.
[0:20:04]  Pastor Bill: And every time I always watch that, I would always be like, I don't see the issue. Just what's that word? Disassociate and eat it. Why can't you just disassociate? Just do it.
[0:20:20]  Pastor Newms: Neurotypicals can't disassociate.
[0:20:25]  Pastor Bill: It's not real. I would just disassociate. It's not real. It happened over there, and my brain is over here. I don't understand.
[0:20:32]  Pastor Newms: No homie. No. I don't know if we can be friends. Like I said, this is the last episode of The Berean Manifesto. Thank you for joining. Hope you all have a good night. If anyone asks how the ministry died, it's because Pastor Bill said he would eat spiders.
[0:20:51]  Pastor Bill: Pastor Newms couldn't handle that.
[0:20:53]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, we have fought on air about all kinds of stuff and even more in our personal life. The breaking point was the argument of.
[0:21:08]  Pastor Bill: Spider, the edibility of Arachnid.
[0:21:16]  Pastor Newms: Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, we got to change the topic. I'm icky as I'll get out right now, we got to go, like, you got to change it to something. Let's talk about the actual stuff. Get to going.
[0:21:28]  Pastor Bill: Get to go. Genesis.
[0:21:29]  Pastor Newms: Okay, genesis two. Move on. Let's go.
[0:21:32]  Pastor Bill: Since we started season four oh, Biggs. Come on. 2.5 million get real. Okay, so since we started season four, we picked back up in Genesis one, right? We started talking about Genesis One. We've talked a little bit about John 1, and we went all the way through the first chapter of Genesis. We talked about the history of the chapter 1 of Genesis and the origins and the Babylonian stuff and some of the Sumerian stuff. And we really did this overall look at why is this piece of text included in Genesis? What is its positioning in relation to everything else? And we went through kind of what are the poetic ramifications of the wording and the things they chose to say and what are the deeper meanings behind those words. When we talked about Genesis 1:1, and we were like, this isn't really just in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. It's this deeper, really profound thing. And if you haven't listened to any of that yet, take some time, go back and read the transcripts or listen to it right quick and then come back and listen here. If you want, if you don't - if you just want to pick up from where you are, that's cool, too. We can just pick up right here. So now we are picking up in Genesis, chapter two, previous years, which I.
[0:23:08]  Pastor Newms: Would like to also state, I hate the chapter breakdown so much sometimes.
[0:23:20]  Pastor Bill: Because Genesis chapter two, verses one through it should be chapter one, technically be the end of chapter one.
[0:23:28]  Pastor Newms: We should not be acting like bad television that requires you to watch the next episode in order to understand the full story. Like, we should not be doing part.
[0:23:40]  Pastor Bill: Twos, mid chapter written like bad television.
[0:23:45]  Pastor Newms: It's split up like bad television, not.
[0:23:47]  Pastor Bill: Written up like bad television.
[0:23:48]  Pastor Newms: We've got chapters like 119.
[0:23:51]  Pastor Bill: It was the producers. The producers did bad with Psalms 119.
[0:23:54]  Pastor Newms: It's just page after page after page after page to make sure it's semi together. And then we're like, let's cut this off and put three verses on the next one. No, there's no reason for it. It's painful. It's painful. And I understand the need because when we're talking in churches and we're talking in groups and we're doing things like this, you can't be like, oh, I'm on page 47. What page are you on? Well, my page I understand some of the purpose behind it. It's just like and we can't really go back at this point and change it all. I know, but it's like.
[0:24:27]  Pastor Bill: Maybe always frustrated me. Some Bible company could make a Bible with new yeah,.
[0:24:33]  Pastor Newms: But then it wouldn't be standard, and it would cause issues across everything and you would never be able to bible just got rid of them.
[0:24:37]  Pastor Bill: It was like, no, we're not even going to have them. We're just going to get rid of them all together.
[0:24:42]  Pastor Newms: It's not that's not that's a that's a translation. That's not a translation. That's a paraphrase. And they plainly say, so we're not gonna, you know, and, you know, it's just one of those things. It's one of those things that we all know it happens. It's just this is one of those blatant. Not like, maybe not. This is like 123-4567. Move on to the next story completely. And you're just like, okay, now I'll let you continue because I won't complain no more about it today.
[0:25:20]  Pastor Bill: All right, so let's go ahead and read Genesis chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. So the heavens of the earth and everything in them were completed on the 7th day. God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the 7th day. From all his work that he had done. God blessed the 7th day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation. Sounds a lot like a lawyer writ that, didn't it? Wrote that, doesn't it?
[0:25:51]  Pastor Newms: Sometimes.
[0:25:53]  Pastor Bill: Now some text like the Greek Old Testament, the one that Paul had when he was writing the New Testament. Not all of the New Testament when he was writing his works that got put in. The new Testament actually reads, on the 6th day, God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the 7th day. But the majority of manuscripts say on the 7th day, God completed his work that he had done and he rested on the 7th day, which I find interesting.
[0:26:28]  Pastor Newms: The Nasb says by the 7th day to kind of, I think, bridge that gap. Maybe, but I mean, it's one of those things.
[0:26:42]  Pastor Bill: Let's see what the KJV pulls from.
[0:26:48]  Pastor Newms: And on the 7th day yeah, but.
[0:26:52]  Pastor Bill: The and on the are implied, not actually in the original.
[0:26:58]  Pastor Newms: Right.
[0:26:59]  Pastor Bill: And they are not given any numbers from yeah. Right. So we have two different Ideologies that we can pull from the two different ways that the manuscripts place these. Right. So the one says, on the 6th day, God finished his work and then he rested on the 7th day. And we have the other one that says on the 7th day, God completed his work by resting. Yeah, and that's the only difference. The difference there is that in one point of view, it views the rest as integral to the work. And on the other one, it says that the rest was taken because the work was done. Right. And so these aren't exclusive ideas. These are two ways to look at the exact same thing that's going on. They're not contradictory to each other.
[0:28:02]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, they're definitely not contradictory. They are different, but they are not contradictory.
[0:28:10]  Pastor Bill: So in the past, in January, we talk about taking a Sabbath day and then we talk about tithing. And that's usually the only times that we hit on those two things. And this year we took a little bit of a different track. Right. We started in Genesis one, we started working our way up. So here we are at the Sabbath conversation because now it's coming up, right?
[0:28:37]  Pastor Newms: Yes.
[0:28:38]  Pastor Bill: So on the 7th day, God rested. Now, whether he rested because that was resting is the completion of the work, or he rested because the work was done, either way, that doesn't really matter in the way that you frame the way you read that. So I had a friend several years ago, not that we're not friends anymore, but we're not in contact anymore. It was a Muslim gentleman who went by the name of D. And we would have these conversations where we would talk about the differences between what the Bible said about certain things and what the Quran said about certain things. And we got into this conversation about creation and the six days versus the Quran's idea that it was millions and billions and years and more of the evolutionary timeline is what he attributed the Quran's teachings to. And I went through the six days and on the 7th day, God rested and he scoffed. He scoffed and he said, God is God. God doesn't need to rest. And I said, I agree. It doesn't say that God needed to rest. It doesn't say that God was tired. It Says that God chose to rest.
[0:30:04]  Pastor Newms: Right.
[0:30:04]  Pastor Bill: He rested. The question came up of why would God do that why would God rest? So let's turn to Exodus 30:17.
[0:30:22]  Pastor Newms: Okay, I was just about to do that.
[0:30:29]  Pastor Bill: Okay. And I'm actually going to start reading at 16, but 17 is the meat of why we're turning over here. Starting at 16, the Israelites must observe the Sabbath, celebrating it throughout their generations as a permanent covenant. It is a sign forever between me and the Israelites, for in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, but on the 7th day, he rested and was refreshed. So God didn't need to rest, but he chose to rest and he was refreshed, right? That's what it says. Now, why would it choose those words, though? Because it all boils down to what is the Sabbath and why the Sabbath day is for us, right? It's a day of rest that we observe so that we can recharge, so that we can reset our mindset, so that we can refocus who we are and then move forward and do our best work. So it's not this legalistic thing, although some have taken it there, right?
[0:31:53]  Pastor Newms: Yes.
[0:31:54]  Pastor Bill: And it doesn't actually say if you go and you look at what the layout of what a Sabbath is, it doesn't actually say everyone has to Sabbath on the same day of the week. No, it says after you've worked for six days, take a day, refresh yourself, reset. And what we found in psychological circles in lots of different areas is that six days of work is a pretty hard limit for the human mind. When you get into the 7th day of work, the 8th day of work without a rest, you're starting to schism. You're not seeing things correctly, you're starting to see the world through weird blinders. Your body needs rest. And honestly, there's this push now for four days of work each week with three days off, because now we're talking not necessity, but now we're talking about what is the peak of human, what is peak performance? Right? What is peak performance? And peak performance turns out to be four days of work and then three days off, you are on Twitch, who calls himself Read. And then there's a couple of verses there. You can go read those verses if you want. Psalm 22:16 and Isaiah 53:5, the references to the Messiah, he says, yeah, a lot of things Jesus did is theatrics and instruction for teaching for us so our dumb finite human minds can understand. You're right on the money. There's so much in the Bible that is an infinite God, an infinite amount of knowledge, trying to dumb it down for humanity to understand. Even in this example that you've given, it's funny to go and read. Jesus will say something and then the disciples would be like, yeah, but what about and Jesus is like, yeah, that's what I just said, but I'll say it again if you think that would help.
[0:34:35]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, when we look at the Sabbath. It's something that we I it's important from a standpoint of resting. And God thought it was so important that when the Israelites were going through the time periods that were getting the commandments and all those things, as we were reading in Exodus, he put on rules of hey, look, you guys have got to understand this. If you don't understand this and you don't take your rest, you should die. Now, here's the funny thing about that. This is not a hard rule to follow per se. Like go take a break for most people is not hard. There are those stubborn people out there that they work, they do everything they do and they don't take a Sabbath. They will burn out over time, especially if you're working two jobs, as Zaydie mentioned. What about people who work full time and are involved in ministry outside? At what point is that a form of working? In my opinion it is you still have to have a day off from those multiple aspects because you will burn out otherwise. And I think a lot of times that's where we see people who work both regular jobs and ministry part time. Ministry work is never part time, but I think that's why we see them burn out often is we have to focus on resting also and it's so important. And that's one of those examples. What Zaydie is saying is where it is hard to those are the types of people who it is hard to take a break when you're doing when you're doing that. But it depends on what is refreshing, what is pulling away from you, which ministry often takes a toll on you, at least in an emotional level. But that's why a lot of pastors take Mondays off. But there are people who don't. And that is where you can have serious forms of burnout. You have to be very careful with that.
[0:37:41]  Pastor Bill: But some ministry can be refreshing to some people. Some people would consider doing some types of ministry to be invigorating, to be refreshing, to be restful, to be The door greeter people, the door greeter.
[0:38:01]  Pastor Newms: Those weirdos at the door. People that are like super happy.
[0:38:05]  Pastor Bill: And when you go to do ministry, it feels like work. Then you're not resting, you're not taking a Sabbath, you're working on the Sabbath. If you're working a full time job and then volunteering at your church too, to the point where you're not getting a day a week off, then you're not taking care of yourself, which is in my opinion, a cardinal sin. You have to take care of yourself. You're sinning against yourself in the name of whatever ministry that you're serving, which is dangerous. Jesus said love the Lord God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, right? So you're supposed to love yourself, which means take care of yourself. Don't feed yourself poison, don't be drinking in excess and killing yourself off. Don't be smoking in excess and killing yourself off. Take care of yourself. Don't be shooting up all the time and hurting yourself and being promiscuous and getting STDs and all the things that aren't actual self love. Don't be doing all those things. Take care of yourself. Love yourself. Give yourself a Sabbath, actual love for yourself, and then love your neighbor in that same way. Make sure your neighbor is fed healthy. Make sure your neighbor is not becoming a slave to drugs. Make sure your neighbor's not being eaten up by addiction and doing things that are destructive to their life. These are the greatest commandments here. Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, all your mind, your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
[0:40:01]  Pastor Newms: I like to love yourself, yeah.
[0:40:05]  Pastor Bill: No, you like to ignore the love yourself part. Most people do. A lot of churches do because they think they look at self love and they go, oh, well, self love is self indulgence. You're not supposed to self indulge. Well, that's not love. If I love my kid, I'm not going to 24 hours a day, seven days a week be shoving candy down their throat. That's indulgence, but that's not love. If you love yourself, then you're taking care of yourself. Like I was talking about last week, I like to have a salad a day. Makes me feel healthy. I have more energy, my body works better. That's taking care of myself. That's loving myself. And so I take that seriously, and this is just as serious. Finding time to rest and reset and refocus yourself is a paramount thing. And it is important for all human beings to have rest and refreshment. It just is. Yeah, gosh, I don't know what else to say.
[0:41:26]  Pastor Newms: And there's nothing so in what we've been doing as we've gone through this. There's nothing super different about the Hebrew words used here either.
[0:41:46]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, I knew there wouldn't be.
[0:41:48]  Pastor Newms: Yeah. I'm just saying that for everyone else, in case they're like, we talk about the words this time.
[0:41:55]  Pastor Bill: Why did we talk about the words?
[0:41:57]  Pastor Newms: And it's because they are there's not.
[0:41:59]  Pastor Bill: Going to be in this one.
[0:42:03]  Pastor Newms: It's what we've talked about throughout the last weeks of this is what it is.
[0:42:12]  Pastor Bill: And there's the plural. There still it's God. Not God. We're actually still technically in the Babylonian adaption. We're still adapting the Babylonian text there. We haven't actually gotten to what was originally the beginning of Genesis yet, not until we get to verse four of chapter two, and then we get to the actual first Jewish text of the Bible. And we talked about the 7th day manuscripts versus the 6th day manuscripts as far as verse two there of chapter two is concerned. But yeah, you have to find time for yourself to rest.
[0:43:05]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, it's super important. Resting is important.
[0:43:10]  Pastor Bill: And you'd think we had a two day weekend in the United States because people understood that but no, that's not why we have a two day weekend in the United States we have a two day weekend in the United States because it's illegal to buy cars on Sundays. No, that's literally why letting people off on Saturdays came through.
[0:43:37]  Pastor Newms: It was illegal.
[0:43:40]  Pastor Bill: It still is in Texas.
[0:43:42]  Pastor Newms: Right? In Texas, but not everywhere.
[0:43:44]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, not everywhere.
[0:43:46]  Pastor Newms: Did Pastor Bill forget to spring Pastor Bill? Your time is wrong.
[0:43:52]  Pastor Bill: Where?
[0:43:52]  Pastor Newms: On your clock.
[0:43:55]  Pastor Bill: Well, okay.
[0:43:58]  Pastor Newms: Biggs just called you out on it.
[0:44:01]  Pastor Bill: It's a manual clock. I forget that I even own a manual clock anymore.
[0:44:06]  Pastor Newms: I was like, what do you mean? Biggs like, he's here. What are you talking about? Yeah, and then I looked behind you and was like, his clock's wrong.
[0:44:17]  Pastor Bill: Every other clock I own, every other clock I own except for in my car is automatic. Automatically changes. Yeah.
[0:44:31]  Pastor Newms: I don't have anything else.
[0:44:32]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, I was trying to think of if I had any other anecdotes, but I don't. Only a story about D, but that relationship got weird about the third time he tried to convert me to Islam. It got really uncomfortable.
[0:44:54]  Pastor Newms: And also there was issues with the business, wasn't there? Like some weird stuff happened or something? Because I remember I went by one time and it was gone.
[0:45:06]  Pastor Bill: I mean, he had a hard time getting customers to come in. Yeah, I don't know why. The food was amazing.
[0:45:14]  Pastor Newms: Food was really good.
[0:45:17]  Pastor Bill: Food was for a while there was an uptick in people that came in, but then it kind of died back down again. I don't know.
[0:45:25]  Pastor Newms: So good. Those were great.
[0:45:28]  Pastor Bill: He ended up selling it to a lady in Irving and then they moved back to Canada. Yeah.
[0:45:42]  Pastor Newms: Well, the Berean Manifesto is recorded live in front of a studio audience. There's no studio audience. It's a Twitch audience.
[0:45:49]  Pastor Bill: It's a virtual studio. And it comes out every Wednesday at 07:00 p.m.. Great.
[0:45:58]  Pastor Newms: You said Canada.
[0:46:04]  Pastor Bill: And to be fair, we do record it live on Sunday evening. Did I send you that TikTok where the person said, if somebody says to be fair and your friend doesn't respond correctly, then you're not friends anymore.
[0:46:22]  Pastor Newms: No, now granted, that means you've watched a niche show from Canada, but niche not niche. Niche. What is niche? That is what is the Mitchar.
[0:46:35]  Pastor Bill: Yeah. So we record this on Sunday nights at 06:30 P.m. Central Standard Time. And you can go to our website, Ekk.House, to find out which Twitch, which Facebook, and which YouTube channel you can go to to watch live and also participate in the chat. Like you've heard us responding to people in the chat as they've brought up points, and Zany brought up a good point. And our new friend with the read and the verses references brought up a good contribution to the conversation so you can actually be a part of the conversation. And then the podcast comes out on Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. Pretty much anywhere you get podcasts. I haven't double checked that. We're on every podcast service in a while because there are a lot of podcast services, but we are syndicated on most podcast services, the Berean Manifesto. So if this has been enjoyable to you or you found this helpful, or you want to share the word of other people, you can go like and follow and share our stuff on social media. You can like and share this podcast wherever you've listened to it. That would really help us spread the word about what we're doing here and get more people to come to the live recordings, get more people to listen to the podcast episodes.
[0:48:06]  Pastor Newms: So that way there's more feedback and build the community.
[0:48:08]  Pastor Bill: More feedback, more community.
[0:48:11]  Pastor Newms: And me and Zaydie were actually talking about this today that we used to before COVID and before life and before me moving to Tennessee and Pastor Bill being in Texas. We met over a meal and did this. Pastor Bill did a recording of the podcast. Everyone listened to the podcast, and then we met and talked, and then we put that out. Also, Zaydie was like, why can't we go back to eating during it? Because that was always good. I liked that. And I was like, because then the podcast would be me chewing, and no one wants to hear that. And she was like, oh, yeah, the podcast. So for Zaydie, this is the whole thing, really. And then for others, we have, as you all out there know and are joining us in podcast land. You all listen to us via that.
[0:49:10]  Pastor Bill: And then feeding people was a lot of money.
[0:49:14]  Pastor Newms: It was, but it was good.
[0:49:15]  Pastor Bill: And that money has to come from somewhere.
[0:49:18]  Pastor Newms: It does.
[0:49:18]  Pastor Bill: So it's just kind of like and we don't ask for money. We just don't. We don't believe in it. If you want to give, you give. We're not going to try to extort you into getting you to give us money. We don't believe in that. And therefore, we have limited funds. And that's okay. It's not a big deal. All right, there you go. That's all we have for tonight. We're ending about five minutes early, but that's okay. That's not a big deal.
[0:49:53]  Pastor Newms: No.
[0:49:54]  Pastor Bill: So I love you guys. I hope you have a great week.
[0:49:57]  Pastor Newms: Be safe out there, please.
[0:49:59]  Pastor Bill: And until next time, too much craziness, please. You add it up, please.
[0:50:04]  Pastor Newms: It's crazy out there right now.
[0:50:07]  Pastor Bill: If you live in Tennessee, it is. If you live anywhere else, then it's just kind of the normal amount of crazy.
[0:50:14]  Pastor Newms: I disagree with that.
[0:50:16]  Pastor Bill: But Tennessee, man, I don't know what's going on with Tennessee. You've got legislators.
[0:50:21]  Pastor Newms: I don't know what we're doing.
[0:50:22]  Pastor Bill: Anti gay and then commenting on gay thirst traps on Instagram all at the same time.
[0:50:29]  Pastor Newms: And we've got our national government trying to ban tiktoks while Biden is in tiktoks.
[0:50:37]  Pastor Bill: That White House making.
[0:50:41]  Pastor Newms: I honestly believe the other 49 states are just watching Tennessee going, all right, let's see how this pans out.
[0:50:48]  Pastor Bill: Because, you know, Texas is going to.
[0:50:50]  Pastor Newms: Be right behind as soon as with Abbott. But it's that aspect of, like, everybody's like, well, they're the idiots who did it first. Let's just see what they volunteered, got themselves into. All right? And that's enough of a 30 second buffer, so now we don't have to sing.
[0:51:09]  Pastor Bill: Personally, I don't understand drag queen story time. Okay. I don't understand why they want to do it, the drag queens. I don't understand why they want to have that performance with children. I don't understand it's fine. But I'm not saying that it's weird. I'm just saying I don't understand the why of why they want to do that firing. They're not allowed to.
[0:51:34]  Pastor Newms: It's doubt-fireing.
[0:51:36]  Pastor Bill: He put it on everyone's mind. When you're a proclaimed Christian and you've come to a drag time story hour because you believe it's wrong and the Nazis roll up, literal Nazis with swastikas on their arms and they link arms with you and you're sharing the same message with Nazis, you're wrong.
[0:52:11]  Pastor Newms: Pretty much anytime that you're joining with Nazis, it's typically you're wrong. That should be your wake up call. Really should really confuse on why it's not pulled up.
[0:52:30]  Pastor Bill: The Christians should have dropped their signs and walked across the line in support of the people inside the library. Yeah, we should not be that's all kinds of wrong.
[0:52:45]  Pastor Newms: Yeah. We should not be with Nazis ever. If anything, that should be your red flag.
[0:53:01]  Pastor Bill: Like, Nazis are bad, period. Full stop. There’s no qualifiers there. Nazis are bad, period. Yeah. Okay. And now I don't want this to get cut off. I would actually like you to leave all of that in there.

S4EP11 - To Sum 1 Up

Summary

Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms were discussing Genesis 1 and the history of how it became included as part of the book of Genesis. They discussed how during the captivity in Babylon, stories from Babylon were added to the existing Genesis 2, as they provided more detail to the creation story. Pastor Newms then reminded Pastor Bill that the Judeans, ancestors of the Jews, were originally a polytheistic people. In summary, the conversation revolved around the history of Genesis 1 and the Judeans.
The conversation discussed the ancient Israelites and their belief in multiple gods and their worship of Ashra, a female deity who was believed to be the wife of Yahweh. Yahweh is mentioned in both Sumerian mythology and in the Mosaic Law. Despite this, the Israelites continued to worship other gods, so God punished them by sending them into captivity. The descendants of these captives went on to become the Samaritans, who still held onto some of their beliefs and were expecting the Messiah. Despite their own experiences with God, they eventually gave up the worship of Asherah.
Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms discussed the origin of the story of Genesis 1. They noted that it was likely adapted from Sumerian myth by the Babylonians, who wanted the Jewish people to worship their king as a monotheistic god. However, the Jewish people saw similarities between the Sumerian myth and their own history, and made changes to make it more palatable to their own culture. They read Genesis 1, noting the broader strokes of the story, as compared to the more detailed account of Genesis 2. Ultimately, the conversation concluded with an invitation to read Genesis 1.
God began the creation of the world by separating light from darkness and creating an expanse between the waters. He then caused the earth to produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees. He made the two great lights to rule over the day and night and placed stars in the sky. He also caused the waters to swarm with living creatures and the earth to produce livestock, creatures that crawl, and wildlife. On the fifth day, God looked on His creation and saw that it was good.

 

The topic according to AI

In the religious reflection being discussed, the authors believe that the creation story in the book of Genesis is a historical truth and has a significant impact on our relationship with God as our creator. They argue that the form of the document, its position at the beginning of the book of Genesis, and historical evidence all support the idea that the creation of the heavens, the earth, and all living things is a work of God and an objective fact. The authors critique the limitations of science in establishing the periods of creation and argue that the conclusions about fossiliferous formations and the plants and animals they contain are not established truths and have not been confirmed by continued research.
The author summarizes the creation story in Genesis 1:1-13, which describes the creation of heaven and earth, including the creation of light, the firmament, the sea, the earth and its fruits, the lights of heaven, fish and fowl, beasts, man, and food for both. The text stresses the importance of recognizing God's presence in our lives and putting Him first in all things. Humans were created in God's image and given the ability to have dominion over the earth, but it is important to ask God to control the evil in our hearts. The authors also emphasize the importance of examining one's daily work and making improvements, as well as the divine proportioning of day and night, with light symbolizing God, truth, heaven, and decency. The beauty of nature is seen as evidence of the existence of God, and the darkness in the book of Genesis is a symbol of the ongoing struggle between light and darkness.
The authors’ central belief is that God is the creator of all things and that creation serves to reveal the truth about His nature and character. They see the relationship between science and God as complementary, with design being at the core of both, and believe that the concept of light and darkness in the book of Genesis is a symbol of the ongoing struggle between good and evil. The author encourages us to live in the Spirit and serve the common good, putting God first in all things, as they believe this is the greatest honor and safety for all.
The authors also focus on two specific Hebrew words in the creation story, "nephesh" and "tannin," and offer alternative interpretations to gain a deeper understanding of their significance. They assert that the universe and all its elements were created for a purpose, as an expression of God's love and grace for humanity, and that everything in creation is imbued with a Divine Blessing that serves to preserve the community and support all life.
The author presents a comprehensive view of the creation of the sea and air creatures in the Bible, as they see it as a demonstration of God's wisdom, power, and love. They believe that the creation of the universe is not just a physical event but a spiritual one as well, and that the universe was created with a purpose and a specific role to play in God's overall plan. The author interprets the creation story in Genesis 1 as a depiction of God's creative work and argues that all elements of the universe, including sea and air creatures, are symbols of God's glory and power. They delve into the meanings of the Hebrew words "nephesh" and "tannin" used in Genesis 1, offering alternative interpretations to shed light on their significance in the creation story.
The authors highlight the numerous ways in which God's presence and power are manifested in the universe, from the physical laws governing the movement of stars and planets to the intricate and diverse forms of life on earth. They emphasize the importance of recognizing the hand of God in the creation of the universe and trusting in Him for our daily sustenance and blessings.

 

Timestamps

25:07 Conversation Summary: Genesis 1 Overview +

28:45 Exploring the Ancient Polytheistic Beliefs of the Israelites +

34:02 Discussion of the Development of Monotheism in Ancient Babylon +

37:28 Summary of Genesis 1: Creation of the Heavens and the Earth +

40:17 Conversation Summary: Exploring the Creation of Man in Genesis 1-2 +

42:20 Conversation on Splitting Chapters and Verses in the Bible +

45:34 Conversation between Pastors Bill and Newms on the Nature of the Bible +

47:09 Conversation between Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms on Faith and Eternity +

50:42 Exploring the Significance of Faith in Genesis 1 +

56:29 Conversation Summary: Exploring the Identity of the Conqueror in Revelation 21:7-8 +

1:00:51 "Exploring the Different Translations of the Bible: A Conversation between Pastors Bill and Newms" +

1:05:40 Conversation Between Pastor Newms and Pastor Bill on the Podcast "Ekk House" +

1:07:31 Conversation Summary: Disagreeing and Appreciating New Listeners +

 

Transcription

Pastor Bill:
[0:01] Hello and welcome to season 4 episode 11 of The Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian. I'm Pastor Bill and I'm joined by Pastor Newms. So last week we had all kinds of technical difficulties that I was completely oblivious to until I went to go listen to the thing. Pastor Newms tried to bring it up at the very, very beginning, but he wasn't as forceful as I, you know, as I actually needed him to be. So I didn't really pick up what he was putting down and I just pushed just ahead Yeah, I was like apologies pastor Newms I should have listened better when you were saying I mean last week and Some people might not have even noticed I'm gonna be honest like it's one of those things where are you kidding me? It was horrible.
Pastor Newms:
[0:47] Well, it was horrible once it went through well Yeah, it was horrible. But like I'll be honest your audio has sounded worse because of technical like oh it's a bad night so you're in and out oh it's fuzzy cuz discourse so it's one of those where it's like okay how much do I bring up the fact that it could be electrical issues like microphone issues it could just be like the the internet is so garbage there that the laser beam doesn't want to work at the moment like you know we're not using cables in the lane yeah like so I was like maybe you know you know I don't know man I don't know but it um it was yeah I.
Pastor Bill:
[1:35] Got my retro Justice League shirt on
Pastor Newms:
I do not have a retro shirt on I have a shirt that's from an active anime and manga Which so I bought this shirt, and I didn't wear it I hadn't worn it because I wasn't far enough in the anime to justify wearing an anime shirt if that makes sense I don't know if anyone else does that But so I pulled it out of the back of the closet today and um put it on and my youngest daughter who is Far farther ahead in this particular. Anime than I am she is. Um, where'd that shirt come from? What do you mean? Um, your shirt, you've never worn that shirt. Where did you get that shirt? Uh, is that a... is that a you shirt? Like, asking, is this a you only? Can I steal this shirt when you're not looking? Will you get upset if I steal this shirt when you're not looking? You know, and I'm like, yes it is. It's a me only shirt. I didn't wear it because I wasn't... and she's like, well I mean can you even name the characters on it? I'm like look, you're not weeb-guilting me into giving you the shirt and no I can't name all of them but weeb-guilting? You can't have this shirt so not your shirt and for in case it's my hero academia in case you can't, I realize you can't actually see it But, um... Yeah, so then she proceeds to tell me each person and what their quirk superpower is. And, uh... I think I'm trying to keep it to myself.
Pastor Bill:
[3:39] Am I in Justice League of America?
Pastor Newms:
[3:44] It is.
Pastor Bill:
[3:48] And Batman's got his blue cowl on, so this is more 50s, 60s...
Pastor Newms:
[3:56] And and that's the you know Weird arrow when they were you know when his costume was I mean sorry Green Lantern when it was a We like it's a different You know Style It's not his.
Pastor Bill:
[4:19] Black pants, black boots, black mask. Green... uh, green... underwear, green boots.
Pastor Newms:
[4:27] Bill says it's the... Biggs says it's the 70s.
Pastor Bill:
[4:32] Did they keep this up all the way through the 70s?
Pastor Newms:
[4:35] You guys can argue about DC lore later, cause...
Pastor Bill:
[4:37] I was just basing it off of the Blue Cowl. I know the Blue Cowl...
Pastor Newms:
[4:48] Um... anyway. I don't know. Oh, he says the 70s is when the Saturday cartoons were showing that style, but that's not necessarily possibly when the books were still using that style. Alright, Pastor Bill, how was your week?
Pastor Bill:
[5:04] My week... There was rain.
Pastor Newms:
[5:10] And wind. And storms.
Pastor Bill:
[5:13] Some roof leakage. I see the water damage in the ceiling above my desk. You know like that discoloration that What's the word Cheat rock gets when it gets wet Yeah Yeah, I had to move my stuff around on my desk and put a big bowl out until the storm stopped because it was tripping just Doop doop doop doop doop doop doop. I was like, oh no, that's not good Your house terrifies me sir Yeah Yeah Yeah, all right nightmare.
Pastor Newms:
[5:53] It just blew over During the storms like you woke up and the house had gone boop Um hadn't hurt any of y'all because the the house is so old. It just kind of went. Yeah And you guys were able to get out but it just went meh um Okay fell over and everything that fell on us was so weak and brittle. Yeah, it just meh it broke over us. Meh meh meh so um uh yeah it was one of those you have nothing to worry about the house is just gonna go meh and you got nothing to worry about well shelter shelter Okay, my week was good. Um, my week was weird um, I was busy but but like it was an okay busy and then at night I just had stuff all week It was weird. I have stuff a lot more now And it's weird me an invite on Facebook to a Yeah. Sure thing Yeah, that's the men's group at the church and every last Friday last Monday of the month they do a thing and I thought I had sent it to you before but I hadn't so I sent it to you so in case you wanted to watch it because I was sitting in the audience watching it it's good they're a good group very good group I like it I don't dislike like it which is weird because I've been I've been out of organized church for so long it's you know hiding in mega churches not serving not doing anything and then I'm very quickly getting involved more and more the next three Saturdays I actually have things at the church so it's it's good it's it's a it's a good thing but it's a weird thing and like today rain was like I don't like it and I was like why she goes I don't like being out of the house this much we're out of the house way too much at this point like that's my girl but we have to be a little it's okay so um yeah so it was it was a was a good week.
Pastor Bill:
[8:32] All right. I think it's my week to pull a card.
Pastor Newms:
[8:35] It is. Okidoki-o. Okidoki-o, pull the card.
Pastor Bill:
[8:53] That's fair.
Pastor Newms:
[8:54] Okay. I couldn't see it. It was behind my face. So I'm like, I'm like, what are you doing? Like pull the card? What are you looking at me for homie you said you were full of the car Oh, you're looking at the card that makes much more sense than you staring at my picture Yes, I'm staring at a picture of Newms If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? The problem here is this. It's like I hate your stipulations on these cards. Just answer That's the dadgum question. The easiest answer is pizza.
Pastor Bill:
[9:38] And the reason that is thingsy.
Pastor Newms:
[9:39] Well, the problem is Pete exactly Diverse like exactly that's why it's the easy answer So the question like if it's you could only have pepperoni pizza No, I couldn't do that. Like I would end up with a gout flare-up that would rival, you know 15 1600s type gout flare-ups like it would be terrible. But like And you can't answer salad because no or a film Yeah, or some random chemical that because I've been told you can't be allergic to chlorophyll But yet I'm allergic to anything that's green or pretends to be green There are people that are straight-up allergic to water that walk the earth. You can't tell me you can't be allergic to chlorophyll I can't tell you I've been told by physicians and allergists that that's not a thing, but of course You know Hey, he's 80.
Pastor Bill:
[10:32] It's not a thing until science discovers it. Yeah, and then suddenly they're like hey, it's a new thing And we're like probably not Probably was just really rare.
Pastor Newms:
[10:41] Yeah, or you just didn't notice it yet Um, yeah, you just hadn't noticed yet Yeah I was actually talking to someone today about dieting and how I need to get back into it and such and it's like but it's really hard at this point of being almost 40 because Like I I can't just have salads and like, you know salads with a little protein and you know, you're good to go Like I can't do it.
And so it ends up being like the only valid Option is like a keto style option and that's expensive and It's a tight line to walk with a guarantee two to three week gout flare-up at the beginning Your body gets used to it and actually starts burning the chemicals, the purine protein, So then you stop, you know, like I when I did it like five years ago now, But it's so...
Pastor Bill:
[11:38] Purine protein, I thought it was an acid issue.
Pastor Newms:
[11:43] It's, no, it's technically, it's a protein that, so it's a protein that your body then turns into an acid that then you expel. But with...
Pastor Bill:
[11:56] You don't expel.
Pastor Newms:
[11:56] I don't expel. It crystallizes. Yeah. But talking about the purine protein half is much more socially acceptable than speaking about the uric acid half because people don't like to talk about bodily fluids. Right. They don't like to equate piss with blood even though that's where pee comes from, from your blood. Yeah. They don't like to... So I usually just stick with the protein side and, oh, and then the kidneys process it wrong for me and then leave it at that as opposed to because people are like why are you talking about that it's like because it's a health issue why are you not um but so it's you know it's one of those it's it's a funny thing is I'm trying to figure out how to get healthier because it's affecting my my side affecting my knees but I find it funny when people drink a bunch of water or you know drink a drink and they're like Man, it's going right through me and I'm like, I mean not technically it's not technically going right through you technically What's happening is your your body is is breaking down more blood into urea in?
Pastor Bill:
[13:13] Preparation for the intake of the liquids that you're in taking But that liquid you're in taking is not actually leaving the stuff that you drank before is leaving But it's from your blood anyway Anyway, it's not going right for you.
Pastor Newms:
[13:27] It's just, that's not how it works. weird aspect though because it.
Pastor Bill:
[13:35] It appears very quickly, like certain beverages and certain things affect very quickly because you're some of it your body's just like uh-uh and so like the first round around the body your body's like I'm it's out it went through your whole body but your body's like it's out like I ain't putting this in like there's some things that there's some things that we literally had to add I can't remember the chemical name for it now but it's basically antifreeze in the chemical makeup we had to add it to it so that our body would hold it and not just straight drop it like a lot of vitamins a lot of minerals you know those pills will have that additive additive chemical that is you know identical to antifreeze under a microscope but isn't actually the antifreeze that forces your body to hold on to it instead of just flushing it out the bottom.
Pastor Newms:
[14:38] Yeah, that's always interesting. The body is weird. The human body is really, really weird.
Pastor Bill:
[14:45] Like when you get dehydrated and your body's like, must flush all liquids now I'm dehydrated.
Pastor Newms:
[14:51] Oop, you're gone. Wait, wait, you're yep. You're gone I'm back. Yep.
Pastor Bill:
[15:00] You're back now Must flush all liquids is the last thing we have helpful to flush all the liquids when you're dehydrated body Yes, but how do I tell you that? I need more liquids. Yeah, I'm pretty sure by the point the body dumps So I'm I already know I already know.
Pastor Newms:
[15:16] Yeah, I Don't I don't need extra alarms, I know But do we Cuz I'll be sick and just ignoring the fact that I need to drink something until I stop sweating and then I'm like, oh I'm not sweating no more That's a problem.
Pastor Bill:
[15:34] You know those old cartoons where they're honest a desert island and one cartoon character looks at over at the other and They start looking like a big ham This water bottle here next to my bed That's on my desk when I when I'm getting low on water man And that thing starts to look like salvation. Like I'm like, it's like glowing gold halo, you know? And it's like, oh, when I look at my water jug, oh yeah, I need to drink some water.
Pastor Newms:
[16:01] No, I don't, I don't, I don't got that. So what food, what food would you, would you eat forever?
Pastor Bill:
[16:08] Salad, I would just, I would eat salad. I, the only reason I, I like to have at least a salad a day. The only times I don't is when we can't afford it Because salad is expensive but but yeah, I would have They go help in a salad for every meal I love salad man. You always have it's great I'll live oil on there some a little bit of salt a little bit of garlic and that's the other thing you Can bet you don't put a lot in your salad even it's not even like it's just it's gross, homie some lettuce and spinach some I don't know just add a little color in there and just yeah, I'm into it.
Pastor Newms:
[16:53] My stomach hurts thinking about it.
Pastor Bill:
[16:56] And when I eat, when I eat a salad everyday I feel amazing compared to when I don't. You know, just at least one salad a day and my body's just like yeah well yeah, it's cause it's a salad, it's what I would We covered this last week. This is what we're supposed to be eating is clean healthy Salads and greens not But yeah fatty bacon every morning if I could afford it or they were just gonna provide the food I would eat a salad at every meal. Struggle to say that I would give up meat if salad was an option at every meal I but I probably wouldn't have any qualms about that.
Pastor Newms:
[17:39] I probably could You come over to Jerry and I submit having a salad with it at every meal instead of Anything else but it's just so dang expensive and and yeah it is and the amount you have to Have is expensive also because the caloric intake is not high on it Which is why the additives like the girls love the chicken Caesar Salads, I think it is I guess the Caesar and you know, it comes with the little thing and it They're good for like, you know a day after you buy them if you're lucky because of Farm to table is not great on salads and you would think it would be with how expensive it is, but it's not Well, it's not necessarily farm to table The problem is it's it's all the hands in between right from farm to when it finally gets to right? That's what I'm saying. It's it's not we don't have just farm to table We have you know that did that did that did that did that did that did that did that did that to us in between?
Pastor Bill:
[18:52] Yeah Anywho, and it appears that says yeah says your mother eats it without salad dressing. I had forgotten that but that doesn't surprise me. That's why I put on the olive oil. That is my salad dressing just a little bit of olive oil and some salt and garlic. That's my that is my salad dressing like I couldn't I can't stand the thought of adding on all those empty calories with the salad dressing just for the sake of some just weak flavoring.
Pastor Newms:
[19:29] Some of those calories are very big calories. They're not empty. Some of them are very fatty.
Pastor Bill:
[19:36] They're big, but they're empty.
Pastor Newms:
[19:37] I'm joking. I know what you meant. It was just... That like buttermilk ranch is a very heavy additive of... I know that's what you meant by... buy it. All right.
Pastor Bill:
[20:07] The whole new USB setup over here at my desk because I bumped the desk the wrong way. Something disconnects and the daisy chain goes down. The daisy chain goes down like I'm using a laptop. That's only got two USB ports What's has to be the camera and the other one has to be a daisy chain that that works the? Keyboard the mouse the microphone Everything else is on this little port over here And if I bump the desk the wrong way the whole thing goes down And then we got to wait for it to come back up again And then we wonder why the expensive computer that we bought just burnt out sitting in your house for some unknown reason in your house electricity just expensive computer had lots of USB ports it did it did but your run a mouse and a keyboard and a microphone no I know I I don't mean because of your daisy chain I mean because of the electricity in your house and the you know the.
Pastor Newms:
[21:09] The leaking roof and when a computer fries to a point where everything in it fries at once that that's an issue it's so hard to actually happen because of all the transistors and little safety things that are in each of the parts to keep that from happening and the whole big block of power supply that's whole job is to I protect computer and you had a nice one and it just Because I was worried about that exact issue and I Don't know how it happened because it happened when it wasn't even storming So that was the that was like like had the house got hit by electricity I would have been like yeah, it happens, but it wasn't it was everything everything in this house goes down quickly Like we were you and I was you and I were talking the other day about the last time we had an electrician come out He was like, yeah.
Pastor Bill:
[22:11] Oh This fuse box was outlawed like 20 years ago You know, I'm technically not even supposed to work on this thing Well, what am I supposed to do? But yeah, like we burn through microwaves real fast. We go through ovens real fast. I mean, we had to find creative. Like right now we have one burner that works on our stove top and then we have two air fryers and a microwave and a griddle. And that's how we cook everything because the oven doesn't work. The other three burners don't work because they all got burned out by the electricity because the electricity is crazy in this house.
Pastor Newms:
[22:50] Anyway.
Pastor Bill:
[22:56] So that's how my week was. Oh yeah, we're past that. Big says, have to kill the dirt flavor. Bigs, if your salad tastes like dirt, either A, you're buying from a crappy company, or B, you need to clean your food before you eat it, bro. Just rinse that salad off. Rinse the lettuce or something. It shouldn't taste like dirt unless you're eating beets. Beets just taste like dirt. Or dragon fruit. and fruit seeds those taste like dirt too. If you're just having a regular old salad, it shouldn't taste like dirt I think that's more of just a Colloquialism not an actual Oh, you don't think he means it actually means it tastes like because I was being like beets actually tastes like dirt and so the dragon fruit seeds well potatoes, I mean Lettuce doesn't even grow in the ground.
Pastor Newms:
[23:49] So if you're eating the part that's in the ground you you've done something wrong already but um I think he I think he just means that whole like it's rabbit food. It tastes like dirt. Um Uh, listen god made dirt dirt don't hurt it does man, it does though The microbes that are in dirt can kill you And speed up the decompressing If you've never built up an immune system If you don't go outside and touch grass, yeah, it does. You're right Like there's this internet thing about you you've been inside too long go touch grass and like I Had I need to go touch some grass and kill you and I'm like, okay I was like I've been inside they're like you need to go outside and I'm like I can't Like the Sun if I'm out there for more than seven minutes I burn and And if I actually touch grass, I'm gonna have a rash so All these you know, these people are like, oh if you just go stand and center yourself in the grass and connect with Mother Nature I'll die. At least I'm not a leadership black pepper,
Pastor Bill:
[25:07] Thanks Yeah, glad it works for you, um Mother nature's trying to kill me At least All right, so we're in this series where we've been going through the beginning And we did you know, we started in Genesis and we touched on John chapter 1 and we came back to Genesis and Last week we reached the very end of Genesis chapter 1 And so tonight we're just gonna look back at Genesis 1 and do a summary. We're gonna do an overcap we're gonna just talk in general about Genesis 1, right? And so If you remember when we started the series we talked about kind of the history of how Genesis 1 became a part of the book of Genesis and Do you remember what we said, Pastor Newms?
Pastor Newms:
[26:12] Huh? This is your turn to talk. No, I mean, it... The story from Genesis 1 was kind of added in... Um... to the aspects during the time of captivity in Babylon from the Babylonian stories, because it was like, hey, those line up really well with what we've got written in Genesis 2 already, and they specify some things better than what Genesis 2 does because Genesis 2 is very generic in some of the things it says. So yeah, this has more detail. Let's use it. That makes sense.
Pastor Bill:
[26:53] You more or less painted the picture. You got a little sloppy around the lines there, but yeah, that's the general idea. Before they went into captivity, the creation story started with what We would call Genesis chapter 2 they didn't call it Genesis chapter 2 They just called it the creation of man they didn't have chapters then either so they just called it laughter the book That's scroll over there That's good. Well, it wasn't even scrolls really. That's true It kind of was by that point. So why were they in captivity in Babylon? What happened there?
Pastor Newms:
[27:34] One of the many times they screwed up. Alright.
Pastor Bill:
[27:40] So what happened is that throughout history the Judean people, which there technically weren't Judeans yet, we're talking about the ancestors of the Judean people who eventually settled in Judea and then became the Jews. They were a polytheistic people. They had multiple gods and they worshiped multiple gods and they believed in multiple gods and despite their oral passing down of religion and despite what they believed the Mosaic Law read and despite all of these things, they were still polytheistic and they continued to go back to worshiping other gods over and over and over even though we see over and over and over gods going, no, focus, you know, me, focus on me. So it got to this one point where... A female deity known as Ashra, who the ancient peoples believed was the wife of the god Yahweh. Now you should recognize the name Yahweh because that is actually the name of two historical entities. One is a Sumerian wind god that the Sumerians believed was the god of storms and wind and weather and that he blew through the deserts with his rage and his fury. And then Yahweh is also the name that God identifies with themselves when they're speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai. They call themselves Yahweh. And it's not so much that they call themselves Yahweh, but it's that God releases a series of sounds that then Moses writes down and when humans go to repeat those series of sounds it comes out as Yahweh. And more specifically it is I AM or I EXIST. And if you drill down into the, you know, more into what they're saying there it's I exist because I want to basically. There was nothing and then there was me. I am. And so we have this idea of Yahweh who people believed was married to a goddess named Asherah. And Asherah had become very popular amongst the people of Israel, the descendants of Israel. And Asherah poles, think of like a maple with the long strings, the ribbons, you know, that you've You've seen them in the Germanic and the Nordic cultures, the Maple, and they run around them with the ribbons, and they tie them off. It's still part of Norse mythology celebrations today even in the places where they believe in the Norse religions, the Maple thing. They don't always call it a Maple and they definitely don't call it an Ashrop Hall. But this is what the idea was. They had these Ashera poles and they were burning incense to Ashera and they were worshiping Ashera alongside of Yahweh and it had yet identified her as you know the wife of God So this was going on and God told them to cut it out multiple tops Multiple times you got to stop doing this you got to stop doing that people would tear them down Okay, people would rebuild them people would tear them down So God says, okay, that's enough. So, um, God hands them over to the King of Babylon, right? Puts them into slavery. And it's not one of those things where you're like, nah, God wouldn't do that. No, no. When you look back at history, God always chastises, corrects, puts back on the right path his own people. Period. If your theology tells you that God is just going to spoil you and give you good things, then you've only got half of your theology right. Because the other half of that is that God is a good Father that disciplines his children. God wants to give you the cattle on a thousand hills, but God will also send you away to go eat in the slop in the pig's troughs for a while before you decide to come home like the prodigal son. This is how God offered.
Pastor Newms:
[32:38] Okay.
Pastor Bill:
[32:40] So God sends them into captivity. Now there is a small group of people up in the mountains where the Babylonians, not a mountainous people can't get to they're like now that's not worth it right babelans you're like we're not doing it there's no slave worth climbing those mountains we're not doing that now these people their descendants go on to be the Samaritans right so we see that play out in the New Testament their descendants Americans the people that continue to worship Asherah up on the mountain. Now, eventually, they gave up Asherah and they have their own experiences with God that we don't have the recordings of, but we do have the woman at the well talking to Jesus who's like, but we follow this law and we follow this law and our forefather, Jacob, he told us this and this and we're expecting the Messiah. And they had their own whole history and experiences with God that rival that of the actual Israelites that we do have recorded in the Bible. So it's kind of interesting there. But while in Babylon, the people are exposed to this idea that monotheism is paramount. Now the god that the Babylonians wanted them to worship was their king, right? They wanted them to worship their king, the god their king, because all the other gods had quote unquote died so that this god could be king. But they didn't quite buy that. But they saw in the histories of the Babylonians who had adopted a lot of Sumerian myth and take a look at that and they go, this story makes a whole lot of sense with what we know. And not only that, but it's got greater detail, right? Because when you go and you look at Genesis chapter 2, it's kind of broad strokes, right? God created man and God created the animals and there's nothing about when that happens. There's, you know, it's not a lot of detail there. It's very broad. And so it's very broad. It's very broad and you can see their connection. A lot of people call it contradiction. There's contradictions between these two accounts and I'm like but is there though I mean are you just looking for contradictions or or what Okay. So they pick up this this new story that we know of as Genesis one and they uh adapt it and they adopt it and they they make They make some changes to the story right um But not a lot. Um Um, that's not even true they they make a lot of changes to the story to make it more palatable to the Jewish ear.
Pastor Newms:
[36:08] And to help align.
Pastor Bill:
[36:09] To help align with Genesis 2.
Pastor Newms:
[36:12] Yeah.
Pastor Bill:
[36:13] I have the story over there, but it's kind of convoluted and confusing for the Western ear, so I'm not going to pull that out. So let's read Genesis chapter 1, and then we'll go from there. That's Okay. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And we had fun with that one. We spent a whole episode on just Genesis 1. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the water. Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. There was an evening, and there was a morning, one day. Then God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water. So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse sky. Evening came and then morning, the second day. Then God said, let the water under the sky be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear. Mention the video and start the video. I lost my place. Oh, and it was so. God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the water he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the earth produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And it was so. The earth produced vegetation, seed-bearing plants according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Evening came and then morning, the third day. Then God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky, separate the day from the night. They will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. There will be lights in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth, and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night, as well as the stars. God placed them in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth, to rule the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness, and God saw that it was good. Morning came and then morning, the fourth day. Then God said, Let the waters swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky. So God created the large sea creatures and every living creature that moves and swarms in the water, according to their kinds. He also created every winged creature according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the sea, and let the birds multiply on the earth. Evening came, and then morning, the fifth day. Then God said, let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, creatures that crawl, and the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. So God made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that crawl on the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth. So God created man in his own image. He created him in the image of God. He created the male and female. God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful. Multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth. God also said, Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you. For all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth, everything having the breath of life in it, I have given. Every green plant for food, and it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came, and then morning, the sixth day.", Okay. Anything jump out at you there that you wanted to talk about again? Highlights that you want to make sure that we walk away with?
Pastor Newms:
[41:39] Um... In seriousness, no. Um, in funny internet meme, my only thought was at what point did the birds get replaced by the robots? Um, but, um...
Pastor Bill:
[42:00] That was within the last century, bro.
Pastor Newms:
[42:02] I know, I'm just saying, like, you know, it was one of those, I was like, hee hee, Birds aren't real. So... You have to have a CIA because the CIA can replace the birds with robots. Right. Yeah. So it has to be after man. No, I mean we've talked about it. So there's nothing really that jumps out at me today differently than how it has over the last couple of weeks. Sometimes that does happen. Let's be honest. honest. But no, I mean, I think it's pretty, it's pretty cut and dry. I do always find it interesting and I don't necessarily like where chapters and verses are split. When we split our chapters and verses? Like, why do we not end? 2 3 as the end of one like that's where one should end Like we shouldn't start the next with and God rests on the seventh day well that but it he should rest at the end because the end is the You did that because you wanted Sunday to be the day of rest which is the first day of the week didn't yeah But you know, it's that whole aspect of like come on that that's part of the whole the same story and, so that that um, that part always irritates me, but that's not what we Talked about I always hate that that Genesis one ends with and the sixth day We got more to go This part of the story is not over So, agreed. That nope, you're gone. I'm back. Okay, cool.
Pastor Bill:
[44:02] You're back. Genesis one is not a Christian text. Genesis one is not a Jewish text. Genesis one is what? It's ancient Babylonian creation myth.
Pastor Newms:
[44:17] Right.
Pastor Bill:
[44:20] To me so is two through one through three if you're saying it from that standpoint but Well, yeah, cuz they went and added the numbers later, but anyway So when we read Genesis one, we're not reading the the point-blank account of God Of Yahweh of how creation happened. We're reading the Caption of the Babylonian creation myth and this one This is one of the reasons why we were using a plural for God Because the Babylonians they were polytheistic Right? And then became monotheistic when they started having the God Kings. And so you've got this weird thing. And the beauty of it all is it requires faith. I don't need faith, or I shouldn't need faith, when I crack open a history textbook. When I crack open a history textbook, I should just be reading fact.
Pastor Newms:
[45:34] Right?
Pastor Bill:
[45:36] Should.
Pastor Newms:
[45:37] Sure.
Pastor Bill:
[45:38] I'm not saying every history textbook is like that. I'm saying that's the expectation. Because when I open a history textbook or a science textbook, I should be reading fact.
Pastor Newms:
[45:48] Sure.
Pastor Bill:
[45:48] There's no faith that should need to be involved. Should need to be involved. This, the Bible, is not written under that assumption. This is not intended to be a historical document. This is intended to be taken by faith. Can't stress this hard enough. I don't know.
Pastor Newms:
[46:17] Well, the Bible plainly says we pull you apart what All scripture is god-breathed and for the use of teaching preach, you know You know all the you know, we've we've beat that verse To death and I don't want to butcher because I don't have it in front of me but it's it's the you know, there are certain and And to be historically accurate is not in that list. It's to teach, to have faith for religious purposes. It's a religious book. And so we build our faith on it. Is some of it historical?
Pastor Bill:
[46:53] Absolutely.
Pastor Newms:
[46:56] Is some of it poetry? Yes. Is some of it stories written down? Yes. Is some of it letters from one homeboy to another? Yes.
Pastor Bill:
[47:09] But man, I left my Coke.
Pastor Newms:
[47:10] Can you send that with so-and-so when they leave? But in that, there are aspects. But one of the biggest things about all of it is it requires faith. Because for any of it to be true, you have to believe it. Now me, as a natural born skeptic, I don't view the world as you do. And I don't trust anybody ever. And so I have to have faith in some people. Because my natural is this ain't true. But it's written down. Doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean it's true. But it's documented. It's got date and timestamps. Hacker can fix that. I don't... We're dealing with programmers, no historical accuracy can be proved sometimes. But that being said, the aspects of... It takes faith to believe this. It takes faith to walk it out. And the bigger aspect, as you're mentioning, is it's not just faith to believe, it's faith to actually walk it out. Because people are like, oh, well, this is just the creation story. There's not much, you know, in it. But no, there's a lot of in it because you've got things like, you know, dominion. You've got things like, there's a bunch of concepts that are deeper meanings than just, hey, here you go, that you look at with some of these heavy-weighted words that we miss when we just... And for those of you out there in audioland, is when you move your hand from the top to the bottom, so when you're just looking at it, just so we're clear on... Because I forget often that that doesn't translate in... It'd be fun to see what the transcription service makes of...
Pastor Bill:
[49:16] Let's see how many more times I can do it. I'm fed up with all the transcription services. It's crazy.
Pastor Newms:
[49:21] Is the new one not working again?
Pastor Bill:
[49:24] It worked that first time and then I couldn't get it to work again. It kept just not accepting any new input. and I was like this is crazy. Hmm.
Pastor Newms:
[49:39] Because it was nice.
Pastor Bill:
[49:40] It was so nice and I want it so bad. Um. She's I don't know, serving me crazy. I'm looking up a specific. Verse here. Do there's a verse in Revelations It talks about all the people that won't have a place in eternity.
Pastor Newms:
[50:16] And I'm assuming by place in eternity you mean place in heaven because everyone has a place It's just not everyone's place is as nice as everyone else's some of them their eternal place is death in hell so it's like Not it's a place eternal death, that's crazy Oh, here we go.
Pastor Bill:
[50:42] Okay So the whole point of all of this of everything from the very beginning is faith. Without faith it's impossible to please God. The whole point of life, the whole point of living, the whole point of creating humanity was faith. We're going to teach these, we're going to put these things out there. They're going to be a lesser shadow of us, God said. This whole point is to learn faith. We're intentionally ignorant. So that we can learn faith. So that we can step into eternity with God. I shudder to say equal footing, but it's almost like that. It's almost like if we're not at this certain level with God, then we can't step into eternity with Him. But what I was thinking about was Revelation chapter 21. And we're going to start at verse 8. And I want everyone to just stick with me. But the cowards, faithless, detestable murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. Their share will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is second death. The takeaway from this verse that I've seen over and over and over is weaponization. People have used this as a weapon against other people over and over and over and over. But what it is, is a statement on identity politics. These are all identity statements. A coward is an identity. Faithless is an identity. Detestable identity. Murderers is an identity. The sexually immoral is an identity. Sorcerers is an identity. Idolaters is an identity. Liars is an identity. And everyone at some point in their life falls into one of these identities. They can be identified or identifies themselves as something in this list. But faith. And Christ came to set us free and to show us what faith really is and how faith really is. And when we find faith and we find that faith of salvation in Christ, this is not our identities anymore. Who once was a coward is now a faithful follower of Christ. Who once was a, faithless person a liar is now faithful. This whole point of this verse is identity. Because the whole point of life is faith. When you achieve that faith that Christ was talking about, that certain level of faith that Jesus said could only be achieved through Him, that becomes your new identity. Am I cis or homosexual or heterosexual or fat or ugly or a coward or faithless or a murderer? None of those things anymore because I'm first and foremost faithful. Does that mean I'm no longer cis or I'm no longer homosexual, no longer heterosexual? Well, according to the gospel that Jesus preached, that Paul then triumphed, all those secondary identities that we try to define ourselves by mean nothing once your identity is faithful. And that is my big takeaway as to why Genesis 1 is so important. It's here in these words that we see this fantastical outlay of when this happened and this happened and the world was a giant ball of cesspool that God hovered over and warred against the darkness. It takes a lot of faith to read that and go, I believe, even though this isn't a textbook, even though this isn't a historical document, even though this isn't any of those things that people try to make this that takes it out of the context that it exists in, That's where I see Genesis 1 laying. It's the foundation of faith. And that's my takeaway.
Pastor Newms:
[56:29] And you know, sometimes we disagree on things, as we do. And I'm going to disagree with you for a second, because you should have started in seven. And here's why I say that. Eight starts with a but, so while you were talking I of course went above because I hate starting with buts. And seven says the one who conquers will inherit these things. These things being what's talked about in six, well actually what's talked about in five of creating everything new.
Pastor Bill:
[57:07] We should have started in five?
Pastor Newms:
[57:09] Well, five starts with a then, so you'd have to go above. Anyway, we're not, should have started in Genesis one, oh wait. So, the one who conquers will inherit these things and I will be his God and he will be my son. And we often talk about how words are, eh? And this is one of the times I actually agree more with the KJV or the NASB's translation. Because Conqueror is, I understand the use of Conqueror, and I understand the use of what the KJV uses, which is overcome. Both of which are accurate because it's overcoming through Conquering. So they're both accurate translations, neither one of them is not. But the important part there is the ones that do meaning they you know I will in six it's I will freely give the thirsty from the spring of water of life the one who conquers will inherit these things so like what you're talking about of having faith and the identity of the people in eight. The people who have conquered. By conquering their identity issues and stepping over those aspects will become, and technically that he is person and the son is child. So they will be children of God. That is the identity that they should be, not the identity of all the other things that are listed in the next verse. And so it's when you really look at, when you start looking at identity and looking at what we call ourselves and how we act and how we, like you were saying, and then you take that one step further of the ones that conquer, the ones that grab ahold of being my children and that being who they are, they will not be the cowards, the faithless, detestable because it takes faith. And I find the coward to be fun because that can also be translated faithless. So it's the cowards because of lack of faith and the unbelieving people because they don't have faith. Both are both, both of the first two are really people who don't have faith. It's two different aspects of not having faith. Being afraid because you don't have faith and not agreeing because you don't have faith. And so it's that interestingness of looking at those two words, that list of identities, and then translating that back to what's the important identity that we should be grasping. And we've talked about this before, of our identity should be follower of Christ, Son of God, not Son of God being Son of God, but Son of God as children of God, let's be clear there. You call yourself the Son of God, you need to check yourself. Anyway, so I just found that to be interesting, some interesting aspect as you were reading 8 and explaining, you know, the identity aspects of those. That Seven then is and of course as you mentioned and the important is six and then above that is the important is five and then we have to go to four and Then we end up in Genesis one.
Pastor Bill:
[1:00:51] Yeah, I found the wording of seven interesting just overall is It should be in my opinion the victorious Will Become heirs of of everything. And then it says, I shall personally be their God and the same. Will be my and in context that shouldn't be the word son it should be in our modern language descendants it's a figurative kinship like a child a foul a son um it's not not meaning direct child direct son direct it means right a descendant you know like a grandfather would look at his grandson well he's still saying the word son you know he would that's my son that's my you know You know, it's my grandson. It's that kind of a word. But yeah, it's interesting the choices they make when they translate certain things that really goes a lot into the politics of the day and the way they saw things.
Pastor Newms:
[1:02:04] I find it funny that the CSB translates one of the ones he. One of the he's one and one of the he's he, as opposed to just saying person both times or one both times. Whereas the KJV does he both and the NASB does he once and one once. So I find that kind of stuff to be interesting when you look at the people that are doing the translation. The words are slightly different because it's overcome error.
Pastor Bill:
[1:02:36] One of the interesting things about the TSP is they have that the whole panel of inter-denominational people that all have to sign had to sign off on each verse.
Pastor Newms:
[1:02:51] Yeah.
Pastor Bill:
[1:02:52] The translation of each verse. So even in that, there are certain ways that it phrases things that it's like, oh yeah, I know exactly which denomination refused to sign off until you put that word there.
Pastor Newms:
[1:03:07] Well, and you know, it's one of the things that are so interesting about the translation of the Bible when as we talk about stuff, one who, the one who overcomes, the one who conquers, he that overcometh in the three versions that I keep up all the time. All of that is just the one word for the, for. To subdue literally conqueror overcomer prevail Someone who gets the victory so it's it's that aspect of it's it's one word that we've got to translate between four and Three and four words to get it to understand for an English reader to just go Okay because Conqueror doesn't necessarily mean the one who, but on the same token, it does. So it's that it's that sometimes if we were to just do a word for word translation, like some people have done in the past, it's hard to read because the word for word doesn't flow because English has a flow to it because of how many other languages we bastardized to get to where we are. But that's one of those things that's interesting when you have a half sentence, technically a full sentence. He that overcomeeth is a full sentence, kind of.
Pastor Bill:
[1:04:39] That is a full sentence, it really is.
Pastor Newms:
[1:04:43] It's one word. It is, it's one word in the original. Interesting. That is.
Pastor Bill:
[1:04:54] But okay so we are not going to do the topic according to AI this week but if you are interested in seeing what the AI's what the AI had to say about the summary of the seven different concordances that I read I will put it in the transcription on this podcast so you can go find that it'll be there and you're gone again. Paragraphs long, six paragraphs. If you want to go find that in the transcription I'll make sure it's there. Even if I can't get a good transcription to add on I'll go ahead and put this in there and mark.
Pastor Newms:
[1:05:40] Okay, so, um, Pastor Bill is at this point just gone. He's talking, but it is not working.
Pastor Bill:
[1:05:47] This is those little green things lit up the whole time. I never lost my little green box.
Pastor Newms:
[1:05:52] It didn't send it to us though. Weird. So the the aspects, Pastor Bill is going to put the thing that Pastor Newms hates, which is the AI interpretation into the transcript, whether or not you always hate my noobs. I do hate it. I just don't Anyway, um have fun describing growl also, um the And then pastor bill was saying Now he's back so he can just say what he was saying about next time and joining us and all that Festo is the podcast that comes out once a week on On Wednesdays at 7 p.m.
Pastor Bill:
[1:06:34] Central Standard Time hopefully I can stop saying standard at some point if they'll ever actually standardize the time in the US and um Passion is shaking said no it won't happen and we record it live on Sunday nights at 630 p.m Central Standard Time if you'd like to join us for that live recording you can go to our website e ekk house and find out which twitch which YouTube and which Facebook we are live on and then you can watch as we broadcast live and Participate in the chat you can type out your messages questions concerns Contradictions, whatever and we can respond to them right then and there live on the podcast and in that way you can actually be a part of the conversation If this podcast has helped you or you found it informative you think someone else might like it then feel free to send it over to them. We like new listeners and we don't like just being a echo chamber over here. Echo chambers are bad. Echo chambers are bad, you know. And so we appreciate new people coming in and new looks on life and we do our best not to sound condescending even though both of us have kind of that personality where We're pretty much everything we say usually comes across as sounding condescending, but we truly don't mean it that way. We truly do love sharing what we do know and we are open to people seeing things a different way. Like in this conversation, we disagreed on something and that's fine. It wasn't that big of a thing that we disagreed on, but we have disagreed on big things in the past between the two of us and we've both sounded like pompous jerks discussing it. In the end, there's only one thing we all have to agree on. I didn't know you said it like a In the end there's only the one thing that we have to agree on agree on and that's the salvation issue. The one the faith in Christ alone for salvation. That's the one thing everything else you're allowed to see anything from scripture the way you want to and we may come back at you and say, hey, well, you know, historically this or this other verse says this, and we're not trying to demean you, we're just trying to, what's the word, we add more things to someone's purview so they can see all the information. Expand, we're just trying to expand the information that you have if we have more information. So yeah, so come and join us and all of that to say we're not jerks, we're just slightly autistic. Alright, so we love you guys. Have a great week.
Pastor Newms:
[1:09:25] I love the be safe out there while you pretend to be just slightly.
Pastor Bill:
[1:09:30] And until next time. My collar has been has been bugging. I'm really aware of my collar all night. Which is bugging the heck out of me.
Pastor Newms:
[1:09:38] I'm nothing to do like what we've already talked about. My collar is seriously bugging all night long. And you gave me no pause so this will end up happen to be in the outgoing.
Pastor Bill:
[1:09:47] Yeah, well, I know. That's exactly what I intended.

S4EP10 - And Then Came Humans

S4EP09 - Livestock, Reptiles, and Fauna Oh My

In this episode:

Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms discuss Genesis 1:24-25 from the Christian Standard Bible, in which God commands the earth to produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, wildlife, and creatures that crawl on the ground. They discuss the Hebrew word nehfesh, which is used to denote the soul or spirit of a living creature, and how it is used in the passage to describe the living creatures. They also discuss how the words for “whales” and “birds” were translated differently in the KJV and CSB, noting that in the KJV, the word for “whales” actually refers to a monster or sea serpent. Finally, Pastor Newms jokes that some fish are given a soul, but not all.

Pastor Bill and Pastor Newms discuss the creation of the world as described in the Bible in Genesis. God created livestock, reptiles, and wildlife according to their kinds. God gave them their portions and saw that it was good. They discussed how God personally made the things, rather than just commanding them to exist. They further distinguished that God saw that it was good, rather than looking within himself and recognizing it.

Pastors Bill and Newms discuss the breakdown of two verses from the Bible, Genesis 1:24-25. In these verses, God creates various animals, including cattle, creeping things, and beasts of the Earth, and declares them to be good. The authors note that the creation of animals was necessary for the arrival of man, as they serve various purposes such as transportation, food, and commerce. They also highlight the special relationship that humans have with God and their elevated status among all creatures. Pastor Bill then delivers the topic according to AI, where he fed the viewpoints of seven different commentaries into Chat GPT and got a synopsis on what they all cover. The pastors also talk about the Wizard of Oz reference in the episode title.

Pastors Bill and Newms discuss the lack of mention of dinosaurs in the book of Genesis. Pastor Newms explains that this is likely because the text was written by Babylonians, who would not have known of dinosaurs since they were extinct by that point. Pastor Bill then points out that some theologians have narrowed the descriptions of 'great beasts' in the Bible to modern animals. Pastor Newms adds that if we look at the Bible from the standpoint that everything was created at the same time, dinosaurs would be considered creeping things or monstrous sea creatures. Ultimately, the conversation concludes that Genesis one is likely a retelling of the story with added in details from the rest of the book.

 

Timestamps:
0:26:18 Conversation Summary: Genesis 1:24-25

0:30:59 Conversation on the Creation of Livestock, Reptiles, and Wildlife in the Bible

0:33:56 Conversation Summary: 6th Day of Creation in the Bible

0:40:29 Conversation Between Pastors Bill and Newms on the Absence of Dinosaurs in Genesis One

0:43:15 Conversation on the Babylonian Account of Creation in Genesis One

0:48:58 Heading: The Weaponization of Scripture: A Conversation on Creationism and Apologetics

0:50:33 Conversation on Faith and Science 

 

Transcription:

[0:00:00]  Pastor Newms: Face Live.

[0:00:02]  Pastor Bill: Face live. You can see my awesome shirt. This is one of the shirts my mama got me for my birthday.

[0:00:09]  Pastor Newms: I see a shirt. Yes.

[0:00:11]  Pastor Bill: My wife says it looks like a hotel quilt pattern on the shirt.

[0:00:18]  Pastor Newms: I don't think it's the hotel quilt, but it is definitely. If it was beige, I would agree that it looks like the curtains. That says several hotels I've got, but I haven't seen a blue like that. I mean, if the material is right, it's a good shirt. Material ain't a good shirt.

[0:00:34]  Pastor Bill: I like it.

[0:00:36]  Pastor Newms: It's one of those things, really, to a certain degree. We're at the age where it's like, does the design truly matter?

[0:00:46]  Pastor Bill: No, comfort matters. That's what matters. It's all about comfort, folks. Yeah. It's like, let nobody lie to you.

[0:00:59]  Pastor Newms: But yes. So, Pastor Bill, how was your week?

[0:01:04]  Pastor Bill: My week was pretty good, as you know. We took last Sunday off. We didn't record a new podcast last Sunday. Not only was it the littlest shay's birthday, like, straight up, his birthday proper, but then the Super Bowl. So we hung out, enjoyed his birthday, we watched the Super Bowl commercials. The second half of the Super Bowl was quite compelling. The Eagles were putting up a crazy defense, and it wasn't enough, but it was entertaining enough that it caught my attention.

[0:01:49]  Pastor Newms: That is crazy. I did not even watch the commercials. I didn't even watch the commercials. Yeah, I straight up. Just nothing this year with it.

[0:01:59]  Pastor Bill: The highlights of the commercials were there were a lot of big-name faces.

[0:02:05]  Pastor Newms: Oh, really? They went that route?

[0:02:07]  Pastor Bill: Yeah. And QR codes.

[0:02:10]  Pastor Newms: Really?

[0:02:10]  Pastor Bill: Almost every company had a QR code in the commercial. Aren't we like this now?

[0:02:16]  Pastor Newms: Like five years past that? Like, where are we?

[0:02:19]  Pastor Bill: And actually, they're finally catching up to the rest of us.

[0:02:23]  Pastor Newms: As far as QR codes aren't QR cards already dead?

[0:02:28]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, they died about ten years ago, and corporations are just now getting there to the pre-death of QR code. That's funny.

[0:02:40]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, that's so funny.

[0:02:45]  Pastor Bill: What else do you do? I spent a lot of time working on some social media marketing for a book publication that came out that I wrote a short story that got put in. So I spent a lot of time working on that. That's about it. Hanging out with the family, and working on marketing stuff now.

[0:03:08]  Pastor Newms: I didn't understand what it has to do with strawberries.

[0:03:16]  Pastor Bill: One of the stories in the anthology is The Selection of a Sacred Strawberry. So they should name the whole collection of stories after that one. Either that was their favorite or I don't know, something that's the main one, or something, I guess.

[0:03:36]  Pastor Newms: I mean, I've never particularly been fond of strawberries or sweet bread, and I'm not big on festivals, but it's one.

[0:03:46]  Pastor Bill: Of those things he's quoting from the short story or talking about the short story that I wrote.

[0:03:54]  Pastor Newms: You don't know that. You didn't send it to me.

[0:04:00]  Pastor Bill: I sent you the name. I sent you all the pertinent information.

[0:04:03]  Pastor Newms: You did not send me the short story, so how would I know?

[0:04:12]  Pastor Bill: I didn't send you this one. You could have gotten it on Kindle or Unlimited. This one could have ordered like this. There you go. He's got a copy. My copy comes in tomorrow.

[0:04:24]  Pastor Newms: Actually, I made Groggy go through. So at the beginning of the book, there's an excerpt, a little thing about each writer.

[0:04:36]  Pastor Bill: Right.

[0:04:37]  Pastor Newms: The weird thing is, one of three who their name is not in the first four words, so it almost makes it look like a second paragraph about the previous person.

[0:04:59]  Pastor Bill: That's funny.

[0:05:02]  Pastor Newms: But.

[0:05:04]  Pastor Bill: A little 53-word biography that I've crafted for use in my.

[0:05:10]  Pastor Newms: Guess would be so there's 28 literary pieces. My guess would be that's the winner winner.

[0:05:22]  Pastor Bill: Yeah. I would guess there were three. They said the top three would get a free copy of the book and yada, yada, yada. So I'm guessing that was number one. Number one, yeah.

[0:05:33]  Pastor Newms: I would think that was the selection.

[0:05:34]  Pastor Bill: Of the sacred strawberry. But yeah, I don't know. I haven't read any of the other stories yet.

[0:05:41]  Pastor Newms: I didn't either. I had no desire to. I found yours, I've read yours, and now the book will go on my shelf. Because I'm not a nice person. I might go back at some point, but let's be honest, I'm not going.

[0:05:58]  Pastor Bill: To you spend $17 on a book. Why is it so high? Why is the price point so high? I don't understand.

[0:06:10]  Pastor Newms: That's not that high for a book.

[0:06:13]  Pastor Bill: Really?

[0:06:14]  Pastor Newms: Yeah. That's moderate.

[0:06:18]  Pastor Bill: What's up? How was your week, Pastor Newms?

[0:06:23]  Pastor Newms: So my week was pretty good. We were actually sick.

[0:06:33]  Pastor Bill: I'm sorry.

[0:06:34]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, it was humorous because when you texted me on Sunday, I actually had laid down to take a nap, which is not unsurprising for a Sunday, because, let's be honest, I love naps, so it's not unlikely for me to take a nap. So I had laid down last weekend this week. So Thursday I worked half a day at work. Friday I took off completely, and then I was sick all the way through. I was sick from Thursday to Tuesday, which is why I didn't fight you on the because usually when you tell me you're like, we're not doing it tonight, I'm like, Why? I mean, it's just a football. I would have said. I was like, I'm going back to bed. I was like, fine with me. I don't want it tonight anyway.

[0:07:41]  Pastor Bill: Cool. I'm tired.

[0:07:42]  Pastor Newms: I don't feel good.

[0:07:44]  Pastor Bill: Sounds good to me.

[0:07:46]  Pastor Newms: And then Zaydiee had a work trip this week, so she was actually gone from Thursday till, like, an hour before. They had a team building, like, work retreat they do every year, a retreat for the people that work across the whole company. So the high school, the elementary school, both the ELCS the baby centers, the whole nine, the whole company. And so they were in Gatlinburg, actually, from Thursday until, like I said, like 2 hours ago, I got home like I was eating up until when we started. The pre-thing. The downside between Zaydiee being gone and me getting over being sick, I played no games from like the Wednesday before I was sick. And I still technically have not launched an actual video game. So it's been like a week and a half because I've been like, you hadn't streamed anything.

[0:09:09]  Pastor Bill: I thought that was odd, but I.

[0:09:12]  Pastor Newms: Was like now there are two games, one of which I know I couldn't stream if I got early access to it. But there is one game where if you pay extra, you can get into early access. And it appears people are streaming it already as of two days ago. Now, I don't know if that is just because they're small streamers so they've got away with it, or if it's actually not under, because sometimes when you get into an early access, there's NDAs until it releases. Other games want you to they're like, yes, please stream it.

[0:09:59]  Pastor Bill: Tag us, love us. Free advertisement building up to the launch. It's good buzz, right?

[0:10:13]  Pastor Newms: I'm debating with myself still. My blanket is out of whack and it's bothering me. I'm debating with myself still on whether to get it or not. And if I get it, then I will start possibly streaming that. I'm currently supposed to be streaming another game, doing a joke run through the game, but a joke run. So the game that I've been playing and that says plays a lot of is a game based on the pathfinder RPG. It's actually a campaign setting and they built a game of it called wrath of the righteous. And there's different ways of playing the game. Like, there's different paths you can take and there's different endings and there's different every decision not every decision, but lots of decisions actually can affect the world. Like, if you make the wrong decision, your party members will just leave. They're like, no, this guy is a nut. We're out. So there's lots of different paths. You can take a demon path, you can take a devil path, you can take an angel path, you can take a legend path, which means you don't want to be truly special. You're just overpowered to be overpowered. And then there's a litch path and a swarm path, which is the lich path. Of course, several of your party members get very upset because becoming a litch is kind of a no-no. And then swarm. You're literally a living swarm. And so your party members leave because you keep eating people. And so there's all these different paths and things you can do. There's a lime, you're literally a group of insects, and you literally keep eating people. Please, I'm out. But there's options. Like, you meet people and you can be nice to them, or you can be mean, or you can use one of the special paths. You can be evil, you can be good because it's an RPG, so it's based on a tabletop RPG, so there's the Good evil, Chaotic Circle. So often there's an option of attack. Like, I don't want to talk to this person. This person's already annoyed me. They look funny. Whatever the reason, they're different situations. You can just choose to attack. And so I was joking with sez that it would be funny to do a run where you just attack every time you're given the option to attack. The first time you're given the option to attack people.

[0:13:07]  Pastor Bill: And see, so it's a murder hobo run.

[0:13:10]  Pastor Newms: It's a murder hobo run. Right, exactly. And see, by the end of the game, who's even around? But the funny thing is, the first time you come across two members, there's two party members, and you have to choose between the two of them because one ends up being evil. The first option for both of them is attack, but they both have plot armor where you don't actually attack them, and you're like, how many people actually have the plot armor in this game where attack is not actually a valid option? And so it's kind of wanting to see that. I might do some of that tomorrow, depending on what happens, because I am technically off all day tomorrow, so maybe I'll do some of that tomorrow. I don't know. I don't know what my plans are yet tomorrow.

[0:14:04]  Pastor Bill: But Gerg, his one-act stuff, they want him there from 09:00 A.m. Till TBD or tb.

[0:14:16]  Pastor Newms: His what's?

[0:14:16]  Pastor Bill: Not to be determined. One act. The University of Interscholastic League theater thing in Texas.

[0:14:27]  Pastor Newms: Oh, that thing he called me about?

[0:14:29]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, the thing he called you back. They take one act of a play or modify a play into one act, and they just put on just that one act of a show, and it gets judged. Well, he's in it, and tomorrow they're like, well, we couldn't meet on Saturday for, I don't know, director at something. And then they're like, but we don't have school Monday, so if you can come, we'd like, everyone here at 09:00 A.m. The actors can leave at 2:30. But all of you like, tech and crew guys, just stay as long as you can.

[0:15:07]  Pastor Newms: Just prepare to be there.

[0:15:09]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, prepare to be there. I got to get up and drop them off at nine. At least I don't have to get up at the normal time tomorrow. I can sleep in a little bit and get him there at nine.

[0:15:22]  Pastor Newms: Now the question is, does the Littlest actually let you sleep or is he still wakes up the moment of day and wakes you up?

[0:15:33]  Pastor Bill: So the littlest has decided that Adeline is his best friend. So he wakes up. Adeline, when he gets up, he no longer comes and wakes daddy up. However, the puppy, if no one feeds her or lets her out, she will come and start whining and scratching at my door.

[0:15:54]  Pastor Newms: Okay.

[0:15:55]  Pastor Bill: So she doesn't let me sleep, but the little human does.

[0:15:59]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, because I know there was a long time when you, like me. The littlest human would be like, hi, good morning.

[0:16:05]  Pastor Bill: Get up now. Hi. Good morning. My son's awakened. So am I.

[0:16:10]  Pastor Newms: You need to go somewhere? Well, that's fun.

[0:16:19]  Pastor Bill: All right, well, now it's time for getting to know the pastors.

[0:16:22]  Pastor Newms: I don't want to.

[0:16:23]  Pastor Bill: And it's my time to pull a card.

[0:16:25]  Pastor Newms: Oh, hey, I had something to ask you about this. No, you can still pull the card. I'm not going to tell you to not pull the card. No, you're good. I unpacked all my books. Right.

[0:16:40]  Pastor Bill: Okay.

[0:16:43]  Pastor Newms: I have a ton of youth resources from my parents, and they're right here in front of me on bookshelves. And several of them have, like, get-to-know-people questions and lists of things. And if we get through our cards or as we get, like, if we want something in between the two sets of cards, I found several books that would be they're just like they're conversation starters. They're getting to know the business person question from my mom. And I'm like, these might be awesome. They could be horrible. I have no idea.

[0:17:35]  Pastor Bill: This could be awesome or really bad.

[0:17:37]  Pastor Newms: So they could be better or worse than our cards. But I have some books that we can use as we run out of cards. Just so you know, don't go buy more cards until we see how those books are. But I have them right over there on the bookshelves, and I think it could be extremely humorous because they are.

[0:18:05]  Pastor Bill: If you, me, were reincarnated okay. As a famous landmark, which would it be?

[0:18:17]  Pastor Newms: Okay, wait. First off, there are many questions that must be asked.

[0:18:25]  Pastor Bill: How qualification questions, as if the card gives me any kind of qualifiers.

[0:18:34]  Pastor Newms: Okay, so the point of reincarnation. Well, no, I guess if you did timey wimey reincarnation, you could have been the famous monument the whole time. Also, but I don't like that. It's always weird to me. To me, a reincarnation, you're born into the next thing, not born into a thing that already exists. That always messes up in my head, because then how do you have memory? I don't like that card.

[0:19:07]  Pastor Bill: Okay.

[0:19:11]  Pastor Newms: I don't know, man.

[0:19:13]  Pastor Bill: Which celebrity chef would you most like to make you dinner?

[0:19:20]  Pastor Newms: Oh, okay. So I'm going to qualify this. I have one card down. Let's see how many cards we have to get through tonight. One thing you get to know about the pastors is pastor Newms is extremely picky. Okay. So for the sake of hanging out with me and I would just like to know the person would be Gordon Ramsay. Because I think it would just be funny to meet him because he seems like the kind of guy that I would enjoy because he's kind of a person. I was going the opposite side because I was about to say and I like people like that. But you went male appendage. And I don't like those very much. But as far as cooking, I don't think his cooking style is something I would enjoy eating. I would like to hang out with this guy while he cooks a meal thing. I think he'd be cool, but I don't know if I'd like his food necessarily. So if I'm going to go with someone like whose food I would eat, it's got to be like, a paladin or Rachel Ray or someone who does the good Southern cooking. I can't remember that one really large, fat chef guy that I used to like. Because if I'm going to have a famous chef cook me something, I want it to be good.

[0:21:29]  Pastor Bill: Okay. So basically, I'm doing this. This means we're simpatico. We're all on the same wavelength, right? This hand thing, the hand gesture I'm making right now. So what we're saying here is we would like to cook a meal with Gordon Ramsay. Yes. And just be like, be in the kitchen. And he's, like, yelling at you like, no, you twit. You cut that half a stick.

[0:21:52]  Pastor Newms: Exactly.

[0:21:52]  Pastor Bill: But when it comes to sitting down to eat a meal that someone's cooked, it'd be something like Guy Fieri, where it's like this dripping burger with just grease everywhere. But it's like that Guy meal.

[0:22:05]  Pastor Newms: I don't know about Guy Fieri because he booms spice a lot. And I'm not a super boom spice guy or bam spice, whatever it was.

[0:22:13]  Pastor Bill: No, that's a different guy you're thinking about. I can't remember what his name is. This is the guy with the spiky. I thought that was that goes to the diners, the drive-ins, and the.

[0:22:24]  Pastor Newms: No, I know, but I thought his whole thing before that was like the bam. No, that's somebody else. And, like, says, you never trust a skinny chef. Like I'm looking for you.

[0:22:38]  Pastor Bill: Thinking of Emeril Lagasse.

[0:22:40]  Pastor Newms: I'm thinking of Emeril. You're right. I am. No.

[0:22:44]  Pastor Bill: So. Yeah.

[0:22:44]  Pastor Newms: No guy. I was thinking for some reason that this is terrible. This is how much I watch cooking shows. Obviously never for some reason, I was thinking they were the same person.

[0:22:57]  Pastor Bill: No, they're not the same person.

[0:23:02]  Pastor Newms: But no.

[0:23:03]  Pastor Bill: The best hamburger and French fries I've ever had was from the quote-unquote Guy Fieri kitchen on the cruise ship that my wife and I went on a cruise on.

[0:23:15]  Pastor Newms: So his recipes, basically, yeah.

[0:23:18]  Pastor Bill: It was the most amazing burger I've ever had in my whole life.

[0:23:22]  Pastor Newms: Big sense. He wants the meal cooked by the cake guy. I wasn't even thinking of going there. That one show, I think it might be in Boston, but it's like cake Boss or something. And they do cakes.

[0:23:43]  Pastor Bill: He just wants the whole cake.

[0:23:44]  Pastor Newms: He just wants that guy to make a full meal, just several cakes like that.

[0:23:48]  Pastor Bill: Biggs is all about the cake.

[0:23:50]  Pastor Newms: Six courses of cake, six horses of cake. And biggs does not argue.

[0:23:56]  Pastor Bill: He just responds, yes. He's like, yeah, that's what I want.

[0:24:02]  Pastor Newms: There's not like a well, you know, what I meant was no, he's just.

[0:24:07]  Pastor Bill: Straight up, that's what I meant.

[0:24:09]  Pastor Newms: What I want, I would need a cake, bottle of acid of medicine and sodium, whatever. The other one I have to take the NSAIDs to be able to walk the day after intaking that much sugar, but I'll give it a shot. I drank a sweet tea by accident the other day, and it was so swollen up I could barely walk. The next sugar is not my friend no more.

[0:24:40]  Pastor Bill: All right, so hello and welcome season four episode nine of The Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian.

[0:24:50]  Pastor Newms: Wait, did we really forget? And I'm joined by Pastor did we forget?

[0:25:00]  Pastor Bill: Yeah.

[0:25:02]  Pastor Newms: Well, how am I going to edit this now?

[0:25:06]  Pastor Bill: I don't know. Pick a spot and start from there.

[0:25:11]  Pastor Newms: How do we forget? Welcome you all to 25 minutes in, roughly, probably. We'll see where I actually start it, but wow. Okay.

[0:25:33]  Pastor Bill: All right, so we're in our series in Genesis, and we're getting really close to the end of chapter one, just real close. So we're in chapter one, verses 24 and 25. And then next week we'll finish out chapter one, and then the week after that, we'll do a recap, basically, of the whole first chapter before we then go into chapter two.

[0:26:00]  Pastor Newms: But did you forget to post something again on Spotify?

[0:26:07]  Pastor Bill: I don't know. Spotify should be automatic.

[0:26:12]  Pastor Newms: I was just asking because they said it, but it might be because we didn't do it last week.

[0:26:18]  Pastor Bill: It might be. Okay, so Genesis, chapter one, verses 24 and 25. 24 says, and this is from the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible. Then God said, let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, livestock creatures that crawl, and the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so verse 25. So God made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that crawl on the ground according to their kinds, and God saw that it was good. All right, so we're at a point in chapter one, if you've been listening and following along up to this point, that none of the words here should be that surprising. We've got God is that H430, which is the plural gods, and then said is actually more commanded like we've been seeing over and over again. Earth is to be firm, and then it says to go out, so to produce. But it's that act of spreading out. You produce and you spread out, right? You fill up the land. It's not just sit in one spot and make copies of yourself. It's spread living creatures is living flesh there. But then it's also breathing creatures. So they live and they breathe. And this is a neat counterpoint to what we've seen up to this point, because with the whales and the birds and all of that, they didn't actually say breathing creatures. They didn't use this term nehfesh H5315. It's the same kind of idea of what we were talking about, the soul or the spirit, the certain something that runs the psyche of a person, the personality, that kind of thing. They didn't use that word for whales and fish and birds. Not that they don't have personalities and they don't think it's just that I don't know. Either the author didn't think they did, or yeah, they did. I don't know. Did they use nehfesh?

[0:28:49]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, in 21.

[0:28:51]  Pastor Bill: I missed it in my notes. Well, it does, doesn't it?

[0:29:01]  Pastor Newms: For birds, every living, it says an active mass. But for sea creatures, where it says whales know, but creature, it does. So it actually denotes the difference between large sea creatures and living creature that moves and swarms in the water. Which is interesting, because now, looking at whales and I missed this last time. So it's whales in the KJV, it's large sea creatures in the CSB. It actually means, which I don't think we talked about this. Yeah, it means a Kraken. It's a monstrance, a monster, a sea serpent, a jackal, a dragon.

[0:30:03]  Pastor Bill: It's the same word they translate as Leviathan in Job.

[0:30:07]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, it's a monster. It isn't just anyway, which, to be.

[0:30:17]  Pastor Bill: Honest, early seafaring peoples that came across a whale, they would be like, what is that monstrous thing?

[0:30:28]  Pastor Newms: And then birds, they don't use the same thing either. Birds, they use fowl. For some, they do. So you miss it in one spot.

[0:30:41]  Pastor Bill: Not birds miss it in one spot. Some fish have a soul, but fish do.

[0:30:48]  Pastor Newms: Some fish do, it appears, but not either. Languages are weird. All right, continue. Sorry, that threw me off.

[0:30:59]  Pastor Bill: Livestock, which is H929 behemoth, which is a dumb beast. So cattle, any cattle, dumb beast that can include camels, cows, oxen, bison. You get the point. Then it talks about reptiles, and then it says, and wildlife. The wildlife there is basically fauna. Biggs Said no spiders, yet. Wildlife would cover all fauna. So that would be spiders, scorpions, everything that hasn't been covered yet that exists. That's where it came from, right there. That's when it was created. Okay? And then we get to verse 25, and it's still plural for God, the gods. And then it's awsaw ayth. Now, remember we've talked about ayth it means to personally do something, right? So it says God made, well, God personally made these things. He personally made the wildlife, the livestock, the creatures. He personally made those. It wasn't like when he just commanded something to exist. He actually commanded that it needed to exist, and then he personally made it and then gave them their portions, it says or when they translate that out, we say according to their kind. So God had this idea that, okay, you have this domain and you have this little domain, and you need to replenish and spread out there. You need to be fruitful. You need to multiply in your little area amongst your own little kind. Right? And so God saw that it was good, right? So we have to differentiate that. Once again, it is not God - like when he saw the light looking within himself and recognize it and going, oh, that's good. No, this is just God looking at it and saying, yeah, that's a good thing. That's good. Right?

[0:33:30]  Pastor Newms: Because it is different.

[0:33:32]  Pastor Bill: It's different. It's a different thing. In English, we say it's the same thing. We say the same way, it means the same thing. But then when we get to the original language, there it's a different thing. It's something different. All right, do you have anything else you want to say about the word-to-word breakdown there?

[0:33:56]  Pastor Newms: No, not really. Not at that point. It's pretty self-explanatory. I mean, the words are the words.

[0:34:14]  Pastor Bill: It's not rocket science.

[0:34:15]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, these ones aren't super deep like some of it. These ones are kind of yeah.

[0:34:25]  Pastor Bill: Basically what we're doing at this point is the author is just trying to get through everything that was created before. Where did my camera go? Okay.

[0:34:35]  Pastor Newms: Nowhere. Don't worry about it. Where about yourself?

[0:34:39]  Pastor Bill: I am worried about myself. That's my camera.

[0:34:43]  Pastor Newms: If anything becomes full screen on that monitor, it makes you go away.

[0:34:53]  Pastor Bill: At this point, the author is just trying to get through the rest of creation and has toned down the imagery and toned down all the background stuff because they're wanting to get to the humans. They're wanting to get to the actual point of why they're telling this story. So in the beginning, they were very much, this is the important stuff, this is the deep stuff. And then as the chapter progresses, they're like, okay, let's get back to the important stuff, but we got to fly off all these things to get there, right? All right, so now it's time for our this is only the second time we've done this. It's the topic according to AI.

[0:35:44]  Pastor Newms: I was really hoping you were going to just leave this alone.

[0:35:49]  Pastor Bill: Where I took all seven commentaries that I read and fed their viewpoints on these two verses into Chat GPT and had it spit back a synopsis on what they all cover. All right, are you ready?

[0:36:08]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, if I'm ready.

[0:36:10]  Pastor Bill: Okay, here we go. The 6th day of creation in the Bible is a significant event in the creation story as it highlights the preparation of the Earth with the arrival of humans. According to the Bible, God created various animals, including cattle, creeping things, and beasts of the Earth, and declared them to be good. These animals were divided into three classes and made after their kind, each having its own unique species. The creation of animals was necessary for the arrival of man as they serve various purposes such as transportation, food, and commerce. The authors note that the creation of the animals demonstrates the benevolent purpose of God's work. The incompleteness of the earth with just lower creatures highlights the spiritual greatness of humans, despite their inferior physical qualities. Compared to the animal races, humans, as the climax of the earth's creation, are able to recognize the order and exert control over all other creatures, making them godlike and the King of the Earth. In contrast to the creation of the animals, the creation of humans is described as the masterwork and the end of all that has been done. According to the Bible, man's body was taken from the Earth, but his soul was from heaven, while the body and soul of beasts are wholly from the Earth. This distinction highlights the special relationship that animals have with God and their elevated status among all creatures. In conclusion, the 6th Day of Creation in the Bible emphasizes the important role that the creation of animals played in the preparation of the Earth for the arrival of humans. It also highlights the unique and special relationship that humans have with God and their elevated status among all creatures. So there you go. There's the summary of the topic according to Chat GPT, based on the commentary entries from the seven different commentaries that I study as part of my preparation. Interestingly enough, we didn't have a dissenting opinion this week. The sermon Bible didn't go all evolutionary on us this time, which I thought was interesting.

[0:38:46]  Pastor Newms: What I find interesting is the fact that we didn't actually talk about the humans.

[0:38:56]  Pastor Bill: But you included them in 24 and 25 don't. Well, the commentaries for verses 24 and 25 talk about it. So that's where it got that from.

[0:39:12]  Pastor Newms: I was like, that's odd.

[0:39:15]  Pastor Bill: Yeah, I thought it was odd too. Says he can fix something for us if we like, but I don't know what.

[0:39:24]  Pastor Newms: Don't worry about it. He's just being Sez, okay.

[0:39:33]  Pastor Bill: All right. So that's verses 24 and 25, of Genesis one, where God makes all of those other creatures. The name of that episode was what? What did we name that?

[0:40:02]  Pastor Newms: I don't remember. Let's go back to the Weekly.

[0:40:08]  Pastor Bill: Livestock, Reptiles, And Fauna. Oh, my. Of course, I had to throw the omi.

[0:40:12]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, I didn't understand the oh, my. I thought that was strange.

[0:40:16]  Pastor Bill: Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my.

[0:40:22]  Pastor Newms: Still thought it was strange.

[0:40:24]  Pastor Bill: It's a Wizard of OZ reference. Come on, man.

[0:40:29]  Pastor Newms: Strange?

[0:40:30]  Pastor Bill: Why is that strange?

[0:40:32]  Pastor Newms: It's strange.

[0:40:34]  Pastor Bill: You can say it's strange if you want to. Oh, I see. Says he can offer a dissenting opinion. Okay, so I have a question. There's no mention of dinosaurs in Genesis one. Why is that Pastor Newms?

[0:41:00]  Pastor Newms: Well, as you mentioned, genesis one comes from the story as written by Babylonians.

[0:41:09]  Pastor Bill: Correct.

[0:41:11]  Pastor Newms: And. By that point, dinosaurs weren't walking around, right?

[0:41:19]  Pastor Bill: No mention of dinosaurs because this is a text written by humans, right?

[0:41:25]  Pastor Newms: In Job, there is a mention of a leviathan. It is the same word usage as sea creature that is used in Genesis.

[0:41:38]  Pastor Bill: Technically, a unicorn also talks about a great beast with huge legs whose neck reaches to the sky. But modern theologians have narrowed those down to modern animals that we still have anyway.

[0:41:59]  Pastor Newms: The other aspect is the fact that there's a couple of different aspects you could look at as far as dinosaurs go in the Bible. So there's the aspect of one, if we're looking at it from a standpoint of everything was created at the same time in the same way, in the exact same the way that most modern churches teach it. Dinosaurs would then be kept under creeping thing and sea ones would be under the monstrous Sea Creatures so they wouldn't spell them out any differently than any other form of lizard and or bird. They're just bigger. If you look at it from a standpoint of it's written by especially Genesis one is a retelling of the story based on added in later from what most of the rest of Genesis was written. It's the Babylonian. So you'd have to go back and ask them.

[0:43:15]  Pastor Bill: I think the main real answer I'm trying to get at is this isn't dictated by God. This isn't God saying in the beginning, I and then I and then I this is mankind going, well, we believe that this is how it happened, right? And we're going, oh yeah, okay, I faith that and believe that, right? But this isn't God's account of creation. This is the Babylonian account of creation as adapted and edited by the culture of the Jewish people. So is it exhaustive? No. Is it scientific? No. Is it 100% accurate? Not any more than me trying to write a book about the Civil War. Yeah, I wasn't there, I didn't see it. I can recount the stories that have.

[0:44:32]  Pastor Newms: Been told to me, right, and that's often, especially when you deal with the text that is not necessarily for religious study. These are stories that have been handed down and handed down and handed down and they were written down. Do I think they are mostly accurate to a certain degree, yeah. I think the generalized aspects are. I think when we look at the differences between Genesis One and Genesis Two, it gets a little funny, but we're not necessarily looking at that yet. That's not exactly what you're looking for at the moment.

[0:45:29]  Pastor Bill: But at this point we're taking the text scripture by scripture and trying to let it stand on its own and build upon itself as if we haven't really seen what's coming yet. We don't know what's going to be said now for the most part. So we've grabbed on to some statements and gone, well, it seems like it's saying this not necessarily believing that. It means that even because we've read ahead in the book where they clarify certain things. Right, but that's all part of the process of learning and getting to the heart of what's there. But one of the things that really bugs me is this whole we get these arguments where people are like, no, it was this way, and other people were like, it couldn't have been that way. That's ridiculous. And they're arguing back and forth as if Genesis one was written from a first person point of view perspective by someone who was there. But it's not. It's a game of telephone. It's been repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated. What it is is a very good, firm-standing building block for the beginning of a religious viewpoint on the world and a religious study of God. It is not intended to be what's the word? A discourse on the actual steps of creation. That's not what it is. It's not intended to be that way. It can't be used that way. But people use it that way and they argue it that way. And I'm like, you choose by faith to believe it is that. And it's a very good thing to build upon in your faith and in your religious beliefs. But to then take it out of the Bible and try to argue it in a secular standing and go, well, no, this is an actual account of how things happened. The Bible doesn't even make that claim. There's the one time where Jesus says he mentions the seven days of creation. Right. And I didn't look it up ahead of this time because I didn't think about the fact that I was going to be quoting it. But even then, it's in the middle of a sermon where he's specifically talking to a religious group, and so it's not even used as a secular talking point at that point. I don't know, it just frustrates me that the Bible is intended for certain things, and to take it out of that context feels like demeaning. And undervaluing the text itself yeah, we.

[0:48:58]  Pastor Newms: Have the New Testament that talks about all scripture is God breathed for the uses of teaching, preaching religious aspects, doesn't say to dictate historical documents, doesn't say.

[0:49:20]  Pastor Bill: The word apologetics isn't listed in that list. And arguing with non-believers isn't in that list either.

[0:49:29]  Pastor Newms: Yeah, it's definitely an interesting thing. When we look at how some people it's like the weaponization of certain areas of scripture. It doesn't make sense. There's no reason we should be weaponizing Scripture.

[0:49:54]  Pastor Bill: So when my child asks me, is this how it happened? Is this how creation happened? What's my response? My response is, as far as our religious beliefs are concerned, this is the important things that happened in that reference. This is the list of the important things that happened in reference to your religion. My religion. That's my answer.

[0:50:33]  Pastor Newms: How I usually would take it is the aspect of this is what is believed to the way it believed is.

[0:50:43]  Pastor Bill: The key word there. Yeah.

[0:50:47]  Pastor Newms: Is it perfect? No, because no one was there. We're basing it off the knowledge of having faith in our belief system. It's not complete.

[0:51:04]  Pastor Bill: I get the same amount of frustrated and secular conversations when people will say, no, we know exactly this is how it happened. We know exactly that the Earth is billions of years, this many billions of years old, and that evolution happened exactly like this. It frustrates me there, too, because I'm like you. Don't you believe it based off this evidence and this evidence and this evidence? But you weren't there. No one was. You're making an educated guess and choosing to believe it.

[0:51:40]  Pastor Newms: I mean, everything takes a certain amount of faith. It's just how honest is.

[0:51:48]  Pastor Bill: An honest scientist will say, we've come to a pretty trustworthy hypothesis that this is what happened. And on that point I can go, Cool, tell me more about it. Because we're being honest, but on both sides, secular and religious, we need to be emphasizing more on the this is my belief, and less on making things into scientific fact that just aren't. Genesis one is not scientific fact. The Big Bang is not necessarily scientific fact. I know we can reproduce certain things that we theorize the Big Bang was like in a much smaller form in the hadron collider, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's actually what happened. It just means it is a plausible option for what happened. The fact that it can be recreated.

[0:53:16]  Pastor Newms: This is close to what science believes because it's what makes logical sense based on our knowledge sense.

[0:53:30]  Pastor Bill: All right, well, that's all we have for tonight. The Berean Manifesto is a podcast that comes out once a week, more or less. Sometimes we take a break, but we try to come out every Wednesday night at 07:00 P.M. Central Standard time. Wherever you get your podcasts from, if you enjoyed this episode or you think it might be enjoyable or helpful for someone else, like share, follow whatever it is on where you're getting your podcast so that you can make sure you don't miss an episode and so that other people can get our episodes as well. That helps it grow. We do record this podcast live on Sunday evenings at 06:30 P.M. Central Standard Time. And you can go to our website, EKK.House, to find out which twitch account, which YouTube account, and which Facebook account you could go to, to catch those live broadcasts. That's the word broadcast. And then you can participate in the chat. You can type it in what you want to say. And I keep discord here open in front of me. Pastor Newms keeps Twitch and Discord in front of him. And we can actually you can be part of the conversation like you've heard a few times tonight. We've referenced someone from the chat, participating in the conversation. And we welcome that. We welcome questions or concerns or dissent. We keep it clean, we keep it respectful, and we're not afraid to block people who are unwilling to be respectful. So keeping that a month. All right, so, Pastor News, if you don't have anything else for tonight, I'm going to say we love you guys and we hope you have a great week.

[0:55:22]  Pastor Newms: Be safe out there.

[0:55:25]  Pastor Bill: And until next time.

S4EP08 - Those that swim & those that fly and stuff

S4EP07 - Lights by day and lights by nigh

S4EP05 - The Firma-what?

Due to a technical error, this podcast does not contain a transcription.

S4EP04 - To Be Hot?

Pastor Bill:
[2:04] Hello and welcome to season four, episode four of The Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian. I'm Pastor Bill and I am joined by Pastor Newms. As always, Newms, how are you doing?
 
Pastor Newms:
[2:22] I'm good, sir. How are you today?
 
Pastor Bill:
[2:24] I'm well tonight. I'm well. How was your Christmas break? We took two weeks off the podcast.
 
Pastor Newms:
[2:30] We did. We were busy between the two of us. Days that you weren't busy. I was, days that you were busy. I wasn't. And it made it very. It's no big deal. It's the holidays. I mean, I actually texted Mom. I was like, Hey, make sure Biggs is on right on time tonight because I had something funny. And she was like, I didn't know you guys were going live tonight. I was like, That's true. It is the first. So the way it fell, you know, it's a little different, but it's good. It's good. I had pretty, pretty good things. I worked. A lot. I've only had I had last Friday and then Monday, and then I have Monday off. So it was three, four-day weeks in a row. But I didn't take any additional time this year because I didn't do any traveling, so I saved my vacation for later. So. And Biggs is saying that you did your office is something different that I'm not noticing?
 
Pastor Bill:
[3:48] Um, I don't know. I mean, we did. It is a recent redo, and then we did take a couple of weeks off, so. Maybe it's just hitting different.
 
Pastor Newms:
[3:59] Maybe. I don't know. I don't know. How was your holidays?
 
Pastor Bill:
[4:05] All right, So. There were holidays. You know, my sister Natalie flew in from California with her husband, Luke. We haven't seen them in three years, so we got to go spend some time with them. That was fun and games and whatnot over at my mom's house.
 
Pastor Newms:
[4:28] Did you guys get any bad ice or anything?
 
Pastor Bill:
[4:28] Christmas at the mother-in-law's. We got some cold, but there was no bad ice.
 
Pastor Newms:
[4:36] That’s good. There was snow on the ground near Christmas, but technically not a white Christmas this year. It was like.
 
Pastor Bill:
[4:44] We got snow. But it didn't stick. So.
 
Pastor Newms:
[4:49] And we had ice by the time it was Christmas.
 
Pastor Bill:
[4:50] And then today. It was like 80 degrees with a nice breeze outside. I spent like 2 hours in the front yard laying on a comforter spread. Doing my last-minute study for tonight. Just enjoying the, you know, the nice temperatures.
 
Pastor Newms:
[5:10] It's like sixties here now. Yeah. So.
 
Pastor Bill:
[5:17] Cool. But as far as weeks go, it was just, you know, busy with a bunch of holidays.
 
Pastor Newms:
[5:25] Yeah, I. I did something. I did something big in games, but not a huge deal outside of games. I completed the Pokédex for Scarlet Violet, minus one. Because you have to in order to get a tradable version of the legendary, you have to beat the game. And I haven't beaten Violet yet, so I don't have them right on. But I have every other Pokémon in my life decks. And so that was a thing that I did this week and then started playing a completely different game. So that was fun. Yeah, it was fun.
 
Pastor Bill:
[6:06] Is the game called Your Chronicle?
 
Pastor Newms:
[6:09] No, that's one of my idle games. Your Chronicle and idling to rule the gods are my two idol games that I play, so they're pretty much always up, and Discord just grabs whatever game was up last. I try to normally not play heavy. Lots of movement and sound games during.
 
Pastor Bill:
[6:34] Service podcast.
 
Pastor Newms:
[6:34] Sunday night. And yes, as Senior Poopie Bottom said, I, I did not know. Okay. So I just realized. Senior Poopy Bottom who Senior Poopy Bottom is. And I don't know if I knew who Senior Poopy Bottom was until just now.
 
Pastor Bill:
[6:55] Who is a Senior Poopy Bottom? I do not know who it is. No.
 
Pastor Newms:
[6:55] Have we talked about that? Senior Poopy Bottom. Did I know that you were Senior Poopy Bottom?
 
Pastor Bill:
[7:05] Let the rest of us in on the secret, bro.
 
Pastor Newms:
[7:08] Well, he's sitting on my couch, um, downstairs. Not. Not the dog right here. That'd be creepy.
 
Pastor Bill:
[7:16] Not to judge the type.
 
Pastor Newms:
[7:18] But that's actually. That's actually Mr. Groggy.
 
Pastor Bill:
[7:24] That's Mr. Groggy. How many identities does that man have?
 
Pastor Newms:
[7:25] Mr. Groggy. I don't know what I do. Oh. Well, that's why I was like, Wait a second. He was letting me play Violet. Yeah, I let him borrow Violet last week, which is why while he was borrowing Violet, I finished the Scarlet dex and then did a bunch of trades when he came in. You know, because he came to spend New Years with us, and we played Mortal Kombat 11 on the Switch all night till, like, one. And if she says anything, it's not true. Rayne did not beat me like four or five times in a row. That is fake news. If she tells you that it is, it is not true. Mm-hmm. I was not a happy person. She beat me so many times. Just over and over again. And. But anyway, it's. It's all good.
 
Pastor Bill:
[8:31] So you got a venom thing? You showed us that. I got a pocket watch that I attached to a wristband. So I can just. Find.
 
Pastor Newms:
[8:33] I did. Oh, that's. That's steampunk.
 
Pastor Bill:
[8:48] So steampunk. I love it. It's great. So steampunk.
 
Pastor Newms:
[8:48] It's so steampunk when you come out here to visit. There's this. And we decide to take everybody to Dollywood. There's down there in Gatlinburg, there's this place that is this thing that you do. I can't do it because it's. It's like 3D and stuff, but. The whole idea is that you're in the steampunk ship going around the world. And so, like in the gift shop, there's the steampunk hats and steampunk goggles. And I was like, Oh, Bill would love all this crap.
 
Pastor Bill:
[9:26] Have to go just for the gift shop.
 
Pastor Newms:
[9:28] Yeah, we will. We probably won't pay for everyone to do that because it's like, Yeah. That was part of the existing grandma. Gloria's Christmas to us was everything they paid for, for the girls you know how that is, with Six Flags often. And so it was like, oh no. And yes, because I do know how you felt all those times that I beat you now while my children beat me at games so. Mhm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:00] The wheel of time turns.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:02] Yeah. Yeah.
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:05] What else? I got money. I got some money. Um. A couple of shots, of Fireball.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:19] How's that? Okay. Okay.
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:22] They sell those little bottles that are just a shot's worth.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:23] I. Yep. Now, I fully understand. It's just. That's an interesting Christmas present.
I didn't. Didn't. Huh?
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:32] That was one of my favorite stocking stuffers, actually.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:36] He. I can understand.
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:41] So, you know.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:43] It's actually, the cinnamon is not that high in carbs. So.
 
Pastor Bill:
[10:51] All right. And now it's time for Getting To Know The Pastors. Yep, it is. As I pack my deck. Now the. Yeah. Yeah.
 
Pastor Newms:
[10:55] Is it your week? Yeah. Like a pack of cigarettes when neither of us smokes. Okay. That makes so much sense. Only. Hmm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[11:07] Right. All right. Would you rather.
 
Pastor Newms:
[11:11] I'm going to say something right now. If this card is terrible and we start the year off with an awful card out of your deck, I'm not going to be happy. Go. You did not just change the card.
 
Pastor Bill:
[11:29] I'm thinking about it.
 
Pastor Newms:
[11:39] Oh, man. Now just read it. Try to start the year off. Right.
 
Pastor Bill:
[11:45] So. Yeah. It's starting off, right? I mean, come girl.
 
Pastor Newms:
[11:56] Oh.
 
Pastor Bill:
[11:59] Okay. I'm sorry. Would you rather. Be the best player on a horrible team or the worst player on a great team.
 
Pastor Newms:
[12:14] See, that's really hard because here's the reason why I say that's really hard. So like, if you're the best player on the worst team. And you feel like you're. Like you're wasting your time and talents. And I take that from a team, sports or business. But if you're the worst, you're constantly worried you're about to get got. So. Oh, that's. That's rough. That one is rough.
I prefer to be third on either side.
 
Pastor Bill:
[12:58] I prefer just not to do team things. But just. Yeah.
 
Pastor Newms:
[13:02] I prefer to be like the third or fourth smartest person in a room and the most efficient person in a room. And like the. Unless you get traded a week before the Super Bowl. Um.
 
Pastor Bill:
[13:17] Oh, yeah, that would stink.
 
Pastor Newms:
[13:20] But Biggs. So Biggs says the worst on a good team. Um, I. Oh, I would have to say probably. Think if I actually had the answer, I would say. I don't want to ever be the best because it just feels. Even being mediocrely above the medium feels terrible when you're doing when you feel like you're doing more than others.
 
Pastor Bill:
[13:52] If I was the best, I'd always be worried about eighties montages. It's like if you didn't suddenly be like. You're the best around. And I'd be like, Oh, crap. I'm in a montage.
 
Pastor Newms:
[13:57] She's not us. 30-second buffer, 30-second buffer, 30-second buffer, Pastor Bill started. Singing 80 songs. Hmm. For those of you who don't get that joke, come join us live. And you will. Oh, yes. So but you got to choose which one? Which one would you truly choose? I prefer to just be middle, but. I think I agree with Biggs.
 
Pastor Bill:
[14:45] The worst.
 
Pastor Newms:
[14:46] Yeah, I think it's just I think being the best at anything at any moment is just would be infuriating. Like, if you were.
 
Pastor Bill:
[14:52] The worst on the team, I mean.
 
Pastor Newms:
[14:54] Because if you're the best on a bad team, I mean, if you're like, yeah, if you're the best on a bad team, you're constantly you'd be constantly frustrated because you're failing, but you're awesome.
 
Pastor Bill:
[15:08] I mean, you'd constantly feel like Judas, just like, Man, I am better than these. Oh, wait, That was just.
 
Pastor Newms:
[15:14] That was just pride. That's different. That was just. That was just pride. I need a fidget. Okay. I got one. I got one. I just realized I'm fidgeting with an extremely sharp. Knife. And if I slip, I must cut a finger. Of course, that's a straight, like, straight-edge razor blade. That's what I'm looking for. So that should not be what we're fidgeting with.
 
Pastor Bill:
[15:40] So. You know, there's a new doctor coming up for Doctor Who?
 
Pastor Newms:
[15:44] I have heard. Mm hmm. Hmm. Hmm hmm. Even though I'm far behind. But. Yes.
 
Pastor Bill:
[15:47] And David Tennant, David Tennant is now the 10th and the 14th doctor. And there wasn't supposed to be any kind of release this year. And the BBC made this big deal of something big is coming tomorrow. Right.
 
Pastor Newms:
[16:08] Like tomorrow is and tomorrow or they made a big deal and it's in the past. Okay. Oh.
 
Pastor Bill:
[16:08] And it was. No like. New Years Adam They made a big deal that New Year's Eve, they were going to drop something big. And everybody was like, Oh, we're getting a surprise episode. Some kind of short. It was a trailer for next year's special. They made a Big To-Do about releasing a trailer.
 
Pastor Newms:
[16:35] Well, that's what a teaser is.
 
Pastor Bill:
[16:36] Oh, people are livid.
 
Pastor Newms:
[16:39] That's what a teaser is. It's teasing the fact that there's a trailer.
 
Pastor Bill:
[16:40] That they made such a big deal about the trailer.
 
Pastor Newms:
[16:45] But that's. They do that with movies. They do that with everything. Because you release a teaser that says that there's a trailer coming.
 
Pastor Bill:
[16:46] Oh, people are upset. I'm upset.
 
Pastor Newms:
[16:55] I mean, that's what a teaser is. A teaser teases the trailer.
 
Pastor Bill:
[16:59] But they could have said, we're releasing a trailer. But they made it sound like they were releasing something real.
 
Pastor Newms:
[17:02] No, that's no fun. That's not a teaser. Hmm. Well, it was real. It was real footage. It was. Does he look good as The Doctor?
 
Pastor Bill:
[17:09] And then there was this very.
 
Pastor Newms:
[17:19] Oh, David Tennant's the next special. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought the next. Oh, okay. I'm trying to.
 
Pastor Bill:
[17:24] Gave it the next, like three specials. As the 14th doctor, and then he'll regenerate into the 15th doctor.
 
Pastor Newms:
[17:32] I've. I've tried to not be to. Spoilery in the fact that I'm, you know, old dude before chick.
 
Pastor Bill:
[17:44] Hmm. You're asking about Nick. Cute chee guy. How do you say his name?
 
Pastor Newms:
[17:52] I'm not going to try. I can't speak English correctly. I'm not going to insult someone else.
 
Pastor Bill:
[17:57] I didn't want to say it, but. The first Canon black doctor I was going to say is his name, but he's the first Canon Black doctor, which I think is great.
 
Pastor Newms:
[18:08] Yes.
 
Pastor Bill:
[18:11] We've always known the doctor could and in spoilers. We saw a previous incarnation of the Doctor that's never been released in Canon during Jodie Foster, Jodie Whittaker's time, and as a black woman doctor.
 
Pastor Newms:
[18:26] Oh, interesting. Thanks for the spoilers.
 
Pastor Bill:
[18:28] But she's not like canon at this point. You know she's, you know, and so it's exciting to see where this actor will take the doctor. But that's what you're asking about. And as far as how he looks. They have released what his costume is. And it's very. Different. Let's put it that way. You know, The Doctor has always been buttoned up in suits and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And this is more like a t-shirt with a blazer and, dress down. It's not now. It's like what we saw in Matt Smith's first promotional material.
 
Pastor Newms:
[19:10] Mhm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[19:11] Except they've actually said this is actually his clothing. Dr..
 
Pastor Newms:
[19:14] Got it. Interesting. It'll definitely be interesting to see where he takes where they take it with him as the head and where the girls are actually trying to get caught up to then back to where we were. Since they're older now and actually like, you know, cause there was like three the last time we watched it. Um, no, she wasn't that. Who?
 
Pastor Bill:
[19:39] Is he Scottish? Biggs, said Scottish black Doctor Who, But I don't think he's Scottish. I think he's.
 
Pastor Newms:
[19:48] Mm hmm. I don't think he's Scottish. He's. Uh-hmm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[19:51] Ughandan?
 
Pastor Newms:
[19:54] Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm. I don't. I don't remember.
 
Pastor Bill:
[20:00] I was thinking he was born somewhere else and then grew up and.
 
Pastor Newms:
[20:03] Yes, that's what I believe. Because I like him a lot on another show.
 
Pastor Bill:
[20:19] Oh, yes. The. The woman. From. Previously, she was Scottish while she sounded Scottish.
But she wasn't. She's not officially canon.
 
Pastor Newms:
[20:37] Right here. Yeah, and I have no idea. So he's were Rwandan Scottish actor.
 
Pastor Bill:
[20:44] Rwandan.
 
Pastor Newms:
[20:45] Yeah, he's Rwandan. And his, you know, rose to prominence as Eric on the Netflix show Sex Education. Which is a pretty funny show. It's interesting, you know. And he is. Yeah, It's an interesting show.
 
Pastor Bill:
[21:07] I'll take your word on it, as soon as this thing and the BBC finish ironing out their deal to have the full catalog of Doctor Who on Disney Plus. I'll be able to go in and rewatch a whole bunch of stuff and catch back up myself before the new stuff drops.
 
Pastor Newms:
[21:28] And. there is how to pronounce his full name, which I.
 
Pastor Bill:
[21:37] All right, here we go.
 
Pastor Newms:
[21:39] I'm not good with little symbols either. So he doesn't help me, but.
 
Pastor Bill:
[21:43] And Cookie. Shoot t. Institute. Hi. Is pronounced Shooty. Okay. It says it's pronounced shooty, not okay. So N - C makes a sound. And his last name is got to. He prefers to go by his middle name professionally, which is shooting. Well, that's fine. I didn't. I've only ever seen his name written. I haven't actually heard anybody say it. So.
 
Pastor Newms:
[22:35] I heard it. Once, but I can't remember it.
 
Pastor Bill:
[22:42] Yes, because they're supposed to have the exam, which says all 50 years on Disney Plus is supposed to be ironing out that deal to bring. Everything, all of Doctor Who on Disney Plus this year. So all the way from number one, all the way up to all of Jodie Whitaker's tenure and everything moving forward, it's supposed to come out on Disney Plus as it's released by the BBC overseas. Because like, right now I can't watch Doctor Who anywhere unless I download it. I don't have anywhere that I can watch Doctor Who.
 
Pastor Newms:
[23:33] Yeah. Right now it's on. I believe it's HBO, Max. And we get it through our AT&T. We have it through. Yeah.
 
Pastor Bill:
[23:44] So. I have Hulu. With HBO, Max. But the HBO Max that's with Hulu doesn't include foreign productions. So you can't watch Doctor Who on Hulu with HBO, Max.
 
Pastor Newms:
[24:12] Interesting.
 
Pastor Bill:
[24:20] Esker Boro, Week three. Oh, it's. It's okay.
 
Pastor Newms:
[24:21] Yeah, I already. I already deleted it.
 
Pastor Bill:
[24:26] I thought he was saying you could go somewhere to watch Doctor Who, and I was a bit like, Hmm. But no, you're right. It's.
 
Pastor Newms:
[24:30] Nope. Now it's gone. It's gone out of everywhere. But what you call it? Yeah. And it's about to be.
 
Pastor Bill:
[24:49] Well, it's gone. Whoever got rid of it, it's gone. All right. So. If you haven't been following along in season four, then you've missed. Three episodes. But we didn't get very far in what we're currently talking about.
 
Pastor Newms:
[25:06] Well. Well, I mean, we've gotten far. It's just we haven't gotten far.
 
Pastor Bill:
[25:13] If we're marking distance by numbers of chapter and verse.
 
Pastor Newms:
[25:17] Oh. Hmm. We haven't gotten far.
 
Pastor Bill:
[25:20] And we haven't gotten very far.
 
Pastor Newms:
[25:23] If you're basing it on that, we have not gotten very far now.
 
Pastor Bill:
[25:25] Right. We haven't got to read the first verse, number, and verse. And so this week, first off. Merry Christmas. We are currently in the 12 days of Christmas. Today is what, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, and 31. Is the eighth day of Christmas. I don't know why. I can't just remember which day is which when the eighth day of Christmas, we got Epiphany coming up. So that's fun. Epiphany is January 6th. The day when we celebrate the Wise men, the Magi, the men of Orient, the probably Zoroastrian individuals. Who brought gifts to Jesus with their caravans of camels and. And all the people that came with them. That's coming up. So that's exciting. That's not. I mean, not exciting, but it's exciting to me to mark those holidays, you know, for me personally. But I know a lot of people don't celebrate those things anymore. The commercialization of.
 
Pastor Newms:
[26:35] Mm hmm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[26:47] Christmas has proliferated greatly. I will just say it. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Any excuse to feel hope and inspiration and to reconnect with people that you haven't connected with in a while. And bury the hatchet and get rid of old grudges. Is a good deal. All right. The baby monitor was still on the receiver. Turn it off.
 
Pastor Newms:
[27:25] So. Okay. I was wondering if and could hear Nibbles over here. Nibbles is very loud at the moment, and I just ask the girls to come get her because she is, loud this weekend.
 
Pastor Bill:
[27:44] I don't hear the cat. Biggs says that he does.
 
Pastor Newms:
[27:48] Yeah, that's Nibbles being a something.
 
Pastor Bill:
[27:54] I don't hear it. So we started this.
 
Pastor Newms:
[27:55] Well.
 
Pastor Bill:
[27:57] We talked about Genesis one-one, and then we talked about Genesis one-two, and then we talked about John one-one, and then we talked about Genesis one-three and Genesis the first half of Genesis one-four. And we did all of that in the first three episodes, so. Where we pick up in this episode is the second half of Genesis one-four. And then we're going to go hopefully all the way through Genesis one-five. Although we may just burn right through this and be done early and be twiddling our thumbs.
 
Pastor Newms:
[28:40] Mm hmm. I'm sure.
 
Pastor Bill:
[28:42] Yeah. Genesis one-four. Last week we talked about God creating light and we talked about how it was less of the light to exist or light it exists and more of a light recognizing or calling out to the light. But we didn't really talk about it. Why we see it that way. Why we framed it that way. And where that comes from is here in verse five. So God creates the light. We're starting in the second half, of verse four. Yes.
 
Pastor Newms:
[29:25] Well, are we going to start in four?
 
Pastor Bill:
[29:31] So God sees the light that it's good. And then God separates the light from the darkness. Right. Now the word there is still gods. We're still talking about the plural. We're still using the plural for God, God's. And this word. Separated is. Is two words. It's. It's H914, which is baw-dal’ and it is H996, which is bane. Okay. Now, baw-dal’ is to distinguish as difference. To look at something and make a judgment and say the light and the darkness, we recognize them as two different things. And then, bane. Make sure I wrote this in my notes right.
 
Pastor Newms:
[30:39] Me to read it, have it open.
 
Pastor Bill:
[30:42] You don't have my notes open.
 
Pastor Newms:
[30:44] No, but I have the thing open.
 
Pastor Bill:
[30:49] And H996 is to declare a distinction between the two. Right. So he's making, God's making two statements here. He's declaring them as separate and seeing them as separate. So not only does God look at them and go, Well, you're two separate things, lightness and darkness. We talked about the light. There was that sentience of man. It was enlightenment, it was consciousness. And then that darkness was everything that's dark, right? It was misery and destruction and chaos. And all this stuff. And God is saying, well, these are two separate things. Two very separate things. Now, later. We're actually going to start calling those things good and evil when we get into chapter two. We're going to start using different terms. And the reason for the different terms is that like we talked about before. Genesis originally started with chapter two. And went on. And then when they went into captivity in Babylon, then they added chapter one, incorporating what the Babylonians knew about creation. Including those details into the story there at the beginning. And that's why there's this different viewpoint, different phrases for the same things. So this is the point where God is separating good and evil and saying these are actually separate things. These aren't just, you know, intermingled. And it's all it is what it is. It's not that's not what these things are. There is clearly good and there is clearly evil. And God can do that. Because God can deal in black and white. Pastor Newms, can you deal in black and white?
 
Pastor Newms:
[32:57] I like Gray a lot, huh?
 
Pastor Bill:
[33:00] I feel like the Sunday school teacher at this point. No, you cannot deal in black and white because you are human.
 
Pastor Newms:
[33:04] I like. Yeah, Yeah, I like Gray a lot. Um, I pretty much live in gray.
 
Pastor Bill:
[33:09] Yeah. Humans deal in gray. We do not deal in black and white. It is physically impossible for us to deal in black and white. They, God deals in black and white. God deals in pass or fail. So we see this in the character of God. We see this from the very beginning. Later on when we get to the ideas of salvation and we start talking about if you've broken one law, then you've broken all laws. If you're a sinner in one way, then you're a sinner. And always if you don't believe, then you're not saved. And it's a pass or fail. It's a yes or no. It's not a “Well, I was a good person” or “I went to church” or “I gave money to the poor,” and No, no, no. There was one answer. There was one question, and there was one answer. It was black and white. It was yes or no. It was not gray. There was no middle ground. We see that in the nature of God from the very beginning. Light and dark. Good and evil.
 
Pastor Newms:
[34:22] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[34:26] That is the nature of God. That doesn't change. It doesn't. God deals. In black and white, right? Now. That's the nature of God. God also exists. In the business of mercy. Which is Jesus. We call that Jesus, right?
 
Pastor Newms:
[34:51] Uh huh.
 
Pastor Bill:
[34:52] Not just there's black and white. And humans are failing that. And then God goes, and I have an answer for it. And that's God's mercy. That's Jesus. And then Jesus offers salvation. And salvation is still this black and white. But it's being offered. When you haven't earned it, you don't deserve it. You're sitting over in the darkness and it gets off. It's still black and white, right? Impossible. And God says, Ha! But. I am Holy Spirit, too. I am the Comforter. I am the reminder. I can move in your life. And that's where we get that part of God, the Holy Spirit. And that gives us the grace to change. Right? And be worthy of the free gift that Jesus gifts. And we see all of that playing out. In that statement. God separated. The light. From the darkness. And so there's this great poetic thing going on here. And we're seeing the nature of God and we're seeing all this power of God. And we're only four verses in.
 
Pastor Newms:
[36:31] Mm hmm.
 
Pastor Bill:
[36:31] And this such as deep, deep, deep thing going on here. All right. And then we get to verse five. Okay. Now, you got to remember you're reading a poem. All right. Verse five. Is it? It's basically. I don't really know how to explain it other than to say if you reach out and you grab dough and you go to make a ball of dough and you go like this. And you squeeze that into the dough to make the finish off the ball. Verse five is that it's finishing off the ball of dough for this poem. That's a weird visual, but that's what I'm getting in my head. So.
 
Pastor Newms:
[37:22] A.
 
Pastor Bill:
[37:24] When you look at verse five. What you're reading is actually telling you what was happening in verses three and four. Okay. So this statement, God called the light day and the darkness he called night. That statement is what actually was seen to happen. And everything before that. This is the explanation of the nuts and bolts. Abatbrain on twitch. My wife says it is a bit odd. My little ball of dough thing.
 
Pastor Newms:
[38:11] It is.
 
Pastor Bill:
[38:11] But all of my analogies are odd, so I'm not surprised. Okay. So when we get to verse five, we see God and we're using the same still the plural for God's called. All right. And. And called there. We see that as God naming the lights. And it would be if this wasn't a poem. If this wasn't poetic, you know, wordplay. Right. But H7121 called. Which is kaw-raw’. A primitive route rather identical to H7122 through the idea of accosting a person met, to call out to that is properly addressed by name, but used in a wide variety of applications, and then gives you a list in the Strongs of all the different ways it's been translated. So what this is saying, this is actually showing you in verse four when God said, let there be light. That was them describing what God did. But what actually happened? Is God. Called out to or accosted the light by name like we were talking about in the previous episode. What actually happened is, is God went light, but he didn't because that's not the name of light. What is the name of light? The name of light is Yome or what we then call day. So in verse three, when he said, Let there be light. And the poem says, And God, you know, said, Let there be light. It's all wordplay for God addressing accosting, calling out to light as if it existed. And the name that it used for light was Yome. As if when Pastor Newms gives me a phone call. Like I said if it wasn't a weird thing for him to call me because he only calls me in emergencies. If he called me on a regular basis and he's my best friend, I saw his name on the phone. I would pick up the phone. I would go Newms! It's the same thing. God, said Yome. Called out to the light as if it already existed. As if it was an old friend. As if he already knew it. And at that point. It came into existence. It then existed. And then God compared. That, too. What was within himself? And then in verse. What is that verse four? No, where to?
 
Pastor Newms:
[41:28] For us. It's good.
 
Pastor Bill:
[41:33] Compare that saw. Compare that to what was within himself and declared it good. I see that within myself. That is good, right? And then. He did the same thing for the darkness. And he called the darkness. I think these are three different pronunciations of the same word. I don't think this is the actual word. It says lah’-yil, lale, and lah’-yel-aw. I think those are three diffeerent pronunciations. But he said that. And. And what that means is a twist away from the light or adversity. Right? So he addressed the night, the darkness as adversity, or a twisting away from the light, twisting away from life, twisting away from enlightenment, twisting away from, sentience, and all of that good stuff. The poet wrangles all that together. And says and the evening in the morning were the first day. Hey. God is talking and calls the light day. But it's not the word day. But that is what the humans then later called a day. They use that same word. Right. So we see the poet playing off of that wordplay. And using the word in both places. Because that's what God called it. And then he calls upon that in the same verse and says, Well, the first day. It's a different day. This is a human day now. Right. And we only have an evening and a morning. Because. God. Separated. The light from the darkness. So the poet's working on several levels. Here is the cosmic level where he's talking about good and evil, and then he's using wordplay to relate that to the reader the difference between sunshine and darkness and where those two meet in the evening and the morning. Which is the gray area. Where we live. Where we exist. Right. In that evening and in that morning. That's where we exist. We exist somewhere in between those light, and that darkness. And that was the first day. And so then when we looked back and we were talking about. The first day didn't end until the first day ended. Right. And well, and what we meant by that was we don't know when the first day began. For God, there could have been. Millions and millions of years. We talked about it in the first verse, God created the heavens and the earth we were talking about. That's a hands-on word, hands-on action, where you're building something up, using the baser elements. And we don't know how long in God's perspective that took. But there was no time yet. There was no marking of what we think of as time. There was no turning of day and night in seasons. And so we don't know how long. There was from the moment that God created the heavens and the earth, right? Started that work. The evening and the morning existing. To create the quote-unquote, first day. It's all very deep and very involved. And I encourage everybody to go back and reread those verses. Go back and listen to the first three episodes of season four. And. Let's back up. Now that we know we've worked through the holidays. We're settling down. We're ready to get things going. Make if you're going to make a New Year's resolution, make a resolution to be in. Right. So we say be very in. Because when we go to Acts, we find people fleeing from one place to another. And he goes to a town called Berea, and when he gets to Berea, he starts preaching. And the believers in Berea, not just the believers, but also the. The Jewish men, they refused to believe anything Paul said until they were able to go and find it themselves in the scriptures. They wanted to be able to go and own what Paul was preaching to them or, have grounds to dismiss it. They didn't want to just receive it. And Paul praised them as being more worthy than the highfalutin Jews over in Jewtown. He didn't use those words, but that was the equivalent of what he was saying. You guys are more worthy than the snooty guys over there. That's awesome, guys. Because they refused to believe what he was saying until they proved it for themselves. So if you're going to make a New Year's resolution and the last episode we talked about, a lot of people start in January, they're going to read the whole Bible in a year. And we talked about how I don't recommend that because it loses a lot of that deep study time because people don't read with intention. They read to just I got to get my daily reading done so I can make it through the year. Resolve to be buried. Go back. And look at these verses in the deep poetic terms that they are intended to be. Cross-reference that with the other parts of Scripture. And let what is one of the deepest chapters in the Bible speak to you, and revolutionize the way you think about this Sunday school topic of creation. You know, like it is. So there's so much there. And. Yeah, that's what I had for tonight. Look at that. 7:25.
 
Pastor Newms:
[49:22] It means you're 3 minutes early.
 
Pastor Bill:
[49:22] But we'll be whittling.
 
Pastor Newms:
[49:26] Right. We have 3 minutes to twiddle now.
 
Pastor Bill:
[49:29] We don't have to twiddle. We can.
 
Pastor Newms:
[49:34] Why are you playing with a grippy thing?
 
Pastor Bill:
[49:38] A clamp. It's a clamp.
 
Pastor Newms:
[49:40] I know. I forgot what the word clamp was for a minute, but I know its purpose.
 
Pastor Bill:
[49:50] Well, I know its purpose. It clamps.
 
Pastor Newms:
[49:51] It's one of those it's it's one of those where we weren't clever. Our English definition of explaining things was not clever. What is what does it do? It holds other things. It clamps one thing to another. What are we going to call it? A clamp.
 
Pastor Bill:
[50:08] From the clamp.
 
Pastor Newms:
[50:12] Let's like, call a vacuum. A vacuum? Why? Because it vacuums. Well, because it creates a. Yeah.
 
Pastor Bill:
[50:17] Because it uses a vacuum to suck things.
 
Pastor Newms:
[50:21] And.
 
Pastor Bill:
[50:25] Yeah. Did you have anything you wanted to add to any of that?
 
Pastor Newms:
[50:28] No, I mean, I think.
 
Pastor Bill:
[50:30] I didn't really stop and give you time to interject at any point, did I?
 
Pastor Newms:
[50:33] I think it's important as we look at these types of things, to think about the fact that, you know, it is not a simple aspect. And so often we look at it as such. And so it's good to take time to dig in and actually understand what the words mean and actually understand what. You know, is being said not just what is written, because it is definitely. English is not as we were just saying, you know clamp is clamp-like if it's not clever it is not pick up the artistry of other languages. Well.
 
Pastor Bill:
[51:16] It was clear.
 
Pastor Newms:
[51:29] You know, So I think it's one of the reasons why studying is so important.
 
Pastor Bill:
[51:35] It's hard enough to understand poetry in English. And then you take some other cultures, poetry, and you translate it to three different languages and then try to transliterate that in English.
 
Pastor Newms:
[51:52] It is complicated.
 
Pastor Bill:
[51:59] Yeah. All right. This podcast comes out every week on Wednesdays. Wherever you get your podcasts, if you found this, I don't know. Helpful, entertaining, funny, and inspiring. Or you think somebody might benefit from it, then like, follow share. Tell people we exist. And also, if you'd like to join us live and be a part of the conversation where you can type out your message and then we can respond and we can, you know, get a deeper explanation going on. If you have a question or something like that, then we do that on Sunday nights at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. You can go to our website www.ekk.house to find out which Twitch which YouTube and which Facebook that we are live on, where you can catch that video and participate in the chat. As always, we are glad to have our listener base. And as we go into 2023, that hasn't changed. We're in season four, which means we're many, many, many episodes and several years into this thing. And we're quite thankful to just. I don't know. I guess I'm more thankful to have you Pastor Newms in my life than the platform itself.
 
Pastor Newms:
[53:29] It's the people that we interact with is more important than the.
 
Pastor Bill:
[53:30] You know.
 
Pastor Newms:
[53:36] Following, because that's not what's important.
 
Pastor Bill:
[53:37] Yeah, I mean, I know, I know. It's important to, you know, get the stuff out there and, and, you know, help people and make a difference in the world, but. You know, I'm not immune to the benefits of. What this does for me. So thank you, sir. For your part in my life. All right. Okay. So if you're with us live now, we have to do this thing that, you know, streaming some.
 
Pastor Newms:
[54:07] No, you didn't say. You didn't say and the next time and all that other stuff. So that way I can then say, be safe. You skipped all that. Go back and do it correctly.
 
Pastor Bill:
[54:19] I love you guys have a great week.
 
Pastor Newms:
[54:20] Be safe out there.
 
Pastor Bill:
[54:23] And until next time.

S4EP03 - Turn Up The Stage Lights

Pastor Bill:
[0:00] Hello and welcome to season 4 episode 3 of The Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian I'm Pastor Bill and I'm joined as always by Pastor Newms.

Pastor Newms:
[0:15] Hola.

Pastor Bill:
[0:17] How are you senior Pastor Newms?  Took a nap and it made you happy.

Pastor Newms:
[0:34] I did, I took a nap had some weird dreams though.

Pastor Bill:
[0:38] Does a nap that made you happy, is it thereby defined as a nappy?  You took a nappy.

Pastor Newms:
[0:46] No, a nappy is something you put on a baby's butt.

Pastor Bill:
[0:51] Ah it's also a certain classification of dirty greasy hair.

Pastor Newms:
[0:58] That's spelled differently.

Pastor Bill:
[1:00] How is it?  How is that spelt?

Pastor Newms:
[1:02] I don't know, but I know it's spelled differently.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04] Okay okay well that's neither here nor there I don't know I don't know.

Pastor Newms:
[1:10] I don't know, I don't even have any hair.

Pastor Bill:
[1:15] Well you have, you got some you got the beard.

Pastor Newms:
[1:18] That's not the same kind of hair.

Pastor Bill:
[1:18] And you've got the chest hair.

Pastor Newms:
[1:22] I have no chest hair you can't prove it.

Pastor Bill:
[1:25] And you've got the back here.

Pastor Newms:
[1:27] You can't prove that either.

Pastor Bill:
[1:29] But not as much as there was this guy that I was in the internship with at Teen Mania. You know in that first when you first get there, you're you sleep out in the Quonset Huts like the long you know just long dome-tinted room with bunk beds. You're all using these communal showers one shower for the men one shower for the women this dude is so hairy on his chest and back that he looked like he was wearing a sweater vest, he even had it cut into a v in the front and then he had a cross shaved into the back.

Pastor Newms:
[2:12] That's a look - okay.

Pastor Bill:
[2:17] But that was crazy like he could be shirtless and from a distance, you'd swear he had a sweater vest on because it did the whole around here by the arms and then he had it a v-neck cut into the front of it, to make it look like a V, what's up Sarafina you gonna join us tonight, a v cut in the front there it was crazy good guy great guy really yeah it was weird, yeah, so how was your week Pastor Newms?

Pastor Newms:
[2:54] My week was.

Pastor Bill:
[2:57] My way.

Pastor Newms:
[2:59] It was.

Pastor Bill:
[3:01] My week was a very week.

Pastor Newms:
[3:05] It was pretty good I um… Was you know, busy at work.  It's the end of the year and my job tends to get a little crazy towards the end of the year so.

Pastor Bill:
[3:18] Yeah I was editing the transcript this week and you were saying you guys actually got busier in December which is the antithesis of how it goes.

Pastor Newms:
[3:28] Antithesis to.

Pastor Bill:
[3:30] In medical Tech.

Pastor Newms:
[3:32] Every tech company I've ever worked at except for this one, but that's okay. You know, everyone has a different business model. We try to get a lot of stuff done at the end of the year and at the first of the year too. Bring more clients on right at the beginning and end and that is the business model they have chosen and that is all I will say about that, but yes.

Pastor Bill:
[4:00] What trips me up in the nonprofit sector was always ending the year in August.

Pastor Newms:
[4:12] The fiscal year.

Pastor Bill:
[4:13] Yeah the fiscal year, is like it always just messes with my mind, ending the fiscal year in August and it not corresponding with the daily calendar and oh man. Wal Mart, right and then didn't they did the week's Week 1 week 2 week and you had to know, as a merchandising supervisor, you had to know what week you were in.

Pastor Newms:
[4:45] You did and it did not correspond to the calendar.

Pastor Bill:
[4:48] And it did not correspond to the calendar and you if you look at the calendar you went okay what week of the year is it that did not correspond with what merchandise week, it is in the numbers, you had to know and then you had to know what end caps were set for that week and the next week and what you could put together and then sometimes they would just leave you big holes in your department in electronics and they were like, “Just fill it with something…” and you're like, I have a hard enough time getting my general manager to approve orders on the things that are actually supposed to be there, that Walmart says they're supposed to be there I'm not going to get him to order me extra stuff for an empty spot, on my floor, that's not gonna so.

Pastor Newms:
[5:37] Well let's be honest you were at probably the worst Walmart that I've ever seen.

Pastor Bill:
[5:44] That's what I hear but it's the only WalMart I've ever worked at. So I don't really have anything to compare it to so.

Pastor Newms:
[5:51] Oh yeah Biggs stated the Nissan year starts in April because they follow the Japanese year not the calendar year also.

Pastor Bill:
[6:04] We'll see at least that makes sense. Like that's the cultural calendar from where the company exists there's some logic to that.

Pastor Newms:
[6:14] It does make more sense than some others will the fiscal year.

Pastor Bill:
[6:18] And just making up your own calendar.

Pastor Newms:
[6:21] The fiscal year for retail makes sense too because you want to capture what money you lose to returns in January from Christmas. So that way you actually know what your fiscal year is or if you don't do that, what happens is the first month of your year is - and you, terrible for the year starting off and it hurts because you're years starting - and you spend the rest of the year trying to catch up as opposed to technically that revenue was captured in December and then lost in January. So it's it, that's the reason they do it and it makes sense from a. The way they fiscally are doing it so that way because it is technically lost from the Christmas sales so because of that it balances out so it works pretty well. My week's been pretty good, we also did today the church we visited. This is the third time we visited them, we actually took the girls and they have a full one of their ministries is a theater company. Not like, oh we have drama we do or not you know, hey, we have no but they actually have like a theater where they sell tickets throughout the year and it's a full production and tryouts and it's a full thing, box you know they have the you can order the whole years’ worth of stuff and go to all of them and they were doing Christmas Carol for Christmas which is logical. So they put on, for morning service they put on their Christmas Carol and then, so we got to see that for free. what other people had to pay for it that always makes me feel special love free things and then they had a church-wide Christmas party thing afterwards, where there was like everyone brought desserts and so there was a huge dessert bar and, just people just lots of people just people.

Pastor Bill:
[8:36] People being people in.

Pastor Newms:
[8:37] And so we sat with the co-worker that Tina has that is her friend. During that so that was good and just overall you know trying to, figure everything out there it's pretty cool place I think but still, you know checking it out. But yeah, so that was kind of cool and then last night we did our first night of our family celebration of Yule which was fun. You should be getting a picture of that from your present. So that's good we'll be doing that for the next eleven nights, until the solstice for Sez in his celebration as well. So that's good. The fire pit was a success, the one I ordered worked very well. We enjoyed it and everyone, most of the family, enjoys the Yule cake that I made. It's a cranberry-based cake so if you don't like cranberries, it's hard to enjoy a cranberry cake if you don't like cranberries like myself but.

Pastor Bill:
[10:09] I like cranberry, sauce.

Pastor Newms:
[10:11] No, so this is actually a, it's an old recipe that it's also called Christmas cake sometimes of course because you know dear people love to borrow things from other.

Pastor Bill:
[10:23] Appropriate.

Pastor Newms:
[10:24] Yeah we'll use that word.

Pastor Bill:
[10:27] That's what it is. Its appropriation.

Pastor Newms:
[10:28] It is it's also theft but that's okay that's what appropriation is, theft of culture.

Pastor Bill:
[10:34] Appropriation is theft.

Pastor Newms:
[10:36] Yeah.

Pastor Bill:
[10:37] It's different there's appreciation which is, taking something and going hey this is a Yule cake, and we're going to enjoy it at Christmas, that's appreciation, then there's appropriation where you go, hey there's your cakes really good but I'm gonna change the name and pretend like it doesn't have some historical meaning attached to it.

Pastor Newms:
[11:21] Three eggs and then, cranberries and so it's super simple it's nice and crumbly and traditionally you kind of leave it out. You don't like put it in the fridge or put it in the and by the end of Yule it gets a little harder and so it's almost like a bar by the end. The one I made is not going to last to the end of Yule I've already planned on buying more ingredients and making another because I wanted the Cranberries to be semi-fresh so I don't want to or buy them.

Pastor Bill:
[11:57] Isn't part of the point for it to last and become a hardy you know through that you can continue to eat in the cold.

Pastor Newms:
[12:06] That is the point of it, but Groggy is here this weekend which means.

Pastor Bill:
[12:13] It’s not going to last.

Pastor Newms:
[12:13] 7 people in the house. Last night, and even cutting them in like 1 by 1 squares a 13 by 9 only has so many squares in it so, I'm pretty sure it ain't going.

Pastor Bill:
[12:32] I would imagine the 13 by 9 only has 13 squares across and 9 squares.

Pastor Newms:
[12:38] That's if I actually measured and did inch squares which you know me, I didn't measure, and they are bigger than a one-by-one.

Pastor Bill:
[12:47] Those were two-inch squares easily.

Pastor Newms:
[12:51] If - because it was just knife carving knife you know. But it was good, fire and stuff which is fun I like fire I've limited the amount of wood we bought. We only bought you know a little bit of wood for each night and we're not doing the, belief that the fire has to burn the whole time or it's bad luck because well one, it doesn't you know the sun isn't not going to come back if the fire goes out says, it was like I was like do we need to keep this fire going and we tend it throughout the day and he's like no like okay cool I'll do it if we need to like if that's part of your not belief system but part of the traditions that you do.

Pastor Bill:
[13:48] He was like I aint sitting out here and tending that fire.

Pastor Newms:
[13:52] Relax and keep the fire going. We'll just light logs each night and like all right cool so that's kind of what we're doing and that's good it's been a good week how was your week?

Pastor Bill:
[14:08] It was life, just you know walking the dog every day multiple times it probably like at least every hour.

Pastor Newms:
[14:16] How's that doing for your health?

Pastor Bill:
[14:20] I don't know I haven't noticed the difference yet.

Pastor Newms:
[14:22] I mean like are your knees hurting a lot more are you are you doing okay doing that often?

Pastor Bill:
[14:28] I mean as long as I sit down for a little bit after doing it each time, I'm fine. I mean I’ve just got to sit down and let my back recoup.

Pastor Newms:
[14:36] I wasn't thinking that the standpoint that some people would take of oh you're walking. You don’t ever walk normally, you've obviously lost 190 pounds but doing it now I wasn't going that route I meant just.

Pastor Bill:
[14:46] Actually, and I haven't lost a pound. It doesn't do anything for my weight you know.

Pastor Newms:
[14:57] Because life's not magical.

Pastor Bill:
[15:00] That's right life's not magical, and getting a dog at the end of October and walking it every hour except for while you were asleep for a month does not equal weight loss.

Pastor Newms:
[15:14] Well to be fair if anything it would it could mark weight gain because you're using muscles you normally don't.

Pastor Bill:
[15:24] Building up those muscles.

Pastor Newms:
[15:25] Right and that's the worst part about weight is everyone's like most people measure by pounds and they're like, I'm so fat alright I've gotten fatter so I started working out you're like no no you haven't I can see that you look different, I can't tell real well because cameras you know but and I don't see all of you but there's that aspect of, if you do that then obviously you've lost weight if I do like this I look skinny but you know it just doesn't work that way none of us have that good of a tour so we're just pushing fat up so the, but I know there are people that get upset and they're like how I'm gained weight when I started working out you're like yeah but have you measured, and that's the other thing is looking at it from that standpoint. How do your clothes fit? How do your you know? Those types of things are important also not just, poundage because poundage is not how you measure that especially.

Pastor Bill:
[16:31] That's another guy over there this week.

Pastor Newms:
[16:50] But I just meant your pain levels, not your.

Pastor Bill:
[16:51] No my panels are manageable, it's all right my bad there's been a few times where I've been limping the dog out but you know those aren't all the time. Anyway yeah, I mean other than you know you see I got this Christmas tie up.

Pastor Newms:
[17:19] I do you see your Christmas tie.

Pastor Bill:
[17:22] I've got this Christmas tree over here that I've added to my office Shelf ah.

Pastor Newms:
[17:27] I am, I don't think I have anything Christmas.

Pastor Bill:
[17:41] Put this in your stuff.

Pastor Newms:
[17:43] We do have two Christmas trees this year. One that has no ornaments and isn't plugged in because I forgot that we, found a Christmas tree towards the end of last year middle of last year when we ordered it. I forgot I just remembered the fact that we didn't have one, and so we were doing something we were out there for the wedding, and Walmart the one over on Cheek Sparger had just put out their Christmas trees. So I found a six-foot black one and bought it and then brought it home and Tina's like, you know we already have one and I was like yeah of course I do, which I had forgotten a little bit oh okay I now do you want to be on camera or no just hand, okay I now have a black Christmas tree.

Pastor Bill:
[18:46] That's not 6 foot that's um.

Pastor Newms:
[18:48] That's this one's not 6ft does that work could not be seen that can't be seen and used to be over here we'll put it right here for Here We Go.

Pastor Bill:
[19:01] Then I just put it right in front of the camera like.

Pastor Newms:
[19:03] Right in front of the camera okay.

Pastor Bill:
[19:06] Just sitting right in front there you go.

Pastor Newms:
[19:07] So I have a Christmas tree now it's a wonderful Christmas tree and it's.

Pastor Bill:
[19:14] Move it over Happy Halloween, nice.

Pastor Newms:
[19:14] It's definitely a Christmas tree and nothing else other than a Christmas tree all right.

Pastor Bill:
[19:22] Don't just move it over to the right, come on man move it to the right up hiding behind the tree okay is that right okay move it to the left then, hold it nope too far little bit more in a little bit more into the camera a little bit more little bit right there oh Pastor Newms.

Pastor Newms:
[19:47] You want me to okay there's a second one I could technically bring it and put it right in front of the Saints but.

Pastor Bill:
[19:54] It doesn't even look real it looks like you've added an image a PNG image into the shot,
not a real tree.

Pastor Newms:
[20:07] It looks purply because the red light right there, there's a red light right there, and there's a red light right there. That's the reflection of the red light that's over there and there's red lights right here but yeah so.

Pastor Bill:
[20:28] All right so Biggs on Twitch asks what kind of dog did you get. My dog is a pit lab, it seems American Pit Bull and Chocolate Lab. I love her, she's great. She's a little stinker though sometimes she plays a little too hard with the kids, but she’s just a baby.

Pastor Newms:
[20:55] Labs have that issue, I've never owned a pit, but well Kaiju has just a little bit but it's not much she's mainly lab but, never had a full mix and Kaiju doesn't understand that she's 65 pounds, she thinks that she is 10 pounds and she gets jealous Shyla will lay right here on your shoulder when you're sitting in a chair, and she puts her back she puts her front up here and then you're supposed to hold her butt and then and then she just cuddles just like a cat, yeah just like a 10-pound 12-pound cat you know no big deal she claws the whole way up but that's okay you know she's special and if you try to remove her, by shoulder meat but.

Pastor Bill:
[21:49] Really at the claws then.

Pastor Newms:
[21:50] Yeah you really get too close if that's the case but then she'll start whining and then try to climb up in the chair with you, and I'm not talking like you know big fluffy lazy boys I'm talking just like chair, you know we've got these swirly, these swivel chairs that are like you know the only the backs only go like, this tall on your back you know. She'll try to pick her up and you're holding her and then she gets right here and she's like I could do it and the tails just, you know smacking you over and over again because she's happy and you're just like oh my gosh you got to get down. But yeah she so I can do it too just dad look, and it doesn't it doesn't work here like no no baby you can't it hurts you got to get down because she has no idea.

Pastor Bill:
[22:44] But I is baby.

Pastor Newms:
[22:46] Yeah so yeah dogs are fun.

Pastor Bill:
[22:56] All right so now it's time for. Getting To Know The Pastors.

Pastor Newms:
[23:02] See this is the problem, I think we do enough of this in the opening that we don't have to do these cards, and yet you say we have to do these cards. Let's just see… if you were to create just create not go to but create.

Pastor Bill:
[23:17] Okay I'm creating something.

Pastor Newms:
[23:19] The ultimate vacation destination. Where would it be located and what would it be like? Now here's my question if I can create the ultimate vacation spot right I would assume that I can also create the means to get there.

Pastor Bill:
[23:55] I mean you own the place you could technically live there.

Pastor Newms:
[23:59] No, I mean like if I'm granted a wish of the ultimate vacation spot by definition, if you were the Jinn doing this you'd have to then create the ability to get people their back or wouldn't be the ultimate vacation spot because no one could go there, okay cool alright go ahead.

Pastor Bill:
[24:23] It sounds like you've put more thought into this than I have what you what do you what do you brewing over there.

Pastor Newms:
[24:34] Under the Sea. The domed like Atlantis style amusement park under the sea.

Pastor Bill:
[24:42] There's that one hotel that only has one room.

Pastor Newms:
[24:47] And they.

Pastor Bill:
[24:48] And it is a submerged room.

Pastor Newms:
[24:54] That's what I'm thinking Atlantis Style, like domed sea creatures all around you hopefully, the meg is not real, and you know we're good to go.

Pastor Bill:
[25:10] The meg is not real.

Pastor Newms:
[25:12] Don't start cuz I got someone in this house that believes the meg is 100% real and so no man don't start this conversation we will lose it.

Pastor Bill:
[25:23] Dude I can't swim in swimming pools if they're too deep because of my fear of deep-water animals so, I understand the fear.

Pastor Newms:
[25:40] I won't swim in the ocean, and I won't swim in lakes. Catfish get too big and there are other things other than catfish that can just crawl up from other places and there goes your foot you had a foot you got a foot.

Pastor Bill:
[25:56] Zaydiee, were doing Get To Know The Pastor's. The card was, if you could create a destination is what are you talking about.

Pastor Newms:
[26:02] Oh Zaydiee knows what we're talking about. Zaydiee knows what we're talking about.

Pastor Bill:
[26:11] Or she asking what are you talking about who believes the meg is she's just so guy you've been naughty better now you gotta expose somebody.

Pastor Newms:
[26:17] Nah I'm good.

Pastor Bill:
[26:20] Who in your house believes the meg is real?

Pastor Newms:
[26:22] The megalodon is real. Its knowledge.

Pastor Bill:
[26:26] It's you isn't it? You're the one that believes the meg is real, isn't it?

Pastor Newms:
[26:30] We have proof that the Meg was real.

Pastor Bill:
[26:34] Once. We don't have proof that there are any more.

Pastor Newms:
[26:38] We don't have proof there's not.

Pastor Bill:
[26:40] It's true there are depths of the ocean we've never been to.

Pastor Newms:
[26:45] That's why I believe Nessie is real too. Some of Tina's favorite movies are The Meg and, she loves them and I'm like no that's real, there's those fall right into my I don't do ghost movies and I don't like zombies, see she believes they still exist as well.

Pastor Bill:
[27:14] So we watched The Meg, and you know there's some jump scares in that movie and if I remember if I'm remembering correctly Roxanne you know I was just unaffected by it Roxanne was like isn't this scary to you? I was like no, because I would never be caught dead in that underwater enclosure so it's not realistic I would never be in that situation so that is not scary to me because I wouldn't go in. I would be firm on the land.

Pastor Newms:
[27:48] What if your wife and kids had gone and now they're trapped would you go to save them.

Pastor Bill:
[27:57] What good would it do to have me die too? What purpose would that serve?

Pastor Newms:
[28:05] Hmm, mmm, man Rox hun, Bat-Brains you gotta come fix your man.

Pastor Bill:
[28:21] I said so much every other day the kids asked me some question if blah blah blah blah blah would you come would you save me so if I got kidnapped, would you pull a Liam Neeson and come and save me and I was like I don't have those skills. And Roxanne showed me this dirty-look and I was like, what? I don't. I couldn't save them. Well would you at least pay the ransom dad? With what would I pay the ransom with.

Pastor Newms:
[28:59] Oh, Shea family, y'all are dead if anything happens to y'all. Just so you know, Pastor Bill cannot help you.

Pastor Bill:
[29:08] I cannot help you, I do not have the skills of Liam Neeson. I do not have the money of
Bruce Wayne. I am unhelpful in a kidnap situation in any way. Well, you aren't either I mean come on honestly.

Pastor Newms:
[29:28] No but I thought I would.

Pastor Bill:
[29:30] If your kid was kidnapped there's nothing you could do about it but call the police and sit on your hands and wait for something to happen.

Pastor Newms:
[29:37] I honestly don't think I could. No, I would have to at least try.

Pastor Bill:
[29:48] You'd want to try.

Pastor Newms:
[29:49] I'd have to call in some favors. I have to find some numbers from old books but, doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.

Pastor Bill:
[30:05] I have a very specific set of historically documented skills. And they don't handle kidnapping. You call me for other things. You don’t call me for kidnapping, you call me for other things.

Pastor Newms:
[30:22] That is true.

Pastor Bill:
[30:23] Kidnapping is not on that list.

Pastor Newms:
[30:24] Kidnappings is not on your list. I'd have to make some phone calls, but I would try hmm it's been 20 years.

Pastor Bill:
[30:33] Alright so my place.

Pastor Newms:
[30:35] Aha.

Pastor Bill:
[30:37] So I really when that question comes up my brain automatically remembered the day in Panama that we spent on the beach. it was the Gulf of Mexico really, but it was on the beach in Panama. White Sands, lots of shade where you didn't have to be in the sun if you didn't want to, the water was crystal clear all the way down, and so you know, and it wasn't that deep you could go swimming you know. You could see what was going on and so my brain automatically goes, well I should create something like that. Nice little water area where you're technically outside but you don't have to be in the sun if you don't want to. Nice big canopy where you know if you want to be in the sun go over there, if you don't want to be in the sun you come over here, and you can swim if you want and there's snorkeling if that's your thing and just hanging out. That'd be my place.

Pastor Newms:
[31:48] I see.

Pastor Bill:
[31:50] And at one point okay so the water was like super warm crystal clear, super warm, and then it started raining, and the rain was like super cold but it wasn't too heavy and the water that you were in was super warm and so it's like this awesome mix of just, being submerged in warm water while this cold rain fell on your head and it's beautiful scenery, and yeah it was great.

Pastor Newms:
[32:19] I'm going to take your word for it.

Pastor Bill:
[32:24] By far one of the best, what did we call those days when you're on a missions trip and you went off? Excursion, best excursion day of all of my missions trips, it beats bamboo rafting down the river and then swimming at the base of a waterfall in Thailand hands down. Although that might have had something to do with the leeches, that we then had to pull off of ourselves when we were done swimming. Anyway, so yeah that's my thing, and riding elephants was fun, except don't sit on the neck unless you've won more than just blue jeans because those little hairs on elephant necks are tough, and they will poke right through your blue jeans. That is a prickly ride down a mountain, stay where you're at.

Pastor Newms:
[33:37] Yeah yeah.

Pastor Bill:
[33:42] All right all right.

Pastor Newms:
[33:43] Here I do say there is somewhere I want to go I want to take the girls because I haven't yet, there's a lost sea here in this area and it's you basically go down. Well it's called the lost sea because when they found it they were like oh this was lost to time you know blah blah blah, but you go down into it, and it's an underground system of caves that they've you know been taking people through for who knows how many years. So because of that you know, it's built up nice and its still very much, do do do do do do. Glass bottom boat, and you go on this sea, like you know it's an underground lake. It's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous and like during the prohibition time there was a bar down there. Today its carved, like they've carved stairs into the rock and you can't actually use the stairs because they're too dangerous or not because it's too dangerous but the funny thing is when your lower. This is a funny story when you're lower you don't feel the effects of alcohol as much because of the way the, something about the air and something about them and so then as you go up the stairs you feel the effects this is what they tell you at least I don't know if this is true might be you feel the effects of the alcohol more as you get into. You know miss you get back up and so some people would open the door and then like, the wind would come in and they'd fall back down the stairs and so it was actually a hazard, to drink down there. But you know, it was the prohibition, so people did it anyway. It's called The Lost Sea.

Pastor Bill:
[35:48] did they carry the pieces down and build the boat on the Lost Sea? Or did they somehow transport the boat whole into the hole? It feels as perplexing as seeing those pirate ships in a bottle like. Okay.

Pastor Newms:
[36:24] It's a pontoon boat Biggs says, I don't know if that answers the question.

Pastor Bill:
[36:29] They might have just carried it down there then.

Pastor Newms:
[36:33] I mean it's not a huge for anyone who wants the information there you go.

Pastor Bill:
[36:45] TheLostSea.com.

Pastor Newms:
[36:47] But it's.

Pastor Bill:
[36:48] Ready to take an unforgettable adventure? Take a boat ride underground. You've never seen, heard, or done anything like this before.

Pastor Newms:
[36:56] How do you see what I did you click the.

Pastor Bill:
[36:56] Listed in the Guinness Book of Records your lost the adventure begins with a guided tour of the caverns this includes a three-quarter mile round trip walk on a wide sloping pathways, while touring that's all I got. You were like, “How are you, how are you reading what I.” what did you think about that.

Pastor Newms:
[37:19] Because I was like, wait did you click the link to stop clicking links man you're not I'm the one who does random stuff while we're doing this you're the one who tries to stay focused. What's wrong?

Pastor Bill:
[37:34] I accidentally turned on the movie I was watching earlier. And so suddenly the movie Bohemian Rhapsody at 50 minutes in started playing over my head buds and I was like, what is that where's that music what's going on. It was over on this screen behind my notes I didn't see it I just because I tapped my ear.

Pastor Newms:
[38:01] Oh yeah, the boats aren't that big, you basic they're just like seat CC and then like foot room and it's glass and so they probably it's nice I like it.

Pastor Bill:
[38:17] So season 4 episode 1. Picked up Genesis chapter 1 and verses 1 and 2. And then and that was called in the beginning and then episode 2 which we called also in the beginning, we did John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4. You can get rid of the tree if you'd like, you don't have to leave the Christmas tree there it's fine. All right, now tonight in episode 3 the title is turn up the house lights.
And we are looking at Genesis chapter 1 versus 3 and four so let's read.

Pastor Newms:
[39:17] So can I take a guess what we're talking about.

Pastor Bill:
[39:21] We're talking about Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 and 4.

Pastor Newms:
[39:24] Does it have to do with light - based on the title?

Pastor Bill:
[39:28] Based off the title of tonight's episode you would probably be a good.

Pastor Newms:
[39:34] Yay I guessed it.

Pastor Bill:
[39:39] All right you want to put in the chat Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 and 4 there. Actually, we're not going to get all the way through verse four. We're going to do the first half of verse 4. Then God said let there be light and there was light God saw the light was good and that's only half of verse 4 because that's as far as we're going to get, not actually going to get into the and God separated the light from the darkness okay. Because we're not going to get that far we've only got 14 minutes.

Pastor Newms:
[40:23] Well I mean I'm sorry the conversation was lively.

Pastor Bill:
[40:29] The conversation was lively.

Pastor Newms:
[40:32] I'm bad at following times you know this.

Pastor Bill:
[40:34] (Singing to the tune of “Let it Snow”) The weather outside is frightening but the conversation is lively.

Pastor Newms:
[40:43] Please just go, no I mean in that song There's a great thing because there's some mixed historical, things about what that song could mean and someone did a spoof where the girls doing the same exact parts, but the guys like no you need to go well.

Pastor Bill:
[41:07] That's a different song but yeah.

Pastor Newms:
[41:08] Is it.

Pastor Bill:
[41:10] Hey you're talking to your thinking about “Baby It's Cold Outside”.

Pastor Newms:
[41:12] Oh I was.

Pastor Bill:
[41:13] Totally different song, yeah the song you're talking about was featured on.

Pastor Newms:
[41:18] My brain I'm sorry.

Pastor Bill:
[41:21] That Christmas movie on Netflix. I can’t remember the name of it but it's got that, the comedian the Asian comedian has the glasses what his name is. He's done a few Netflix special comedy specials can’t remember his name anyway that's not that's neither here nor there.

Pastor Newms:
[41:46] Is Grayson praying for us to stop and be focused or.

Pastor Bill:
[41:49] Grayson is praying for our mental sanity he's like oh dear Lord help them, Lord.

Pastor Newms:
[41:57] What is it what is he praying for exactly?

Pastor Bill:
[42:00] So Genesis 1 chapter 3 in our translations it says then God said let there be light and there was light okay now when we go to, the Strong's to find out what words are actually they're right we find out that there's one, two, three, four, five, six words. There's only six words here okay, and the words using the same translation the words are “God said be light; be light” are the words. There is no “then” there is no “let there” and there is no “and.” It's just God said be light be light. So, there's a lot of context that has to be thrown in to make a sentence like and God said let there be light and there was light. The problem with contexts when you're talking about something like Genesis chapter one is you have no context. The only way to add words to what's being said, is to make them up is to go well in the future, because we see what happens in the future, we think that what they're saying here is this, and we backwards paste our expectation onto earlier scriptures. And say well we're going to translate this way because of what we read later and what we find out later, but when we break it down and we look at just the words that are there to try to get this deeper understanding and this deeper look at what's going on. Once again, we don't necessarily find the translation to be wrong, but we do find the translation to be shallow. And we don't find it to be bad, but we do find it to be more leaning in a poetic form. So it's crafting this poetic idea that they're trying to communicate, but it's coming across without any of its depth and it's supposed to flow like poetry so it's not hitting all of that those markers of substance that we want, when we're reading the Bible so let's look at the words that are actually there, the first word is God but the God there is that same word for God that we've been seeing so far, in verses 1 and 2 which is Elohim I've got my e-sword up here on the right-hand side of the screen, you can kind of see some of it if you're watching the video, the word there's Elohim it's H430 which is that plural of God which is God's or Divine beings we talked about last week. This definitely included Jesus, because John told us, in the beginning, was the word we also saw that the commentaries really preferred either plan promise provision or motive, instead of translating as word. And then the motive becomes. Human. He is Jesus. So Jesus was there in the beginning, it's part of this plural but it doesn't negate other beings being a part of the creation as well. We apply that understanding to the text like I said because of what we learned later. Now in its original form Genesis chapter one wasn't even, like we said in episode one of season 4 it wasn't a Jewish text it's not a Christian text it's not an Abrahamic text. It's actually a chapter they borrowed when they were in captivity in Babylon, so the meanings of these words could very well have intended by its original writers, to include a whole Pantheon of beings when it said Elohim and it meaning you know a Pantheon of Gods. God said for the Gods, I said now the said there is well it's aw-mar’ H559 if you're following along in a Strongs Thesaurus. It is to say and it's used with great latitude it is answer a point of ouch bid boast self call certify challenge charge, um Man commandment commune there's a lot of words there I'm not going to read all of those because it's a pretty lengthy list of things that you can, technically use this word to mean because of that great latitude but you get the idea here of what that word is said. Okay, then we get to the next word, which is be. Now be is haw-yaw’ H1961 and that is to exist be or become come to pass always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary. Yeah, it's not a passive word, it's not a side word it is a main word. My words are failing.

Pastor Newms:
[48:28] I'm like what were you trying to say.

Pastor Bill:
[48:31] It's a main word all right, exist and then the next word is light which is ore is the pronunciation there, H216 which comes from H215 and it is illumination for concretely luminary, every sense of the meaning of the word luminary including lightning happiness Etc. It can be bright clear day like lightning morning sun, but even there. Light in this actual in this context right because we have two verses before this is our only actual context. In the context of those two verses and what we broke them down and saw what they meant and how deep they were and what this scene is that we've with it has been painted for us, light is an over simplification of the translation of the word ore. Just like saying darkness in verse 2 which is the word kho-shek’ was an over simplification of that word because that word kho-shek’, is the word darkness, they translated as Darkness or the dark that one's H2822 from verse 2 which is this chapter one but when we looked at it we saw that it meant that means darkness - figuratively misery destruction death ignorant sorrow wickedness darkness night of security, it doesn't just mean dark is in the absence of visible light that word is so much more than that and to just translate it as darkness as is an over simplification, of the message. They're just like light is an oversimplification of this the concept of what's happening here, is so much deeper than we can really wrap into finite words to try to explain what's going on. But basically, there's always void in this darkness and there's you know the Earth is there and the spirit of God is moving or we said warring could be it was a very aggressive word, on the face of the deep against the darkness against misery and sorrow and all these things. There was no way for life to exist that spark of life wasn't anywhere in the universe. And last week when we were going in John chapter 1 we got to that verse 4 and we were talking about the all of my commentaries agree that the light, was you know the motive was the light in the light was the life of men. That light they were talking about was sentience that it was the spark of life that it was what separates life from not life and that allowed human beings to then, take that step up to awareness of your surroundings and wanting to better ourselves the basic things that are sentience and enlightenment. So then we go back to Genesis and we look at well, were oversimplifying all these words so this light that may have been the word that was used but the meaning behind this word. Is spark of existence is the ability of life, is happiness, is brightness, is joy this all these things, are all tied up right in this work. And so when we look at this verse again and we take everything that we saw in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 and verse 2 and then we go to verse 3 we no longer see, God said let there be light we get this mental image of God, greeting an old friend named light as if light already exists. So it's this concept of if Newms called me and we hadn't talked in a few days, and it wasn't weird for him to call me because normally he just text, but if it wasn't for him to call me and we hadn't talked in a few days when I picked up the phone I would say, “Newms!” And I would greet my old friend as if he existed right there with me this is the concept were reading about in Genesis 1:3, God said, “Light!” Greeting light as if it existed, happiness joy life the existence of Life the spark of life greeted it as if it existed, called out to something that didn't exist as if it did exist and he was very familiar with it. And then light existed, that's the concept that we're looking at in verse 3. Does that make sense?

Pastor Newms:
[54:14] Yeah, it's not just like flip the switch thing it's the way it is still making something exists, but it is definitely in a different, feeling then what is sometimes conveyed, to people it is.

Pastor Bill:
[54:38] And you get a lot of questions at this point. How did light exist if the sun didn't exist yet? How does this work? Why? Well , it's because we're not actually talking about.

Pastor Newms:
[54:49] Lights.

Pastor Bill:
[54:50] The light that you are perceiving with your eyes. We're talking about happiness and life and joy and, this is the word that we've translated as light it's not actually light rays from a light source that's not what's being created here. So then we get to the next verse see we're already out of time and I've probably got 15 more minutes in me.

Pastor Newms:
[55:12] Let's be honest I might have elongated the beginning, so it's okay.

Pastor Bill:
[55:19] So I'm going to go for 15 more minutes and then what we'll call it okay. So we get to verse 4 and we're using the same word for God. Remember we’re only going to do the first half of verse 4. We got the same word that's just this multiple word were talking about this plural God, and then we get to the word saw okay. And this word That We're translating as saw (surprise-surprise) is an oversimplification. The word saw is actually a compound of two separate words or rather it's the usage of two separate words raw-aw’ and ayth. Raw-aw’ is H7200 and ayth is H853 those are those numbers if you want to go look those up. Now, H7200 is to see, literally or figuratively it's used in numerous applications direct and implied transitively in transitively and causative lie, it is advised yourself appear approved behold considered discern make to enjoy have experienced gaze take heed. It's all the things that you would think of for seeing. Yeah, it is saw that word ayth, however. Is in the demonstrative sense of entity properly self, but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition even or namely as such unrepresented in English well, I'm here to tell you how to represent that in English. You ready okay. Raw-aw’ ayth is to look within yourself. So the gods or God looked within themself. It looked within themself and what they found there they found the light. It looked within themself found the light that they had just created. And judging it against themself saw that it was good okay? So God looked inside of himself and given everything that God was, God is, God always will be, judge the light against that. And based off of what God saw inside of himself he declared that it was good. The that there kee H3588. Nothing deep about that word it's just prepositional prefect's its, it indicates casual relationships of all kinds. It's the word that and the word good is tobe, it's H2896, it's good as an adjective in the widest sense use likewise as a noun both in the masculine and the Feminine singular and the plural, good a good or good thing a good man or woman good goods or good things good men or women also an adverb well beautiful best better Bountiful cheerful at ease, fair word be in favor fine glad good, deed, deedlier deadliest deadly deed - Deeds, graciously joyful kindly kindness like if like it's best loving Mary most Pleasant, please have pledged your precious Prosperity ready sweet wealth welfare bewell be favored, good means. In all the sense of good right. It doesn't mean good for something it doesn't mean, taste good it doesn't mean oh yeah that's good but it's not best it doesn't mean you know oh I'm good but I'm not well it doesn't mean you know it's not these modern ways that we use the word good, by good, he was in Eternal fate, that this thing in the widest sense of the definition. Was beautiful best better Bountiful cheerful it's this all-encompassing word of that is a good thing always, God looked within himself and he compared the light to what he saw inside of himself that it was good, remember that light is life that light is that spark of creation that light is, is all the things that would come to be enlightenment it is all the things that would come to be tensions it is all the things that, cause the universe to spin and causes gravity to work and causes you know everything to be, moving and growing and changing and that, without that light, everything just sat stagnant in death and Decay and misery. Darkness there was no moving forward there was no spark there was no change there was no sentience there was no existence. There was just cold dark rocks and primordial ooze. Until God greeted light as an old friend, causing light or causing life to exist spark of life to exist compared life to himself and went yeah life is good. Genesis chapter 1 verses 3 through the first half of verse 4. See what we relegate to elementary school we relegate toSunday school and we relegate to a quippy poem, written in archaic version of English that we've been tried to dumb down and translate down and transliterate into the easiest version to read, it's really some of the heaviest stuff in the Bible it's so deep and so existential. It blows my mind every time I go back and start to study it again. How deep the pictures that are being painted actually are in Genesis chapter 1. Pastor Newms, you have anything you want to add to that?

Pastor Newms:
[1:03:36] No it's exactly like you said we so often look upon, you know these topics and we glaze over them based on, the English that used to be glazed over them based on what we've been taught and you know it's probably some of the most read parts of the Bible.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04:02] Second to John 3:16 but yeah.

Pastor Newms:
[1:04:04] Yeah because and the reason I say this is every year, probably Millions but at least thousands of Christians start a reading plan start with Genesis and then fail somewhere around you know either the Minor Prophets or, you know Numbers cuz some people don't and so.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04:29] If you're reading the whole Bible in the course of the Year Kudos that's great but you might as well be reading the phone book I mean.

Pastor Newms:
[1:04:39] Well.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04:40] Once you're actively studying what are you reading, if you're just reading it to read it and you're not listening to Holy Spirit and you're not pacing yourself.

Pastor Newms:
[1:04:50] There you go.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04:51] Right because if you're trying to read it in a year you're reading three chapters a day at least.

Pastor Newms:
[1:04:57] You are but.

Pastor Bill:
[1:04:59] Unless you're sitting down and taking all day to read those three chapters you're probably missing a lot.

Pastor Newms:
[1:05:07] There are some of us that read, and comprehend differently everyone learns differently the spirit speaks to everyone differently so there are people who do get, out of a daily Bible reading like that they do because they take the time to listen to the holy spirit so there is.

Pastor Bill:
[1:05:27] But it's I would say probably one percent of people that are doing yearly Bible readings are those people.

Pastor Newms:
[1:05:34] I don't know if it's quite that low but it is lower than what people anticipate the key though is the listening, and a lot of people there are some people who do the reading and don't do the listening, and those are normally the people who will not make it through because you're not going to get anything out of, large portions I never make it through because I forget it exists because.

Pastor Bill:
[1:06:07] I never make it through because they're like Read Genesis chapters 1 through 3 today and I'm like I get through the first five verses of Genesis and I'm done for the day and I'm like I'm so far behind by the end of the first week, but I'm like I can't even catch up at this point. I can't even catch up.

Pastor Newms:
[1:06:28] No I understand but I'm just saying there are so because of that this is some of the you know most read parts of the Bible because if you pick up a book you start at the beginning and that's what everyone does and so, it's interesting how much people will miss if they just blow through it, don't think on it don't apply the, the studying aspect and just blow through reading it because all I know the Judges I know Genesis is easy I've been taught Genesis since I was little like that's an easy story I know it just like put, do you understand the meanings behind the heavy words that are used not just, you know yes this happened.

Pastor Bill:
[1:07:24] And if you try to translate Genesis with all that weight behind it, they would probably be 10 times longer you know if you really tried to explain in the full concept of what actually is there. Now you don't think so.

Pastor Newms:
[1:07:45] Because I mean, you get into farther parts of Genesis and there's even weightier stuff that would take you know there's this some of its real big so I do.

Pastor Bill:
[1:08:04] Honestly honestly I don't even think, I don't even think Genesis is a good place to start if you're a new Christian or if you're just like, I'm gonna start reading the Bible I don't think Genesis is a good place to start anyway like we said like the first ten chapters of Genesis, they're not Christian text or not Abrahamic text or not Jewish texts there straight history, from the viewpoints of other cultures, that then someone in the Jewish realm said that seems like truth to me we're going to include that. I used to really start in Genesis and then as Jesus makes references.

Pastor Newms:
[1:08:54] You said Genesis as you should start in Genesis I know that's not what you meant.

Pastor Bill:
[1:08:59] You should start in Math maybe not Matthew. I would think I would start in mark.

Pastor Newms:
[1:09:08] You would a lot of people say start in John.

Pastor Bill:
[1:09:12] Mark was the first one next you write the Gospel his gospel and then.

Pastor Newms:
[1:09:15] No I understand why you would say.

Pastor Bill:
[1:09:17] Matthew and Luke both had a copy of Mark when they were writing there's and then you know John is good, but even John is a little deep for starting I think it would be better started Marks you get the overview of the story and then we John so you get the deeper behind the story, and then move on beyond there and honestly only go back to the Old Testament, when the New Testament references it. And then when you're done with the New Testament if you like you know what I want to go do a deep study about you know what all this stuff is and the origins of it didn't go back to the Old Testament. And read through it because the New Testament when they quote the Old Testament they're very clear that they're quoting the Old Testament and you can easily go back and go okay well where's this quoting and if you don't understand it. It's all cross-referenced Every Bible you're ever going to get it's going to have cross-references so that you can go back and understand what you know why they're saying it this way why they do it that way. The only time you should be in the Old Testament is when you intend to study you shouldn't just be there to read. That's my take on it.

Pastor Newms:
[1:10:44] Yeah I.

Pastor Bill:
[1:10:45] You may disagree that's and that's okay.

Pastor Newms:
[1:10:46] We do on this one and that's okay the eye I like both as far as, if you are a new Christian I agree with you wholeheartedly please, he's starting the New Testament because you're going to get caught up in some stuff and not until you understand the grace of the New Testament you can get caught up in some Old Testament stuff that's going to flip you but.

Pastor Bill:
[1:11:12] Yeah for goodness sakes First and Second Kings are just lists of ways that people are screwed up and need a savior like, that's all first and second Kings are and Judges. Judges is the same way.

Pastor Newms:
[1:11:27] Yeah so I mean it's definitely the old.

Pastor Bill:
[1:11:30] List of example after example after example after example after example of why we need a savior and you're sitting here reading these awful things, and thinking is this cool it's just okay that things that they're doing and it's like no it's not. That's the whole point of that book.

Pastor Newms:
[1:11:49] Yeah the whole point of the first half is “no” and so. I do think once you have settled there is time to there is a time to reflect on the whole thing.

Pastor Bill:
[1:12:04] But see that's the thing is the reflect not just read but actually take it in. Let me add on a qualifier then casual. Do not casually read the Old Testament.

Pastor Newms:
[1:12:36] Right.

Pastor Bill:
[1:12:38] That's my qualifier because most people casually read.

Pastor Newms:
[1:12:43] That's true I'll give you that one I'll give you.

Pastor Bill:
[1:12:47] Should never be casually reading.

Pastor Newms:
[1:12:49] I don't think I'm able to casually read I don't think that's why I have so many books behind me.

Pastor Bill:
[1:12:57] You can casually read the book of Acts you can, you literally have there's no hidden secrets in the book of Acts it is literally God did this miracle for the church then God did this thing through the church and then God did this thing too. And if they're not excited about God moving on the Earth, then you can casually read it. Now myself Acts doesn't particularly excite me, it just doesn't. I get it God moves God does things I believe it, it's cool, other people read acts and they get all excited about it and that's fine for them that's cool but you can technically casually read it you don't have to do a whole bunch of study to take any information there. The Old Testament is not written that way. All right well that's what we have for tonight I hope you guys enjoyed it. The Berean Manifesto comes out every Wednesday at 7 p.m. as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you've enjoyed this episode, it's helped you or you think it might help someone else. Please like, share, follow - all the things on social media and where are you get your podcasts. That really helps expand our reach and then forward a link to someone you know might benefit from this episode or one of the other episodes that we've done. We do recorded these episodes live on video on Sunday nights at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, you can go to our web site www.ekk.house, and see which Twitch, which Facebook, and which YouTube you can go to watch us live and also participate in the chat while we're recording, and we can interact with you if you have questions or you have comments or you just want to send a pray hands symbol because you think we've lost our minds and you're praying for our mental sanity, that's fine too thank you Grayson for that emoji earlier, I think that is all we have for tonight right.

Pastor Newms:
[1:15:11] That is all we have I think.

Pastor Bill:
[1:15:15] So happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Christmas, Saturnalia. Whatever you're celebrating this time of year it's fine, I'm going to say Merry Christmas because I celebrate Christmas, I don't say that because I expect you to celebrate Christmas. I say that because while I'm celebrating, I hope, that you were having a bright and merry time in that time. However you celebrate it. Love you guys hope you have a great week.

Pastor Newms:
Stay safe out there.

Pastor Bill:
[1:15:54] And until next time.

S4EP02 - Also In The Beginning

Pastor Bill:
[0:00] Hello and welcome to season 4 episode 2 of the Berean Manifesto; Faith, Hope, and Love for the Modern Christian.  I'm Pastor Bill and I'm joined by Pastor Newms.  How are you Pastor Newms?

Pastor Newms:
[0:15] I'm good how are you doing.

Pastor Bill:
[0:21] I'm doing alright.  My sinuses are all out of whack still, so I've got a lot of drainage and having a lot of issues with that but.  Coughing and what not so I'm on a lot of antihistamines, and some Afrin, and lots of cough drops so.  So how was your week?

Pastor Newms:
[0:46] I'm sorry to hear that um is probably the best I can um so.  My week?  My week was okay I worked a lot.
,
Pastor Bill:
[1:09] No I'm sorry to hear that.

Pastor Newms:
[1:11] Yeah I worked a lot.  And so that was that was you know it is what it is trying to get, we got a lot of projects and for some reason people are wanting them all done at the end of the year which is odd for software, but it is what it is.  Usually in most software companies December is pretty much non-existent but in this particular healthcare company, we busy.  It's like we're busier than we were two months ago busy, and that's weird for December but you know it is what it is.  So I worked a lot.  I picked up the Pokemon game again and started playing it some, the new Pokemon Scarlet played some Space Engineers.

Pastor Bill:
[2:02] Phoenix when could I not see your communications? Phoenix on Twitch says “Can Bill now see my communications?”  Could I not see your Communications before?

Pastor Newms:
[2:15] Confused by her question did you say hello and welcome already so no.

Pastor Bill:
[2:26] Okay so I saw the nerdy smiley face came through but that just says Fina we 656 raid run teeny-weeny 656 hula.

Pastor Newms:
[2:41] Yeah no.  So he can't get emojis correctly because he's looking at it through the Discord interface not the Twitch interface.  So no, Emojis and do not come through.

Pastor Bill:
[2:57] So regular smiles like the nerdy smile.

Pastor Newms:
[3:01] Well even those sometimes come through because it depends on if Twitch has done something different with them even though they look like a regular smiley face on Twitch side they don't always come across correctly so it was.

Pastor Bill:
[3:17] Three celebrating smile faces.

Pastor Newms:
[3:19] It was like the birthday ones with the funny hats, so it was good that that you know work was work, I work a lot of hours and then.  I think that was it I don't think I did a lot how was your week?

Pastor Bill:
[4:05] My week was all right.  Focused on doing some writing.  Did some flash fiction writing, entered a few writing contest to just sharpen my skills a little bit so that was fun had that going this week and then there was the local Christmas parade was yesterday.  And I don't understand how it can be 50 degrees and feel, literally feel like it's freezing outside while you're sitting there watching a parade that makes no sense to me.  But it did, and my feet were so cold, and my hands were numb, and I was like it's only 50 degrees.

Pastor Newms:
[4:55] I'm sorry, I did get asked.  So did I tell the funny story; about the first time we visited this church that we visited a second time on here?

Pastor Bill:
[5:16] I don't know did you?

Pastor Newms:
[5:17] I don't remember, about the jacket.  I don't think I did okay so you know we talk a lot on The Berean Manifesto that that life is about doing not just…like life should be done, life should not be just hanging out you should actually be doing not just saying that's where I'm trying to go.  Who am I brain I worked a lot of hours you should be doing not just saying and, and so when you go to a church you go to a thing or you do a thing you always hope people are going to show actions more than they're going to say actions so that's always our hope well so we go to visit this church this has been this was the week before we took the vacation to Dollywood so it was the week before the week before Thanksgiving so I don't know the second week of November so it's been several weeks ago in between our visits. And so we, we go and, you know it's like 38-39 right and so everyone is bundled up because they're cold.  I I'm not cold cuz it's only 30s it's not in the 20s it's the 30s it's not that cold we're walking from the car to the place, it's not that cool so, and so I left my jacket in the car because I didn't want to put it on put it off put it on put it up for them but you always take it in the car in case you get a flat tire or something you've changed a tire because if you're out in the rain and.

Pastor Bill:
[7:30] Right exactly.

Pastor Newms:
[7:32] There's a valid reason to have a jacket with you but I don't wear it when I'm going into the stores and going into play.  And so I left my jacket in the car we went in, and we're in the back of course shocking and we're sitting there and this person comes up to me and genuinely looks at me and goes do you need a coat like, general not like the hat you don't even have a jacket on but like,
like actually at he's like if you need a jacket we can get you one like if you're if you're cold if you're you know you can have this jacket right here I've got extras at home blah blah blah and I'm like oh no I'm just not cold and he kind of looked at me like uh huh, and then looked over at Tina and I was like okay sorry, sorry my jackets in the car I don't wear it till it's like in the 20s.  I have a leather jacket I've got sweat shirts at home I've got suit jackets I had my own jackets I just don't wear them oh okay okay we just wanted I wanted to make sure you had a jacket which is amazing from a standpoint of he's legitimately trying to give me the jacket off his back.  First off second off really funny interaction because like you could tell he didn't believe me for schnot like he was like uh-huh I'm sure you don't need a jacket looking at Tina like this man need a jacket you know did you bring this man in with you and he needs it you know and pour Zayidee is like no no.

Pastor Bill:
[9:20] Did you find this man out on the street?

Pastor Newms:
[9:22] Yeah are you bringing this homeless man in this place and he needs a you know.  And so is this one of those funny moments of you know legitimate church trying to be, what church is supposed to be.  It's a decent it's a decent place we think we're going to try it again we've been twice now and we're going to continue going so far at least for a little while.

Pastor Bill:
[9:51] So far so good.

Pastor Newms:
[9:53] So far so good yeah we enjoy it so far how was.

Pastor Bill:
[9:56] All right well now it's time for.

Pastor Newms:
[9:58] We talked about your week.

Pastor Bill:
[10:00] We talked about my week so now it's time for getting to know the pastors.

Pastor Newms:
[10:02] You know the worst part about this you would think listening to how I've been both last weekend this week in our in our opening you would think like I'm doing a thousand other things,
yes someone else did ask today not as forcefully if I needed a jacket, he wasn't as forceful as the other person because he could he was in the he was like the door opener so you'd see in the car I parked in so he assumed I could have gotten one if I won like he at least was that he's like do you have a jacket like are you good luck but like on the same token like.  It's kind of a nice car, that I'm able to lease because my father Biggs is an amazing person and works for Nissan so I'm driving a much nicer car than I would ever be able to normally let's be clear and so I'm like, all right it's it is funny they are they are super they are super nice, is it my card or is it your card, all right I didn't so you're in the part of the screen I can't see cuz you're behind me so I didn't realize you were even holding a card and you were like nope my card and it popped up above my head which is just.

Pastor Bill:
[11:28] Would you rather go 30 days without your phone or your entire life without dessert?

Pastor Newms:
[11:53] Is it one of those like if I eat a dessert ever I then lose my phone or would I literally not be able to get a dessert ever.

Pastor Bill:
[12:04] You have to decide now and then you can literally never get a dessert.

Pastor Newms:
[12:08] So if I try to reach for a desert my body would not let me.

Pastor Bill:
[12:14] No your hand would just disappear the closer it got to the desert and as you pulled away your hand would reappear.  You can't even touch the desert.

Pastor Newms:
[12:23] Can't even touch the desert that's what I - that's the one I want because my waistline, my waistline agrees with that one and that's not because I'm addicted to my phone that's legitimately weight loss right there man if I literally couldn't reach the cookie do you know how happy my daughters would be if I could not eat, or steal their cookies and Candy my daughters would lose their minds if if they did not if there was no chance of me stealing their cookies they would love that and, like I mentioned so would my waistline and my arthritis, I don't eat a lot of sweets but I would love if I couldn't, that would just be.

Pastor Bill:
[13:15] I am straight-up addicted to my phone, if I find myself in a room and I've left my phone in the other room I have to go back and find it.

Pastor Newms:
[13:24] I'm not addicted to my phone. In most situations there are certain situations.

Pastor Bill:
[13:41] When you're going number two.

Pastor Newms:
[13:43] Yeah I if I forget my phone I will ask someone to bring it to me you know it's one of those where it’s like.

Pastor Bill:
[13:57] I think that's just a given for most people.

Pastor Newms:
[13:59] But often for those of you who know me.  I will straight have no idea where my phone is even located.  I'll be like, I don't know, I don't know where it is I don't know I don't know people call me like most of my family members Biggs, Phoenix, you says everyone knows just send him a Discord message he will not see that text message you're about to send him he's not going to see it he's not going to see if he does see it he might he might see it next week and then he's gonna be like I never saw this and then forget to text you back anyway so just don't text him like you're not getting a response and my girls even know that I've got.

Pastor Bill:
[14:43] And if you do get a response it'll usually just be “k”.

Pastor Newms:
[14:52] That is that's hurtful let me look at this look at this.

Pastor Bill:
[15:06] Your sister reinforces what I'm saying in all caps “BILL IS SPOT ON”.

Pastor Newms:
[15:13] Okay so no all of mine and Bills messages are actually more my sided than his in all actuality.

Pastor Bill:
[15:22] Well because you try to reach out to me on Discord and then you’re like oh yeah he's not always on Discord then you send me a text. And then you’re like hey did you see my Discord or hey I know you're not always on Discord blah.

Pastor Newms:
[15:34] I wasn't going to talk about what the message is are but it pretty much is like, hey check the message I sent you how long till you get on are you going to so yeah you're not wrong, yeah and that's true good luck on reading what I send cuz it's going to be misspelled there is no punctuation and its probably not all the words are, even there because I do not do well at.  Making sure stuff is done right.

Pastor Bill:
[16:30] My wife has got into the habit of using speech to text let me tell you that's fun to try to decipher. Let me see if I can pull one up right quick so just to give an example here.

Pastor Newms:
[16:45] I've heard that can be pretty sideways.

Pastor Bill:
[17:07] When was the last time she did that come on.  Printably prinably more than that.  Text so often it's.

Pastor Newms:
[17:34] Did you say you text so often you text so little.

Pastor Bill:
[17:38] No we take so often that there's a lot of text to go through to find the last time she actually did the voice text thing.

Pastor Newms:
[17:46] Ah

Pastor Bill:
[17:47] She does it that you really remember is that it comes out bad and then oh my gosh.  All right well I guess I'm not going to be able to find one this time.  I don’t know, I was really hoping to read one because they're really funny yeah.  No just saw a text.  One day I went to the store.  In the morning and I'm at the store and I get a text from Roxanne did you forget about someone?  And I was like no, not that I know of and she goes Finn’s in the restroom and I was like. I'm not even at home sweetheart what do you want me to do about Finnick being in the restroom.  Oh okay so I guess I'll get up and help him. It was funny.  All right well last week, we looked at the beginning of Genesis and talked about how the first 10 chapters of Genesis aren't really Christian texts are not Jewish texts are not Abrahamic text they are simply just historical records right there their the authors, writing down the way they saw history based off of what they believe to happen what the cultures around them saw an influence them to believe, originally it was just chapters 2 through 10 right but the numbers didn't exist anyway back then.  The text of chapter one was added later when they were in Babylon and we went through Genesis chapters - I'm sorry through Genesis chapter 1 and verses, one and two that's pretty much as far as we got. Um and so that episode was in the beginning, now this episode season 4 episode 2 is also in the beginning, and for this episode we're actually going to be in John.  We’re going to be looking at John chapter 1 and we're going to be going through John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4 okay.  Now in the CSB this reads, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning, all things were created through him and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.  In him was life and that life was the light of men.  Okay, all right.  So that word beginning where that phrase in the beginning. This is the Greek ar-khay' and, I'm much better on my Hebrew pronunciations.  So if you know these Greek words and I butcher their pronunciations when I'm trying to read the pronunciation little key things that spells it funny to try to get you pronounce it correctly, I apologize our ar-khay'.  It’s G746 It is (properly abstract) a commencement, or (concrete) chief (in various applications of order, time, place or rank): - beginning, corner, (at the, the) first (estate), magistrate, power, principality, principle, rule.  Okay so if John was speaking abstractly right if he was saying, according to the myth according to the stories that have been passed down that we don't we don't really think they're real we just think they're you know good lessons to learn from. Then that would have been the general use of the word and he simply meant beginning in reference to time.  But if John's intention was to communicate the beginning as in the concrete idea that there was. At one point nothing that had been created then this the beginning, is like the building and putting in the cornerstone or like creating the foundational thesis of an organization. Basically that statement that is everything the organization stands for, if that's what he was talking about then the usage here is more like the word that we found for beginning in Genesis.  This has John saying the first important thing to happen right so he's not just saying, kind of loosely you know oh yeah back back back then when things started happening you know nothing was happening and things started happening, no John's saying.  This is this is the most important thing this will starting here because it that's how important is this is the beginning. And in context we can reasonably assume that he's using the word that way and expressing that concrete usage. What did I put in my nose.  Yeah we have that reasonable belief that that's where he's coming from, because of the way he continues to talk about it and reference it and go back to it as he continues to write and he's talking about this this Cornerstone idea, this is very very important thing that is crucial to everything that he's about to write that's crucial to, the understanding of everything right okay sorry my mouth is feeling all weird right now. You know when you get dry mouth.  And then you put dentures in your mouth while your mouth while you have dry mouth.

Pastor Newms:
[25:38] See now you've lost me because I've never had to put dentures in my mouth.

Pastor Bill:
[25:43] It's it's quite the experience.  So the next word that we need to look at is actually what they translated as word okay, so word is G30 five sticks in the Strong's and it is the word logos.  Okay so logos and I'm going to read off the translation are as strong as to find it something said including the thought, by implication a topic subject of discourse, also reasoning the mental faculty or motive, by extension a computation specifically with the article in John the Divine expression that is Christ.  And then it goes on to list off all the things that's been translated as account caused communication, concerning something Doctrine feign having to do something intent matter mouth preaching question reason reckon something removed, say saying show Beaker of something. Speech talk thing none of these things move me tidings Treatise utterance word work okay.  Now one of the things that we saw last week when we were talking about the creation was.  That they're at the very beginning this wasn't a spoken project yet right, God or more properly they used the word for God's or Divine beings.  Personally cultivated and formed the universe the long way, so in this instance the choice to translate logos. As word is believed to have been a side effect of Western theology. That place is the focus on individuals instead of the group, right so I got this from from several different commentaries where was talking about this and then I found some websites that were backing it up. That when they were translating this out and they were trying to decide how exactly to translate that logos there this is this is the ideas that they were coming up against is that, the Viewpoint of that Western philosophy, and when we say Western philosophy were talking about anything west of Israel right, so we're talking about Italy and England United States all of that is west of Israel that's Western theology.  So this trends like really this translation reinforces this authority of scripture. Over the relationship of the community, what it's talking about and it props up that control of those who can translate those scriptures.  So it gives this idea of the individual leader Leading the People, instead of the community as a whole owning the revelation.  The word word ends up not even being what most commentaries that will release the most ones that I have I'm currently read from 1 2 3 4 5 6, great commentaries that's my a sword up here on my screen a commentaries most of them agree that word isn't even the right translation there for the context so.  Let's talk about that in the context of the day, John was having to create craft his writing for the Greek reader the Jew reader the Christian reader and also the Gnostic Christians, now the Gnostic Christians were a huge threat to, the survivability of the church the Greeks were not so much a threat to survival of survivability of the church because they were kind of keeping their hands off, jail it was you know it was kind of tricky you if you. Talked about worshiping a god other than one of the Greek gods, you could get in trouble depending on what God was walking by but usually, it was it was just kind of a you shouldn't be doing that but doesn't the Jews that was a big issue you didn't want a Jewish person walking by and hearing you talk about worshiping Jesus. And that you know because I was an issue so this is kind of the.

Pastor Newms:
[31:10] Way of way of I don't know.

Pastor Bill:
[31:14] Life I don't the temperature that atmosphere.

Pastor Newms:
[31:16] Yeah trying to trying to tippy-toe around things.

Pastor Bill:
[31:23] So this word logos, John was not only identifying Jesus as a manifestation of God right but refuting the Gnostic claim, that Jesus was a separate God created by the Demiurge. Now the Demiurge was an evil God that made all of creation that the Gnostic Christians believed in, they believe the Demiurge created creation and it was for evil design and that Jesus was a separate God created by the Demiurge who then basically rebelled against the evil God, and brought us salvation from the demiurge and it's this whole thing and it was it was bad.  So now for the Greeks using the word logos and Theo's.  Theos being the word here for God, and the common word in Greek for a god so Zeus they would use the same word Aphrodite Artemis it was all feels right, but using logos and Theo's in in reference to each other stood in direct contrast to how the people of the day would have talked about their god. they would have said moothos and theos, which was customary when telling stories about the gods moothos becoming the word mythos or myth as we know it today.  The Greeks were very open about the fact that all the stories they had about their gods were all myths, they had made them up. Two, surround the gods with intrigue to surround the gods with attention they didn't think the gods didn't exist but they understood and recognized the things they were saying about the gods and the stories they were telling about the gods were things that they had made up, so they would say moothos in reference to theos and here John is saying logos in reference to theos instead of saying, well this is a story that I'm making up this is a story that's been made up, he's attaching an air of well this is actually what happened to it for the Greek reader.  So most likely what most of the commentaries say is that John intended logos to mean plan, purpose promise or my favorite – motive.  So the general idea is that that shouldn't have been the word “word” at all should have been plan, purpose, promise, or motive.  Motive to me seems to make the most sense in modern vernacular right?  The way we talk now it seems to make the most sense when you're reading all of John chapter 1, as to.  What you're looking at and what is going on so when we look at John 1:1 we see of all the things to know about the beginning of all things.  There was the Motive and the Motive was with God and the Motive was God.  Or more specifically was there should be existed as, that's the next word we're looking at.  The word was and it is ane like I said my Greek pronunciations are lacking its G 2258.  And the translation there is I (thou, etc.) was (wast or were): and it has been translated as - + agree, be, X have (+ charge of), hold, use, was (-t), were.  So today when we use the word was.  It's a word that can mean at one time, but then not anymore right it's like I was hungry but that was resolved I'm not hungry anymore.  That kind of usage of the word didn't actually exist when John wrote this when you use the word that word their lust was it meant existed as so the motive existed as God so God was the motive manifest.  Everything that God was is this motive this this thing that they've been translated as the word, word.  Okay, alright verse to you got any questions about verse one yet or any comments you want to make.

Pastor Newms:
[36:57] I think I don't think I have anything, the was I get it. I think we've talked about it in the past but yeah it's pretty common stuff we've talked about a couple times but it's always great to review.

Pastor Bill:
[37:18] And the main reason that we're going from Genesis 1:1 to now John chapter 1, because not only because they both deal with the beginning but we also want to… we touched lightly on, the people that think that the reason that God is plural in the creation in Genesis is because of the Trinity.  And then we don't want to Discount that belief because obviously the New Testament supports that idea, right and so we explored the idea that, that word can mean Divine beings it can mean the Angels were helping it can, it can mean a lot of things, it's important then to go and follow that up with well there was this idea and the early church and John wrote about it, that Jesus was there with, the Supreme Divinity at the beginning.  So it's not just this trinitarian idea separate from anything else in the Bible, it's actually supported by the beliefs of the first century church that you know Jesus was a part of that they. A part of that them part of that plural usage of the word in the beginning, and then we see that in verse 2 right, He was with God in the beginning now, this is the first hint that John's given us that he views the motive or the word as a person.  Now the word for he that John uses isn't specifically he.  Unless you place your own interpretation on it.  I believe the word he was chosen as a translation for that because it becomes cleared later in the chapter that John is talking about Jesus who was a male.  However, I think John was still trying to tease the reader, at this point he was still crafting you know… and I don't think he would have he meant he at this time I think this word isn't.  Isn't necessarily A he.  It says including the nominative, masculine plural second form nominative feminine singular third form and the nominative feminine plural fourth form, so it's not specifically he but in the modern the way we talk about gender in the modern day and time it would have been they or them, so they were in the beginning with God.  This is why in the King James. I think they chose ‘the same’ as the translation for the word he that the csb calls he. It's because it's not specifically he its they or them or this or that it's it's non gender-specific it can be used for gender, but only if the writer has already made it clear what gender they're talking about.  John hadn't yet so they were with God, and then we get that in the beginning part right. As a crucial part of the first of all things they were with God as a crucial part of the first of all things. Verse 3 all things were created through him and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.  That verse just really I don't like the phrasing sometimes, one more trying to read Bible verses because they feel so convoluted like if you would have just just, maybe swap that around and rephrase that just a little bit so I just wanted to try to rephrase that for myself. And what I came up with was the universe and everything in it,
was created because of him and if he hadn't existed nothing else would either.  And I feel like that's a much better way to say the same thing that they're actually trying to say. And you can go back and reread that virtue for yourself if you want you can try to flip it around with the punctuation is there and try to make sense of that for yourself, but I think the idea there is you know. All things were created through him it's, it's because of him, it's using that motive that motive is why all things were created, and if it hadn't been for that motive if it hadn't had been that driving force then we wouldn't have had creation at all.  God would just be still chilling in The Ether just out there just because through his motive wouldn't have existed to fuel creation.

Pastor Newms:
[43:13] And, and I see where you're saying with that to me it works I'm like.  No, no it's just all things were created through him and apart from him not one thing that was created, that has been created so apart from him nothing was created nothing would have been created that has it that had been created I mean it's, sometimes having a broken brain makes things make sense because I'm looking at it going why wouldn't that make sense.

Pastor Bill:
[43:50] Mmm and then when you, when you look at it from a gnostic point of view right because he's got to write for this Gnostic audience as well, they believed that Jesus was created.  And so this idea that nothing would have been created without him.  Undermines the idea that he was created because you can't be created.  Because you exist because you don't exist to then create yourself.

Pastor Newms:
[44:25] And I think that's the reason why it's worded the way it's worded that apart from.

Pastor Bill:
[44:30] Weird logical flaw and he's pointing out.

Pastor Newms:
[44:32] One thing yeah not one thing was created that has been created including him so.

Pastor Bill:
[44:41] Including him because he's not a creation.

Pastor Newms:
[44:43] As I'm writing this, I'm realizing what you're about to say so I'm going to add this part here at the end that some people will just go duh and other people will go oh okay I'm wrong.

Pastor Bill:
[45:03] Okay now we're in verse 4 and this is as far as we're going to go tonight, in him was life and that life was the light of men man, I went back and forth on these words, back and forth and back and forth over and over and over and over and over and I I've had my suspicions as to what I was looking at, and I can't seem to. I can't seem to really pin it down what I actually think John is trying to say here so I went to my commentaries, and I was just like I'm gonna I'm just going to write down what the commentaries are saying. And they pretty much all seem to agree see what was the outlier it was.  The Keel and delitzsch had nothing to say about it and I think the FB Meyer thought differently but um.  It basically John was saw his talking about sentience and Enlightenment that all of that came from the motive right so that.  Basically, that spark that separates humanity from animals that ability that sentient ability to go I recognize that I exist and I have to have a purpose and so I'm going to improve my life and the world around me.  That that is only exist because. Of the that life that is the motive that that life created that that spark of sentience in.  Then as we see later in John 1:14 you know we find out that the motive is made flesh, and that's why he's in fact Jesus.  So all this time he has actually in fact been talking about Jesus because he believed that Jesus had been God before he was born, and that he was there in the beginning he was part of the creation that he existed as God as part of God, and so yeah so.  When you, when you try to look at Concepts like the Trinity and you try to poke at you know poke holes and go but it doesn't seem to fit here and it doesn't seem to fit here and it doesn't seem to fit here.  You're not wrong and you're not wrong mainly for the reason that of all the things that there is to know in the universe about God. The Bible.  Already but I didn't so of all the things there is to know about God in the universe which is the universe length in you know in length what we know about God is only this much of it.  This much of a whole universe was worth of knowledge. So yeah, when we when we see Concepts like, in the beginning was the motive and was with God in the motive was God and so John is trying to tell you that, God and you know God the father and God the son the same person and then we find out that Jesus goes to the father and sends the Holy Spirit, who is also in full agreement for agreement meaning you know he's also the same person, and then we try to build theologies that we understand like the Trinity with such limited knowledge.  There's gonna be holes there is and that's where faith comes into play, we don't know everything because without faith it is impossible to please God and if we knew everything if we had all the information we wouldn't have to have faith and then we wouldn't be able to please God and then this whole simulation of physical life to create souls worthy of Eternity with God would fail.  That's what I have to say about that.

Pastor Newms:
[49:45] And that's, that's that whole thing we've talked about it before but the whole thing around if we don't have faith we don't have, our belief system and so not everything can be answered easily. Because faith and.

Pastor Bill:
[50:25] If you if you, you know what is the purpose of life well if you look at the writings of Paul and Peter and John even the purpose of life is to learn faith.  That's the whole purpose of the time that we're on Earth is to learn it's a finite time to learn a concept. A mind-blowing concept and to always be this show me where I won't believe it. That's kind of the opposite of Faith you know it's like I know you know Thomas wanted to see the holes in Jesus hands in the whole inside and Thomas gets a bad rap for that.  But the other disciples had already asked to see the same thing when Jesus first appeared to them, they asked you know to see tip the hold man on the holding the side and understandably three days earlier they saw this guy.  Brutalized hanging on a cross.  So yeah obviously they want you know they want to get that closure right.  But without faith it's impossible to please God and so whole point of life.  Is to learn faith and then you know we love others while they're learning Faith because life is hard enough you don't need to make it harder.
Cut a guy some slack, show some love.  There you go that is “Also in the beginning season 4 episode 2” did you have anything else you wanted to tag onto their Pastor Newms.

Pastor Newms:
[52:30] No it's this is one of those conversations where it's to me it's pretty cut and dry like it's not a lot of extra frivolous.  Wells butts if could zits just kind of like yeah it's written that way that's his that's exactly what it says.

Pastor Bill:
[53:04] It's written that way that's what is it.

Pastor Newms:
[53:05] Let's see what it says.

Pastor Bill:
[53:09] All right so the Berean Manifesto comes out every Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time wherever you get your podcasts, if you've enjoyed this podcast so you think it might help someone else feel free to forward it share it like it follow us that helps other people find the podcasts and be able to get the message that we're trying to spread, Faith, Hope, and Love for the modern Christian, also we record this live on Sunday nights at 6:30 p.m. Central Standard Time and you can go to our web site www.ekk.house, to find out which which Twitch Facebook and which YouTube, Channel you can go to on Sunday nights to join us live and you can actually participate in the chat you can type your message your question whatever, and it comes through on our Discord server and it comes through so that we can respond to you answer your questions and you can be a part, of the conversation instead of just me and Pastor newms having a two-person conversation we can get some more enrichment in here and we welcome that we welcome people coming in and asking questions and you know saying things like well I've always been taught that it meant this and why did is it why do you say it means that and so we can actually you know because. I can assume that you're on the same page as I am on but that doesn't mean you are and so sometimes we have to flush things out and.  Additionally, I'm not always right so sometimes you'll bring something up and I'll go hold on, oh yeah that's right I was saying it wrong you're right and then you know that way I can fix it because I do my best you know to prepare but that doesn't mean I'm not going to miss something.  I'm always right but sometimes I'm wrong.

Pastor Newms:
[55:15] I'm always right but sometimes I can learn more all right and now's when we do the Final End thing.

Pastor Bill:
[55:27] Yes so I love you guys

Pastor Newms:
Be safe out there.

Pastor Bill:
And until next time.