Paul

Transcript

I thought for our Sunday school class, we would take a look at the Apostle Paul. Obviously, the life of the Apostle Paul, we're not given a whole lot of information about his early life as far as where he grew up, that type of thing. We know that he was from Asia Meyer, from Tarshish. Next week, we'll probably look at the importance of that city. We know that he had Roman citizenship as well, so that obviously is going to help him in the preaching of the Gospel. But we'll get into that in our next classes. We'll probably have four classes, I think. Is it 31 days in March? So we do have four classes. So what I'd like to do today, anyways, with that said, the Apostle Paul, we'll do a deep dive into his life, probably, beginning today, but definitely in the following classes. What I'd like to do today, anyways, is kind of give an overview of the world that Paul lived in. What was the world that he lived in? We read these epistles, we read the Acts of the Apostles. They're doing all of these things, there's miracles being performed, the Gospel message is being preached to all of these different cities. But what did it look like? What did Paul have to deal with as he traveled around the Roman Empire? Was it easy? Was it hard? When he went into the cities, what did they look like? What were some of the trials and tribulations that he had to deal with just with travel? When he talks about this in 2 Corinthians 11, where he kind of lists all of the things that he had to go through to preach the Gospel message, to start these ecclesias everywhere, to make sure they were running properly, make sure that they had sound doctrine within them. That was like a big thing if you look at all of the epistles, particularly ones to Timothy and the Corinthians and others, Paul, of course, was concerned about doctrine. Were they following the doctrine that was given to them by his own mouth and by the other disciples that were preaching? We'll get into that a little later on. What was the world like? What was the world like of the Apostle Paul? And so hopefully we can answer that question. So here are some of the things we'll take a look at, the Roman and Greek world, obviously, what were the cities like? When you say I went into Thessalonica, what did that mean? Yeah, I lived in Rome, what did that mean? We read about these cities in the Old Testament, maybe in history as well. Oh yeah, he went here, he went there. But what did that mean? What did it mean to do these things? Paul just didn't wake up. He's like, oh, I'm in Ephesus today, hold on, boop, kind of like when Stephen was taken to the eunuch, the Ethiopian eunuch and then taken away. That didn't happen with Paul. Paul wasn't by the Holy Spirit. God didn't put him here. And then, OK, you're going to stay here for a week. And then I'm going to transport you over to this area. He had to use the mechanisms of travel afforded to him at this point in time in the ancient world. What were roads and waterways like? We learn, we hear a lot about Roman roads. And it's true, they had a lot of roads. But one of the easiest way to travel was by water. It was actually a little safer. And you could carry a lot more things or transport a lot more things on a ship than you could on roads. That didn't mean people didn't travel on roads, believe me. But shipping was the big way to travel. And Paul did that, right? Sometimes it worked for him, right? Other times it didn't. Like the last story that we'll look at in Paul's kind of life is the big shipwreck, right? And kind of the stuff that went on. It's a great story, by the way. That's why as the older I get, I kind of do things that I'm interested in. And I'm interested in Paul. Outside of Jesus, Paul did the most to spread the gospel message of Christ. And God told him that. He said, you're going to be my mouthpiece to the Gentiles, the apostle to the Gentiles. You're going to speak before kings, Christ tells him. All right. In our life, we live in a Christian country for the most part, OK? Obviously, we know that there's a separation of church and state. Christian laws don't necessarily apply in the secular world, although there is certainly influence. We have to kind of wipe our mind. And I know it's very difficult. We have to wipe our mind of the modern world. Because it really, in a lot of ways, it's extremely different. It's almost like a different earth almost. And our minds are kind of geared towards the modern world and all of the conveniences that it has in it, all right? So we've got to, you're sent out as a Jew, as Paul, he's a Jew. And he's going out into the vastness, the complexity of the Roman world. And what are the things that he had to deal with? Well, certainly other religions. Paganism was the order of the day. Cults, astrology, oracles, magicians. I actually did a few years ago, I did a midweek class on some of the cults and stuff like that that were around there. Again, something that I found interesting. I hope you did too. But this was the world. No one knew about Jesus. No one knew about Moses and the promises made to Abraham. And God's plan of salvation is given to the prophets in Judaism. No one knew anything about that. No one cared. And so this is the world that Paul was being sent to by Christ to change the world in a very fundamental way, a total change of the Roman world. It's going to take about 300 years. But Rome is going to go from a hardcore pagan superpower to a Christian empire, a Christian kingdom, in about 300 years, 350 years. Pretty amazing. And then the Jews in the Gentile world, what did that look like? Number one. And then number two, is Paul going to use that kind of relationship? We know he's going to. He's going to use the fact that the Jews were very comfortable for whatever reason, they were very comfortable kind of living in other places. You know, they weren't a group of people that just kind of stayed in their own little area of Judea and Israel. They didn't. They went out. We talked about, I think, last time how some of the Jews went with Alexander the Great to go on his conquest of the Persian Empire and into India. There were Jewish soldiers that went there. There were all kinds of Jewish settlements in the east and all kinds of Jewish communities throughout the Roman world and all of these big cities. And this was like a perfect setup for Paul. Perfect setup. He was very comfortable, right? Very comfortable in the synagogues. He could preach. He knew the law. He grew up at the feet of Gamaliel. We'll see what that's all about. And so he's preaching all of these things first to the Jews, right? He tries to, you know, get the Jews on board, but it wasn't a two year period. It wasn't great, right? He had all of these fights in these different synagogues. And word would travel before him. Oh, here comes Paul and Barnabas. They're teaching some strange doctrine. And a lot of times there would be uproars, right? There'd be riots, which happened all the time, brothers and sisters, in these ancient, ancient, ancient cities. Riots all the time. All right. Pax Romana, the Roman piece. You know, this was one of the things that God is going to use. The fact that Rome was that relative piece during this time and trade when everywhere people were going back and forth. It was a great kind of situation. All right. So very quick background on Rome. OK, Rome is located in what country, Judy? What country is Rome located in? Italy. All right. And so it really started out as a very, very small little kind of backwater town, right? You guys hear about the story of Romulus and Remus. The wolf is going to keep them alive until these two twins are going to be found by a shepherd. The shepherd is going to raise them unbeknownst to the shepherd. These two were nobles, right? They were the future king, or Romulus was, anyway. OK, they slowly, very, very slowly, they're going to get into fights with the other tribes in Italy. Shocker, I know. And through battles and deals and diplomacy and stuff like that, again, very slowly, they're going to take over all of Italy, all right, and the vastness of Italy, and particularly up in the north, the Po Valley, very rich in agriculture. Up in the north as well, there's mines, like gold mines, silver mines, there's copper in this area, too. But listen, the Romans were never satisfied with just Italy, and they kind of pushed. They pushed northward. They had a big fight with the Carthaginians, who were from the city of Tyre, and the Phoenicians, which should be, we should know them as well, because they were neighbors of the Jews. They were neighbors of the Israelites, up north, and in fact, Ezekiel has a lot to say about Tyre, and their kind of obsession with monetary things, with material things, and that kind of fits exactly with the history of the Phoenicians. They were really obsessed with trade and with material things, and they're going to start a big city called Carthage. They're going to get in a big fight with the Romans, and the Romans are eventually going to win, and very slowly, they're going to kind of take, they're going to conquer Spain, they're going to conquer Gaul, and Greece, Asia Minor, so on and so forth, in a very slow process. I probably should have moved you up to the front in the first place, you know what I'm saying? Susie's in the background, he's paying attention now, but very easily distracted. You're in the right spot, buddy. I talked to your mom and dad, actually, it's like, put him in the front row, perfect, or

you're the type of kid that's like, oh, Mr. Leon forgot my glasses, you know what I'm saying? I know the tricks, guy. All right, so the Punic Wars is going to give the Romans complete control over the Mediterranean Sea. And so what this does is, it is going to unify all of these people under one kind of set of rules and regulations. That doesn't mean that the cultures of these different places didn't continue on. We know that they continued on, because in fact, the Romans are going to, it's like a soft conquer, all right, they're going to soft conquer Judea, they're going to put in

like that, they're going to be their client kings. But we know that the culture of the Jews continued on. Had their temple, had all of their rituals and their customs, and Rome would allow that all the time. They'd say, okay, as long as you're paying your taxes, you're not causing us problems, everything's good. Just make sure you pay your taxes. And we know the Jews begrudgingly did this, and eventually it's going to come to a head. But anyways, there's a great little story, I've probably told this before, but there was a group of people that, you know, they wanted to fight Rome, again, Rome was kind of bullying people. And one of these great lines was one of the Roman generals goes, and he has this conversation with the other general, and he says, look, Rome offers you war or peace. It matters not to Rome. Oh, oh, we're dealing with a tough guy here, right, and so that's, this is Rome's attitude. They weren't going to take over everything, we're Roman, we're the best, that type of thing, okay. They were heavily influenced by the Greeks, and so when historians talk about this period, oftentimes you may hear, and you've heard this, the Greek and Roman period, okay, because, you know, the Romans are like, oh, the Greeks, yeah, we love their culture. They were really impressed by Greek culture, okay. They thought that the Greeks were a little too effeminate for the Roman taste, but whatever. You know, the learning, the literature, the culture, that type of thing. So in their religious beliefs, as we're going to say, the Romans completely copied all the Greeks, just gave them different names. Like for instance, Zeus, right, the main god of the Greeks, he turned into Jupiter, right. Same guy, did the same thing, same story, same fables, that type of thing, so. All right, questions, comments from me before we go on? All right, first 15 minutes, beautiful. Beautiful, I haven't lost anybody, I don't think. All right, what do these cities look like? What was the deal with the cities? Okay, so this is a picture, I believe, of Calcutta, I think. Oh, no, you know what this is? This is Medellin in Columbia, on the hillside. These places is actually where Escobar and a lot of the drug dealers, this is where they kind of, you know, cut their chops and made their, you know, made their, you know, a name for themselves, you know, in kind of places like this. So take a look at this, okay. Ancient cities were super crowded, you know, like modern day Hong Kong. You ever see pictures of Hong Kong? There's an apartment complex in Hong Kong that you don't have to leave the apartment complex to get anything you want. They have supermarkets in there. It's this massive complex that you don't even have to leave, and it's kind of stacked. And then they have these massive, gigantic apartment complexes that you can't even see when you're down on the ground, you can't even see the sun. That's how kind of congested Hong Kong is, I'm sure you've seen pictures of it. It's a congested city, all right. Very small group of people were kind of crammed into a very small area. Sanitation, great, no. Were there no-go areas in these cities? Violence, absolutely, sure. Violence was endemic in a lot of these places. Fire, plague, disease, earthquakes, crime, violence, you know, open sewers. They didn't, you know, some of the more wealthier kind of nobility would have kind of running water. They would have like a fountain that would came in running water into their, they'd actually have a little tap too that they could, you know, a little thing that they could stop the water from coming in. But the regular guys, regular Joe Schmoes like us, we're not going to have running water. Okay, these cities would have public toilets though, you could go there. That's, you know, you did your business, public, like in Rome they had fountains everywhere. They would bring the water into Rome, but it was your, you had to bring the water from Rome into your home if you didn't have it. So, there's that aspect. A lot of different people coming to these cities. The cities were where it was at. Cities was where you could make your money, make, you know, get, you know, go into a different lifestyle, that type of thing. People from all over the Roman world are going to come to these cities. Incredible amounts of trade. You know, when we think of trade we know, you know, they, I was reading an article the other day about the cranes that lift up, the massive cranes that lift up all of the stuff off the cargo ship. I guess 90% of all the components of these cranes are made in China. And I guess there's like spy software that the Chinese put into these cranes that they can actually like monitor the things that are coming in. It was wild. And so the Chinese are making these cranes, but they're also putting little spy technology and software into the mechanisms of the crane. So anyways, you know, just kind of think about the hustle and the bustle and all of the cargo that is coming through like Long Beach, California. Think about that. It was no different with Rome, right, on a scale, on a scale. People from the time the sun went up to the time it went down, people were busy, okay. And it wasn't like, you know, I need my own time, I need my own space, right. It didn't happen in these big cities. You didn't have your own space, particularly if you were kind of like the working poor, which unfortunately the majority of us would be if, you know, you look at the numbers. We'd all be like working poor. We'd have a job maybe. Maybe one of us would scrap it a little bit and maybe make a, you know, make a little bit more. But, you know, come on. Hopefully we would all be free men. We would be citizens at least. But again, the numbers tell us probably the majority of us are either going to be working poor or slaves, right. Not great. So again, this is the type of people that Paul is coming to contact with. A lot of slaves, right. A lot of disenfranchised people. A lot of people that are kind of sick and tired of just kind of the rituals of the pagan temples, right. They weren't offering anything to the people. And that's going to be a big thing with Paul. Paul's going to offer them something. Paul's going to offer them not only salvation in the future, the gospel of salvation for all mankind, but what Paul in Christianity is going to offer the people is some type of community. A community of people that could help each other, that could work together, that had a set of ethics, morals, and beliefs as their foundation that they all agreed upon. And that's going to fundamentally kind of alter the thinking of people, all right, particularly in these cities, all right. Small population of rich, right. You're probably talking about like a 5 to 95 percent, 5 percent were really wealthy, right. You had some kind of middle class, very small middle class. And then the rest, like I said, slaves, working poor, just trying to make ends meet, okay. Sometimes you had enough food, sometimes you didn't. Some, you know, you had a lot of kids, obviously. There wasn't access to birth control, that type of thing. You know, four kids, oh, sorry. I apologize. Four kids would be small back in the day, right. You'd have, you know, seven or eight kids. A lot of them, unfortunately, as we know, would not survive to adulthood. And so when we talk about, you know, the ages of when people die, you know, the life expectancy in the ancient world was like at, you know, 40, okay, 40 years old, all right. But does that mean that no one lived to be like 60, 70 years old? No, it didn't. A lot of people lived to be 60 and 70. The thing that drops down life expectancy is infant mortality, okay. If you have something that's doing zero, right, you have one person that, you know, obviously, you know, dies when they're an infant or a baby or something like that, or lives to be three or four years old, and then you have another person that lives to be, say, 100, well, what's your life expectancy going to be? 50. But you're like, wait a minute, this guy lived to be 100 years old. Well, you know, you know, we know how it works, okay. But that's what I'm saying is, were there very old people? Did people live into their late 60s and 70s and sometimes even 80s? Yes, absolutely. Okay. But a lot of people are going to die when they're young, too, because of disease. And that's why we get, you know, oh, people only lived to be 40 years old. That was the life expectancy. Yeah, just by a numbers point of view. But, you know, thousands and thousands of people are going to live into their 60s and 70s and 80s and so on, okay. All right. So we talked about that. All right. So are we getting a good picture of what, you know, the world that Paul is going to go into, right? He knew this world, by the way, brothers and sisters, right? He had one foot, you know, he was a Roman citizen. He grew up in Tarshish, which was a city in Asia Minor. We'll look at that next week, Lord willing. But he was immersed into Judaism. He loved it, right? He was like in a hardcore sect of Judaism, Gamaliel. He knew the law. He knew all of the Psalms. He could probably recite all of the law of Moses by memory. Right? Every day he would pray. We've seen pictures of him at the wall, at the Wailing Wall. He was just kind of rocking back and forth, you know, saying their prayers. There's a movement with a lot of the prayers, okay? And so Paul knew all about it, right? You know, what does he say in Romans? You know, he was a tribe of Benjamin, of the Jew. You know, he's like, listen, I'm the Jew of Jews, right? I know all about it, people. Okay. All right. So what are we dealing with when we're talking about numbers here as far as these cities are concerned? Well, number one, Damascus. We know Damascus is still around. But back in the day, 45,000 people lived there. Ephesus, 51,000. Alexandria, 250,000. All right? And that may even be, you know, more. Like for instance, Rome, 500,000 in Italy. There's going to be times when in Rome that the population is going to be close to a million people. Think about that. A million people. No electricity. There's no pumps. There's no natural gas. Nothing. Just think of it. It's almost an impossibility to really kind of think about it as living in a world. And kind of like putting ourselves in that. It's like, you know, no healthcare. Like I'm going to the doctor's. I don't feel good. Oh, you broke your arm. Well, we've got to go to the hospital. No, I'm sorry. No hospitals around, right? You had to kind of fix that yourself. You broke your foot. Or you have like a heart issue or something like that. Big thing back in the ancient world? Parasites. Sorry to say. You know, intestinal parasites were a big thing in the ancient world. Cholera. These types of things. Unsanitary conditions. All right? We haven't even gotten into preaching the gospel yet, brothers and sisters, right? And so when Paul kind of goes through all of these things, he doesn't kind of mention like the day-to-day struggles that he would have to go through just to kind of preach the gospel. He talks about like some of the big stuff. I just think day-to-day, what am I going to eat in the morning? You know? Or I just got beat up last night. Almost to death. They chucked me out of the city. You know, what's the process to get from that situation to back on your feet and traveling again? You know what I'm saying? Like it doesn't tell us, like the Acts of the Apostles doesn't tell us those details. But unfortunately, it's almost like you're craving those details. Like, okay, well, you know, Paul's, they left him for dead outside the city. You know, they just chuck rocks at this guy and say, get lost. Chuck him out the city. And then everyone thinks he's dead. But no, he's not dead. He just popped right back up. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. It's just, it's an interesting thing. Like how did he get from that position to back on his feet again preaching? It's amazing. Really is amazing. And I think that goes to show you kind of the mentality of Paul, the zeal of Paul, the commitment and love that he had for Christ. He would go through all of these things. And as he says, not only going through all of these physical and mental things, he's also got a what? He's got to kind of manage the Ecclesiastes too, right? He's got to take care of some of these issues. And this is where we get the letter. So and they're beautiful letters, aren't they? They're almost, in some cases, they're beautiful written literature, right? From a literature point of view. But we can see the love that he has for people, right? You can see the love that he has for his brothers and sisters and the love that he has for Christ. And he's going to, throughout all of this, throughout all of his travels, all of the things that he's going through, he takes time to kind of write these beautiful letters to his brothers and sisters, right? And the majority of them are what? They're upbeat, they're positive. You know, something, you know, you kind of have to drop the hammer on some people, understood, but the majority of them is like, listen, show the same love that Christ showed. Show it to each other. Be meek and gentle and kind to each other, right? These types of, you know, what does he say there in Ephesus? Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake. As forgiving you. I just think that that is a wonderful statement of hope, of joy, of community, while he's going through all of this kind of trial and tribulation navigating the Roman world. And he sits down and he writes these kind of beautiful, encouraging words to us. Words to the early day brothers and sisters. He writes to us as well. You know, he didn't care about himself. He didn't care about his own kind of, you know, he says, I count all things like refutes, right? He says, they're all junk to me. They're all trash to me, except for the gospel of Christ. And so just, you know, lastly, kind of cities where, like, we talked about this, right? It's a place where things were happening, right? You want to, maybe you wanted to kind of work yourself into the good graces of one of these noble families or something like that, right? Become, they would sponsor you. They would be your patron, all right? You know how, like, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, they made all of these things? They didn't have another job, you know, they weren't like shearing sheep on the side. They do this in their part-time. This was their full-time job. They had clients, though. They had patrons that would pay their money to work on certain types of things. And so without the wealthy giving, like, Michelangelo and Leonardo and others, you know, Bonicelli and all these other people from the Renaissance, they didn't have the resources. They would never have done the things that they did. So this is a way of resources. You see genius, you apply the resources, and then boom, you know, you get the Sistine Chapel and, you know, all of these other things as well, all the great inventions of Leonardo. And that's how it worked in the ancient world, brothers and sisters. It isn't like you went to the bank and said, I would like a loan for 500,000. I'm going to start my own business. Yeah, do some paintings. I'm really good at the marble and whatnot. You know, it's like, you're not getting a loan. There's no one. But if you do find a rich person that says, oh, you know, he's really into art, and he loves, you know, he loves sculptures and colors. He's really into that, and he's got a little extra money, boom, the other guy. Rich people do that today, right? Wealthy people, some of the prices of this ridiculous art, it's still going on today, all right? And so, if you had some type of skill, you didn't want to just kind of hang out in the hills of Judah, right? Maybe you would, you know, if your mind was someplace else. But other people, other people didn't want to just stay in the hills of Judah and live a nice, quiet life. I want to go to the city, baby. So the action is, let it ride, right? And so this is what happens. It was a place of learning, all kinds of different temples, people everywhere. You're running into different types of people, and you can understand in this environment how quickly a new religion and a new way of living would spread, right? You, Paul talks to a sailor, sailor man, right? Blah, blah, blah. Talks about Jesus Christ, this, that, and the other thing. Sailor looks at him, okay, I got you, I got, sounds a lot to my neighbor, the Jewish guy. He sounds a lot like this, oh, yeah, yeah, it's a lot like that. Let me tell you something about Jesus. Well, anyways, he tells you, you get on your ship, you go out to Spain from Rome, now you are carrying this colonel. Maybe you talk to somebody. You say, you know what, this guy really made an impression on me. And so, you know, you've got it now, and this is how it's going to, maybe another guy comes in contact with you, Ben, right, who came in contact with Apollos or something. You know, we don't know how the Holy Spirit worked in this situation, but it's fascinating. Right? Eventually, it's going to spread through the whole Roman world. You guys, I'm sure, have heard the old maxim, all roads lead to Rome. I'm going to, I have a couple of pictures to show you that that indeed is true, okay. But, you know, Rome, you know, they didn't build roads because they were magnanimous to people. Oh, you need a road, sure, buddy, I'll build you a road. You need help with the transportation, do you? They didn't, they weren't, they didn't build roads for that. They built roads for one reason, to get their war machine to the people that they wanted the war on, and this is why there's so many roads. Particularly, as we're going to see, the roads go north because that's where the Gauls were, the Celts, the Celts of which I am, you know, descended from, and so the Romans are going to have these massive battles, as we know with the Celts up in what's modern day France, okay. It was called Gaul, and there's going to be a big slaughter up there, but anyways. So, these roads are first built for them to get the allegiance to different places. They're going to be used by everybody, though. The road is built, now it's like, oh, nice, flat area, I can take my goods. It's a lot easier than walking on these little paths through up and down foothills and in forests and stuff like that. Look at this, nice, straight road, and then they would use it as well. And so they would go before they would build these roads to go up to, say, like up into Germany or something like that to fight the barbarians. And then afterward, when they were done, they didn't rip up the road, here you go, here's your road, and so they would use that. People that were traveling would use the roads. Traders, obviously, common people. They weren't safe, though. A lot of times they weren't safe. There were areas on the road, there were a lot of bandits, you'd get robbed. This was one of the things why, you know, like travelers, traders, overland traders particularly, they were always armed. They always had like a contingency. Some of the bigger caravans, right, we're talking about 400, 500 different types of animals, they would have an armed escort, right? They would have an armed escort. In fact, we know about this because in Ezra, he didn't want

a guard. He didn't want the Persians to give him soldiers. He said, I'm going to trust in God. I don't need your soldiers. So this is interesting. The first group of Jews that came back from Babylon to Jerusalem did it without an escort, without an armed escort. They did it themselves, which is pretty scary. And so there were scary spots as well as they went to different locations, okay? Thievery, you know, robbery. Well, we know, the Good Samaritan, right? What happened to this guy? He was just going from Jerusalem down into Jericho. What happened? He got beat up and he got robbed. Happened all the time, okay? And Paul talks about this, right? Perils, perils here, troubles here, fearful. You know, I could deep dive into the psychology of Paul while he went through all of these things. Like there had to be a time, I'm sure. He says this a couple times in his writings. We despaired even unto death. Remember he said that? Well, look at that later on. He despaired even unto death. He's like he just wanted to die. It was so grievous to him. So difficult. And it just shows you the type of individual. A lot of these stones would get slippery when wet, all right? So you didn't have a lot of good traction. The Roman soldiers actually had little nubs of metal on there, kind of like cleats on the bottom of their boots, their sandal boots. And that's how they kind of kept traction, particularly when you have a mass of men crashing up against you. You wanted to have cleats to kind of stay in your position. Yeah, so long distances. Again, if you can't do it by ship, you know, obviously there's places on the earth that you can't get to directly by ship. And so what would happen is obviously you'd ship a large, you know, shipload full of goods and then it would be transported to different places, kind of like we do. You know, the big ships come in unloaded by the spy software Chinese cranes and then they're put on what? They're put on trains or trucks, right? Usually trains, they go and they, you know, trains can haul massive amounts of, you know, stuff, right? And that's how we do it. We're still doing the same thing just on a larger, more, you know, just on a larger and a more, not intimate, but more complex, more complex way. And we're using modern technology and internal combustion engines, that type of thing. All right, so a couple, just a couple right here. Number one, you can see all the different roads, where they went. You can see the trade routes as well in the Mediterranean Sea. Look at all the different shipping routes in the Mediterranean Sea. He's going to use, he's going to take advantage of this, okay? Paul's going to take advantage of this. He's going to travel everywhere via ship. You know, you go to like Joppa, which was the main, the main shipping in Caesarea in Israel at this time, hundreds of ships would be coming in and out of those places constantly. Boom, unloading things, loading things back on, you know? It was just boom, boom, boom. So, roads, shipping, shipping lanes, that type of thing. All right, pretty complex, pretty complex world that Paul is going to be having to deal with. All right, I got this off of Facebook or Twitter or something like that. All roads lead to Rome, a data visualization unveiling mobility patterns. Ooh, at a very large scale, created with routing algorithms. So, this is all the different, you know, this is AI now. And they put together all different roads, okay? And you can see there's like, what, three or four main roads that lead out of Rome. But then there's all kinds of smaller ones that connect to those bigger tributaries that lead all the way into Rome. So, pretty, and guess what, brothers and sisters? You go there, they're still using the same, the same paths and the same roads today

that were, the Romans made them bigger, but they had been there for thousands and thousands of years. Like, I was watching Rick Steves travel, great show, okay? And he was talking about the Swiss Alps, and one of the roads, the Dolomite Road, he said that this road was one of the passes that have been used for thousands and thousands of years to get from Italy up until Germany and also up until Gaul, which is modern day France. I thought that was pretty interesting. It's like, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it, let's just leave. So, a lot of these roads in Europe, Roman roads, they just repaved them. They started another thing, too, like, they were comparing like a modern road with all the potholes and asphalt and everything. Like, this one is trash. This road from Rome 2,000 years ago is still in operation. It's not that easy, but they do have a point. Okay, is this? Yes, Steve? Somebody was saying that the trains now, when you look at a train track, it's, you know, the width of a train track. You wonder, like, why is it that wide? Have you heard this story? I have, yeah. Go ahead, tell it. It's the same width as the chariot wheels. Is that true? Yes, that's right. So, if you, the chariot wheels, right, it's the gauge of the track is very close. I think it's actually almost exactly the same, and they use that as kind of a, you know, a measurement that they could use, you know. From the ancient world, Steve, we still have it. It's still affecting our modern world. It's awesome. All right, this is probably one or two slides here. One of the Greek poets, Hestoid, said that there were 33,000 gods in the world, Roman world and other places, okay. Roman gods, Egyptian gods, North African gods, Mesopotamian gods, temples everywhere. Thirty-three thousand gods, right? The ancient man was very fearful of the gods, okay, because the gods, for the most part, particularly the Greek and Roman gods, really didn't care about people. In fact, the gods, the Greek gods, had a lot of the same characteristics as people, like negative characteristics, jealous, vengeful, you know, without pity, without mercy. They're no compassion, that type of thing. And so, you know, a lot of writers would say that, you know, human beings are kind of just like playthings for the gods. They had a different understanding of their relationship with their gods. It was one of fear, that at any time, a god could get angry. Zeus could get mad at you, Tammy, get mad at you, boom, it's over, it's over. He's been saying some stuff about you, and so there was a lot of religious anxiety, like, oh, what are the gods going to do? Are the gods going to send rain, right? Are we going to have a good harvest, that type of thing? Along with this, there were also very secretive kind of mystery cults, religious societies that were dedicated to one special god, okay, the cult of Mithras. Mithras. This involved a lot of killing of a, it was like in an underground place. There was a goat, not a goat, an ox that would be killed, and then the blood would be slowly kind of sprinkled on the priest and stuff like that. It was a whole ritual. But Isis was a big one. You know, these different types of cults, okay, that were secretive and they were just dedicated to one particular god. There were oracles. You would go to find out, you know, what was going to happen in your life. You would go to different oracles with a question, and hopefully you would get some advice. Like the one in Delphi, okay, that's kind of the most important one, the one, the most famous one that was located in Greece. And people would go on pilgrimages to go to the oracle of Delphi. Like that was important. Before any big, like a general goes on campaign or something, there's a big battle. Oftentimes they would go. Like Alexander the Great went to the oracle of Delphi.

Other great, you know, Greek generals would go to the oracle of Delphi. And they would have a question, you know, am I going to be victorious, this type of thing. And so there was a whole like scam going on at the oracle, okay, because the way that they had the temple set up, there's two things. Number one, they had kind of like, not crawl spaces, but walk spaces between the wall and the outside wall. There was like a little walkway or a little hallway in between that a priest could kind of sneak in, and he could listen to what they were talking about, okay. They would get all of this information. He would go and he would share that with the girl who was the oracle, okay. So now you have some background information, number one, all right. Number two, the girl would be intoxicated by wine, number one, and also they would put like hallucinogens, like mushrooms, okay, mushrooms today, call them magic mushrooms, whatever. Psilocybin, I think it's called, okay. And they would put, ground up some mushrooms, put it in the wine, okay. So now you have a, you know, a psychological now, okay, and this is the kicker. It was underneath like a volcanic fault, okay. There was like a crack in the ground. You can actually go and see this crack in the ground. During this time, small amounts of gas would be coming out of these cracks. And so not only do you have this young woman who is intoxicated with mushrooms and also wine, now she is breathing in these fumes, and it's causing her to kind of say really like cryptic crazy things, like in languages that couldn't be understood, word associations that wouldn't make sense to the average guy. Good thing we have the priests though. The priests were there, and they could translate for the oracle. And with this background information, a lot of times, you know, right on baby, you got it, okay. So, interesting. This was very important. We kind of smile and smirk and hee hee ha ha. This was deadly serious to ancient man, to the Romans, deadly serious. He didn't make fun of the oracle. Good way to get killed, Nate, cracking jokes about the oracle of Delphi. And then obviously, you had, you know, astrology. Astrology was big during this time, different phases. Remember, you know, at nighttime, they didn't just turn on the TV or they were on their device, you know, whatever. It was nothing. Pitch black for the most part, outside of, you know, a little lamp or something like that or a fire. And so what did people do to kind of, you know, they would look up, they would see the stars, and there was no pollution, light pollution, right. And so the movements of the celestial objects in the sky, big, big business, big business. Like if you understood astrology and the movements of the different things, just think about that type of stuff. Like that's secret knowledge. You knew when the next eclipse was. Oh man, that's some big time secret knowledge, okay. And so a lot of this stuff, and Paul is going to run into some of these people that we're going to look at, right. He's going to run into some of these characters, the musicians, the magicians, those type of people. Different types of amulets that they would keep, right. That they would, they had special power in the amulet of the Tasman, they would call, right. And so it would protect you. You know, oftentimes people, you know, wearing a crucifix or something like that, something along those lines, all right. And so these amulets in these special, you would go to a, like a woman that knew chants and knew incarnations, kind of like Saldi with the Witch of Endor. But you would go and they would, they could put a curse on your enemy. You go to one of these ladies, you put a curse on your enemy. It's actually a death sentence. You find out you were putting curses on people, gone. Death sentence. In fact, in the Middle Ages, and this comes out of this, but, you know, a lot of times if like a king wanted to get rid of somebody, right, they would trump up charges of witchcraft. And, you know, that type of thing and say, yeah, he was, he put a curse on the king. This is, remember when the king got sick? Yeah, and they put a curse on him, gone. But watch yourself, buddy.

Transcript

So, last week, if I remember correctly, we had gone over just, you know, because what the ancient world looked like, you know, in the time of Paul. We're looking at the Apostle Paul. I always like to kind of give some background information on the world so we can actually understand what is going on during this time. It never really made sense to me just to talk about a person and their actions and their decisions and stuff like that. And how we're really understanding the environment that this person was in. So, it's really, it's important to understand the environment that not only the Jewish people were in, but by extension, the Apostle Paul as well. And how that affected the psyche of Jewish people living in a pagan world, a hostile pagan world a lot. And the same with Paul. How did that affect their psyche? Well, look at that. You know, some people chose different paths. Some Jews chose the path of integration. We're going to go into the Rome or this other city. We're going to set up a little community. We'll do our own thing. Other people said, no, we're going to stay right here in the land. We're not associating with them at all. This is the land that God has given us. We're not going. And I think those two types of Jewish people had a very different outlook on

the world. Okay? And so, that's going to be an issue that is going to rear its ugly head as we go on here. So, what is this all about? Major revolts and riots in the empire. I want everyone, maybe you've already been staring at this for a little bit, but take one minute and just take a look at that.

And then I'd like some feedback on what you think is going on in this map. Major revolts and riots from 4 BC, okay, to 200 AD. Every fire represents a major revolt in the Roman world. So, what do you think? What is, Ben, what is something that jumps out at you? Okay, yes, around the frontier, very good, at the extent of Roman control, very good. Somebody else? Going once, going twice. How about, let's take a look at the area of what is known today as Israel, okay? Ben made a great point that a lot of these revolts are happening, for the most part, on the edges of the Roman Empire, and that's absolutely true. Unfortunately, for the Romans, the Jews were on the edge of their empire and their area of control, and also for the Romans, the Jews were right next to their hated enemies, the Romans' hated enemy, which were the Parthians or the Persians. And so, the Jews were right there on the border, and that was no bueno for the Romans because what the Romans wanted was a stable area, a nice buffer zone between the Persians and themselves. The Jewish people were not giving them a stable buffer zone at all. In fact, if we look at here in the corner, the bottom right-hand corner, look at all the fires in that area, okay, particularly like Alexandria. I think we talked about this. There was a sizable Jewish community in Alexandria, and they actually had a lot of battles with the Greeks. The Greeks hated the Jews. The Jews hated the Greeks. It wasn't great. And then, you know, of course, you see the revolts that happen in and around Judah, in and around Israel. I count one, two, three, four, five anyways, okay? So, this was an area of unrest. This was an area that was constantly on the minds of the Roman government because they were concerned about it. And so, I just want to kind of give you, you know, a little sense of what, you know, how the Romans looked at it. The Romans didn't look at it as the Jews would just allow a little backwater. They, in some cases, they were, but they were also extremely important to the security of the Roman Empire. So, all right, moving on. So, let's take a look at this, Jews in the Gentile World. Just a quick comment on the right-hand side about the

picture that we have up there. This is, this is of a biblical scene.

Anyone know? Anyone venture a guess on what this scene is presenting to us? Oh, Ben is, Ben's the A student, this is why he sat up front. So, this is, this is, Moses is found by Pharaoh's daughter, drawing him out of the water, right? And you have the different people. You can see the little, the little, you know, the Ark of Vorush is there. They kind of made it like a, like a little, like a building or something like that. It's interesting. Now, here's another little interesting thing about this. This was found in a Jewish synagogue, this painting, this fresco, in a Jewish synagogue on one of the outposts on the border of, with the Persians and the Romans, okay? So, Jews were right there on the, on the border as well. Right down the street from this synagogue, what was, what was there as well? Anyone know? This is around 200 A.D. Right down the street from the synagogue. There was a Christian church, a house church, and they have this. You can actually go, I think I showed some pictures of this. But, so this, this just shows you that, you know, right down the street from this synagogue, in Dora Ryopa, you had a very small house church that was going on in the 200s and 80s. And so, even during this time, you had interaction between the early day Christians and the, and the Jewish communities. Unfortunately, they're going to grow further and further apart as we're going to find out, you know, and, you know, we have the situation that we have now. All right. So, we know that the Babylonian captivity is going to happen around 600 B.C., right? We're talking about 2500 years ago. Okay? We know that they were dispersed. The Assyrians came down first into Israel, the scattered tribes, the lost tribes of the, you know, we have no idea where they were taken. The same with some of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity as well. They lost to history. We know that there was a sizable community in Babylon for hundreds and hundreds of years of Jewish people. I don't think there's anybody, I think, I read someplace that there's like two Jews now living in Iraq or something like that. It's crazy. And we know that there was a massive trend, you know, they, massive population exchange, you know, in 1948, the Arabs kicked all the Jews out and they had to go to Israel. But anyways, so, the Hellenization of the ancient world is going to have an impact on the Jews and the Hellenization just means the spreading of Greek culture in language, in their philosophy, in their outlook on life, that type of thing. Okay? And so, in a lot of ways, through war and conquest, Alexander the Great is going to spread Greek ideals to everybody, including the Jews, including the Jews that were living in Israel at this time. And some of the Jews are going to go with Alexander the Great on his adventures. And there's going to be Jewish soldiers in Alexander's army and Alexander is going to give them certain, you know, land and, you know, cities that they can live in. So anyways, so they're going to come in contact with all kinds of different peoples. Antiochus Epiphanes, without getting into it, Antiochus Epiphanes, was a Greek who controlled the area of Syria. Without getting into it, Alexander the Great is going to die. He's going to divide his giant empire into four different sections. They're going to all fight each other. Boo, boo, boo. You have the Antioch up here. You have the Ptolemies down here, down in Egypt. Boom, boom. They're always fighting. Anyways, Antiochus Epiphanes is kind of one of the great scoundrels of history and Jewish history. He's actually going to attack Jerusalem and he's going to attack Jerusalem, destroy a portion of it, and take Jews captive. We don't really talk about this, but Daniel makes mention of it, okay, in the 12th, 11th to 12th chapter. Anyways, he talks about Antiochus Epiphanes in very kind of cryptic language, but he is going to, you know, destroy portions of Jerusalem. He's going to kill tens of thousands of Jews and he's going to take them captive as well, enslave them, and this is going to be the catalyst for the Maccabee Rebellion, okay, which was a group of very devout Jews that said we've had enough of this. We need our own country. We need to control our borders. We need to control our own culture because we're getting destroyed by these Greeks. These Greeks are coming in and doing whatever they want, and so the Maccabees and other people are saying, look, this needs to stop. We cannot have this influence over and over again. We're losing our culture. We're losing our identity. We're being scattered to the winds, and so the Maccabees are going to revolt against the Greeks, and they're going to be victorious. And in fact, they're going to establish, I think for over 100 years, 150 years, they're going to establish an independent Jewish state during this time. Now, was it from the House of David? No, but the Maccabees and their descendants are going to control this area. They're going to be kings. They're going to be leaders, and this is, you know, Herod's going to come out of this as well. He wasn't a Maccabee. I believe Herod married into the Maccabee family, and he's going to kind of wheel and deal and become Herod the Great. Anyways, there's going to be a deep divide, like a palpable hatred, between the Greeks and the Jews, okay. They're just going to be so different. The Greeks are going to look at, they only believe in one God. Might as well be an atheist then, right. Look at all these kind of rituals that they go through. You know, circumcision was a big one for the Greeks, right. Weirdos. But the thing is, without doing a deep dive into circumcision, but, you know, the Jews, there were other peoples as well that practiced the circumcision as well, notably the Egyptians, okay. So it wasn't like this weird thing. The Greeks were just looking for stuff, you know, to get bothered by. A lot of riots are going on, okay, between the Greeks and the Jews. So, you know, to counter this, and this seems very comfortable to us, I think, okay, to counter this influence from the Greek world. Well, the Jews said, you know, we've got to remain, you know, committed to our traditions, committed to Yahweh, committed to the rituals of the law. This is important. Not only is it a religious thing, but it's a cultural thing as well. Like, the identity of a people in the ancient world was always tied to religious beliefs. Always. And so if you destroy a god or a temple in the minds of the ancients, you've destroyed a people. And so the Jews are understanding this, you know. Every time someone goes into Jerusalem and takes something or kills people, comes into our land, we lose a piece of ourselves. And so this is why these revolts are going to happen, and they're going to become, this is where the Pharisees are going to come out from, okay. And the Pharisees are going to get, and rightfully so, they get a bad rap because, you know, they were putting all these different burdens on the people. They loved the power and the control that their religious positions afforded them. But in a time of kind of upheaval, it was the Pharisees that kind of coalesced the people, the poor people, and impressed upon them the importance of tradition. Impressed upon them the importance of Yahweh, obviously, but also their culture. They tied it all together, and they became kind of the traditional, the traditional religious Jews that we know from the New Testament, okay. It all came out of this period. And so one thing that I find fascinating, and I give this a lot of thought sometimes, you know, God uses situations, and he uses events of this time period to bring about his purpose. All of these things created the environment for the birth of Christ. God chose this very specific time period using all of these events to bring his son into the world, okay, at that particular time. And I think it's just amazing, you know, God, and God in our lives as well. Sometimes we can't see it. You know, the Jews, the faithful Jews couldn't see this, but God was working. He was working in the world to bring about his purpose. Daniel talks about that too, right, the watchers, the angels, you know, the, what did he say, the prince of Persia withstood me for a certain amount. And I think a lot of this, you know, is going on here as well. So there was a separation, a major separation between the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews, okay. And, you know, there's a lot of disdain on both sides. There's a lot of hatred on both sides, right. The Greeks hated the Jews. The Jews hated the Greeks. And there was arrogance on both sides, right. The Jews were saying, you know, we're the chosen people. Hashem, Yahweh has blessed us. We have the oracles of God. These Greeks are nothing. They're dirt to us, okay. This is how some people thought, right. And there's still sects of Jews that think like that, okay. And then you had the Greeks looking down on the Jews as well as were uptown. So it wasn't a great situation. And this is where the idea of a religious martyr comes in. This is the idea where the zealots come into. You know, the zealots were a group of people where the Pharisees, it wasn't good enough. You know, we've got to use violence to get rid of some of these people. You know, we got rid of the Greeks with the Macedonians, but guess who rolled in after the Greeks? The Romans, okay. And the Romans were a different people. Romans had a different outlook on life. A little more, you know, they wanted to control this area. The Greeks, for the most part, didn't like the Jews, but kind of let them do their thing. When the Romans roll in around 60 B.C. with Ptolemy, they take over the whole place. You're a province of Rome. Congratulations, right. Now, this is going to afford certain people like Paul the ability to get citizenship. Because in Tarshish, where there was a sizable Jewish population that we'll look at, Lord willing, next week, a lot of them had citizenship. It was a Roman city. They were born in Rome. You know, they were born with Roman citizenship. That was important. So just think about that. We have a time period in Roman history where they were giving Jewish people, Jews, citizenship. They were full citizens of Rome. That was important. There was power in that. And we know that Paul is going to use that power that he has to help his fellow, you know, Christians, but also to help himself, right, to get out of another beating or something like that, right. And I love, we'll look at this, but I love the way that Paul goes after, you know, the centurion. You know, no, they beat us in public. You're going to apologize in public, you know, different stuff like that. And there's a great line with, you know, Paul tells the centurion, you know, I'm a free man. And the centurion goes, with a great price I bought this freedom. How did you get it? How did you get it? How did a Jew get, you know, citizenship? Oh, Natasha's, buddy, sorry. Can't take it away from me. Let's see, many Jews leave Israel. Okay, yeah, Jews are going to leave Israel for better prospects. We know that. They're going to settle in the big cities. And you know what? The Jews are going to, you know, as they kind of move throughout Europe and North Africa or stuff like that, they're going to choose the cities, right, to go in. There's a lot of opportunity, a lot of trade, a lot more interaction, that type of thing. In other words, Jews are not leaving the land of Israel to go farm, all right? They're looking for other opportunities in these big cities, whether it's Rome, Antioch, or, you know, Alexandria, a huge population of Jews living in Alexandria, huge, like 200,000 Jews living in Alexandria. And this is going to be the time period when the Septuagint, okay, the Old Testament is going to be translated from Hebrew into Greek, okay? Greek was like the lingua franca, okay, the language that everybody used, kind of like the language that everybody uses in the

airplane industry, aviation, right, which is what language? Aviation language? That is correct. And that aviation language would be airplane English, is that what you said? Airplane English, perfect. Yeah, it's, the language they use is English, okay, and so this is the same thing, like Greek was spoken particularly in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, that was the language everybody used. And so if you wanted to get ahead, you wanted to do something, you had to learn the language. And that's what the Jews did, they go there and they learned the language, you know, you have to, you know, like if you don't speak Latin in the ancient world and you go to Rome and try to make a living and get ahead, not happen, okay? All right, questions, comments before we move on? Fantastic. All right, let's take a look at this, dispersion of the Jews, we already talked about that, right? It was a state of being, and so they had this connection, the Jews in ancient world had this connection to the land, they had the connection to Jerusalem, and they would go to Jerusalem, a lot of them, you know, I think there was three times that they had to present themselves to the temple, okay? The major one was Passover, all right, and so that was the big thing. And so we know from the Old Testament, from the New Testament, that tens of thousands of people came from all over the world, Jews are going to come and worship here during the Passover. And we know from Psalm 137, this is kind of a foundational aspect of Judaism, the remembrance of Jerusalem, if I forget the old Jerusalem, right? Psalm 137, very sad Psalm, but the Jews keep this kind of, you know, in the back of their minds, to always remember Jerusalem, all right. You know, the Jews weren't just like, you know, they weren't just like 5,000, you know, Jews throughout the ancient world, the Roman world, sizeable amount, five to seven million Jews are lived in the ancient world. There's what now? Sixteen million in the world today, so, you know, they were doing pretty well in the ancient world. They were doing very well. They had their own little communities in these different cities, they would set up a synagogue, and this is going to be the kind of the center of worship for the Jewish people in all of these different cities, these major cities. Wow, it's almost as if God was kind of setting up a foundation for the teachings of Christ to spread to the Gentile world, weird, weird. So you have all of these little centers of worship for the Jewish people, it's perfect. It's perfect for some, maybe a traveler that is, you know, maybe has intimate knowledge of the law, has respect from the Jewish community. Imagine if someone like that would be converted, and then we sent this guy to all these different places. Imagine we could spread this message. Hmm, we'll see, see if that happens. Synagogues have become the center of worship in Jewish culture. We talked about this already, but I just want to reiterate it. State of tension between the Greek Roman world and the Jews, okay? Always this tension. Jews are different, right? They're obnoxious. Sometimes the Romans call them obnoxious. They are obnoxious with their religious beliefs. They're obnoxious with their rituals and their, you know, their diet. Oh, so obnoxious. I think it's kind of like when you have like, and listen, I apologize to all the vegans out there, okay? It's kind of like someone that's really into veganism, right? It's like they're always talking about the diet and what they're doing, all right? And, you know, a certain amount of that is going to be healthy, right? But just, you know, it's one of those things like this guy is so annoying about the veganism, you know, did you know, you know, I'm probably just isolating a lot of people. Well, I am vegan, Richard.

All right. So the synagogue gives them a place to center themselves, a community center and a place of worship. So just imagine this, okay? This, and we can understand this because in a lot of ways, this is our place to center ourselves again, right? We use Christ to center ourselves again. And so they're going to use these synagogues to center themselves, you know, just think about it, every day you're getting pressured. Pressure, pressure, paganism, paganism, the Roman world, the Roman world. Ah, you can go there on Friday nights like, oh, you see the pictures of the, you know, all the frescoes, there'd be frescoes reminding the people of different events in the Old Testament. You have Jewish food there, you know, you're speaking in Aramaic or Hebrew, whatever it is, it's like, ah, this is the area, this is where, this is my home, okay? And a lot of times, you know, they were spiritual homes to these Jewish people that were remembering the past, but also kind of in the modern world, which to us is the ancient world, but it was the modern world, right? And I think some of the trials and tribulations, some of the things that they had to go through, and we have to go through too as a community, okay? We're a small community. The Jews in relation to everybody else, we're a small community. And so we have to be mindful of that, you know. Is our ecclesia a place to center ourselves? Is our ecclesia a place where people can come to be reminded of the things of God? And that's what was going on in these synagogues. All right, very quickly, just, I want to just show you a couple maps here that kind of give us an idea of what's going on. The Jewish dispersion routes, you can see in the green there, you can see where they went, all right, major cities, boom. They went to Mesopotamia, but look, they started in the east and they moved west, and they went to all of the different cities here, even up in modern day France. Doesn't look like there's anything in Britain up there, but eventually there was. And here are some of the synagogues. Here are some of the towns where synagogues have been found, okay? Remnants of synagogues, and you can see they're all scattered everywhere. Look at it, even up in the Black Sea, up by the Crimea, right, one, two, three. There's still Jews in the Crimea region as well. And so wherever there was trade, wherever there was people, wherever there was communities and cities, for the most part you're going to find a Jewish community there. And if there wasn't a community, a synagogue, there was still a group of people in fact, and we'll look at this in Acts, where they went, Paul went, where was it, was it in Philippi, where they found, they were down by the river, okay, and he found women worshiping down by the river. And so that was an area where they used to worship before there was a synagogue, before there was enough Jews, I think you needed to have 12 or 13 male Jews in order to have a synagogue, and so if you didn't have that, they would look for other places, and that would be one of the places that would be the river, okay? All right, I want to save, let's do it, let's do it, okay. Here's an important thing to remember, it wasn't just Jews and Gentiles, okay, and there was no like in between, there were proselytes as well. In other words, there were pagans that had converted to Judaism. All right, increased Jewish numbers in the Roman world. We're not going to look at these in Isaiah, but the general theme is that the Jewish people were to be a light to the Gentiles, and by extension, Christ would be that light as well, he'd fill the whole world with his light. But it's starting now with these little dots of synagogues, little communities of Jews everywhere, here, there, and everywhere, okay. Here's a quote from Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Pedat in the third century, God sent Israel into exile among the nations only for the purpose of acquiring converts, okay, that's interesting. Are the Jewish people known for their conversions? In other words, do we have Jews knocking on our door? We don't, that's not how they do it, they're not aggressive in that way. What they do is they set up a synagogue, and they allowed Gentiles that were interested to come, to listen, okay. So they had an open door policy as long as you were respectful. They allowed Gentiles to listen, okay. Here's another one from Josephus, we all know Josephus, all the time they, the Jews, were attracting to their worship a great number of Greeks making them virtually members of their community, interesting. So around the first century, you had Greeks who were interested in the Jews, and they converted to Judaism. Every Friday, Saturday, they'd be at the temple, or in this case, the synagogue. All right, and then lastly, Church of Adolf von Harnack, okay. It is utterly impossible to explain the large number of total Jews in the diaspora by the mere fact of the fertility of Jewish families. We must assume a very large number of pagans trooped over to Yahweh. That was real interesting to me. So even before Paul is on the scene, you already have what Paul refers to, when you can look these up in Acts 13 and Acts 16, Paul refers to them as God-fearers, fears of God. They were there, they were Gentiles, but they had converted from being a Gentile, from being a pagan, to Judaism. So imagine you have these, and we'll stop here, imagine you have this person, and he just converted to Judaism like three or four years ago, right? And then the Apostle Paul comes scrolling in, and he's like, you know what, I'm changing my religious beliefs again. You just got here! Yeah, see you later.

Transcript

All right, this was the last slide, brothers and sisters, that I believe we looked at.

And again, just to kind of get our minds going on what we've been talking about the last couple of weeks. This is our third class, we've got one more I think, is that our third, yeah, third class. We've got one more after this, so just a reminder that the children of Israel, because of the diaspora and because of the fact that they were conquered by the Babylonians, but also began to spread out into the Greek world with Alexander the Great. I think we talked about last week that some of the Jewish people, Jewish soldiers joined up with Alexander and kind of got to see the world, and it kind of opened up their eyes to a lot of different things, and very similar, brothers and sisters, where the way that the Middle East was opened up during the crusades to the Europeans. The Europeans, through conquest obviously, went into the Holy Land and took Jerusalem on the first crusade. But more importantly, there was this interchange between the Muslim Arabs that were living in that area and the Jewish people as well with the European knights, and so cultural exchange happened. And the same thing is going to happen with the Jews, they're going to spread out outside of Jerusalem and outside of the land of Israel. They're going to look for economic prosperity, and

they're also looking for different ways for trade and things of that nature. So they're going to spread out, they're going to be living in all types of the big cities in the Mediterranean world, both in the Greek-controlled areas and also the Roman-controlled areas. And we looked at this, right?

God sent Israel into exile among the nations only for the purpose of requiring converts. And so a lot of this stuff is taken from Isaiah, from the 49th chapter in Isaiah 60, a light to the Gentiles. And so a lot of the Jewish people, as they spread out because of the diaspora, the scattering of the Jewish people brought their customs, brought their ideas, and brought their religious beliefs as well into these different cities. You know, they were welcomed as long as they paid their taxes and stuff like that, but as we've seen in the past, there was some friction, wasn't there, with the Greek speakers and the Jewish speakers as well. But there were God-fearers, and let's just take a look at one of these, in Acts the 13th chapter. And when we get into, probably next week, when we look at some of the journeys of Paul, he uses this phrase quite a bit, but in the 13th chapter, verse 16. And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a riverside where prayer was wont to be made and we sat down and spoke unto the women which resorted there. So there were women by the river who were what? Well they were praying. And so there's some speculation here at Philippi that a synagogue, they didn't have enough people for the synagogue, and so a lot of times the Jews, to remember Jerusalem, would go down to a river and to pray there. So yeah, it's interesting that a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple was there, whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized in her household, she besought us saying, if ye have judgment to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there, and she constrained us. And so here we have Paul kind of finding other believers, you know, Jews that were there, but also Gentiles who were called God-fearers. In 13 verse 16, then Paul stood up beckoning with his hand and said, men of Israel, right, so that's one category, men of Israel, and his second category, and you people that fear God, listen to me. Okay, and so there were other people outside of men of Israel. They were Gentiles, they were God-fearers, they were interested in Judaism, they were interested in this idea of a one God. They saw most likely the religious strength and the communal strength of a synagogue, and they wanted a piece of it, they're like, oh, they were welcomed there. This is another thing, too, brothers and sisters, that sometimes you don't think about. The Jews did not proselytize, they didn't go and preach the message of Judaism through the world. That isn't how, you know, you don't have Jews knocking on the door talking to you about the law of Moses, that isn't how they roll. But you know, they did preach, I guess you could say, by the communities that they would set up in these different cities based upon the synagogue, and you know, people would be, you know, they're looking for something, they're in this pagan world, it's a jumble, you know, there's a lot of confusion on religious things, and then you have this one group of people that just believe in one God, and they are committed, baby, right? You can imagine just kind of very, you know, conservative Jews how different they would be from the Romans. You know, their day was very different from a regular Roman day. And this had appeal to some of the Roman citizens, maybe to some of the slaves that were there as well, you know, you know, this sense of community. This is one of the things that unfortunately was lacking in the Roman world, particularly with the underclasses, they just were constantly working all the time, particularly slaves, you know, you don't have control over, you don't have physical control over your body, you're told to do this and you're told to do that. And so it was demoralizing a lot of times. And so something like a synagogue where people come together and to worship together and to support it, it was very important to a lot of people in the ancient world. And this is something that's going to, you know, you have the, you know, Judaism, but out of Judaism comes early, you know, early age Christianity, and that as well was also very appealing to people as well, this idea of community, helping each other out. What does it say in Acts that they pulled all of their resources together? They had all things common. Like that, that isn't something that you naturally found in the Roman world, right? This idea of kind of communal living together, sharing all of your things. Very different. All right? Questions, comments before we go on here? Very good. Quick map that I found interesting just to give us a scale of travel during this time, and this really fits very nicely obviously with Paul because we know of three journeys that he took, right? We maybe think like the three journeys of Paul, and we just kind of gloss over that sometimes, like the three journeys of Paul. I think this map kind of figure, tells us a little more information about what that entailed. This was not an easy thing to do, okay? If you find, so find Italy for me, okay? Judy, you found Italy? Judy! Judy, where's Afghanistan on this picture? It's not on, that's a trick question, trick question. All right, so we found Rome, that little red dot in the middle of the boot of Italy, okay? Anything that is blue, okay? Any city or village or area in the blue would take you anywhere between three to seven days to get to, depending on how far it was, okay? So yeah, under a week travel in the blue areas. The green areas, well, it's going to be a little longer than a week, could be a week and a half to two weeks. Yellow, you're pushing three weeks, four weeks. Anything in the red, you're looking at a month plus, when we're talking about travel. The combination of taking a ship or, you know, walking, riding an animal, that type of thing. So you know, travel today, you know, you can't jump on a plane and be out on the west coast today in like eight hours, right? Less than that, right? Probably six hours, right? Obviously was not the case, we didn't have jet power during this time. So anything in the red is going to be a major journey. But anything outside of the blue is going to take you at least two to three weeks to get to. And so Paul, in his travels, is going to be spending months and months, in fact, when you look at all of his three journeys, years on the road, and what that entails, and we'll look at that probably next, our next class, Second Chronicles, Corinthian, sorry, the eleventh chapter, where he kind of goes through all of his, all the trials that he went through to travel. Alright, so let's get to actually the place where Saul most likely, well, not most likely, where he grew up and got an education to a certain degree. We know that he is going to, at some point in time, most likely with his sister, is going to move to Jerusalem. How old Paul was when he moved to Jerusalem to become part of the religious school of we're not told, but most likely it was when he was like a teenager, because usually that's when you made a decision to kind of go to one of these schools, these religious schools to be taught a really in-depth, like a deep dive, you're going to become what, a doctor of the law? Well, where do you go to be a doctor of the law? Well, you go to one of the schools that the Jews had set up specifically for teaching of the law and the intricacies of the law. But before we look at that, let's go back, well, where was Paul born? We know that he was born in Tarshish. Tarshish was not like a backwater city at all. It was a main city. In fact, you could kind of compare it to one of the major cities of America, a New York or like a Chicago or something along those lines, Los Angeles, a big, big city. In the ancient world, 250,000 people, okay? Historians and archaeologists say that in Rome was probably a million people somewhere around there, okay, at its height, and so this was not a small city. Think about in the ancient world, 250,000 people living in one area and what that entailed. It was bustling. You had all of these people doing this, that, and the other thing. If you ever watch any travel shows or anything, I like watching Rick Steves travel with the PBS, all right, Settle Down Nerd, okay, I get it, you do a lot of PBS, do you? That's a shocker.

So when he travels around, he goes to these cities, particularly these European cities or Middle East, the cities like Cairo, they do one on Cairo, and it's just bustle everywhere. You go down to the, there's no really big supermarkets or anything. You go down to the market and get everything. This is how they're doing it right now, and so I like watching these things, you know, shows because it puts, it gives us a perspective into how the rest of the world lives, right? We can be very isolated in a kind of a, you know, one of the top areas of the world to live in New England, access to medical education, all the things that we have access to, okay? It's not true of the rest of the world, but the majority of the world, okay? So anyways, one of the greatest cities of the Roman world, it was the center of trade of Asia Minor, you can see that it's located right on the coast at a beautiful harbor. It was located on a river, so they would go up the river, so it was a nice, it was a, it was a city that was situated in a very nice area as well. Here's the, here's a very important thing for Taurus, Tasha, sorry. It was a free city. In other words, it could govern itself. It had its own council. Didn't have to worry about, like, the, the Greeks from another place getting involved in their politics. Rome couldn't even get involved in their own politics unless there was some type of revolt, because it was in Roman territory. But they, they could run their business as, as they see, they saw fit. And so this was something that the Greeks gave to the, the people of Taurus, Tarsus, and the Romans continued that as well. Didn't have to pay any taxes, no duty taxes. So people are going to flood to Tarsus, because this was where money was being made, okay? There was a lot of opportunity to become successful. You know, things that drive us today, right? People move to different areas of the country or areas of the world for opportunity. Same was true in the ancient world. Oh, Tarsus is a free city? Great, I don't have to pay taxes, I can start my business with the trading? Fantastic, okay? And this is what a lot of people do. Tremendous amount of wealth here. In fact, the they were known for, the people of Tarsus and the leaders of Tarsus were known for their massive investment into infrastructure. There were great roads, there were public fountains. There was you know, an amphitheater for theater and stuff like that, okay? I, I believe they had a small, I call a sea of type of structure for games and things of that nature. But it was a nice city, it was really nice. They put a lot of, they, they reinvested a lot of the money that they got from trade, which was considerable, back into the infrastructure of the of the city itself. Beautification pro, projects, that type of thing. There are mountains located, the Taurus Mountains are located in this area. And there are a lot of minerals and lumber in and around the mountains. And so, considerable amount of wealth is going to be taken out of this. This was interesting. There used to be huge herds of black goats that used to graze in and around Tarsus, and they would use the hair of the wool. The goats have wool, what was it called? Goat hair, goat wool? Goat hair, probably, right? Goat hair. They would use that to make cloaks and kind of heavy duty kind of outside jackets, things of that nature. So again, you know, you have minerals, you have the lumber, you have trade of all types of goods. You have you know, the, the whole industry of processing goat hair, right? Think about the industry of all of these things, okay? It was a, it was a bustling city. Now, this was, this is also interesting, was a university town. There were all kinds of different schools that were going. You get a really great education at in, in the city. And there are some you know, some historians that kind of call Tarsus the Ivy League of the ancient world because you had all these kind of different types of early day universities or schools that you know, taught the wealthy the wealthy and their children, they got an education. They got a really good education. You guys may be familiar with the philosophy, the Greek philosophy of being a stoic, right? Not letting, not getting too high, too low, just kind of going with the flow. Focus on the renewal of one's self, strengthening your, your own self, this idea of discipline, disciplining yourself, keeping yourself under subjection, huh? Those are things, those, that's a philosophy that Paul is going to kind of weave into his, into his letters, isn't he, right? I, you know, I bring my body into subjection, he says, a few times. He compares himself to a runner or to a boxer. And this is kind of the stoics thought, you know, thought like this as well. Paul knew classical Greek, and we know this from his writings. He was, he had really good Greek. He knew, you know, and so he had really good Greek. He knew all, you know, he was, he was, and he could speak fluently in Konine Greek, which was kind of the day to day, the day to day language in the Greek world. He had two main languages in this area. Number one was Greek, number two was Aramaic, and the third would be Latin, okay? Most of the people in the Middle East, particularly around Syria and Israel, that area, all sp, spoke Aramaic, okay? That doesn't mean Hebrew wasn't spoken, but it was, Hebrew was spoken only for a religious language. Kind of like Latin is with the Roman Catholic Church, right? You know, people aren't conversing in Latin. But when you go to, you know, a Catholic mass, you're going to hear a lot of Latin. And so the same was true in the ancient world. Hebrew was the language of religion. It was the language of God, really. That's how the Jews, some of the Jews looked at it. And, and because of that reason, it was almost lost. But the Jews understood that if you lose your language and culture, you lose your people. And so this was one of the reasons why the Jews had an emphasis on education. And they still do today. They put a heavy, heavy emphasis on education. And this comes from the reading of the law, right? You had to read the law, you had to know how to write, right? And so the law of Moses is tied up into reading and writing. And so this is why, you know, to truly understand the word of God, you needed to read it and to, you know, and to, and to write it as well. And so schools were set up for the very purpose of keeping the Hebrew language alive, keeping the religious rituals alive as well, keeping the culture of the Jewish people alive. And this is not only happening in Jerusalem. It's happening in Jerusalem on a large scale. Because this is kind of the religious center of the Jewish world, Jerusalem. They went there four times a year for the, particularly during Passover as well. And so Paul was a highly educated Jewish young man. He had his whole life in front of him. He could have been a, you know, made very, he most likely came from like a middle class, upper middle class family. We're not really told, you know, you know, what Paul's dad did. Right? But he, we know that he was, he worked with leather, right? He was a tent maker. And tents were made primarily from leather. Which wasn't a great job, by the way, in the ancient world, to get the, you know, to take animal skins, the whole process by which, you know, the sca, the scraping of kind of animal, you know, fat and stuff off, off of the skin. Urine was used as well to kind of break down the skin. It's a whole process. The tanners, right? The tanner area of the ancient world, very smelly, very smelly place. You have all this kind of rotting animal, animal, you know, byproduct. You have urine being used as well to break down the skin. So it wasn't a great place. So Paul would have been very familiar. Saul would have been very familiar with this process. I don't think he was involved in the process, kind of make, you know, making the leather, but he got the, kind of the final product of the, the manufactured leather and then he made tents from it. I'm guessing. But maybe he was involved in it. I don't know. He was most likely some type of, you know, like a, a leather trader or something like that, or a tent trader, something along those lines. Now, tents were very important. It was actually pretty lucrative. If you, especially if you got a, a Roman, a contract for the Roman army. All right? Because all those guys needed tents, didn't they? Small tents, big tents, that type of thing, so. All right. The biggest thing with Paul, brothers and sisters, was he was a Roman citizen. You know, we want to talk about privilege in the ancient world. He was a privileged guy. He could do what he wanted for the most part, okay? He was a voting member. If there was any type of voting membership into something, he could vote. He could, if he wanted to, he could be part of the council. He could run for office, political office. There were special tax things as well that were designated for citizens. He could go to law, right? If he didn't like ruling against him, he could appeal it. He couldn't just be taken off the street and beaten, right? That's going to happen to him, right? And then he's going to, he's going to get into this conversation, this great conversation with the centurion, because I'm a Roman citizen, right? You beat, you beat me in front of everybody. You're going to apologize to me as well in front of everybody. We'll, we'll look at that. All right, now this is from, I'm sure to put his name up here, I didn't, historian. This is what he says now about a Greek-Roman education that Paul would have been part of. There's two types of things here, brothers and sisters. There's a Greek and Roman secular education, right, that Paul is going to get. He's also going to get a very strong religious education as well on the school of Gamalio, okay? So Paul obviously is going to, he's going to show signs of like an aptitude for the things of the law. And it comes out in his writings, like some of the stuff, the connections that he makes. He's, when you read it, you're like, oh wow, this guy's, he's got his mind around it, you know what I'm saying? Obviously being directed by the Holy Spirit. But still, you know, God uses people's intellect to further the gospel message. You're going to use Paul as well, the kind of the secular education that he got. Anyways, Greek-Roman education was liberal in its scope, okay? In other words, it, they're going to learn about a lot of different things. It's not just kind of a narrow, a narrow education. Slaves supervised boys in their early years by giving them their first lessons and then leading them to and from private schools until they graduated into adulthood with a great deal of ceremony. As young men, they could attend universities at Athens, Rhodes, Tarshish, Alexandria, and other places to study philosophy. Rhetoric, law, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, geography, and botany, right? And so, again, a liberal education. All right, so, you know, Saul's a smart guy, right? He's not, he's not a dummy. He's a smart guy, he had a great education, okay? And so, in a lot of ways, brothers and sisters, Paul has two feet in both camps. He knows all about the Greek and Roman world. He knows how everything works in the Greek and Roman world. The biggest thing, he can speak the language. He can speak Greek fluently. He can write classical Greek fantastic, okay? It's interesting, if you look at the Greek from, you know, the book of Revelations and Paul's Greek, Paul's Greek is the best. Like, he really does a great, you know, Greek. If you look at the Revelations, the Greek that's used in Revelations for whatever reason, it's not so great. Paul's Greek is better than, say, John's Greek, which, you know, which is interesting to me because it's not like God, you know, they're moved by the Holy Spirit, inspired by the Holy Spirit. But God is using their abilities, right? He's like, hey, not everybody's going to have perfect hemanship. Your Greek is going to be better than my Greek. Your Spanish is going to be better than my Spanish, right? But God is still using people, regardless of whether or not their Greek is classical, right? It isn't a competition. It's like, get the message out there, right? All right, what have we got for time? You know what, I'm going to start, I'm going to, we're going to start with this next week. We'll start with this, this slide for next week, the zealous hammer of God, right? This is, this is Paul. We're going to get an insight into Paul's kind of, you know, what his worldview, his thinking, that type of thing.

Transcript

anyways I wanted to start today um just with a couple um

paintings um and this is obviously a scene that has been painted quite a bit but these two paintings uh I saw a few years back um uh Le and I and the girls went over well Mckenzie was already there studying but we went over to uh Italy and you know so we went to Florence and we also took a day trip to Rome we went into the Vatican and you know just to see you know kind of all the great historic pieces that they had these were these were two of the uh paintings that really affected me I guess in looking at them particularly the one on the right like the one on the left is a very realistic kind of situation right where you have you can see the you know the hatred really and the violence associated with the stoning of Steven this is what we're looking at right he's and uh Steven praying you know for to forgive them and then in the back kind of poignantly you have the Apostle Paul right laying they they would they took off their cloaks right and laid them at the feet of Saul so they could really you know put some uh real you know they didn't want anything tying up their arms when they threw the stones at at stepen

um and then you know the one on the right is for some re you know you know how you look at a painting and one person it could be yes it's all right uh I don't really care for it but then like another painting you look at it and you're like oh man that's

it for for whatever reason it's hard to articulate but there's it's a very poignant painting for me on the uh on the right hand side with Paul there there's kind of a duality with the light not getting into like odd history and CR critiquing it but look at Paul there's a PO of him that's in the Shadows on that right one right and um and then you can see Steven Stephen's almost contorted there's really you know you're trying to look for a human being there but he's just being pounded by by stones and just like the the raw naked aggression of man against this in innocent uh believer of Jesus um so you know and this is this is this is the way obviously you know before you know multi medeor and all this kind of stuff this is how ideas and emotions uh were transmitted to people through paintings like this you can see both of these in the Vatican or use the Googs either

one all right let's get into it uh those of you that are asking are we going to have a multimedia presentation of course maybe I could have gotten through a little more stuff without the multimedia presentation perhaps some would say that I would not all right let's take a look um at Galatians the first

chapter just to kind of set the scene here and it's a I think it's a it's a chapter and a verse uh that we that we we are familiar with this is Galatians was one of the first uh first letters that Paul is going to write it's one of our earliest letters that we have along with uh the Thessalonians I believe First the Thessalonians was written before Galatians but in any event call uh Paul kind of sets the stage for us in the 13th verse of the F first chapter of Galatians where he writes for you have heard of my uh conversion in time past in the Jews religion how that beyond

measure I persecuted the Ecclesia of God and wasted it and profited in the Jews religion above many my equals in my own Nation being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers and so Paul is kind of laying it out clearly in black and white um and just the words he used I persecuted the church of God and wasted it like he Paul Paul really Saul was really on the verge of wiping out this very early you know Jesus movement that that is kind of it's uh it's coming out of Judaism and it's in its infancy and Saul is the guy that is sent by the chief priest uh to wipe it out and he got very close to it except you know God had other plans right um in Acts chap 8 we you know we know um you know we we know the story in Acts chapter 8 where you know he's on the road uh to Damascus and one of the things that's kind of interesting to me just in a psychological way is you know Paul grew up outside of Jerusalem and outside of Judea historians have said that perhaps you know Saul came to Jerusalem to study at um in galo's kind of school you know the different rabbis would have different schools where you would go and you would learn according to the their method um their philosophies based upon the law that type of thing hila was another one during this time Gia was another one and so Paul is going there why Paul went to Jerusalem we're not told but it may have been and again this is speculation on my part and other historians um it may have been that being a Jew living in a gentile area uh he wanted to get closer to Judaism he did you know what was going on his town he was kind of living one foot in the Gentile world and one foot in the Jewish world and he really wanted to commit himself to the traditions of his people uh which is interesting and so he's leaving kind of a very Urban as we talked about a very Urban kind of Cosmopolitan we got all kinds of different people all kinds of different religious beliefs here in tashes and he goes to a place where you know there's one religion and it is Hardcore right but and he what what does he say say there you know above I was zealous above everybody about the traditions of my elders um and he need he was looking for that he was looking for that um firm conviction in the things of God uh and he got it he got it at the feet of Galeo he was instructed in the things of of Judaism and the things of the law and the Torah and he took them to H he was zealous um and he he used the zealousness to persecute so let's look at acts the 4th chapter

um and at that time first verse there was a great persecution against the Ecclesia which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles

so I I like to look at things from a different perspective sometimes that you know it could be good and bad you know you can spend all your time looking at a different different perspectiv but anyways the perspective of the phes I think was this they were living in a very difficult time because they felt as if they were losing

control uh of you know kind of Jerusalem to the powers that were over them which were the Romans okay they were kind of being hemmed in you had the Sadducees who were doing business the Senate of Israel at that time were doing business with the Romans that type of thing um but also you have this outside pressure affecting Judaism but now we have internal chaos well what's the internal chaos well we have this movement that started with Jesus of of Nazareth and it's upending it upended Jewish Society at that time right Jesus is coming he's healing people he's touching them uh he's preaching the Good News of the kingdom of God to the poor you know think about how how radical The Sermon on the Mount would have been at that time right and so they got rid of that problem and even Caiaphas right in John I think it says you know it's expedient that one man will die for Israel and he's referring to Jesus he's going to die let's get we got to we got to you know we got to crush this right now we're going to have major problems and they thought they did right they thought they did with Christ but he was raised from the dead and uh you know people saw Thomas is going to touch his body and he puts puts his fingers on his wounds that type of thing and it's going to make such an impact upon these apostles like that's the only reason why in my own mind you know why did the apostles go after their leader is kind of destroyed crucified in the most horrific way buried in a tomb why would they be so moved to preach the kingdom of God this new gospel they saw Christ they saw the Risen Christ they were given the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost they couldn't be stopped but Saul in his mind thought he could stop this the Chief priests in the political in the government of Israel at this time thought they could stop it that they had the power to stop it but Gia had some insight right because remember Peter and John are going to be brought to the temple and Gia is going to be the one that's going to say he's going to give a little history lesson without looking at it he goes look I remember this guy remember this guy he had a little following he went out in the wilderness who knows what happened to him and then he mentions another one I think but he says look if it's God's will that it will continue you we can't stop it if it's of man we sure we can stop it but if it's of God we can't do anything and he was right and it was a it was a hard lesson for Saul to learn um that he wasn't in control he he wasn't you know the he wasn't the Hammer Of God that he thought he was you know he thought he was the good guy he wasn't the good guy and it and it took him this incredible conversion

to finally realize that as he writes in Galatians he wouldn't have written this before his conversion we know that right um beyond measure I I wasted the Ecclesia you know I you persecuted Ecclesia guard and wasted it he would never say that he goes I was doing the Lord's good these guys were Heretics I was wiping them out they were a cancer spreading throughout Judaism had to be destroyed and this is the same thing too uh just kind of looking at the conversion of Saul he's p part of this unjust killing of a righteous man he's part of it he M he he was part of a murder of stepen murdered him by Stones

intimately an intimate killing of another human being Paul was there he consented he agreed to it yes stoneless man and he was part of that whole

process and so you have that type of mentality the conversion on the way to the Damascus and then this very Paul very very same man is able to write First Corinthians the 11th chapter right this beautiful letter of love love is patient love is

kind you know just I I think of that like the differences between

Paul really the murderer of the of the of the lovers of Jesus he was murdering those people putting them in jail taking their children and their wives away from them and he says after the conversion love is

patient love is

kind love does not keep track of wrongs he was keeping track of wrongs wasn't he you know he had a whole list of grievances I got a lot of problems with you people

um and so I think it's just a wonderful conversion that we have it's one of the great stories in scripture right and it it should give us hope um it should make us kind of rise up and say you know what if if you you know we're going down the wrong path if we're heading up to

Damascus I think everybody in our life has had a moment where we're heading up to

Damascus and God you know Christ is going to put a stop to

it um and it's a lesson too that you know there's always Second Chances there's always conversion with Christ that's what that's what it's all about changing our hearts from a Heart of Stone to a heart of Flesh where the word of God can be written Upon Our

Hearts all right um now here here this is interesting too in verse three um in Saul he made Havoc that's a great like uh Old English word Havoc find that in the uh you know it's one of the great lines

um Hamlet maybe I think it might be Hamlet Cry Havoc oh that that's from a juliia Caesar Cry Havoc release the dogs of war um and so this is that's a it's a great little word so he's just chaos

everywhere um where was I so oh yeah um entering into every house and Hauling men and women committed them to prison he's he's grabbing people out of homes he's destroying people's livelihoods destroying people's families zealous of God love measure you wonder what he was thinking at this time I probably know what he was thinking got people deserve it Heretics destroying a religion not listening to the tradition of the elders saying that the Messiah has come who are

you we have the Oracles of God

um therefore they they that were scattered abroad went

everywhere preaching the

word I think that's hilarious uh you know on a certain level despite the awful circumstances um it it had the opposite effect that Saul thought it was going to have he thought he was going to crush this thing immediately within Judea first he was moving up to Samaria right he's he's moving northward he's even going up to Damascus as well he's got all the power of the priest behind him the power of the Judean uh government at this time

but I think it speaks to the conviction of the early followers of Jesus that despite the fact that they were being run to ground they were being ground to dust by Saul and his soldiers in the uh with the support of the government of the Jews at this time they still preach the word of God wherever they went it's like hey what why are you here in this new town oh we just I just lost my whole family to Paul but let me tell you why I did I lost this is this this man named Jesus of Nazareth he has preach these wonderful things so just imagine the mindset brothers and sisters of somebody that is being persecuted being scattered from their home their livelihood everything is taken away they're kicked out of the synagogue you're gone you're not part of Jewish Society anymore and instead of keeping their mouth shut they do the opposite we're going to preach more and so wherever they were scattered by Paul Paul actually Paul actually is preaching the gospel right now even though he's thinking he's destroying it he's allowing the gospel to be spread by his own hand his own hand of

violence and so that's just another reason brothers and sisters or another example

of God

using bad

circumstances evil

circumstances to bring about his will this was a this very difficult time for the early Believers I mean immediately this small group of people is pounced upon by the Wolves they they remain strong they remain convicted and you ask yourself

why why do they remain convinced why why do they go on preaching just think about their faith brothers and sisters and what strengthened their faith well they saw Christ they saw Christ before they saw him on the cross and they saw him after he was raised from the dead and it convinced them that he was the Messiah and it should convince us and I Know It convinces us all right uh questions comments before we go on I'm doing a lot of talking chis brother

Chris you got it to invite a question absolutely just uh from a historical standpoint uh you know initially the Ecclesia we see had all things in common and things were flourishing they had converts in the thousands uh and then with the stoning of Steven so we see the scattering that you're referring to but those that remained in Jerusalem did they go underground or was it so from the we have Li we have limited kind of primary sources as far as what they did but yes um they went they went underground the the Ecclesia at Jerusalem uh went on the ground the apostles stayed in in the Jerusalem area so they didn't go it was really other people that fled from the persecution of Paul the idea of the Apostles was you know if we die we die we're dying in the service of Christ Christ told us that we were going to go through these things but yeah during this time of persecution they went underground but we're told um and it's it's up there in the ninth chapter of uh acts that finally things settled down so it was a I think it was a very short period of very intense persecution Chris and then things kind of di down and their attention went to other people thank you very much all my opinion all right

um let's see we kind of we talked about that right let's talk about Barabas uh real uh with couple things here with bonovas let's take a look at acts the 4th chapter and verse 36 of the four chapter of Acts and joses who by the apostles were was surnamed Barnabas which is being interpreted the son of consolation a levite of the country of Cyprus having uh having land sold it brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet um but I just want to mention here Barnabas the son of

consolation uh Barnabas was known as being someone that would comfort people okay I try to you know try to get them get them going the son of consolation the son of comfort not not a bad thing to be known for right there's a lot worse things to be known for so the so the other Apostles saw Barnabas as somebody um that had a special quality he he had the ability to make people feel

better it's pretty good quality you know I think a lot of times like on social media you'll see particularly younger generation what's your superpower what's my superpower okay barnabas' superpower was he made people feel better okay he took time to make people feel better all right and he's going to be the perfect guy the goet right to all the brothers and sisters that Paul you know years ago three four years ago had wasted them in their family and it's going to be Barnabas is going to bring this kind of community together it's really fascinating right and we know people like this we have people in our Ecclesia like this right make you feel better uh you know and so I think there's uh there's an exitation in there you know um we have to know about our brothers and sisters right we should be checking in with each other obviously during Sunday but also through the week whatever our networks are we all have different networks um and we should be sons of consolation we should be daughters and sons of comfort to each other just like Barnabas was he was he was like that to uh Paul of course but he was also that to to the um to the community this early Community he wanted to comfort the community and he wanted to bring these people together so with that in mind ninth chapter of

Acts

um verse 26 this is after Paul escapes um from Damascus with the basket and everything he's lowered Down the Walls and everything you know immediately excuse me Paul is now involved in all of this stuff right his life goes from he's up on top right he's got he's got an A small little army and everything he's got papers he's got documents from uh the government saying I can do what I want right um and now he's getting lowered down in the basket no one wants him everyone's scared of him the chief priest are like this guy's a traitor what's going on with Paul we haven't heard from him I heard he went down into the desert now he's back and the and now the early day Christians are like who who Saul let's take a look at what happens uh verse 26 and when Saul was come to Jerusalem he ISU to join himself to the disciples hey guys how you doing Paul new new guy uh but they were all afraid of him uh and beli not that he was a disciple nah n you're not tricking me there's no way that Paul the Destroyer the waster of the church is now he's a Christian now he's a believer in Jesus sure it's just a trick

infiltration you know Paul is going to try he's try he couldn't do it by force of arms now he's going to infiltrate us right he perfectly reasonable right I used I I tell kids a lot of times you know we're having a conversation about something he's talking and I usually say hey it ain't paranoia if it's true right you know ain't paranoid if it's true and so these guys were paranoid they you know these early Christians are paranoid uh and so it was up to Barnabas so let's let's go on and Barnabas took Paul and brought him to the apostles and declared unto him them how he had seen the Lord in the way and that he had spoken to him and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus and he was with them coming in and going out of Jerusalem and he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed with the Greeks so on and so forth so Barnabas is going to be the one that is going to bring these two sides together he's Barnabas is going say hey I've seen this guy preach he's the real deal he's preached to the Gentiles with power and conviction and he's speaking to our Jewish Brethren with power and conviction as well and then About the Name of Jesus Christ the saving name of Christ uh and eventually you know they come around and like wow this is incredible and I think it says in one location that they praise God they praise God that this had happened that their number one enemy at this time had been converted that Christ had changed the Heart of Stone of

Paul into a appliable heart that the that so the name of Christ could be written upon it so and then uh in verse 31 of that same of the ninth chapter of Acts in 30 uh 31 yeah then all of the churches rested throughout all of Judea in Galilee and Samaria and were edified and walked in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit were multiplied so there was finally some rest you know this persecution slowly died out

um and you know they everyone everything calmed down and kind of slowed the process of this persecution and now people could preach without kind of you know getting you know getting killed for whatever reason yes brother Chris yeah it's interesting to see actually that that peace that seemed to settle down between the uh Jewish community and the Christian had to seem to do with the conversion of Paul who led you know who who led this havoc and with his conversion it seemed to bring peace yeah I and that's a great Point brother Chris because I think Paul uh you know Saul at the time

um I he might have been like the ring leader of this like he was really promoting this um and it may have been his project he's like give it to me I'll I'll handle it right now and once once he was stopped from going up to Damascus and then he goes you know he he goes down uh into you know Saudi Arabia um for a few years right once he's taken out of the way the persecution just kind of dies off it's almost like people didn't have the hot for it Paul had the hot for it at the time but once he's taken out of the way everything kind of calms down and we know that in life right we've been in situations I'm sure at work or maybe even our families right you take one piece right you bring them in or you bring her in BR and take that person out the whole dynamic changes right whatever reason without getting into things so things calm down a little bit now Paul as we've talked about as he travels throughout the Greek and Roman World he's not going to lose sight of his Jewish roots in fact he's going to use those Jewish roots to spread the gospel it's really fascinating uh you know he's going to use the synagogues as his base of operations oh there's a synagogue here there a synagogue there synagogue there well why why are there synagogues everywhere why aren't the Jews just in Israel well we know why there were several diasporas there had been several scattering of the Jewish people throughout history Babylonians well even before the Babylonians there were people that were scattered uh with the Assyrians up in Israel not everyone in Israel uh that was scattered was lost to history they they open you know they they started synagogues Here There and Everywhere and so God is using again a very difficult time in the history of the Jews

to bring about his purpose to lay the foundation of the spreading of the Gospel message of Hope to all mankind and he did it on the foundations of uh of uh synagogues that were built in all of these major cities um during this time and so with this synagogue system that was set up throughout the Greek and Roman world and then the system of going to Jerusalem to sell celebrate the four main holidays right particularly Passover um you have a way of spreading this message first by word of mouth right you go to the synagogue and you talk to them but also other people they hear it oh I heard Paul speak in Corinth very powerful this was talking well what was he talking about well he was talking about this and so you go and now you're spreading the message and this is how it happened uh very slowly at first but you know within 200 years um you know close to half the population in the Greek and Roman world are going to be uh going to be Christian some form of Christian that's another fascinating history like all the different kind of sects that that bubbled up during this time it gets very complicated very very quickly in early day Christianity really does

Transcript

okay as a reminder and to review um the diaspora was uh the Jews scattering in some places right by force to different areas of the world through Conquest we know that happened with Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians we know that happened with the Assyrians as well right the northern tribes gone to the wind we have no idea where they are

um but also Jews are going to

uh you know make a determination to leave Israel to go to other places where there was more economic um you know viability economic promise that type of thing a lot of them went down to Alexandria a very large portion lived there but they they scattered throughout the Mediterranean world and so we may you know when looking at it historically we may say okay big deal what's the big deal well the big deal is as we've looked at it as this is going to be what the

foundation by which Paul and the others other um Apostles are going to preach the gospel message to the Jew first and then to the Gentile so this is a great example brothers and sisters of God using very inoc innocuous things uh you know kind of just everyday things people immigrating from one area to the of the world right we do that all the time human beings have been moving constantly um and this was the case to bring about his purpose and Paul all as we're going to see and as we've seen are going to use these synagogues to preach the gospel he's going to go in there he's going to preach Christ on you know during the Sabbath on Saturday and then on Sunday he's going to meet with the Believers and so there's the distinction between meetings now right you're going to the Jews on Saturday preaching the gospel on Sunday you're coming together as a group of Believers and so there is that distinction um so very quickly um as the Jews move out to different locations they're obviously bringing their culture with them they're bringing their religious beliefs with them and this is the way that Judaism is going to be exposed to the Gentiles in most cases the Romans and the Greeks thought that the Jews were yeah they were an ancient people they had an ancient god but they were weirdos right who believes in just one

God and so there was stigma attached to the Jews as well the Jews didn't do themselves any favors either because a lot of them were belligerent you know when it came to their religious beliefs and they you know completely understandable um and they you know they were they did have a lot of fights with the Greeks and stuff like that but anyways they spread out throughout the whole gr Greek and uh Roman World um this little note here at the bottom here the God fearers all right now the god-fearers were an interesting group of people they weren't Jews

but they came together with the Jews uh during service during Sy uh during uh uh Sabbath day service and so they feared God they they understood about you know they were really interested in this idea of monotheism one supreme god controlling everything very different from what the Romans and Greeks believed obviously but these God fearers Yahweh fearers okay they feared Yahweh as the supreme god so they recognized that but I think we've talked about this as well there were some things that the Romans didn't want anything to do with and it was two two things number one biggest thing circumcision no thanks right Greeks and Romans nope and then number two uh was the dietary

restrictions right the Romans ate everything they ate they were kind of gross in what they ate right they ate you know we're talking about cats and dogs now

right cats and dogs mice they ate mice they ate pigs that's the type of thing get into it but um so yeah so that's that's what we're dealing with and so these god-fearers are going to be Gentiles from the Greek and Roman World interested in Judaism but still not interested in any of the restrictions particularly that you know as Paul says the mutilation of the flesh right the circumcision and so once those two things with the Jerusalem Council right are taken away we you don't have to follow that to be a believer of Christ you have to follow these things that's when these god-fearers are going to turn into what early day Christians right and so I think it's

wonderful um and are inspiring and strengthens my faith when I read about these little things the way that God works uh in the lives of individuals that love him and to bring about his purpose as well we have no idea who these people were as far as their names are concerned but scripture labels them as god-fearers and these god-fearers brother brother and sisters are going to turn into Christians into followers of Christ Brothers and Sisters in Christ so you know never put any limitations on the power of God he works in all kinds of different ways my ways are not your ways God says and we have to keep that in mind he's working in our lives right now even though sometimes we feel as if maybe he's not working in the right direction or doing the right thing he's working in our lives to bring about his purpose just like he was working in the lives of these unnamed individuals these god-fearers to bring about his purpose of spreading the gospel to the world to Gathering all of the Nations back to himself and there's an interesting connection brothers and sisters I think to the spreading of the Gospel in the New Testament and going back to Genesis to the Tower of Babel well what happened to the Tower of Babel well the people had gotten together and they wanted to be they they wanted to reach up to God they wanted to be like God it's like that same thing remember the LIE the serpent maybe wasn't a lie but what the serpent told to Eve your eyes will be open and you'll be be like Gods right you could have that power same thing happened with ba uh in Babylon with the Tower of Babel and so God's what he scatters the Nations he's like I'm done get you you're scattered going into your different different places of the world okay he's still ruling in the kingdoms of men but he scatters these people now what happens in the gospel with Christ and particularly with the Apostle Paul there's a gathering of the Nations now now God says I want all of the Nations back they're my people now it's not just the children of Israel it's not the just the Jews all those Nations that I scattered in bab you from Babylon on I'm bringing them back together through my son Jesus Christ and so you know there's another connection too in Genesis 10 and I'm know I'm going down a rabbit hole again but in Genesis 10 there's the list of Nations that are listed

okay when the Holy Spirit comes upon uh the

apostles and they go out and they preach in the morning I think it was 9:00 right they're preaching and all of the Jews from different parts of the world they they're preaching they hear it in their in their native tongue from all over the place there is a connection brothers and sisters between the places that are mentioned the Nations that are mentioned in Genesis 10 that are scattered with the different nations that are mentioned in Acts SE Acts 2 who are hearing the gospel in their own tongue right their own tongue they're listening to the gospel God scattered them right through language so again through the holy spirit and through and through Christ now those Nations now are being gathered together I think there's a lot of great connections that that type of thing okay um questions comments before we go on beautiful all right we look I I think we looked at this slide too we just talked about tashas tashas wasn't a Backwater City it was a major metropolitan area in Asia Minor um 250,000 solid population that's a big city particularly in the ancient world pretty wealthy

um you can get a good education in tarus as well it was known for its schools and so this is the environment that Paul grew up in he knew the law he knew Judaism but he was no slouch in the other other things as well you know education has always been important to Jewish people even in the ancient world they understood the power of the written word they understood the power of being able to read and so when you have a relig a religion that is based upon the reading of and the listening of a set of laws like the the Torah was it is imperative that you understand and you read and you can write and so this is why it was pushed upon the Jewish people from a very young age was this ability to read and write we take it for granted brothers and sisters in the ancient world if you knew how to read and write you were in like the top five to 10% okay it was it was prestigious I know how to read and write

okay all right here are a couple images right here of the stoning of Step this is kind of a um you know it's a pivotal it's it's a pivotal event in the life of Paul because you see kind of just the hatred in the violence associated with the destroying of this sect of Judaism you know Christianity you know Paul as ironic as it is Paul took Christianity as a very small kind of little you know know some people called it a cult or whatever this guy that they followed he's dead you know this little group of Jews it's going to blossom into something incredible but Paul before his conversion wanted to stamp that those groups of people out wanted to destroy them and so this is uh I think a couple couple um paintings that are pretty powerful right the first one you know stoning with stones is a pretty gruesome way to die um particularly if you want to torture the person they would purposely throw smaller rocks at them um without getting graphic um you know you could you could really Stone somebody with just one giant Stone and sometimes they did that they wanted to be merciful um but if they wanted to make the person suffer they'd throw a lot of small rocks at them you know you ever hear of the term Death By A Thousand Cuts kind of very very Sim similar situation not a great way to go and so you can see uh the love of Stephen right saying you know asking God to forgive these people for what they they're doing Paul is overseeing this he's watching all of the clothes you know you want to drop your cloak so you can really lay into some of these Stones right no you don't want your arms to be binded in any way and then this one on the right hand side this one is actually at the Vatican Museum am um I saw this you know few years ago when I when uh we went there to Italy um and for whatever reason it's like a it's it's powerful to me you know it's almost like

uh they're not they're not human like there's this just this anger there like humanity is missing from this picture without getting too into it and then take a look at Paul Paul's half in the light half in the dark you see that I think that's that's interesting too you know Paul he was in the do when it came to Christianity when it came to Jesus he why are you persecuting me Christ asked right so and this is and just as a side thought brothers and sisters we see these pictures right here this is the way that the gospel was preached very early on again reading and writing okay people visualize things think about how powerful that would be there's no television there's no radio there's nothing like that anything visual that you see is either in the natural world or is um you know there's a sculpture or a painting or something like that and so this is the way a lot of times in the ancient world

ideas and stories were conveyed through these types of things and you can see how powerful that

is all right we we looked at this as well again Saul was he was the Hammer Of God he was the zealous hander of uh hammer of God he was going to wipe this sect out this was not Judaism they were Heretics they needed to be destroyed um and he went everywhere certainly in the land of Israel but even he went up to Damascus Damascus wasn't in Israel so it just shows you the power that the Sanhedrin had the chief priest had that they could send soldiers really into a different province that they you know technically had no control of but what they did have control of what was what was being preached in these synagogues okay this is where the authority came from and so uh you know they're sending Paul Paul up to say look you got to wipe these guys out um and Paul and Paul recognizes that he's saying I I shouldn't even be called the least of the Apostles because you know I persecuted the Church of God the Ecclesia of God he it was something that always kind of GW at him um but he he was a different guy during this time and it took a major conversion of of Jesus appearing to him you know Blinded By the Light it is hard to kick against the Thorns right it's hard to kick um you know you wonder what was going through Paul's mind during this time you know before his conversion he was he was zealous for the law he he says above all of my peers he says I knew the law inside and out I knew the prophets inside and

out but he was misguided and I think sometimes in our lives we can think we're doing uh you know the right thing or we're making good decisions when in fact we're not and we you know we don't have that you know that gift of 2020 hindsight but you know we have to be aware are we following after the things of God or are we following after our own lust and desires there was a certain aspect I would imagine brothers and sisters of Paul that you know he was making a name for himself here he was saving Judaism from these Heretics he was a superstar in in the the scribes and Pharisees in the Jewish religious World Paul was up and coming and you know there's a reason why he was given this task you know you don't give this task to go you know take care of Heretics to Joe Schmo right he hadn't he had already made a name as being a zealous individual and now he's given all of this power and control to go and Wipe Out the early day Christians God had other plans sorry Paul you know he all the best plans that he had in his mind were done like that in an instant and God put him on another path I think when we look at our lives I think the older we get we look back in our lives we had all the plans in the world right we had our paths that we were taken but God had other plans he had other plans very important plans for Saul

um and so Saul is completely converted he's he goes by the name Paul now which is a more Saul was a Jewish name Paul is the Greek form of Saul and so Paul is going to go by a his the Greek form of his name okay the B the Greek spelling and and the Greek pronunciation well there's a reason for that right he's preaching to the Greeks and Romans okay be you know it's it's kind of like um and this is kind of a funny analogy but you know like when an Asian-American comes over a CH you know China he comes over in China and like a lot of the girls the adopted girls because you know a lot of the girls in China they don't in some areas of China they don't want girls a lot of them are discarded in some of the more rural areas of China they want a a male child a boy because their line their ancestor line goes through uh the male line so they're looking for that remember they only had up until recently only had one child

policy so if they got a girl they're like you know I don't want the girl and so this is why a lot of the Chinese girls young girls were adopted here in the United States they didn't want them which is sad right obviously um what was I saying oh so when they they come over here you know they have very Chinese sounding names you know Lynn Chang or whatever it is um and they changed their name to like Sarah right Sarah Abigail and so it's interesting you have a Chinese girl with a very Americanized name or a very Western name and I think it was similar to Paul here Paul his name is now Paul it's a very familiar name uh to the Greeks and Romans and so it was just another way to PA for Paul to make the gospel uh I want to I don't want to say more palatable but approachable right you don't have this kind of crazy you know uh really hardcore Orthodox Jew right you have Paul hey Paul oh Paul I know plenty of Pauls there's another Paul what do you got to say Paul um and so after all of this things do tend they settle down and the gospel is uh preached in different parts of the world we know that Peter Peter is going to preach as well in the in the city of Jerusalem and in around Israel as well you know to I think what 3,000 were were baptized right the Holy Spirit came upon them as well like the very first couple days you know you have Christianity um expanding pretty rapidly at the beginning but then it's going to slow just because of persecution and stuff like that but anyways all right questions comments before we go on

very good now one thing I want to take a look at um today

is some of like the superstitious kind of stuff that uh the ancient world uh were really wrapped up in all right and this is gon to it's going to hamper Paul um in his preaching okay because you know a lot of the things that he is going to do uh along with the Holy Spirit is he heal people and things of that nature but one of the very first things that he does he you know he heals people but then the Greeks and the Romans instead of attributing the healing event to God to Yahweh who remembers who they attributed it to you

remember two yeah Jupiter and and Mercury correct that's right man yeah and so um so this was kind of some of the things that he had to deal with you know trying to get a population of people completely

immersed in

um in the belief of many gods completely and then associated with that is all of these different ideas about Superstition okay and one of the things I want to look at today because it's going to play a major role with Paul right he's gonna he's going to come face to face with some of these characters is this idea of magic

magic in the ancient world special power in the ancient world people believe that they had special power uh they could um put curses on different people as we're going to find out uh different types of things even in the ancient world in Jew the Jews the ancient Jews believed in Magic

Superstition magic words right say the magic words get the magic curse uh on someone you don't like like like Ben you didn't like me I did something to you you go to the right person You' have a magic spell put on me okay this is real stuff we chuckle about it now but this was real and so this is some of the things that Paul and the other um the other preachers of Christ um are going to kind of have to run into it and Paul talks about this you know to to the to Athens on Ma's Hill you guys you guys are way too superstitious right you got a God for everything you got an idea for everything magic spells all this kind of stuff so um so not only is Paul and the other Jewish preachers going up against the tsunami of gods that were in the ancient world thousands and thousands of them they also have to deal with the the people's understanding of their natural world all right we can look at it and say magic that's silly it's Harry Potter silly talk Abracadabra whoy Doo this was real stuff this was life and death stuff if someone put a curse on you butch you got major problems and so you had to go to get the curse removed there was a whole industry associated with this as we're going to find out all right so some of this stuff is it's really interesting to me but there's there's a connection there's a connection to the Old Testament as we're going to see and that is going to continue on up until um up until the Greeks and Romans superstition magic is all tied into the gods as well the good Gods right the gods that want you to be successful but there are also evil spirits as well demons evil spirits it was it was a very scary world and I'm not talking about the natural world I'm talking about the spiritual World there a lot of people you had to look out for a lot of a lot of bad stuff out there okay all right so magic in the ancient world um we've talked about a few of these things magic was an everyday thing okay this was po it was like coffee in the morning all right if you had a special amulet or a special um you know a little seal or something that had writing on it the magic writing you would keep that that was your like you know a lucky uh rabbit's foot little side remember rabbit's feet you guys remember sure Jake do you know what rabbits feet are this is what I'm saying

used to be like a little furry little thing you put you like a keychain type of thing in it had um funny story I used to go to the building 19 everyone remember Building 19 all used to go there with my grandfather it was like a great little trip we'd go and get like a food and then go I'd show off with my grandfather at Building 19 it was wonderful um but I the I stole something from from building 19 I had never stolen before and I had this impulse and you know what it was

it was it was a you know keychain rabbit's foot keychain but supposedly that gives you luck is is what I'm saying okay I ended up confessing to my mother afterward and because I confessed Gail I didn't get in trouble I know I know the tricks but I never stole after that so good news good news all right um every major civilization had magic was used for many things such as protection health

Vengeance love support of the Gods and to keep demons and evil spirits away guys uh you know we can joke about it as I said but this is this is serious business protection Health Vengeance this if I want Vengeance on somebody because something that they've done wrong okay there's a way to do that people believe this okay for love if you're trying for love I mean I tried all kinds of magic to get Lee and it didn't you know but they would they would um you know if you did want to like um uh you know get the eye of a of a girl or get the eye of a you know a guy you would go to you know one of the you know The Magicians male and female by the way and you could get a special spell put upon somebody that you wanted you know love potions that's you know love potions absolutely this stuff all existed all right um ancient Jews are going to encounter magic like in a real major way when they go to Babylon oh B the Babylonians loved magic and we know this right because you know who's going to who's going to deal with The Magicians in uh in Daniel you know Daniel's going to have to deal he's going up against all The Magicians and the the wise men what does that mean The Magicians they knew all the Spells they had the magic spells they had been taught in the ancient spell

uh the spell world and so you know you don't Nebuchadnezzar doesn't have magicians just to do the Cod tricks you see what I'm saying this was serious it's like having an advisor like if you're a president and you're like hey I have my advisors here magicians were advisors they weren't advisors about like what's happening in the natural world per se he had other people these were The Magicians understood the spirit world and they understood which spell can be used when when are the magic words to be incanted okay all this stuff serious

business

um as as we know this was strongly

prohibited uh under the law okay and we don't have to look these up but in Exodus 22:18 you know witchcraft magic spells all that kind of stuff God didn't want any of it um Deuteronomy and Leviticus as well it's a shocker I know but the Jews continued to do magic even though it was prohibited oh they didn't listen to God oh okay right we know that there's an incident uh in the Old Testament that we're going to look at you know um there's a lot of different incidents in the Old Testament that have to do with uh I guess the occult like the hidden spiritual world having to do with magic and spells and things like that okay King manasse let's take a look at this this is um in Second Kings I I'll read it in Second Kings

21 Second Kings

21 in obviously manasse was uh you know one of the worst kings in both Israel and Judah he was he did change his heart for sure um and submitted to God uh but beginning in verse two

speaking of manasse he was 12 years old he's going to Reign 55 years by the way so not great you know you're talking about half a century of wickedness at a very high level not great he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord after the Abominations of the Heathen whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel um goes on about the high places verse six he's building verse five and he built altars for all the host of Heaven in the two courts of the house of God think about that he's building altars to different gods inside the temple Courtyard okay verse six and he made his sons pass through the fire and observed times and enus used

enchantments okay the speaking of magic and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards and he W wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger so we get a pretty clear picture of God uh of what God thinks about enchantments and magic and it says you know Wizards that type of thing again and it's it can be very difficult to put ourselves as a modern individual into the ancient world you know when we talk about Wizards again Harry Potter um Merlin the magician stuff like that Merlin magician he was a magician he would he could control what he control magic think about all the things if you're familiar with Merlin um the Green Knight and things like that you could do all of these things you say the right words and things can you know things would happen same was true in the ancient world okay people believe that you go to the right person you say the right things you're going to be okay all right uh this what what is what is this a picture of trying to think it looks like a boomerang I can't remember what this was

it was pretty cool when I thought I oh you know what this is oh okay this is what it is this is an amulet that would go around people would wear this uh like in this this area right here you can see where um you can put string through in the middle they would wear this as protection this was an amulet it was about maybe that big it would wear kind of like a necklace type of situation all right and it would have writing on it or

symbols to keep the evil spirits away

Egyptian magic oh the Egyptians love magic as well all right so all these uh Advanced ancient civilizations all had embedded in their

polytheism a whole world of magic and spells just think of it's never ending just just think about it okay um they had a magic Force they called hia uh very powerful both both humans and gods possessed this power could only be used in certain ways by certain people the priests right that's interesting you know there's always a group of people that control the secret knowledge and this was true in Egypt right and and guess what guys the priest made a pretty good living from this whole situation all right through taxes we think about that right through taxes a lot of taxes went to the upkeep of the temples in the different sanctuaries throughout uh Egypt um but but also they would perform different incantations like you go you know you go into the preach and like hey this is the type of situation I'm dealing with he goes okay I got the right spell for you Ben got the right spell for you buddy all right you're going to have your crops oh your animals are sick oh got the right spell right and often times the spell would also coincide with some type of ritual like you had to go to your field right and do something but this wasn't free people right this saying the words cost money okay and so and so this is this is one of the re reasons why like the priest class in the ancient world became very very powerful because people believed they had uh the power they were like a conduit in a certain way with the spiritual world with all of the Gods with all of the evil spirits the demons they were a conduit for those things Saul believed that on a certain level and he went to the witch of Endor didn't he he thought that the witch of Endor could conjure up

Samuel and he was pretty afraid and so was the witch when it actually took place right um okay so we we talked about all uh priest knew the secret words to protect you from fade or from Evil um at time went on a group of priests known as the heu he hekou um and these are the magicians that took over and became powerful remember Joseph in the M uh in The Magicians right he he he told uh Pharaoh what the dream was okay the others couldn't do it Moses and The Magicians right did did The Magicians have some type of power to do some of the miracle or some of the plagues

yeah now did God give them that power I don't know probably I would imagine they didn't have power by themselves but Pharaoh certainly looked at them as having this power there are certain things that The Magicians couldn't do right as they got more and more complex you couldn't just do you know slide a hand twist the Fate type type of thing

okay all right continue on uh we don't get too much into this but uh yeah families would keep written spells in their homes for protection from Evil uh Spirits okay I think uh in in the way that some people put up like um Bible verses in like in the kitchen or something like that um you know different different signs with a certain type of uh message just imagine that with different um different spells you would write you know different different spells on there put it in your doorway now you're protected from Evil

okay um I'm not saying there's a complete connection but in the way that the Passover happened right what did they do well they put blood on on the top and on the sides of the door which is indicative of a like a protection right this is this is the way that the angel of death knew that they were Believers in this house in the same way that the in the ancient world that non-believers would believe that a spell or an incantation would protect your house so it's it's it's interesting the way the ancient the ancient mind worked um healing spells would be written on paper okay and then put on the sick person all right so maybe you know maybe in the ancient world I um you know I had a heart attack or something like that right they would write a spell it would put that spell on a piece of paper right on my heart hopefully that process the magic would heal my heart some type of infection or a wound there was rituals and routines associ iated with that with the magic all right along with actual you know they did put ointment and stuff on it but there was a magic component to any healing whatsoever okay and so you would have a doctor and a priest really performing one for the spiritual one for the natural world all right you can take a look at uh on the right hand side these are all little amulets that were that were worn by the Egyptians and by uh ancient Jews by the way um and in order for them to work the right words had to be spoken

correctly all right so there was an amulet um so you had to wear it but you had to say the the right words in order to get the power out of that amulet so these these are all different ones that they found um pretty interesting ancient Jews are going to wear them as well by the way all right and this is spoken of in Isaiah and in Ezekiel and shocker I know God doesn't approve of this right doesn't approve of these things because what you're doing is if you if you are wearing some type of amulet okay number one number two uh you believe in magic you're believing that there are things or gods that are stronger than Yahweh right that's what you're saying and so you need these spells you need these amulets it isn't God isn't powerful enough I need some of this magic and so God's saying the magic is not going to help you guys right it's made up it's fake I'm

real I'm your savior but it's difficult right I mean you know the the Jews the minute they got into the land they're going to be bombarded by different types of culture different type of religious thought that type of thing and that's why God was so you know he he was constant uh in his delivery of stay away from the other nations stay away from them you're going to lose your your identity you're going to lose your culture you're going to lose your religion and they were this close from being lost to history G on who were the Jews I don't know don't know small group I guess they're not they're not around anymore God had other plans right

okay question yes of course Ben hold on we got I think we got a microphone here for you

buddy so the question is just um

in terms of uh the world that we live in today right yes very secular very uh we're product of rational thought and uh you know scientific you know a lot of these superstitions have been costed out it'd be a mistake to say it's totally been cast out I I would say Han and I when we went to South Africa we saw the influence of kind of superstitious tribal religion and things sure different practices defeating curses and hexes and absolutely uh going to Witch Doctors even yeah um so and this is people walking around with iPhones in their pockets right so they're in the modern world but they're still influenced by the superstitious thinking um I I guess my question for you would be um what is the lesson for us now that we are less under the influence of superstitious thinking is there some way in which that's been transferred into trust in more modern more

secular uh yeah Ben you know with me there's always a lesson to pull out of it right I guess you know there is are there things in today's modern world um that we can put our trust in instead of God I mean I know you can read the horoscope in the newspaper yeah no you're right but you what let's put that let's put like the Superstition and stuff aside there are other things that we can we can fill our lives with that we can trust in right and then God is pushed out of the way it's a different it's a different Dynamic B for sure because like you said we live in the modern world but there are things that we can trust in and put our trust in and not put our trust in God I'll get you know like an example I trust the government to help me out in all types of situations right you can put your trust in the government and not trust in God that type of thing it's not a one-on-one analogy I understand where you're coming from like what are things and maybe it's a conversation we can have with ourselves I mean you give an exert some ago about magical thinking yeah right and I want so there's still this part of our brains that are looking out for kind of a a special Solution that's outside of the normal way things are supposed to work right yes um yeah I don't I don't have a I don't have a great answer for you but Ma yeah magical thinking as well things are just going to they're just going to work out you know so I don't I don't know yeah I don't know if going down to the buying scratch tickets or something like that

right or you know wear wearing you know your my you know my my lucky pair of pants or something like that who knows who knows I don't know we all have our little our little things though our little routines and rituals yeah and and you know I get some some of the things can be funny right but

um yeah I you know I don't know I mean I think for for for everybody's life there's a different answer for

right but yeah we can still use you know magical thinking yeah just hope it works out

thanks um we we talked about this thanks for that Ben um we talked about this Egyptian Magic books of the dead or some of the stuff overlap with other civilizations in the ancient world Mesopotamia is going to have magicians written spells for healing and protection here's an example right here this would this is from Mesopotamia because it's in Cana form

um so yeah um and so again the ancient world the Ancients felt that they were being bombarded by evil spirits demons and sickness okay and so if you if you believe that you got to find a remedy you got to find something to protect yourselves

from um yeah and then they you know they believe that carved images themselves had the power to protect and this goes back to what it goes goes back to idolatry right this is an aspect of idolatry something that you've made now has special power okay and God obviously from the very beginning was against that just made with hands they have no special power but people believe

it uh we don't have to get along with this but um just just talking about this the next slide will be our last slide but this is called the pyramid text and this was written on the walls of the great pyramid at Giza So within the funeral uh within the um the actual coffin around the coffin the the sarcophagus and on the walls of the pyamid room there are written all of these different spells that when the Pharaoh was resurrected inside of the the pyramid the first thing he had to do was speak the words to speak the spell in order for his soul to find his way back to the body and to open up the pyramid in order for him now to go and fight the spiritual demons in the afterworld okay pharaohs still have a lot of work to do in the after World all right and they had to they had to go through all of these different steps in order to make it uh to the to the afterworld it involved fighting a giant snake monster all these kind of like craziness and so this shows you the only reason I'm telling you this is this shows you how important and powerful incantations and Magic were if the Pharaoh doesn't say the right words Jake it's over he's stuck in there for the rest of his life he's got to say the magic

words all right now here's this our last um this is from Ezekiel 13 I believe

um and this this shows very clearly that the children of Israel were not exempt from this type of uh thinking and practice okay um and you son of man set your face against the daughters of your people so it's not just male prophets that are speaking lies they were also prophetesses prophetesses that were here as well but they they they were they were dealing in other things who prophesy out of their own Hearts prophesy against them and say thus says the Lord God woe to the women who seow Magic bands on all wrists and make veils for the heads of persons of stature and the hunt for Souls will you hunt down Souls belonging to my people you have profaned me um going down behold I am against your magic bands with which you hunt the souls like birds so on and so forth and so I I I looked at a couple commentaries on this and so what they're saying is you had women in the a in in ancient Israel who were prophesying right they're saying this is going to happen in the future that was one aspect but they also dabbled in um in the magic bands okay they had they used to wear things around their wrists and so forth um that if you again said the right words people would go to them so that they would say the magic words in order for something to happen either good to them or bad to somebody else and so you have Jewish women involved in this kind of thing and you can see again why was God so upset with the children of Israel well here's an example magic bands what what are we doing with the magic bands they had been caught up in this idea of magic as well which is a kind of substrate of

polytheism okay the belief in many gods evil spirits all around they're out to get you you need to have the magic you have to have the amulet oh I have a I have a woman that that she'll she'll make you an amulet right here here you go it's going to cost you some money but here is the amulet she'll say the magic words for you you are protected it's a whole business it's a little business going on so all right well stop there any questions comments

Transcript

all right um so let's just very quickly Let's uh recap the

situation um we have been uh discussing in our in our talks about the Apostle Paul specifically um before our summer break we looked at uh some of the background of the Apostle Paul why he W was really a perfect uh the perfect person uh to spread the gospel message to the Jew first and then to the Greek the importance of synagogues everywhere they were kind of little bastions of Truth or the bastions of the Gospel um based upon the Jewish synagogue and they're really going to become bases of operation for Paul for the Apostle Paul and other Apostles really as they go and they spread the gospel message um to the Mediterranean world but also to other places as well they're going to run into some some major issues obviously right the biggest one being polytheism the belief in many gods uh the worship of thousands and thousands of gods and

superstitions magic people they believed very intently um that people had the ability through saying incantations and the right words at the right times to bring about either Prosperity or destruction to your enemies and there's a lot of different um things that we've looked at so it was important so this is going to be one of the things that the apostle Paul is going to have to um be on God against but as we're going to see today brothers and sisters um there was prohibitions against this in the Old Testament as well prohibitions that as we've already looked at that they didn't listen to Because as we looked at in Ezekiel one of the last things we looked at was you know you had female um women in in uh Israelite Society in both Israel and Judea um you know pray playing the role of a prophetes and you know trying to get people giving them or you know oracles or giving them prophecies uh you know in order to make money this was happening in Israel okay it was happening in the Nations around them but it was also happening in Israel as well so magic was an everyday thing we can kind of look at it now and say oh Magic hahhaa pulling the rabbit out of the Hat things like that David Blaine he's levitating all that kind of stuff that David Copperfield right just think about all this stuff we associate that in the mountain world as magic right they're like oh there's tricks to it this that and the other thing we have to get out of that mindset when we're looking at this magic was real in the ancient world it was important to battle against um you know there was a whole Pantheon of gods good Gods bad Gods demons evil spirits like this was serious stuff in the ancient world you had to be protected from these things okay every civilization is going to have m magic was used for many things such as protection Health Vengeance love support so on and so forth uh the ancient Jews are encourage magic particularly in Egypt and Babylon and these are the two places obviously that is um you know potentially had you know had the potential anyways to really corrupt them right in Egypt they almost almost lost their culture and same thing in Babylon and if it wasn't for a small group of people that were really uh concerned about their culture and their religion uh you know Judaism might have been lost you know they're taken and they're scattered but thankfully um you know you had a group of people that copy down these you know copy down the law and the books and that type of thing uh Bob we start at

9:30 great to see you happy fall all right and I think we looked at King manasse and all the things that he did um you know he you know I think the language is he filled Jerusalem from one end to the to the other with all kinds of you know with Innocent blood he was pretty bad King he eventually you know had a change of heart um but you know King Manassa when we think about it you know all of the Pagan superstitions he brought into Jerusalem and he set up all kinds of things so all right so let's take a look at a few things um in the Old Testament um we'll spend some time on these now there is an interesting uh in Genesis the 31st chapter okay in the history of the Jewish people we have an event with um laan Jacob and Rachel we all know the story okay you know laan was a pretty shrewd guy he was crafty he also manipulated people he was trying to manipulate Jacob um you know and he changed Jacob's wages it was all kinds of shenanigans I want to keep these sheep you can keep these sheep the bottom line was um God was with Jacob despite the fact of laan shenanigans and trying to get more for himself and take away from Jacob Rachel as we know was Jacob's second uh wife again through what trickery of laan right Lear and you know we know the whole story in gen let's just take a look at this in Genesis the 31st

chapter um we have we have Jacob and isra uh Jacob and um where are we

who we have Jacob taking off from laan you know in the nighttime um

secretly and you know in verse 38 of the 31st chapter says this 20 years have I been with thee the 's and the she goats have not cashed their young in the ram so on and so forth um verse 40 that I was in the day day the drug consumed me the frost by night my sleep departed from mine

eyes verse 41 thus have I been 20 years in thine house I serve thee 14 years for the two for thy two daughters and six years for thy cattle and thou Hast changed my wages 10 times except the god of my father the god of Abraham the fear of Isaac had been with me surely thou Hast sent me away empty so this is Jacob kind of talking about laan and all of the all the things that that he did um but if we look um in verse

30 and this is laan talking and now though thou wouldest need be gone because thou Hast saw longest after thy father's house yes wherefore Hast th stolen my gods so that's interesting so Rachel had taken the household images of laan they were called the teraphim we're not 100% sure exactly what they represented but you know this we we kind of get a glimpse into the fact that having Idols we think of Idols as being bad and they obviously were bad were these teraphim though some type of representation of Yahweh or something like that we're not sure they held significance however because the owner of them if you had these household Gods you were in charge of the house you were in charge of the spirituality of that house um and so if you had these Gods you had the power over the spiritual world to bring blessings upon your house so if laan had them they were a sign of authority of power if Rachel and Jacob had them that was they now had that power you see what I'm saying and so that's why Rachel took them she this kind of goes hand inand with laan not giving Jacob his just do and Rachel is going to see that as well and say you know what laan everything that you have should be Jacob's um and so she's going to take these teraphim that had significant power in the ancient world to bring about blessings upon that household and if you didn't have them well how are you going to kind of communicate with you know with with the spiritual world it's going to be very difficult if you don't have these teraphim so they were very important if we remember the story of David and Michael what did Michael put in the bed to kind of trick Saul's men that David that David um you know wasn't there David escaped and what did what did Michael do anyone

remember what they what did he put in the bed put in the bed remember she put like some type of some type of idol right or we call it an idol but there was some type of thing that she put in the bed now what was that thing you know um let's let's look at it actually in uh first

Samuel one year

David hey if anyone if anyone finds it before me

say

it and what what's the

chapter 19 okay yeah so okay verse 12 so Michael let David down through a window when he escaped and Michael verse 13 and Michael took an image a teraphim okay if you look at the the margin thank you assistant Nancy and laid it in the bed and put a pillow of goats here for his for his bolster and covered it with a cloth so there was some

type of something right an image some type of representation now did it have some type of spiritual um you know representation did it represent something Yahweh or or something like that we don't know or was it just kind of an image for decoration right we don't know um so anyways that's the same word is what I'm saying is that's the same word that teraphim um was some type of image this one was big enough though to you know the it was this I guess right it was big enough to look like a body in the bed with the goats here is here I don't know um but it's just interesting that word that word for image is teraphim which is the same same word that we we're looking at uh with with Rael Rachel Jacob and laan all right so just some things to look at right we won't spend too too much time on it but just some interesting things you know the the the Hebrew word is the same word there so

um and it's you know it's mentioned in the bible so you know these aren't these are things that we're not pulling from extra biblical sources they're actually written here and we have evidence that what were the ancient Israelites doing with these things you know David and Michael had a teraphim in their house you know obviously you know with David a man after God's Own Heart you know David wasn't worshiping other gods we know that because he you know he followed after Yahweh so the question is what did the tarim represent we knew with his significant cultural power with it but what else was there we just don't know okay but we know that right they were important to Rachel and Jacob and David and Michael had some type of teraphim as well pretty large inside of their home you guys do with that information with the way you want do a deep dive on it I'm not you know I don't have all the ansers on it but it is very interesting the significance that they that they placed on these things okay Joseph and The Magicians we know this account this is from Genesis the 41st account and this um you know Joseph Joseph is taken out of prison The Magicians couldn't really figure out what what these dreams were again the dreams and also uh The Magicians as well and so those two things really go together remember Joseph before he was taken down to Egypt what caused all of the jealousy with his brothers remember dreams right so Joseph had this ability to interpret dreams it was very important in the ancient world you know sometimes it's very it can be very hard to put ourselves into the thought process into the thinking of ancient people but imagine if you you know we don't have any other stimuli except for the natural world right and all of a sudden you you go into a deep sleep and you have some kind of very Vivid dream we've all had vivid dreams like like you wake up and you're like oh

man where was I now imagine you're in the ancient world and you have some type of vision about sheaves bowing down in the Sun and the Moon imagine your pharaoh and you see all of this plenty these sheep and then you know thin sheaves come and thin thin cattle eating fat cattle this was this was a scary situation particularly to Pharaoh because he knew some type of divine power was trying to contact him this is this is what like dreams were important and so if you had the ability to interpret dreams you had tremendous power and Joseph is going to show Pharaoh that he had this power and he says it's not because of me I don't have any but God is the Holy Spirit you know God is helping helping me and directing me all right and so very clearly brothers and sisters in the old and the New Testament there is a very clear distinction between the works of the Holy Spirit right which are of God and Magic right things of things the the trickery of the nation the trickery of Egypt the trickery of of Babylon it can only take you so far right and that brings us to Moses and the M uh in The Magicians let's take a look at this in a little more detail in Exodus the 7th

chapter um yeah in verse we're not going to read the whole thing but

um in verse 8 and the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron uh when Pharaoh shall speak unto you saying show a miracle unto you then Thou shalt say unto Aaron take thy rod and cast it before pharaoh and it shall become a serpent and so they do this and Aaron cast down his rod in verse 10 before pharaoh and his servants and it became a serpent then Pharaoh also caused the wise men and the sorcerers Now The Magicians of Egypt they also did in like manner with their enchantments and they cast out every man his rod and and they became serpents but Aaron's rods swallowed up their rods all right so the magic of Egypt only took the Egypt the Egyptians so far it only took Pharaoh so far because in this case yes they they did the same type of Miracle or sign right to Pharaoh but Yahweh yahweh's serpent was stronger than the other ones and he consumed all of them and this is going to go on if this kind kind of we see like a spiritual battle don't we brothers and sisters between Yahweh the god of Heaven and Earth in these false gods of Egypt okay and eventually it is Yahweh that humbles the gods of Egypt and draws his people out by his own arm and his own power and so there's a very important lesson there right um if we go back to uh in the Old Testament with balum right remember uh balum

uh was paid in order to what what what was he paid to do anyone

remember curse Israel right to curse Israel he was given um he was giving money uh what's his name B say his name you just said it was close Barack Barack bayak thank you brother Jim bayak remember he he paid balum to curse Israel because he you know I think he was the king of Moab and he saw the greatness of Israel I like we got to real problem oh I know the I know the guy balum right oh he's he's known as you know a magician he's got the power and so if he says the right words if he curses Israel those words become power and those words turn into action and so him by speaking the magic words he curses Israel so the words that he speaks are placed upon Israel and so whatever he says they're going to be Cur that's going to come to pass and so this was some real extreme power and he became a wealthy man bam is going to become a wealthy man because he supposedly had this power and B is going to go and say you got to curse Israel for me anyways the curse doesn't work why because yahweh's blessing is upon Israel balam's words have no power the power of the curse against Yahweh means nothing and that's that's really the lesson however what did balum do what was actually his what was his tactic actually to weaken the power of Israel any want

remember say again Jim yes the women the intermarriage the the relationships with the moabit women that was balam's idea and you know it had it had a significant effect on them you know into Mary have these cultures come together everything's great and yeah obviously God is going to put a stop to that because he understood that the mixing of the cultures of the people the mixing of religious ideas false gods the idea of Yahweh eventually would bring destruction upon the children of Israel and that was his message throughout but they couldn't it was it was too tempting to be part of the crowd that's really what the deal was with Israel they wanted to be like the other nations their gods their culture the way they acted they didn't want to be set apart they didn't want to be monotheistic that's weird it's

different and it's it's tough to be different sometimes and Israel didn't want to be that different they wanted to be part of they want to be accepted we all do on some level on a human level we want to be accepted um and so that was that was really the struggle uh the witched Endor right that's that's an interesting one and that could be really a whole lesson but there were still there were still women and others obviously within uh Israel at this time that Ed divination they Divine things they um you know they they had the ability supposedly to draw people out of from the dead right and so if we remember with this I think kind of the tell with this story is what happens when um Samuel actually makes an appearance what does the witch

do does she like oh yeah this is exactly what I thought was going to happen hello Samuel we've done this before says that she like was she was scared to death when she when she actually saw Samuel so again I think God's hand is in all of this and Samuel has a message of Destruction unfortunately for Saul uh it's not going to it's not going to work out you guys are going to die um so you know remember God had withdrawn himself it's interesting God had withdrawn himself from Saul and he is in this street he needs Direction you know it's a pretty tough situation you have your the enemy of your people are going to come and destroy you the Philistines what do I do God's not talking to you oh right no communication with Saul Samuel's been dead for a while he's kind of just drifting Saul he's just drifting no no purpose no direction and then he gets the bad news from Samuel you know it's it's sad you know Saul's kind of this very kind of sad figure he started out with such great promise um all right now and this is from Josephus this is obviously extra biblical stuff but Josephus says of Solomon God gave him knowledge of the art that is used against demons in order to heal and benefit men elsewhere however there was an Egyptian a false prophet a magician that did the Jews more Mischief for he was a cheat all right so Jo here's Josephus making mention of again the fact that the ancient Israelites had access to these different types of people in other words it was to a certain you know we don't know if was it like an underground thing where you had to have like a secret code in order to go to a certain person in order to get to you know to kind of deal in this in this type of stuff I don't know interesting thing in Zachariah we'll take a look at this in Zachariah the 10th

chapter in verse

two uh we look at verse one 10 10th chapter of Zechariah verse one ashy of the Lord reign in the time of the latter rain so the Lord shall make bright clouds and give them showers of rain to everyone grass in the field for the idols have spoken

vanity what is that if you anyone has a um a margin there for mine anyways verse Two for the teraphim right Chris is that what you have all all right so for the teraphim have spoken vanity H and the diviners have seen a lie and have told false dreams they comfort in vain therefore they went their way as a flock they were troubled because there was no

Shepherd okay so again we have a reference here to the teraphim have spoken vanity so this kind of you

know this gives an indication that obviously the terim are still around

even um you know right I guess was Zachariah was after the return right the teraphim they're speaking vanity did they speak no obviously they didn't this is referring to again to kind of um it may not be a false religion of Judaism but it's an extra practice of Judaism that is not found in the law okay so I'm not saying these terim were a different God like they the terapin wasn't baale or anything like that but there were some Jews it seems that were still using some of these practices in order to talk to God through dreams divination having the special words my point is it's still part of of Judaism on some level it's not out and so this is something that still persists even after the Babylonian captivity that they've come back to is as well again we're not really sure what role the teraphim play but it seems like they had these idols and there was an intermediary between what the teraphim was saying right some type of priest or a priestess or whatever they called them in order to get some type of message from God again that's outside of Temple worship isn't it there were also other events we know from scripture that that what remember you talk about the Kings right and it says he did right in the eyes of God however the high places were not taken away well what does that mean we read it over and over again in the in the history of the Kings the high places were not taken away what was going on at the high

places so orig that's right there was idol worship Gordon that's right the idol worship was still happening in some some of these Groves the high places they would go up to a high hill or a mountain and on there would be some type of s uh some type of altar or something and they would alter it uh to to different gods but the high places as well were also used to worship

Yahweh they were high Believers in yah the true God would also go to high places and offer up but they weren't supposed to do that we was supposed we were all offering supposed to take place in Jerusalem in the temple okay but we know how human beings are hey you know I'm tired of those guys in Jerusalem you know paying all the money the Rigo no no no no I'm Going Back To Nature and have my own high place build my own Grove right and so this is this is kind of the this is why God was opposed to that it's not like hey guys stop worshiping me they God wanted worship it was like listen we can't shatter ourselves into all kinds of small little high places of groves you got to come together and worship as an assembly as a people to the temple with the Levites and the whole process that was set up by God and the law but people are always trying to find hey I'm going to do my own thing and that's what the high places were all about and I believe that's what the teraphim are all about as well it's not necessarily that the Jews were worshiping other gods they were they had a lot of the cultural aspects of religion from the Canaanites that they co-opted and then tried to fit into Judaism in some way you see what I'm saying and so you know this was again kind of the struggle that was that was going on through through with the Israelites in the Old Testament and we see that a lot of the stuff is going to continue to to linger on even up until the uh the second temple period with with Christ okay questions comments before we move on to the other

slide all right uh there are some examples of teraphim up there okay those this is what we're talking about uh some of them are large these are these are pretty small and I believe the teraphim that uh Rachel had were pretty small as well because we know that she what she hid it in the stuff and then she was kind of sitting on all of the all of Stu and like listen Dad I can't get up you know um this that and the other and so she she was able to hide these teraphim the teraphim with Michael and David seems to be bigger different sizes okay all

right yeah they you know the diviners have seen a lie they have told false dreams right and we know even with Jeremiah's time there were other false prophets that were directly contradicting the words of

Jeremiah

okay um so some other events in the uh in the Old Testament okay just very quickly we're not going to look at all of these uh Jezebel right Jezebel the witch as well she also used divinations as well and she she used a lot of that stuff and um yeah let's take a look at this in Second Kings uh chapter n this is

interesting and this is

um this is the this is the interaction between jorum who was the son of Jezebel and jiu who was the SC of God bringing retribution on the Ahab and ahab's house right and so geram is going to see J Who and say um and it came to pass when jeram saw jiu that he said is it peace J are you coming in peace J's answer what peace along as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel in her

witchcrafts are so many so there was that aspect of Jezebel not only worshiping uh baale or ball right we know that she she really pushed that right the worship of ball um but it also mentions witchcraft here and div you know divinations all that kind of stuff as well and so it sounds like from this from what gu was saying that Jezebel also played a role in the worship of ball as well some type of you know was she a priestess or a sorceress or you know a witch or whatever but she played some type of role in the worship of the cult worship of Bale so it wasn't just like hey I'm bring you know if you guys want to worship Bale that's cool you want to worship Yahweh also cool no no no this was Jezebel actually pushing this religion to to the detriment of Judaism we're going to wipe out Judaism ball is going to be the the the center of worship and and frankly I'm going to be the one running the show because Jezebel is much more active in religious things than Ahab ahab's just like you know you know he's he's he's a problem all the time he can't get naab remember he can't get naab's uh Vineyard so he goes and sus and Jezebel's like don't worry about it I'm gonna you know the whole thing so not great so she was definitely active very powerful when it came to uh the worship of Bale particularly up in the north in Israel all right let's take a look at this this is again just to show you that the importance of magic and divination Nebuchadnezzar in Ezekiel uh

21 what is Nebuchadnezzar

doing verse two son of man set thy face toward Jerusalem and drop Thy word to the holy places and prophesy against the land of Israel let's go down to verse 22 uh 21 for the king of Babylon stood at The Parting of the way at the head of two ways to use

divination he made his arrows bright he consulted with images what's that word image ter teraphim very good all right he looked in the

liver um at his right hand was the Divination for Jerusalem to appoint captains to open the mouth of the slaughter to lift up the voice of shouting to appoint battering rams against the gates and it shall be that them as a false divination so on and so forth so here we have Nebuchadnezzar using divinations he's looking at the liver anyone know what that refers to interesting ancient

practice you would open up a sheep or a Ram or something like that okay you would look at the internals you would take the internals particularly the liver or the kidneys things of that nature and you would look at the liver if the liver looked a certain way good to go if there was a problem with the liver or a spot or something like that bad news don't do it okay Nebuchadnezzar got the right answer when they looked at the liver okay when his when his magicians remember and the sorcerers and all the wise men he had these people he was what did what else did he do it says there well he you know his arrows bright his knives bright again you using different types of things how they looked how they feel um that type of thing dreams Divination in order to make the determination do I go to Jerusalem do I attack it or do I go down do I buy pass it and go down to Egypt and so Nebuchadnezzar is using all of these things and like this was important to Nebuchadnezzar we we can laugh at it right now are you're looking at a liver well what does the liver say

you would you would never do that that that would be extremely disrespectful to the gods and to Nebuchadnezzar nebz would probably have you killed right so this was important stuff and if you had the ability to somehow communicate with the spiritual world in the ancient world you had tremendous power tremendous power and this is why it was so important okay

Daniel in the uh in Babylon right this is really where the Jews come face to face with all the knowledge of the world all the knowledge of the world is right there and they're going to come in contact with all of these different cultures that are in Babylon all of these different people all of these different gods and

ideas the all these different um all The Magicians the magic of the ancient world think about it Babylon you know Babylon always in scripture represents the world the evils of the world uh and here were God's people smack dab in the middle of um you know a place that was spiritually and physically foreign to them think about that and that's why I think it's such a wonderful story of Hope and determination of the Jewish people that even in that situation what did they do they came together this is where the idea of a synagogue comes in well let's we need 12 people let's get them together let's say our prayers let's read right let's continue on the tradition let's teach it to our children let's read the sacred books well I have a I have a piece here of Genesis well oh I I have a piece here of Isaiah well let's get all of these Sacred Scriptures together let's put them in one book Let's copy them down and that's what they did in that 70 years it's a marvelous story it's wonderful um and this is why we have the Old Testament this is God's hand involved in all of this and nameless people we have no idea who these people are that copied down and kept for us the sacred writings of God we have them and we have the New Testament as well which is obviously built upon um upon the old test okay Running Out of Time book of mysteries Jewish book of spells and Magic from a from 300 ad right this is actually when um right around the time that Christianity is be going to become the state religion of the Roman world right around this time well the Jews at this time have a whole book on on on mystical mystical ideas and this is where anyone ever hear of the term cabala okay uh Madonna is into cabala stuff okay lot of mystical different types of things okay secret meanings of words found in the Torah secret numbers found in the Torah that type of thing you want to do a deep dive into this

stuff got a lot of different a lot of interesting ideas um from the cabal and from Jewish mysticism okay all

right uh just very willing okay yeah let's just talk about uh the Roman World of Magic first of all we have Papi okay which on it is written a Greek magical kind of incantation which talk talks about and this may have been like a jewi a Greek Jew or something like that right which talks about um y Yahweh like the ancient names of God Yahweh SEO adoni they're all mentioned on this on this papy okay just you know we're writing you take the reads or whatever and just make paper from it that's what papy is unfortunately we don't have a lot of these because what happens to it it's going to degrade right it's bio it's biodegradable and these things the great over time all right um Egyptian magic again magical papyri recipes for spells we talked about this last time you know you can't just go up there and willy-nilly say words in the Magic game can't do it all right you have to say the right words at the right time we even talked about that the on the walls of the Great Pyramid okay when you see the a picture of the pyramids just say oh there's magic there's magic spells on the walls inside of that Great Pyramid to help the Pharaoh get to the afterlife you can go there and you look at it like oh look at they put him right in the walls and so when Pharaoh is is resurrected right out of it he the first thing he does is I got to get out of here I got to say the magic words that are written on the wall they were nice to the Pharaoh they said it was important just put it on the walls you know he's you can't miss it when they're on the walls right and this is how important it was to the Egyptians all right um the upper class of Rome they kind of look down upon you know the people that believed in Magic like AIO with very smart people that's for the Riff raft the plebians right Judy I'm sure you've said that a few times

right all right um magic was outlawed in early Roman law this didn't obviously stop people they continued on it was very important um plenty the Elder and again if you notice the time he's going to live for 50 years 29 to 79 this is right around the time of Jesus and also the destruction of the temple as well um this is what he wrote there is no one who is not afraid of becoming the subject of lethal

spells people who were afraid of getting a spell cast upon them all right and so this was serious imagine having a a magic spell cast upon you well what what are you going to do well I got to I got to go to my own person and get a defensive spell that will protect me Ben you laugh this is

serious you need to get a defensive spell to stop the M you know this guy from doing the the bad spell on you all right so everyone's afraid of this by the way this is not something I'm making up they were afraid of this kind of stuff um what else here yeah certain women and men were known to cast spells on people for a fee all right sister Brenda she knew the spells so you know if I'm I'm having trouble you know with Paul and say look uh Brendon can you cast the spell on Paul please I've had it with them all right she's saying no before a fee Paul right right and and certain spells depending on the severity of the spell more money okay you want a simple spell maybe you know he sprains his sprains his foot low level you want a really bad disease or curse it's going to cost you and this was a big business again we joke about it now but this was big business this was serious business all right uh curses by enemies were greatly fear voodoo dolls of your enemies right this you know takes place in voodooism now in Haiti um on you know on a pretty pretty wide level which I think is one of the issues that the Haitians are dealing with but anyways um yeah you you would get particularly in the ancient world you know you'd have like a you know representation

of your enemy or somebody right and you would say a curse you would say the words of the curse while injuring the doll that you had okay so if you wanted them to die like of a heart attack or something like that you would say the words and then on the doll you would stab it in the heart or something like that and now you've just given power to the curse all right imagine living in fear Fe like this you know uh so you know not only dealing with a hostile you know spiritual world you're also dealing with hostile human beings who are trying to put you put curses on you so and this is why it was important uh to have some type of defense against this all right and this is this is some of the

ideas prevalent in the ancient world this is what the gospel is up against this is what the Apostle Paul is up against as well all right uh this so this will be our last

slide

um no this will be our second to last slide all right again Roman magic characteristics um complicated rituals spells

recipes um sequential utterance of divine names and nonsense syllables in the hope of hitting on the right

password okay so again you have to say the right words it was a whole whole thing you had to go through

okay Magic from all over the world is powerful just like Gods you know if you were from Mesopotamia and you brought your ideas of gods to Rome no problem your gods are still effective here you're allow in fact if you didn't worship your own Gods you know in a different country people would look at you differently but they were accepted Mesopotamian Gods had the same amount of power as the Roman gods um except for the fact fact that you were in Roman land now and they did have they had more power now because you were actually in the land of the god and actually we look at the Old Testament brothers and sisters this was an idea from the Old Testament because remember I can't remember the details but when the syrians came down against Israel and and they beat Israel beat the beat them the syrians in the hills of Judea or the hills of Israel they like oh Yahweh is a god of the hills let's fight them in The Valleys because our God is stronger in the valleys and that was their thought process unfortunately Yahweh also beat them in the valley as well and now they got a conundrum on their hands they probably didn't use the right kind of divination you see this is the thought process anyways um the coercion or the manipulation of gods okay if you had the ability to use magic you could control the gods manipulate the gods Ben if you could say the right words

Apollo would help you no questions asked all right okay um yeah so the request concerning the immediate desires of the individual as well so you know I oh I got to go see a sorceress right now I got a little extra jingle in my pocket listen can you can you say a nice you know use the magic words on me so I will be successful in what I want to do all right last slide here we go all right now this was found I've been using this picture right here okay so this picture is the actual picture of the Papyrus that we're talking about that had the names the different names of God on them all right and if you can see that there's actually a picture of a person on there with directions on the words to use in order to inflict physical pain on that person depending on the area of the body all right so I conjure you all the Angels by the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that you obey my authority completely whoa whoa settle down buddy and give me favor influence Victory and strength before all small men and great as well as Gladiators soldiers civilians women girls boys and everybody quickly quickly because of the power of SEO the clothing of Alo and the might of Adonai all right so again these this is a I believe a Greek Jew

using the name or invoking the name of God if you invoke the name of God the there was power in the actual saying of that word of the name of God okay and so you can see everything that we're talked about here it's on it's written down and so this was power so I conjure you all right that you will obey my authority completely imagine telling God to obey you right this again this was this was the mentality okay like you better do what I say Yahweh I'm saying the magic words right now I'm saying your all of your

names you better help me you better obey me so that was the mentality when it came to Magic

Transcript

so um just again we've been looking at uh Superstition and magic in the ancient world and um how that related to the spread of the Gospel number one um and then number two uh we're going to look at today uh some of the interactions that the uh that the Apostle Peter had and the Apostle Paul had with different types of individuals that were in a lot of cases making money off of the backs of well poorer people right people um who were desperate for things something that just pops into my mind um remember with Christ the woman that had an issue of blood for what was it years and years and she ended up crawling you know on her hands and knees to Touch the Hem of Jesus and and she was healed it says there that she had spent her whole life savings on going to different doctors and I'm wondering if you know a lot there's a connection here right with magic and Superstition that type of thing you know how how many times was this woman told to do this or do this make the right you know pronunciation with your your words or take this medication whatever it was you know it must have been so frustrating for her and it wasn't until you know the healing power of Christ that her issue was um you know taken care of but anyways um just very quickly magic magic was everywhere in the Roman World okay everyone knew magic everyone was superstitious down and the Greeks as well um Egypt many of the upper class Romans looked down on it but the the fact of the matter is everybody everybody you know believed in ma magic on some some level fenny the Elder 29 79 ad there's no subject one there is no one who is not afraid of becoming the subject of lethal spells right so everyone had this concern all right curses of by enemies were greatly feared voodoo dolls of your enemies we talked about that last week so um very very in very important stuff in the ancient world and then on the on the right hand side uh that Papyrus right there you can actually make out a figurine I believe and the writing has to do with you know where you you know what the curse is number one how you utter the curse and then also where to put you know the the sticks inside the voodoo doll or whatever whatever it is I'm not an

expert and just you know a lot of different complicated rituals right spells

recipes

um coercion and manipulation of the Gods that's an interesting one right so if you say the right words now you have the power of God in your hand hand the gods would listen to you and do whatever you wanted to do particularly if it was against your enemy all right um and then request concerning the immediate desires of the individual uh this is you know this is something that we can understand you go to a particular Shrine or a particular God you say the right words and you know you want a type of you know you want health or you want something done for your family all of these things are going to be involved in the rituals of magic okay so without without any um you know getting into it too much uh this is the world that Paul was was dealing with um and so this will be our slide for today we're going to take a look at uh some of the interactions of Paul uh with these uh you know the The Magicians the sorcerers that type of thing and Peter is also going to have um

interactions uh with an individual called s Simon Magnus and it's going to cause uh you know considerable upheaval in the early church you know this was one of the things that the early church had to had to deal with was not only internally were they struggling with hey what is Christ what is Christianity do we have to keep the law because remember in in the acts there was a big fight about whether or not they should keep the law you had Christian converts from a Jewish background particularly the priests that was saying if you don't follow the law of Moses you have no hope you have to follow the law of Moses they had the Jerusalem Council to kind of you know uh take care of all of that so anyways um enemies of the early church said that uh Jesus was a magician who learned his craft down in Egypt all right and so those these were some of the kind of the the fables that were coming out during this time by the enemies of the early early church that hey Jesus was just a magician he knew he knew some you know curses he knew some magic words da d da d da so it's you know it wasn't just Jesus was the son of God um he was the manifestation of Yahweh here on Earth

and uh you know they couldn't they couldn't give him credit right they couldn't give him any credit for who he was and so a lot of times you know they would start these rumors um the books the book of Acts as we're going to see Luke makes sure that the reader knows the difference between the works of the Holy Spirit and Magic right the Holy Spirit was legit obviously power of God um bringing about the wishes of the individual uh and so you have really a microcosm don't you you have you know God now uh going through through Paul going out into the Gentile

World um to do away with all of the Superstition with all of the magic and you we're going to find out that this was you know was was very important in the ancient world and and Paul's going to be up against this but let's take a look at this um Simon Magnus in the eighth chapter of Acts a few interesting things here um in verse n but there was a certain man called Simon who was before time in the same city used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria giving out that he himself was some great one to whom they all gave heed from the least to the greatest saying this man is the great power of God so he he was a very charismatic leader it sounds like um he had the people following him you know it absolutely Ely you know he was a magician or a sorcerer or whatever it is what does the Bible say there he had Bewitched the people using

sorcery

um they all listened to him from the least to the greatest he was an important person and to him they had regard because that of a long time he had Bewitched them with sorceries um but when they believ Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ they were baptized both men and women Simon himself was baptized and what does he do he says he he was with Philip Phillip so he continued with Phillip it says here and he saw all of the Miracles and the Wonders that philli was doing through the um through the Holy Spirit um beholding The Miracles and signs which were done um and so you know laying on of hands it talks about the Holy Spirit comes upon certain PE um people in verse 14 when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God they sent unto them Peter and John so Peter and John they're like hey we're in Samaria right now here here's something interesting brothers and sisters what you know was Samaria a place where Jews went on a you know a lot of times was Samaria the area in other words what was the relationship between the Samaritans and the Jews was it a good one

no had be right okay they didn't like each other they hated each other and this is obviously why go uh Jesus is going to um use the parable of the um the Good Samaritan right because the Samaritans were hated by the Jews because they were following a really a heretical form of Judaism up in Jerusalem we remember the story right um they sent priests there uh and they had this kind of um twisted uh view of Judaism and there's still Samaritans today by the way that live in Israel that practice their religion I think it's in and around Mount Herman maybe they have a little settlement there there's only like a thousand of them but there's still Samaritans that are living today practicing their religious beliefs that are based upon Judaism right interesting so they're up in Samaria that kind of one of the you know the hated people of the Jews and so

where where's Peter and John and philli oh they're preaching to the enemies of the Jews that's interesting okay so they're embracing they were embracing Christianity in the land of Samaria which was the north of Jerusalem right and so instead of just saying okay Phil you know Philip you take care of this area when they heard that there was an interest in Christianity they sent you know the two The Heavy Hitters right the closes they call them in sales bring the closes in bring butche in he's going to close the deal

right and so you come in and boom they they're they're helping now Phillip to um you know preach the gospel and really brothers and sisters begin to establish a you know a type of um you know church or an Ecclesia in that area very early on you know we're talking about what you know Christ died around 33 35 you know a ad right around that time period right after like 40 let's say 40 ad we already had have established ecclesias established churches throughout uh Israel in Syria up in Antioch as well so just think think how quickly the gospel begins to spread and the ironic thing brothers and sisters and this is very interesting to me and it's like it's one thing one of several things that just say you know man you know God's hand obviously was in this you know the the that the diaspora of the Jews the you know the the punishment by God to scatter the Israelites the North and the southern tribes into into Babylon into other areas is going to be the prec cursor or the foundation by which Christianity is going to be spread to the Gentile world I think that's fascinating you know God using a negative the scattering of his people that's a negative but to bring about a greater positive a greater good the salvation of all mankind right and you know I think we can meditate upon that the power of God being patient with God uh giving our lives to God saying you know I'm in your hands you do unto me as you seem good sometimes we can't see his plan right it's like looking at the at something backwards almost right and it isn't until we flip around we see everything the way it should be just like you know uh Paul says you know we look through a what a a mirror Darkly right we're in the dark we're looking in a mirror we see some things right we can't see it all and we will all of these things will be revealed to us eventually so Simon is going to what he wants to say he's going to say look he didn't have the Holy Spirit by the way brothers and sisters is which is interesting right Philip didn't you know lay hands on Simon and say okay you have the Holy Spirit because it says that Simon was with Phillip and was wondering at all of the great things that he saw he didn't have the power he was going to what pay money right hey got a little cash just imagine what was going through his head at this time right hey I already got these guys now if I have the Holy Spirit imagine what I can do okay we know God's here was it obviously involved you know the holy spirit is not going to descend upon somebody that isn't of the the right mind that doesn't have a heart for the gospel doesn't love Christ it's not going to happen obviously and so there's a reason why he didn't have the Holy Spirit in some other cases it mentions in in Acts that what when they were baptized the Holy Spirit came upon them but not in this case which is interesting all right

um and when Simon saw that through laying on of the Apostles hands the Holy Spirit was given imagine that he sees it the he you know Philip lays hands on people they receive the Holy Spirit o give me this right so not only do you have the power but you have the power to give the power right that's important as well it's just what what was his reasoning his reasoning wasn't hey I'm going to have the Holy Spirit um it's going to really enter into my heart I'm going to preach the gospel everywhere I'm a I'm a servant of the most high God I'm I'm a disciple of Christ now that wasn't his attitude he saw something that could further his hold on on his people and to gain power and control uh over this area for his own good not for the spread of the Gospel brother Chris yeah so uh the idea of Distributing the whole Spirit you know you jokingly refer to Peter and John coming down to Samaria as the closes but perhaps it was they would wisely distribute the Holy Spirit making sure the Samaritans understood you know uh the purpose of the Holy Spirit and and what it was to be properly used for yeah so it wasn't just automatically distributed yeah that's a great Point Chris and you know we you know just just think you have people that really have no knowledge you know for in a lot of different ways of the gospel and like you said the Distributing of the Holy Spirit the purpose of it that type of thing you know this wasn't just done by God willy-nilly we'll see what happens right he had a plan he had a purpose and he was bringing it about here and so you know Simon Magnus is going to be one of these individuals that is going to try to anyways use the gospel to enrich himself I wonder what the go and right would have been if you wanted some Holy Spirit from Simon right what the going right for a little bit of Holy Spirit you see how crazy it is like we think about it it's like you know God isn't going to allow you know the Holy Spirit to be you know given to people like this and it wasn't and so um you know this is this is the reason why Peter is going to what he confronts him and says thy money perish with thee because thou Hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money you have neither part nor l in this matter for thy heart is is not right in the sight of God repent therefore for this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee for I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness in the bond of iniquity so you know this is Peter you know withstanding Simon and the it's a great example of a leader isn't it by Peter he sees that there is a potential problem in this very early Ecclesia with this individual who really had become puffed up he had a certain role before the gospel right before the gospel he was the big guy in charge he was the chief of this area the gospel comes and now people are interested in Christ not in Simon and so Simon wants a piece of this action and it's almost like he's thinking this thing fell on my lap I have this I have the special power of God now I'm really going to have it and Peter confronts him and say absolutely not you're part you're not part of this you have to change your ways your heart isn't right with God and so you know thankfully obviously Peter was there and you know you can you can imagine the forcefulness of Peter right Peter was a forceful guy anyways you know he confronted Jesus right you're not going up to Jerusalem physically you know he got like almost like a physical confrontation with Jesus they not going up to Jerusalem right and so you know Peter you know Peter is walking on water he take remember he takes out the sword cuts off um the high priest servant's ear he was an impulsive guy but he wasn't afraid of Confrontation you know I think Peter maybe like to mix it up a little bit understandable

right uh and so he had you know he comes up to Simon he tells him straight away you have no part with us you know just imagine the harm that could have been caused by someone like Simon in the early Ecclesia would wouldn't even lasted he would have been taken over right it would have been taken over and you know who knows the damage that could have been caused by this one thing

but God was in control and he had great servants didn't he you know um philli is up there Peter comes up as well as John and so Simon obviously he recognizes that he's in some type of danger here right I'm in danger and he says there pray ye to the Lord for me that none of these things which he have spoken come upon me pray to God for me right we're not told if Simon forgives um you know asks for forgiveness we're not told if his if his heart changed however as is the case there's extra biblical like stories um you know when you can go down a rabbit hole on a lot of this kind of stuff but this there's stories of Alim and um that he didn't change his heart in fact there's a lot of accounts of him becoming um an enemy an adversary of the early church and that he's going to end up he's going to move to Rome right to kind of Shadow Peter and to try to undermine Peter and the apostles particularly um in Rome again it's a it's an extra biblical um you know letter or epistle or something like that um and these are some of the stories that came out of it so all right um so let's take a look at uh acts

13 we have another incident here another sorcerer uh this time Paul is going to um you know this is very early on in Paul's Ministry and you know the 13th chapter and beginning in the 11th

verse he's at Antioch by the way verse verse one tells us he he's in at Antioch and we're also told that this is going to be the first place that um the followers of the way as they were called the followers of the Gospel are going to be called Christians okay and that's the name that people outside of the church gave them but they're going to excuse me they're going to embrace that

um yeah verse two and they ministered to the Lord and fasted the holy spirit said separate me Barnabas and Paul from the work we're un I have called them and when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them they sent them away so they're sending uh Paul and Barnabas away to begin their first Ministry their first Ministry Journey throughout um the Mediterranean World Paul and Barnabas we know that they were together for a very long period of time but there was also um contention between them right uh Barnabas wanted to take Mark at that time John Mark and uh Paul was like no he's not committed he's not committed he left us remember he left us we know uh there was a split right unfortunately Paul's going to go with Silas Barabas is going to go with Mark and guess what there are two teams that are going to go and preach the gospel now again God working through a very difficult situation to bring about his purpose all right there there's going to be a Reconciliation right I believe with Paul and Barnabas too because in one of the Epistles that can't remember he says um and bring Mark unto me for he's profitable to me right so that idea that Paul there was a Paul saw that you know what John Mark actually is is committed to the preaching of the Gospel so all right um and when they had gone through the aisle unto paos p uh peros they found a certain sorcerer a false prophet a Jew whose name was bar Jesus which which was with the deputy of the country sergius paulus a prudent man who called for Barnabas and Saul and desired to hear the word of God okay that's interesting that there you know he hears about it the magistrate there kind of the head the Roman magistrate the judge you know kind of like the mayor in a lot of different ways right he heard about Paul and and uh Barnabas hey what's the story with these guys and so they go his his closest Confidant right is um his name

is uh elmus the sorcerer verse 8 and is his name by interpretation with stod them seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith all right so he's saying you don't want anything to do with these guys it sounds like they're part of that wacky Jewish cult they're not part of Judaism sir don't take pay any mind to these people and so okay now we have another confrontation don't we um then Saul who was also called Paul filled with the Holy Spirit set his eyes upon him right that's that's a great line set his eyes upon him and he said oh full of all subtlety and all Mischief th child of the devil th enemy of all righteousness wil thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord and now be behold the hand of the Lord is upon thee and thou shalt be blind not seeing the Sun for a season and immediately there fell on him a Mist in a darkness and he went about seeking to lead him by the hand then the deputy who he saw what was done believed being astonished at the doctrine of the um of the Lord so it's interesting you know some of the wording the verbiage that um you know that that Paul uses here against by Jesus um you know full of all subtlety Mischief child of the devil devil enemy of the righteous perverting the right way of God you know these were these were individuals that uh had their hand against Paul and the early day uh Apostles to stop the spread of the Gospel particularly um you know a Jewish individual who saw this as a Corruption of Judaism all right

um and so you know you can understand then why Paul is so forceful with this individual right because you had an individual here this Deputy that was interested in the gospel in the saving name of Christ and we're told here that after he sees these things and hears the words of Paul he believes he sorry say I believe right and so again a very negative confrontation between Paul and this individual is turned into something positive for the spreading of the Gospel message all right um I'm going to leave I'm going to come back to the slave girl we're going to jump to the seven sons of ska in uh Acts 19 just very quickly on here

um in verse 11 191 yeah so

um verse 10 and they they're going to continue uh by the space of two years so he's going to stay here for two years in Ephesus so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord uh Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks and God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons and the diseases parted from them and the evil spirits went out of them so we have a case here where Paul is being brought certain individual items from individuals that were sick and he touches the item and the individual is healed um there's still there are still traditions in the Catholic Church of this is as well um you know bringing certain items to be blessed or to a certain Saint or something like that so this tradition really has uh has still continued on let's see yeah um verse 13 then certain of the Vagabond Jews Exorcist took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus saying we adure You by Jesus whom Paul preached and there were seven sons of one schever a Jew and chief of the priests with which did so so they're using the name of Jesus as well in some kind of

fashion in order to mimic what Paul was doing with the Holy Spirit um and the evil spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are you and the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them and overcame them and prevailed against them so that they fled out of the house naked and wounded and this was known to all the Jews and Greeks all uh also dwelling at Ephesus and fear fell on them all and the name of the Lord was magnified and many that believed came and confessed and uh showed their deeds so again you know this was incredible stuff in the ancient world brothers and sisters we can kind of look back on it and and just you know we read it but imagine witnessing this firsthand the power of that you know we have cases that are recorded in acts as well where um Paul and Barnabas are going to be considered gods right I think we talked about that one of our classes when they did some Miracles they were worshiping them as Jupiter and as mercury and um you know and so this this was incredible it was an incredible time in this area of of the world uh and so we have another another event brothers and sisters where the power of God the Holy Spirit uh is up against the shenanigans of

sorcerers and magicians and superstitions all that kind of stuff and once again it is the power of God uh and God's Plan of Salvation that comes out on top in this interaction okay last thing let's take a look uh at the 16th chapter of Acts

um in verse

11 uh wrong 16 where am I starting from yeah okay in verse

16 and it came to pass as we went to prayer okay so they they were they were going to prayer um you know most likely probably you know was one of the three times that the that uh Jews prayed I think some of them more devote Jews I uh prayed six times a day as one they had a morning a midm

morning uh afternoon midafternoon evening and then night if I if I remember correctly okay uh and it came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination and now that Spirit of divination has to do with um

the the spirit of Apollo as it relat relates to the Oracle okay remember guys remember the Oracle at Deli and all of that that she could predict the future um and there was a whole there was a whole um you know Temple associated with them

um yeah a spirit of divination which met us which brought which brought her Masters much gain by sus saying the same followed Paul and us and cried saying these men are the Servants of the most high God would show unto us the way of Salvation and this did she many days but Paul being grieved turned and said to the spirit I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out the same hour so you know this was a form of you know we we talk about human trafficking today right um and the evils associated with that and the border and all that kind of stuff um this was really a form of human trafficking as well because this girl right was taken we don't we don't know her name as well so already you know she's been dehumanized and she was used just for one purpose to bring money uh to her Masters the people that owned her this was her job right every day she would you know be there you would go up to the Masters okay you know the people her handlers and she would say something and you would give the handlers some money depending on what she said and so every time Paul and Barnabas walked by she starts yelling to them right about being um you know they're they're bringing salvation right now I don't know if she was doing it in a mocking

fashion all right in a sarcastic fashion I don't know but it grieved Paul it upset Paul the whole situation upset Paul that this this girl was being used and manipulated and controlled by these individuals because she was different there was something different about her and so Paul was grieved by it upset it was unjust to him and so he ends it he casts out the evil spirit and now you know everyone's ticked off atam right particularly these people our livelihood is gone how are we going to make money imagine that's the way you make money you know I don't you know people make money now do being unjust and wicked and evil and sinful and that that this was an example and again it just shows uh the justice of God the goodness of God that he sets this woman through Paul free from her infirmity and free from this awful life right I'm just you got to deal with this every day every day it was your life saying some nonsensical thing

people getting rich off of it right while you what you sit as a slave girl

Transcript

okay so uh this is going to be our our last class on uh the Apostle Paul and magic and this that and the other thing um not because I don't like it but we've done it for a while now I'm on to something else we're on to

Cincinnati all right um so if if you would brothers and sisters and if you want there's no pressure of course um and ask the 16th chapter we're going to start there um and there's a couple things I want to uh just look at that that relate obviously to things that we were discussing last week as far as the slave girl remember the slave girl um that uh her Masters was you were using her to en enrich themselves you know she was telling

um you know she had some type of ability divination or something like that or people thought that she had it and she was able to uh quote unquote discern the future give people important things about the spiritual World which is obviously very important um but we'll read about the account um in here in in Acts the 16th chapter there's a couple things I want to uh look at um and then we'll we'll kind of tie it all together and then hopefully um we'll have enough time to see that that last episode of Paul his final I think it's episode 6 the final journey of his where where he goes to Rome um you know he's in Chains he writes the Epistles uh the prison Epistles to the followers um and that's that so uh all right let's get into it so acts

16 so let's take a look at this and this this goes back to our um our discussion about the difficulty that Paul had very early on

convincing the Jews the Jewish Believers that they they had to put away the law in other words the law wasn't going to save them put it away imagine growing up in a certain idea certain customs and rituals and then all of a sudden someone comes along and says okay this individual has fulfilled all of those things in his death and in his resurrection and you're like H I don't I don't know about that so here's an example we know that uh Paul and Timothy as we're going to see we're very close Timothy um Paul looked at Timothy as a son Timothy looked at Paul as a father but let's just look at this then came he uh chapter 16 of Acts then came he to Derby and lisra and behold a certain disciple was there named Timothy the son of a certain woman which was a Jew and believ but his father was a Greek so already we have you know could be a potential issue here right father was a Greek had no interest in any of the Customs right of the Jews as far as his own person is concerned I'm sure he wasn't um I'm sure he wasn't circumcised because we know Timothy wasn't circumcised so that one

aspect of that really that physically made you a Jew Timothy hadn't that hadn't been none Timothy which is interesting even though we know from this account that his mother was a devout Jew and his grandmother as well was a devote Jew so they knew the law but this family Dynamic and this relationship obviously caused um you know Timothy's mother to make the determination that you know he he wasn't he wasn't circumcised you know and this just kind of popped in my head you know what you know what part did the male I'm sure of pretty significant part in the in the ancient world what part of the did the father play in kind of bringing him to the you know not the temple but to the synagogue and have that have that ritual performed I don't know but it wasn't done on Timothy and he was he was half Jew and he was a half Greek and we're going to see this we see this a lot right this kind of combination of cultures which is going to bring about ultimately you know Christianity as we know it um which was well reported of by the Brethren that were at lisra and Iconium him would Paul have to go forth with him and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters for they knew all that his father was a Greek and as they went through the cities they delivered them the decrees for to keep that were ordained of the Apostles and Elders which were at Jerusalem so here was Paul because of uh you know the the importance of the ritual number one but also push back from some of the the Jews the early Jews that were converts to Christianity they were still hanging on to circumcision another interesting thing is if we look at the later uh chapters in Acts it seems as if Paul brought Timothy into into the court of the temple they recognized Timothy because he wasn't

circumcised he hadn't had that ritual performed on his person that he he was forbidden from going into the Temple okay into the into the section for the Jews and that it caused an uproar at Jerusalem which was the Catalyst for him going to Felix INF Festus so on and so forth that type of thing in beresi towards the end of uh acts I haven't really done a deep dive on that but that's pretty interesting to me right and so this was this is an example of Paul using his knowledge of the Jewish world and his knowledge of the Greek world to in a way kind of uh plate some of the the early day Believers of Christ which is interesting I think that goes hand in hand with what Paul says um you know for the Jew I became a Jew for the Gentile I became a gentile he accentuated certain things of the Gospel message depending upon who he was talking to and I think this was the case but this is really the beginning of a um a very close relationship where Timothy is the son to Paul they love each other they work well together Paul is going to inspire Timothy who was younger obviously to do great things as a leader of the bishop of Ephesus right if you remember from last week's class Paul almost really got killed in Ephesus right because he pushed back on Alexander the silver smith and Diana of Ephesus all that kind of stuff okay so this is this is where we're at now let's look at the slave girl um

and it came to pass as we went to prayer a certain damsel possessed with the spirit of divination met us uh brought her Masters much gain they were making a pretty good living off of this little scam they were running the same followed Paul and us and cried saying these men are the Servants of the most high God which show unto us the way of Salvation so she was telling the truth but it grieved Paul because of the situation that this girl was in I believe and the whole the whole situation on what it represented so it grieved him it upset him every time they walk by this girl goes there they are there they are um and you know uh it's interesting that Paul puts an end to it I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her and he came out the same hour and this is obviously going to cause uh major trouble and upset in Philippi and when her master saw that the hope of their gains was gone they caught Paul and Silas and Drew them into the marketplace in the ruler so that's kind of the outcome of that interaction there um with this girl that had the the spirit of divination Paul put an end to it and because of that um the populace of Philippi push back on that just like Paul is in Ephesus and he starts talking about the gospel El and you know uh talking about Jesus Christ doing away with Diana of Ephesus and the people what what happens well they push back on him as well and so you can see the power of the culture of Greek and Ro the Greeks and the Romans at this time they weren't pushovers they believe what they believed and they weren't going to let an upstart an upstart Jew like Paul to tell us who to worship and who not to worship okay you're a nobody from a no from a whacked out Province and the edges of the Roman Empire right you have no power here um but Paul did have power and it you know it took it took a while but eventually that whole Pagan system in Rome is going to come uh crumbling down for the most part um all right so we are introduced to a sister called Lydia here okay and it in the 16th chapter we we find out that she and on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a Riverside where prayer was want to be made and we sat down and spoke unto the women which resorted there and a certain woman named Lydia a seller of purple of the city of thyra which worship God heard us whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken of by Paul and her whole household brothers and sisters are baptized okay so there's there's some interesting things

here it has been supposed that um there was not enough Jewish males in Philippi at this time to have a um to have a synagogue okay you needed 10 adult males in order to set up a synagogue according to uh the the customs of Judaism remember that the idea of a synagogue came out of the Babylon bonian um uh captivity okay this is when we find the first synagogues being formed in the land of Babylon okay because their Temple was destroyed they didn't have a central location where they could go to perform all of the rituals there was a time of Darkness that 70-year period but they just didn't throw up their hands and say woohoo you know gu that's that's the way it is they did something about it and so they set they set up um the these synagogues and the synagogue itself is going to be the center of of the community uh outside the temple so when the temple is rebuilt you now have synagogues in different areas of of Israel but you also have the temple as well because it's going to be rebuilt but the idea of the synagogue and the institution of the synagogue is going to continue in Israel and also outside of Israel and does it continue today of course it does right we have synagogues all over the place some of them are call Temple is one about a half mile down the street here on the right hand side okay we go by it all the time um and so I think there is an incredible spiritual lesson in that um that despite the horrific nature of really losing your identity and your culture and your religion and your family and things that you love you you know and you feel as if God has abandoned you we have psalms about that one that comes to mind the 44th Psalm all right all day long we are slaughtered as sheep Paul uses it in Romans to talk about the persecution that was happening during that time but they used the best in a very bad circumstance in other words they made the best of a very bad circumstance okay and they did two things we talked about the synagogues the other thing that they did which was very important they made sure that they had all of their holy writings okay this is when all of the Holy writings that we know as the Old Testament right they're going to be compiled because before then which is wild it was a there was a chance that those holy writings would be lost to history remember what happened with uh Josiah remember this this incident with Josiah Josiah righteous King he is instituting all of these reforms he's rebuilding the Temple mount that had been not destroyed but left in disr prepare and while they're doing that what did they

find copy of the law no one knew knew about it it literally was buried and once they read it Josiah what does he do he renss his clothes right which was a symbol of extreme upset right just really upset about because he read Deuteronomy it was a it was a uh it was a a scroll of Deuteronomy and he read all remember the blessings and the cursing he's going to read all of this okay and this is kind of the beginning even though they're going to be destroyed by Babylon the Reformation of Josiah began before Babylon came before Nebuchadnezzar came and it was so strong and God's hand was on it that it is going to uh grow and prosper in the land of captivity and then you know that faith and that strength that spir spiritual strength is going to come back into the land and cleanse the land of all of the the idolatry that was going on during that time so I think it's an incredible story um and so anyways Lydia is most likely um is is a Jews okay living here continuing to pray there was a tradition that um if there was no synagogue you would go to a body of water particularly for women women were doing a lot down at the river particularly having to do with you know the wash and carrying water for cleaning carrying the water for drinking very labor intensive Lydia most likely was a wealthy uh Widow why do we say that well if you were a merchant of purple you will making some good money all right it'd be like well what do you do for a living

um well I uh I I own my own gas and oil company oh okay right so that this is I'm not saying that it's just like she's making billions and billions of dollars most likely she was wealthy she had a nice little business that maybe her husband you know had set up she may or may not had have children that were helping her she certainly had what's called a household and so when we read about households in the ancient world we're not just talking about intimate family members Sons daughters wives that type of thing remember that in the ancient world you had extended families living in one domicile one area and as the family grew in their and their wealth grew they would add on just like we do today but you would have Generations living together Additionally you would also have

slaves right you would have you would have your servants they were slaves and they were part of the household a lot of these household slaves brothers and sisters knew nothing else they were born into slavery they were born into that household there were little children they grew up in this house and as they grew they got certain jobs as a slave so they would know anything else and a lot of times a lot of these slaves that had grown up in families and households in these homes they were loved they had they had close relationships with him that doesn't mean that they still they weren't slaves but they were treated very well okay household slaves all right and so um you know it's a Turkish town now it's known for its carpet right with uh was a householder which most likely meant that she was a widow there was a die making Guild that was well respected in Philippi so it was known so when when the Bible says that she was a um a seller of purple uh that coincides with extra biblical um type uh of writings which says that there was an actual Guild in other words all the dye guys got together right and they're like yeah with the purple dye guys and and you know they came up with their own Guild they set I'm I'm sure that they set prices they had distribution that they took care of just like today you know you have a lot of things that you have to worry about today in a guild having uh some type of community where you can go to to get help and stuff like that they would give each other loans right stuff so you know it's like a whole business situation so this is what was Paul was you know kind of kind of dealing with from an economic point of view and here you know Paul is using this situation Lydia down by the river okay

um and it reminds me Brothers and Sisters of the 137th ssal we don't have to turn to it but by the Rivers of Babylon okay there we hung our hearts right for the they that wasted us required from us a song how can we sing the Lord's song um in a situation like this right Psalm 137 and so this was a traditional thing too that when you were outside of Jerusalem right you would go down to the river to pray all right you would go to the river and that would that's where you would pray uh I think it had to do with kind of the Living Waters aspect of it right the moving the moving of the waters an open area as well most likely where people could go um and this this was a traditional thing that would happen particularly in smaller Jewish communities and this is where Paul finds these people finds these you know down by the river right and uh you know he's going to preach the gospel starting with Lydia's household they're all going to be

baptized all right and so you know when we think about baptism today you know we have a um you know an examination and I think you know some of us that have been involved in different ecclesias some examinations are like you know you better you better know your stuff right so uh I don't I don't think that took place here I don't think there was a long in-depth um examination but they were baptized into the saving name of Christ and they took on the saving name of Christ as well because here's the thing uh whatever religious beliefs your master

had you had all right oh that's against my religious beliefs oh is it no one cares and so what would happen would be and and ancient world you know that was that wasn't a big deal to most people it's like okay yeah you you know it's like yeah we're all worshiping really the same Pantheon of gods I call him this I call him that you know they took different ideas and mixed it all up that type of thing

um yes Chris you caught me taking a

[Laughter]

breath go ahead

say

this these events take place and so forth so I always thought that was the idea that Rome would not allow religions to flourish and kept this down until uh you know a future date but yet we're seeing at least at this time that all these Roman colonies are following many gods so is there something that happens after this in a change yeah so uh it is interesting to kind of look at um the process right of this but during this time yeah it was absolutely persecuted because the big thing with the Christians was they refused to offer incense to the emperor they refused because the emperor was considered a god a living God and they refused to recognize any God greater than Yahweh and so the Romans are like well this is seditious you you know and so they would they crack down on that the interesting thing Chris is they never cracked down on the Jews and it's and it's really genius that Paul you know obviously God's hand is going to use the these Jewish areas throughout the Roman world the Romans really had no problem with the Jews even though they were

monotheistic they recognized the Jews as an ancient people from the ancient world and that they were still around and by the basis of them still being around for you know what 2,000 years 1500 years that gave them legitimacy you see what I'm saying and so the Romans are like okay the Jews are legitimate they're part of the you know a little little weird little cuckoo when it comes to religion but hey okay we can do business with them the Christians are going to come out of the Jewish system and then they're going to be much more aggressive against the Roman system we're not doing anything you say to us you can burn us we don't care we're not b bowing down to the system the Jews made a determination as saying hey we're going to follow our community right here but for the most part we're going to keep our mouth shut unless we're attacked the Christians are like we're not keeping our mouth shut and we're not offering to to the emperor and boom this is where the persecution really starts starts to

hit

okay all right you know rich I was reading I was reading a book the other day and it it was on early church history and they were talking about the RO the Romans were referring to the Christians as atheists yes which I thought was I mean I was so confused as I was reading this book but it was because you know they didn't believe in all the Roman gods the think of the Christians as atheist was bizarre to me yes right but that they they looked at it it's like you just you believe that there's only one supreme god it's like that's crazy talk to them you're an atheist yeah thank you both for those uh comments okay