The Mystery of God's Word: Insights from Bible 101

Joshua Noel: 00:00:39

Isaiah 55, verses 10 through 13 in the New American Standard Bible Read for as the rain and snow came down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it produce and sprout, and providing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will my word be, which goes out of my mouth. It will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the purpose for which I sent it.

For you will go out with joy and be led in peace. The mountains and the hills will break into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn bush the juniper will come up, and instead of the stingy nettle the myrtle will come up and it will be a memorial to the Lord, an everlasting sign which will not be eliminated.

In this pericope the Lord is speaking to The Prophet chapters 40 through 55 of Isaiah are often referred to as the Book of Comfort by some scholars who try to kind of divide the book up into sections for understanding the text better.

Dr. Peter Link if this is the end of the Book of Comfort, as they call it, presumably written for the Israelites as they are returning from exile back to the Promised land, why might the author have chosen to end this admonishing with this particular set of similes about Scripture?

Peter Link: 00:01:51

The short answer is that this entire section, starting Isaiah 40, began with give comfort, give comfort. And the comfort comes in the form of the arrival of God. And the arrival of God in the book of Isaiah is about Emmanuel, God with us.

And throughout the book there's been this picture of Immanuel creating a redeemed and ransomed people, because his mere presence, his final presence that Isaiah 53 is declared with his death will change the whole creation by His Word. And so the things that are broken are being made right. And this is not just for one generation of Israelites.

This is for whatever reader picks it up, no matter where he is, that the Word of God does not return void. The Word of God brings life in dead places. The way that God created by His Word and Spirit is the way that he redeems by His Word and Spirit.

And it all depends upon recognizing that we put to death the one who makes all this possible, and that in Isaiah 53 in particular, you have not only the promise of the Messiah and his atoning death and turning the wrath of God, but a group of people who will be identified as those who have repented and believed and trusted in Him. This is the picture of an Israel A people of God from all the nations.

And so this section is very important because what follows it is really a depiction of what the atoning death of the cross creates in chapters 56 and following, and that is a new heavens and a new earth. And this is a nice transition point between the two. So our comfort is something that can't be taken away. What God's word has started.

He will be faithful.

Joshua Noel: 00:03:26

Yeah, good stuff.

Joshua Noel: 00:03:28

Good.

Joshua Noel: 00:03:33

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Whole Church podcast. Possibly your favorite church unity podcast. But it's.

It's fine if it's not, you know, we're not in competition with anybody because that'd be weird. Be weird to be the unity competition. Who's way better than the other unity podcast. And that doesn't work. So we're here today.

We're gonna have a lot of fun. I am Joshua Noel.

I'm the one who's here to announce the greatest podcaster of all time, whose name used to be Pod, but then after podcast got created, he had to change his name because it just got annoying. The one and only T.J. tiberius one Blackwell. How's it going?

TJ Blackwell: 00:04:10

Good.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:11

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:12

Anyway, we are here. We're gonna have a fun one. We're talking about a book today, Bible 101. We're here with the authors return guest friend of the show.

You guys should know him. Dr. Peter Link is an Old Testament scholar and a professor at Charleston Southern University. New to our show, we haven't had him on before.

Excited to get to know him a little bit better is Dr. Edward Gravely. He is a New Testament expert and also Bible professor at the same university, which is a university I attended for about two years.

I didn't graduate there, so it doesn't feel right to say alma mater, but like ish, you know?

TJ Blackwell: 00:04:46

Yeah, you know, like halfway there. That's Alma.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:48

Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:50

My motto was just at the ngu, but the Alma part was.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:04:55

But that makes sense.

TJ Blackwell: 00:04:56

You mentioned Bible 101, and that is if, you know, you're not aware. Just part of the Adams 101 media series. It's a collection of books published by Adams Media.

They cover various subjects in accessible introductory formats. So if you're interested in a topic, then, you know, you're not versed enough in the subject to pick up a big thick book and figure some stuff out.

As is the case with much of academia, then Adam's media has you covered. If you're listening to this, check out the Odds out podcast network website link is below.

For shows that are like Ours, you know, partnered with them, partner with us. You know, we like what they do, they like what we do. We don't agree on everything, but we're still part of the same network. So check them out.

And if you want to just support us and forget about the other guys, you can get the merch on our store ran through. Captivate. It's comfy, it's fashion forward, it's understated. Get it while it's hot.

Joshua Noel: 00:05:47

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:05:48

And of course, you guys do know before we do anything else, we start with a holy sacrament on our show of silliness. Because you can't be divided when you're being as silly as I like to be. So today. Got a fun one. As always.

The best part is when I write these a little bit earlier and then forget that I wrote them and then like, don't read over it. And I'm like, man, why did my brain come up with this? And how do I answer?

So today's is one of those, if you had to ride a horse horror novel featuring a unicorn as the main monster, like a feature creature. How would you go about making a unicorn more frightening? I'll let TJ go first. He's better at this than me, I think.

And then I'll go give you guys plenty of time to think.

TJ Blackwell: 00:06:36

Were you, like, aware that that's a thing that happened? Like there's a. There's a bad sci fi movie about.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:41

I can think of at least three times I've seen this happen.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:44

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:45

Because it happens in Supernatural too.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:47

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:06:47

Oh, of course it does.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:48

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:48

I mean, natural.

Joshua Noel: 00:06:49

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:06:50

People love to. Supernaturally, people love to just, you know, flip it on its head. Make unicorns just bad. I don't know.

Peter Link: 00:06:56

It's.

TJ Blackwell: 00:06:57

At this point I feel like it's hard to make it interesting. But I have an idea. The unicorn wants to be the only horned beast. So the horror is it killing, you know, all the steer, all the steer, all the bucks.

It's just taking out meat sources. If nobody stops that unicorn, we're going.

Joshua Noel: 00:07:12

To start just a really envious unicorn.

TJ Blackwell: 00:07:15

Yeah, well, it's taking our food supply.

Joshua Noel: 00:07:18

I think I'm going to go with more of a. I'm going to go like kind of pull a page out of the Good Place series. For those who've seen it, I think the unicorn is going to be majestic, beautiful.

You're going to think you're basically in paradise and the unicorn is actually just causing you to hallucinate. You're actually in like the worst place ever. You Are being tormented and have no idea because it's too late, thanks to the unicorns.

Happy sunshine, hallucinations. That's where I'm going.

Joshua Noel: 00:07:47

Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:07:49

Dr. Link, since I know you, I feel more comfortable putting you through this first. So Dr. Gravely has plenty of time to think. Where are you going with this?

Peter Link: 00:07:59

Well, you may not have remembered this, but my undergraduate degree was in radio, tv, film. I actually took a whole class on horror movies you mentioned. Yeah.

I would probably say that the best way to make the unicorn terrifying is to make him as normal as appearing as possible and to have his actual conquest occur off screen with sounds and with darkness.

And that's probably the best way to do it, because, to be honest, a killer horse or a killer unicorn by nature, seeing that is never going to live up to what it should be. So I think that's really your key.

And just like one of the things in Stephen King's it that was terrifying was it was a clown, which was supposed to be this nice, safe kid thing, the unicorn. Every little girl loves a unicorn, except when she meets the unicorn. So I think that's the direction I'd go.

And I guess we could flesh it out more, but we probably don't have time for that.

Joshua Noel: 00:08:52

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:08:53

My brain just can't help but think of, like, the little girl from the Minions movies, and I'm like, I feel like no matter how horrible we make this unicorn, she's still going to love it somehow.

Peter Link: 00:09:04

Well, that's the whole point. Yeah. That's social media. Your unicorn is an allegory with social media. Right.

TJ Blackwell: 00:09:10

Yeah, of course. Intentionally.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:13

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:14

Dr. Gravely, take us home. Give me a scary unicorn.

Edward Gravely: 00:09:19

Well, if I remember correctly, the oldest historical reference to the unicorn is Sunny the Elder, the monochros. And when he describes it, he's clearly describing a rhinoceros tail, like a hog, feet, like elephants head, like a butt, you know?

And so I would just.

I would tell any normal children's story about a unicorn and then replace that unicorn with a charging rhinoceros, which is definitely more frightening. Carnage, trampled children, destroys. You know, that's probably what I would do.

Joshua Noel: 00:09:53

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:09:54

It would be pretty funny to get a call out to help with this terrifying unicorn. And you get there, and it's a rhino. It's a whole rhino.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:01

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:01

Also, I just want to throw out. I'm slightly disappointed I didn't think of this. Like, I could just replace, like, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. And they're unicorns now.

That's just, like, an easy swap there.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:13

Yeah. That would work.

Edward Gravely: 00:10:15

The four Rhinoceros of the Apocalypse.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:18

There we go. That's what I want to see.

TJ Blackwell: 00:10:20

Yeah, that's a good. That's good. They'll probably do that in absolute Batman at some point.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:25

The force of the apocalypse at absolute Batman. Okay.

TJ Blackwell: 00:10:28

So sure.

Joshua Noel: 00:10:29

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:10:30

To move on to something real. Oh, one thing we do here. Yeah, that's what we do here.

But one thing we found that really helps engender Christian unity is to hear one another's stories. So we have heard Dr. Link's story once or twice or four times, and we've talked about his faith journey a little bit.

So, Dr. Gravely, would you mind sharing with us some of your story before we get started?

Edward Gravely: 00:10:54

Yeah. So I. A long story. Not that old, but it's a long story. But I was. I was sort of raised.

I think most people will understand what I mean when I say I was raised sort of Christian adjacent. We had some. Again, long story, but I spent some time living with my grandparents when I was elementary school age.

And my grandfather decided that now that there were kids back in the house, we were all going back to church. And so that was kind of my first introduction to, like, regular church attendance. It was a Baptist church that we went to.

I went to a summer camp from that church the summer before I went into high school. And that was where I think somebody really explained the gospel to me in a way that my brain could understand.

And of course, the Spirit was working and the Word was working. I understand all that. But I really do believe that I was.

Became a believer in Jesus, a born again believer in Jesus that summer before I went into high school. And my faith grew a little in high school. It was probably more struggle and conflict than anything.

But it was as long after my second year in college was a physics major originally, actually. And my second year in college, the middle of that semester, I kind of reached my. The end of my rope. I just.

There were just so many questions that I had. I was trying to reconcile my life with faith and all of those things. And I was also, you know, an arrogant, stupid 19 year old.

And I just decided that I was going to put everything on hold until I found some of the answers to these questions that I have. And we had a pastor at the time who had gone to a small Bible college in western North Carolina.

And so he went there and he seemed pretty smart to me, so I went there as well. And there it was there that I think the Lord put me on the track, the academic track. I took Greek as my Foreign language and loved it.

And then from there and really felt like God was calling me into ministry. An academic ministry of some kind.

And so, yeah, I. I studied Greek in college and then went to graduate school and studied Greek some more and then got a PhD studying Greek some more. And I've always tried. I've always tried to. It's always more. There's always more Greek to study.

I've always tried to sort of center my ministry around serving a local church. I do consider myself to be a churchman. I've been a pastor, not full time consistently, but a pastor for almost my entire career.

But yeah, so I think, you know, got. Got married pretty young when I was still in college and got two kids.

I don't know how much of that you want to hear, but yeah, that's kind of my story.

TJ Blackwell: 00:13:25

Normal Bible college stuff.

Joshua Noel: 00:13:27

Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:13:29

You know, I. Speaking of Greek, I'm gonna out myself to my Hebrew professor, much to his chagrin. I still have never really got Hebrew. It's just so hard for me.

I try still every now and then, I still try. I actually, weirdly enough, I have some note cards I tried to make for myself.

And after I did extremely poorly on a test, Dr. Link was like, hey, let me see how you're studying, and helped me, like, fix my note. So I have my fixed note cards still, but I used how he told me to format those when I studied Greek.

And I'm probably still not great at Greek, but I do think it makes more sense to me than Hebrew for some reason. But yeah, even how I studied Greek, though, was just me copying how he had me do note cards.

Because, like, when you had me do it, it was like, not just the word, but like the preface, suffras, like the gender of the word, all that kind of stuff. So, like, I had details for the word. And not just this word means this because that's a. That's not how lots of languages work.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:31

Yeah. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:14:32

It sounds like your note cards were bad.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:33

They were. They were really bad. I didn't pass that class. I don't think so. I mean, they were awful.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:43

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:44

But anyway, moving on from that, from how bad I am at Ancient Languages, I was wondering if you guys could help us just kind of fill us in on what inspired this book and who you envision as the intended audience for Bible 101.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:58

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:14:59

Dr. Link, do you want to go. Go first on this one?

Peter Link: 00:15:01

Absolutely. To me, I was walking down the hallway at Charleston Southern University and my dean said to me, hey, I've got a book assignment that I can't do.

And he had written a book that would, in essence, be a competitor to Bible 101. So he couldn't do this. And the person had reached out to him and said, do you know anybody who can do this? And it was Bible 101, which is.

They wanted to take basically a thousand words for 60 chapters and basically walk through the whole Bible. And I sat there and I said, wow, when do they need this? And we were told. I was told about, I don't know, six weeks for the first draft.

And I said, all right, well, I'll do it if Ed will do it with me. Because there was no way that quickly I could have pulled together all my stuff, the New Testament, done and done a decent job.

So we sat down and we wrote initially a couple chapters of each, parts of the book just to kind of show them what we were capable of and kind of our vision for it. And. And they liked it. But we were dealing with a publisher who didn't specialize in Christian or Bible stuff. They specialized in other things.

It's a division of Simon and Schuster, a bunch of folks in New York who, to be honest, had never really read the Bible, which actually worked out really well for us because we had editors who were connected to our target audience. And we sat down and we kind of mapped it out.

Well, if you're going to prioritize, because a thousand words may sound like a lot to you, but, oh, man, it was difficult. So we broke it down. We came up with a couple different outlines of how we would do the chapters of the book.

We divided up the work and we agreed to do it. We signed a contract. We had a couple little battles over how the book should be ordered. And we wanted to do our own free translations.

They wanted us to interact with specifically King James text, which is fine, but we said, you know, we're capable of translating it on our own. And so we worked through all that, and when all was said and done, we had a few revisions.

It actually turned out as a book that allowed somebody who's never read the Bible or who's read the Bible and doesn't understand how it fits together, or who has read the Bible and not understood how theology can emerge in all the different parts of the Scriptures. And we reach that person.

And there's one other audience that I think we were tied to, and that audience was those who have never taken the time to try to connect the dots theologically.

And what I mean by that is several churches have been able to use this book as part of their discipleship because the problem of biblical illiteracy is overwhelming in the church. And this is a way to do that. It has a couple of unique features with the Old Testament, and that goes back to how I process things.

But the editors, publishers ended up being very supportive. They gave us good feedback. We didn't always agree on everything, but that's true for any project.

But when it's all said and done, we looked back and said, hey, pretty good. We can use this. And I do believe it is helping churches.

It's helping people who just want to know what the Bible says and doing it in a way that gets to the point, I think, effectively. And yet there's some pretty good theology showing up, too.

TJ Blackwell: 00:18:25

So, Dr. Gravely, could you, like, tell us a little bit about how you decided to structure the book? Now, it's different from a Bible commentary. Like, how did that process go?

Edward Gravely: 00:18:33

Yeah, so we only had a small amount of say in the book's actual structure because all of the Bible or all of the 101 series, all follow the same structure. So they told us how many chapters, and they told us how long each chapter would be.

And each of the chapters needs two sidebars that need to be exactly this many words. And here's how the title goes, and here's what the. You know, you need a tagline. And so they. It was. It was fill in the blank in a lot of ways.

And so what Dr. Link and I did was, is we just sat down and just divide. We had, okay, we got 60 chapters, and we've got more than 60 books of the New Testament, so clearly not just one book per chapter.

And we're going to need some prolonga. We're going to need an introduction, what is the Bible, and how to read it, and some other things. And so we sat down and we just mapped that all out.

And we tried to give a couple of chapters at the beginning and really geared to the person who, like, has never picked up a Bible before, like, explaining what is a chapter, what is a verse, when someone says Romans 5, 3, what is the 5, and what is the 3?

And explaining things like what a translation is and the chapter headings that, you know, were not written by Moses, didn't write the chapter headings in Genesis, for example, those sorts of things. And then we just sort of divvied up. And I think. I think Link got about two thirds of the book, which is fine. I don't begrudge him that.

Joshua Noel: 00:19:47

I mean, Old Testament, New Testament. I feel like that makes sense.

Edward Gravely: 00:19:50

Yeah, yeah. And then. And then he had to sort of figure out how he was going to squeeze things in, and I had to do less of that, obviously.

But, yeah, things had to get combined. I did end up doing a whole chapter on just Paul to describe the missionary journeys and how that fits into the Book of Acts and that sort of thing.

And so, yeah, it's not.

I mean, with a thousand words basically, for the book of Romans and a thousand words for the book of Matthew, and a thousand words for the book of Revelation, it is definitely not a commentary.

Joshua Noel: 00:20:18

Yeah.

Edward Gravely: 00:20:19

But what I, what we tried to do is just, just, just so that when someone pick. I. I was really thinking in terms of having this as a. As a companion to your Bible reading. So you've never read the book of Romans before?

Okay, great.

Before you sit down and read the book of Romans, read the thousand words that I wrote on the book of Romans, and it'll kind of give you just sort of the gist of who wrote it, when it was written, what's it about, and kind of how does it flow? What is the message of the book so that you can sort of follow along as you read.

Joshua Noel: 00:20:49

Yeah, that's.

TJ Blackwell: 00:20:50

Honestly, that sounds like a pretty. Not nice. But I think that would make it easier for me to write a book if I had, like, a very strict rubric.

sand words, right? Yeah, it's: 1200

Joshua Noel: 00:21:13

Yeah, yeah.

Peter Link: 00:21:14

Well, and so that's. Right. Can you accomplish something useful in a thousand words?

And so we did, like I said, we did have some structural questions, like if you'll read the Old Testament part, it's organized by the Hebrew order, or one of the Hebrew orders, to be more precise. And so we had to figure out, is this actually going to help people?

And I think the way it worked out, it does that, and that gives it kind of a unique flavor. And so you're right, it is not easy to do, to fit everything to a thousand words.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:42

Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:21:42

I mean, it's what the Bible's always needed. It's like trailers, you know, you just wanted to watch a commercial for each book of the Bible. This is it.

But, you know, hearing a lot of this, the two things that, like, immediately in my mind are like, these seem like they'd be really difficult to handle.

Like, one is that, like, limited Space, because I took a class on Daniel with Dr. Link over a summer once, and let me just tell you, eight weeks for the Book of Daniel is nowhere near enough. I was like, yeah, we need to do that like three times. We'll just do the entire college career as me studying Daniel, which I still am.

I'm still studying Daniel. And we're going to have a. We're actually having a Daniel Scholar on soon. Ernest Lucas, who writes one of the big commentaries on Daniel. And.

Yeah, because I'm just a nerd when it comes to the Book of Daniel. And I think it's particularly relevant right now. Anyway, the other thing that I would find is a really big challenge. It's relevant for us.

You know, the Church Unity podcast is like, you mentioned some theology because it's hard to do anything with the Bible without doing some theology. In fact, I think it's probably impossible. Does that ever come up in your head?

Because, like, okay, so right Now I'm Lutheran, TJ's Pentecostal, both of you are Southern Baptist.

If you're interpreting the Bible and you're having to condense it and you're including some stuff that's obviously going to be theological in nature, there's probably stuff that the three, you know, us here wouldn't even see eye to eye on.

Is that, do you try to interpret in such a way that it's applicable for most Christians, or do you just kind of do like, here's what I believe and I'm going to roll with it because I have a thousand words and that's what I got.

Peter Link: 00:23:12

So the short answer to that is, yes, a little bit of both. And let me give you an example. There's a chapter called how the Old Testament and New Testament Relate to each Other.

And in a thousand words, we were able to map out two different models. And these are big category models. The most common way people do it is the New Testament provides.

The Old Testament is kind of a foundation for the New Testament. And the other one is that the Old Testament proclaims the New Covenant. And that second way of doing it is actually the way that we say, despite.

After giving all the other view, and it's clarifying how it works, we then turn to what was going to govern, how we were going to try to relate it together, that the Old Testament actually proclaims the New Covenant. And so, yeah, I think you've got to do. You've got to do both.

But I mean, there, there is no way to, to take a theological book and not do Theological analysis and interpretation. Even if all you think you're doing is translation, there's a. There's an awful lot of. Of interpretation in any translation.

Joshua Noel: 00:24:14

Yeah, Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:24:15

I mean, Superman super is super relevant right now. It.

I could see two translations of the Superman store, if we're condensing it, that both are technically accurate that seem like wildly different translations of, like, one person's maybe interpretation is.

It's a white male hero that's showing the dominance and superiority to save others and, you know, represents the government and someone else who goes, yeah, it's an illegal immigrant who came here and is an alien, and he's supporting, you know. You know, like, both of those things are technically true, but I don't think that's really what Superman is, you know, so that's. It's a challenge.

Yeah.

Edward Gravely: 00:24:52

Yeah. The scholarly impulse is to make sure that your idiosyncrasies don't leak out onto the page in a book of this size. And so I definitely.

You ask, do we keep that in mind? I certainly did. I tried to keep it broad.

There wasn't much time for any kind of niche discussions that might reveal who's a Baptist or who's an evangelical or who's a Lutheran. Yeah, but I. But I definitely. I definitely. It's definitely a Protestant reading of the New Testament. There's no doubt about that.

And I think it's also. I think, as Dr. Link said, there's no way to write about the Bible without doing theology. But there's. Regardless if you have.

If you have any label of Christian at all, we obviously, all of us, hold a particular set of theological truths in common, and those are the kinds of things that end up being focused on when you have to, say, write about the book of Romans in a thousand words.

Joshua Noel: 00:25:50

Yeah. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:25:51

So have you considered, like, making this an assignment in your classes?

Edward Gravely: 00:25:55

I do. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, I do. In my New Testament survey, Bible 101 is one of their required textbooks. It's electronic.

It's very inexpensive, and the students. It's just helpful for them when they get to the end of the studying for the exam and what they know.

One of the questions is going to be, what is Dr. Gravely's take on the Colossian heresy? And they're like, I didn't write any of that down. They can go to Bible 101 and. And read it. Because that's my take.

Peter Link: 00:26:19

Yeah. And I use it in my surveys because we are dealing with the need to cover a lot of information very quickly and to put it.

And really to interact with students in multiple ways, lecture, reading, notes, whatever it is that you need to do. And. And so Bible 101 allows that and helps that process.

It really is for me, just a lot of fun because one of the reasons I fought so hard to have the book in the Hebrew order is because that's the order I teach my class in. And so I use it in all my surveys. For sure.

Joshua Noel: 00:26:55

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:26:55

So have you considered just down week in the syllabus and you're just like, hey, summarize Romans in a thousand words for me?

Edward Gravely: 00:27:04

No, I have not done that. But my students do get a daily reading quiz and they get quizzes from Bible 101, so.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:11

Oh, man, fun.

Edward Gravely: 00:27:12

Find out if they haven't read it. There's an audio version. They may be listening, but either way I hope they're getting.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:17

Yeah, I got the audio version.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:21

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:21

I do most of my reading actually while I'm working, and it's just because I can just have earbuds in and chop as many vegetables as I want, you know.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:27

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:28

Doesn't take a lot of concentration for me at this point.

TJ Blackwell: 00:27:30

Yeah, we're not actually allowed to have earbuds in, so I don't get to listen to anything at work.

Joshua Noel: 00:27:34

Yeah, I'm a rebel. No, but the.

Edward Gravely: 00:27:40

I'll tell you a funny story on that. We didn't even know they were going to do an audio version of the book until I just got an email from this production company I'd never heard of.

And the email was just simply asking me how I pronounce my name. And I was like, what the world? This is the weirdest spam I've ever gotten. And so I started Googling.

And sure enough that we figured out that was so gravely, not gravelly. That's all they need to know.

Joshua Noel: 00:28:05

Wild.

Joshua Noel: 00:28:06

So you guys mentioned that this was mostly for, you know, people who haven't read the Bible before.

Do you think if you had to pinpoint just one misconception that you think this book might help clear up for people who are new to the Bible, what would you say is just like them pops in your head first? And I'm sure there's plenty you can think of. But Dr. Link.

Peter Link: 00:28:26

So the thing that I would focus on if somebody were to come to this book, I think the thing that would stand out is just how messianic, how Messiah and Jesus driven the Old Testament actually is without having to do a whole lot of work. It's just all over the pages.

And I think that that is one of the nice things about Bible 101 is it allows somebody to enter into one of the largest and most important theological discussions, even though they're just beginning to read the Bible or just beginning to read theologically or just. Or just deciding to take it seriously for the first time in their lives.

For most Christians, the distance between the Christian and the Old Testament is pretty big. And so anything we can do to bring that closer, I think that's what I hope happens in the Old Testament part of Bible 101.

Joshua Noel: 00:29:19

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:29:20

Dr. Gravely, anything to add to that?

Edward Gravely: 00:29:22

Yeah, the thing I tried to focus on the most was how the story that's being told among the books of the New Testament. I see it in my students. They, when they read the Bible, they tend to.

They'll read the book of Romans, and they tend to think that this is some sort of mysterious, mystical spiritual text that is this sort of random collection of sentences that somehow has to be deciphered. And when it's not, it's a, It's a letter.

And we know who wrote it, we know who he wrote it to, we know when he wrote it, and we have the Book of Acts to sort of help us triangulate that. And so I think people, I think people misunderstand what the New Testament documents actually are.

And they, to be fair, they come by that misunderstanding quite honestly because that's often how the material is actually treated in sermons and in discipleship. But, but yeah, so I think the misconception.

I think, I hope that when people read the New Testament portion of Bible 101, they'll walk away saying, oh, okay, so these first four books are about the life of Jesus. And then here's the Book of Acts that tells us about these first couple of years and these letters that were written as the gospel spread.

And here's what these letters, here's their who to and what it's about. And, and to give them some, Some context, they know at least know on the map where they are when they start reading the Book of Philemon.

Joshua Noel: 00:30:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Peter Link: 00:30:42

In fact, your, your last, your last sentence in Bible 101, I think, sums that up pretty well. You say it is a comprehensive guide talking about the Bible.

It is a comprehensive guide to knowing God and knowing his son, Jesus Christ, and informs the lives of more people than any other religious text. And so it's not just raw information. It's this idea of actually knowing God and knowing his son that is all over the New Testament.

And I would add the Old Testament But I really think the strength of Ed's part of the book is that he really is masterful at connecting the various parts of the New Testament into a coherent story about knowing God and his son.

Joshua Noel: 00:31:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:31:22

I know there's so much fun.

And I do think there's going to be some stuff theologically I probably don't agree with in the book, but I think this is really useful, especially for people who haven't read the Bible before. And I really want to highlight for me, I grew up, and it wasn't until I went to college that I realized some things about the Bible I had just.

This is a collection of books I always knew, but I always read them the same because it's the Bible. And then college is when I found out, yeah, they're a collection of different genres, too. And I'm like, oh. And I'm still wrestling with that.

That still messes with me sometimes. I'm like, what do you mean? Daniel has multiple genres in the book? That's not how books work. And it's like, well, turned out it is.

Got to deal with it.

Joshua Noel: 00:32:01

All right.

Edward Gravely: 00:32:03

Yeah. One of the things I always tell my students is that the. The Bible uses the New Testament, specifically the Old Testament as well.

But the Bible uses language the way everybody uses language. The Bible is. Is written in relatively plain wording. Now, there are some clear exceptions. Daniel, Revelation, I get all that, but.

And so my students are just sort of shocked to read the Bible and find hyperbole and sarcasm and figures of speech and parables and Jesus saying things purely to make people angry.

And I think that once you just take a breath and relax and allow the Bible to talk like any normal person would talk, it tends to make a lot more sense.

Joshua Noel: 00:32:47

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:32:48

I mean, I know even there's been a couple of times I tried to walk away from my faith, and I can't put the Bible down. Like, for me, even, like, if I don't believe it, it's just such a good book. Like, I'm like, I don't know.

Like, right now I'm at a point where I'm like, yeah, I'm here. I'm with it. You know, I believe all this, but even when I don't, I'm like, this is just a book I can't get away from. It's just expertly done.

And having something like this to kind of help guide people so they know what they're reading. Pretty useful.

Joshua Noel: 00:33:15

Yeah. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:33:16

So something we thought might be fun for this episode is to do what we're gonna call the Bible speed round. So get y' alls opinions on a couple of different questions. There are rules. You both have to answer in one sentence or less.

You do both get to answer or you can skip it. You don't want to answer a particular one. We're not allowed to ask you follow up questions. We're not going to do anything fancy.

We're not going to alternate. We're just going to go gravely link for every question. So are you guys ready?

Edward Gravely: 00:33:44

I'm ready, yes, sir.

TJ Blackwell: 00:33:46

All right, so what is your preferred Bible translation and why?

Edward Gravely: 00:33:50

The esv English Standard Version. And the why is? Because it's the one I'm most familiar with.

Peter Link: 00:33:59

I'll say the CSB because it is very accessible and I still think reasonably accurate. So yeah, that's when I'm not teaching from the Hebrew, I often use the csb.

TJ Blackwell: 00:34:11

I agree. What would you say is the most overlooked book in the Bible?

Peter Link: 00:34:15

Jude Obadiah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:34:19

So what's one Bible story that always moves you?

Edward Gravely: 00:34:22

The calling of Levi in the Gospel. An amazing story and it's told with such shocking brevity that you can't help but be moved by it.

Peter Link: 00:34:30

I would have to say the Exodus story. In particular the chapters 1 through 15. When and especially the moment when Pharaoh basically begs for Moses to show give him a blessing.

Suddenly I see Pharaoh in myself or my. You know, how would that work?

TJ Blackwell: 00:34:50

So who is a character in the Bible that you see yourself in?

Peter Link: 00:34:53

Peter.

Edward Gravely: 00:34:54

Often wrong, but never in doubt.

Peter Link: 00:34:57

Well, I already said Pharaoh, so I think unfortunately that's true. But I'll add another moment. I see unfortunately a lot of Jacob in me as well, although I only have one wife.

Joshua Noel: 00:35:08

Well, yeah, yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:35:10

So what do you think Evangelicals most commonly miss when reading scripture?

Edward Gravely: 00:35:14

They don't read enough of it to properly understand the sentence that they're quoting.

Peter Link: 00:35:19

Context, context, context and large volume reading is the key. And yeah, that's, that's we're on the same page there.

TJ Blackwell: 00:35:28

All right, so what's one or what might Catholic readers be most surprised by with your reading of the Scripture?

Edward Gravely: 00:35:35

I think it's the same answer as the last one, which is read, read, read, read the Bible. I think people who grew. This is more than one sentence.

Peter Link: 00:35:42

Sorry.

Edward Gravely: 00:35:43

People who grew up in a tradition where they were sort of authoritatively told what the Bible means often don't think the Bible is accessible. But I hope this book would surprise my Catholic neighbors. I gave them a copy with just how readable the Bible actually is.

You can read it for yourself. And it is, most of the time, relatively clear in what it says.

Peter Link: 00:36:07

I would echo that.

And as a former Catholic, I would say that the greatest thing about when I came to faith was I already had a confidence in the Bible, but I had never been exposed to the Bible. So I would always say to somebody who's from a tradition where you don't read the Bible a lot, you start reading it a lot.

TJ Blackwell: 00:36:21

So what is one section of Scripture that people might be surprised by? Its literary genre, Book of Revelation.

Peter Link: 00:36:30

I would say that the book of Ruth being set in the midst of a bunch of wisdom books in the Hebrew order is very significant and surprising.

TJ Blackwell: 00:36:39

All right. And that will conclude the Bible speed round. You both did a great job. It ain't easy, and somebody has to do it, and you both succeeded.

Joshua Noel: 00:36:49

Specifically, you two had to do.

Joshua Noel: 00:36:51

Yeah, yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:36:52

It's unfortunate.

Joshua Noel: 00:36:53

Oh, man. Well, you know, I mentioned it before. Our podcast is primarily about Christian unity, so got a couple questions along those lines.

We want to ask you guys specifically, how do you think people from Catholic or Orthodox traditions might receive your book? You mentioned kind of what you thought might be most surprising, but what do you think their reactions to it would be?

Dr. Gravely, would you start us off with that?

Edward Gravely: 00:37:15

Yeah. I would assume that most Catholics or Orthodox would agree with most of what I wrote about the New Testament.

There are some things in there probably about Mary they wouldn't necessarily agree with. I identify James and Jude as the brothers of Jesus. They might. Some Catholics might disagree with that, but I don't. I mean, it's. It's trinitarian.

It's Jesus is the Savior. It's substitutionary atonement. I don't. I think that. I think we'd all be on the same page there for sure.

Peter Link: 00:37:44

Yeah.

I would say this, that for Catholic and Orthodox traditions, my reading of the Old Testament will dovetail with those traditions, just as I think it does with the Protestant. When it's read. Well, the gospel focus really brings everything together.

And just remember that if you're, for example, if you're from the Catholic tradition, you think, what about those other Old Testament books that they include in what they call the Deuterocanon? And I just say, hey, your Deuterocanon, we call them Apocrypha, that's fine. If you call it second canon, that's fine. That's what Deuterocanon means.

Let's just focus on the first canon. And the first canon is just laid out here in the Old Testament, and we can find a lot to agree on.

And you've got other resources where you can dig into those other books. Because we can't do everything with a thousand words per section.

Joshua Noel: 00:38:29

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:38:31

So if they reached out and they were like, hey, let's do Apocrypha 101, would you both agree or.

Peter Link: 00:38:35

Probably not, because I don't think I'm a good enough expert on those books, just to be blunt. There's plenty of people who would do a much better job than I would. But I feel like on the primary canon, I can help.

No matter what Christian tradition you're in, you can even.

It really doesn't matter at the end of the day, the way that it's ordered, you're going to better understand how the Old Testament communicates the Gospel.

TJ Blackwell: 00:38:57

All right, so.

And when we consider believers of more progressive traditions than Southern Baptists who might not affirm biblical inerrancy but still hold the Bible as important and authoritative, how do you think they might receive the book?

Edward Gravely: 00:39:14

Yeah, I don't. Again, I don't think that. I don't think there would be any issue. I tried not to use any theologically loaded terms.

So the term inerrancy, I don't think shows up in the book. Obviously, we have a. The writers of this book have a very, very high regard for scripture.

And so you could certainly infer things like authority and inerrancy and clarity and all those sorts of things.

But, yeah, I mean, I. Dr. Link will be able to say more about this because there were some unavoidable cultural landmines he had to walk his way through regarding sexual ethics. So I'll let him talk about that. But in the New Testament portion of. I don't think it'd be an issue.

Peter Link: 00:39:55

Yeah. For example, when we came to Genesis 19 and we had to deal with what was happening there, how do you describe that?

Well, no matter how you shape it, it's homosexual rape. And they had to think through whether or not that was an appropriate description. And ultimately, that's where the book comes down.

But I would say to progressives, any progressive who's willing to submit to the Scriptures, because by your definition, they find it to be authoritative. If all they're trying to do is sidetrack those other questions about inerranc. Okay, let's talk.

But I think they're going to find in particular, what we're doing is just bringing them to the Scriptures. It's not.

I don't think anyone who is in a different tradition is going to put this down and say I got to be a Southern Baptist today, although I think you should be.

But I do think someone is going to say, man, I got to start thinking about the Bible in bigger categories because I got to start thinking about Jesus in bigger categories because I got to start thinking about the Gospel in bigger categories.

So that's really the goal of Bible 101, which is to take what you know of the scriptures and connect it to the most essential elements that all Christians have agreed upon, Old and New Testament. And I think the way it's set up, it allows for that and it doesn't cut you off. Now, we obviously disagree.

Like, they're going to go if we had an extended discussion outside of the book, like we're doing here, eventually my commitment to inerrancy is going to show up. My commitment to a particular form of inspiration is going to show up.

But I don't think any of that is an imposition that's going to get in the way of somebody else reading it. But I do think it's going to.

It's going to be very clear that the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ are essential truths to the Gospel in both the Old and New Testament. So that's where your definition of progressive, I think, is. Is gets a bit dicey. I'm not sure that all modern progressives would agree with that.

Some would, obviously, but not all would.

And I think if, if, if you disagree with those essential truths, you're going to read Bible 101 and perhaps be challenged that maybe, just maybe, the. The Bible is arguing something different than your version of progressive Christianity.

Joshua Noel: 00:41:57

Well, I'll speak to this a little bit because I'm probably the most progressive person of this group. If it's like a, you know, if you think of it as like, Like a scale, I guess.

Peter Link: 00:42:07

Sure.

Joshua Noel: 00:42:07

Oh, no. You know, for. Just, for example, I probably have a different atonement theory that I would subscribe to than you two.

I still don't feel like it was that offensive, you know, holding more to, like a Christus Victor model. I'm reading it and I'm like, yeah, I mean, that's what the Bible says, right?

Like, there are parts that, you know, that I'm like, I probably would have said that different. And then when I think of it, I'm like, well, I don't know how I would have said it.

And I couldn't say what I would want to say without including both sides having a whole debate and, like, having a whole college dissertation. And that's not what this book is.

TJ Blackwell: 00:42:39

So there's a reason we have this show.

Joshua Noel: 00:42:41

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:42:42

So that I can be long winded and TJ can complain about it on air.

Joshua Noel: 00:42:46

Yeah.

Edward Gravely: 00:42:47

When I try to walk my students through this issue at the beginning of New Testament survey, I try to avoid making them have to take an. Have an opinion on inerrancy right away. And so the. But. But I think anybody. And I am an inheritance. But I think anybody.

The language I use in class is this.

The Gospels are a reasonably accurate record of the things that Jesus said, did, and the books of the New Testament have been transmitted to us through the ages with reasonable accur.

Because if we agree, regardless of what your other theological commitments are, if we agree that the Gospels are a reasonably accurate record of the things that Jesus said and did, then we can have a conversation. And I think this my book, this my part of the book, and I know Dr.

Links as well, certainly does approach it as if they are a reasonably accurate record of the things that Jesus said. If you want to.

You want to quibble around the edges about dates and times and places and some other place names and, you know, the kinds of things that tend to get debated about. I just. Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but I just don't care about. Just don't care about those things right now.

Joshua Noel: 00:43:52

I get that.

Edward Gravely: 00:43:54

Yeah. Do you believe what Jesus said about salvation? We can argue about where he was standing when he said it later. Right.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:01

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:02

Yeah, I know.

Peter Link: 00:44:03

Now remember that Dr. Gravely is a textual critic and he is an expert in all those things. So he's not saying those things are unimportant. What he's saying is that we're always going to make the main thing the main thing.

And that's the commitment of Bible 101. It does make the main thing the main thing. And it makes Jesus either the foundation or the stumbling block. And that's the wisdom of the scriptures.

But it also is the opening up for the conversations that can transform everybody who's willing to listen to the scriptures.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:32

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:32

People usually are pretty surprised when you show them that.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:36

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:37

Hey, everything that you guys say you know about Julius Caesar, there's actually more documentation of Jesus than him. So nothing you to believe he's God, but to not believe in the historical figure that is Jesus is on par with not believing in Caesar. Just crazy.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:52

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:44:53

Which I could get behind that.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:56

There was no Caesar. What are you talking about?

TJ Blackwell: 00:44:57

There was no Caesar.

Joshua Noel: 00:44:58

Just gaslight everybody.

TJ Blackwell: 00:44:59

Not Julius.

Peter Link: 00:44:59

Sure.

TJ Blackwell: 00:45:00

Octavius Caesar. Yeah.

He was real but so is there anything else that you think our listeners might want to know about either of you or Bible 101 before they go pick it up?

Edward Gravely: 00:45:11

I would just add that it's a. For the devout believers who are listening. It's a great resource. And I'm not trying to sell books here, I promise.

If you knew what my cut was of each book sold, you would realize I'm not trying to sell books, but it's a great book to have on hand to give to people. I always keep a bunch of them. And when I'm talking to people and they find out I'm a.

My wife and I just got back from a vacation in Europe, not really as luxurious as it sounds, but. And once they found out I was the.

I was the college professor in religion, every dinner I got questions, and it was just good to have a couple of Bible 101s on hand to say, hey, you know, you got lots of questions about the Bible. You and I are not going to see each other ever again after about three days.

And so here's a great little resource that might help you read the Bible, mostly hoping that it will encourage them to read the Bible.

Peter Link: 00:46:01

Right.

It can accompany an evangelism strategy, a discipleship strategy, which I think should always be connected anyway, because it's ultimately helping people put on the categories of the Bible and language that is biblical in the softest sense of the word. Right. So it doesn't require you to argue over details. It does require you to think about the big picture.

And so that really is, I think, seeing churches and we use it, schools and some schools are starting to use it as well.

But seeing churches use it as ways to help Christians who've been Christians a long time, but also new Christians, and help them relate to the Bible better. Man, that's a home run. That's the goal. That's really the joy of what we've tried to accomplish.

And hopefully, if you want to hand out one here or there like we do, that's fine. I had to hand out one today, but I had to borrow my colleague because I was out of them, so.

Joshua Noel: 00:47:03

Nice.

Joshua Noel: 00:47:04

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:47:05

Well, with that said, guys, you know, one thing we.

We do always like to do before we wrap up is to just ask our guests, if they had to provide a single, just tangible action, something practical people could do to better help church unity, what it would be today, I'm a little bit more specific because all believers that, you know, Christians, for the most part, seem to agree on, like the Bible being important in Some way, at the very least.

So if you guys had to provide just an action that would help us, I don't know, better read the Bible for ourselves or understand how other people are coming to Scripture, what would you say to that? And I'll throw that to Dr. Gravely first.

Edward Gravely: 00:47:47

I would say one of the. One of the elements that's often missing is that we read the Bible, but we don't read the Bible with other people. And I think that the.

The Bible was in. Was given to the church to be read by the church.

And I think that you actually learn a lot about the Bible and about your own faith when you read the Bible with other people in community and in terms of unity. I think it'd even be great if, you know, Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox all read the Bible together. I think. I think that would.

That would be fantastic. Anything that gets people to read the Bible more, I'm all for. I'm always here for that.

Joshua Noel: 00:48:22

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:48:23

I've always kind of imagined book clubs as a whole concept, Just being someone who went to a church and was like, man, what if we read regular books like that? And that's just how book clubs started. They're just all based on Bible studies. What if we had an Edgar Allan Poe study?

Edward Gravely: 00:48:37

I'd go to that, too, by the way.

Joshua Noel: 00:48:39

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:48:39

So it sounds fun. Dr. Link, though, same. Same question. What would you say?

Peter Link: 00:48:45

The main thing I would focus folks on is praying the Scriptures. And in praying for the Scriptures, learning to pray for your enemies, pray those who pray for the.

Praying for folks changes your posture towards them, and therefore it influences your posture towards God.

And part of what taking the Bible seriously about is adjusting our posture toward God and others so that the Great Commission and the Great Commandments can become a more vibrant part of our lives. And sometimes myself, I struggle with the praying part of scripture and apparently the speaking in public today.

But the praying part of scripture is in. Is very difficult and yet very rewarding. It helps you when you don't know what to pray.

It helps you when you recognize that your heart is very distant from the God you know who loves you. And it lets those ideas up Mount Gob that are still very, very distant to come very close.

And that allows you, therefore, to recognize that God really is the good father he claims to be.

And if you can approach the Bible as God as a father, rather than God as a mere policeman, it opens up more than just the intellectual part of your life. It opens up all of it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:50:01

Yeah. So that's super important to us. We Always tell people to share the episode with their enemies for much the same reason. But what happens?

What are the repercussions in the world if everyone takes your advice link. Or bravely? Like, what if we start, you know, praying, putting emphasis on prayer, reading the Bible together.

I think like a multi mass type thing would be cool. Everyone goes and reads in the atrium and then splits off to do their sermon. I think that would be really neat.

Probably only possible on a college campus, but it'd be really neat.

Joshua Noel: 00:50:30

Yeah.

Edward Gravely: 00:50:31

Yeah. I think if you have more people reading the Bible level, then we certainly have more of a common language with which to discuss our differences.

Because it becomes. I found this in my own classrooms. It becomes less tribal. It's not. Well, my people believe this. Well, your people believe that.

Well, your people believe that. But look what your people did. If we can take those and just simply reduce it down to. Yeah, but what do the words say?

And, and that way we lose all of the superfluous appeals to authority. It's no longer.

Well, yeah, but I've been a Christian for 20 years and so my reading is correct or I was praying and Lord revealed to me that this interpretation was no, the, the, the, the, the. The winner of the battle of ideas is the one who can convince the most people that this is what the words actually say.

And I think that would be, I think that would be a. We would have much more common ground to have our discussions and disagreements, and we would certainly know the scripture a lot better.

And that's always a good thing.

Peter Link: 00:51:31

Yeah. So let me, let me just build off of that. In addition to teaching it at Charleston Southern, Ed and I are also pastors at the same church.

And we work in a ministry we call life groups, which you can call them Bible studies, call them whatever.

But fundamentally, theologically, what we believe is that the people who love God, who are moved by God's spirit, sitting around and reading God's Word, Word together, those are the conversations that changes the creation. So when you began Talking about Isaiah 55 and the power of God's Word, that is the power of people talking about and praying through scriptures.

And you, the world, in a sense, can't do that. It is the church that does that.

The people who are called by God's name, shaped by his sacrifice and his son, who are allowing God's Word and God's Spirit to move our hearts. That's where life is created. And really there is no human kingdom that's going to measure up to the kingdom of God. But in every Human kingdom.

We can delight in the kingdom that's coming and live according to it. We can take our future hope and let it shape who we are today. And that's going to happen in community.

That's going to happen in people who believe in the seriousness of the scriptures and learn to love through it. And therefore, they can connect the Great Commission and the Great Commandments. That's what changes the world. And it does it one heart at a time.

And you have three steps forward, two steps back, two steps forward, three steps back. And that's okay. If you look at the history of the church, it is not a straight line.

It is a bumbling group of people who stumble over themselves and the gospel, and God keeps picking us back up. So you should not have some lofty expectations.

That is, if everybody would suddenly develop my particular theological perspective, that there would be great unity. Now, that would be uniformity.

And I think instead, what I want you to do is to recognize that if you believe this creates genuine unity, the gospel, you walk on it and let God shape you and others through it. But don't hold off the idea that, man, if everybody just. Just did it my way, things would be better maybe, but maybe not rarely.

Joshua Noel: 00:53:40

So.

TJ Blackwell: 00:53:41

So, gentlemen, thank you so much for your time today. We got a few things left, so bear with us. Next, we're gonna get into our God moment.

We always do this before we wrap up, and it's just where we talk about what God's been doing in our lives recently. We just take them all where we saw God, whether that be a blessing, moment of worship, a challenge.

And I always make Josh go first to give the rest of us plenty of time to think. So, Josh, do you have a God moment for us this week?

Joshua Noel: 00:54:03

Yeah, I went to a conference a couple weeks ago with Dr. Tom Ord and his group, which I don't theologically fit in with completely, but I had a really good time, made a lot of good connections. People kept buying me mules. So that was great. I think that was interesting is even though I pretty Openly disagree with Dr.

Ordinary a lot when it came to. There was like, near the end of the conference, he was doing, like, a workshop.

He once had someone talking about publishing and some talking about this. And he was a lot of his doctorate students. He was like, yeah, I want you to help lead. Like, how do we do podcasts?

And I was like, hey, I'm gonna not agree with these people. I do know how to run a podcast and create a podcast.

And the fact that he respected me enough to say, hey, we disagree, but I know you know this well, and I was able to be humble enough to go. I might not agree with all the podcasts that they're gonna create, but. But I'm here to help, you know.

TJ Blackwell: 00:54:59

Which is a cool, cool God moment to have when, you know, Dr. Link was what, our 15th guest on the show.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:06

Yeah, he was on when the podcast didn't sound very good.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:11

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:55:12

And it was in person.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:13

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:14

That was fun, though. I miss that. It was fun sometimes.

TJ Blackwell: 00:55:16

It was a lot of driving, so this is a lot more economically stable.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:20

That's.

TJ Blackwell: 00:55:21

But for me, my God moment, my grandparents have reached that stage of their life where they just want more reasons to get the rest of the family around because, you know, kids grow up and they decide to start going to different churches and this and that. This week they're just doing a celebration of life dinner. And it's just fun to see what.

Edward Gravely: 00:55:40

They come up with.

TJ Blackwell: 00:55:41

It's all kinds of things because now we've got all the standard stuff that everyone expects. You know, Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving. Got to go to Meemaw's house now every few weeks, she's just like, hey, let's come up.

Everybody come over my house.

Joshua Noel: 00:55:54

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:55:54

And I really love it. And they are just such a great, God fearing and God loving people that I can't turn them down.

Joshua Noel: 00:56:01

Although they could have made it a Dino bash and that would have been cooler.

Joshua Noel: 00:56:04

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:56:05

Well, yeah, they're perfect.

TJ Blackwell: 00:56:06

They are human. But I'm super grateful that they're still around and still loving. Hard to explain how grateful I am for that. But.

Dr. Link, do you have a God moment for us this week?

Peter Link: 00:56:22

Yeah. I was blessed.

One of my children, who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent, dedicated his life to mission work after going on a mission trip with our church. And I've known for a long time that God could use him in this way, but now it's a matter of.

Of giving him time and space to let God be his father in a more direct way than ever. And I'm excited for that and for my other kids, too. They're all growing in their own way.

And so as a father, as a Christian father in particular, it's a bit of a dicey game to figure out when you are stepping on the toes of your heavenly father with your children and when you are actually leading them to his feet.

And so there's been a lot of ups and downs, a lot of things I would go back and have done differently, but it's Nice to see that despite all the shortcomings, God is greater than I. And definitely this past week and a half, pondering that it's been a great, delightful Dr. Gravely.

TJ Blackwell: 00:57:24

God moment us the best for last.

Edward Gravely: 00:57:27

Yeah. Two things immediately come to mind.

Number one, on that trip that my wife and I took, I was trying not to do any work at all, not talk shop, so to speak. But every time we would sit down to dinner with other couples that were on the tour, I would always have somebody sit next to me, and they'd be like.

They'd lean over, and they would say, so you're the religion professor, right? I have a question. And so I actually have to do quite a bit of question answering about the Bible. Well, that was a blessing. I was.

To be honest, I was a little frustrated at first, but. But it was. It was a blessing. And my.

We have a daughter who is currently serving for the summer as a missionary in South Asia in a very difficult place. And we got to talk to her this morning, and she's doing really well. God's doing some amazing things, and they've been.

They've endured some hardships, let's put it that way, but things are going really well.

Peter Link: 00:58:12

Very pleased to hear about that.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:15

That's awesome. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 00:58:16

That's a dangerous place to be.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:18

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:18

That feeling of, like, oh, you're the religion professor. That also happened a lot during that week. Primarily.

I was at this conference primarily because, like, we were doing, like, podcast stuff at the end of the nights.

And, like, the very first day, someone came on and was talking about how, like, you know, they found the charismatic stuff that they encounter dangerous. And of course, I had to follow up with, like, oh, so is this a bad time to mention I'm still charismatic? And.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:41

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 00:58:42

So naturally, the entire rest of the weeds, like you said, you grew up Pentecostal. You were Pentecostal. You're charismatic. Let me ask you this. I'm like, look, I don't speak for all Pentecostals or charismatic people or any of that.

I don't know. I don't know, man. I got that a lot. I should have known better than to say.

Edward Gravely: 00:58:59

I do, in fact, speak for all Baptists. So if you ever need to know what you think.

Joshua Noel: 00:59:02

Perfect. What's the best superhero movie? You know, Dr. Link doesn't have an opinion anymore. So what do all Baptists like for superheroes?

Edward Gravely: 00:59:12

Oh, Netflix. Daredevil.

Joshua Noel: 00:59:16

All right, good to know. That's their favorite. You know, it's a good one. I. I can respect it.

TJ Blackwell: 00:59:22

So, yeah, if you like this, please consider sharing with a friend. Share with your enemies. Share with a cousin. Gotta love your cousins and your enemies.

Joshua Noel: 00:59:30

Especially your cousins. Yeah, cousins are better than enemies because it can be both.

TJ Blackwell: 00:59:34

They can be both. Yeah, many are. Yeah, yeah, sit on that. And there are paid subscriptions you can use to support us. If you just want to submit and forget.

You can do that on Captivate, Apple Podcast Patreon for extra content where you can support our ministry. There are also single time tip options on I think all three of those.

Joshua Noel: 00:59:54

Yeah, I know for sure. Captivate. I don't know for sure the other ones.

TJ Blackwell: 00:59:57

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can single time tip us on any of those if you want to submit it and forget it and feel good once. If we don't deserve $10 a month, but we might deserve $10 once, that's okay with us.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:07

Yeah, heck, I'll take a dollar once. That's like, that's like most of a cheeseburger. You should be a whole cheeseburger.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:14

Yeah.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:15

Anyway, also guys, make sure you check out the other shows on the Amazon podcast network. You know, there will be a website, the show links down below. And here let nothing move you.

With Christian Ashley going through the Bible, you can hear the homily Pastor Will Rose and Systematic Ecology. You know you want here TJ and I trying to think the most recent thing that we did on there probably Duel of Fates.

We reviewed Star Wars Duel of the Fates script.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:39

Yeah.

Edward Gravely: 01:00:39

If you want to hear that.

TJ Blackwell: 01:00:40

I don't know. That's when anything comes out. So yeah, I have to assume you're right.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:44

I barely know and I produce it. So that's. That's bad.

TJ Blackwell: 01:00:49

But we hope you all enjoyed it. Once again, Dr. Link, Dr. Gravely, thank you so much for your time.

Joshua Noel: 01:00:53

Thank you.

TJ Blackwell: 01:00:54

Next week we're going to be having another round table discussion. It's roundtable time.

This time we're going over how churches can disciple people in a time where church members spend more time with news and media than they do in our churches, which is of course rather poignant at the moment. Then we're going to be speaking with Dr. Janet Ock. I think it's Ock.

About her contribution to the New Testament in Color, a multi ethnic Bible commentary.

After that, Russ Petrus and Olivia Haste from Catholic Moon Preach will be returning to the show to discuss what the new Pope might mean to their ministry. And at the end of season one, Francis Chan will be on the show.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:28

Yeah, he doesn't know it though, so someone has to tell him.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:31

Yeah. Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 01:01:32

Somebody's got to tell.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:33

Don't ask, just tell. Just be. Okay, Francis. I saw you. Just want to let you know you are going to be on the show soon.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:38

Yeah.

TJ Blackwell: 01:01:40

At Target. Stop him.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:43

Tap on the shoulder. I hear you're going to be on this podcast. Can't wait.

Joshua Noel: 01:01:47

Yeah.