The Completion of the Gospel

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way.

Did I tell you that we had a second person, a long-time faithful listener, who let us know that she too thought we had been ‘limping like chickens’ to the Promised Land, and if there’s one there are two and there must be more, so I’m telling you right now we are not limping like chickens.

It just surprised me that both heard the same thing. I could see how you could hear different things, but the exact same thing – that is surprising to me.

I must need to work on my enunciation.

Emily, say “Jacob.”

Jacob.

I don’t know how that’s “chicken.”

Our recording equipment in the beginning was not very good. I will say that we have improved.

But we also demonstrate that we’re not using a recorded intro at the beginning, which a number of podcasts will do.

Yes, it’s not from a can. It’s baked fresh every morning.

We are at the end of the gospel of Luke. We got through the episode with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and we saw Jesus eating some fish with the disciples and confirming to Thomas that he was risen indeed, but we’re still in Luke 24.

We’re going to pick it up there and if we do a little overlap, so what? I’m going to start reading with verse 44. Luke is not necessarily trying here to take us one day at a time. He’s throwing at us things we need to know, that these things happened before Jesus went back to heaven, because it ends with him going back to heaven and the disciples going back to Jerusalem. Luke wants us to know these things happened, so we’ll start in verse 44.

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms, concerning me.

Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.

Then he leads them out to Bethany, and we’ll pick that up in the Book of Acts when we get there.

Some of the things I think we need to see at this point are that this is not happening in a void. It’s part of the historical continuity that began in Genesis and has moved step by step, decade by decade, century by century, recorded in the prophets until we get here.

Jesus himself mentions the law of Moses – that’s the Torah, the first five books – and the prophets. Normally the law and the prophets is a complete summary of what we would call the Old Testament, but he does add the psalms. It may be for emphasis, or it may be that by this time the Jews were dividing the Old Testament into law, prophets, and writings, which was their later division at least, in which case Psalms being the largest book would constitute that third section. Jesus is saying “the whole Bible,” which at that point was the Old Testament. As I said, this is not happening in a void. God has been planning this. He’s been working it out through history.

It is tempting when we have new Christians to hand them one of the gospels, usually John, and say, “This is what you really need to know.” There’s a place for that and there’s some wisdom in that, but sometime really soon, if we don’t want this to become belief in a myth or a fable, we do need to set the historical context for them.

There was a young couple we were introduced to by some good friends. It wasn’t clear if they had just come to Christ or were about to come to Christ or wanted to come to Christ. We didn’t know where they stood. It turns out in retrospect that I think they already at this point were converted but didn’t know what happens next, and I was overly cautious. Instead of saying, “You need to be baptized and join a church and make a public profession,” I said, “I don’t want to twist your arm here, but what we can do…”

These were well-educated young people in I would guess their late 20s, maybe early 30s but probably late 20s. He was a very successful business owner and had a lot of guys working for him, our friend being one of them, but they had never read the Bible. They’d never read the Old Testament, and when I mentioned things like Noah and the flood, or Samson with his strength and his long hair, they just looked at us like, “No, no, doesn’t mean anything.” I think with one of them it was like, “Oh yeah, yeah! We just got a book for our little girl and that story is in there.”

“Okay. Well, I do have this thing I do where I take people through the Old Testament in about 45 minutes. Would you like me to do that?” and using the Table of Contents, that inspired document, I talked them through the history so that their understanding, I would hope, would not hang in the void because they’re educated.

They’re intelligent. They’re going to want to know, “How does this fit in? Where does this belong in history? Is this like Xena princess warrior or Hercules or something? Or is this real?” and I tried to make them understand, “This is real.” We can sequence the stories, yes, but historical events have brought us this far.

This is what Jesus does. He doesn’t say, “Remember all those people in the Old Testament and all the wonderful experiences they had? You too can have an experience like that.” He doesn’t do that. He talks about how those books pointed forward to him in one way or another, and he’s including all the Old Testament books.

Unfortunately, I’ve run into too many Presbyterian and Reformed people who are a bit uncomfortable with that. “Yeah, he’s mentioned more or less in most of the books, but there are sections where he’s just really not there, like Ecclesiastes or Esther or something like that. Sure they’re laying groundwork, but you don’t try to teach Jesus out of that. You’re stretching the text.” “Uh, no, we’re not.”

Jesus is saying all of the books are about him. Sometimes they’re very direct references. We all know Isaiah 53, “despised, rejected, wounded for our transgressions,” or Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?” or Micah 5, “Thou Bethlehem Ephrata…”

We know those, but sometimes we think that’s really all there is there and that’s really all that’s important for us as New Testament Christians. We know that those prophecies are there. That’s a start, but Jesus is saying the whole Old Testament is about him. We saw this in his conversation with the men going to Emmaus. If we’re not getting that the Old Testament, both as a book and as a true account of real history, is about Jesus we’re not getting it.

Again, since this is a history podcast, not a theological one, nonetheless we must insist that if you don’t have a theological and Christological understanding of the Old Testament, you’re not going to understand history. It’s going to be one kingdom after another, one dynasty after another, one civilization collapsing after another.

Some people find that entertaining – battles and plagues and all that – but try to find meaning for your life and your eternity just in that. We need Messiah. We need God who spoke, and we need God to have always spoken and we need God to have said a great deal, and Jesus says he did.

These disciples knew the Old Testament better than most Christians do, let’s face it, because first they didn’t have the New Testament to read so they spent more time reading the Old Testament. It was read every Sabbath in their synagogues, and they had hung out with Jesus and they knew that he had the Old Testament mastered. You know that when your teacher begins to master something then you feel you probably should too, so they had a good grasp on the Old Testament, but that wasn’t enough.

Verse 45 says, “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.” We need Jesus by his Spirit to open our understanding or we’ll continue just to look at them like, “This is boring. Why are all these numbers here? Who cares who the daughters of Zelophehad were and why there were no sons? Who cares about that golden scepter that King Ahasuerus held out?”

Once we understand it in terms of who Jesus is and what he’s come to do, it all begins to come alive. This is what he did for them, but it takes the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to see and to believe. And having opened their understanding by a divine act he says –

Thus it is written [a famous way of quoting the Old Testament] and thus it behooved [an old-fashioned word that means it was necessary, it was requisite, it was something he had to do] that the Messiah had to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day.

Suffered, dead, resurrection, and resurrection on the third day.

When we get to 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul sums up the gospel he says, “Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures, and he was buried and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures,” it is amazing how many commentators say, “Yeah, the third day part, he’s not talking about that. He’s just talking about the resurrection,” and they quote two passages.

The whole testament is about his resurrection, and the third day is mentioned over and over and over again. You want a fun exercise? Get a concordance or whatever the equivalent is on computers and look up “third day” in the Bible, then compare it to first day, second day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day. For seventh day you’ll get a lot of hits. The others not so much. Third day is overflowing.

The Bible keeps coming back to impressive, important things, transitions and God’s plan of redemption happening on the third day. Why? Because something really important is going to happen on the third day, and there are other ways the Bible gets at it as well. Again, there’s more than just two passages that talk about the resurrection, but if you limit yourself to the explicit text then you may have trouble finding it. In fact, I’ve read commentaries that say, “Paul says Psalm 16 talks about it, so I guess it does.” Why is this even a problem for you? You wanted something explicit? It’s right there. Paul says it is. So does Peter.

I had a friend in college tell me that the apostles did things with the Old Testament that were totally illegitimate as far as biblical interpretation goes. It was like, “Don’t you think we should be guided by the apostles’ example in how to interpret, with the New Testament being inspired – like that would be an inspired interpretation, which would be the one you want to follow.” It was a perplexing perspective to have heard.

Did you get a response on that one?

I don’t recall. It was a long time ago.

That’s usually the spot where people smile at you noddingly like, “Poor child, you’re so deceived.”

It reeks of the underlying presupposition of higher criticism and all of that, where “our system” defines how the Bible should work, “our system” defines what is scripture, what are the right manuscripts. It’s by our science, our research, our parameters – we determine what is and isn’t correct in the scriptures. What all of this is saying is that the Old Testament are the scriptures he’s talking about.

I was recently listening to a back and forth, because they’re all over the place – the Charlie Kirk thing – and on one of them they were claiming he was a Christian Nationalist and he was saying, “No, I’m a Christian who loves my nation.” The guy was saying, “That’s not right, that’s not biblical,” and Charlie starts quoting Old Testament passages. Then the guy says, “Well, but those are all in the Old Testament. Jesus has changed things. How do you explain your position from the New Testament.”

Charlie Kirk left the other thing alone and started going after his, “So, the Old Testament is not as significant? If it’s not in the New Testament then we can’t do that?” But what this is saying is our history moving forward is going to more fully understand the Old Testament, which means we can actually use it better than those in the Old Testament could.

This is such a pivot point in history where moving forward we should have a greater capacity to use the Old Testament and have it inform how we build culture and governments and families.

And there’s a simplistic critique that kind of gets slapped down as soon as you quote anything related to national Israel in the Old Testament, where it’s like, “Well, America is not Israel.” “Yes, I do actually understand that, a concept of how these concepts are related, but it might take us a few steps to get there. Are you ready to listen?”

It’s as though if it’s not one-to-one we don’t have any imagination to be able to figure out how to relate those things. It’s the same as what you were just talking about, Greg, where we look at Ecclesiastes or Esther and we can’t figure out how to get to Jesus. It’s because we don’t have the imagination, the understanding to be able to make those intermediate steps. I’m sure there’s a number of reasons why, but we tend to want the really easy straightforward ones. I look at this and I can say, “It means this exactly.” I don’t have to work at all. It’s just very cut and dried straightforward. We don’t appreciate the poetry.

I think I understand what you mean, but I want to be sure. When you say imagination, you’re not talking about making things up and inventing connections. You’re talking about reading the way you would read literature in finding the connections and kind of letting your mind go in ways that are not strictly linear?

Yes, thank you. In the book Lit, which is by Tony Reinke, he talks about the importance of imagination because our faith is based on things we cannot see, so we need to be able to conceptualize them in our brains in what he calls imagination, so that’s what I’m thinking of. It’s something that’s not physically in front of us, but rather we need to be able to reach beyond our normal experiences and understanding.

The evidence of things not seen? I think the Bible has a word for that…called faith.

Yes, which is what he was relating it to, saying our faith is in things that we cannot see, and therefore we need to be able to understand how to do that.

A couple things to flesh this out a little bit – my former pastor when I lived in Anderson was a headmaster and schoolteacher. He taught Brit Lit wonderfully. We still use some of his notes as the basis for my syllabus. At one point the kids were reading Macbeth and he used a copy that had an essay in it that I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to find. The author of the essay argued that Macbeth’s problem was a failure of faith. He took everything literally.

“No man born of woman can hurt you.” It doesn’t require great reason to come up with, “Well, what else could that mean?” but he sees it in simple black and white. “It means I’m invulnerable.” That’s not what the words said and it’s not what they mean, but you’re unable to think the next step. Or “You’re safe until Birnam Wood comes against you.” “Well, it can’t move so I’m safe.” What else could that mean, just maybe?

Interestingly enough, J.R.R. Tolkien in Lord of the Rings thought that Shakespeare’s solutions weren’t nearly good enough.

His were so much better.

So he has a young lady and a hobbit kill the bad guy – no man born of woman. And in terms of the wood coming, the wood actually gets up and walks to the fortifications.

Along those lines, there was – he’s not a pastor anymore; he used to be a local pastor, and he basically thought I was the Antichrist because I corrupted the minds of the youth. He should have called me Socrates. One of the problems he had with me was the books I assigned in Lit. Particularly with regard to drama, which of course is far more public, he condemned me for using Roman Catholic plays – Sound of Music and I forget what else – and not using Reformed plays.

Emily and Rachel: What Reformed plays?

That was my response but maybe I’m missing something, so I asked my pastor, “What would you say to this?” and he looked at me and said, “What Reformed plays?” Now if you want to include within the Reformation the Anglican church, then I give you Shakespeare, I give you Agatha Christie, which we do a great deal of. And there’s Charles Dickens, who wasn’t a Christian but at least he worked within that milieu. I think there’s a reason for that.

It is significant that the Reformed Presbyterian tradition – let’s exclude the Anglicans for a moment – has not turned out plays or novels. It’s turned out a few sonnets and one epic and one allegory in the Puritan days. If you think afterwards, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything that counts as literature that the Reformed Presbyterian tradition has turned out. Systematic theologies? Fantastic. Commentaries? Wonderful, especially if you’re looking at the exact words in the Greek and Hebrew. But beautiful pieces of art and literature? Not so much, whereas the Anglican tradition has. At some point we need to ask ourselves, “Why is this?”

We look in the wake of the Reformation, and what was left of it gave America wonderful statesmen, most of whom were lawyers. They knew how to tackle a legal document, tear it to pieces and read the fine points and get all the loopholes. They couldn’t write literature to save their souls. Ask anybody who’s taken American Lit.

Or taught American Lit.

Yes, as the case may be. We’re very far afield here but the point is that as we read the Old Testament, you’re right, we need to read it the way the apostles did.

Sometimes I get the complaint, “Yeah, the Old Testament says that.” “Okay, great. Let’s turn to the New Testament. Nations – let’s look at the Great Commission – disciple all nations. Let’s look at Galatians 3, the heart of justification by faith, and see the gospel is that God will bless all nations. Let’s go to the book of Revelation where ‘All nations which thou hast made shall come and worship before thee.’”

I think the issue that people have though is they see, “Okay, all the nations can be gathered in,” but they don’t have a sense that we should appreciate the nation that we’re in. I think that’s the disconnect that there is. They see more ‘nations’ as just a generic term of different kinds of people, but if you say, “I love my nation. I want to do good to my nation” then you’re being a Christian Nationalist.

At which point I think we smile and say, “You’re making that up. Please show me from scripture where that is true, where the Bible ever suggests anything like that. Here’s the Bible, start turning.”

It comes from some of our over-development of the sacred/secular divide, where we think our nation is something that does not connect with our religion in any way, which is again dividing our lives in two. But we’ve eaten that for so long that nationalism has become completely separate in our minds, or we think it should be.

How better to undo the Great Commission. Well, you can convince people that Jesus doesn’t have all power, or you can convince them there are no nations. Either one works, and either way the Church doesn’t have a job.

There was a little booklet, and I don’t remember the name anymore, that was written by someone in the two-kingdom camp. It was supposed to be a nice little summary. It was a nice little summary. It was very blunt. He said there’s literally nothing else that needs to happen now.

How about the nations that are unreached? How about all the language groups that are unreached? You’re saying they can go to hell and you don’t care because people in your tradition or your nation have been saved and you don’t care about the rest of the world. This is wonderful Christian charity on your part, and it’s thoroughly unbiblical.

There’s that frightening note of lessening the scope of the Great Commission and the Church’s job by simply defining nations out of existence. “Well, as long as most people someplace have heard it, we’re close enough, right?” Um, no.

So to bring us back to our text, our verse 47 actually says that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations. I was seeing that as a summary of our goal and our commission and what Christ is doing in history as we move forward, particularly from this point, that this is what we should expect and also attempt to contribute to.

Notice the words – first of all, repentance. We started the gospels with John the Baptist and then Jesus saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” There are Christians today who don’t believe that repentance is a legitimate thing, that salvation is by works. “You don’t need to repent. You just need to trust Jesus and ask him to forgive you. Restitution, repentance, making things right that once went wrong, all that’s unnecessary because God forgives you, and anyone who suggests otherwise is laying a guilt trip on you.” Um, no.

Here, just before Jesus ascends, all nations need to hear and need to repent. Yes, there are sins to forgive. It’s not that people are lonely and they need a best friend, or people are hurting and they need a divine counselor, or people are sick and they need a divine physician. You are a sinner, a rebel against God, and your sins need to be forgiven. That’s what all nations need to hear – and again the word is ‘nations.’

He could have said people. There are words for that. He doesn’t. He says nations, starting here, starting in Jerusalem “and you are witnesses of these things,” but one thing is lacking, the promise of the Father. He doesn’t say it here, but elsewhere throughout the gospels and into Acts we’re told very clearly what that promise is. That promise is the gift of the Holy Spirit, so they’re to wait in Jerusalem until the Spirit descends upon them and baptizes the Church to Christ and empowers them to go do what Jesus just told them to do.

You would think, “Wow, this is exciting! We’re on the move! The kingdom of God has come. We’re about to take over the world for Jesus’ sake!”

Then we go to John, and apparently probably not seeing Jesus for a week or so, or at least the six days after this, they were told to Galilee. From the moment of his resurrection the angels had said, “He’s going to Galilee. Meet him there. Before he died he told you he would go to Galilee. Go to Galilee,” so they do, not just the apostles but much of the disciples and followers go there, but they’re just hanging out. This is chapter 21 of John.

We’re given the name of some of the men who were there – Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee (James and John), and two others. Simon Peter says, “I go a fishing” and the others said, “We’re going with you.” They go into a ship and they labor all night, because that’s when the fish come to the surface.

We’re not told exactly what was in Peter’s mind, but Jesus in the beginning had called them away from their nets and the fishing enterprise and said, “I’m going to make you fishers of men,” so this does not sound good. Maybe they were just killing time. Maybe, but there probably were better ways to kill time while they wait for Jesus than to go back to the very thing he called them away from.

So they’re there and it maybe should have struck them that, “You know, we’re professional fishermen. We know how to do this,” at least four of them were. Maybe the others were, too. But they can’t come up with anything and it’s going towards morning and we’re told this.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.

This was so often the case. Probably we’re on a Sunday morning. Then Jesus said to them, “Children or sirs or guys, do you have any food?” and they answered him rather curtly, “No. Don’t rub it in. We’re supposed to be good at this. We didn’t get anything.”

And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship and ye shall find.

This is one of the more amazing statements in scripture…

They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.

Here’s a stranger. It says they don’t know it’s Jesus. They’ve been fishing all night. Yes, they fished on both sides before. They’ve thought of everything. They moved the boat around. They’ve done everything, and some stranger says, “Have you tried the other side?” and they do.

Perhaps something reminded them of the first time this happened. For some reason, maybe it’s just the compulsion of the Spirit in their hearts, they do this ridiculous thing. They try the other side, as if what? The fish are all waiting on one side ready to jump in their nets? Yeah, kind of. So the net fills up with fish. The fish threw themselves into the net, and they can’t even draw it all up.

Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved [that’s John] saith unto Peter, It is the Lord.

No kidding. But Peter hadn’t figured that out on his own.

Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him, for he was naked [probably means he was stripped to the waist so he could yank and pull on nets] and did cast himself into the sea.

No one ever explained that to me when I was kid. What, he’s hiding?

I thought he was swimming to shore.

He is, but no one ever told me that. I grew up with a swimming pool in the backyard. When you went underwater it was to hide from people. You’re playing Marco Polo or something. Sometimes things are obvious to grown-ups that are not to kids. But yes, he’s going to swim to shore because he wants to get to the Lord before the others do, so he just leaves them with the fish.

And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fishes.

This is valuable. They’re not going to let the fish go.

As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon and bread.

Jesus produced this and we’re not told how. We’re not told if he went into town and bought the fish and bread with money he didn’t have, or if he miraculously generated them out of nothing, or if he said, “Here fishy, fishy…” and they came up and laid themselves in his hand. The bread would be a little more difficult. You don’t whistle for bread.

Somehow he through some divine method had produced this and laid it on the coals because everyone likes a nice warm meal when you’ve just been out all night in the bold, and especially if you just threw yourself in the sea.

By the way, for those of you who know the Chronicles of Narnia, at the end of Prince Caspian when they sail to the ends of the earth to Aslan’s land they find a lamb with a little fire going and fish and bread on it.

It’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Oh, you are so right.

Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.

So Jesus caught some, they caught others, and they’re all part of this collection of edibles that need to be consumed, that need to be eaten into this body of believers. Here again, “That’s odd. Why fish?” High in protein?

Because they’re high in fat. You need that to survive. You can’t live on rabbits and squirrels forever. There’s not enough fat.

I’ve never heard Presbyterian Reformed people to go that way, but there are weird people who say, “This is the diet prescribed by scripture. You’ll be healthier if you do this.” There are still people who are promoting Ezekiel bread. There was a point there – and it isn’t that it’s healthy.

In fact, it made them fatter, which is a fun fact to bring up when people bring up that diet.

Anyway, the significance of fish in the New Testament, from the moment that Jesus first calls the disciples, is “You’re going to be fishers of men.” The fish stand for men. Fishing with a net equals fishing by preaching the gospel. The Bible itself sets it up, and it doesn’t set it up just for that one time. It sets it up for the rest of the New Testament. In fact, it has roots in the Old Testament.

Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine.

That is, you’re part of this process of incorporating people into the kingdom of God.

And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread and giveth them, and fish likewise.

Every time he shows up, he eats with them.

This is now the third time that Jesus showed himself to his disciples after he was risen from the dead.

So presumably, although we’re not told so explicitly, it’s the next Sunday. We know that the first time he showed up was Sunday, the next time was Sunday, and it’s been awhile obviously so it fits at least.

When they dined, Jesus apparently gets Simon by himself, or everyone else just shuts up – one of the two.

So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

I suppose most of us have heard sermons on this and know that the words in the Greek are different. There are some commentators who say they’re not that different, that in fact agape and phileo can be used interchangeably and that we shouldn’t stress the difference quite so much.

One of the commentaries that I use on John – and unfortunately I forgot to look and see who the author is; I think it’s Hendrickson but I may well be mistaken – he has an entire sub-section and table where he actually compares all the times that agape and phileo are used, and he shows that yes, they do sometimes overlap or are used interchangeably, but more often than not there’s a distinction, and I think for myself at least that that’s what’s going on here.

Jesus asks, “Do you love me with divine love?” – agape. Peter responds with a different word. “You know that I feel brotherly affection for you,” – phileo. It’s not the same thing. And remember that Peter’s previous claim was, “I’ll go with you to death. Nothing can separate us.” Now it’s like, “Yeah, I love you like a brother, like a best friend.” “Okay. Feed my lambs.”

“Do you love me?” – the same question, same word – and Peter responds the same way. “I love you with brotherly affection.” “Feed my sheep.”

Then Jesus changes the word. “Do you love me as a brother?” and Simon weeps, not simply because it’s the third time, and we are to think of the three denials, but also because Jesus changed the word. He came down to Peter’s level and basically says, “For now I’ll take it,” and this is overwhelming.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young thou girdest thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest, but when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God.

In the most broad sense, “You’re going to lose control of your destiny when you get old.” That’s not very specific, but Peter basically picks up, “Oh, I’m going to die a martyr for Jesus. Okay.” But he’s excited.

Apparently at this point they’re walking along because he sees John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, following along, and being Peter and wanting to say something, and when you’re excited you want to talk about it, “What will this man do?”

Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.

“If he lives forever until I come back, what does that have to do with you? Follow thou me.”

“Oh, yeah yeah yeah.”

Apparently a rumor went around among the disciples that John would never die, which John himself corrects, because that’s not what he said.

Though he is going to be the last apostle to die.

He’s no Macbeth, though.

Then the book ends with John saying, “And if everything Jesus did and said were written, the world could not contain the books that would be written.”

Can I throw in something about the “feed my lambs”? I’ve got the Greek in front of me and it’s interesting that not only is the word for love different, but the word for feed is different. First he says, “Feed my lambs.” The second time it’s more like, “Tend my sheep,” and the third time it’s going back to the first verb and saying, “Feed my sheep.” I don’t know if it means anything. I’m not enough of a scholar to know that.

It means something, I just don’t know what because if I ever learned that I’ve forgotten it.

This also is a very important story to shape the way the Church should grow and develop, and will be very important after all the persecutions because there will be those who say, “If you denied Christ you can’t come back into the Church. Only those that suffered and were with him all the way, only they are the true Church.”

So we’ve lost the apostles.

Yes. That’s where you can turn back and say that Peter, who Jesus says is going to be at the core of the Church and who is the first one we see preaching the gospel – clearly he was able to be brought back, and you can’t just say, “Well, Jesus was there to bring him back.” Well, Jesus is there to bring all of us back. It also shows that there can be no sin that is too great for someone to be brought in or to be brought back.

I think those are important things in church history because often people feel very full of themselves, so the heresies that develop are often ones that want to shut certain people out of the Church because they’re not good enough or they’re somehow too simple or Jesus is not able to save that group or that other group. This is an important one both for even showing what a leader of the Church can come back from. That’s important to remember.

Rachel, what was the name of the sect…

I believe it’s the Donatists.

I was thinking Donatists but I wasn’t sure.

Like if you were baptized by someone who later defected, your baptism was invalid?

That will be another thing. We still have this circulating today, David has talked about it some, that if the leader that baptized you goes astray, people have this sense that their baptism wasn’t real. Or even if they’re baptized it will come up in the Reformation in the Roman Catholic church. They will say, “That wasn’t a good baptism. It wasn’t legitimate because of the person that was doing it,” rather than the name in which you were baptized and the mode that you were baptized with. There will be a number of things where we focus on the person and their sin, and then we’ll undermine other people’s faith.

Excellent point.

I’m looking at the clock and I think Acts 1 has to wait till next time.

Yes, we’ll get to that next time.

As we say, we’ll get them into heaven next time.

I promise at least halfway up to the sky next time. Before we head out though, let’s give some recommendations.

I have a very simple recommendation. My very simple recommendation is pumpkin seeds. They’re a new food that I have found and they seem to have many wonderful properties that I did not know. They’re an anti-parasitic and also a good source of good fats and other vitamins. You can eat them raw or roast them, so I have been exploring pumpkin seeds recently.

And they’re very good for males.

Yes. I originally got them for David and then found out that they were good for me, too.

They’re great. We used them for Gretchen when she was just a toddler instead of Cheerios because they were so much cheaper. She would carry around a little packet of pumpkin seeds.

Would she be able to eat them whole?

Yes, she would eat them whole. I can’t say that she chewed them all meticulously, but she did swallow them and not choke and die.

That’s good to know. What’s yours, Emily?

My recommendation is a little book called Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. I’ve been getting into chess lately and this resource was very helpful to me in just starting to learn to read the board. I’ve known how the pieces move for almost all my life. My dad taught me when I was little, but I was not good at chess. I’m still not very good at chess but I’m learning and this was a great tool to get started.

I sort of started and thought, “All right, I’m going to learn openings,” and it’s overwhelming. There are so many openings to chess. Where this book begins actually is with the end game. It teaches you to recognize when you have checkmate in one move, and then when you have checkmate in two moves, and kind of works backwards from there. I wish it was ten times as long as it is, but it’s basically a little book of chess puzzles and it was really helpful and fun.

Okay. I have a little book to recommend. I think I recommended it probably years ago now. It’s called The Big Book of Bible Learning, if I remember correctly. We lost our copy and I tried every combination of words I could think of based on the nature of the book – “life and times when Jesus was on earth,” “biblical sociology” – everything I could think of. It’s a children’s book. How complicated could this be? It turned out it was really difficult. I finally gave up because I tried every variation on what I thought it was supposed to be. Kate also had trouble finding it, but eventually she managed to persevere.

It is a children’s book. In fact, it’s a book for children who are just learning to read. The language is very simple but it’s also extremely full of factual material. We re-ordered copies so we would have them. When I picked it up and looked at it I thought, “There’s so much more here than I remember.”

It’s all phrased as a character in the book talking to the child saying, “Hey, do you have lights in your room? We have this lamp. It’s full of oil. Do you know why?” and that kind of thing, but it’s not insulting to a child. It’s just a simple conversation at a child’s level for someone who’s just learning to read simple words.

It goes from describing the furniture in the temple, what a shepherd does, oil lamps, clothing, food. It’s not flawless but it’s pretty good, and only maybe has a picture of Jesus and only if you tell people, “It’s a picture of Jesus.” We told our girls it’s some random shepherd or something. That didn’t work. Years later they came back and said, “You know that picture of Jesus? How do you even know what a picture of Jesus looks like?” So you won’t have to constantly be worrying about the dangers of idolatry or any such thing. The style is a little cartoonish, which is good since they’re not going to show you Jesus anyway. It's fun, it’s simple, it’s informative.

Our generation – in fact, for several generations now – has no concept of what the world used to be. For the kids who live now, there have always been cell phones. There have always been computers. There have always been cars. People have always driven to work in the morning. You always were required to go to school until you graduated as a senior. There were always hot dogs and hamburgers. McDonald’s has always had two arches, or whatever. This shows them, “The Bible world is not like that, but it’s a real world.” Yes, technology did not change a whole lot, but there are some differences.

Anyway, it’s a really good book, and if you have small children it’s fun to read to them, or as they begin to read themselves they can zip through it pretty fast and find it enjoyable with lots of cool pictures. The Big Book of Bible Learning I believe is the title.

I already Googled it because I was curious. The full title is Early Reader’s Big Book of Bible Reading by V. Gilbert Beers. It looks like it’s not available through trusty Amazon, but it is on some of the used book sites.

That’s where Kate got our two lovingly-used copies. There wasn’t any writing in them but there was a Goodwill stamp on one of them so we know where it’s been.

Speaking of books, how is Jane Eyre?

You know, that’s a wonderful question. Oh look, we’re out of time so I guess we’ll have to address that next time.

We’ll have to have a whole other episode that’s just about Jane Eyre.

I don’t think it will take that much time.

Thank you both so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure to get back to recording with you. We had to take a little break for sickness. Hopefully that won’t even show up in the release schedule. We’ve always been here. “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.”

Ooo, we need to start offering brownie points to people who get our off-hand allusions to things. When you get so many of them we’ll send you something.

We need merch of some sort.

Thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters for keeping the show rolling. We really appreciate you.

And thank you to you for listening, whoever you are, wherever you are. If you enjoy the show, tell a friend about us. If you’d like to send us an email and have anything to say, we would love to hear from you. That would be [email protected], and there is no s in toward. We are Americans so it’s halting toward zion. Goodnight, friends.