Stephen the Martyr and Simon the Sorcerer
From the Hosts
Join Greg, Emily, and Rachel as they discuss the teaching of Stephen and the interactions between the apostles and Simon the Sorcerer
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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. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Rachel Voytek, and we are working through chapter 7 of the book of Acts. We’re nearly to the end. I think we got through Stephen’s sermon last time, is that correct?
Yes, technically his defense, but it’s certainly sermonesque, his testimony. Let’s just pick it up there. Having recounted the history of God with Israel, and the fact that 1) Israel actually wasn’t in the land that much, 2) it took them forever to get a temple, and even when they did that’s not where God really dwells, and 3) throughout the whole thing God’s people had persecuted the prophets, he seems to break off.
He’s probably reading his audience and saying, “They’ve stopped listening. I might as well make my point now.”
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it.
“You have the law. You’re proud of the law. You’re proud of talking to angels, and guess what you did with it? You broke it. You’ve murdered the Messiah as you murdered the prophets. You’ve kept with the track record of your fathers. This whole thing is a sham.”
I have an idea he knew where this was going because there’s nothing conciliatory here or “I take my stand in the Lord and trust Him to get me out of it.” He just lets go.
An interesting point that is significant in the flow of the book of Acts is that he says particularly not that they resisted Jesus, but that they resisted the Holy Spirit in resisting the Word. It’s another clear example of the Holy Spirit’s work being more particularly called out in the Old Testament because they’re resisting just like their fathers resisted the Holy Spirit.
He was also going to the fact that the Old Testament signs always were looking for an inward reality, because he accuses them not of being uncircumcised in the flesh, but in the heart, and that’s their real problem. They have not had their own flesh cut away. As you like to say, Greg, they have not had heart surgery. That is precisely why they’re resisting the Holy Spirit, is they have a heart of stone. So yes, when you accuse someone of a heart of stone, if there is no work of the Holy Spirit there, it’s going to go where it’s about to go.
At that point it kind of depends what’s on the line. Some people walk away with sort of, “Did I hear a buzzing or something? I don’t know what that was.” It’s the wayside soil in Jesus’ parables. On the other hand, if there’s something on the line, “I’m sorry, we must kill you now because you’re in the way of our self-righteousness, pride, and legalism, our worship of our own traditions.”
Not by regeneration but by conscience. “Oh yeah, that. Well now. We could repent. No, let’s just kill him. It’s easier that way.”
That is they were angry. They were so angry. This is not a reasonable legal decision. This is mob violence.
But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God…
People often ask, “Standing? Isn’t he sitting?” Sitting is a figure of speech. We’re not told that Jesus can’t move.
Some have suggested that he stood up to greet his friend who’s about to show up there, but for whatever reason he’s standing at the moment.
Also any time we stand up it generally means that we’re giving more attention to something. The key point is that you’ve already murdered Jesus and now he’s watching what you’re about to do to his deacon, to his follower.
Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
And it sounds very Daniel-esque, seeing the heavens opened and the Ancient of Days or the Father.
Then they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord and cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul.
And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
Now he’s praying to him as God. You don’t call on Elijah to receive your soul, or Enoch, even though they’re in heaven, or your dear departed mom. It’s Jesus. He’s God. You pray to him. He is the judge of the quick and the dead.
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
He falls asleep in the Lord. So the great grace that Stephen had – here are these people that are so angry at him and angry at Jesus, and yet unlike Zechariah, whom they slew between the temple and the altar, who said, “Lord, remember this,” Stephen says, “Don’t.” The Son of Man has come to save the world, not judge the world, not yet.
There is a turn in the New Testament as God’s grace gets wider and more powerful, and people you didn’t think could possibly be saved…
That is one of the things that maybe is not directly referenced, but in multiple places it seems that Paul remembers this, because yes, there was at least one person there, and maybe there were others that we don’t know about who eventually are brought out of this great anger against Jesus.
Of course there were no chapter breaks in the original, so the “and” leads us directly into the next connected thought. Saul was consenting to his death. It doesn’t say that he actually threw any stones, but he was watching the clothes while other people did.
An odd thing that I’ve heard and did not bother to check on – we know that in general the Jews were not allowed to execute criminals. The one apparent exception was that any defiling of the temple they could act upon immediately. So since Stephen has, in their minds, questioned the temple, said that Jesus was going to destroy it and all that, that took off any restraint and they went out and stoned him immediately, something they did not do to Jesus, although occasionally they thought about throwing stones at him.
Yes, but this they followed through on. After all, Stephen is not Jesus. Jesus could fix them with a look, or suddenly not be there. Stephen is called to martyrdom, and to martyrdom he goes. He’s the first Christian martyr.
The word martyr originally meant a witness. Here he has witnessed to the truth of the gospel. He’s witnessed to the Messiah-ship of Jesus and to the work of the Spirit, so it’s ironic that the witnesses to his witness are the ones who throw stones at him.
We’ve turned the word martyr into someone who gets executed, because here’s precedent, but in the Old Testament the witnesses were the ones who threw the stones, and these apostates are usurping that title and becoming witnesses who will have to answer for their perjury one day. But Saul is there and he’s consenting to Stephen’s death. We don’t know anything about Saul yet. We’re going to find out a lot as the rest of the New Testament unrolls.
And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
Yes, although it’s most seen in verse 4. If we go from verse 1, in verse 2 we have Stephen buried and lamentation made for him, then Saul causing all this trouble. In verse 4 it says –
Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.
The idea that we begin to see is that the more persecution rises, the more they are “forced” to go out, and in the process serve the exact plan and mission that Jesus set out, because the next place they’re going to go is Samaria, which is the next place that Jesus laid out. Then as persecution rises further they will go, as we say, to the uttermost parts of the earth.
The overall pattern of persecution is actually increasing the spread of the church, and some of it is driving those who are Christians out of their comfort zones to new places so they now have new people to talk to. It seems to be a way that Jesus drives his church forward and outward. Also that persecution never overcomes the church. As we say, the gates of hell can’t prevail. Instead, the church ends up taking over more places. They take more ground, even as they seem to be beaten down further.
There’s a fun book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb called Antifragile: Things that Gain where he talks about this concept of things in history or in everyday life that gain strength from disorder, like the human immune system. It needs to be challenged and then it gets better. That doesn’t seem to make intuitive sense until you learn about how it works. He talks about the free market and stock indexes and things like that where the more chaos, the better everything gets.
The kingdom of God is antifragile here. Everything that is designed to attack it, feeds it. “We’re going to stamp it out of Jerusalem!”
You referenced Christ’s commission, not the words of the Great Commission we normally think of, but his last words to his disciples. “You shall be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.” We’ve been stuck in Jerusalem. That’s one city. Now into Judea, and at the same time into Samaria. We’ll talk about that a bit here in a second. In this scattering Philip goes down to Samaria.
Here we have to look back at verse 1. It says they were scattered, except the apostles, which means that Philip here is not the apostle Philip, who we’ve run into before. “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them…” and “Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Hey Andrew, there’s this kid here.” It’s not that Philip. This is the deacon that they’ve just appointed and he’s preaching.
Wait, deacons preaching? Apparently. You got a problem with that? Take it up with Luke. Of course these were extraordinary circumstances, but he is a church officer and here’s a mission field.
We just had Stephen also doing similar things in Jerusalem, and the apostles were right there, so it seems there was still some teaching aspect, I think particularly when the church is very young and they need more laborers for the harvest.
And sometimes you bend a few rules – not break them, but with proper oversight.
No, he’s evangelizing. In fact, he’s later called Philip the Evangelist. Maybe he got promoted. Maybe he got special dispensation. We’re not told and it obviously doesn’t matter or we would be. Right now we know he’s a church officer, a deacon, and he doesn’t have a church to minister to so he’s going to be active as best he can, and right now it’s preaching to Samaritans. Uh-oh. This is our first cross-cultural missionary endeavor.
Most of you probably know about the Samaritans, but real quick. During the latter days of the kingdom period the people of God were divided north and south between the northern nation of Israel and the southern kingdom of Juday. Israel, the northern kingdom, was taken over and exported by the Assyrians, who then turned around and, as was their way, imported other people.
Today we would call this genocide, scattering people all over the place so that you didn’t have anyone with whom you shared a culture or even a language. The only identity was, “We’re all Assyrian citizens.” So they filled Israel with people from all kinds of nations, although there were still some poor people here and there.
As the pagans moved in, God expected them to honor him because it’s his land. There’s a thought. There’s a whole philosophy of politics in that one. “But wait, he wasn’t their God. Why should they…” Because he’s God. Work on that one. So God sent lions amongst them, who killed many.
They didn’t say, “Wow, the lion population is suffering some kind of weird mutation here. Let’s hire a bunch of hunters.” They rather appealed to the king of Assyria and said, “We’re offending the God of the land because we don’t know what to do. Send us a priest.” Unfortunately, almost certainly they sent him one of the priests of the calves, but the calves went under the name of Yahweh anyway so he would have said he was worshiping Yahweh. They did observe the externals of the law, so that they would have got.
But we get this hodge-podge of ethnic influences, and a paganism of various sorts now overlaid with some kind of nod to the God of Israel, a sort of claim of, “Oh wait, we’ve always been Israelites, haven’t we?”
When the Jews returned from captivity, the tribe of Judah and those who went with them, they weren’t so happy with these people who lived in the northeast, Samaritans, named after the city of Samaria, the capital of Israel, so we have a long history from then until Philip. Jesus ministers in Samaria a couple times. There’s complete hostility between the two.
The Jews complained that anytime the Jews were doing well the Samaritans claimed to be their best brothers and kin and such, and any time the Jews were not doing so well they distanced themselves and said, “They’re a bunch of apostate cultists. Kill them all.” It did not go well.
Samaria laid right between Judea to the south and Galilee to the north, so going back and forth you either went around Samaria so as not to, as it were, cross the tracks, go over to the other side, experience an encounter with ‘them,’ or you went straight through and did business deals and got out as fast as you could.
Those are some of the things that are going on here. The Samaritans have rejected the God of Israel. Jesus has made a dent, a landing place. He’s started ministry. But by and large this is a different culture, different people, different language, where there is a great deal of resentment.
A lot of Jews and even a lot of Christians probably would have just said, “Well, I think Jesus said something about Samaria, but that’s obviously not my calling, not my ministry. I’m sure someone will take it up. The apostles will deal with it eventually.”
Philip takes the bull by the horns and says, “No, I’m going to preach Christ. It’s what the Master said to do,” and so he does. He preached Christ unto them.
And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did.
Here we have a deacon like Stephen who does miracles. Unusual. Not unprecedented, since Stephen had done it, but deacons don’t have a strong track record, neither do elders in scripture, of doing miracles. But again God is punctuating with outward signs to establish, “This is a good thing. This is not some reckless guy going out on his own doing his own thing. This is of me.” He cast out demons. He’s healing people – the lame, the palsied – and there was great joy.
But there was a certain man called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.
Magic was a thing. Sorcery was a thing. Yes, the word for sorcery tends to be pharmakeia, from which we get pharmacy because a lot of sorcery was done with drugs and potions and playing with the mind by purely chemical means, and yet it’s clear that on occasion God did allow these men to make deals with the devil, as it were, and tap into demonic power and do some pretty impressive things. The language here certainly bears that out. He used sorcery. He bewitched them.
The sorcerers of the Egyptians were not using pharmaceuticals to do their things.
No. It was easier maybe 100 years ago for commentaries to read that and say, “Well, you know, Newtonian mechanics and all that. We know what can and cannot happen, so obviously these were tricks,” even when the text says, “No, the sticks became serpents. The magicians turned water to blood.” Of course, theologians of that era were still struggling with the idea that God actually did miracles. Too often there was an attempt to explain them by natural processes.
We’re going to encounter the occult again in the book of Acts. It’s almost strange that we don’t encounter it more often. We can read Athanasius’s On the Incarnation of the Word and pick up on the idea that demonic intervention was everywhere. There were oracles. There were demons. There was magic. It just couldn’t stand up to the gospel. When the gospel appeared, it ran away.
That we only encounter it a few times in the book of Acts is actually somewhat surprising. Think how many times Jesus encountered demon possession in synagogues – not just in Israel and Jerusalem, but in the actual synagogues where God’s people worshiped. So it was a real thing, and the fact that we don’t see it as much now means the gospel is winning. Where the gospel goes, that shuts down.
At this point Simon had been bewitching the people. There are historical secular references to Simon which I am not terribly familiar with, and again forgive me as I should have looked them up, but you can find them – Simon Magus, Simon the Sorceror. Presumably he eventually had some influence at Nero’s court. There are legends that he took on Peter, or Peter took him on there. They are legends, but it gives you a sense that the ancient world considered him big stuff.
Even after Peter shuts him down here, the ancient world still thought he was pretty cool. He’s been connected with Gnosticism and other things, and with something else which we’ll talk about once we find out what he does.
Then Simon himself believed also, and when he was baptized he continued with Philip and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done.
Simon thought he had a pretty good deal going, but Philip is just so surpassing him with weird and miraculous things that he thinks, “Maybe there’s something here.”
The apostles eventually hear about this. They’re still in Jerusalem and they send Peter and John to check it out, which is proper, due church order and all that. Philip was not an apostle. He may have been an appointed evangelist. He certainly was practicing the work of an evangelist, but it’s good eventually for the proper authorities to come and step in and set things in order and establish the connection.
We don’t need to believe that every church is a law unto itself or a world to itself, and that our church is our church and your church is your church, and we’ll see if we all get to heaven. There’s the one holy catholic church, and the apostles were to oversee all of this, so they sent two witnesses, Peter and John.
Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John, who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost (for as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.
What happened here? The first answer is we’re not told very clearly. It’s the Holy Spirit who regenerates and brings forth faith, so at some level they had received the Holy Spirit, but whatever kind of evidence – perhaps speaking in tongues or prophesying or something –
Yes, a tongue of fire, a rushing wind, something – because here’s the thing. In the minds of the Jews these are a separate people, and in fact an inferior people, so one wouldn’t expect God to make a big fuss over them like he did us. You want to bet?
So whatever God knew he needed to do to remove that stumbling block and temptation to say, “No, they’re all part of the church. You all get the same gifts. You all get the same special effects, if that’s what impresses you, because we’re going to make a point right here. There’s not a southern Jerusalem church and a northern Samaritan church. This is one church and God ministers his grace freely in all directions.”
So there is some kind of visible manifestation of the Holy Ghost coming upon them so that they can say, “Oh, we’ve all been through the same baptism. We are now officially outwardly visibly united to the church.”
Simon sees this, and he sees that when the apostles lay hands on those who believed this thing happens, so Simon has a brilliant idea.
And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.
It’s interesting that he’s not trying to buy the blessing of the Spirit. He’s trying to buy the office of apostleship, by extension to manipulate the Holy Spirit is what he’s asking to be able to do.
Oh yeah, he’s still thinking like a magician. “I want to be able to manipulate God. I want the Force to be with me.” He figures, “I could climb the holy steps, go on a pilgrimage – how about I just give you money and cut to the chase.”
He was used to having power over people by being able to do things, so he’s looking for, “Oh, this is the newest latest magic. It’s more effective than my previous magic, so I want this because I want people to respect me, or more likely fear me and do what I want them to do.” He sees the Holy Spirit as simply an agent he can command in order to get other people to serve him.
The word simony – if you have never heard it – typically refers to an attempt to buy a church office or a high church position. It comes from this passage because he is the first to do so. It becomes a very significant problem in the Roman Catholic church throughout the medieval period, and it’s often considered one of the signs that the church is doing very poorly, particularly when it reaches into the highest offices such as Pope.
You see it a lot where wealthy families will essentially buy a nice priest position or something higher up – archbishop, cardinal, pope – for their son, because then he can give them money from the living that comes from these different positions, so it becomes this sort of kickback cycle. “We do this to get you a good position, and then you give us things. Then once you have a good position you can do this for others.”
It also makes me think of Pride and Prejudice, because there are points – was it Lydia and Wickham or if it’s one of the others – where it says they tried to be nice to Darcy because he has other favors still to give, meaning things like church offices. That’s one of the big conflicts in the whole book. Actually, it’s a couple times because you get Mr. Collins who doesn’t buy his church office with money, but he does with a lot of flattery.
He certainly seems a lot bound up in the material goodness that comes to him through that living.
Yes, and then the whole conflict over whether Wickham should have had this, because it somehow was promised to him by a wealthy landowner who had control over who should be a pastor – another form of simony. Even if you’re not buying it for yourself, other people are acquiring it for you as their way of establishing your good fortune for the future.
And on a kinder gentler note, even Sense and Sensibility – our hero at the end, his having no inheritance, Colonel Brandon makes Edward a parson on his estate. We all cheer because that solves all the problems, and we tend to believe that Edward will be a good man.
And it makes all of them beholden to their patron or patroness in the different circumstances, where they’re going to preach whatever they’re told to, whatever keeps them in that position of money and comfort.
And even when you do have a good man or good woman as your patron or patroness, there’s going to be that temptation and it’s not a good one. Pastors work for Jesus, they don’t work for men.
That brings us also to the question of chaplaincies and other such things. I would not say that’s the same thing, but there is the danger of, “I want to be a chaplain.”
“Unless someone actually asks you and they’re already in that disposition.”
Muzzling the pastor is still one of Satan’s favorite techniques, and money plays a huge part in it.
You mentioned the Middle Ages, but in the Reformation of course this also comes out. It’s a huge way of pointing fingers at Rome, but then Protestant churches need to be careful lest they do the same. A lot of Protestant pastors in England got support from Henry and Anne and then later Edward and Elizabeth.
Anytime you have political power mixed up in church authority it’s inappropriate.
But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.
Whoa. First of all, the gift of God is a phrase that’s used for the Holy Spirit. It’s not just some random gift of God, although no gift of God may be purchased with money, but particularly you cannot buy God himself with money.
“Your heart is not right in the sight of God.” Peter is not God. He has no direct sight into the hearts of men, but looking at what’s going on here it’s very clear. Sometimes we do judge men’s hearts by their actions.
Yes. Peter does call him to repentance, but he specifies, “This is wickedness.” And Simon, who’s used to manipulating the gods, Peter says, “Pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.”
“You need to get on your knees and beg God because you don’t have any leverage here. If God is going to forgive you and save you it will be of his grace and you can seek it, but you can’t leverage it.”
Yes, so give up your magical approach to the supernatural. Peter says, “I perceive you’re in the gall of bitterness, the bond of iniquity. You’re trapped in your sins and your bitterness, and you don’t like what I’m saying.” Simon responds with what to us might sound hopeful.
Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.
Peter just said, “You need to pray.” He wasn’t offering to pray for him. “This is personal between you and God, and you need to repent of your sins.”
It’s all good and well when people come and ask us, “Please pray for me. I’m struggling.” That’s great and we should, but that’s not the point. We can’t bring someone to faith. We can’t believe for them. We can’t repent for them.
We can’t skip talking to God and ask somebody else to do it for us. That’s again going back to the Roman Catholics. We don’t go to Peter so he can go to God for us because he has a better relationship with God.
And he’s falling back on what he saw before, that Peter apparently can command the Holy Ghost, so he’s trying to call back to the magical power that he believes Peter has.
Simon is a master politician. He knows how to say things, except he doesn’t, because once you step out of Christian territory all the rules change.
On the other side we also see some more of the language that Peter uses when he’s evangelizing and calling people to repentance. The expression such as “your heart is not right with God” is something we can say particularly when we speak of somebody that is in sin or that is unbelieving particularly, and that the call is always “repent of sin, repent of wickedness.” It’s always, “Go to God. Don’t go somewhere else, because what’s in your heart is defiling all of you.”
And of course that means we have to believe there is such a thing as wickedness, not just brokenness or a mistake or the other words that the church in our generation has used to try to nudge people toward Christ. “Your life is empty? Let Jesus fill it up. You need a friend? Jesus is your best friend. You need a psychotherapist? Jesus is the Great Physician.” That’s all true to a point, but beside the point.
The point is you’re in rebellion against God. You are wicked. You have broken God’s law and you deserve hell. You need to repent. You need to turn from your sins and throw yourself on God’s mercy. It’s the most loving thing we can possibly say to people. We don’t have to say it with an attitude. We don’t have to be jerks about it, but we need to tell the truth. With some people you can say these things to in a nice simple way because God has prepared the ground, and sometimes you do what Peter did.
I think we can make a connection here also to some things that have been happening recently where there’s been a lot of attention drawn to the Bethel Redding church, if we want to call them a church. There’s been a lot of exposure of cover-up, of financial fraud, of sexual abuse, of all sorts of things by their prophets and apostles.
Initially a lot of their leadership basically denied it and attacked the people that were trying to bring this to light, but in the middle of all that I connect it here because when you start to learn about Bethel, they believe that their whole mission is driven by the power of signs and wonders. So in this story – if I can draw the parallel – they’re Simon the sorcerer. They believe that it’s all about what you can see externally and how you can show, supposedly, the power of God, and that these people have this special Holy Spirit capacity.
My husband David and I were watching one of the New American Gospel episodes and they gave clips actually of different people within the Bethel community who say, “When you pray, you are actually commanding God to do things. He needs your permission to do things. He’s waiting for you because he has given you…”
It goes back to their whole thing of, “God has given us all authority.” They believe the Great Commission is not just to Jesus, but we got the exact same amount of authority, those sorts of things.
And that was one of the comments in the video. They have a special school of supernatural teaching there, and people jokingly refer to it as Christian Hogwarts because they’re basically teaching them to do magic. It’s all about this big gathering of lots of people using signs and wonders, but if you listen to their message they never seem to use the words repent or wickedness or sin in any way that we would recognize. It’s all about pushing power and authority and grabbing hold of things and showing off with these great signs and wonders, and they’re getting lots of money in the process.
May I just say I ran into this thing again recently where some Christians won’t read Tolkien because some occultists like The Lord of the Rings. This is more ungodly than anything in Tolkien’s books. It’s twisting the name of God, attempting to manipulate him with his own words. It is gross misuse of scripture.
Actually, in one of their sermons they try to ignore the sin of one of their so-called apostles. They actually said something like, “No, we need to let his ministry go on because Jesus let Judas keep doing miracles and preaching, so clearly that was him authorizing us to let people keep going. As long there are signs and wonders we need to let them keep doing those works.”
It’s very interesting. Right now, because of the controversy, the newer American Gospel series are putting the Bethel episodes up for free to watch. David and I watched one, but we went, “We can’t watch anymore. We’re so righteously indignant and angry. We can’t handle anymore,” because just one hour was sufficient for overload of horrible heresy.
It reminds me of this because they’re also on the wrong side of how to approach the Holy Spirit and the work that he is truly doing versus the work that we love to get wrapped up in and think is most important – all the external signs and wonders.
Well, I hate to end on that note but it’s time. It’s also a good breaking point in the text. We’ve dealt with Simon, and we’re going to see more of Philip next time. Shall we sign off with some recommendations?
My recommendation is going to be library sales. I stopped by a library because my daughter needed to use the bathroom, and I was like, “Well, they’ve got cheap books here,” and I was able to find an extra copy of Four Quartets that a friend was in desperate need of. I was able to find an extra copy of Marilyn Robinson’s Gilead, and I think everybody needs an extra copy of that. Nothing happens in that book, and I love it so much. I consider it a very profitable visit.
I did stock most of my British literature library when I was teaching from library sales. You have to go when they’re doing their half-price or whatever sales, where it’s a bag of books for $5 or something, because then they don’t charge you for the hardbacks. I got I don’t even know how many books from that.
The last library sale I went to was very disappointing. I found one book that was part of what we call the Orange Books, the Childhood of Great Americans series. It was about the Ringling Brothers and I actually read it all the way through. It was quite good.
I’m going to tag on another thing to find old books. Go to the little towns on the periphery, on the Galactic Rim, where people don’t normally think of going, with real bookstores, not second-hand stores, although those sometimes turn up treasures too. My wife and I went up to Auburn and discovered a bookstore we did not know existed.
Yes, although he did not recognize Childhood of Famous Americans, but said, “Give me time. It’ll come to me.” As is my way, I looked at the religious/theological section, and although a lot of it was the normal pablum and heresy and magic, there were some really good books. He actually had Lewis, and it’s very hard to find Lewis at any used bookstore because people steal them.
There was a used bookstore in Roseville and we talked now and then to the lady who ran it and she said books that are stolen most often around Christmas time are, 1) the Bible (think about that), 2) anything by C.S. Lewis. “If we have Lewis we keep it up behind the desk.”
He had his out there and there were a number of other books that were quite good, sound theology. You had to skip through 5 or 6 to get to one, but it was great. Kate said the children’s section was the most curated children’s section she had seen anywhere in this area. We’ve found other bookstores occasionally in obscure places. There’s one in Placerville that’s quite nice.
So unless you’re in Oxford, don’t go to the big bookstores. Try some of the little out of the way places that barely even show up on Google and you might find something that surprises you. On the other hand you might find complete trash, but you know – and if you do find something good, let us know, that we may come and buy books with you also.
My recommendation is something I’ve recommended before, but I can recommend any of the episodes of The American Gospel if you want to watch those. But I also was going to recommend something much more enjoyable, which is that I have been switching to teakwood cooking utensils and I have really been enjoying them and find them very durable. I love that they’re not sloughing off and turning weird textures and colors.
David got me a full set for Christmas and I was suspicious because I didn’t think they would work as well, but I have been greatly enjoying them. So if you can, switch from the plastic to the wood. They’re actually not that expensive. I was surprised. I was concerned they were going to be a lot.
I got my first one up at Apple Hill at Boa Vista, and it was one that was all prettily painted and decorated, so that was part of why I got it, but found that I loved it and then got more. That’s my nice recommendation.
That’s so fun. I think when you can find those things that you actually enjoy while doing the things that you have to do every day, it just makes your whole day better. It’s like, “A-ha! I’m going to go mop the floor.” Now, I’ve never said that in my life because I don’t love my mop. I wish there was a mop in the world that I loved, but I haven’t found it yet. If you have a recommended mop, Dear Listener, let me know. You can send that recommendation to [email protected]. That is what we call a segue.
Thank you so much for listening. As I said, you can get in touch with us and send us your mop recommendations at [email protected].
A big thank you to our financial supporters for keeping the show rolling. If you’d like to join their number, you can visit patreon.com/haltingtowardzion.
A big thank you also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband.
I think that’s all I have to say right now, so thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.