Transcript from the podcast (so sorry for the spelling mistakes)
Wildfire podcast is an extension of Wildfire Ministries, an organization that has a focus of igniting men and women of God into a deeper discipleship with Christ, instilling them with a passion to radically and relentlessly pursue Christ wherever that leads, that God's truth will spread like a wildfire.
Hey guys, welcome to the Wildfire podcast.
And I have a very important question for Luke to start off with.
Okay.
Who do you think is going to win?
Godzilla or King Kong?
Such a big question, but you know what, it's not a big question.
I, you know, I was told in advance what this question would be, and it's definitely going to be Kong.
So that was a tough choice, well, not really.
You find it quite easy to do it for Kong, but do you prefer the Old Testament or the New Testament, Luke?
The age-old question that every Christian has asked at some point.
That was way more difficult question than who's going to win Kong or Godzilla.
Very, very different one.
And like, you know what I mean?
It's got to understand, you know, it's very unfair question because it's one narrative.
It's one book.
So it's like ripping part of a book out and then ask them, what's your favourite end of the story?
And I love the Old Testament, but it's like New Testament.
It's got Jesus manifesting himself and coming into human history publicly express himself because he comes in the Old Testament as well.
So, oh, wait, we have Jesus in the Old Testament as well.
So I guess I'm sort of losing that.
I don't know.
I like the, I like the New Testament.
I love the teachings of Jesus.
It's just so transformative.
I love the epistles and you know, I'm going to say it.
I love Revelation as well.
I just think, and also I'm, I do think the end of books are better than the start.
So that's like, that's the conclusion.
So that's what I think.
But what do you think?
See, I'm one of those rare people that actually prefers the Old Testament.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that's, that's the thing.
Look, I don't know a lot of people who are the same.
Why do you think that is?
Why is everyone like you?
Look, are you?
Numbers, Old Testament.
They just, you know what I mean?
It's like people tell, go read the Old Testament.
It's amazing.
They just go to like a really, you know what I mean?
You can't say it's a horror book because it's the word of God and everything is just full of teaching.
I blame you and the Bible reading plans.
Everyone just gives it up.
Exactly.
It's just like a random verse out of context from like Joel.
Or like Malachi or something.
No, I think it's just a combination.
Like when I think of numbers and you talk about like, it's giving you criteria for like the tabernacle and stuff.
People are, you know, a busy day at work or at school or something.
They're like, I'm going to get into some really light reading about the tabernacle.
So there's, yeah, there's certain certain books or there's a lot of genealogies that appear.
So I think people like just read a chapter or read, get an area of the Bible and they're like, they just take that as a representation for the whole thing, which I think is not a good thing to do.
Obviously, you got to understand that it's one of ours.
So I think people just context, they don't do enough context.
And I think they go to some of the more difficult passages.
I don't think they pray about it and get the actual author of the Bible and his input, which is God.
I think it could be problematic, the way in which we actually practically study and the way we approach it.
And then New Testament can be self-explanatory.
It's the narrative of Jesus' life and his teachings and his ethics and obviously the words of Jesus, it pulsates.
You know what I mean?
It's transformative.
Like, look at the movement that it created.
So people are automatically drawn to it.
Atheists and agnostics are drawn to it.
So, of course, Christians with the Spirit of God are more inclined to draw to it.
But, you know, so that's what I think.
At face value anyway, the only hard book at face value in the New Testament is Repelation.
Everything else, you can read once over and just get lots of lessons from it and enjoy it and kind of understand what's going on.
Yeah, Revelation is such a difficult book.
Yeah, but then in the Old Testament, there's at least, oh, I'd say people can name like 10 books that would be revolutions of the Old Testament.
So it's boring, but you know what I mean?
It's just about getting involved in it, getting stuck in and, you know what I mean?
There has to be a first step.
You have to begin somewhere.
So, you know what I mean?
People always say, I'll wait till I'm 30 or something.
You begin now, create a foundation, and then that will be a springboard, a biblical springboard for the Old Testament.
But yeah, so why do you think that, though?
Why do you think people are more dry?
No, I think it's, oh, it's definitely difficult.
I don't deny that.
But I think people don't really, don't really appreciate it because they don't know what it is.
The New Testament, again, like you said, narrative, letters, revelation, that's how it's made up.
The Old Testament, you've got, well, genealogies, a lot of people go to.
You've got narrative as well.
You've got law, you've got prophecy.
You've got a bit of romance in there, which, look at that, we're just discussing.
The New Testament doesn't actually have any romance that we can think of, except Christ and the church.
Exactly, it's beautiful as well.
But that's in the Old Testament as well.
So it's sort of like-
Yeah, so if romance is your thing, you go like the Old Testament as well.
But I think it's just a lack of understanding of what the Old Testament actually is.
So the way I would usually break it down is I don't like even calling it the Old Testament, because as soon as you call something old, it doesn't seem relevant.
That is such a good point.
Yeah.
I actually never knew though, what's the origin of that?
Or is the Old Testament, New Testament, is that in the Bible?
Do we know that?
No.
That's not in the Bible?
I don't think so.
I actually never thought of it that way.
No, I think it's probably just early church.
Well, you would know the church history better than me, because you did A-level RE, but...
Oh, crap.
I think I was just titles given by the church.
I don't think it's...
Fascinating.
Because the New Testament doesn't call us off the New Testament.
And then even if you look at the Jewish community, I almost prefer their names for the Old Testament.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, Bible Project Tim Mackey would use Hebrew Bible, which I quite like, or else the Jews would have the Tanakh, which it's a slightly different order, but it's the same books of the Old Testament.
So real raspiness to that.
Again, you can hear it.
Just go into the mic a bit more there and just say, Tanakh.
Yeah, so that's ASMR for you.
But that's like, so they would have their Torah, which is the law, Nevaim, which is prophets and Ketuvim, which is writing.
So they would just bring it up slightly differently, but they would call the Old Testament something different and have a different order.
So I kind of prefer those names.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second.
Yeah.
So the Jews had their, had their, like talk a bit more about it.
So that was drawn up by the Jews, but it was recognized.
So obviously, if we take ourselves back into that time, into the time of Moses, et cetera, these documents are being written and they're being recognized by people as divine authority through, you know what I mean, miracles and their ability to perform miracles and the authority of what they're saying actually came true.
Again, all these signs were attesting to this is the word of God.
Okay, but are you saying that it was formulated differently to the way we have it now in the Bible?
Like the order and stuff?
So the order I'm not too clued in about, obviously the order is different now, so if you go and pick up a Tanakh in a bookstore, it'll be a different order than the Old Testament.
The books are the exact same, just slightly different order.
Yeah, content's the same, the order's different.
Oh yeah, the exact same content, they've just ordered it slightly differently, which again does really make a difference.
I think it was again the early church that reordered the Old Testament to have it more categorical.
What was that, that's like the Council of Nicaea.
Possibly that, was it 300 AD.?
Yeah, 300, 400, something like that.
But people think, people make it, there's contention over this as well, but people think it was imposed, so the Council of Nicaea literally gathered the documents and imposed that.
But there's another view, which is the recognized view, which is like these are the letters that were written by St.
Paul at that time, between 600-100 AD around the time, the Gospel was re-written around that time as well.
That was recognized by the Church's divine documents that was there right throughout.
And then you just have right up to Revelation, which was written by John around, that's contentious as well, but I'm like, people around 90 AD.
So you had all the documents written, like, you know what I mean, in like the first century.
And so everyone knew what the divine, it was really just like they got it in one compressed, easy accessible, look at that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that's even the difference between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
The Hebrew Bible is written over about, well, it covers a period of 400, sorry, 4,000 years of history.
So that's what it covers.
It's not written over as long period as that, but that's what it covers.
New Testament's what, 70 years-ish, like something like that.
So it's so much shorter.
That's right.
So there's so much more history packed into the Hebrew Bible.
So you have to give it some leeway for being a bit longer.
But even in terms of the order, just to address that quickly, the most common example is Daniel.
So Daniel in our Old Testament is grouped with the prophets.
But in the Tanakh, it's grouped with the writings as such, so it's not with the prophets.
Exact same book, just different titles.
So it doesn't really mean a lot.
It's just an example of what they would call it.
Just to do with the context of that time, the way people were accustomed to it as a way of reading and a way of understanding it a bit better.
Okay, that's good.
So why read the Old Testament?
Okay, I'm sitting here and it's like, the New Testament is good enough.
No?
The teachings of Jesus, the epistles, revelation, why not just, we don't really need it.
No?
Well, we need to even, so Jesus' main title is Christ.
Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus.
Yeah, that's right.
Like what does Christ mean?
It's the Greek translation of Messiah.
But who even is the Messiah?
That's a Jewish term, which you would get from the Hebrew Bible.
So you don't really understand the full implication of who Jesus is claiming to be if you don't know your Hebrew Bible.
And you can obviously learn this from a few Sunday school lessons and things like that, but if you want to get the full gravity of it.
Yes, you don't need to become a Hebrew scholar.
No.
Is what you're trying to say.
No, to understand the basic level of everything, you don't need to be a biblical scholar.
But it's like everything, if you want to learn more and make it have more meaning in your life, you need to actually study it in more detail.
Okay.
But that's just in regards to who Christ is.
That's why the Hebrew Bible is important, but it's important for so many more other reasons as well.
Like you've got, so it covers a vast range of topics.
You've got history, prophecy, the romance, you've got genealogies, so many of these.
It's got wars, conflict.
Oh yeah, wars and conflict.
It's a big, a sexier side of it, to be honest with you, on Netflix.
It's been done before, actually.
I want an R rated version of the Old Testament.
That's what I want, so the Game of Thrones, that's...
It would be like, an 18 wouldn't even, like that's crazy, an 18 wouldn't even suffice.
You need something beyond it, it would be like a plus 30.
You could do some things in it.
Oh, crazy.
I want to say someone needs to make that.
Maybe we will.
Wildfire Movies is next.
Yeah, but so there's so many stories like that, just war stories and awesome things like that.
The New Testament doesn't have a lot of that.
And then in terms of actually why it's important, we're Christians, the main, like the founder and finisher of our faith is Jesus.
So how does he treat the quote unquote Old Testament?
So he quotes it tons of times.
If you read any sort of Bible with hyperlinks and things like that, you can see he quotes it in regard to the Pharisees with issues about the law.
He quotes it especially quite a bit in the Sermon on the Mount, talking about ethical issues.
He talks about it with, in regards to who he actually is, his person.
And it kind of specifically, in RE, we learned a lot about the temptation.
So each time Christ is tempted, he talks about as it is written.
And he quotes from Jitteronimy three times.
And Jitteronimy is one of those books that we grip in with Leviticus and Numbers as not being very important and just having lots of laws.
They avoid gripping.
Yeah, you can skip this and move on to Joshua kind of stuff.
But Jesus quoted from it three times when the devil tried to tempt him.
So that alone shows it has a quite a bit of importance.
And that's true because the Bible does say in Philippians 2 that we are called to follow the example of Jesus and to live as he lived.
And 2 Corinthians 3 also says that anyone who says that they live in God must live as Jesus lived.
So, you know what I mean?
If you take those verses and Jesus was using the Old Testament and Jesus was well-read in the Old Testament, and you know what I mean?
That was far less successful.
Obviously, Jesus had to memorize large chunks of passages.
So we need to follow the example of Jesus.
And if we want to do that to the full extent, then we need to know the Old Testament.
What age was he when he was lost in the temple, was he?
That's true.
Yeah, was it something like that?
Yeah, he was 10 or 12.
10 or 12.
He was definitely like a child to some degree.
Yeah, of course.
The Pharisees were amazed, or the teachers of the law were amazed at his actual skill and how well he knew his Hebrew Bible.
So even as a child, we're a bit behind that.
But sometimes strive towards.
And then like those verses, you could look, obviously we are meant to look towards Jesus.
And if you look at how he actually exposit the Bible when he's with.
So he dies and he's resurrected.
But before anyone kind of knows, he's on the road to Emmaus.
And you can find this in Luke 24.
And just to quote an exact verse, verse 27.
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.
So Jesus was able to talk to these two disciples after he had risen again and just explain the whole.
So Moses, that's just a way of saying the law.
And then obviously the prophets and all the scriptures.
So that's all of the Old Testament.
And just say, here's where I am in this.
Here's where I filter in.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Because that is crazy, because it's like, Jesus was obviously marking this transition from the old into the new, the Israel to the church, and his resurrection, huge.
Like, it's a catalyst for complete change and transformation, okay?
And then as soon as he's done this, what's his teaching?
He's like, go back to the Old Testament.
He gets in, look at the full narrative, look at its completion in me.
So, you know what I mean?
We have to look at the full thing.
Yeah, exactly.
The Old Testament only helps to show who Jesus is even more so.
So, you get the old example where, oh yes, he's the Messiah, but there's so many more titles used of God and even Jesus in the Old Testament that we can learn.
Yeah, like people think of the term Yahweh is a title, but like there's like Yahweh Yaira, Yahweh Shama, Yahweh Sekenya.
There's like seven titles just about Yahweh.
Yahweh, yeah.
So, it's like, it's crazy.
There's so many titles for him.
Yeah, and the New Testament does a great job of showing Jesus and his humanity, but the Old Testament shows God as God.
Divinity.
As divinity.
Obviously, the New Testament does a lot of that as well.
I'm not shying away from that, but the Old Testament.
It's just a different emphasis.
Yes.
Yes, you can learn so much more about the character of God.
So, are you saying Jesus is in the Old Testament?
I think we've alluded to that, but it's like, you know what I mean?
If I'm sitting, watching this podcast right now, I don't like go to the Old Testament.
I can't put my finger on an Old Testament passage and be like, yeah, Jesus is here.
You know what I mean?
As I can in there.
So it was just briefly because I know how to...
Yeah, so it's like a separate topic.
Hashtag Matt.
Yeah.
So we'll just drop this in, a quick explanation.
So obviously you got prophecies like in 2 Samuel chapter 7.
It's a prophecy.
It says David's error will inherit the throne and you can be like, oh, his error is probably Jesus.
That's looking back, that's how we would interpret it.
But there are more clear passages where a certain character appears called the angel of the Lord.
I think he appears with, no, sorry, Joshua, when Joshua is about to come in the land, the angel of the Lord appears.
And Joshua buys down and worships him.
But any other angel, you'll notice, will not let himself be worshiped.
Because all worship is due to God.
So the angel of the Lord has divine qualities.
And without going into too much.
You can compare that with the other path, like Jacob, who's Jacob wrestled with.
He wrestled God.
And there's passages and judges and stuff.
And yet the Torah says, you shall not see God.
No one should see the face of God.
Yeah, there's so many passages.
So many characters come into the contact with God, face to face.
It's also like apologetics and stuff.
So like, what do you do with that?
That's sort of one of the points that sort of subverts the truth of Judaism.
So it's just not true.
Yeah.
It's uncompleted.
Another re-teaser for you, Trav, as well.
I'm sorry, I'm just throwing so many stuff out.
I'm sorry, go back to where you came in.
It's our first episode, it looks exciting.
Go back there.
There's so much, that's what I'm saying.
This is what this is highlighting.
I mean, there's so much we can talk about, so much, so.
Yeah, but that's just a hint of Christ in the Old Testament.
So again, we'll cover that in future episodes, but it's something to look for, because Jesus is obviously able to explain that to his disciples in the future, or sorry, in the root of MS.
I think the final verse I'd like to talk about is 2nd Timothy 3, 16, so it says, All scripture is breathed out by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
And as you're aware, this is a New Testament passage.
So when it says, All scripture, it's not self-referential, it's talking about the scripture that they would have, which is?
Yes.
Yeah, because that's the letter.
Yes.
And so yeah, people would have a full account of the epistles we do.
It's not for me, because that came with the council, actual accessible, savage version.
So it's definitely referring to the Old Testament there.
Yeah.
So that just shows, like, these are things.
Paul's telling to Timothy, he's a young leader in the church.
He's saying, this is what the Old Testament is useful for.
It's for teaching.
So obviously we can teach in the Old Testament for proof and correction.
So if someone says something wrong, we can show them from the Old Testament why they're wrong about Jesus.
Yeah.
Specifically, training in righteousness, and that you may be competent and equipped for every good work.
So it's like...
Yeah, there's so much.
Like if you think of even the book of Proverbs, okay, if you take that isolated, you can't do that out of context sometimes.
It's like one chapter in itself contains so many truths and principles that we should apply to our lives that are so useful and that we should be...
Like it talks about being self-disciplined.
It talks about working hard.
It talks about submission.
It talks about what it is to be a woman in Proverbs 31 and some of the characteristics of that.
Oh, there's so many.
There's so many.
Yeah, it's just beautiful.
And the discipline that they give you.
You know what I mean?
You hear snippets of it in the New Testament, but if you want to get full expansion on that, you know what I mean?
They complement each other so well.
And if you want to understand the New Testament, like there's so many principles in the New Testament, like circumcision, like that's a big debate in the early church, circumcision, and so many things like that, even baptism.
And to fully understand those, you need to actually understand the context in the Old Testament first.
Yeah, arguments for infant baptism do stem back to the Old Testament.
So, another change in future episodes after this.
Exactly.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah.
And then the fact alone that the verse says, all scripture is breathed out by God.
So the fact that it's breathed out by God, the Hebrew Bible gives it already infinite value.
Exactly.
That's crazy.
You know what I mean?
So you're talking about, if we even go back to the Numbers passage about the Tabernacle, that their verse was breathed out by God.
Okay.
So that was given to us for a specific reason or genealogies, that verse was given to us for a specific reason.
So whenever reading God's Word and you go back to the Old Testament, remember that all of that was breathed by God and is there.
And it has a specific utility.
So genealogies is very good for historians because they can trace back and are good in that regard.
So that could be that gets you there.
But just understand that it's breathed by God.
That is crazy.
Yeah, that's crazy.
So that's kind of why I love the Old Testament.
I think hopefully in future episodes we'll get into some more passages and stuff.
Don't convince me.
No, I know you love the Old Testament.
I'm going to just, the Old Testament, New Testament, I'm going to just completely destroy that.
I'm going to say it's just one narrative.
It is one book.
I'm just going to say I love the Bible.
Unified story of the life of Jesus.
Yeah, the Bible as, yeah, it's just, it's amazing.
So, but at least we can include.
Well, we have a bit of time.
So we can talk.
I was talking to Peter about if I could, if I should include this, if I could, because obviously the prophecies, the prophecies that appear in the Old Testament, that are, so what's that there?
The Old Testament, you know, the revealed thing, like the New Testament, is the Old Testament revealed?
Is that right?
Oh, yes.
And then the Old Testament, the New Testament concealed.
Yes, exactly.
So we're calling someone that is in the Old Testament.
Shout out to anyone.
The one that go to Daniel, my goodness, like you love Daniel.
Daniel is my favorite book in the Old Testament.
So, well, you need a bit of help if you haven't studied it before, but definitely there's plenty of resources out there.
I'm glad to hear.
But one of the most amazing prophecies, Daniel 9, is that right?
End of Daniel chapter 9, yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
So an angel comes to Daniel.
Is it the angel Gabriel?
I think it's Gabriel from that.
So the angel comes to Daniel, okay?
And he gives Daniel this prophecy.
And it's basically talking about whenever they would, the Jews, because this was during their exile, it was a Babylonian exile, wasn't it?
Yeah.
During the exile that the prophecy was that they could return, whenever they would return, they were allowed to return and start to rebuild, actually start to rebuild, whenever that was decreed, whenever that was made legislation official.
But that was like the stopwatch.
You can begin and 173,888 days later Jesus would come.
Yes.
The Messiah, the redeemer, the one who would restore.
So that's just crazy.
Wait a second, that's crazy because if that's true, then wow, like the authority of that, because Daniel's written, you know what I mean, how many years?
500?
600 odd years.
Yeah, 500, 600 years before Jesus comes.
And we have the exact dates.
You can trace this.
This has been done on the 14th of March, 445 BC.
That was the decree of Artaxerxes.
Yeah, King Artaxerxes decreed that they could go back and that they could rebuild.
Okay, so according to this prophecy, the stopwatch begins.
172,888 days later brings you to the 6th of April, 32 AD.
And what happens on that day?
Jesus rides on a donkey.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
And that's just one.
And there's like, I don't know how many, but there's 300 plus prophecies.
Is there a thousand?
I don't know.
There's a lot.
Read the Bible and find out.
Next day.
Yeah, send us all the prophecies that appear in the Old Testament.
Like, that's just one out of so many.
And it's just like, it's just amazing.
Like, that is just, that's absolutely crazy.
That is just, that's divine.
That's true.
But, but yeah.
So is there anything else?
Is there any other favorites?
We've talked about, like, in Genesis, like, that's the creation story.
Amazing, yeah.
The creation narrative.
Exodus again, like, whole Prince of, Prince of Egypt stuff.
Yeah, this is wrong for me, frankly.
We have time.
Just kidding, we're there, just kidding.
We don't have to do all of them, because once we get to the minor problem, it gets a bit full, we get the minor problems, to be honest with you.
But you know what I mean, you got Exodus, you get the people, captivity.
You've got the laws, which again, everyone's least for a part, Leviticus, Numbers, and Jidrolami.
Yeah.
But there's lots of good stuff in there.
You have to work hard to get out and listen to good Bible teachers, but it is in there.
And then you've got Joshua, Judges, well, Joshua's not too dark.
Joshua's great, a lot of military conflicts.
If you love war, conflict, that's amazing.
Great military strategies.
It's just so interesting.
It's like, oh yeah, okay, keep going.
Judges is like the dark, it'd be like the Game of Thrones type stuff, it's like the darkest book in the Bible probably.
The failure of people, the lapse of just morality.
Yeah.
And then you've got like 1st and 2nd Samuel, the story of the dynasty of kings being installed in Israel.
Yeah, exactly.
And then you've got kings themselves.
And then you've got chronicles, which is documenting, it's like actually chronicling as a chronicle of what had actually take place in history.
And it's just so amazing.
Like we talked about gideon at the start and stuff, so many amazing stories.
You've got Psalms, like 150 Psalms.
All the poetry and Song of Solomon.
Song of Solomon, romance, but it's a beautiful, you know, it's a beautiful book.
You know what I mean?
You're talking about what it is, being a covenant in Mars.
Yeah, we'll get looked at talking about that sometime.
I'm so experienced in that area.
I'll stop casting notes.
And oh yeah, there's so much of them.
There's the minor prophets that are just scattered.
Lots of great letters in there.
Yeah, scattered throughout the history.
You've got Christophonies, Theophonies, you've got prophecies, history, romance, just all of these things that are just jam packed into the Old Testament.
And it literally has it out.
You can't pick a theme that it doesn't have.
And then of course, the New Testament is the fulfillment of that.
And it's just the complete story.
Yeah, just don't dive straight in without any help.
If you haven't studied the Old Testament.
Yeah, so practically what would you say?
Now that they've heard this and they're like, okay, the Old Testament does sound pretty awesome because it is the word of God.
Okay, what do I do now?
So Bible Projects have great resources.
Before you read a book in the Old Testament, go on the Bible Project, search the title of the book and just watch.
It gives you a breakdown of the chapters, what the purpose behind the book is, and even any good Bible commentary.
You got zander van, most Bibles will probably have a wee commentary below.
So if there are difficult verses, you can kind of look at that and understand what's going on in the passage because some of the stuff can be quite confusing.
And don't dig straight in a little bit, I guess don't challenge yourself like that.
I've tried it, it doesn't really work.
Okay.
Start Genesis or even the Psalms or something, or Daniel if you want.
Daniel's amazing because it's history to begin with.
So just get a good firm grip on like the New Testament, the teaching of Jesus and then start in the Old Testament and just look at all the resources.
There's podcasts and stories and Bible project.
And other experiences of Christians around you, like we want to start conversations around the Bible.
So if you know other Christians just...
So New Testament, get secondary sources and just begin, just start because you have to start somewhere.
And just remember that you've got the author of the book living inside of you if you're a Christian, like the God of the universe.
So if you're misunderstanding something, you know what I mean, pray, ask, because God says just ask.
And if any of you lacks wisdom, says James, this is James, right?
I think so.
Yeah, if any of you lacks wisdom, just ask and God will give.
So, okay, Peter, do you want to wrap us up there?
I'll wrap us up.
So that's our first episode finished and we'll see you guys next week.
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