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When Prophets Went Quiet: Enoch, Rome, and the Birth of Christianity · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  Relish pleasing or zestful flavor a quantity
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  just sufficient to flavor to be pleased or
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  gratified by enjoy we are hoping that what
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  we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life welcome back
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  to another episode of relish i'm roan miller this is don patterson don how are
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  you doing today oh yeah wonderful wonderful yeah me too any better i'd have to repent.
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  I don't know if I've heard that one before. Oh, it's all right. That just came.
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  Yeah. I've got my question for you. All right. I'm so excited about this question.
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  Okay. I'd like to know the answer.
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  So who is your favorite character in the Bible and why?
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  Favorite character in the Bible?
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  I mean, I don't necessarily have like a least favorite. I mean,
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  you got a bunch of big-name Bible characters.
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  That's true. I think I like the story of Joseph with his coat of many colors.
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  Yeah. I think him being able to forgive his brothers after something like that that they did.
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  I mean, I have brothers and I couldn't imagine them selling me off,
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  but I think forgiving them after they do something like that.
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  Should we ask them sometime if they considered that?
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  Depends on the mood they're in. Who knows what they'll say.
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  Oh, my. Yeah. What mood they're in. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Quite a bunch. Every one of you boys has a different personality. It's amazing.
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  Yeah. And good. It's good. If you were all the same, that'd be sort of scary
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  too. Right. That would be awkward. Yeah.
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  But good felons. I can't imagine they'd sell you off.
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  Yeah. They'd want to beat you in basketball, but they wouldn't want to sell you off.
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  Yeah. Right. They'd keep you around just for that. That's right. Yeah.
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  And maybe if they could outscore you at a golf course, they'd probably do that too. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Lots of competition. There would be. In your family, there's a lot at
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  the golf course. Right. Yeah.
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  I never want to go golfing with you.
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  It'd be great. It'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Look how many strokes he can get.
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  Oh, man. All right. We'll jump into the. We better. We'll jump into the questions here before.
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  Yeah. What's the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
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  How many years were between the two?
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  What happened then?
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  And are there possible, like, are there books that were written or writings
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  that were recorded that aren't in the Bible that would have covered that time?
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  Okay. We'll just start with the first one. Yeah. The difference.
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  So the difference between the Old Testament and New Testament,
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  the Old Testament is before Christ. It speaks about Christ.
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  There's about 300, depends on which author you're finding.
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  One has 500, says there's 500 verses that predict Christ's coming and lend to the messianic verses.
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  Event that happens with Christ. The one I ascribe to, I'd say there's 360 verses
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  of the Old Testament that actually point to Jesus being the Messiah.
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  Prophecies fulfilled, scriptures fulfilled.
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  And that comes from the Old Testament. But what the Old Testament does for the
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  new is it sets the stage for us to understand God's personality a little bit.
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  And a lot of people think God changes between the Old Testament and New, and He really doesn't.
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  God's benevolence is just as well described in the Old Testament as it is in the New.
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  The difference is that the New culminates,
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  that benevolence, that goodness of God,
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  God's desire to make us more than what we would be on our own,
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  primarily because he sets us free of the sin that holds us back, puts us down.
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  And so by Christ coming in the New Testament, then we have the Savior coming, God's Son,
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  John 1.1, and not only willing to come and teach, which the prophets did,
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  and the teachers of the law did, they had Pharisees and Sadducees,
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  they were teaching Old Testament,
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  but Jesus would put all those teachings of the Old Testament in the Old Testament.
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  More into the first person for us to live out so that he would take those teachings
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  that were starting to mold a people together for God.
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  They started that, but sort of got off track because it became an institution. It became a ritual.
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  It became, uh, much like the religions around them so that it was easy for the,
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  uh, from Hebrews to, oh, oh, the balls are over there, you know, and let's go over there.
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  I sort of like their worship, don't you? And so they go over there and,
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  you know, sacrifice their firstborn.
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  You know, it's sort of what they do.
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  Or they go over to the Ashereth pole and do that.
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  And so they were easily moved away from God because they didn't see it as a relationship.
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  When Jesus comes in the New Testament, you can't get past the fact that we're
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  having a relationship with Jesus.
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  Jesus talks about us being his friends. In John chapter 15, he talks about being
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  such close friends, he would share the ministry with them.
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  And he washes their feet. It's all first person.
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  I hate to use the word intimate, but that almost describes it.
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  It's a tenderness that I don't think they really felt in the Old Testament.
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  But this love of Jesus and his willingness to, oh, let's just take John 13.
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  So they're at a meal together and it's the last meal they'll have together. Jesus knows that.
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  And somebody who was making the meal and getting their meal around forgot to
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  get somebody to wash feet.
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  And so Jesus prepares himself and washes their feet. I mean, he loves these guys.
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  He cares for these guys. And you see that when you, especially if you walk through
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  the gospel of John, you see how much Jesus cared for those 12 guys. Even Judas.
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  Right. Who would deny him. And that's very evident in chapter 13.
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  So that when you get to the revelation, you realize God's called out this unique people through Jesus.
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  Your second part of that question was, so how many years was it in between?
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  And so we look at the scriptures and we see about 400 years between Malachi
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  and the first writer in the New Testament, which would have been Mark.
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  And those 400 years, basically, the prophets were silent.
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  And it was a Maccabean period. There are some other writings, apocryphal writings.
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  They aren't in a lot of our Bibles. The Catholic Bible would have them.
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  And so you learn about the menorah and how that came about in those writings.
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  That's basically Jewish. That's basically Old Testament period.
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  I find some information in there that's interesting.
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  There's the book of Enoch, which is attributed to that era, that talks about
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  things that actually are way back in Genesis 6.
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  And so it gives a whole different angle.
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  I find some value in that because the
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  book of Enoch is referred to in jude but it uh it's not one that's in our daily
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  reading pattern probably it's a little if you haven't read it yet maybe read
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  it don't read it at night uh and and read it with,
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  michael heiser's book yeah uh it's hidden hidden things,
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  I think is the name of the book. But Michael Heiser did a really good scholarly
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  work on not only Genesis and those beginnings, but also the book of Enoch.
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  It covers the role of angels, the role of the Anakim and the Nephilim,
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  and the book of Job, how Satan shows up in the book of Job and actually is among, uh,
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  the, the, uh, sons of God.
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  So, uh, Michael Heiser's work is really good at that.
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  There's connection in that period. And what was the fourth part of that?
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  Um, I, I can get about three things.
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  I remember about three questions. So you got the last part. But I think what
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  happened in this time is, well, you kind of got that a little bit. Yeah.
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  That last verse of Malachi basically started the silence of the prophets. Okay.
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  And part of that is because nobody was listening to God anyway.
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  They were ready for a Messiah. He hadn't come.
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  I think they were sort of depressed as a people because they had been conquered,
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  if you will, in that period and no longer had, they had, they were in the country,
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  but they were no longer ruling their own country.
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  And so they were conquered people, maybe a depressed people.
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  Yeah and uh i think
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  that 400 years is significance in the
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  fact that it's almost the same period of time that they
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  spent in egypt before god called them out of egypt and so yeah 430 years you
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  give that before jesus time jesus grew up started his ministry in about his
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  29th or 30th year So that'd be about 430 years. Yeah. Interesting.
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  So I think it's a time that needed to happen before Jesus could even be accepted.
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  So that 400 years was kind of like to prepare the...
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  Israel for Jesus? I think so. Okay.
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  What's interesting is Rome came to the fore and was the dominant empire of the time.
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  And we could actually blame the Romans for our Christianity spreading as quickly as it did. Yeah.
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  I remember covering that in Bible class and history a little bit.
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  Yeah. It's amazing. The roads, the language, the marketing, all that was actually
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  an aid to Christianity moving as quickly as it did from Palestine to the rest of the world.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Kind of crazy to think about. It is.
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  People that are, the leading authorities are kind of trying to push it out,
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  like suffocate it or really led to the spread of it. Right.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they tried to snuff it out altogether, and it was coming from two angles.
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  The Jews were trying to snuff it out as well, and then Rome was trying to snuff
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  it out once it became a challenge to them and their way of doing life.
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  And they wanted Caesar to be above all things, and Christians would not replace
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  Jesus with Caesar in their lives.
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  And so they kept going, and they kept killing him, and they kept going, and more all the time.
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  Right. Right. The fact that they were just so large helped them because they
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  could just go anywhere freely. Yeah.
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  Well, and they didn't tie themselves down.
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  It's as if they realized, as the Christians of the first century realized,
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  that their role was just like Matthew 19, 28.
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  It's go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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  Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. That go part they got.
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  I think they got the go part better than we got the go part.
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  Yeah. And the circus, we sort of like stay home.
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  Yeah. Comfortable there. Yeah. How do you speak truth with love? Isn't all truth loving?
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  I think we kind of talked about this a while back. And you remember with.
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  Say your sibling sister comes out wearing something ugly.
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  Yeah. You know, the truth is like you got to kind of have to tell them.
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  You've not had that in the first person. I haven't had that in the first person.
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  But I've experienced it myself. No. Catherine, you're not watching.
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  Well, okay, speaking the truth in one, that is in Ephesians 4, is it verse 15 or 16?
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  So in that context, talking about speaking the truth in love,
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  it is talking about the leaders, the prophets, the evangelists,
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  the apostles, the pastors and teachers,
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  speaking that truth in love.
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  What is a hallmark about that is it's done with a relationship.
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  In other words, this kind of love, this agape love has to be done in relationship.
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  So if I have something, I mean, we haven't known each other all that long,
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  what, five to 10 years, maybe.
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  But our relationship is such, what can I tell you and what can't I tell you
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  without breaking your heart or making you sad?
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  Vice versa, right? Vice versa.
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  So when do we get to the kind of relationship that we have the integrity of?
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  To say those things that might, you know, my goodness, those,
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  that yellow skirt is awful.
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  Yeah. I mean, I love you, sister.
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  Don't wear that to the prom. Do not wear that.
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  Speaking the truth in love. So how do we do that?
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  It's that process of first relationship that has such integrity and depth that
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  you can actually speak it.
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  Right. And that, it's really a high calling.
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  The problem is we think in church that we can speak the truth because we love everybody in church.
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  And I'm not sure we love everybody in church well enough to speak such truth.
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  So we leave it up to the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
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  And some of us pastors get a little edgy once in a while because it needs to be spoken.
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  Right. It needs to be spoken. Several weeks ago, I did a sermon on sin and that God punishes sin.
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  And it was a little edgy. I mean, it was to the point.
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  And it was about Achan's sin when he kept the three articles from Jericho for himself.
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  And he should have, you know, those were devoted things. They were supposed
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  to be taken into the temple and to the Lord's house.
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  And he took these things for himself.
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  Surely they won't miss it. Yeah, surely they won't miss it. And, uh.
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  I think it's rare that we see such a decisive move on God's part to say,
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  yeah, you're not doing that and I'm not going to help you anymore if you do that.
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  And so it has to be taken care of.
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  Right. And then he does it tribe by tribe, clan by clan, family by family,
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  and individual by individual within that family until he comes to Achan.
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  So it's, it's a very, yeah.
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  It's like if you got, well, roughly how many people were, like,
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  how many people made up the.
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  It might have been 10,000, 10,000, no, 100,000.
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  I think they said half a million people. Wow. So that'd be like.
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  And each, you know, each tribe, 12 tribes. Right.
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  It's like if somebody stole, like Iowa City's smaller than that.
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  And it's like if, or are they smaller? I don't know.
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  Right at that, I think. And so, yeah, it's like dividing up Iowa City.
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  It's like one person stole something from there, and then the whole Iowa City
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  has to stop and walk through.
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  Assemble yourselves, present yourselves. Remember that word present,
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  they presented themselves before the Lord.
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  And so you see all this field of people divided into 12 groups.
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  And in those groups, they're divided into their clans, and in those clans,
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  they're divided into families, and somehow God pointed Achan out.
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  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
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  That's, yeah, it's an amazing story, but it ruffles feathers in this day and age to talk about sin.
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  Even though we know that we're all guilty of sin, we've all tweaked things, you know, our own way.
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  In fact, there's whole churches that say, well, no, that's not sin anymore.
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  And they sort of do their thing.
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  And we wound, we wound God's presence. I guess I used the story in that of my
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  dad and how he disciplined me. And it was rightly so. Dad did right.
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  And when I looked back on what my words did and I saw the tears in dad's eyes,
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  I likened that to the fact that there's things that I might be doing that are
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  sin that may make my heavenly father sad.
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  Well, that kind of stuff, we got to stop.
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  So speaking the truth in love, I think it's mandatory. The one piece we haven't
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  done is developed good relationships where we can do that in the first person. Right.
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  Your sister, real close with her, right? But if you see some lady for the first
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  time in some restaurant and tell her that her dress looks ugly,
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  then. Yeah, or Walmart. Right.
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  Anywhere. It's happened more in the Walmart than in the restaurant. I bet.
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  I'm sorry, folks. Yeah. And so I took the cop out. I don't go to Walmart anymore.
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  Sorry. No, that's good. I do my shopping online. That's good closing.
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  Flee, flee the evil. Flee from evil, said James says.
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  Yeah. So I flee from evil. I don't go to Walmart anymore. Who would have thought
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  you shopped online? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
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  Nice. I'm good. Pretty handy, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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  All right. I just pull the computer over to Charlene. What do you think of that?
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  Yeah. Black Friday, Cyber Monday is coming up. Yeah. Yeah.
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  All right. Well, thank you guys. Thank you guys for joining us.
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  Go enjoy your Black Friday deals.
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  Happy holidays. Hopefully you get to spend some time with your family. Lord willing.
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  Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time. Lord willing.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing it with others.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  and is calling to us in our daily lives. Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.