Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Paul Blackham: Multiverse Stories and the Christ Centred Cosmos || SLP479

Transcript

Paul Blackham: Multiverse Stories and the Christ Centred Cosmos || SLP479 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast, episode 479.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Thomas Thoroughgood, media producer at Speak Life, and whoever you are, wherever you're listening, you are most welcome.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're listening to this while you're going for a little jog.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're doing some cooking.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, watch that pot from boiling over.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we've got a new episode today, a new interview that Nate did with the Reverend Dr.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Blackham.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he's been on the podcast before, Paul Blackham.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: An absolute legend, particularly uh stirring was his interview that he did with Glenn back in 2021.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 341, that was about COVID, really, and a theology of plagues.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul Blackham really helped us to see the hope of Christ in that very dark time.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: More recently, episode 445, Glenn spoke to Paul Blackham about bishops' marriage and the failure of the church.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was about the Church of England situation and living in love and faith.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have Paul Blackham on the show to weigh into something a little bit different Multiverse Stories and the Christ-centered cosmos.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this went out on Nate's Reformed Mythologist YouTube channel.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't checked it out, it's youtube.com forward slash at Reformed Mythologist.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you will find this to be a very entertaining and thought-provoking conversation as they get into all sorts of areas.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: What is the multiverse?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Why has it been invoked as an possible explanation for how reality works?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what's it done to our storytelling?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a film fan, you will have noticed that there's been a bit of a bit of an explosion of multiverse-based storytelling recently.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, that did very well at the Oscars.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Marvel has been really leaning into the multiverse idea with shows like Loki and films like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the two animated Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse, and there's going to be a third one soon.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: DC seems to be exploring this avenue as well.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So why are lots of stories doing this?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think Paul really helps to shed some light on this matter.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I will hand straight over to Nate and Paul Blackham.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Reform Mythologist Nate Morgan Locke here with an interview.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's right.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just going to be me talking in this video.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be joined by the Reverend Dr.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Blackham.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: The particular thing that made me think I really want to get you onto the Reform Mythologist channel to talk about is the most wonderfully named podcast I think that's ever existed.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: The Christ-centered cosmic civilization podcast, which is a fairly new thing from you.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just give us an understanding of what is the Christ-centered cosmic civilization podcast all about.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, so I ended up with that that name just because um I I kept trying it was only I needed something really big that would enable me to talk about all the things that I wanted to talk about.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: That it wasn't as if I just I said, Oh, I just want to do something about like how to understand the Bible or something about angels or something about science.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was like the one of the big things that I've been sort of concerned about is that like the there's quite good things about little portions of truth and reality, but I felt like what what's what the need is, at least for me, and and that's what I feel I I've missed.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and this is particularly come from looking back at Christian history, Christian civilizations all over the world for thousands of years, is that they they have this massive view of reality, and it what they can do that by having this sense of Jesus Christ, the divine emperor who reigns over this cosmic civilization, and then with that vision of Christ, could I think the problem is a lot of people have a view of Jesus and it's really just personal salvation, and it's like Jesus saves me, and then well, what about Jesus?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm looking out the window, that tree or that car or that house or the grass over there or you whatever.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I don't know, that's got nothing to do with Jesus.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's the savior person, he's selling fire insurance, eternal fire insurance, maybe, maybe a little bit more than that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: A little bit, but basically that's the scope.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that's rubbish.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: This cosmic high priest that's Jesus.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: So how can we talk how because I over the years have been spent a lot of time looking how Jesus makes sense of everything music, science, biology, chemistry, physics, language, architecture, everything, geography, history, angels, all these different animals, trees, all of it.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that I just thought, what I need a heading that enabled me to talk about all those things, and and and to do it in a sort of slightly unhurried way.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not as if I'm like, this week I'm gonna do everything on like maths.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I don't know how long maths is gonna well, I do now because I'm pretty sure um yeah, but it took at least sort of six episodes, I think, six or seven episodes, to kind of go, right, maths.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: How numbers, let's give that a not exhaustive, but enough to feel, yeah, right, I kind of feel we've got a handle on that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Why that is all about Jesus?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then we're into all the different subjects.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so that's one of the things when whenever anyone's trying to start a podcast, I mean it's one of those things that people start and then it's very difficult to sort of sustain it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the challenges people find is is how do you how do you carve out your niche?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's what's your thing?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: What are you not talking about on your podcast so that your audience can actually find you and and that sort of thing?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas when you when you set it up exactly as you've done, it's like the cosmic civilization of Christ, like literally that is everything.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: There isn't anything that's can be possibly outside of the rule of the divine emperor as you keep you sort of refer to him, and that is one of the things I found really exciting about it is that it is it's uh it's a total perspective on you know, if I say I'm the reform mythologist, well, you're a sort of cosmologist, it's like what is what's in the scope of this podcast and everything.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I want to dive into some of the specifics of of the episodes that you've done so far.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing I like to do as a you know, somebody who's fascinated by story and storytelling, is to try and think, well, how can we get to know you a little bit before we you know get into uh you know how Jesus helps us to understand maths or music or or or the fay creatures, we'll get onto that, is um to try to sum you up in three scenes.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is this possible?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: If we were making Paul Blackham the movie, uh I mean the first question always comes, who do you think would play you?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who could do justice to you in a movie?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then really, if you can just take us to three uh scenes so that we can get you.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: If we wanted to really understand you, what would those three scenes be?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: The three scenes, uh the actor thing's difficult because uh yeah, I'm not sure there's anybody quite suitable.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It would have to be uh balding, aged, and uh anyway.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Prosthetics, they can do all sorts of prosthetics.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can have anyone you like, you know.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, oh yeah, yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh possibly Brian Blessed or something, but anyway, um but uh with the three scenes, yeah, um I guess one scene that might come to mind is is like me as like probably about 14, 13, 14 years of age, and we had a there was a newish minister in Methodist backgrounds, and we were primitive Methodists.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's a literal thing.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Primitive Methodism meant it was a kind of movement in the 19th century because it was the feeling Methodism had drifted away from its roots and it was too complicated.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: Primitive Methodism was like, we gotta go back to the way it was like a hundred years ago, and that'd be serious.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: So primitive Mesonism grew up then, and we were that, and then um we had a minister who came who was a Wesleyan minister, and that meant that he was higher church, sacramental, and at first we were like, Oh, what's all this about?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: We don't fancy this, dodgy, and yeah, and he wore a robe, like a pre the Geneva preaching gown, and immediately we were like, Oh, this is not primitive to me.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, but he introduced me to what he did is he gave us the Christian year and said we're gonna do the Christian year, okay, and he was so into it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we hit like Advent or the run up to Easter, he'd do readings on from the church fathers.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: And again, we're like saints, what's all this rubbish?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then we listened, and me especially as that young teenager, I was like, Oh the the he's reading people who are sort of scratching and itches that I've had, okay, and I've been wanting answers to those sorts of questions, and I'm thinking, like, why does Jesus have to be resurrected?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't his deaf do everything?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is achieved by him rising from the dead?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then these people would say that, the people he'd read, he re-and I was like, Oh, this is so good.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that was, and then there was like an excitement, and I can remember times running up to Christmas and Easter, like Christmas Eve going for Holy Communion or Easter going for a Good Friday meditation, and I'd be crying with the excitement and wonder as a young teenager, just like I can't wait to hear more of this.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one scene.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what year is this taking place?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the early 80s, okay.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, so early 80s, okay, in what part of what part of the country?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's Lancashire, that's like uh um oh black if you think of Blackpool and you go down down the coast from uh Blackpool, and then there's the Ribble estuary, and then so on one side you've got Morecambe and and and Black uh Blackpool and that sort of thing.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Opposite that you've got Southport and then going up to Preston and things like that.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm between Southport and Preston, that on the sort of the bank of the river uh the the the ribble estuary there, and it's a farming area, yeah, uh Lancashire.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: So early 80s, and you're having your basically you're having your mind sort of just expanded in terms of the scope of what what who Jesus is and what it means that Jesus has sort of come and that was huge for me because yeah, I'd read a lot of the Bible and I only really read for me, reading the Bible meant reading Moses.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just would start the beginning, read it, quite enjoy Joshua, loved Moses, right, read Joshua, I was like, that's okay, and then uh Jesus is alright, and then once I got into I'd be like, oh no, this is too I don't, and it's not as good.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then instead of saying, which a lot of people I think now I know, people would go, oh, let's just go to the New Testament, read the gospels and things.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I'll just go back to beginning and start again.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I can remember just doing that repetitively as a as a younger kid, like before my teens, just over and over and over, and then in my teens, but then added to that mix was this like church year, sacramental perspective, uh early church fathers, things like that.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really I can yeah, and did were you sort of anxious about your your faith or your standing before God in that because a lot of the time when people have a kind of teenage experience that they you know oh this is this was really what what did it for me.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's often to do with sort of anxiety about am I saved or not, and then it sort of oh, but then it all suddenly made sense and I had peace.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it sounds as though you you sort of had the peace, but you just had felt that your your vision of Christ was narrower than it than it maybe ought to have been.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: I literally can't remember a time when I didn't trust in Jesus.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like um it l I lit literally I'll share this, it's a crazy thing, and you'll say it can't be true.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I literally, my very earliest memory is being held in the arms of my mum at a Harvest Festival service, literally in the first year of my life, okay, like 1970 or something like that, and then I kept I had it, it's very clear in my mind this service.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we looked it up, it was in the first year of my life, there was such a service just as I remembered it.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I cannot remember a time like when I didn't uh believe all this and trust in it and belong to it.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I I mean as a teenager, I was I was you know terri badly behaved, uh no terrible discipleship, all that sort of thing.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And of course that that was bad, needed to be sorted out, and you know, um made a little bit of progress perhaps since then, but um the the sense of what is true, what is real, what is to hold on to, what really matters.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Nah, I can't remember a time when I I wasn't gr held held you know gripped by it and gripping it.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's wonderful.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And such an encouragement for you know for those of us who do have you know uh believers with children who were sort of bringing them up in the faith to in it doesn't it's not by necessity that you just have to have this kind of oh, I didn't understand a single thing.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it didn't it didn't make any sense at all.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had no relationship with Jesus whatsoever until I went you know away as a teenager or something.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's that's so encouraging.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you were celebrating harvest festivals then?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: There was a harvest.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, that's another one.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's another one.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: They were huge when I was growing up as well, because of farming area.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the uh it was it was almost the biggest festival, not in not in terms of the church year, as Mr.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Briggs as he was known, he intro Reverend Briggs, he introduced us to that, but just in terms of the like social life of my home church.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: The Harvest Festival was immense, and the entire church was decorated, all the windows filled with fresh fruit, veg, potatoes, onions, flowers, everything it was immense harvest festival.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, again, finding that that is a scriptural thing, that's in the Bible harvest festival, that was awesome for me, and it also I guess now that I'm reflecting, I've not thought of this before, but it that's probably all part of this way I've ended up doing this sort of podcast where Christ is involved not just with like my private soul and time shows, but with everything, the whole creation.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll we'll we'll keep going with the the scenes, but just on that, I was um just doing some reading on um oh the the Homeric hymn to Demeter.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you know when you think about harvest and all these kind of stories of oh, why do we have plants and seasons and all the sort of stuff?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then obviously, so many worldviews and religions and mythologies, they've got an account of the seed time and harvest, and it's usually something awful, like the one about um Persephone, just this young girl who's dancing with her friends in a meadow, and then up comes Hades with his like chariot of jet black horses to kidnap her and take her down into the underworld, and then her mom Demeter's wandering round going, Oh, everything's gone, and it's all I'm all sad, and then eventually she's let out.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: But um the pomegranate seeds, that's an interesting, wasn't it?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm huge on pomegranate seeds.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Stephanie gets to eat some pomegranate seeds.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Go on, do you give us a bit on the pomegranate seeds before?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to distract.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's only because they they are traditionally the the fruit that was eaten in the Garden of Eden.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: The the uh you know it well certainly the pomegranates on the on the tree of life, right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: They are probably the out the fruits on the tree of life, but sometimes they're traditionally understood both both both the tree of life and the knowledge of good and evil are these are pomegranates, but particularly on the tree of life, because they're just full of seeds and fertility.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, sorry.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's it but it's just so interesting, as we might think about this later on, how how the distortion of the truth, you know, you can still see, you know, I mean, literally seeds of the truth that um have kind of made its way into the the other mythologies of the world.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: But uh and to me, like that's why the Homeric uh if I have to choose between those two hot sides of Greek, the Homeric or the Platonic Aristotelian rubbish, yeah, I would choose the Homeric stuff because there you're still engaging with real stories that have the the the threads of things that can lead you to genuine biblical ideas.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Even that idea with the harvest and there's the Hades, the underworld that comes to you're like, oh, like that's not true, but I I I like I there's something we can do with that.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Once they go, oh, we don't like all that, let's just have a God who does nothing, who does nothing and cannot be perceived and says nothing and doesn't care about anything.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, ah, like you can't do anything with that, but you can do something with the Homeric stuff.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then and and partly I think because there's a there's a drivenness within the within story.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So characters are motivated, they're desirous of things.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember there's a wonderful uh quote from I mean the rest most of the book isn't very good, but it's by a guy called Jeremy Truby who writes uh a book, you know.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is how to write a screenplay, basically, it's one of those things.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, uh Descartes has I I think therefore I am, whereas stories about I want, therefore, I am.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you're a you're a heart-driven creature, rather than you're just this kind of brain on a stick, and you know, there's a thing called consciousness and stuff like that.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And stories where people just think of rubbish, you know, you actually need you know the stories to be driven by an intention, desire, by you know, kind of passion, um, and that sort of thing.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's go to we've I suppose we've kind of done two scenes already because we've done we've done the you know one year old in the harvest festival surrounded by this, you know, the these this abundant food, and then we've got you discovering you know just how big this this whole Jesus thing really is with the the the church calendar with Reverend Briggs.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what's another scene that you know we really ought to see if we were trying to get a handle on on you?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think uh maybe a good one is Speaker's Corner.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's this thing in central London that uh the end it's in um High Park, not that far from Buckingham Palace, it's the end of Oxford Street.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: And Liz and I, even before we were married, we were just students and um going out, then we were engaged and so but throughout that whole time we would go.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we had this friend called Peter Moody, he was like um Jamaican background guy, big big.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and totally the weird thing is, other than at Speaker's Corner, he was so shy and quiet, but at Speaker's Corner, it's like the Spirit of the Living God came upon him, and he preached with such power and and authority and deep theology.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: But he and we didn't know that at first, he just said, You should come and do you should come to Speaker's Corner.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, let's let's let's tell people about Jesus.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then we were like, Oh, okay, and then we thought, oh, it'll be like just a broad cross-section of the sort of people we talked to as students at university, yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then we went and it wasn't that, it was like 50,000 Muslim people.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is in the 90s, early 90s, uh, and then you know, maybe 10,000 other people who were not necessarily Muslim, yeah, and then a very small number of Christians, and then it was chaos, and we went into that and just Got exposed as we didn't know what we were talking about when it came to Christian theology.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So on the one hand, I got the excitement and the the sense of like I've read read the Bible, read some shit, but to suddenly go from that into this situation were all these Muslim speakers, particularly, who were really uh had really thought a lot about Christianity from this outside perspective and what was what they regarded as wrong with it, and going into that and they put us under enormous pressure for that first year.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the Trinity?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: And back then we would initially just think go, oh, well, you know, it's like a mystery, innit?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now that is considered an acceptable answer if you are in Christian circles, because everyone just goes, hmm.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas that is a rubbish answer.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's totally, and they rightly said, You don't know what you're talking about, do you?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know what it is.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, yeah, they're right.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: They're right.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know what it is.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, So you are coming here, you dare to come here to tell us that you know about God and we don't.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then when we ask you like the central questions about your God, you don't even know.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Yeah, that's true.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: So for those first, I remember for quite a lot of weeks, we would go and just get battered, absolutely battered.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Questions like, oh, so your God goes what you're talking about the incarnation, like your god went to the toilet, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And at that time, I'm like, oh, um, did he?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and they're like, that sounds and they were they were rightly putting me under pressure, and then they'd give me Bible verses from all over the Bible that I never thought about.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that and I and I just didn't know.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so we'd go away absolutely destroyed every week, and it'd take us like two or three days to even like speak because we were so exhausted and wrecked by it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: But it was brilliant, brilliant, because it took us about a year before we could stand on our own feet and sort of go, Oh, oh, oh, hang on, okay, I can answer that, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the and that is this, and so that that scene then, there's uh I think the best scene, if you're gonna picture something, is as us as like 18-year-olds, or probably 19 or 20 actually, by the time we did that, and and and just this sense of us totally out of our depth, surrounded by thousands of people asking urgent, relevant, central questions, and us not being able to answer them.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then we discovered no, you need to go back to the Bible more seriously and trust that these are the right questions and that the Bible will answer them, yeah, not later theologians who you know it made us think the Trinity wasn't invented like three, four hundred years after the Bible, like Moses teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, things like that.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because, and then we discovered like nothing less than that would answer these people.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: So being in a furnace for a year and getting absolutely reduced to tears, really, with exhaustion and defeat, was the best thing, and they I often say they were the greatest theological teachers I ever had because they forced me.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because the kind of answers to go, oh well, Trinity, have you ever thought of it a bit like this?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they go, But that doesn't make any sense because and they were right, they were right every time.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So when you were when you were kind of skulking off with your, you know, your sort of tail between your legs, feeling kind of oh, we just screwed up again there, where were you going back to?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where was the kind of regrouping place that you just got your Bibles open and just went, We've got to really just Yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: So initially um we were students living in student accommodation, then we got married, and this is when we were like 24, and we went we were living in Finchley.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: So we go back there.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now I at that time I was teaching Greek at what was then called the London Theological Seminary.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's called something else.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I can't remember what it's called now, but Dr.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Martin Lloyd Jones helped to set it up for training non-conformist ministers like in North London.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I taught Greek there.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so that I'd go back there, but um, and so Liz and I would do that.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: But the real thing that helped us, and this is like a cheat code, it's ridiculous, really.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: That when I was at I was doing my PhD at King's College London, and then someone there was a little announcement, I think it was Alan Torrance or Colin Gunton who just said, There's an elderly man who is got has gone blind, and would anyone be prepared to go and read to him from theological books because he's lost his sight?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that was it, that was all that was said.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh well, yeah, I'd love to do that.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just imagining it was just some retired person, and you know, that was it, and it would just be me doing them a favour kind of thing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I was just like, Yeah, I'd I'd be happy to do that.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: Took it, went to the address.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was Bishop Leslie Nubigan, and uh he was the person, and week by week I would go and read.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I remember the first book we read was NT Wright and the New Testament and the People of God, something like that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it was that, but he he got like often pre-publication versions of books and things like that, and then I'd read them, and then he'd go, What do you make of that?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: and I'd say something stupid, and he'd go, Okay, um, I I think it may be this, and then we'll give like an unbelievably brilliant analysis of the whole thing, and I'd be just like, Yeah, yeah, that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it was so wonderful because he would he asked me about Speaker's Corner, me doing that, and he because he's like it was a tremendous missionary evangelist theologian, yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: He'd go, So what did you say to that question?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'd be like, Well, we said this, and he goes, No, that that's not a good answer.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he wouldn't tell me the answer.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: It I wanted him to say this is what I would have said.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: He wouldn't, he'd say, Let me tell you where to go to get answers.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he'd say, Yes, you need to do the old testament.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: You need you don't back away from the Trinity, you have to be able to, that's got to be in your shop window.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: The thing you're most confident, don't stop until that is the thing you're most confident about, and that you're not waiting, you're not fearing you're getting a question, you're you're leading with it, you're leading with it, and you're thinking they're gonna be terrified that I'm gonna bring up the Trinity, sort of thing.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he said to do that, you need to go read the Bible, understand what the the how the Bible teaches it, and learn how to do that from the early church fathers because they were using mostly the Old Testament when they developed the Dutch Trinity, and see how they did that and understood it, and then you'll be able to do it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then he listened and guide me and counsel me.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: But that's how that's how we went from being so crushed.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: He we had this like unbelievably brilliant mentor that was just like this secret thing that the Lord gave us to say, right, you can do this, don't give up, go back next week, and and then and then eventually we and Jay Smith, the you know, everyone knows Jay Smith, like evangelist.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: He he came, he was part of it, yeah, and all of us together began to learn how to do this.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's so fascinating.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: That the way you know, I mean, God using his arranging his children around and putting them in contact with each other to sort of build each other up and and using that kind of weakness that he couldn't read the book, so he needed he needed some some bloke from near Preston to come and read them for him.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that's weird, isn't it?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's wonderful.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um I mean I I would I would pay to see this film um that we're now gonna make um if there's any financial backers who are watching this video, we'll uh gladly receive your funds to uh to make Paul Black and the movie happen.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, I just wanted people to really get a sense of your background and you know your obviously your enthusiasm comes through and uh in everything you talk about, but just particularly to sort of see how you know the Lord's been using you in terms of engaging others with the wonders of Christ, and and so yeah, really appreciate that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, back to the podcast.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's get on to this this this scheme of this podcast you've got, this Christ-centred cosmic civilization.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'll tell you what I what really excited me about it was um one particular episode, I can't remember which one it was, but it's called A Journey Through the Heavens.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember this?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um the and you take us through uh a journey from the earth through the three heavens, you know, through the first heaven, through a second heaven, and then into a third heaven.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And even just that language for so many of us as Christians feels a bit we oh, where does that come from?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Where where do you where are you getting that from?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: But we can answer that question, but I suppose what was so exciting for me was that listening to an episode like that, go back into church, and then just to hear the things that we say as Christians about you know the Jesus who is at the right hand of the Father, you know, in heaven, um just took on a real new kind of depth, and uh I I felt I had a really a much stronger appreciation for just the shape of reality and the shape of the cosmos.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um where where are we getting this this shape of the cosmos from?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: What what yeah this idea?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, people who hang around me a lot, I I always think they must groan when I start on my three heavens pits because they're like, oh man, he's not doing that again.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because I do it a lot because to me, I'm it like you, I feel it's exciting and it's a bit of a game changer in perception to understand that it's not just like earth and then some stuff up above, but it's a much more radiated thing than that, and that the Bible has a more sophisticated view of cosmic reality than that, and that that has been deeply understood and populated and um and and depicted by our Christian ancestors for thousands of years all over the world.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: But how does it work in the Bible?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, straight in the the beginning, in the beginning, God created the heavens, plural, yeah, and the earth.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Now, straight away that is missed.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, people think of it as heaven, singular, and earth.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can't get into one verse of the Bible with that.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's quite a lot in that in that one verse, isn't there?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like, okay, it's that's really there's so much you're gonna explode, it explodes with the money.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: You pull on it, and it's all out.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: But just that thing about heavens, plural, and earth, and that's like that all the way through the Bible.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's heavens and earth, and even in Hebrews, it's like Jesus ascends through heavens in order to get to this control center of the universe.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, what what then a good way of like I'm showing how people how to go about doing this with their own Bible study is then look up where the word like heaven and heavens is used in the Bible and how it's used, and that very quickly, I think, shows you why there are these three heavens.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because you've got like first of all, the concept of three, the Apostle Paul in like 2 Corinthians 13, he goes, Um, oh yeah, uh, I I I took a trip to the third heaven.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so he's like, Of course, there are three heavens, and there's I went to the third one.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I might have been in my body, I might have been out of my body.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think he was in his body, but that's for another discussion for another time.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in the in body uh or out of body.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, he he's like, I'm not sure.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um but that th he just tells us explicitly third heaven.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: So without any explanation, he just says I was brought to the third heaven, and like we're all supposed to go, oh yeah, oh the third heaven.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, obviously, of course.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the third one, yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Not yeah, yeah.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so that that to me, like exactly as you articulated it, that was like, oh, so he he he expects we know what he's talking about.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: So then why don't we?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then I assume all the information was available.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, okay, let's go back and spot it.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then you just notice, even on chapter one of the Bible, that there is the birds of the heaven.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So there's there's like an initial kind of heaven, and you'll see that throughout the scriptures.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus talks about the birds that are in this heaven, this first heaven, and it's this what we might call, we call it atmosphere.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, our atmosphere, and it's like uh a little heaven, first heaven.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's clouds, I'm looking at some now, there's blue sky heaven, and then there's winged creatures that fly in the first heaven, and there's clouds of glory, um, and it's an expansive thing.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: And when you're up high in the even in the first heaven, and you're looking down from a plane or a mountain or even a tall building, it's quite uh it's quite an experience, and you feel like you know, it takes your breath away and it's overwhelming, even just the experience of height and and grandeur and size of the first heaven.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's that.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: But then we scale up and go, but there's also something like the the stars of the heavens and the sun, moon, and stars that are in something that's also called a heaven.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now that we go, but that's like ridiculously bigger than the first heaven.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, okay, but note that, note it the scaling.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: First heaven, scale up to second heaven.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: The scaling is enormous, absolutely enormous.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and we are quite uh taken away by that the scale of the second heaven, which also has clouds that like nebula that are large and glorious, and and and then there are creatures that move about um like gliding, flying through the heavens.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting in science fiction that um thing like spaceships, that spaceships, again, that's like but they fly through the heavens, and it's all to do with it's all very much like um like the similar language, like like uh that that is used about the first heaven is actually uh extrapolated out.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that's this second heaven, enormous galaxies, stars, all that, creatures that inhabit it.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then for for the modern mind, that is where your mind is supposed to get blown.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: The scale of the second heaven, and you you know the at least four times as big as this one.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's massive.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like really big, and huge numbers are thrown at you, and you're supposed to get sort of a sense of awe and worship about the second heaven, and then people imaginatively populate it with aliens and civilizations and project into it uh really what are divine, like the idea that there's like higher-level beings who live in the heaven and they could come down and bring us technology or cures or things like that, or possibly judgment from the heavens and all this.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, but the second heaven becomes the the ceiling, really, that the highest level that can be thought of, and you're supposed to be if you're dissatisfied with that, it's like, oh, you haven't understood it, you need to go and see more, you need to see more like go Carl Sagan or something on on the heavens or something or on space, and just the calling it space is so rubbish.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: I love that because you mentioned that in the podcast a couple of times, it's so funny.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: But sorry, go on, say it's a good thing.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's basically it's big, and the the there's a lot of sp uh of expanse between the inhabitants.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna focus not on the inhabitants or the light of the grandeur, but the expanse between them and just say it is essentially just space.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's mostly nothing.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's mostly nothing.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't worry about it because it's mostly not the most of the stuff up there, isn't stuff at all, it's nothing.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's so unimaginative.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um the 20th century's been rubbish about the second heaven.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: But see, what the Bible does is go, oh, okay, you think that is mind-blowing.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Remember the jump in scale from the first heaven to the second heaven, right?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now imagine that there was just such a big jump in scale when you go from the second to the third.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, Well, I I can't, I can't do that.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: I can't make that imaginative leap.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: And the Bible's like, I know, I know, I know, but it's the yeah, it's the and that's the level.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: So if you you know, you shouldn't be satisfied with being wowed by the second heaven.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: You should like go, what, but there's a there's as a bigger jump and scaling up to a level of reality where, and again, now in the third heavens, we're now dealing with clouds again, clouds of glory, expanses, winged creatures flying around, light, light that's emanating out, and now we're at the source of all light.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: And even biblical writers who are pretty amazing, and someone like Ezekiel, who's like, oh man, he's I always think of him like a surfer dude or something who's dropping acid or something.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: But he's the sort of person who he he has a go.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: He has a go at trying to describe it, but even he's like, oh man, it's like you know, wheels and stuff, and I don't know how it works.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: And John has a go, and they they have a go, but you can see that it's very, very difficult to make that imaginative leap and capture it with language and things, but that's an important thing, and it's at that level of reality, the highest level of reality, that is where Jesus reigns, and he is completely competent to handle that level of reality and to administer it with you know hundreds of millions of angelic beings, and the angelic beings themselves are all too much.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: And when biblical people come into contact with some of these higher-level angels, they just collapse and start worshiping them.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Even someone like John does that, and you're like, John, do you know you shouldn't be worshiping, even the angels like you know you shouldn't be doing this, and John's like, Yeah, I know, but you know, you're pretty amazing.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's that sort of thing, and that and yeah, just having that sense because often people show those videos of you know, look, here's the size of a you know, a guy sitting in a park, and then they zoom out a bit and they're like, Oh, look how small the guy is compared to you know, and how big the city is, and then they zoom out again and zoom out, and then you just and you've totally forgotten about the guy who was sitting in the park because you're thinking how he can't be relevant at all.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like he obviously has no meaning or value because he's so small in the grand scheme of things.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then one of the really helpful illustrations that you you were chatting about with uh with PJ on the um one of the earlier episodes.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: So your your son PJ who heads up it's called uh Global Church History History Project.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: The Global Church History Project.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you've got global church history and the Christ-centred cosmic civilization, all space and time is dealt with by the Black and family.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: But it's what was great in that conversation was you talked about a theatre and how if you really want to understand what's going on in the massive structure of the theatre, you really need to be sitting in one particular place.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And now just sort of parse that out.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by that if if you know the world's a theatre?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't we want to go into space space?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um No, I don't think so.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a very hostile environment, quite deliberately.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's set up to prevent us doing so.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's partly to do with it's the curtain that prevents us accessing like.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: The control room of the universe, and that there's like this curtain almost being put down.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's as if to say, and this problem that you burn up if you start trying to leave the atmosphere and all this sort of thing.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's an immensely hostile environment in order because the living gods like said, I cannot have people like you wandering around my cosmic civilization.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: You are really dangerous.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've quarantined you and sealed you into a tiny, tiny portion of it.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: I've had to exile you into this tiny portion of the cosmic.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: I want I have designed it to be our family home forever and ever and ever, but I can't have you doing that right now because you'd be awful.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you you'd you've already made a really bad mess, and I don't want that spreading.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, no, I think going into space now in our present darkness is uh not only impossible, of course, like we we think it's an enormous achievement to go to moon the moon or something, and that's just a tiny satellite that's barely beyond the orbit.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then it's like, what if we went to Mars?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, yeah, like maybe you could do that.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: But think of that: a single solar system in one galaxy.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: You couldn't go, you know, we can't even travel to an adjacent star or anything.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's all good.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really pleased that that's the case.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've lost my train of thought.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of so being being on on Earth from the perspective of Earth is the right place to be.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's the right place to be.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the difference between Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adam, and Psalm 8.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: So Hitchhiker's the whole series is designed to make you feel like you're nothing.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Life is it's hilarious.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hilarious, it's brilliant, love it.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: So many classic things in it.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: But underlying it all is a philosophy that makes you human beings are nothing and unimportant and irrelevant.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: And there isn't and the meaning to everything, 42, deliberately the idea that there is no there is no answer to everything.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Although actually 42 is a really significant number, but you know, that's another time.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: But um I've just done the episodes on on numbers and uh sort of stuff.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, multiples of seven got to be taken seriously.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the number three and a half, actually, because forty-two months is three and a half years.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: So in the Bible, the num and three and a half is half a seven, and so you'll know like that's the time that uh there's the drought in Elijah and and in Revelation.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, listen, you're drawing me into it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: You should I shouldn't have done that.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, Douglas Adams wasn't trying to say anything valuable with that.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: So he he's really do what he's really doing is taking a perspective to view cosmic reality from like a disengaged floating one in the second heavens, like just trying to look at it all as if this is the correct way to view it from.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh like floating around among the galaxies, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And really, it's galaxies in that.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: You can just float around all the galaxies, and that from that perspective, you will realize you are an insignificant nothing, and there is no meaning, there's no Jesus, there's no God, there's nothing.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's Douglas Adam.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: What Psalm 8 does is say, oh well, no, you don't be looking from it, you're not designed.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't even be going up there anyway.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you definitely shouldn't be trying to view reality from a disengaged floating perspective in the second heaven.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: You can't do it physically, so don't do and try and do it imaginatively.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's stupid of you.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: You have been designed to stand on earth and look up through the first heaven into the second heaven, and then have this sense of the third heaven.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: And when you do that in Psalm 8, what is the perspective of that person?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: They don't go, wow, when I look up in the heavens, I feel like a worthless nothing.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, you go, Wow, how important are we human beings that the one who made this loves us and cares for us so much?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the answer to that question in Sami is the son of man.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: The son of man has done this, he rules all this, he's designed all this, he loves us, given himself for us.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like now amazing! I I feel loved, I I feel like my life has got meaning, I want to serve him and love him, he's the center of reality.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: And two ways of looking at the stars.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: One makes you feel worthless.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: So if any if people are looking at the stars and feeling worthless, don't do it that way.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: Go back inside, don't look up anymore.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: Go back inside, read the Bible for a while, find out about Jesus, then go back outside and look at it as it was designed to be looked at.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, the theatre point is you could if you say, Oh, here's a theatre, I'm gonna wander around the theatre and look at it from across the street, and oh, it's an enormous building, and look at that, the structure of it, things like that.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, yeah, you're kind of observing truths about it, but that's not what the theatre's been designed, you know, or you look at it from a hill far away and you get binoculars and you look at the theatre.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: All of you can do all those things, but that is not what the theatre has been designed for.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's designed for you to go inside the theatre and and actually sit in a very narrow kind of defined space that's inside the theatre, and from that perspective, things will happen in your field of vision, and that will then tell you a story, and suddenly the whole building makes sense only though if you sit where you're supposed to sit.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's so so helpful to realise that we are part of not just a universe or a world of things that can be looked at in every any sort of direction, but we're part of a grand theatre of salvation, and that that is being kind of played out for us.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to kind of have a think about you mentioned the the curtain, and um when we get the picture of you know what is the the shape of of reality when Moses is shown that um and he's he makes the tabernacle and so he makes it according to the plan of what he's been shown, and then he's got the holy place and then the most holy place, and that after at a certain point so it's one room, isn't it?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then you add in this this thick curtain to separate the two.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things wrestling with different kinds of stories and mythologies, the the idea of a threshold or a barrier, and that's so much story and storytelling is about someone crossing through the threshold.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so g Joseph Campbell's famous hero's journey, you have to go into the unknown, you cross the known world into the unknown, and then you do whatever you do, and you get a boon, and then you go back across the threshold.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems to me that when we're thinking about the gospel story, because we haven't got this this this staging sort of m idea that there is a threshold that Christ crosses in the incarnation, you know, at the point of of of uh you know in being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and then he sort of recrosses it at the ascension, and that most Christian churches uh that I'm ever sort of part of, well, we all celebrate Christmas, we all celebrate Easter, but the Annunciation and the Ascension are completely ignored within within the narrative.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: But but on this thing of threshold, then when you're thinking about you know the cosmic civilization, where do those thresholds come in and and how should we sort of think about them?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's it's it's a good thing because that idea of like if if we take it seriously, the tabernacle instructions, and and I try to, it's that sense that initially this model of the heavens, this multimedia model of the heavens of the earth, if you if you notice the order in which the instructions are given, initially Moses is told to make three pieces of furniture, and of and that's worth a whole uh a conversation in itself about the Trinity and so on.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but then he's told to make a building and and he and just make the building and then sort of now make sure you've made that according to the instructions.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a time to meditate on the fact that it's a single building that is undivided, as you were saying, and then only in the next stage a curtain is put in.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that fundamental idea that when God designed it all, he designed it not to have the division, no division between not really, although even in the early creation, you can see that he's anticipating division because there's the land and the sea and the land and the sky and all light and darkness day and night.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: He's already establishing these boundaries because boundary is so important, and then of course there's an this big boundary is brought in that he didn't like design, which or he obviously knew it was gonna happen, but it wasn't really, it's not part of the decide is his great intention, is this curtain, and then what that means is our experience of reality is deeply uh limited, uh truncated, and we don't perceive lots of uh the cosmos.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: So uh in um uh Colossians, for example, you know, he Jesus, everything seen and unseen, powers, principalities, so on.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: Seen and unseen, this idea, and then in 2 Corinthians, Paul again talks about seen and unseen levels of reality.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's all of it has been made by Jesus, for Jesus, it holds together in him, he manages it all.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: But we need to take seriously that we are so used to, in a post-Enlightenment um regime, to say the only thing that's real is what is seen.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh my reason will operate only on what I can see, and and I don't believe that anything beyond what I can see is real or rational or needs to be taken seriously.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Even but the Bible has warned us no, no, don't do that, because there are vast aspects of reality that are not seen to you, and that's not a deficiency of reality, that's a deficiency in you, and that's but you're in a mess, you're in this little sealed off kind of fragmentary section at the moment, and you can't see everything that needs to be seen.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: But it's okay, Jesus has got it all, it's all good with him, and there are powers, kingdoms, principalities, all of that.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: But we're so used to in this post-Ent Enlightenment, particularly English-speaking world, kind of although European say, that sense of we've reduced the limits of our perceptions, is the limits of our of reality to us.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the Bible said, No, no, don't do that.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: There is a boundary, and you can't normally see beyond it, but don't it is there, and there are many different kinds of creatures, angels obviously people could cope with, but many others that you can't see, and and and it's because of this kind of sense in which a curtain has come down.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: So sometimes people know they'll say, Oh, a person can't understand the Bible because a veil is over their eyes.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: Paul talks about that as well.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it's like, no, you can't we can't see even reality the the the non-biblical book of the cosmos because there's also like a veil that's written in that you can't see beyond.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, that I is that the sort of thing you were.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it it does, because uh I suppose we've got this idea of a spatial uh distance or a spatial boundary and something that's gonna stop you going from one thing into the next.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then so much of our I think our most profound myths and stories that culturally we keep on telling are about someone who can cross over.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you've either got you know this giant chasm that you know can't be bridged by anybody, and and you know, like but who could possibly make it across there and and who can go on that journey?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then also people who are considered to be sort of guardians or port of of the of portals, you know.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's quite interesting.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: The oh what was his name, the actress actor's name is in the the early Thor films.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it is is it is it?
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: Idris Elba?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he's playing Heimdall, I think, is you know, and he's like, Oh, he's guarding the way back to Asgard.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so if anyone wants to come from Midgard, is that what they call Earth to Asgard, they've got to go through his portal and he you know, he's scarding the way, and you think, oh, that's a really interesting um idea, because you know, there is a cherubim with a flaming sword that guards the way back to the tree of life from when the Lord introduces this barrier between uh Eden and and the rest of the earth.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then what's really odd is how and this isn't just an MCU kind of complaint, but once they introduced they were like multiverse is gonna be everything.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So now kind of anyone who's got a kind of special watch or a little bit of a power can just move their wrist and make a portal from one world to another, and you're like, well, originally, even in in the establishment of a kind of Norse cosmology, yeah, it was a really big deal to pass bit from world to world and now so everyone's just doing it.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I couldn't agree with you more.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the notion of infinite universes, multiverse is the most intellectually rubbish idea that has possibly ever come.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's the only reason people think like that is because the model of the universe they have to handle this universe doesn't work.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: So they'll go, it doesn't work, but if we have infinite number of universes, it maybe works.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, oh shut up.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_02: Why not just say a leprechaun's done it or something?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Just come up.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I've I've touched on fake creatures there, but like, why not just come up with a completely silly fairy story?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because that at least will be more fun.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Infinite universes is means like I can't be bothered coming up with a genuinely good rational explanation.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm just gonna do Deus Ex Makina and go, well, you know, I'm just gonna, oh, there's infinite universes and it will be true in one of them.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, oh you lazy, lazy good for nothing.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_02: And as you say, it doesn't only ruin science and scientific explanation because it just is it's so rubbish in that, but it's rubbish for storytelling because you can just do a data sex beginning and you go, I'm just gonna go into a different parallel universe with that that works, or I'll be quite because like as you say, with with the Midgard, the Thor, the Norse stuff, the Bifrost, oh my goodness, like that's like this crazy thing, and we see the rainbow in the sky, and it's like part of reality in this sense that there's a there's a way, a bridge that reaches into the heavens, and it's immensely difficult to use it, and there's guardians on it, and that was a fantastic idea.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you'll know in the um what's it called, the Hellions Gospel.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you'll you know the Hellian Gospel were Jesus.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know that were it's the evangelistic tool used to win the sort of Germanic peoples, and it was a version of the gospels written culturally for them.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_02: And the my one of my favourite bits is in the resurrection, Jesus doesn't just like roll come out of the thing.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's like no, I mean we need something more dramatic than that, and something that'll explain like the rainbow bifrost thing.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: So in it, he like blasts the resurrection, it's so intense about boom, and then he the the the rock explodes, and so such is the intensity of the resurrection, which it creates the bifrost, and so like all the gem people could be like, oh, so that's the origin story of the bifrost, it's the resurrection of Jesus.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's the bridge, the bridge to life diagram we all really need, isn't it?
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just as much bigger.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's it, but you see, like that, like whether that is truly the origin story for the bifrost, I think Noah's art Noah might be like, hey, hang on, like, but nevertheless, there's a fundamental truth.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, the Germanic people's like, so the the the way to bridge from earth to the heavens is this resurrection, and you're like, Yes, yeah, now that's true.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's true, yeah.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: But I anyway, you're right, multiverse.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: But that's and so I was reading um started listening to the Andy Circus uh uh red Lord the Rings.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just the stuff that's in there, and they'll say, Oh, and then they walk for three hours, and you're like, What?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just stop someone walk for three hours.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like this is a completely you know overlooked part of the quest.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, why would someone walk for three hours?
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's no travel in you know, in these MCU things, it's like you get everywhere immediately, there's no sense of of a journey.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at least even the Barbie movie.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I don't know if you've seen the Barbie movie.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: But that does this whole thing about there's a threshold between Barbie land and the real world.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you even do have to go through a certain set of instructions one way and then backwards to get onto the Venice Beach boardwalk.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: Travel across land and sea and like genuinely break through from world to world rather than just going, oh, you just jump, you just rubbish as it and as you say, like in Middle-earth, um, there's um uh a whole series of books that were created so people could do role-playing games in Middle-earth, and it's compatible with fifth edition, of course, and Adventures in Middle Earth.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: And when I read these, it was amazing that one of the main things that you do is rules for journeying, and instead of just having battles and things, there was these enormous rules about you're having a journey, and are you discouraged by it, and or are your spirits lifted?
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: And like most of the playtime is going on journeys because that's what the books are like.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: The books are about that, so that's what the gameplay is, and that sense that you're journeying from one place to another, and it's complex to do it, and then to go into Moria, and you'll go you'll and all the all that goes on in passing from one into the next, and the dangers, the hazards, and it's not to be done lightly.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: You do not just go into Mordor and all that sort of thing, yeah.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about it with the with the wood between the worlds in The Magician's Nephew.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Lewis even has to set up there a kind of you know uh it's almost like an airport terminal, you know.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to kind of come to this one place where you can go from different pools and and enter into the different worlds of Charn or back into Narnia or or back into to London or whatever it is.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: But but at least it's a really cleanly arranged piece of world building.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's one of the things I've found so helpful in your uh cosmic civilization uh podcast, is that when when people really want to get into mythology and and storytelling and fantasy and science fiction, so much of it is about the world building.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, used you know, Tolkien never used that sort of language.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: He was always mythopoea because it's you know it's the the making of the story.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: But whenever we're trying to kind of establish these the law or the the world building of these different fantasy worlds in which people love to live, it really matters that you have these kind of fairly fixed principles because without them you just end up with this, you know, desperately kind of naked capitalist, you know, we're just trying to make more money out of everything.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um it just goes terrible.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: I get that, and it's i i I'll share this with you that i i and uh I I do it cautiously because it could be misunderstood, but it when I was growing up, I thought that reading I wanted to have a much bigger vision of God.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that so I I obtained books that were like doctrine of God or sections of books that were doctrine of God.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought this was gonna be brilliant.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was gonna really enrich me and give open my mind and my heart and reality was gonna be improved by this and all that.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: But nearly entirely I had the opposite experience because what the doctrine of God, I'll put that in vertical comments, was in most of the books, was something so abstract, it was more like the hitchhikers thing, it was something utterly disengaged.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_02: No story, no personality, no events.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like in the Bible, getting to know God and the persons of the Trinity, you know, God most high, the angel of the Lord, the Spirit who blows, and all this and things, it's so uh engaged in events and Satan speech and encounter and you know um the the world and and and stars and angels and historic events and battles and sea crossing a sea and all these sorts of things.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: But when I so I I'm reading that all the time and going, God, this God's amazing and so powerful, and why is it then I turned to Dutching a god books, by and large, they were supposed to make me like wow.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_02: But nearly invariably, as a young person, I was like, oh, um that's strangely sterile and really not, and I didn't, I came away feeling the god of that book is not that amazing.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the god who say takes them through the Red Sea, now you might say that doesn't necessarily seem to take as much power as the god you described in the in this abstract book, but it was a more amazing god that takes them through this Red Sea with the with the walls of water on either side and then crashes it down on the Egyptians.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_02: That god's like, wow, that's amazing, and we've blocked we've gone from a land of slavery, now we're into this wilderness but of freedom, but now we're traveling with him, and he's providing food every day and all that.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now that is a god that makes wins my heart and makes me cry and worship and everything.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: Was the god of the abstract the sort of disengage just leaves me cold?
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, and and a yeah, great proof that we as it Lewis says, if if God is mythopoaiic, should we not be mythopathic?
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: So should we not be those who who do respond to to to the story, being created to respond, to be in per in relationship, and to be swept up into it, and and that that's what brings about great songs, great anthems, and and great worship is being caught up within that that story, which God is using the in every single tool at his disposal within you know his creation to tell us.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it's within his creation, he's like the way he tells the stories and does it all is all you is is not like asking us to close our eyes and do like a platonic realm of forms.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: Always the engagement is is is kind of rooting us in this world and history and things, and that is what actually wins our hearts and minds.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_02: And and actually, I think that's that's how God He intends to live this sort of life and reality with us forever and ever, you know.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, yeah.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm rambling a bit.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's all it's all glorious.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh this is great.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hopefully it's raising an amen and a hearty hallelujah from uh the people who are watching.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Paul, thank you so much for um for joining me.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um where might people find you?
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how might they get hold of the uh Christ-centered cosmic civilization podcast?
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um there I I I think I shared a link with you that maybe could be shared, but um, there's also you can just search for that.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's on uh Spotify and Google Podcasts and things like that.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that should be obtainable.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_02: We also have run a thing called the Bible School Show, and we do that uh that goes out every Sunday, and I do that with PJ and my other son Jonathan, and that's just some lectures going through all sorts of subjects on Bible, church history, theology, things like that.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, we do the book by book stuff.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you go can go to biblicalframeworks.com and look at we've tackled all these books of the Bible, about 35 books of the Bible for the past sort of 25 years.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I think that's probably and then there's the St.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Crispins in in Highbury.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to pop in and see us there, that'd be lovely.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean that there we have it, the number of different ways that you are a fountain of this Christ-centered theology, and uh and just using um lots of different ways to make sure that people can can just meet him and and discover uh the glory of his of his kingdom.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Paul, thank you very, very much for joining me.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you were here.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, thank you so much.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's been lovely.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great, thank you so much for listening.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for more on this area and storytelling, we have plenty where that came from, so you could check out episode 421 of the Speak Life Podcast, Reality and Other Stories.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was an interview that Nate did with Matt Lilly Crapp and Peter Dre about their book Reality and Other Stories.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that was exploring the life we long for through the tales we tell.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Nate has an extensive back catalogue looking at stories through the lens of Jesus, like what you've heard today.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go to the Reformed Mythologist YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash at Reformed Mythologist, you'll notice that we've done a series on franchise storytelling.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we looked at the big franchises: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Toy Story, and Batman, Narnia as well, and looking at the theology of those.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: We also did a series called Popcorn Parenting.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a podcast that Nate did with James Carey.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think they started it during lockdown, and we've now made those into videos, added some visuals to them, and they live on the Reform Mythologist YouTube channel as well.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And most recently we've started a series on that channel called Five Minute Myths.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So Nate does a bit of a whistle stop tour of a myth and how it relates to Jesus.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one we did was about harvest and demeter, and so that's getting into things like pomegranate seeds, which uh Nate and Paul Blackham touched on in this episode.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're intrigued by that, do check out the Reform Mythologist YouTube channel.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, please do continue to check out the 321 course that we at Speak Life have launched, uh, the brand new version, 321Course.com.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a course that introduces you to Jesus and his vision for God, the world, and you.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're really encouraged by how people have been using the course so far and sharing it, and uh we pray that by God's grace that will be able to continue.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you everyone and thank you for listening to this podcast episode.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do subscribe to the Speak Life Podcast if you haven't done so already.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Leaving a rating and review, especially on Apple Podcasts, can help us get seen and heard by more people.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're all about shareable faith that you can send round to your friends and family.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for listening, and we will be back next week.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: God bless.