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How We Lost the Word · The Rhett Palmer Show

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hey, folks.
0:01
SPEAKER_02: Hey, the joy of the Lord shall be your strength, and we have a lot of joy.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: Wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, there's joy and happiness.
0:08
SPEAKER_02: If you haven't experienced that, I recommend you do.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: And this fellow sitting across from me always has the joy of the Lord.
0:13
SPEAKER_02: He's married, has four children.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: Right?
0:16
SPEAKER_02: That I know of.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, just four.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Just four.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Just four.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: He's a professional pilot.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: He was a actually a fighter pilot.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: And uh came contrary to the uh the rules of engagement with this world in sin, uh, he came to know the Lord Jesus.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: And it says not many noble or intellect come to know the Lord because the Bible does say the mind of man is enmity with the Spirit of God.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: I'm Brett Palmer.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: I've been a radio host for thirty-two years, and my friend has been traveling the world as a missionary for what, forty-something years with his wife and children.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: And they have a missionary coffee shop down in the uh Utilla, Bay Islands, Honduras.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: And the name of it is?
0:55
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Rio Coco Cafe.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Of which there are two of them in the United States that goes here to support here in Vero Beach, and all of that we started because of our school project, which we ran for 37 years out on the Rio Coco, which is the border between Honduras and Nicaragua.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: I went there in 1984 to work with refugees from the war in Nicaragua, a group of indigenous people called the Miskitos.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: And one thing led to another, we ended up starting uh schools, primary schools.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: And uh when the war ended in 1990, then uh we moved to the Nicaraguan side of the river, and a few years later I met some coffee farmers that were uh running a uh camp called Young Life, and they were using uh their coffee to fund bringing kids to the camp, and that gave us the idea to start selling Nicaraguan coffee and making some money to pay for our teachers.
1:48
SPEAKER_02: Isn't it amazing coffee?
1:49
SPEAKER_02: You know, like Jerry Seinfeld has that successful show, Comedians in Cars Having Coffee, and it's it's a convivial food, a social food.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Um I never I pardon me?
1:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a friendship drink.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: There's a great what a great thing.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: It is the friendship drink, and I'll tell you how I learned this, Rhett.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Um we do study tours, uh, take our friends to Israel, to Greece and Turkey, to Italy to study biblical sites, and we uh 2006 we uh had an Arab bus driver named Mohammed, really nice guy.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh always had a picture of his wife and his kids, uh, read his Quran when we were stopping.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: I met Mohammed's cousin uh outside the hotel one day, and he was telling me about it.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Arab bus drivers uh enjoy taking the tourist out for a good time.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: And he was telling me that his his cousin, Mohammed, doesn't really go because he loves his wife and loves his family, and I thought, yeah, what a nice guy.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, we had Mohammed again in our study tour for 2007, and on that trip I noticed whenever we were out at a site, he would pull out his little gas stove and he would heat water and make coffee.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: So that's how sacred it is to him.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was uh something that while we're on the side, he's drinking coffee.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I had my press with me and my grinder and some uh coffee, and I was making coffee in the hotel, and I started uh making a cup, and I'd step on the bus and I handed him a cup of coffee, and he'd smile, and uh so that was became my daily ritual.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: And one day we were down by Lakish at this site, and this is of course the site where Sennacherib came up and took the city of Lakeish, and the next city was going to be Jerusalem, but he never made it there because of a rebellion back in Nineveh, and he had to go back, and his sons end up killing him.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Lakish is a really nice spot out in the country.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: There's big trees in the parking lot, and I've been on the site a few times, so this group went up.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I said to Mohammed, hey, pull out your stove and uh let's have coffee.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, cool.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And so we made coffee and we sat there under the trees, and he and I started chatting, and we were talking about our families and life in Jerusalem and our life in Hawaii and Central America.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: And a couple days later, we were in the parking lot of the church of Ingali Kantu, which is that uh church that's built over Caiaphas's house in Jerusalem.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: It's uh got a roast rooster on the door of the church.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: This is where the rooster crowed after uh Peter denied uh knowing Jesus three times.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: It's it's quite a nice spot.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So um the group went into the church.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: I said, Mohammed, let's make some coffee.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: So we sat under a tree and we pulled out a stove and we made coffee.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: And he looked at me and he he held up his cup and he said, He said, Mike, you know, this is the friendship drink.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: And I said, What do you mean?
4:46
SPEAKER_00: He said, We've become friends drinking coffee together.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And it was really true because that day he told me how it was as a uh an uh a Muslim Arab living in East uh Jerusalem.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh we talked about what he believed as a Muslim.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: He asked me what I believed as a Christian.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: We became friends.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: It's the friendship drink.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: It really is.
5:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, did you there was a guy that came to town, he had a New York Times bestselling book a few years ago, and it was called Three Cups of Tea.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: I guess in some Muslim countries they say you don't become friends until you've been over for three cups.
5:19
SPEAKER_02: On the third cup of tea, then you begin to become friends.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Did you ever hear that?
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've seen the book, and uh it's in Bedouin culture it's cups of coffee that are given.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh as uh if you you know as a sign of friendship and hospitality.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it is definitely uh something happens.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: We ended up uh uh uh buying a coffee roaster and roasting our coffee and here in Vero Beach.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And then in 2011 we opened a cafe on the island of Utilla because we wanted to really reach out to the travelers.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: People come to this island for scuba diving, for free diving, literally from every country in Europe, uh Australians, Argentinians, a lot of Israelis, uh uh even now uh Japanese and Chinese are coming to the island.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: And you wanted to be a witness for the Lord.
6:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh these people were like me.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I was a, as you said, I was a pilot in the Navy for seven years, and uh then I was a ski bum in Colorado, and then I went to Hawaii to help uh my uh one of my friends open uh an ice cream business, and there my cousins who had lived on the island for many years pulled me into their church and I had an experience with God and uh my life took a turn.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: Pretty unusual for an intellectual guy.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: You have to be pretty dang smart to be a pilot, particularly a fighter pilot.
6:40
SPEAKER_02: I never met a dumb fighter pilot.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: And so usually well, the Bible says the mind of man is enmity with the Spirit of Christ, so how was it that you overcame that that that block or whatever you were?
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, you see, I was always searching for something significant in my life to do.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to just waste my time doing things that had no meaning.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And so uh flying uh fast airplanes, I flew the A6 Intruder, and it was a great airplane to fly, great mission.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't really want to stay in the Navy.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: My friend Joe Tanner, uh uh who was uh my roommate and uh and we were dear friends through flight school, coerced me to become go skiing with him uh in the winter.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh one season wasn't enough, so we kept uh living in Colorado, but uh skiing had its end for me when I became a follower of Jesus because I realized God uh has a specific purpose for my life.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: And so when we started uh going to the island of Utilla, which was a short flight in our airplane from where we lived in La Saba, which is that city on the north coast of Honduras, we noticed all of these travelers coming from all parts, and many of them were professionals that had been working in their jobs for five, ten, fifteen years, and they realized that that just wasn't doing it for them.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: So they decided to go traveling, and one of the islet places, if you're a traveler in Central or South America, you're gonna come to Utilla for sk skin diving or s uh scuba diving or free diving.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Sounds like a beautiful location.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: It is.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: What color is the water?
8:17
SPEAKER_00: It's deep blue water.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's on the second largest barrier reef in the world.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: So we started meeting these people and realizing all the world is coming to Utilla, and that's why in 2011 we opened a cafe there just to reach out to these travelers.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: You could have opened a church, but most people aren't going to grace the steps of a church.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: It's a great way to create friendships.
8:41
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus never jumped on anybody, did he?
8:44
SPEAKER_02: He had what did you say, equity?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Um Well, Jesus, it's if you if you read the gospels, it seems he notices people.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: Then he engages them and starts having conversations, starts having meals with them.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in biblical culture, you only eat with your friends.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: So having meals with prostitutes and tax collectors.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's a sign of friendship.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: Like Zacchaeus, the tax collector.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, I'm coming to your house today for a meal, and all the people in Jericho are going, What?
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's the most notorious sinner in our city.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Why did you pick him and not me?
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus knew what was going on in Zacchaeus, and that's why he came.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: And uh, as he as we sang in Sunday school, he climbed up in that tree.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: He was curious.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: Now, Jesus is walking into town.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: By now, he's healed some people, so there's throngs of people following him.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: He comes in town, and what's really cool is Zacchaeus now knows by now he's not a good guy.
9:58
SPEAKER_02: He's charging people a lot of money as a tax collector.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: But then what does Jesus give him?
10:03
SPEAKER_02: This is the secret.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: He gives him dignity out of the whole crowd.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: Hey, you up there, Zacchaeus, the one that people don't like.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Well, I like you.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm coming to your home for dinner tonight.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: And Zacchaeus, because of the love, it's your kindness that leads us to repentance, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_02: He goes, I and what does he say?
10:23
SPEAKER_02: He says, I will give half of whatever you've stolen back.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Jesus spends some time with him.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And see, this is a great example of there's always a process going on in people around us.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Because the whole gospel is God is reaching out to mankind.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: It's not anything that we're doing to work our way to God.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: It's God working towards us.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's God is pursuing us.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: He's tapping us on the shoulder.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: He's He's setting up encounters with His children that would uh serve us and care for us and be friendly to us and causing us to think about things.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: He shows us sunrises and sunsets.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: He shows us flowers, that he makes birds.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all sorts of creation does it.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: All creation says, I love you.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Right.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Um And so with Zicaeus, there was a process going on, and Jesus recognized that this was the time for the harvest.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And so he spends time with Zicaus.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: And what does Zacchaeus say then?
11:18
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, if I've uh uh taken money uh unjustly from people, I'll give them back four times and uh Jesus didn't ask him to do this, he just blurted this out with great enthusiasm.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh as James says, if you have faith, you're gonna uh it's gonna be shown in your behavior and your decisions and things you're gonna do.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: So uh this is the process.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh everyone is uh on a spiritual line of I see it from minus seven to plus seven, and minus seven is a Satan worshipper, plus seven is Mother Teresa or my wife Laura Uetta.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh my assignment is to nudge them one notch closer to the Lord.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain point where they're going to receive the Lord, and that's why Jesus says, uh you think uh the fields are I think the harvest is later?
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Look at the fields are white now, and those who uh uh sow and those who reap are gonna rejoice together.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: And you're listening to unlocking the biblical truths.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm Red Palmer, and I'm with my friend Michael Bagby.
12:21
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm not so sure I want to do that because it kind of interrupts, it's interrupted, but we'll think about it, you know?
12:27
SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna do it?
12:28
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
12:28
SPEAKER_02: It's a thought.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh hey, how are you doing?
12:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh biblical truths revealed right here, unlocking the Bible, uh, with biblical scholar um Um Michael Bagby.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Michael Bagby.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: Yes, here.
12:44
SPEAKER_02: A little bit more coffee, Red, just so by the way, he went to Miami University and he studied at Luxembourg uh European history.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: He also went to the Jerusalem Institute and studied under Randall Smith.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: How many times do you think you've been to the uh Holy Land?
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Um I I don't know.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Let's see, seven, eight, nine times?
13:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh we lived there in the summer of 99.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: We lived there in 2000.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: You're a pretty bright guy, so I can understand why you remember a lot of things.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: Of course, you astound me with the way you can say the biblical names, the sites, the history.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, it is, it's pretty crazy.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's uh Rhett, just you need to get out a little bit more, okay?
13:25
SPEAKER_02: Well, well, the thing no like I have this uncanny ability for some reason we don't know where it came from, because I was a high school dropout, and that is that the word of God is nigh into my lips.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: It's it's a gift of God.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: Um you know, it's it's well, of course, it's the only truth I've ever known, so I just I love the word of God, and uh I don't mean to proselytize.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: It's just the only place I mean you know, I had my secular radio show for for uh uh twenty-six years, now on the 32 years total, and and people will get irritated.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: I get letters and cards and say, hey, stop all this talk about I'm sorry, but that's the only place I found truth.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't mean to proselytize.
13:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's just my place to go for truth.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, and this is of course the question Pilate asked Jesus what is truth?
14:04
SPEAKER_00: What is truth?
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus said, Everyone who hears my voice, hears the truth.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: I am the way, the truth, and the life.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this generation is looking for now.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're in a situation, uh, especially after these years of a worldwide pandemic and uh just the policies of uh different governments.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh we see uh European culture turning in uh its back on its Christian heritage and making uh decisions that would shock.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean uh just uh a few days ago, a uh Finnish uh former member of the Finnish Parliament and former Minister of the Interior, this lady, uh, published a book twenty years ago where she just recited the biblical view on marriage and she published it, and she was uh charged with hate speech and convicted of hate speech and fined thousands of euros because she published a book twenty years ago that uh explained the biblical uh truth regarding marriage between a man and a woman in a committed relationship.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And it did not include a man and a man or a woman and a woman, and so the Finnish court uh convicted her of hate speech and find her.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: Do you think she's gonna be able to contest this?
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, this was I think the Supreme Court.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: This was the final it's but it's it just it's a sign that uh European culture, which was based on a biblical worldview, and which is the reason why European culture basically and Western culture took over the world as far as science, medicine, education, business, government, all the critical areas of human interaction, the those with a biblical worldview excelled because guess what?
16:00
SPEAKER_00: God created this world in a fabric of logic and things that work according to his design.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And when you align yourself with that design, amazing things happen.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the reformers of the 16 and uh hundreds discovered that reading the Bible and applying biblical truth to your life actually causes good things to happen.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think uh the Bible now is becoming uh more and more relevant because we're coming through a time where it was completely irrelevant.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: I don't like people yelling at me.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: I was somewhere last night where there was a guy asking for money for a nonprofit that has to do with alcohol people who are addicted to alcohol.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: And they brought in this guy who everybody else has been through the the the alcoholism.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: This guy you could tell right away, he he he works for a Christian radio station or with him, and he was yelling at the people about, you know, and and I understand, you know, but it just came off as a pretense because he's he's not broken.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: What I think is great about what we're doing here is that we're not we're neither one of us are we're not preaching.
17:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, one thing that Billy that uh Bill Clinton said, he said, well, when he was having that problem with Monica Lewinsky.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Now I remember I remember praying for Bill Clinton.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm not a Democrat, but I remember saying he's got to be considering suicide.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: The whole world was on his case, right?
17:21
SPEAKER_02: Now I don't know if he did or not, but anyway, he said Billy Graham flew in to see him.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: I'd say probably that happened.
17:29
SPEAKER_02: And he said, You did he did not speak at me, he spoke with me.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: We're not on here proselytizing.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: We're we're we're going over historical truth, we're going over the Bible, telling the truth, and letting people they can take it or leave it.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: And I think it'll be appealing uh with the with our broadcasts that they can refer to this and know somebody's not coming at them, you know.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, the reality is uh you and I are at a phase of life where we've had uh many life experiences.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: We have both tried, I think, doing things our way.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: Um you uh being the radio personality that I met uh what, 20, 30?
18:08
SPEAKER_02: No, 32 years ago.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh I met you 32 years ago when I published uh that book, uh Just Another Lump of Clay.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: And you and I shared uh one uh characteristic.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: We thought a lot about ourselves.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: As a pilot in the in the United States Navy, I was trained to think a lot about my own skills and abilities.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't want an unconfident uh because when they uh send you in on that mission, they want you to have assurance that you can accomplish the mission and then come back and land on the boat at night uh in bad weather.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus And you did that.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: That's just amazing.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh as a single man, I when I would tell people that I was a Navy pilot, well, when I would tell a lady that I was a Navy pilot, they would go, Oh, really?
18:58
SPEAKER_00: But when I met my wife, Laura Uetta, who grew up in Honolulu, and I'm sure she saw a lot of Navy guys around town, when I told her that I was a Navy pilot, she looked at me with a little bit of disdain and she said, You were one of those?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Why did she do that?
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, uh Well they probably found them to be very uh Well, arrogant and uh very highly opinionated.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: Well you had that working against you, because I remember you.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: You're a really good-looking young guy.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: You're obviously an intellectual, you went to luxury.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, well, that was later on, but I mean you became a pilot for the Navy.
19:36
SPEAKER_02: Only brilliant guys become fighter pilots.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: I've lived long enough to know that.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: And so you had your intellect working against you to accept the the because you know the Bible says not many royal, not many noble come to know Jesus because he's chosen the poor of this world to be to to you know uh and the foolishness of preaching, you know, and and so uh here you got that working against you.
19:55
SPEAKER_02: Then uh, you know, uh it's c so were you married before you got born again, or did you become a born-again Christian and then you found it?
20:01
SPEAKER_00: I was single at the time, and then uh that was in uh eighty one, and I married Laura in eighty-eight, so seven years later I married Laura.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Um but um Yeah, Rhett, here's the thing.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: All of us that God has given certain talents to, yeah.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: We pursue life and think that we're going to find peace and joy and satisfaction in accomplishments.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Um I thought flying fast airplanes, well, that was an accomplishment, and that was very satisfying, and I was so fortunate to be able to do that.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: I lived in Vale, Colorado for three years.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: That was the finest mountain in the world.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: Probably wine, women, and song, right?
20:45
SPEAKER_00: And I thought living that life, what could be better?
20:49
SPEAKER_00: But I started to realize there was limitations to that lifestyle, and that there was a high that uh was above me that I just wasn't quite reaching.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Of all the highs I was experiencing, and I was uh a wine steward at a very fine hotel in Wales.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: And um I uh yeah, there was all the pleasures of life were available, but there was a certain point where I realized I was missing out on something.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think it was probably hiking around the Colorado Mountains in the summertime, I started noticing the alpine flora, just the magnificence of God's creation, and I realized I need to meet this guy.
21:31
SPEAKER_02: Which guy?
21:32
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the guy who created everything.
21:39
SPEAKER_03: The one we're talking about, okay.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And then when I um uh my friend that I was working with in the hotel uh moved to Lahaina in uh the summer of uh 1981 and opened an ice cream business called What's the Scoop?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And in September, that's great, man, he uh coerced me to come and Help him because he said I got a line out the door.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: At the time, my uh cousins had lived on the island Keenan Shelley Salzer for 12 years.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: They'd lived in Hanna, and they uh my cousin grew marijuana and he made his living on that, and he grew really fine, tasty buds.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And so, oh, okay, I'll go see my cousins.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: And at the time I had a girlfriend uh that I was uh with in Vale that was part of our ski team, and she had she was from Honolulu.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: She had moved back to uh Honolulu that summer to finish her last year at the university.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: So I had three good reasons to go to Lahaina in the fall of 1981.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I had ice cream, my cousins and their marijuana farm, and my girlfriend.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh my girlfriend was uh a kind of a strange girl.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: She chanted a lot, she could read your palm, and she was a little bit weird.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: But she was a beautiful girl and she could ski the bumps like nobody else.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And uh so I was very shallow at the time in my criteria for uh companionship.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh but my when I moved to Maui in that uh uh September, I called my cousins up and they weren't living out in Hana, which is the uh jungle east side of Maui.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: They had moved to Kihay, which is on the South Shore.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: And when I asked them, uh, so when uh what's happened?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Why are you living in Kihei?
23:28
SPEAKER_00: They said, Well, we've had some changes in our life, and they've been good changes.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, when are we gonna go to the plantation?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And my cousin laughed.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, we're Christians now.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Christians?
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Does that mean we're not gonna be smoking anymore?
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And she laughed and uh she said, Well, why don't you come and have dinner with us uh on Saturday?
23:47
SPEAKER_00: So I came down Saturday.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Um the football game was on, my cousin's next door neighbor came over, a guy named Craig.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: We were sitting there drinking a few beers, watching the game.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: We had dinner.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh they said, Why don't you come to church with us tomorrow?
24:02
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I don't really go to church.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh they said, Well, come back uh on next Saturday and have dinner with us again.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: So I came back next Saturday and uh had dinner.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: They said, Come to church with us.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, I'm gonna have to go one time just to be polite.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: So the next morning I drove from Lahaina back down to Keyhead, and they were not meeting in a church, it was actually a high school cafeteria or it was an old school cafeteria, which I thought was unusual.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: And I walked in and people were very casually dressed, and a couple people had uh uh were playing guitar, and people seemed to enjoy being there, which was your perfunctor religious uh No, not at all.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: And then to my surprise, Rhett, my cousin's next door neighbor, who I had spent time with the week before, got up and gave the message.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And my thought was, he seemed like such a normal guy.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: He's the pastor of the church.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: How can this be?
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, that day he said something that I'd never heard.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: He said, having a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important thing you can have in this life.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: And I had never considered that because for me, uh uh Christianity was all about the rules and all about being good.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: And I decided in my high school days I really wanted to have fun.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: So I was pondering that.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh a week later, Bonnie, my girlfriend, came over from Honolulu, and I've been thinking about this.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: And of course, I've been set up by my summer before uh hiking around the mountains of Colorado, wanting to meet the creator of the of these flowers and the sunrise and the sunset.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm I'm being set up for a moment here.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: And so we worked all day at the uh what's the scoop.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: We came back to my apartment, and I said, Bonnie, I really got to ask you a question.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Uh, where does your spiritual power come from?
26:02
SPEAKER_00: She said, What do I mean?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
26:04
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, you can read people's palms.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: You can really make a lot of things happen in a very unusual way.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh something's going on with your chanting the you know, well, she had told me that she was a warlock, which uh when I asked her, Well, what's a warlock?
26:19
SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, it's like a good witch.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: So Bonnie was definitely into sorcery.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: And so I said, Well, is this spirit a good spirit or a bad spirit that's inside you?
26:30
SPEAKER_00: She said, Well, I don't know, but he gives me power.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well I don't know, but he gives me power.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: I said, if it's an evil spirit, Bonnie, you should let it go.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And she said, No.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: No.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And I said, and I'm now I'm sleeping with this girl, okay?
26:46
SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking, okay, I need to be careful.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: I said, Bonnie, the third time, you need to let it go.
26:52
SPEAKER_02: Now, we had worked on you know nothing about spirituality at this point.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I had been to church as a kid, but this was this was uh something new.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: So you naturally shied away from the darkness.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually I participated in the darkness.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: You did?
27:08
SPEAKER_02: By what?
27:08
SPEAKER_02: By sleeping with the bigger.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, just I mean, I was uh I was doing uh smoking weed, I was doing whatever came along.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: I had no uh Go boundaries.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: My morals were let's very loose at this point in my life, okay?
27:22
SPEAKER_00: But when I said to her uh the third time, you need to let it go, we were sitting on my bed, and we uh we just got back from the uh ice cream store, and she sat up and she kind of gazed over my head, and without moving her lips or without moving her jaw, a voice came out of her in a very gravelly tone that said, I will never leave this body.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And I was totally straight.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't smoked anything.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: I said, and I said, What?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And she's gazing over my head, and she's in a very catatonic state, and this voice came out of her again that said, I've become very accustomed to this body.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: She's not moving her lips or her jaw.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Her face is like a statue.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen anything like this before, except in a movie that I had seen a few years earlier called The Exorcist.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And my mind raced, the priest, the priest, the priest, what did he do?
28:17
SPEAKER_00: He used the name of Jesus.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So I said, You spirit in the name of Jesus, leave her.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And she jumped.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And I pointed at her again, and I said, You spirit in the name of Jesus, uh, get out.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And this voice came out of her, and she's still sitting like a statue.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: No! I said it a third time, in the name of Jesus, spirit be gone.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly she looked at me with consciousness, because she was just kind of staring off in the distance.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: And at first I thought she was just fooling around with me, and I said, Bonnie, why did you say those things?
28:55
SPEAKER_00: She said, What did I say?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, you said this, and then you said this, and then you yelled at me.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: She said, I don't remember saying that.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I said, Has this ever happened to you before?
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I think so.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't bother you, Bonnie?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: No.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: But I'll tell you what, Red, it bothered me.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: So that night I'm kind of laying in bed and I'm kind of scooted over on the side.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: But I realized I had seen into the spiritual world and I saw there was good and there was evil, and I saw myself sort of straddling the fence.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: But I knew where I belonged was on the good side.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: But the other thing that I realized was there was something powerful about the name of Jesus because when I used that name, that spirit, that spirit jumped.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Now, you asked me what was the defining moment of my life or the uh the thing that turned me and the direction of God.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: It was this moment right here.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: That scared you.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, it didn't scare me.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: It just caused me to realize I need to figure out who this guy Jesus is.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: So I uh worked at the Pioneer Inn, which in Lahaina is one of the old historical buildings, and right next door is the Lahaina Library.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: So I went over to the library and I started doing my research.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: And the first question that I had is can I trust the Bible?
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Because at university I was told the Bible is just mythology, it's just oral traditions, it's it's men's opinions, it's a book of philosophy.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: And uh as a as a history major, uh I was trained in analyzing ancient works of literature as to their veracity, and I thought, okay, I gotta apply these tests to the Bible to see if I can really trust it.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: So I started doing my research and read what I found is many of the historians that I read uh at university basically said that the Bible was a good source of history based on manuscript evidence, internal evidence, uh archaeological uh evidence.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean this appealed to your intellect, of course.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, it just gave let me know that I could trust the Bible.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, the next thing is I started reading about what did Jesus say about himself.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Because this was really the crux of the issue.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Um Jesus says in no uncertain terms, I am Yahweh in the flesh.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: He says it uh uh a couple of times in ways that his audience, the religious Jews, picked up stones to stone him.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And John records Jesus saying, Why are you uh going to kill me?
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Because of my good works?
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And the response is no, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Now imagine when we met a few years ago, Rhett, and I introduced myself to you, and I said, Rhett, my name is Michael Bagby, I am God.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: What would you do?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: See you later, alligator.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: What's that dude been smoking?
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so your first conclusion.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Your first conclusion is I did one hit too many, and I'm a lunatic, right?
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's one one option when you consider the claims of Jesus.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: He's a crazy man.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: The other uh possibility is uh he might be just lying to me and trying to deceive me.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but all of a sudden, if you're touching people and they're being healed, I've got to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on there?
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and then the there's a third possibility, Rhett, that he actually is who he says he is.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: So for me, this was my dilemma.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Is he a liar?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Is he a lunatic, or is he really Lord?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And so this was what I was pondering, and that's when I began talking to the ceiling.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you're up there, I really want to know.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: And of course I went back to Keyhead, I had some conversations with my cousin Keene, I had some conversations with uh Craig.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: And over the next, it took about seven, eight, nine weeks, I was pondering this and I was talking to God.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And he started giving me answers.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: You will find me if you seek me, when you seek me with all your heart, honestly.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And one day I was sitting uh at the beach at Waikouli uh State Park, which is just north of Lahaina.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: It's where I used to go after work and jump in the water.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And I was sitting there and suddenly it all became clear.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And so I just said, Okay, Jesus, I believe you are who you say you are.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: So now I'm gonna follow you.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Now I did not hear the hallelujah chorus.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: The clouds did not part and sun hit me, but I knew something had changed in me just by the fact that I had made that declaration.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And it was a short while later I went back to my apartment because I was gonna meet my friends for sunset.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: I pulled out the bong and I did a few bongs, but guess what?
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I didn't get high.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: I thought this weed was good yesterday.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Something had changed in me.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And uh that began my journey.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: Now uh I stayed on Maui.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh you didn't see that girl anymore, of course.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I uh actually um our relationship uh ended a few months later because I was processing all that.
34:21
SPEAKER_02: You gotta keep one eye open when you're sleeping.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh and then I went back to uh uh Vale uh because I could not imagine not uh skiing that season, but I got my ski pass back, got my job back at the hotel, but the mountain didn't own me anymore.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: And uh after the season ends, I was living with uh Joe Tanner, my friend, and his wife Martha, and uh we were talking, and I wanted to go back and visit my cousins, and uh so uh I went to Maui, uh, got a job, ended up getting a job at the at a hotel, uh managing a restaurant.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: Joe kept my Bose speakers, my wine collection, my dog, and my van.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh I stayed on Maui.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And eventually Joe got a job with NASA, moved uh to Houston, and uh and I stayed on Maui for three years until I went to uh Honduras for a two-week trip to work with the refugees.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: But you see, God was pursuing me, and I think he's pursuing all of us.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think there there's a great interest now in discovering the truth, because that's really what we need.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: We need to understand how we are designed to live in this world.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible tells us that.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: And God is very clear that He has a way for us that we will things should go well for us.
35:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, Jesus said, make sure you're born above, from above.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: He said, You're born once to your mother of the water, but you must be born of the spirit.
35:55
SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, uh because uh I remember a friend of mine told me he became a Christian, and uh I I didn't believe in Jesus.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: I was into Eastern religions from the time I was fourteen, read an autobiography of yogi, went to Boston to get inducted into a meditation group, transcendental meditation, just all that stuff.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: But none of it rang true.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: You know, and so uh this friend, uh a young bass player, I was almost signed to Columbia Records back then, and we went down to New York City, but that all fell apart.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: But he later on said, Uh, I become a Christian, I'm witnessing.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: I said, Whoa, okay, so uh he said, I'm a witness.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: I said, What's a witness?
36:29
SPEAKER_02: He said, Well, I'm witnessing to you of my conversion to Jesus Christ.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: And uh he said one scripture he said, Jesus said, I wish above all things that thou were either hot or cold, because if you are lukewarm, I shall spew thee out of my mouth.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: And for some reason that just rolled around in my head.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: If you I wish above all things you're either hot or cold, because if you're lukewarm, I'll spew out of my mouth.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: So I started to think a lot about it, and uh it took a number of years, and then just got up one day and I was in my living room like you yelling at the ceiling here and saying, Okay, if if you're real, I guess I'm a fool.
37:00
SPEAKER_02: All these people are telling me about Jesus.
37:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe I need to take a chance on this, you know.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: And uh I said, Well, I believe you died and rose from the dead, and nothing happened.
37:09
SPEAKER_02: And then it was like this violence, okay.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean I I don't know what was going on, but I was saying, All right, okay, so uh yeah, I'm a fool to live without you.
37:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you you gave me breath and life.
37:19
SPEAKER_02: Well why would I want to go through life without you?
37:21
SPEAKER_02: So I said, I believe you died on the cross for my sins, rose from the dead, and this was the key.
37:25
SPEAKER_02: I said, I now surrender the rest of my life to you.
37:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't know why I said it, and the heavens did open for me, and a peace that passes understanding.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: My immediate thought was, and I used to apologize to God because I didn't want to offend him, but I said, the first thing I thought was, oh, this is why people do drugs.
37:42
SPEAKER_02: Drugs are the counterfeit, this is the real thing.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: It was a supernatural peace.
37:46
SPEAKER_02: I sat down in my rocking chair and I was rocking, feeling this peace, and I said, This is what the black folks are talking about.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: I thought joy and happiness were synonyms, but this was joy.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: I said, You're real, you're real, you're real.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: Went for a walk in the park, and even the birds would not fly away from me.
38:00
SPEAKER_02: It was just it was just it was wild.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: The trees were uh greener, the sky was bluer.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: It was.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are there's a number of things that seem to happen to a person when they actually uh receive the invitation from God and God examines their heart and sees their sincerity, and then he places uh his Holy Spirit in us, and then all of a sudden uh things change.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: We had a situation.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh a guy named Ethan was uh at our cafe uh at the first week in uh uh February this year.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: And uh he was a guy that was uh a Canadian from Toronto, and we had some conversations with him, and uh we encouraged him to really start asking the question God, are you there?
38:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: And he agreed to do that.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: And he left the island and he got on a plane and he flew to Santiago, Chile.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: And he sent us a message uh that he requ actually a voice message that he was on the flight, and he said, I just want you guys to know that on this flight I asked Jesus to come into my heart.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And he said, all of a sudden, everything changed, and and life is like like really intense, and I've been having all these thoughts, and and I'm watching the the clouds go by, and it's it's like suddenly like everything is new, and I really need to talk to you guys again.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
39:31
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens when the Spirit of God gets put into us.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: But Ret, you said something just a few minutes ago.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to ask you.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: I wish that you were hot or cold that since you're neither I uh since you're lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: What do you think Jesus meant when he said that?
39:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think if you're I think if you're religious without really having spiritual connection, it's maybe even harder to reach.
39:57
SPEAKER_02: Remember, it wasn't the nonbelievers, it wasn't the atheists that killed Jesus, it was the religious people of the time.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: And I think religiosity is a pernicious spirit.
40:07
SPEAKER_02: So I think if you're cold, I don't believe in God, I don't believe in God, or now a lot of atheists don't believe, and then a lot of them are just angry with God because something happened in their youth.
40:16
SPEAKER_02: Killed my grandfather, I don't like him, I don't believe in God.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: And so he can deal with that slowly.
40:21
SPEAKER_02: He can change the heart.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: But if somebody thinks that they're righteous of their own self, uh the the whole thing with Jesus is, you know, uh you either accept his righteousness, which is a payment.
40:33
SPEAKER_02: A lot of religions say, you know, you need to die for me, you need to go and jihad, you need to do all these things for me, and said Jesus is no, no, no, no, no.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: I already died for you.
40:44
SPEAKER_02: You just need to accept it.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: And so it's even hard, even all these years later, 40 odd years later, going, Okay, so on that day, ostensibly, Jesus married Rhett Palmer.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: He made a he made a commitment.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: And so hopefully I'm right on this, but so even though I have fallen into sin and out of sin and actually had some things happen in my life, and I'm certainly not a perfect man, to come to realize that, oh, really, you're keeping your side of the covenant no matter what?
41:13
SPEAKER_02: I'm yours forever.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: Barrett, but she said, uh, I wish you were either hot or cold, or uh because you're lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a great example, if I may, of reading the Bible and trying to understand it through our 21st century eyes and understand it through our own reasoning without any historical context to it.
41:41
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: I think we're about to learn something about that.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh it's it's what I what I realized is I'm I can't read the Bible with my 21st century mentality.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: That I need to try to get into the room.
41:55
SPEAKER_00: I need to try to get into the culture, I need to try to understand cultural things, I need to understand perhaps geographical things.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: And in this case, that verse that you just quoted has an incredible geographical context that changes everything.
42:13
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm ready to listen.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, a few years ago we went uh to on a study tour of the seven churches uh of Revelation, which are in Turkey, and we ended up uh in a central southern valley of the Meander River in an area where there's a lot of cotton grown and a lot of uh vineyards.
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh Denizi is the uh city there, and it's kind of the center of the textile industry in Turkey.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: But in this valley, uh there is a uh a city right in the middle of the valley that's called Laodicea.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of that?
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh I have.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: And this uh quote that you made is from Revelation to the church in Laodicea.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
43:00
SPEAKER_00: And it was about 20 years ago that some local businessmen put some money together and started excavating the city, and it's an incredible site.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: It's they've they have set up the columns, they have uh they're actually working on restoring the amphitheater now.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful place.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh people uh come for weddings in Laodicea.
43:22
SPEAKER_02: How far of a drive from Jerusalem?
43:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is in Turkey.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: This is ours.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: This is in Turkey, okay?
43:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're standing in Laodicea and you look to the north, you notice a big white hill, the side of the mountain that is white.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And that is the site of Heropolis, which is an ancient hot springs.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: And the the hillside is covered with the calcium and magnesium that comes out of the hot springs.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh we took an uh early morning balloon ride when we arrived.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh we arrived in the evening.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Our hotel was at the bottom.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Bottom of this hill, this ridgeline.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: And when I woke up and we were getting ready to get in the balloon, I noticed the hillside was all white.
44:09
SPEAKER_00: I could not figure it out.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly we were up on top of this ancient hot springs, Heropolis.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: And we were there later in the day.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: It is still a place where tourists come to sit in the hot springs.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in the first century, it was a place where people came to sit and bathe in the healing springs of Heropolis.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, just about five miles south of Laodicea is Mount Cadamas.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: It's a 5,200-foot mountain with snow on top.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: And at the base of Mount Cadamas comes out a river, the Lycris River, that flows into the Meander River right where the city of Laodicea is.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: This water coming out of the mountain is icy cold.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: And so if you want a cold, refreshing drink, you take a short walk over to Colossae, and there you drink cold refreshing water.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: In Laodicea, the problem that the people had in that city was that the water was sort of mixed with a lot of calcium and magnesium.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: And so people in Laodicea were always having stomach problems from the public water.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: And you can see the pipes from the water system are exposed, so you can actually see them.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: But now imagine that we are in Laodicea.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: And we get this letter from Jesus.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: And the Laodiceans were very proud people.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: They had an earthquake in 44 and pretty much destroyed the city.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: The emperor, the Roman Emperor, offered them help to rebuild the city, and the Laodiceans said, We don't need your help, we will do it ourselves.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
46:07
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is addressing himself to a very proud people.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: And he finishes up by saying, Because you're neither hot, think of healing springs at Heropolis, and because you're not cold, think of refreshing cold water from Colossi.
46:29
SPEAKER_00: Since you are lukewarm, I'm going to do to you what you've done to that water that you've been drinking.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to vomit it out of my mouth because you're not relying on me.
46:43
SPEAKER_02: So he used it as an analogy.
46:46
SPEAKER_00: It is the geographical context at least helps me understand that unless I'm healing or refreshing to the people around me, I'm not really representing Jesus well.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm a proud person that thinks I need no help, then Jesus doesn't really have any place in the world.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Or about flavoring my words maybe with swear words.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: And how can I apply that to my life?
47:27
SPEAKER_00: I never believed when I heard preachers say that I that Jesus wanted me to be a pagan and not know him, or be on fire.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: But since I was kind of a Christian that was meandering through my life, like the Meander River goes from Laodicea all the way to the there's a river called The Meander River, yeah.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: It goes all the way to the Mediterranean.
47:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, how do you like them, Apple?
47:49
SPEAKER_00: Um but I don't think uh I think Jesus knows that I do meander sometimes.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: And um so that verse never set well with me as the way that people were interpreting it.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: But once you go to the hot springs in Heropolis and you go down to Calypso, well, it's suddenly it's the it's the geographical context that makes the the passage very clear.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: And this is a challenge for me.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: I want to understand context.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Now we're celebrating Palm Sunday uh this week.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus riding into Jerusalem.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: And he the people are waving uh palm branches and they're shouting, um Hosanna.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna, Hosanna.
48:38
SPEAKER_02: What does Hosanna mean?
48:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the thing, this is the question.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: What's going on here?
48:43
SPEAKER_00: Um the priests and the religious people say you must tell your uh people to stop saying that, and Jesus says if I tell them to stop saying that, uh the stones will speak out.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: I think we spoke about this in our last session.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: But what's happening is because the expectations of the people that the Messiah was going to be a military leader and uh kick out the Romans and restore the Jewish kingdom, they're expecting Jesus to be the political king and kick out the Romans.
49:14
SPEAKER_02: They were looking for a warrior or a general or right.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: So they're waving a palm branch which is on most of the coins minted during the Jewish revolt of 66.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: I've seen those coins.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: I've held them because uh merchants in the old city like to sell you those coins for a good price.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: But the palm branch was apparently the um symbol of the nation of Israel, and they're shouting Hosanna, which is an Aramaic phrase meaning save us now, we pray.
49:42
SPEAKER_02: And do you know why the palm tree is so revered?
49:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but all all I know is it is a political demonstration.
49:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh they are trying to welcome the king because Zechariah 9 9 says the king is coming, he's riding on a donkey.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
50:00
SPEAKER_02: And so now they made how many years in advance?
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Um it was at least hundreds, okay.
50:05
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, I'm looking at this now as a political demonstration.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: The politics help me understand what's going on.
50:13
SPEAKER_00: So the Bible, I think, uh, as we're unfolding the Bible here, there's a lot of geographical, cultural, political context, cultural context that help me understand what Jesus was really saying.
50:30
SPEAKER_00: For example, Jesus at the his last Passover meal with his disciples, what does he do?
50:37
SPEAKER_00: He washes their feet, and then and then he takes bread and breaks it, and he gives it to them, and then he takes wine, pours it, blesses it, passes the cup around.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and we call this communion, right?
50:55
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's Supper.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: And so this is my body broken for you.
51:00
SPEAKER_00: This is uh my uh wine and the blood of the new of the new covenant.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but what was Jesus' disciples thinking as he was doing that?
51:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what's going on?
51:09
SPEAKER_00: If we were in the room and we saw that, what would we think?
51:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, this is my body.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: What are you talking about?
51:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, just the bread and the wine, okay?
51:19
SPEAKER_00: Every Jewish male understood what Jesus was doing.
51:23
SPEAKER_00: Because in Jewish culture of that time, when you found the girl that you were going to make your bride, the first thing you did was go talk to her father.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: And the conversation would usually start like this.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: Jacob, uh, you know, I saw your daughter uh out in the fields the other day, and your daughter is so ugly that she scared my sheep, and it took me three days to find them all.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: To which Jacob would say, Well, I'm sorry, my son, you're mistaken.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: My daughter is a very beautiful girl.
51:56
SPEAKER_00: And thus would begin the negotiation for the price of the bride.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: And this young man and the father would be They knew what they were up to, yeah.
52:07
SPEAKER_00: They were deciding how many barrels of olive oil, how many bushels of wheat, and how many sheep this young man was willing to pay for the price of the bride.
52:16
SPEAKER_00: While this was going on, the young woman and her mom are standing outside the room.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: And when the details of the arrangement are finalized, she comes in carrying a tray with bread and wine.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: At this point, the young man picks up the bread, he br he breaks it, tears it, he blesses it, he takes a piece and eats it, and he hands another piece to the young lady.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: Then he picks up the wine cup, he blesses it, he takes a sip, and now is the moment.
52:54
SPEAKER_00: He passes the cup to the young lady.
52:57
SPEAKER_02: If she drinks it.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: In cultural language, with the passing of the cup, he's saying, I love you, I want you to spend the rest of your life with me.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: Will you be my bride?
53:09
SPEAKER_00: And if she takes the cup and drinks it, she is accepting his marriage proposal.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: At that point, the young man goes back to his father's house, and he builds an addition, a room onto his father's house.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: And the father is kind of the uh the building inspector, and he decides when the uh windows and the AC and the electrical work's all done, the that he now can tell his son you can marry the bride.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: Of course, I'm being facetious.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: There was no electricity or air conditioning then.
53:42
SPEAKER_02: But at that point, but he goes to prepare a place for her.
53:45
SPEAKER_02: And it could be six hours, six days, six years.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is this is Jesus talks about.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: I go to prepare a place.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: This is the uh young man foreshadowing.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: It's the young man preparing a place, and then the bride must be ready.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: And so when he shows up, she must be ready, and if he really loves her, he's gonna send somebody ahead saying, I'm coming tomorrow, be ready.
54:09
SPEAKER_00: So all of this a custom of how Jewish men and women marry is really embodied in this ceremony of breaking wine and bread.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: So what the Lord is.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: What did they think that Jesus was doing?
54:24
SPEAKER_00: I think they realized that Jesus was inviting them into a relationship so intimate that the only thing we have.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, what do they what does the the epistles uh say?
54:38
SPEAKER_00: Paul refers to we are the bride of Christ.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: They understood what Jesus was doing.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: But see, we 21st century uh people reading the Bible, if we don't understand that custom of how young men propose to their future wives, it would it would go right by.
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Or not a wedding, but a uh uh what it what the the covenant you make uh you're engaged.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a nuptial uh arrangement.
55:05
SPEAKER_02: So this is all for now.
55:07
SPEAKER_02: If you think about this too.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: Is it any mistake that his mother nudges him and he says to do a miracle at this party?
55:14
SPEAKER_02: It's a wedding.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: Make some wine because they've run out of wine.
55:18
SPEAKER_02: It's not my time yet, but his mother says, do this.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: And he makes the wine.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: Now, the first miracle that we know that's recorded of Jesus is turning water into wine.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the thing.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: It's at a wedding.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's another uh cultural uh thing that's important.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh as a new Christian, I was told that Christians don't drink alcohol.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh and I was told that uh Jesus uh drank grape juice.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: And uh and so for a number of years I thought uh a Christian, if you're gonna be serious about a relationship with God, you never touch a drop of alcohol.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, you certainly don't want to overindulge.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: And uh well, of course, but uh well then I began uh doing some reading, and then uh of course my time in Israel where uh wine is always served at meals, and even Jay Vernon McGee, my guru at the time, I was as a young Christian, I listened to Jay Vernon McGee Vernon McGee through the Bible radio, and Jay Vernon got got to this passage and he was talking about, he says, Well, you know, a lot of Christians say that uh, you know, we Christians should never drink alcoholic beverages, but I gotta tell you, I was just over in Germany with a lot of my brothers and sisters, and I gotta say that if you're with him, you're gonna drink a beer at lunch.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: Now what I realized was uh that uh yes, wine in first century Jewish culture, it was alcoholic, that Jesus uh drank wine and he uh was accused of being a drunkard.
57:06
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the Bible is filled with uh proverbs and uh you know, just be careful with wine, don't overindulge, don't be drunk.
57:14
SPEAKER_00: You'll be like a sailor tossed around in a boat, you'll be like on a mast, you know, you'll be laying around, you know, it talks about don't drink and don't overindulge.
57:23
SPEAKER_00: And uh and Paul says in Ephesians 5, don't be drunk with wine, but be continuously filled with the Spirit.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, but Psalm 104 says that God gives a man the bread of the field and the wine that makes his heart glad.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: So I realized I was being a religious Christian and not really understanding biblical culture.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: So this is my challenge, Rhett.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be a religious guy that's mindlessly following rules, many of which are man-made rules.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: I want to understand what God's saying to me and how I apply his words to my life.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: And and this is the challenge.
58:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think that over these next um uh sessions, we will talk a lot about context, uh, language context.
58:10
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about uh geographical context, we'll talk about political things that are going on, and things that uh are happening in the life of Jesus, in the life of the uh that early church that suddenly make the Bible become very much alive and real and mostly relevant to us as 21st century Christians.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: This is my goal.
58:35
SPEAKER_02: Well, good.
58:36
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's been great talking with you again and unlocking the uh truths, the biblical truths.
58:41
SPEAKER_02: And uh my guest, of course, is the man who owns a cafe Rio Cafe.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: Rio Cococo Cafe.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: And uh Brett, uh drinking some of this coffee today.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: Are you enjoying this?
58:53
SPEAKER_02: Thoroughly.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: This is coffee from the island of Tamor.
58:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's one of our most popular coffees.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: We roast coffee right here in Vero Beach because coffee is the friendship drink, and we want to be drinking uh high altitude, hand-picked, specialty grade coffee is what we roast.
59:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
59:10
SPEAKER_00: And so I would encourage any of you uh listening, invite your friends for a good cup of coffee and have a uh some intimate moments with your friends.
59:21
SPEAKER_00: And then if you like, we send a lot of coffee to our friends across the country.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: Go to RiococoBeans.com and order uh some of this delicious Timor coffee that we're drinking today.
59:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:32
SPEAKER_02: And we'll be back with more in the future.
59:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm Rhett Palmer.
59:36
SPEAKER_02: And um Well, John three sixteen God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever shall call upon his name shall be saved.
59:46
SPEAKER_02: When is your hour of transition?
59:48
SPEAKER_02: Have you had it yet?
59:50
SPEAKER_02: I'm Rhett Palmer.