Latest / Regina UNSCRIPTED / Why Do We Need a Pope? | PopeCast EP0

Transcript

Why Do We Need a Pope? | PopeCast EP0 · Regina UNSCRIPTED

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to our podcast.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: Each week we'll be diving into the fascinating story behind the apostolic succession.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Starting with Peter, right up to our current Pope Leo XIV.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: But rather than start with Peter today, we thought we'd set the scene and give some context.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Our starting point this week, therefore, is not Peter but Jesus.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: For that, we have to look at how the Old Testament signposts his coming and what this means for the office of the Pope.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: So, rather than episode one, think of this as episode zero, where we establish the importance of one unifying visible figure instituted by Christ as the foundation of his church.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Hi Mark, we're going to talk about the papacy.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Exciting, isn't it?
0:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Start of our podcast.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: I hope people tune in for the whole 267 episodes of the history of popes.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Starting with, uh, well, you're going to tell us, aren't you?
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, today we're talking about the rock.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't mean the professional wrestler, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, either.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, talking about Peter, the first Pope.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: So before there was a Vatican, before there were basilicas, before there were conclaves or tiaras, Swiss guards, canon law, or even Christendom, there was a fisherman from Galilee called Simon.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: And he was impulsive, brave, weak, ashamed, forgiven, and trusted by his friend, Jesus the Christ, who renamed him Cephas, meaning Brock.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Now this is very important dramatically, isn't it, Mark?
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Because Christ isn't merely giving him a nickname here, which is what it sounds like, but he's actually giving him a vocation.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: And throughout scripture, when God changes a name, he changes a destiny.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: So we see it with Abraham, who was Abraham and becomes Abraham, Jacob, who becomes Israel, and Simon, of course, as you've just said, who becomes Cephas, which is rock, rendered in Greek as indeed Peter.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: You've you've mentioned there the pattern that runs throughout the whole of scripture, and we can't come to understand Peter really outside of that story.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: So uh I think the best thing we can do here is to take our audience on a journey back in time to give some context and significance to the the figure of the first pope.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, in order to understand how God relates to us, we have to understand um how God relates to Israel and especially how he relates to Israel in connection with the nations, because it sets a pattern for how God relates to us today through his bride, the church.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we need to look at the Old Testament.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: We can't simply reject it and say we're talking about Peter, we can just focus on the gospels.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: We have to look at it in context.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, I suppose the visible head of the universal church, Christ's representative on earth, um, needs to be understood in relationship between God and Israel to give it that context.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it, when you think how important that context is.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is where a lot of one of the things that a lot of people seem to miss is the the fact that there is a real that everything is foreshadowed in the old testament, isn't it?
3:29
SPEAKER_01: And if you understand the old testament really well, it helps you to understand what's going on in the new testament.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: Um like you, you know, you've heard, and lots of people watching have probably heard that Catholics refer to the church as the New Israel, and where Israel was referred to as the bride and God the bridegroom throughout the Old Testament, the old covenant, the church becomes the bride and not a new and different bride.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: God isn't a bigamist, but like an acorn becoming an oak tree, the bridal relationship flourishes.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: So, Mark, when you speak about Israel, though, I think with modern ears, many people will be thinking of that strip of land in the Middle East, sandwiched between Egypt and Jordan.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Is that where we're talking about?
4:17
SPEAKER_01: About the size of Wales, I think, isn't it?
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it's it's not really anything to do with that.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Our focus is theological, so we're going to get into the relationship between Israel and God, and that starts with who Israel is.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: Did you say who?
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a who and not a what or a where.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm sure that'll be news to some of our listeners.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: So Israel is the name that God gives to Jacob, who's the grandson of Abraham, the son of Isaac.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember him?
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is the son promised to Abraham and his wife, despite their advancing years.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the one.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's the son who Abraham took up the mountain to sacrifice before God substituted a ram.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, right.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: So we've had to go back to the beginning in order to understand Peter in context.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have to do a bit of thinking here.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And you've taken us back to the figure of Abraham, who had this son, Isaac.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: And this son Isaac is the precious, long-awaited, and promised son.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: And this son has twin sons, and he calls them Jacob and Esau, who we're told struggle together in the womb.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's not insignificant to this story, is it?
5:34
SPEAKER_01: No, it's kind of really key point.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, and God explains it by saying, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: The one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is actually really significant, isn't it, Mark?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Because as far as I understand, this is where we start to see that pattern established of the elder and the younger brother.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Right back in the beginning, we've got Cain and Abel.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Cain is the older brother, the stronger brother, who ends up offending God, doesn't he?
6:05
SPEAKER_00: And he he gets cursed.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: And then we've got Abel, who's the younger brother, who pleases God.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And his fate is that he gets murdered by Cain.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the older brother, the murderer, appears to prevail.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: He goes out, kills his lovely, innocent little brother who's pleased God, and just seems to go off scot-free, doesn't he?
6:23
SPEAKER_00: And the younger boy is murdered.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not much of a story if it ended there, but we know it doesn't.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: So after the fall of Adam and Eve, following the prompting from the serpent, when it appeared that evil had prevailed, God actually says to the serpent, and this is a quote from Genesis, so it's get your Bibles out time, folks.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: She will crush your head and you will strike his heel.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: And I guess this can be understood as the beginning of salvation history, a history that's going to play out across generations, and a story that's going to take us to our first Pope, to Peter.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: From this point, what we see is the older brother being protected from eradication.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: And you might say, despite been a murderer, why on earth would God want to protect him?
7:15
SPEAKER_00: But we do see Aeneas being protected from eradication.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: But the younger brother supplants the older brother in surprising and unexpected ways, which are significant.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what we're seeing here, Mark?
7:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it?
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And like we're saying, we go back to the beginning, but this really shows you how much is in Genesis.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: I always think Genesis is probably one of the most important books of the Bible.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: And you know, even with when we're talking about going back to the beginning with Adam and Eve and the proto-evangelium, we're still in Genesis when we're talking about Isaac and Jacob and all that sort of thing, aren't we?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So I think like that whole thing with the older brother and the younger brother, that brings us into this unexpected sort of paradigm that we see playing out throughout scripture, which is shown to us in David becoming the king, you know, little David beating Goliath and becoming the king, and the way that Christ enters into Jerusalem like on a donkey, um, and the similar unexpected nature of Peter being the prime apostle, being the prince of the apostles, the one who denied Christ three times, after all.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: You know, he seems to constantly get it wrong, doesn't he, throughout the gospels.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, we see that exactly that kind of unexpected uh dynamic here, really, where you've got Esau, who's the firstborn, and it's so in the story in Genesis, he comes out red and his body's like all hairy like a cloak, um, hence the name Esau, which basically means hairy.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, then afterwards, his brother comes out and he's holding on to Esau's heel.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: So he was called Jacob, which is it means supplanter, and we'll see why that is in a little bit.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, but basically, Esau is the he's like the strong one, the skillful hunter, the the older brother, and Jacob is like a quiet man.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: So already the brothers are sort of juxtaposed straight away in the story, immediately after coming out of the womb.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: And then we see one day Esau becomes like he's out hunting and he comes home hot and he's hungry, and he goes to Jacob and he says, Can you give me some stew?
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, but Jacob cunningly, I suppose, says, First, sell me your birthright.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: That's got to be some good stew.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: You'd want it to be, really, wouldn't you?
9:45
SPEAKER_01: But so Esau basically says, What good's a birthright to me?
9:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm about to die here, mate.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: So he swore an oath to sell his birthright to Jacob there and then on the spot.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: And and this is a serious and binding thing, isn't it?
10:00
SPEAKER_00: It's not as we might imagine it today, like, um, can you give me this and I'll give you that?
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And then you forget about it.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: It can't be rescinded after he's finished his bowl of stew.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: He was essentially passing on the promises that God made to their grandfather, Abraham, which would naturally have been passed on to Esau as the elder brother of the two sons, wouldn't they?
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: So the that whole chapter ends saying that Esau then despised his birthright.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: And later on, we see as Isaac is nearing the end of his life, he wants to pass on his blessing to his eldest son Esau.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: And Jacob, knowing that Esau is hairy, makes a I think this is one of the comedy moments in the in in the old testament myself.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, like it is quite funny when you read it, but he he makes like this covering of hair all over his body.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: So when he presents himself to like his father's like we can't see very well, he he you know, he's hoping that he can pass himself off to be out Esau and get his blessing instead.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna do a quick recap here.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, we're focusing uh on the first Pope, which is Peter, we know, but in order to understand the significance of the figure of the Pope, we have to jump back and start looking at scripture from the very beginning.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And we said that salvation history begins when God says, despite the fall, um, you know, I'm going to put enmity between you, the serpent, and uh your offspring and her, she will crush your head and I will strike your heel.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: He will strike your heel.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: So we've got this promise that actually don't think you've won, mate, to the serpent, as it were.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it doesn't happen overnight.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're trying to unravel here is how does that promise come to be fulfilled?
11:52
SPEAKER_00: How does that healing happen?
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And at the moment, we've got this figure of Abraham.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, he's waiting for this son, him and his wife.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: The reason he's called Isaac is because Isaac means laughter.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Because Sarah literally laughed when she found out she's pregnant because it was physically, like humanly impossible.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: So they've got this long-awaited son, and Abraham's faith is so great that he takes this son to be sacrificed, knowing that if this is what God asks, although it makes no sense, this is what he should do.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: So the boy is saved, Aram is substituted, and this boy goes on to have two boys, and they are Jacob and Esau.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: So here's Esau giving over his birthright, and here's Jacob sneaking on a hairy outfit to pretend to his dad that he's Esau.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And you said the father's um eyesight's not very good, Isaac's eyesight.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: But the old boy is a bit suspicious, he doesn't just believe it instantly, does he?
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, thank God, because that makes the story more believable, I think, doesn't it?
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Because it is one of those.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of those hilarious stories.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, his eyesight's poor, and he says, Um, but you sound like Jacob.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Are you really Esau?
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And Jacob says, Well, of course I am, Dad.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: And upon feeling the hairiness of his skin, he gives Jacob the blessing.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: So the actual blessing that he gives Jacob is Genesis 49, what verses 1 to 27, if you want to look it up in your Bible, and and this is exactly what it what the blessing says.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: From the dew of heaven and the richness of the earth, may God always give you abundant harvests of grain and bountiful new wine.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: May many nations become your servants, and may they bow down to you.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: May you be the master over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: All who curse you will be cursed, and all who bless you will be blessed.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Wow, he's just received this blessing from his dad, and just at that moment, the real eldest son Esau comes back in, doesn't he?
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Old hairy Esau, yeah.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, as you would expect, um, he's not best pleased by all of that.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: So obviously he says that his brothers tricked him twice, once out of his birthright, and now out of his father's blessing.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: And he begs his father, please, father, what about me?
14:16
SPEAKER_01: And Isaac says to him, I've made Jacob your master.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: What's left for me to give you?
14:21
SPEAKER_01: And from this time on, we're told that there's enmity, you know, between the two brothers.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: There's enmity in the womb, according to the the scripture.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: But you know, at this point, we're told that Esau hated Jacob.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really significant line, you know, the one that says, I have made Jacob your master.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: In other words, that promise made to Abraham still stands.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: But rather than running through the firstborn, it will now be fulfilled through the second.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now when you say the second, there, my sort of bells are going off because I'm thinking of the second and going back to those lines in in uh the New Testament, in fact, in Paul's letters to the Corinthians, as well as Saint Irenaeus' commentary on Christ as the second Adam.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: So when you say um what we're seeing here with Isaac's blessings passing to um Jacob rather than Esau, and Jacob's name very name meaning supplanter, and all this talk about the firstborn and the secondborn, my mind immediately goes to Christ.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, who we see as the second Adam, who Irenaeus of Leon actually says, and I quote, in the first Adam we offended God by not performing his commandment.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: In the second Adam, however, we're reconciled by being made obedient even unto death.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I know it might seem like a jump, but do you see what I'm saying?
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Is it's right to sort of nod at this point to the New Testament and say, maybe we can't look at all this Old Testament stuff outside of that lens of the New Testament, and perhaps who better than than the man God Himself chose to help bridge that gap.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: So that's obviously got to be St.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Paul, but he's he had a name change as well.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: He was Saul originally, wasn't he?
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So we can look and that so you can see that immediately how that's connected.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: But let's just run into the New Testament then and particularly pay attention to the opening verse of St.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Paul's letter to the Romans.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Um perhaps we should set the scene a little bit about Paul before we uh we do that.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: So Paul was a Pharisee, um, which is a member of a Jewish sect at the that existed at the time, and his main job was going around persecuting Christians.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: Um but amazingly, he becomes an elect vessel to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the sons of Israel.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I'm gonna just quote now from uh Romans chapter one, um, where Paul says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his son, who descended from David according to the flesh, and designated Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: Now in verse 16, chapter one, we see the argument that Paul makes, beginning here in chapter one and running through the entire epistle.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And that argument is that he's not simply expounding the gospel, but he's expounding the gospel as the power of God for salvation and opening up the implications for what it means for God to have saved the Jew first, but also the Greek.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: And he says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and to the Greek.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: So Paul is a chosen instrument to carry God's name before the Gentiles and kings, the sons of Israel.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: He's not only carrying the gospel to the Gentiles, but also to their kings and the sons of Israel.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: We see in Acts 26, verse 4, Paul talks about his past, and he says about how there are many who can testify that he was a Pharisee, known among all the Jews, but now he stands on trial for hope in the promise made by God to the fathers, to which the 12 tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: So the important part is that though he's a member of the Jewish sect of the Pharisees, nevertheless, he's now an apostle.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's as an apostle, and even still as a Pharisee, he had hope in a promise that God made to his fathers.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: So that's the connection there with the Old Testament, a promise which the 12 tribes still hope to attain, even at this point.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay, right.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned Paul because Paul is this Pharisee who knew his Old Testament scripture inside out, and he's been chosen to show exactly what we're trying to reveal in this conversation about how Christ unifies this broken mess since the beginning.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's a curious thing for Paul to say, isn't it, to talk about the 12 tribes of Israel?
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Because at this time that he's speaking, uh, which would be the first century, there were no longer 12 tribes at all, certainly not in his own experience.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Um there was really, would there be just one part of Israel left, which would be Judea, centered around Jerusalem, where of course Jesus was, and a weaker, smaller tribe, which would be the Benjaminites.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: And then together these would have formed what we I suppose could term Judaism, but really they're only two twelfths of Israel as Israel is meant to be.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, pretty much.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: When Paul talks about Jews and Israelites, they're not interchangeable terms like the way that we would use them today.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's because 900 years before that, the rebel coalition of 10 northern tribes broke away from the 12 tribes and they ended up calling themselves Israel.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: So from 930 BC until Paul's own lifetime, there was never a time when those those 12 tribes were reunited, apart from just 80 years.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was two generations.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: So King David, who served as king for only 40 years, and then his son Solomon the Great, who reigned for another 40 years.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: So you've got 80 years, the 12 tribes of Israel were united as a single kingdom.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's a golden age.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: That was the golden age, only 80 years.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And when they fell apart from it, they never actually recovered at all.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: But despite that, there are loads of prophetic passages throughout the Old Testament um which are sort of uh speaking to this hope for the twelve, this longing for the 12 tribes to come back together again.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's the hope that St.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: Paul is describing to Agrippa in Acts.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: It's a hope that somehow the 12 tribes could be reunited.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: But obviously, looking at it at that time in the first century, you would be wondering how on earth could that happen?
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And if you if we want to understand that, we have to jump back again to the old testament and look at the figure of Jacob.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Mark, but I think I confused things a little because earlier, when you were talking about, you know, well, we were both talking about this pattern that seems to be emerging between the oldest and the youngest, and that that has significance.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: I then said, Oh, well, the second is reminds me of Christ being the second Adam.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: So I think I got ahead of myself a little bit there.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then that got us talking about tribes, but perhaps.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps we haven't really even established where these tribes have all come from.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned going back to the figure of Jacob.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: We last left him, didn't we?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Having um received his brother's birthright, which his brother was none too happy about, let's be honest.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: And he and he received Isaac's blessing.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Isaac bestowed on him the promises that were made to Abraham.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: But in case I have confused anyone there, how does all this link to Paul carrying the gospel to the Gentiles, the kings, and the sons of that very important word, Israel?
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: So remember we said that the question to ask isn't what or where is Israel, but rather who is Israel?
22:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: And we find the real answer to that is in one of my favourite chapters in Genesis, chapter 32.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And if you watch us, if you've watched Catherine and I before, you'll know this is a chapter that I go on about an awful lot.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Um and in this, Jacob is all on his own and he's crossed over the river Jack Jabak, and then he meets this stranger who wrestles who he ends up wrestling with.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Um and he wrestles him all night, he wrestles him until morning, and the stranger strikes him on the hip bone, and uh Jacob puts up a really good fight, and then the the stranger asks him what his name is, and obviously he answers Jacob.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: And at that point the stranger says to him, Your name shall not be called Jacob, but Israel.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: For if thou hast been strong against God, how much more shalt thou prevail against men?
23:33
SPEAKER_01: So Jacob there is given a new vocation, a new name, and his name is Israel, which means struggles with God.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: So Jacob realizes that he has seen God face to face and been saved at that point.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: Right, so Israel is Jacob renamed, and as we said at the beginning, not just nicknamed, but given a new vocation by God.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: So here we've got Jacob, this boy who dressed up in the hairy cloak, took Esau's by right, his being the firstborn, his birthright, and now he's wrestling with God, and now God says, you know what?
24:08
SPEAKER_00: New name now, Jacob, it's gonna be Israel.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: So Israel's got 12 sons.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: And Jacob, so formerly Jacob, is that right?
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Formerly Jacob, now Israel goes on to have 12 sons.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: So he's renamed Israel, and he has 12 sons.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: So it all starts to make sense, doesn't it?
24:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, like the 12 apostles, the 12 tribes of Israel.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: Um and so that these, and it's like these 12.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: So this is leading into Joseph and his amazing technicolor dream dream coat.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've seen the it's all laid out there, isn't it, in that famous uh musical.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: But like you basically the 12 sons of Jacob of Israel are the 12 tribes of Israel, they're the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: So you can start to see the link with what Paul is saying in Acts that he's set apart to carry the gospel to the sons of Israel.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: So we jumped to the New Testament.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: We heard from Paul.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: We know Paul has been chosen to carry the gospel.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: But Mark, a long time has passed between Jacob wrestling with God there, right back in the book of Genesis, and St.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Paul being called on the road to Damascus.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think how it's even possible that he could carry the gospel to the sons of Israel.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Are they even still a thing by this stage?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, we will see.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's certainly true that a long time has passed, but look, the focus of our podcast here is um about the popes.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's gonna be the popes all throughout history.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: And the thing about it is we can't isolate that history from salvation history, from the beginning of salvation history.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: So we've got to spend a little bit more time revisiting that salvation history before we can actually get to the person of Peter.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: And this way, it will hopefully we you know what we're hoping is that it will set up the papacy in context um and make the ongoing succession which follows all the way to Leo the 14th today, make more sense.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we've got Jacob, renamed Israel, 12 sons from whom the 12 tribes come, but we know that they've fallen into disunity by the time Paul comes in comes on the scene.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Saul, formerly Saul, and now renamed Paul.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so how in the world could these 12 tribes be reunited?
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because if he's got to deliver this to these 12 tribes and they don't even exist because they've fallen into disunity.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: What we're thinking reading the gospel is how how is it possible?
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, because um from 930 BC to 722, the 10 northern tribes were separated, um, and they were completely independent from the two tribes who were down south.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: So the kingdom of Israel had lapsed into the worst kind of idolatry.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, it had expelled all the Levitical priests who God had established on Mount Sinai following the tribe of Levi.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: Um they were the only ones who remained loyal to God, and making them go back down south it made them officiate in Jerusalem.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: So the king of Israel up north had erected golden calves in the cities and allowed anybody to become a priest after the Levites had left.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that how Malali got a big break, basically?
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: That is how Malaly.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: There's a big revelation there, yeah.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is the point actually that Scott Hahn makes.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: It's that the idolatry was institutionalized in the northern kingdom of Israel right at its very founding.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: So there was no practical way for the northern kingdom to be ecumenically reunited to the southern kingdom.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: Then in 722 BC, the Assyrians come in and they wipe out the northern kingdom completely, deporting the 12 tribes, uh the 10 tribes, sorry, and they deport them so thoroughly and completely that for the next seven centuries there are all sorts of documents about the ten lost tribes of Israel.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Those ten tribes, the ones that survived the Assyrian siege in 722 BC.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: So later on in 586 BC, the Babylonians come along and they do to Judah what the Assyrians had done to Israel, with one important exception, and that's when the Babylonians take the Jews out of Judah and deport them into exile.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: 70 years later, just as Jeremiah had predicted, Darius the Mean, who had conquered the Babylonians, 70 years after the Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem and Judah, Darius allows the Jews to go back into Jerusalem, and Sirius allowed them to build the temple and the walls and help them to pay for it.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: So the Jews from Judah, after 70 years of exile, actually return to their own land.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: But then, and this is like you know, by the rivers of Babylon, we've got that psalm and the song of obviously by Boniam.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: You want to sing the song, Mark?
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe get a single.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Not at this particular moment in time.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Maybe catch me down the pub later.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: Um I'll give it a bash.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: I'll see if I could capture it, folks.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: So um, so basically, um, the Jews from Judah return after 70 years in exile, and the stragglers who are left, they're forcibly intermarried with all these other people who the Assyrians had conquered from other lands and resettled in the northern kingdom, and that's where the Samaritans come from.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that's where so this is why the Jews in the south, during Jesus' time, in the gospel time, despised the Samaritans as kind of half-breeds, because not only had they succumbed to idolatry at the time of the civil war back in 930 BC, but from 722 BC on, they were basically unidentifiable as Israelites because they'd become they'd so polluted the holy seat of Israel with foreign wives, and so they couldn't really be counted as Israelites in any real sense of the word.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, at least that's what the Jews thought.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: That's in the eyes of the Jews.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Blame, this is so interesting because it's a bit of a mess, isn't it?
30:26
SPEAKER_00: We've we've we've it's just like we've got Eden, we've got the fall from, you know, the the fall with Adam and Eve, and then we've got the Abraham's call, this promise made to Abraham, and that seems a long way off at this point.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but God did make a promise.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: He did make a promise, and he's God, so he will keep it, even though it's looking very messy at this stage.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: But the people to who he to whom he made the promise did mess up.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: That's undeniable.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: They messed up so badly that now, as you say, it's hard to even distinguish who they are anymore.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: You just said 10, 12 of them have been intermarrying and co-mingling such that their own people, as it were, don't accept them as Israelites.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: This is the mess that we're in at the moment, that we're that we're focusing on at the moment.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: But God knows.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Like what I'm saying is a human wouldn't be able to tell.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, you talked about 700 years past.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Imagine a load of families all intermarrying and 700 years past.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: How would we know who's the descendant of who?
31:28
SPEAKER_00: But God does.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose, of course, God keeps his promise to the Israelites precisely by.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Am I right here, Mark?
31:37
SPEAKER_00: Because this is kind of mind-blowing.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, God keeps his promise to the Israelites by extending that promise to all peoples, right?
31:48
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: I love this, it's brilliant.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, wow.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we need a moment, we need a moment here.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: We've got Paul in the New Testament speaking to Agrippa about how Jesus Christ chose him to be an apostle to the Gentiles and kings and also the sons of Israel, not just Judah, not just the Jews, but to all of Israel, all 12 tribes.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: So if we stop thinking of Israel as that geographical boundary that it is today, and instead as the descendants of these 12 tribes, then that means then that means Israelites are all across, all across the world everywhere.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: They're intermarried, they're not existing as it were, I suppose you could say, as one distinguishable and identifiable people in one identifiable place.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Surely that's what what that means.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to us, but to God, you know, God knows to whom he makes promises, who he's got a covenant with.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: And as you say, God always keeps his promises.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: But it is still humanly almost impossible.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, it is impossible to see how.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: How?
32:54
SPEAKER_00: How could he even do it?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: You can't even recognise where they are anymore.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, and that resonates with us, with every generation, doesn't it?
33:02
SPEAKER_01: We all, I think, you know, those of us with faith looking at the world, we all think that.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: How can this, you know, how can God keep his promises?
33:10
SPEAKER_01: How can but and yet he always does.
33:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: And before his ascension, the apostles gathered around Jesus and asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
33:23
SPEAKER_01: All right.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: And he said to them, It's not for you to know the time and the dates the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: So, right at the beginning, at the ascension, the apostles are wondering, is this what you're going to do?
33:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, this impossible thing.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And what was the kingdom of Israel?
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, we know what it was under David, and we know what it was under Solomon.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: You've mentioned that already.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: It was an empire that not only united the twelve tribes under the son of David, or under David, it also elevated the tribes as an empire to rule the Gentiles.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Don't we see this in Psalms?
34:15
SPEAKER_00: The Davidic king is supposed to rule from one end of the earth to the other?
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we turn from there to Romans 1, uh chapter 1, verse 2, we've got the the gospel of God promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, there are and there are numerous prophetic texts contained within the scriptures.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: So we can't go through every single one in this popecast.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: So we'll look at, let's take a look at some of the prophetic texts that connect this idea of the gospel uniting the 12 tribes of Israel.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: So we've got in Jeremiah 31, it says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: Look at that.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: A new covenant to unite Judah and Israel.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: That's in the Old Testament.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: The southern and the northern tribes will be united.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: It's humanly impossible.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been since 930 BC and since 722 BC.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: It isn't even a possibility anymore.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: What on earth is Jeremiah going on about?
35:27
SPEAKER_01: How can he see this as being something in the future?
35:31
SPEAKER_01: A new covenant with both the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: It will not be like the covenant I have made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: So as Scott Hahn explains about this bit, by the time this new covenant comes around, it isn't going to be Israel on one hand and Judah on the other.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be the way it was back in the golden age, when the son of David ruled from Jerusalem and all twelve tribes formed one house, the house of Israel under the Judaic king.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: So it carries on.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: That's not just taken in a way that combines the northern and southern kingdom out of context.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Look at the whole prophecy in the context of Jeremiah 31.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: At that time, declares the Lord, I will be the God of the families of Israel, and they will be my people.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: And there will be a day when watchmen cry out on the hills of Ephraim.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: So now you might, there's a new word in there, Ephraim.
36:49
SPEAKER_01: And you might say, why Ephraim?
36:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, this is the territory in northern in the northern kingdom, um, especially Ephraim, which is a territory which was the capital city of Samaria.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: And the first king to rule the rebel coalition was Jeroboam, who was an Ephraimite.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: And that's why the northern kingdom of Israel was named not only Samaria, but also the kingdom of Ephraim.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: You see it all through the Old Testament, because it was the tribe of Ephraim that gave us the first king of the rebel coalition.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: So then, if we go on to verse 9, the Lord says, I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn, followed by, hear the word of the Lord God, you nations, and proclaim it in distant coastlands, our Darte Insula.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: He in Latin, he who scattered Israel will gather them and watch over his flock like a shepherd.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: Interesting there in the in light of what you've been saying, what we've been discussing earlier, you talked about the Ephraimites, which would have been descendants of the of two of Israel, but the ten-twelts of Israel.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you said the northern kingdom, the rebel coalition ended up calling themselves Israel, almost ignoring the fact that there were two tribes down south.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: So and the Ephraimites would have been this territory in the northern kingdom.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: And then you said in that quote, um, you said that I am the father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And you've just been talking, we've just been talking about first and second born.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: So again, I feel like there's there's something significant here, isn't there?
38:38
SPEAKER_00: This is the firstborn, right?
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
38:41
SPEAKER_00: Just stop me if it if I'm not making sense, sort of correct me.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: But you're talking about the northern tribes who've committed idolatry, who've been scattered by the Assyrians, they're the firstborn.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: It says here, you know, Ephraim is my firstborn.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And then we've got the two twelfths in the southern kingdom where Christ will come around Jerusalem, but they are all still descendants of Abraham, they're just so separated.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: But they're now we're starting to build up a picture of the first and the secondborn.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul would be from those tribes around Jerusalem.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: Effectively, if the northern tribes are the firstborn, by contrast, the secondborn, and we've already heard this stuff about the secondborn with Jacob getting the promises against Esau, his elder brother.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: So it's all fitting together.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: God is basically saying here, listen up, Ephraim, though you've been scattered to the four corners of the earth, God will gather Israel and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock, for the Lord has ransomed Jacob.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Jeremiah certainly doesn't confuse Judah and Israel the way I guess we do today, does he?
39:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: When Christians today read the prophets, we don't seem to make any differentiation between Judah and Israel the same way that they do.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, but this distinction was everywhere throughout the prophecies.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: If you go to verse 17 of Jeremiah 31, we've got this quote: There's hope for your future, says the Lord.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: The days are coming when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: The days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and the people of Judah.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: I will write the law on their hearts, I will be their God, and they will be my people.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: God will bring the tribes of Israel back together and write his law on their hearts.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: And this was centuries before the Gospels, centuries before the incarnation.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing, isn't it?
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it?
40:44
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it?
40:44
SPEAKER_00: I hope, I hope everyone's loving it as much as we are.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: If not, we're gonna be on some corner of the internet just talking to each other.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm happy with it.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're following us, great.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: If you're not, we still love it.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's Jeremiah, and the passage reminds me of another important prophecy, which certainly Saint Paul would have known really well as a Pharisee, and that's Ezekiel 36.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: So in Ezekiel 36, the prophet describes what has come to be called the new exodus.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: The first exodus we're all familiar with, um, when Moses brought Israel out of Egyptian bondage to make them a nation in Mount Sinai.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: But as Jeremiah reminds us, and you've just just shown, as soon as God brings the tribes out of Egypt, they break the covenant by worshiping a golden calf.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: So not going very well at this point, is it?
41:39
SPEAKER_01: No, exactly.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is, I mean, we're just picking out texts here that make it really obvious, but this is throughout the whole of scripture, isn't it?
41:48
SPEAKER_01: You know.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it wasn't enough to take Israel out of Egypt.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: What the prophets try to teach God's people is that God is now going to have to take Egypt out of Israel, like in other words, the idolatry out of Israel's heart.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: But before we can take Egyptian idolatry out of Israel's heart, God has got to punish Israel for lapsing back into idolatry all over again.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: So Moses told Israel back in Sinai, if you remember, how God would do this.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
42:20
SPEAKER_01: It would be exile.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: God would exile Israel to the nations.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: Once Israel made the decision that it wanted to be like the nations instead of a holy nation.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: So God's holy name was invoked over Israel at Mount Sinai when a covenant oath was sworn, right?
42:39
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites took upon themselves God's holy name and they became God's holy family, his people, his nation.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: But they then profaned that covenant, they violated the oath, and as a consequence, they triggered the curse.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: They desecrated God's holy name, and so God had to punish them according to the curses of the oath, surely.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: That they'd sworn this oath, and so it's simple logic, isn't it?
43:05
SPEAKER_00: If I I mean, even take a silly example, like if I live in a country where murder is punishable by imprisonment and I murder, I'm gonna be imprisoned.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: One follows the other.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: So they had profaned this covenant, triggered this curse, and so the curses fall.
43:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he did punish them.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Um but more than 400 years before his wrath was visited on them, God, in his great mercy, knowing what they would do, because obviously he's God, right?
43:36
SPEAKER_01: He swore an oath by invoking his own name in Genesis 22, 16 to 18.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: So God rewarded Abraham for offering Isaac, and he said that because of what Abraham has done, he and his descendants would be blessed.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: So God actually swears an oath.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: He effectively puts himself under a curse, if you like, he invokes his own.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Holy name and unconditionally obligates himself to bring the blessing of salvation to all the nations through Abraham's seed, no matter how sinful Abraham's seed might end up becoming.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: God unconditionally bound himself to bless them and to bless all the nations through them.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: So when, hundreds and hundreds of years later, Abraham's seed plunged themselves into idolatry, violating their own covenant oath, triggering God's wrath, it didn't release God from that original promise.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, instead, he chose to bless them in spite of themselves and use them to bless other nations.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: God's mercy is programmed into the covenant at the most fundamental level, even before the law was given, knowing that when it was given, it would indeed be violated.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:54
SPEAKER_00: So God kind of said, I'll put myself under a curse first, because if I allow them to put themselves under a curse, once I do, they'll release the curse.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: And so I swear that I'll bless them and use them to bless the nations so that when they disobey, like all the other nations, I will do whatever it takes, even if it means taking upon myself their curse.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And you'd have to not be very acquainted with scripture to sort of recognise some Christological overtones there as well.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: And of course, Christ became a curse for us so that the blessing of Abraham might be released.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: And this is God's merciful plan to save Israel, his oldest son, and all the Gentiles who are his younger children.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: God uses the Israelites to bless all the other nations.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and how is God going to unify the broken tribes into one kingdom?
45:52
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of talk at the moment.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: How does he do it?
45:55
unknown: Okay.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: So we've kind of been building up to this, haven't we?
45:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: When God acts, the nations will know that he is God.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: When the second Exodus, the new Exodus, occurs, it won't just be a drawing Israel out of Egypt in a promised strip of geographical land.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: What it actually will be will be gathering all the nations into which Israel has been scattered and uniting them in into one kingdom, just like it had been in the Davidic covenant.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: So after the first Exodus, the Mosaic covenant made the 12 tribes of Israel one nation, but the Davidic covenant made the 12 tribes one kingdom, one empire ruling the other nations, but uniting the Gentiles in subjugation to Israel, so that they might learn the ways of the God of Israel.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: The Mosaic covenant was symbolized by a tabernacle, only big enough for the twelve tribes.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: The Davidic covenant was symbolized by the temple of Solomon, which was big enough for the Gentiles as well as the people of Israel.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: That's why the temple that Solomon built had room for the Gentiles, the court of the Gentiles.
47:04
SPEAKER_01: It was a place of prayer, wasn't it, for the nations, so that the nations would come to know God.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: But the kingdom of God becomes one church, one body, with room for everyone under the king.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: And we see this in Ezekiel 36, 23, which says, I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: Then the nations will know without any doubt that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I prove myself holy among you in their sight, for I will take you from the nations and gather you, gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land, and I will sprinkle clean water upon you.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: So this is the kingdom established by Christ.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: The land is the church.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: They're bringing them into the new Israel.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: And entry to this new kingdom is baptism, right?
47:57
SPEAKER_00: I will sprinkle clean water upon you.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: See, when the new covenant comes, God will write his law upon our hearts, and he will cleanse our hearts from idolatry in the way that Moses never did.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: A new heart I will give to you, and a new spirit I will put in you, and I will take out of your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Take out a heart of stone, a dead heart, and give you a heart of flesh, a pumping and a live heart.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: This is the prophecy of the valley of the dry bones in Ezekiel, isn't it?
48:29
SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm going to open your graves and bring you up from them.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing when you see it all coming together.
48:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, God doesn't just bring them back, but actually brings them back to life.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: I will open your graves and graves and raise you from your graves.
48:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll bring you home into the land of Israel.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: A corporate resurrection for the of the nation of Israel.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: Coming home is going to go, it's going to go from being covenantally dead to being covenantly alive.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
49:00
SPEAKER_00: This is crucial to understand God doing the humanly impossible, uniting millennia of division under one king and one kingdom, a new Israel.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: And for anyone still wondering, that king is Christ.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it has to be.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: No one else comes anywhere close.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: And this is Ezekiel 37.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to take the stick of Joseph, which is Ephraim's hand, and the Israelite tribes associated with him and join it to Judah's stick.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: I will make them into a single stick of wood, and they will become one in my hand.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: Hold before their eyes the sticks you have written on, and say to them, This is what the sovereign Lord says.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: There will be one king over all of them, and they will never again be two nations or be divided into two kingdoms.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: They will no longer defile themselves with their idols and vile images or with any of their offenses, but I will save them from all their suck sinful backsliding, and I will cleanse them.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: They will be my people and I will be their God.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: My servant David will be king over them, and they will have one shepherd.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: This is so profound.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: It's so profound, Mark.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: We have all these Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled in Christ, in Manuel, in Isaiah, the righteous branch of Jeremiah, the resurrection in Ezekiel, all consistently referring to the same thing, the unification of the divided Israelites under one king, so divided that they become indistinguishable from the nations across the whole world, all so that God keeps his promise to bless the descendants of Abraham, because God never fails us even though we fail him.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: So the shepherd is Christ, the suffering servant, he who makes the separated sticks of Judah and Ephraim into one, the two sticks of the cross, taking upon himself the covenant curses.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: I can as we discuss it, I can see it all being fulfilled in Christ.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: And even that figure of the cross, the two sticks, and on it he's crucified, and it's all unified in him.
51:25
SPEAKER_00: I've I'm got I'm tingling, I'm tingling.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Are you?
51:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and like you know, if you want it more visually or more sensually portrayed, you could go to the O Antigons, where you know, in Advent, couldn't you, where all of those prophecies are laid out for us, and that might make a bit more sense now if you've listened to this so far.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: So and and of course, those the Jews who the Judeans who were living at the time of Jesus came to see that, which is why it would be a little blunt, you know, it to say that like they basically, the first Christians obviously were Jews, weren't they?
52:00
SPEAKER_01: They converted to Christianity.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: And all that happened really there was that they saw that this was the long-awaited fulfillment of God keeping his promise to bless all his children, the eldest and the youngest, the Jew and the Gentile, because all are now Israel.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: The earth given to Adam and the people populating it from every corner has been blessed and returned to his care, not some ethno state 300 miles long, which excludes everyone else.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: So here we've got this unity under Christ, and unity is what we're focused on because let's not forget this is the Pope cast, and we're going to be going through the lives of the popes, lots of very interesting stories.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: But before we even get to why their lives matter or why anything they do or say matters, or the significant contributions they make variously, we need to understand why it matters at all to have a pope, one pope, um, to unify the church.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: And the tabernacle that that you mentioned earlier that was big enough for the tribes became the temple we know under David, that was big enough for all the peoples under him as king, then becomes the womb of our blessed mother who houses the divine, who who is the dwelling place, no longer the ark of the covenant, but Mary's own womb.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
53:14
SPEAKER_01: And and this is how the church has been described since the time of the apostles.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: She, the church, is our mother and our teacher.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: She's the Ark of the Covenant.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: So we have a solid now but not exhaustive set of evidence showing how Jesus Christ is the long-awaited Messiah who fulfills all the Old Testament prophecies.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: And then we have Peter and the papacy, which is not unrelated, is it?
53:42
SPEAKER_00: Just as well, really.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: We got there.
53:45
SPEAKER_01: No, Catherine, they're not unrelated, which is just as well, considering the amount of time we've spent explaining it.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: But as we've shown, Christ brings that necessary unity, and that's the same way that King David brought unity when he ruled over the kingdom.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: And it's the enemy, always the enemy, Diablos, that scatters and divides.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's Christ who brings unity, who unifies, and brings that important coherence.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the same is true of the visible church that Christ institutes.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: God didn't come to establish a thousand different denominations with different interpretations of scripture.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: He came to bring to establish one church who would be the visible structure through which he could invisibly impart grace.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: One visible church obviously needs one visible person on which to build it.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: Shall we take a look at Isaiah 22, 15 to 24?
54:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord, the Lord Almighty says.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: Go, say to this steward, to Shebna, the palace administrator, What are you doing here?
54:53
SPEAKER_00: And who gave you permission to cut out a grave for yourself here?
54:58
SPEAKER_00: Hewing your grave on the height and chiseling your resting place in the rock.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: Beware, the Lord is about to take firm hold of you and hurl your way, you mighty man.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: He will roll you up tightly like a ball and throw you into a large country.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: There you will die, and there the chariots you were so proud of will become a disgrace to your master's house.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: I will depose you from your office, and you will be ousted from your position.
55:28
SPEAKER_00: In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.
55:34
SPEAKER_00: I will clothe him with your robe and fasten your sash around him and hand your authority over to him.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: He will be a father to those who live in Jerusalem and to the people of Judah.
55:46
SPEAKER_00: I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: What he opens, no one can shut, and what he shuts, no one can open.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: I will drive him like a peg into a firm place.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: He will become a seat of honour for the house of his father.
56:05
SPEAKER_00: All the glory of his family will hang on to him, its offsprings and offshoots, all its lesser vessels, from the bowls to all the jars.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now let's have a look at Matthew 16, 18 to 19, in the light of that.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
56:30
SPEAKER_00: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: Right, quickly, let's just have a look at Revelation 3:7, Catherine.
56:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes, boss.
56:47
SPEAKER_00: And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, right, these things saith the Holy One and the true one.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: He that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and no man openeth.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: So Simon is the first disciple called by Jesus, yeah?
57:03
SPEAKER_01: As and he's by the lake fishing when he's called, because that's what his profession is.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: So if we look at John 1.42, we see that Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: What does Peter mean?
57:18
SPEAKER_00: And we see in Caesarea Philippi when Peter professes faith in Christ, this is when Christ says those words which we can see echo the words in Isaiah: Blessed are you, some Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it, and I will give you the keys to the kingdom, whatever you bind, blah, blah, blah.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: We've mentioned it before.
57:42
SPEAKER_00: We want to uh we wanted to talk about those Old Testament passages because we can see that those hopefully what we've been able to show you is those particular words, binding and loosing on this rock, are all kind of echoes, aren't they, of what we've seen foreshadowed.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Peter becomes the first, what we call Pope.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Pope is from the the Latin Papa, which is like an affectionate name for father or daddy, is like you know, daddy.
58:16
SPEAKER_01: Um so the Pope then is the representative of Christ on earth.
58:21
SPEAKER_01: He's not he's not Christ by any stretch of the imagination, and he's not the head of the church because Christ is the head of the church, but he is like the link between God and man, the bridge builder, the neck, as it were, um, not the not the man, not Bob or Simon or Nicholas or Jorge, but the the man when he is in the person of the Pope.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: It's the office that's the important thing there.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we've done a lot today, and not every episode is going to be this involved.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it was important.
58:56
SPEAKER_00: I know we're sort of laughing at the journey we've been on today, but it was important to really give that background to understand the importance of unity, I think, more than anything, because that's what that's why the papacy matters is this point of unity.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: And after all the division we've seen in the Old Testament and the mess of it, that it is um only in Christ.
59:18
SPEAKER_00: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and so on.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be set apart by Christ as the rock?
59:26
SPEAKER_00: What kind of person did Christ choose and why?
59:28
SPEAKER_00: What evidence is there for any of this?
59:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, join us next time to find out.