0:04

Hello,

0:07

welcome

0:09

to Ono, Ross, and Carrie, the show where we

0:11

don't just report on fringe science, spirituality, claims of

0:13

the paranormal, no way, we take part ourselves. Yep,

0:16

and they make the claims, we show up, so you

0:18

don't have to. I'm Ross Blotcher. And I'm Carrie

0:20

Poppy, and we are here with a book report. The end is

0:22

nigh. Nah. Or

0:24

maybe not. The end is nah. We

0:27

went to a rapture anti-protest, I don't know,

0:29

whatever you would call that back in the

0:31

day, and you had

0:33

a sign that said, the end is far. Yeah, yeah,

0:35

yeah. Which is good. The end is far away.

0:37

Yeah. And it still is, probably. But

0:40

the book we're talking about is All

0:42

the Rage. Is it? Okay,

0:44

you told me about this, I had not heard about it,

0:47

but I think I'm in the wrong circles. Well, let me

0:49

tell everybody about it. Okay, Ross is in the right

0:51

circles. Okay, so this book is

0:53

called The Great Disappearance, and

0:55

it's disappearing off of store shelves. Is

0:57

that true? Is this popular? I

1:00

had seen a trailer for this book

1:02

without realizing it was a trailer for

1:04

the book. Yes. It was

1:06

just a really slick trailer, which now

1:08

has over 5 million views on YouTube.

1:11

You sent this to me. Looks like a

1:13

movie, looks like a Christian movie. And you know

1:15

what? I would imagine a movie's

1:17

on the way, though, of course, there's

1:20

no narrative structure to this whatsoever. Yeah.

1:23

But if you turned kind of what they did in

1:25

the trailer into a movie, you know, you

1:27

might have something. Oh, man, that trailer makes

1:29

it look so much more interesting. The thumbnail

1:31

for the trailer says, The Rapture Caught

1:33

on Camera, but the title of

1:36

the video is The Great Disappearance. Okay.

1:39

When the rapture occurs, the

1:42

world will capture the moment. Cell

1:45

phones, security cameras, law

1:47

enforcement body cams, doorbell

1:49

cams, and more will

1:51

all bear video record

1:54

of the great disappearance. real

2:00

with concern from watching this strange,

2:03

mind-boggling and unbelievable video

2:05

footage that goes viral across

2:07

the globe. People

2:10

vanish before their eyes and

2:13

all caught on camera. This

2:16

event won't be science fiction,

2:18

conspiracy theory or mindless

2:20

speculation. When Christ

2:22

comes for these people, it

2:24

will be in the twinkling of an eye. Seeing

2:28

the resurrected dead and the rapture, billions

2:31

of people will exit this planet

2:33

in an instant, but

2:35

billions will be left behind. It

2:39

will be chaos on our globe, what

2:42

incredible, glorious joy in the sky.

2:46

This is the rapture, the

2:48

great disappearance. It

2:52

is vital to know what the Bible says about

2:54

this during day. The

2:56

next event on God's prosthetic agenda for

2:59

the earth. Are

3:01

you ready? Let's

3:26

talk about the rapture. Okay,

3:42

evangelical Christians have this idea

3:44

that Jesus is coming back

3:47

and he's grabbing the believers and

3:49

sucking them up into heaven before all

3:52

the real shit goes down in the

3:54

end times here on earth. Yeah, technically

3:56

all Christians believe this, but evangelicals are

3:58

the ones that are going Make

4:00

you think about it. Oh, I'm sure you

4:02

find some Christians You don't they're gonna talk

4:04

to you about it because it is baked

4:06

into the the Bible. Oh interesting I

4:08

felt not convinced that I didn't finish this

4:10

book, but the first half I was like, I'm

4:13

not even convinced This is in the Bible. Oh

4:15

it is Except okay.

4:17

All right. Well, this is a deeper

4:19

conversation that we'll get into Of course,

4:21

the word rapture is not in the

4:23

Bible, but then again neither is purgatory

4:26

neither is limbo A lot of concepts

4:28

that the church holds dear, but it

4:30

does describe Jesus coming back Jesus coming

4:32

back. Definitely Yeah, and he's got like

4:34

three major chapters he points to but

4:36

of course the book of Revelation Everybody

4:38

knows it's the forward-facing book about the

4:40

end and Jesus says behold.

4:43

I come quickly. I'm coming soon He

4:45

says it multiple times. Yeah, Jesus was

4:47

really clear about coming back and coming

4:49

back Well, the people who are still

4:51

alive right now as I'm leaving They

4:54

will still be alive when I come back right and

4:56

even the Jesus supposedly speaking for

4:58

himself and not the fever dream

5:00

Jesus of Revelation even

5:02

like the Oh Jesus Preaches

5:05

that he will return in the clouds He

5:07

did at the right hand of the father

5:09

and all of that kind of stuff and

5:11

yeah It's all very imminent one thing that

5:13

I thought when I saw that trailer is he's

5:16

taking the point of view That

5:18

it is a silent and quick

5:21

rapture Which is

5:23

confusing because I've always heard about this trumpet Oh,

5:25

okay Interesting that trumpet is what comes to

5:27

mind Well, none of those videos that are

5:29

shown in the little trailer have sound attached

5:32

to them But it says like in the blink

5:34

of an eye They're just gonna be missing and then

5:36

it shows people sort of like looking around them and

5:38

their friends are gone And then you

5:40

know, their bike is still there or whatever

5:42

It seems it's all very sudden and not

5:44

you know people looking around being like what

5:46

the fuck just happened I heard a big

5:48

loud noise and all my friends were sucked up

5:50

into heaven. It's more confusion Okay, he'll

5:52

bring up the trumpet a few times and

5:55

say some weird things about but where I

5:57

thought you were going What I kept thinking

5:59

about Is that he makes a big

6:01

deal about how during the rapture we

6:04

will we meaning Christian believers living and

6:06

dead We will all be caught up

6:08

in the air together and it talks

6:10

about ascension and being lifted up But

6:12

you have all these depictions of the rapture

6:14

happening and in the blink of an eye

6:17

People disappear and that is what you see in

6:19

this video and all these little jump scares that

6:22

are very cute Using modern

6:24

like security cameras and stuff That's

6:26

what I thought I was gonna build on it's like everyone's

6:28

ring camera just captures this Yeah, not

6:30

really a prominent part of the book

6:32

first half. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, he

6:34

does describe that but yeah Yeah, the

6:36

book is there's something different but anyways,

6:39

the the thing that really irked me

6:41

throughout the whole book and You

6:43

know all of these depictions of people just

6:46

being there one frame and gone the next

6:48

Yeah is that you have this description of

6:50

everyone being caught up in the air together

6:53

Yeah, so is it everybody rising

6:55

like a helium balloon, right? Okay,

6:57

and then clumping up somewhere in

6:59

the air and then worldwide I guess

7:01

there's multiple clumps like you got a

7:03

great over each continent I don't know

7:05

am I brought over to the East

7:07

Coast from California? Okay. Is there a

7:10

local clump? I don't know. That's that's

7:12

one thing but the disappearing is a

7:14

different thing unless you like disappear and

7:16

reappear up in the air Yeah, yeah.

7:18

Yeah, I kept getting kind of caught up on

7:20

this tonight. Everyone's getting caught up I

7:23

thought this would become more clear to me and I

7:25

gotta say it does not Yeah, I

7:27

still have no clue how he pictures

7:30

that going down But it's

7:32

kind of silly and uh, I

7:34

was I was going to talk about this later But one thing

7:36

he keeps doing in the book is quoting c.s. Lewis As

7:39

many many Christians do right? Right there

7:42

intellectual Forebear. Yeah, he's

7:45

on team Jesus and he's smart Yeah And so

7:47

a lot of people kind of defer their their

7:49

thinking to him But a lot of people don't

7:51

necessarily read him and if you read c.s. Lewis,

7:53

he says some weird stuff Why you have a

7:55

c.s. Lewis book right there. Yeah, this is one

7:58

my sister bought for me. It's called me miracles.

8:00

That's a cool cover. Yeah, and she hadn't read

8:02

it either. So I did a little book report

8:04

where I kind of pointed out, yeah, C.S. Lewis

8:06

doesn't really think about miracles the same way you

8:09

do. Thanks for this book, though. So

8:12

first of all, C.S. Lewis thinks

8:14

that miracles are incredibly rare activities

8:17

and he didn't feel he had ever

8:20

witnessed one in his lifetime. Okay, yeah.

8:22

So, okay. Yeah, but referring to this

8:24

whole getting caught up in the air

8:26

resurrection thing, he was talking about Jesus

8:29

ascending because there's this whole scene. Jesus

8:32

dies, he comes back, he's got this

8:34

new resurrected body for some reason it

8:36

still has wounds in it. And then

8:38

after he spends a few days hanging

8:40

out, he goes back to heaven and he

8:42

ascends. Yeah. It says eventually like some clouds cover

8:44

him up. So, you know, the disciples are all

8:46

there watching him. All of a sudden clouds get

8:49

in the way and you have to wonder like,

8:51

well then what? Does he ascend

8:53

to like Superman speed or like does

8:55

he go plaid and like shoot off

8:57

into space? The stage door has

9:00

closed and we don't know. Or does he disappear?

9:02

Is heaven in the cloud somewhere?

9:04

Right. Obviously our vision of the

9:06

universe has expanded a bit. Right, whoever

9:09

wrote down clouds at the time was like,

9:11

white stuff in the air. So, C.S.

9:13

Lewis, to his credit, he realized that this

9:16

is an issue. Okay, what year

9:18

are we reading from here? 1947. Okay, okay.

9:20

Almost 80 years ago. For

9:24

here, surely, we get the implication

9:26

of all those primitive crudities to

9:28

which I have said that Christians

9:30

are not committed. The vertical ascent

9:33

like a balloon, the local heaven,

9:35

the decorated chair to the right

9:37

of the Father's throne. Quote,

9:39

he was caught up into the sky,

9:41

says Mark's gospel, and sat down at

9:44

the right hand of God. He

9:46

was lifted up, says the author of Acts,

9:48

and a cloud cut him off from their

9:50

sight. It is true that if we wish

9:52

to get rid of these embarrassing passages, we

9:54

have the means to do so. The

9:57

Markan one probably formed no part of

9:59

the earliest text of St. Mark's

10:01

Gospel, and you may add that the

10:03

Ascension, though constantly implied throughout the New

10:06

Testament, is described only in these two

10:08

places. Can we then simply drop

10:10

the Ascension story? The answer is

10:12

that we can do so only if

10:14

we regard the resurrection appearances as those

10:16

of a ghost or hallucination. For a

10:19

phantom can just fade away, but an

10:21

objective entity must go somewhere, something

10:23

must happen to it, and if

10:25

the risen body were not objective, then all

10:27

of us, Christian or not, must invent some

10:30

explanation for the disappearance of the corpse. So

10:33

anyways, I just think it's hilarious that

10:35

he refers to it as an embarrassing

10:37

passage and tries to

10:39

think, well, you know, this part of Mark

10:42

wasn't original, so maybe it's just an interpolation,

10:44

but C.S. Lewis didn't like it. He didn't

10:46

like the idea of Jesus just floating up

10:48

into the air like a balloon. And

10:51

allowing for error in the Bible. Exactly.

10:53

Yeah, yeah. That's a big move. Yeah,

10:55

guess what? I agree with all y'all

10:58

on a lot of things. He was a

11:00

smart guy, but he made a lot of

11:02

bad analogies. I'll just say that. What's the

11:04

C.S. for? Clive Staples. Clive

11:07

Staples. Yeah, it's pretty

11:09

good. Why not? Wow. Why

11:12

not just read that out every time? Yeah, that's a

11:14

good name. But everybody called him Jack. C.S. Lewis.

11:17

Oh, really? Yeah, that

11:19

was his nickname. It's weird. Anyways,

11:21

there will be a lot of C.S. Lewis quoting in this book.

11:24

But like I said, I didn't know that

11:26

this trailer was for a book. I

11:29

didn't know what I was expecting. Yeah, it seems like

11:31

a movie. It seems like I'm going to

11:33

go see this on 2B and convince me

11:35

that Jesus wants me to

11:37

take him as my Lord and Savior. Yep.

11:40

And of course, that is always the real

11:42

point. Yes, yes, exactly. That's why we're here.

11:44

I was going to say that. So Ross and I both

11:46

bought copies of this book because

11:49

we are the target audience. It's

11:52

one of those, you know, you're reading it

11:54

thinking like, well, who's reading

11:56

this? Who doesn't agree with you? And

11:59

then I realized, well, me. I'm the one

12:01

reading it who doesn't agree with you. But for the most part,

12:03

when he gets to the parts where he's

12:05

telling me to accept Jesus, I'm like, Come

12:07

on, 95% of your readership is

12:10

already on board with you. Yeah, not

12:12

more. And if they're not, they're reading this

12:15

for some other reason, but they're probably aware

12:17

of the option. Yeah, they're not like, Oh,

12:19

what's this? But it's what's this now Jesus

12:21

died for my sins. It's a switch you

12:24

can't turn off when you're an evangelical. I

12:26

was reminded of that Noah's Ark too. Because

12:28

yeah, they had that multiple times you're confronted

12:30

with the salvation message from Ray Comfort from

12:33

this whole section on the third floor that

12:35

has like this walkthrough comic book. That's

12:37

all about getting you to accept Jesus, because

12:40

yeah, that's why the Ark is there. Not

12:42

just to make these points

12:44

about history. They want

12:46

you to accept Jesus. And

12:48

that's what this book wants. So what brought this

12:50

back to the four in my

12:52

mind was an email from listener Anna Siftar.

12:55

She says that she works at a bookstore.

12:57

And just the day that she wrote us,

12:59

she said that she had received a call

13:01

from a man who ordered the book The

13:04

Great Disappearance and was wondering why it had

13:06

not yet arrived. It disappeared. So she looks

13:08

at the ordering website and sees that there's

13:10

hundreds of copies backordered, even though this

13:12

thing comes from Harper Collins. That's how

13:14

it demanded. Yeah, okay. Yeah. And she

13:16

said, Yeah, I'm sorry, it might be

13:19

on backorder until early December. And he

13:21

said, you know why this is a

13:23

problem, right? And the rapture is going

13:25

to occur soon. And I might not

13:27

be here when the book arrives. Okay,

13:30

so I guess I guess he's worried

13:32

that he won't be prepared because the

13:34

subtitle of The Great Disappearance is 31

13:36

Ways to be Rapture Ready. Okay, so

13:38

maybe he feels he's only ready in

13:41

three ways. I don't know. I wonder if

13:43

he even is really that worried. Yeah,

13:46

I don't know. She didn't mention any sense of

13:48

like it being tongue in cheek or anything like that.

13:50

Well, I mean, I bet he's trying to motivate her.

13:52

Oh, right. Just using this

13:54

as I need this book faster. Yeah. And so

13:56

do you actually know that we think about it.

13:58

She didn't know. anything about this

14:00

so she asked him, oh is there like a

14:02

date attached? Did you guys set a

14:05

date? And he said something to

14:07

the effect of, no but it's coming. It could happen

14:09

at any time. Oh okay. Well

14:11

you send us that Save the Date when he sets it.

14:14

And she said, well if the rapture happens before

14:17

you get the book, you haven't paid for it

14:19

yet so we would be able to just return

14:21

it, no problem. So that was hilarious to me

14:23

and I went to look this up and

14:26

on Amazon it was listed number

14:28

one in Christian prophecies,

14:32

small pond, number one in Christian

14:34

eschatology, number one in

14:37

Christian spiritual warfare. Okay,

14:39

wow that's a category, wow.

14:41

Yeah and each of those it would have

14:43

like multiple places because there would also be

14:45

the audiobook which would also be in the

14:48

high costumes and other versions. But overall it

14:51

is currently right now number 16 on

14:53

Amazon's most sold non-fiction list. Oh

14:56

wow, okay. Yeah big deal and

14:58

that's down from its peak. The

15:00

week of November 5th it was

15:03

number six selling non-fiction

15:05

on Amazon. So

15:07

this is a big deal. This has been selling

15:09

a lot. And when I was there looking

15:12

at the current list it was just two

15:14

places under the body keeps the score. Okay

15:16

I was waiting for this. Yeah okay. Which

15:18

has been on that list for 158 weeks.

15:22

Yep. Okay I figured you'd be intimately familiar with

15:24

that. But going back to

15:26

the great disappearance it's also just number

15:28

38 in books overall. All books. Wow.

15:32

Yeah this is big. So if you

15:34

go to your I don't know grandma's

15:36

house or your aunt's here's a good

15:39

chance you're gonna see this

15:41

blue sky with clouds

15:43

and an annular ring around the

15:45

moon. It looks so much

15:47

like something that belongs in clearance at

15:49

Borders. You buy

15:52

this while you're standing in line behind 25

15:54

people and then you're like oh you know what we

15:57

didn't get anything for Christine. down

16:00

and that's there and you're like, Christine's Christian, let's go

16:02

to this. As long as it's

16:04

not on back order. Yeah, so this

16:06

guy who wrote it, Dr. David Jeremiah.

16:09

Yes, Dr. D. Okay,

16:12

so already we have this, to

16:14

me, kind of forgettable name, because

16:16

it's just like two common biblical

16:18

names. David Jeremiah, guess what his

16:20

middle name is? Uh-oh. Think of

16:22

the biggest troublemaker in all of

16:24

Christianity. Pontius Pilate? I'm thinking

16:27

of them as a troublemaker. Paul? His

16:30

middle name is Paul, that's also my dad's name,

16:32

but Dr. David Paul Jeremiah, his

16:34

son is David Michael Jeremiah. Oh

16:36

goodness. Bible names for everybody. Okay.

16:39

And guess where the doctorate comes

16:41

from? Oh, I looked this up,

16:43

it's a theological school, right? Yeah, but it was an

16:45

honorary doctorate from where he

16:48

got his bachelor's degree. Okay.

16:50

A Baptist college in Ohio.

16:52

Ooh, okay, honorary doctorate from a

16:54

Baptist college. I don't know, how is that?

16:56

Like if you get an honorary doctorate, do

16:59

you put doctor in your title on a

17:01

book? I know, I know people do it.

17:03

That would feel dishonest to me. I know,

17:05

I know, I'd feel kind of strange about

17:07

it too, but there are people who do

17:09

it. Okay. I don't know, I mean I guess. I

17:11

don't have strong feelings. Yeah, I don't have strong feelings either, but

17:14

I do think it is a funny

17:16

move to do it when it's an

17:18

honorary doctorate from a Bible college. Now

17:20

we are. Yeah. Twice

17:22

in questionable territory. Fair.

17:25

He did get his master's in theology from,

17:27

and he'll mention this in the book, Dallas

17:30

Theological Seminary. That becomes

17:32

relevant. And he is now senior

17:34

pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church

17:36

in El Cajon. El Cajon, shout

17:38

out to my friends, the Igwios. Yeah, and

17:41

I think I recall him saying

17:43

in the book that he inherited

17:45

that position as the senior pastor

17:47

there from Tim LaHaye. Yes, yeah,

17:49

that was my introduction. Like one

17:52

of the authors of that whole

17:54

left behind series. A popular

17:56

Christian paperback series about the rapture.

17:58

I probably said this on the podcast before. but

18:00

I always wanted to make a, I don't know, spoof

18:02

or follow-up to Left Behind called The Other Cheek. Carrie's

18:06

thinking about it. So is it like... Okay,

18:11

so there's the left side of here behind

18:13

and then there's the other side. The

18:15

other cheek. Yeah, another biblical reference. I'm

18:17

proud of myself. I just

18:19

had to follow it, I had to follow it. Okay,

18:22

yeah, the forward is really where

18:24

all the action is in this book,

18:26

right? A lot's going on. Boy, there's

18:29

nothing new under the sun with this

18:31

guy. This book is just about the

18:33

rap shh. I don't know

18:35

what I expected, but I just expected some

18:37

new take. And he's just like, Jesus

18:39

is coming back. It's going to be how you

18:41

always thought it was. I'm like, 100 pages

18:44

in, I'm like, what? That's fair,

18:46

because it's rehash. And

18:48

he has some insights that I thought,

18:50

oh, I'd never heard that before, or

18:52

that's slightly different take. But for the

18:55

most part, this is just warmed over,

18:57

beliefs about the rapture. No reason for

18:59

the guy calling the bookstore to be

19:01

like super concerned that he didn't get

19:03

this new information that has suddenly arisen

19:05

about the rapture and Jesus's return and

19:08

us all getting caught up in the

19:10

air. And by the way, it's not

19:12

31 ways to be rapture ready. It's

19:14

31 chapters long. Ah,

19:17

I don't know why people do that. Act like

19:19

something's illistical when it isn't. This is

19:21

kind of an industry for this guy. So

19:23

I was looking at other books he's written.

19:25

2022, remember that year? Yes.

19:29

He wrote the book After the

19:31

Rapture, An End Times Guide to Survival.

19:33

Oh, wow. Okay. And then

19:36

he like immediately got started on this.

19:38

Right. But that same year, 2022, he

19:40

also wrote The World of the End,

19:42

How Jesus's Prophecy Shapes Our Priorities. Oh,

19:45

no. 2021,

19:47

he wrote Where Do We Go From

19:49

Here? Oh, no. How Tomorrow's Prophecies Foreshadow

19:51

Today's Problems. Oh, no. He

19:53

wrote another book. I think this one was

19:55

2020, The Handwriting on the Wall, Secrets from

19:57

the Prophecies of Daniel. And in 2019, he

20:00

wrote, the book of signs, 31 undeniable

20:04

prophecies of the apocalypse.

20:06

God. Like, dude, you're

20:09

just, I mean, I haven't read those, but

20:11

I'm pretty sure he's just kind of recapitulating

20:13

the same things over and over, slightly new

20:15

dressing. And he's got

20:17

this fancy church and clearly this

20:19

whole media empire, he runs Turning

20:21

Point, radio and television. He's

20:24

obviously got some great designers, you know, that

20:26

they can make this trailer and everything like

20:29

that. He's just got a good apparatus for

20:31

turning out all these books on the end

20:33

times that sit on your aunt's shelf. Yeah,

20:36

very much. I mean,

20:38

it's not quite Elrond Hubbard level or anything,

20:40

but it gives me that feeling of like,

20:42

sort of manic, constant writing. Oh, yeah. You

20:45

know, why do you write like you're running

20:47

out of time? And with certain people

20:49

like Isaac Asimov, it's like, how can you possibly

20:51

do this? Be researching so much and thinking so

20:53

deeply that you turn out so many books. And

20:55

then people like this, I just think, oh. Oh,

20:58

that's out. You have a different conception of a

21:00

book. And that's why you can write 20 books.

21:02

And I haven't written one. Yes, I can't

21:04

remember who this was. But someone was talking about

21:07

how he wrote his book. And he was like,

21:09

I just got on a plane. And I just

21:11

wrote the whole time. I wrote the

21:13

entire way there. And I wrote the entire way back. You

21:15

just have to make yourself do it. And I was like,

21:18

Oh, so a book's not something important to you.

21:20

Yeah, you don't mind wasting other people's time. I've

21:22

been writing a book for 10 hours a day

21:24

for three years. Oh, man. Yeah,

21:29

books mean different things to different people. Yeah, yeah,

21:31

yeah. But OK, I'll get on

21:33

a plane. And

21:36

shit one out. OK,

21:40

yeah, this forward is so dense. Can I

21:42

tell you a couple of things I noticed

21:45

about it? Yeah. OK, I love that he

21:47

connects himself to Hal Lindsey. So there

21:49

was this writer named

21:51

Hal Lindsey, who famously in 1970

21:54

wrote this book where

21:57

he was like, the world's going to end by 1990, probably. 1988

22:01

but 1990 at the latest we

22:03

are peaced out of here. Yeah, he made

22:05

it pretty clear that the world would be

22:07

done with before December 31st 1988

22:10

yeah, and then there was like some point where he

22:12

actually said well by 1990 at the least that

22:16

the latest of course what always happens

22:18

the date creep because Jesus

22:20

doesn't show up right he doesn't come back and

22:22

then by the time you've done that twice people are like ah

22:25

Three strikes you out. Yeah. Yeah, sorry

22:28

Harold camping exactly So late

22:30

great planet earth famously a failed

22:32

prophecy and this guy this

22:35

writer David Jeremiah evokes

22:37

How Lindsay and says well, you

22:39

know, I've worked with the same

22:41

brilliant minds that house worked with

22:43

because I use the same ghost

22:46

writer Carol Carlson she co-writes

22:48

with me and that connects me to him

22:50

I was like why first of all, this

22:52

is a weak connection, but second why

22:54

do you want to be connected with him? Right

22:58

You'll be embarrassed that you went

23:00

to the same school and have

23:02

so many close connections to this

23:04

guy that was obviously wrong Yeah,

23:07

why are you so proud of this? But

23:09

he talks about how much that book sold

23:11

without mentioning like also the book was wrong

23:13

and now everyone makes fun of it Right.

23:16

He just says this book brought the

23:18

message of biblical prophecy into everyday conversation

23:21

Ah Rachel

23:24

dole is all brought like race into

23:26

every day conversation Well

23:29

true. Yeah, she was the woman who said

23:31

she was black. Yeah, she was. Yeah. Yeah,

23:33

okay But Carol Carlson who

23:35

co-wrote late great planet earth

23:38

and had written previous books with their

23:40

David Jeremiah I was like, oh she

23:42

sounds like the secret sauce who she

23:45

yeah the tide that binds Yeah,

23:47

so I bought his other book that

23:49

he co-wrote with her invasion of other

23:51

gods the seduction of New Age spirituality

23:54

You showed this to me. It looks it

23:56

looks pretty ripe. Yeah, so I've got

23:58

that here and then I also looked into

24:00

her just a tiny bit and found that

24:03

Carol Carlson in 1992 appears to

24:05

have faked her own kidnapping. Oh just

24:07

like Amy Semple McPherson. Yes and

24:11

the founder of the fourth square church. And

24:13

Agatha Christie for 11 days faked

24:15

amnesia. I didn't know that. Yeah

24:17

and disappeared and yeah faked the whole story.

24:21

Yeah yeah I mean it's not you know

24:23

there's there's still speculation about whether she actually

24:25

faked it or not. Yeah there's a pretty

24:27

pretty fun article from 2004 in

24:30

the Des Moines Register about her. I like when

24:32

he mentions her and I think her husband Ward

24:34

he says they have graduated

24:36

into the presence of the Lord. There's

24:38

quite a euphemism for death. Yeah also

24:40

she and her

24:42

husband Ward had been divorced for like

24:44

20 odd years or something. Whoa! That

24:47

sentence is kind of misleading. There's so

24:49

many little things just left out. Yeah

24:51

and I kept waiting for the shoe to

24:54

drop for him to just kind of realize

24:56

the irony of him referring to all of

24:58

these people of the past who spoke of

25:00

God's imminent return. And like yeah but

25:02

they live their whole lives eagerly awaiting

25:04

this and nothing ever happened so it

25:07

was kind of a waste wasn't it?

25:09

Right right right. And I guess I

25:11

guess the implication here is that well

25:13

you need to live like Jesus is

25:15

coming back at any moment and that

25:17

will give you the proper attitude for

25:19

life. But I mean all that hand-wringing

25:21

and I don't know maybe some focus

25:23

could have been elsewhere like making the

25:26

planet better for future generations. Totally and

25:28

my god it's been this guy's like

25:30

singular obsession you know. Clearly. All the

25:32

books that he wrote and then I

25:34

think he actually says somewhere near the

25:36

beginning says like this is bit oh

25:38

here it is. For most

25:40

of my life I've been thinking about

25:42

this very day the predicted moment when

25:44

Jesus will re-enter Earth's atmosphere for his church.

25:47

The reason I'm asking you to imagine it is

25:49

because I've been doing the same for decades.

25:51

It's hard to get your head around the

25:53

pandemonium that will engulf our planet when Jesus

25:55

fulfills his promise to come for his people.

25:57

So I'm just picturing just sitting there just like

26:00

doing you know like hmm, I don't know

26:02

if it's like he's keeping himself motivated or

26:04

he's reassuring himself cuz I would start to

26:07

Panic after a while writing all these books

26:09

and realizing I'm wrong Like maybe

26:11

you get into kind of like a little mental loop

26:13

of like no, no, he's coming back. He's coming back

26:15

He's coming back. Maybe I mean he seems

26:17

cool as a cucumber when you hear

26:20

him give a sermon. Oh, really? Yeah,

26:22

okay He's very grandfatherly. He's 82 years

26:24

old now. Oh, okay going

26:26

strong still preaching all the time with his little

26:28

media Empire Did you know

26:30

that his TV show seems

26:33

to be syndicated pretty far? Hey, I

26:35

know it has a big reach I don't know how big

26:37

I saw it running in Oakland's and we established

26:39

a son in San Diego unless he moved around

26:42

But to your point I noticed that he

26:44

was talking about the Left Behind series and

26:46

he said now There's a new movie coming

26:49

out 20 years after the original. It's like

26:51

don't you get the irony? Don't

26:53

you get it? 20 years at best but

26:55

still no Jesus Touché and

26:58

every now and then he's had a lot

27:00

of time obviously to think about how to

27:02

phrase these things And he seems to be

27:04

very good at making this feel immediate for

27:06

the audience And I thought it was very

27:08

sweet how he opened that Introduction you and

27:10

I are privileged to stand on the cresting

27:12

waves of prophecy To live

27:15

in a time closer to the return

27:17

of Jesus Christ than any other generation

27:19

in the history of the world We

27:21

see the signs of the times. We

27:23

know the world is reaching a climactic

27:25

point of unparalleled crisis Wow,

27:27

yeah, damn one of my favorite books to

27:30

recommend to people on this topic is A

27:32

History of the End of the World By

27:34

Jonathan Kirsch and he just goes through major

27:37

points in history Of course, it's been constant

27:39

since the time of Jesus that people have

27:41

thought that the world is about ten including

27:43

people at the time of Jesus And

27:46

just one by one, you know, they build

27:48

up a bunch of followers. You have like

27:50

the Miller rights that followed William Miller He

27:53

did the same like date postponing and out

27:55

of him We got the Seventh-day Adventist and

27:57

we got the Jehovah's Witnesses as an

27:59

offsho- And then you

28:01

have the latter-day saints. Keith

28:03

Green had last day's ministries. You know, they

28:05

keep setting up these things where, oh yeah,

28:07

we're the last generation. And it's gonna be

28:10

any moment. I remember as a child, we

28:12

thought it was happening any day. Yep. I

28:14

remember my college boyfriend feeling this very strongly,

28:16

just saying, well, I've just always known my

28:18

whole life that Jesus is coming back in

28:20

my lifetime. My mother-in-law still, like

28:22

every now and then, you'll remind her,

28:24

you said that you weren't gonna die.

28:27

You were gonna go in the rapture. She'll be like,

28:29

oh yeah, that's true. Meanwhile, she's

28:31

making corporations. I'm on it. I'm

28:33

on it. She's getting older. So, you know, there's the

28:35

thought about burial and all of that. But wait, you

28:38

said you're definitely going in the rapture. Did you bring

28:40

this up when she's talking about her burial? No. Okay.

28:43

Smart. I'm not a jerk. He

28:46

makes some interesting points, and I didn't try to

28:48

fact-check him on this, because this is a strange thing

28:51

to say. But he'll

28:53

make statements like, 27% of

28:55

the Bible concerns itself with

28:58

prophecy. 27%. It's a lot. Is

29:00

that right? Yeah, over a quarter.

29:02

It's hot. Well, that's

29:04

how you define it. Like,

29:07

he feels that certain

29:09

passages in the first chapters of Genesis

29:11

talking about Adam and Eve are already

29:13

laying out the plan of salvation. So

29:17

this, I think, is a very

29:19

loose strain. A strain with a

29:21

large mesh that lets a lot of things through.

29:24

Yeah. He's like, I could make an argument for 100%, but

29:26

that sounds too high. Pull

29:29

it back. Yeah. 27 is

29:31

a lot, but still a minority. He

29:34

doesn't tell us how he arrived at that number, but it's a big

29:36

one. So a major part of the

29:39

theology here is that Christians will

29:41

get a new, permanent, perfect body

29:43

when they're called home by Jesus.

29:47

He mentions in here a few times that

29:49

if you have a disability, that's going to be

29:51

restored. If you're old, you're going to be young again.

29:54

Oh, yeah. There's always this assumption of like, well,

29:56

we all know what the perfect body would be.

29:59

So it's going to be good. you're gonna be going back

30:01

to that. Yeah, and this is one

30:03

of those things that I think about that

30:05

gets on my nerves, but I don't think it

30:07

bothers Christians much. But you know, if you die

30:09

when you're 12, well then are

30:11

you 12 forever in the afterlife? Right, right. If you

30:13

die when you're 90, we all assume

30:16

that you go back to your body of

30:18

your 20s. Yeah, and what if

30:20

you're Dick Van Dyke and you're like, 90 was great

30:22

and I was an alcoholic in my 20s. Yeah.

30:24

What happens then? Good point. What

30:27

happens then? Well, and you said

30:29

people who have disabilities, he's

30:31

got a little special section where he talks

30:33

about whether they get raptured or not, or

30:35

whether when they die, if they're assured

30:38

of their heavenly destination. Oh,

30:41

right. And so he believes, you know,

30:43

if you never had that ability to

30:45

make the decision, yeah, it's automatic. And

30:47

so he says that for children. Children.

30:49

Right, and he doesn't give us like

30:51

an age of accountability or anything. Right,

30:53

but he says, he basically makes

30:55

the argument that if God is loving,

30:57

he would have to excuse children because

30:59

God isn't just some jerk. I'm like,

31:02

okay, but the rest of your book, you've

31:04

been arguing from scripture. And

31:06

then this is just purely my

31:09

subjective opinion of God's morality. Right,

31:11

and be like, you know, I mean, I don't

31:13

want to go Richard Dawkins on everybody, but like

31:15

I've read the Bible, it's not a nice God.

31:17

Like, come on. Yeah. Come on.

31:19

And he'll tell the story about Jesus saying,

31:22

suffer the children to come unto me. See,

31:25

he loved children, so there's no way he would let

31:27

them die. Yeah. And when I

31:29

was on the website, I noticed that there

31:31

was a PDF that you could download. Will

31:33

babies go to heaven? Oh, look at that, there's

31:36

a baby on it. So I gave them my

31:38

email address, and now I get a daily

31:40

email from Dr. David Jeremiah, and I get

31:42

a daily email that's kind of a little

31:44

mini devotional from Turning Point Ministries, thanks

31:47

to downloading this PDF. But all of

31:49

this info is in the book. He

31:51

makes all the same arguments. Oh, okay.

31:53

So is the argument just basically like, of course

31:56

God wouldn't let this happen. Yeah, because

31:58

of God's loving kindness. Great. I

32:00

also learned that if you have an abortion, okay, if

32:03

you have an abortion when you get to heaven You

32:06

have to meet the Jesus is good

32:08

news You have to meet and take

32:11

care of the kid like that becomes

32:13

your child. Uh-huh awkward Again,

32:15

just something he's totally Intuitive his way

32:17

into yeah. Yeah, there's no scripture reference

32:20

for that So like what an awkward

32:22

encounter but I mean the way he's

32:24

saying it if you really believe that

32:26

that any fetus that is aborted Automatically

32:29

gets entrance into heaven. That's kind of

32:31

the best thing you can do right?

32:33

It's an argument for abortion, right? What

32:35

yeah, what are you? Yeah, what what?

32:39

Yeah, like why even make

32:42

children like if children

32:44

are already in heaven and heaven is the best place

32:46

But you send them down to earth and now they

32:48

can get help Why don't you just keep them up

32:50

there part of me thinking? Well, I'm glad

32:52

you don't really think that. Mm-hmm. Yeah

32:54

Oh, yeah, it's so confusing Yeah

32:56

mixed messages at least. Oh, yeah, you mean

32:59

like they might like pull a king Herod

33:01

and like kill toddlers or something, right?

33:03

Oh, right. I'm not sure about their

33:05

kid. He seems really selfish No, yeah

33:07

before he has agency and he

33:09

would yeah this way he'll be hell certain to go

33:12

to heaven Oh good point good point. I

33:14

mean, it's one of those times. I think well, I'm glad

33:16

you don't actually believe that Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

33:18

that's um, that's a good dystopia

33:20

movie It's just kind of like with doing

33:22

missionary work you go out and you tell

33:24

people about Jesus because not everybody's heard about

33:27

Jesus but Depending

33:29

on how you handle these issues like before

33:31

they hear about Jesus They're just subject to

33:33

like whether they kind of lived a good

33:35

life or not Right, right the things that

33:37

you would hope a God would judge these

33:39

things on and now you've gone to their

33:41

wherever and you've told them about Jesus and

33:43

now they're subject to being Cast

33:46

away from God's presence forever where the

33:48

worm diet not because they rejected that

33:50

but it's good news So

33:53

I don't know but I know it's kind of bad

33:55

news when the men missionary shows up because you're like

33:57

lowering everybody's chances of getting

34:00

Right? You're

34:04

objectively gonna have fewer people enter the kingdom

34:06

of heaven. Anyways. Yeah,

34:08

no you're right. One thing he talks about a

34:10

lot is imminence, the doctrine of

34:12

imminence of Christ's return. Oh right. That's just another

34:15

way of saying it could be any moment now

34:17

you just always need to be ready. Every moment

34:19

of your life think about it all the time.

34:22

Yeah, he also... Instead of more

34:24

productive things. He

34:26

also knows that people have said

34:28

Jesus's imminent return before and then

34:30

it hasn't been so quick. He

34:32

makes the point that well technically

34:34

imminent just means you fulfilled all

34:36

of the prerequisites so it can

34:38

be any second now. Does that

34:41

mean now? No. It could mean

34:43

in 5,000 years but everything that

34:45

needs to happen has happened. Yeah,

34:48

this was an interesting take that I

34:50

felt was something I hadn't quite heard

34:52

put this way before. That there are

34:55

no signs of the rapture. The rapture

34:57

is like you said everything's been fulfilled

34:59

that would lead up to the rapture

35:01

happening but he has this structure where

35:04

you first have the rapture and all

35:06

of the believers both living and dead

35:08

are caught up and taken away from

35:10

earth then you go into the seven-year

35:12

period called the tribulation. Yeah. And everything

35:15

will be horrible. The worst you can

35:17

imagine and he says that

35:19

the signs that get interpreted like

35:21

the wars and rumors of wars

35:23

and earthquakes and you know all

35:25

of these things that people associate

35:27

with the end times those are

35:29

predictions of the tribulation not the

35:32

rapture. Clever,

35:34

clever. So all the Christians

35:36

will get sucked up and then there will be some

35:38

earthquakes? Lots of earthquakes, lots of

35:40

wars and rumors of wars and you

35:42

know all this bad stuff with the

35:44

Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast

35:46

and all of that. Now this is

35:48

a particular thing called the pre-tribulation rapture

35:51

and some Christians believe in the

35:53

post tribulation. Not many that I know

35:56

I'm not even sure really there's a

35:58

specific denomination that's post But

36:01

I feel like everyone I've interacted with, all

36:03

the Left Behind series and the Thief in

36:05

the Night and all these other pieces of

36:07

media all seem to be pre-tribulation. God

36:09

takes his flock away, and that's

36:11

a promise of avoiding this

36:14

horrible time for that small sliver of

36:16

believers who happen to be alive at

36:18

that moment. And there is so much

36:20

ink spilled in this book about that moment. Yes.

36:23

And how much bedlam there will be

36:25

on earth, how everyone who's

36:28

left is just going to be

36:30

totally asunder trying to figure out

36:32

what happened to their loved ones.

36:34

Right, and he keeps talking about how this will be

36:36

the greatest mystery of all

36:39

time. Yeah, what? There was a huge

36:41

trumpet noise. Like everyone is going to

36:43

be confused. What happened? Oh my goodness. And

36:45

I'm sure you all have plenty to say

36:48

about this too, but he starts out his

36:50

chapters with these really bad little pastor stories

36:52

or anecdotes that are so loosely tied to

36:55

the point of the actual chapter, which

36:58

is just a chapter not a way to be

37:00

rapture ready. And one

37:02

of them was about Agatha Christie, and

37:04

she was such a prolific mystery author.

37:08

But when you think about it, the

37:11

Bible is the greatest

37:13

mystery novel of all time. All

37:15

time, oh my God. And so

37:17

he's such cheap analysis. Absolutely.

37:19

And it's so pastorly. It's like what

37:22

you expect of pastor stories. The names

37:24

of the innocent have been redacted. No,

37:26

the names of everyone have been redacted

37:29

because it's not about anybody. It's

37:31

clearly made up people. Or

37:33

church people do this too, repeat some story

37:35

that someone else told on the dais that

37:38

you're like, oh, that was just perfect. And

37:40

then- That illustrates the point perfectly. Now

37:42

I have to tell Carrie exactly who said

37:44

this. Oh, Anne Janine from Minnesota has a

37:47

story where she sat on a plane next

37:49

to a guy and it turned out he

37:51

was a firefighter. I'm like, oh my God,

37:53

I don't care. But

37:56

the thing that really bugged me about that was

37:58

if this happened, let's say tomorrow everybody

38:00

just for a good chunk of people

38:02

disappear he says millions or billions of

38:05

people disappear I think we're

38:07

gonna figure out what happened we're all gonna

38:09

be like oh wow the rapture really happened

38:11

okay you know I take it all back

38:13

I'm sorry yeah y'all hear that

38:15

huge trumpet y'all see your friends

38:17

bodies briefly flying to the sky

38:20

yeah either flying to the sky or just disappearing or

38:22

disappearing and then somehow reappearing up in the sky I

38:24

don't know it's hazy they don't really explain it well

38:27

yeah that's what I kept thinking I

38:29

was like there wouldn't be mass confusion

38:32

it would we would immediately know

38:34

what happened every headline immediately would

38:36

be like ah turns out the rapture is

38:38

real boy we all suck we're still here

38:41

and and so many people would still be

38:43

on earth who had Christian viewpoints but didn't

38:45

like walk the Christian walk or whatever right

38:47

they're supposed to be billions without so they'd

38:50

all be like oh yeah you know

38:52

what you guys should have listened to church but that

38:54

would be everywhere in that trailer you

38:56

see people in church some of the

38:58

people are still there and it's to

39:00

make the point yeah not all quote-unquote

39:03

Christians will be raptured yeah you'll have

39:05

some people still sitting in the pews

39:07

because they didn't have the right walk

39:09

with God yep don't be that

39:12

person it's not like they're gonna

39:14

wonder oh my goodness it's so weird

39:16

what happened right no there's tons of

39:18

people who know exactly what this plot

39:20

is and we've heard from many

39:22

people who were freaked out at some point in

39:24

their lives and I know people who've been freaked

39:27

out at some point in their lives because their

39:29

parents went out and didn't mention it or left

39:31

their clothes sitting somewhere and

39:33

they're convinced I miss the rapture oh

39:36

my god oh I've seen so

39:38

many stories like this really yeah yeah

39:40

it makes sense there's people yeah

39:42

no it's just like I wasn't

39:44

young enough believing in the rapture to put

39:47

this together yeah I don't have any instance

39:49

like that in my life where I didn't

39:51

see other people and recall being like freaked

39:53

out the raptured happened and that I'd missed

39:55

it but there are situations that could have

39:57

made me think that way yeah yeah oh

39:59

yeah That makes if you're told this is how it'll go.

40:01

Yeah, and probably in your lifetime He

40:04

sets up some questions that he refers to

40:06

as very practical questions such as will children

40:09

be raptured We've already answered that what will

40:11

happen to our bodies at the moment of

40:13

resurrection What will our

40:15

glorified bodies be like will we know

40:17

each other after the resurrection? What will

40:19

happen in the days and years immediately

40:21

after we're raptured what will happen to

40:23

us? Well those left behind still have

40:26

an opportunity to receive Christ as their

40:28

Savior So I had some additional questions

40:30

one was how about when is a

40:32

prophecy not fulfilled? How

40:34

long? Yeah, that

40:36

doesn't come up. He doesn't talk about falsifiability

40:39

But of course that is the hallmark of

40:41

this whole setup, right? Right There's no point

40:43

at which you can say well guess it

40:45

didn't happen. Let's move on right and sometimes

40:48

I think like how far in the future

40:50

Will there still be like a remnant of Christians

40:53

around or like any minute now for sure in

40:55

10,000 AD? I

40:57

bet if there are humans around they're still

40:59

talking about Jesus. Yeah I just I feel

41:01

like at some point you'll have this future

41:03

where it's just a small priestly class

41:05

or something so much fear of death

41:08

In here I know that won't surprise anyone but

41:10

just so many times that I just wrote

41:12

fear of death and the interesting

41:14

The margin cuz nominally they shouldn't

41:16

be right if this

41:18

is all assured. Oh man talking

41:21

about Overwriting there is a chapter

41:24

where he's like the

41:26

rapture is mentioned three times in the Bible.

41:28

Why three? Sure,

41:30

and then for like let's drag this

41:32

out. He's like, you

41:34

know, it's a magical number in storytelling

41:37

Where you set up to the rule of threes?

41:43

Which was ironically the third chapter Oh

41:49

Okay, yes eat page 74 he

41:51

says zap no more quarterback meaning

41:53

like someone's just removed from the

41:55

football field Oh, okay. What about

41:58

the trumpet? Where's the truck? Kerry

42:00

wants the trumpet. I want a clear picture of

42:02

what happens, which is what I was hoping for.

42:05

So this bothered me, and I don't have

42:07

the page right at hand to see my

42:09

notes, but he took one passage, I think

42:11

it was in Revelation, it said, Jesus spoke

42:13

in a voice that sounded like a trumpet.

42:15

Okay. And then he tried

42:17

to make it where the trumpet that's

42:19

supposed to sound at the rapture is

42:22

just Jesus's voice. It's like, no,

42:24

no, no, you're conflating things. Yeah,

42:27

yeah. I don't like it. This

42:29

is like when people say that the word means

42:31

Jesus, and then they try to put Jesus anywhere

42:33

the Bible says the word word. But

42:35

he does mention that there have

42:37

been popular sightings, I guess sighting

42:40

isn't the right word, soundings of

42:42

trumpets, where people have said, we

42:44

heard this giant trumpet sound and

42:46

we thought it was Archangel. Oh,

42:48

remember when that happened to you and me? Oh yeah,

42:50

I remember you getting really freaked out. We both kind

42:53

of freaked out for a second, but then, you know,

42:55

we were quickly recovered. We

42:57

were recording at my old apartment

42:59

on Carlton Way. I remember you saying

43:01

like, Oh, oh my goodness, that really, I mean,

43:03

I like startled both of us. And then

43:06

I was like, I started because it was a

43:08

loud sound. Yeah, yeah. I didn't think it was

43:10

rapture for more than a few seconds, but it

43:12

scared me. I was like, what the fuck? But

43:15

it wasn't, we're still here. But there's this

43:17

kind of an urban legend thing. I haven't

43:20

really looked closely into any of these, but

43:22

yeah, there have been these places where people

43:24

say, Oh yeah, we all heard this loud

43:26

trumpet sound and we thought it was the

43:28

angels trumpet blasting. And so he was buying

43:30

into that thinking it was maybe like an

43:32

early rehearsal or something. Perhaps

43:34

you've read about the strange phenomena occurring

43:37

around the world as people report hearing

43:39

eerie sounds of trumpets. This has

43:41

been going on since 2008 when

43:43

a video was posted by

43:45

someone in Belarus. Yeah,

43:48

one has to assume that it's just once

43:51

you've heard a story about a trumpet and

43:53

how it's going to end humanity, then if you hear

43:55

a trumpet, that's one option. Yeah, or just

43:57

some loud sound that's vaguely in the the

44:00

realm. Apparently now it's been reported in

44:02

the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Russia, the

44:04

Czech Republic, Australia, and other places. I

44:06

was surprised he mentioned that because it's

44:08

just like nothing's come of it. It

44:11

seems to be kind of

44:13

something misinterpreted or mass

44:15

hysteria or what. Yeah, here's some

44:17

people who falsely thought Jesus was back.

44:19

Anyway, he's coming back. One thing it said

44:21

on the website was that you can read one

44:24

chapter in six minutes, so it'll take you no

44:26

time to get through this. I mean, you could,

44:28

yeah. Yeah, so I started timing myself on every

44:30

chapter, and what I would start doing is I

44:32

would like read through quickly and maybe underline a

44:34

few things, but then I'd go back and take

44:36

all my notes, which is counterproductive. Might

44:39

as well just take your notes as you're reading. So

44:41

I could get through a chapter in five or six

44:43

minutes, seven minutes. I was like, all right, this checks

44:45

out, but then later on I would just read it

44:47

at my normal pace and writing things in the margins

44:49

and stuff. Definitely mark this book up, and it

44:51

would be more like 12 minutes, sometimes 20

44:55

minutes. Anyways, if you go through without

44:57

really thinking too hard, sure, six minutes

44:59

is a good accurate. Yeah, you're certainly

45:01

not like dealing with heavy material here.

45:03

Indeed. Love a bad metaphor. Okay. So

45:05

on page 77, he quotes from a book called

45:10

The King is Coming by Harold

45:12

Wilmington, who says this, a

45:14

man is cleaning out his garage and

45:16

discovers a small box filled with a

45:19

mixture of tiny iron nails, wood and

45:21

splinters, sawdust, and pieces of paper. Suppose

45:24

he desires to save only the nails.

45:27

How could he quickly separate them from the

45:29

wooden splinters? If a magnet was available,

45:31

the task would be quite simple. And then he

45:33

explains how you would pull the magnet across the

45:35

top and the nails would come up. And

45:37

then he says, when Christ appears, you will

45:40

not come especially for black or white people,

45:42

for Catholics or Protestants, for Jews or Gentiles,

45:44

but for those individuals who possess the same

45:46

nature as himself. The task would be quite

45:48

simple. He would simply position the magnet over

45:50

the box. Immediately, all those objects possessing the

45:53

same physical nature would be caught up to

45:55

meet the magnet in the air. And then

45:57

he compares that to Jesus. Sure. because

46:01

the individuals who possess the same nature

46:03

as Jesus would be magnetically pulled

46:05

up to Jesus. But I was

46:07

like, that's not magnets. Magnets

46:10

attract things that are different.

46:12

But it's an analogy and it's supposed to be

46:14

good enough for you. Yeah. Why even

46:16

argue from analogy if the analogy is wrong?

46:18

Yeah, he's quoting someone else's book

46:21

there. But yeah, he says, when Christ

46:23

appears, he will not come especially for

46:25

black or white people, for Catholics or

46:27

Protestants, for Jews or Gentiles. And I

46:29

thought, did anybody question this? Why

46:32

do you need to say that? Right. But also

46:34

it would be the opposite nature. If it's

46:36

a magnet. Lots about analogies for sure.

46:38

Right after that, he wrote, we'll

46:40

be drawn to him caught up by

46:43

his magnetic rapturous power, and then we

46:45

will ever magnify our Savior. And

46:48

I underlined that and said, wow, that's

46:50

cultish. Just that it's, you know, that's

46:52

not how people use English in normal

46:54

life. Ever magnify our Savior. That is

46:57

Christianese. Very Christian. He

47:00

tells us so many times that this

47:02

will only happen for the real

47:04

believers. Right. And I mean, we

47:06

mean the real believers, not just

47:08

Christians in general, like, you know,

47:10

the ones who really stand by Jesus. He

47:12

goes on about that for so long. And then on page 90, he's

47:15

like, we've explored the what and why

47:18

of the rapture in many ways and

47:20

for many angles throughout these pages. Yet

47:22

it would be a mistake for us

47:24

to ignore the who. The

47:27

rapture will be restricted only to those

47:29

living or dead who carried the passport

47:31

called Christ. I was like, ignore

47:34

the who? Like, you've been doing this for

47:36

a hundred pages. You've been telling me the

47:38

who. Just Christians, just

47:40

Christians, just Christians. It's so

47:42

repetitive. Yeah, we know. And again,

47:45

you've got your analogy to the

47:47

passport. Lots of analogies. Yeah.

47:49

That's what you got to do when things

47:51

aren't real. You've got to make connections to

47:53

real world things. It says in the very

47:56

beginning that all the references are from the

47:58

New King James version. otherwise

48:00

designated, he uses a lot

48:02

of different versions of the Bible. I'm

48:05

always suspicious of that. That tells me that you're picking

48:07

the ones that sound best for the point you're trying

48:09

to make. For a while, I

48:11

was looking up every single reference he used

48:13

to see how well it checked out. And

48:16

a couple of times I saw something where

48:18

like, okay, that's not actually referring to this

48:20

end times prophecy, that's an earlier prophecy. But

48:23

for the most part, he was faithfully representing

48:25

the intent of the Bible, I'd say. There

48:27

is a part in chapter 13 where

48:30

he talks about some family called the

48:32

Lily family that I guess has a

48:34

huge annual reunion in Flat Rock, West

48:36

Virginia. So for the longest time,

48:38

they've been inviting people whose last or

48:40

first name is Lily to come to

48:43

this event. And

48:45

now it's just become a big event in

48:47

the town and people can come, it's still

48:50

called the Lily family. Right, they don't have to

48:52

be Lily's, right? Okay, so as he's

48:54

explaining this, he says, there's

48:56

one difference between that and

48:59

God's family reunion. In a

49:01

spirit of generosity, the Lily family reunion

49:03

welcomes all, even those not named Lily

49:05

are having a direct connection with the

49:07

family. But that won't be true

49:10

at the Rapture family reunion. Only

49:12

those who are in the name of Christ,

49:15

only those who are Christians or

49:17

Christ ones will be invited

49:19

to attend the reunion of Christ's family

49:22

at the Rapture. So God is not.

49:25

God is not as generous as

49:28

the Lily family. Yep, they

49:30

are more inclusive and welcoming. Yeah,

49:33

speaking of things that just, when you try

49:35

to picture them, don't really compute, he was

49:37

talking about how once we are raptured, how

49:40

amazing and wonderful we'll be, we'll all

49:42

be with Jesus and we'll all greet him

49:44

and talk to him and it'll be so

49:46

exciting. And I'm thinking that's one long greeting

49:49

line. Can you imagine,

49:51

like, cause what if he has, let's say

49:53

like a two minute interaction with each person

49:56

and what, your number 5,083? Yeah,

49:58

you could have that Santa. problem. Yeah, exactly.

50:01

Yeah, yeah. So do you get

50:03

mall Jesus's? Diffuses.

50:06

Just line

50:08

up for the multiple Jesus's, you know, if he can

50:11

be three and one, why not? One of my favorite

50:13

depictions meeting Jesus, of course, is

50:15

in mysteries of the kingdom of God.

50:20

Yeah. And says like, he says something like,

50:22

Hey Jesus, how's it going? Yeah, right.

50:24

That's his profound, uh, probably later

50:26

on, kicking himself like stupid, stupid,

50:28

stupid. I finally meet Jesus. And

50:30

that's all that comes to mind.

50:32

Hey Jesus, how are you doing?

50:35

I sat next to Miley Cyrus once of the

50:37

bougouard pig. And I, I don't know what

50:39

any of that means. I know. I've

50:44

heard of Miley's. Okay. The bougouard

50:46

pig is a coffee shop in LA

50:49

that actually I think might've, might be

50:51

gone now, but wrecking ball got to it. But

50:54

I sat next to Miley and I love Miley Cyrus

50:56

music. And I was like, Oh my God, it's Miley

50:58

Cyrus. And then I thought like, do I have anything

51:00

to say to her? And the only words I could

51:02

think of where I love you, I was like,

51:05

don't say I love you. You got yourself. Don't

51:09

profess your love to a stranger. You got

51:11

to not. So if you have something else,

51:13

then I was like, no, you

51:15

could say I love your work. Nope. Nope. Okay. All

51:17

right. Well, at least you

51:19

got yourself. And so anyway, if you're out

51:22

there, I love

51:24

you. Not too far away. I

51:26

once saw a weird owl at, Dumey's

51:29

next to Max, a great

51:31

vegan Mexican place. And he

51:33

was just there like the only other person in

51:35

the restaurant besides the guy at the counter. And

51:37

so I ordered my food and then I leaned over and

51:40

said, something to the effect of,

51:43

I just, I'm

51:45

a huge fan of your work. Thank you so much.

51:47

And then it was like, okay, I need to go

51:49

sit somewhere where he can't see me so he can

51:51

keep checking his phone and not have like me staring

51:53

at him in a pretty small restaurant. And

51:55

then the cashier leans around the corner and says,

51:58

that goes for me too. Yeah,

52:00

it was cute. I just got to point out

52:02

in the chapter 3 the rule of threes where

52:04

he's telling us How that's so great for storytelling

52:06

it sure. Yes rule of threes is a real

52:08

thing, but it is noxious the

52:10

way he describes it he makes reference to

52:13

Jesus's parables and how he used

52:16

the rule of three like in

52:18

the good Samaritan story first You've got a

52:20

priest who walks by then a Levite, but

52:23

then the Samaritan actually is the one that

52:25

helps Okay, great, but the next sentence he

52:27

says in Jesus's parable of the sower He

52:29

described the good soil as that which produces

52:31

a crop some 30 fold some 60

52:33

and some 100 Hello,

52:36

the parable of Hello

52:38

the sower has four types

52:41

of soil you have the

52:43

hard soil you have the rocky soil You have

52:45

the thorny soil and the good soil. Okay, I

52:47

know is I'm just like it doesn't use the

52:49

rule of three you're pointing out Yeah

52:53

For there and you're pointing out some

52:56

really small aside from that like just

52:58

don't mention that parable Yeah, it's awkward

53:00

talking parables that your staff doesn't

53:02

understand. It doesn't make your point Yeah,

53:05

thank you. Julia speaking of

53:08

parables later on he'll bring up

53:10

the parable of the ten virgins

53:13

Okay, and what do I have thoughts on that? Okay, but

53:16

I'm not not now I do want just I don't know

53:18

where I left my notes Well, you know

53:20

what you would know where they were if

53:22

you had a Squarespace website No,

53:25

I wish I had a Squarespace website. Wait a

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second. We do we do but it

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doesn't have that information But it

53:31

could because a Squarespace website can

53:33

have any kind of information that

53:35

you want Yeah, I can't think of any

53:37

information I could not put on a Squarespace website

53:39

Yeah, I mean there are things you could put there that would get

53:41

you in trouble Mm-hmm, but your

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fingers would keep going and you'd

53:46

push publish and there would be Indeed,

53:50

you're talking about Squarespace. You're thinking about

53:52

websites. Oh, yeah, I love

53:54

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The end of the world is coming. But you've got time

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And if you're sick of listening to our

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It's dad. What he's saying is it's dad.

56:15

Dad is doing it. It's dad doing it.

56:17

You can listen every Thursday on maximumfun.org or

56:19

wherever you get your podcast. As

56:24

we've been saying, we were writing in our

56:26

books. So I was constantly underlining things. So

56:28

I see here, as a result, the Thessalonians

56:30

were gripped by the reality of Christ's return.

56:32

And I wrote an arrow from that and

56:34

said, wasn't real for any of them. It's

56:36

like, you know, they spent their lives just so

56:39

ready for this. Oh, it's going to be any

56:41

minute. These are first century people. It just

56:43

seems like a waste. We always hear

56:46

about Pascal's wager. This whole idea that

56:48

you have this like simple two by

56:50

two grid where there's either a God

56:52

or there's not on one axis.

56:54

And then you either believe in him or you

56:56

don't on the other axis. Christians will

56:59

make this argument, which already has a problem.

57:01

Like if you're just doing this based on

57:03

a game theory calculation, you think Jesus would

57:05

see through that like, no, he's just believing

57:07

in me because he thinks it's good for

57:09

his odds. But the idea is, even

57:12

if there isn't a God, but you believe in him,

57:14

you don't really lose anything. But I

57:16

always think you lose a lot. You

57:19

lose so much of your life. He's

57:21

telling us to think about this when

57:23

we get up in the morning and

57:25

when we go to bed. There's so

57:27

much thought real estate. It's the one

57:29

resource we can't buy. Yeah. Your time

57:32

is really important and how you use

57:34

it, especially if there's only one life.

57:36

Right, right. And both options,

57:39

you want to maximize your

57:41

pleasure and joy for as

57:43

long as you will last.

57:46

And if the amount of time that

57:48

you will last is 80 years,

57:51

fine. And if the time that you will

57:53

last is eternal, fine. But like the question

57:55

is, what will 100% be? You know, is

57:57

100% going

58:00

to be 80 years or is it

58:02

going to be eternal years? You can't

58:04

skip that question before you make this

58:06

analysis. I think a Christian would hear

58:08

what you're saying and be like, well, that

58:10

bigger amount of time, that's eternal, so it's

58:13

worth doing everything you can in this very

58:15

small amount of time to make sure you

58:18

end up there. Right. Store up your treasures

58:20

in heaven, as they say. Right. Then I'd

58:22

be like, that's bonkers. Well...

58:25

I'm saying we both want to protect the only life

58:27

we've got. It's the one we know for sure

58:29

we have. Right. Yeah. Another problem

58:31

with the whole Pascal's Wager thing is it's not

58:33

just two by two. There's lots of

58:35

other beliefs out there. Right. I can just invent

58:38

like a harsher God and a longer forever.

58:40

Yeah. Like, well, actually my

58:42

God who you need to believe in, he

58:44

has two eternities and he's meaner

58:46

and more indicative than yours. So now you need

58:48

to believe in mine. Yeah. And we have

58:51

other ones on this planet of people who

58:53

really believe them. So what if person number

58:55

three is right, then both of us are

58:57

out of luck. Mm-hmm. Anyway. You

59:00

can do this forever. There was another passage

59:02

where he was talking about how the prophecy

59:04

tells us it'll be just as in the

59:07

days of Noah, you know, where everybody's just

59:09

living for themselves, selfish and greedy and horrible.

59:11

And I think... Rainy. Well,

59:14

there's a reason every generation since first

59:16

century Palestine, people have thought this applies

59:18

to them because it's always the

59:20

case. You can always point to

59:22

people being selfish and horrible and

59:24

wars and, you know, there's technically

59:26

less war than there was at

59:29

any point in the past. Anyways, I

59:31

just see that argument and I think, okay,

59:33

but when wouldn't you have said that in

59:35

history? Right. Actually, things are going great right

59:37

now. Yeah. Theoretically,

59:39

they all want to hasten the end. So

59:42

you think that people who believe this would

59:44

be voting for the leaders that they think

59:46

are evil. Mm-hmm. Because that would

59:48

bring this all to fruition much sooner. Yeah.

59:51

And I believe Biden is the antichrist vote for

59:53

Biden. Right, right. But

59:55

for some reason it's forbidden. Yeah. I

59:58

mean, they wouldn't want to be the guy. votes though. Hmm,

1:00:01

but you're gonna be counting. Such

1:00:03

things must come but woe unto

1:00:05

him through whom they come. Yeah,

1:00:07

yeah, exactly. He

1:00:11

does like Ken Ham make the

1:00:13

analogy, right now the door to

1:00:15

salvation is wide open just like

1:00:17

the door of the Ark. Famously

1:00:20

closed. Well it was open when it was

1:00:22

letting all the animals in. Now is your

1:00:24

chance to get in. Two by two. So

1:00:27

that is a big question that he

1:00:29

raised earlier which was can you still

1:00:31

gain salvation during the tribulation if you

1:00:33

don't get raptured? Yes. Yes, yes you

1:00:36

can. Yeah, he says yes you

1:00:38

can but A, you're gonna be

1:00:40

suffering a bunch because the tribulation is

1:00:42

gonna suck and B, you just won't

1:00:44

have as much assurance of your salvation

1:00:46

because you're gonna really have to prove

1:00:48

it once, I mean once all of

1:00:51

the globe is aware that Jesus is Lord you're

1:00:53

really gonna have to prove it. You're not gonna be able to just be

1:00:55

like I go to church. Here's

1:00:58

another argument that really annoyed me is

1:01:00

that he was making the point that

1:01:02

we all think Jesus should have arrived

1:01:04

or like why hasn't he or a

1:01:06

ribbon. You know we might ask those

1:01:08

questions but if he had come

1:01:10

back a hundred years ago then I wouldn't

1:01:12

be here and I got to live and

1:01:15

I'm so glad. I'm so

1:01:18

glad and he even uses the word delayed. I'm so

1:01:20

glad that God has delayed all

1:01:22

of this because you know that gave me a chance

1:01:24

to meet my wife and have this wonderful marriage and I'm

1:01:26

thinking you gotta cut it off

1:01:28

somewhere. When are you gonna do

1:01:30

it? Why are you waiting for a certain number of souls?

1:01:33

Why are you delaying? Yeah, I mean

1:01:35

there's a certain amount of narcissism there

1:01:38

too you know this idea that like

1:01:40

I'm gonna be there, it's me. Of

1:01:42

all these generations of Christians I'm

1:01:45

in the final one. Every generation falls

1:01:47

for it. Yeah, yeah. We're

1:01:49

the special one. We're chosen. It's gonna happen now,

1:01:51

any moment now. In the

1:01:54

same way he was talking about how God has

1:01:56

to come back. This is the righteous thing he

1:01:58

has to do to cleanse the earth. because

1:02:00

he just can't stand sin. He

1:02:02

can't abide the rule of sin in the

1:02:05

world. I'm thinking, well, he's a bidden it.

1:02:08

He's abided it for a long

1:02:10

time. What's he waiting

1:02:12

for? You have to draw the line somewhere. Right,

1:02:14

and he's been a pretty hands-off God for

1:02:17

some time. Yeah, hurry up and

1:02:19

come back then. If you can't

1:02:21

abide this, why? What are we

1:02:23

doing? Does it make sense? So I

1:02:25

didn't read the latter half of this book.

1:02:27

So does he take any big zags? Oh,

1:02:31

by the way, here's an interesting take on

1:02:33

the rapture that you haven't heard before. Again,

1:02:36

little elements, but nothing immediately comes to

1:02:38

mind. Like, whoa, you really saved this.

1:02:41

Thank gosh, why is this so pop?

1:02:43

Is it just like it's just a moment?

1:02:45

It's just Christians paying for stuff. Honestly,

1:02:47

I think it's the little cottage industry that he's

1:02:50

created of these books that are highly anticipated. I

1:02:52

think that trailer did a lot. I think he

1:02:54

just got a lot of buzz around this. And

1:02:57

this is just the right atmosphere

1:02:59

at this moment to capture people's

1:03:01

fear and paranoia and

1:03:03

kind of willingness to believe things that aren't

1:03:05

supported. I'm sorry, I'm just now noticing that

1:03:08

you have a blue and black dress that

1:03:10

looks a lot like the one that went

1:03:12

all meme-like. Remember when people debated whether it

1:03:14

was blue and black or white and gold?

1:03:16

That dress was white and gold. It

1:03:21

totally looks like that. Anyway, sorry, that's behind Kerry's

1:03:23

head and I just now noticed it. Drew's mother

1:03:25

gave me that. Yeah, you

1:03:27

can start internet debates with it. I now can

1:03:29

just see it both ways. I

1:03:32

can't go back to a white and gold, which I did initially

1:03:34

see. But once I saw

1:03:36

this blue and black, I couldn't unsee it.

1:03:38

Whoa, cool. Weird. Friends are weird. Yani or

1:03:40

Laurel? I can't remember what I

1:03:42

thought now. I think I'm Laurel when I last

1:03:44

looked, but it's partly an age thing. So let's see

1:03:46

if I still am. Yep. I

1:03:50

hear Laurel. Me too. Laurel. But

1:03:54

when I try to hear Yani, I can hear it.

1:03:56

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I

1:03:59

can't go back to seeing. white and gold but I can go back

1:04:01

to it. Oh yeah, I just heard Yanny. Yep. I

1:04:04

can totally flip back and forth on it. Yeah, I don't

1:04:06

hear the Yanny at all. So, okay, so

1:04:08

here's an interesting point that he makes

1:04:11

that I hadn't really thought of before.

1:04:14

Distinguishing between the rapture and the

1:04:16

second coming of Jesus. Oh, yeah.

1:04:19

And that, you know, your rapture is not

1:04:21

Jesus actually setting foot on earth. Again, he's

1:04:23

gonna stay up in the sky. We're all

1:04:25

gonna meet him up there. And again,

1:04:28

you know, I'm picturing a globe in my

1:04:30

head. Maybe the authors of the Bible weren't

1:04:32

or were. I don't know. But when you

1:04:34

picture them all gathering in one spot, where

1:04:36

is it? Is it over Europe? Is

1:04:38

it over the Mount of Olives? Mm-hmm. You

1:04:40

know, what happens to people from Australia? They

1:04:43

blink out of existence or reappear over Jerusalem?

1:04:45

Or do they get hurtled through the air

1:04:47

and hopefully like don't hit a bird on

1:04:49

the way? I picture it

1:04:51

as above space. Above space.

1:04:53

Okay, but now they can't breathe but

1:04:55

I guess they've got these new bodies.

1:04:57

Yeah, they're new bodies. So, okay, maybe

1:04:59

you blink out of existence and then

1:05:01

your atoms get reconfigured into the new

1:05:03

body. He talks a lot about

1:05:05

the new body you're gonna get and how

1:05:07

it's gonna be like this perfect idealized body.

1:05:09

Yes. And this is such wish fulfillment stuff,

1:05:12

you know, just like it can't be corrupted.

1:05:14

It'll never grow old. Right. You can do

1:05:16

anything. There's real sad moments in here

1:05:18

where he's like, so-and-so's kid died

1:05:20

but, you know, because of heaven

1:05:22

they know that they're gonna see

1:05:24

their kid again. It's just

1:05:30

one of those moments of like, well, you're kind

1:05:32

of giving away the motivation but I don't feel

1:05:35

right like taking it away from

1:05:37

that grieving mother. He

1:05:39

says, I have tried to bring understanding to

1:05:41

this subject by using a little mathematical formula.

1:05:43

If you have been born only once, you

1:05:46

will have to die twice. Yes. But if you

1:05:48

have been born twice, you will have to

1:05:50

die only once. And you may

1:05:52

even escape that one death if Jesus returns to

1:05:54

the earth during your lifetime. Regularly,

1:05:56

he acknowledges, yeah, we may die and

1:05:59

not see it. it and

1:06:01

he refuses to like he's learned the lesson

1:06:03

of how Lindsay without acknowledging it that you

1:06:05

don't name a date or time so you

1:06:08

won't find that in this book yeah

1:06:10

and he says that at the beginning he's like I

1:06:12

won't be giving you date I really

1:06:14

want to find some method to get people

1:06:16

to put their money where their mouths are

1:06:19

you know like if X amount

1:06:21

of time goes by and this doesn't happen

1:06:23

yeah yeah will you give me

1:06:25

this amount of money and sign a

1:06:27

contract for it or even

1:06:29

upon your death can I own

1:06:32

your stuff because like Jim Underdown

1:06:34

has done this from the Center

1:06:36

for Inquiry the CFI IG he

1:06:39

runs that group a friend of ours anyways he

1:06:41

had this really clever a little deal where he

1:06:43

got people to oh I don't know

1:06:45

how many people actually took him up on it

1:06:47

but he had this open offer for Christians to

1:06:50

offer him things that they would leave behind in

1:06:52

the rapture kind of make a

1:06:54

contract he'd get it for pennies on the dollar clever

1:06:57

idea speaking of what you

1:06:59

were saying about people losing family members this

1:07:01

was a really sad passage that I remember you sent it to

1:07:03

me as you were reading it second

1:07:05

death is a shadow not a

1:07:07

reality David called it the Valley

1:07:09

of the shadow as

1:07:11

dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse was driving home from

1:07:14

the funeral of his first wife he

1:07:16

and his children were overcome with grief

1:07:19

yeah they love this story I remember

1:07:21

this story they lost a wife and

1:07:23

mother okay as he sought

1:07:25

some word of comfort for his kids a

1:07:28

huge moving van past them and its shadow

1:07:30

swept over the car dr. Barnhouse

1:07:32

said children would you rather be run

1:07:35

over by a truck or by its

1:07:37

shadow the shadow

1:07:39

of course said one of his children

1:07:41

it's harmless two thousand years

1:07:43

ago said the father the truck ran

1:07:46

over the Lord Jesus in order that

1:07:48

only its shadow might run over us

1:07:51

what on earth why would

1:07:53

you say this to your kids on the way home

1:07:55

for their mother's funeral why

1:07:57

what does this have to do with anything

1:08:00

That's a really small comfort. It's

1:08:02

so bizarre. That's a bad

1:08:04

analogy. This

1:08:06

still hurts. Can you pull over? You don't

1:08:08

seem well. This

1:08:12

is an issue he doesn't bring up that I'd

1:08:14

love to ask Dr. David Jeremiah about. And

1:08:17

that's how God deals with incomplete

1:08:19

bodies. Because he talks about how,

1:08:21

as it says in 1 Thessalonians,

1:08:23

the dead in Christ will rise

1:08:25

first. So that means everybody

1:08:27

who's already died will pop up out of their

1:08:30

graves, they'll be caught up in the air, then

1:08:32

the rest of us will follow. So

1:08:35

he's talking about people whose bodies are resting

1:08:37

in cemeteries. Okay, what about who

1:08:39

even Christians who fell in the ocean got eaten up by fish?

1:08:43

Or who have been cremated? My

1:08:45

mom does not want to be cremated because she

1:08:47

wants her body to be ready for when Jesus

1:08:49

comes back. Wow. But

1:08:52

it's been a couple thousand years. The

1:08:54

atoms from those bodies are now in

1:08:57

other bodies. Hey, you're too worried about

1:08:59

atoms. It's just gonna be like the soul.

1:09:02

Okay, so the soul leaves the body.

1:09:06

Then God's like, I have a

1:09:08

memory of basically what Carrie looks

1:09:10

like at her hottest. I'm

1:09:12

gonna like fabricate like

1:09:15

a basic. But the brain

1:09:17

when it's the smartest. Yes, yes,

1:09:19

yes. And then

1:09:21

he's like, okay, I guess both of those

1:09:23

are 40 and a half. And so then

1:09:25

he makes me in my current state.

1:09:28

Okay, so then it doesn't matter

1:09:30

that you get cremated. Does

1:09:32

it? Yeah, exactly. Right. But for many

1:09:34

people, this is an issue. Yeah, they're

1:09:36

wrong. The body needs to be in

1:09:38

some kind of state of preservation. Body

1:09:40

doesn't keep the score. Oh, yeah. He

1:09:42

like razzes people who don't believe for

1:09:44

trying to pretend like death doesn't exist.

1:09:47

And I'm like, What? This

1:09:49

book is pretending death doesn't exist. Yeah, totally.

1:09:51

He's razzing us for saying death

1:09:53

doesn't exist. Death exists. What

1:09:57

a strange straw man. Yeah, it's a...

1:10:00

here. How often in our culture do

1:10:02

we pretend death doesn't exist? Oh, okay.

1:10:05

Like two paragraphs later he says,

1:10:07

Paul asked, Oh, death, where is

1:10:10

your sting? Right. Like that's pretending

1:10:12

death doesn't exist. That's

1:10:14

how often in our culture. Yeah. I

1:10:16

mean, there's denialism around death, but you know,

1:10:18

it's usually in the form of like, sure,

1:10:21

not wanting to think about someone dying.

1:10:23

Right. Yeah. And the fact that you

1:10:25

die. Call in the kettle block. Oh,

1:10:28

I love this. In other words, God

1:10:31

always planned for the church to be

1:10:33

multinational to include both Jews and Gentiles,

1:10:35

but he kept the plan secret until

1:10:37

after the resurrection of Christ. Why?

1:10:41

Why keep that plan secret? Why have a

1:10:43

chosen people for big chunk

1:10:45

of history and then be like, guess

1:10:47

what? I had a plan for all humanity.

1:10:50

I'm not just a local God. Right. Why?

1:10:52

Why did you know our new bodies will be

1:10:55

incapable of sickness or death? Yeah.

1:10:57

Yeah. That's the impression I keep getting. And

1:11:00

that our new bodies will be identifiable by all who knew

1:11:02

us on earth. Wow. That's not even

1:11:05

always true when you identify a court. Yeah.

1:11:07

There seems to be this idea that somehow there

1:11:09

will be this version of you and it will

1:11:11

have a look and I guess it'll be distinct

1:11:13

from all the other people, but

1:11:15

there'll be something special by which people will recognize

1:11:18

you like your vibe, man. That seems to be

1:11:20

like the feeling I get like, oh, that's so

1:11:22

Carrie. I can't put my finger on it, but

1:11:25

I know that's Carrie. Carrie's essence. Well,

1:11:27

I know you're still flipping through the great disappearance. May

1:11:29

I, while you're looking, tell you about invasion

1:11:32

of other gods? Do it. So

1:11:34

this one is about new

1:11:36

age spirituality and it's from

1:11:39

1995. Okay. And

1:11:41

he wrote this with Carol

1:11:43

Carlson, famous, maybe kidnapped herself.

1:11:46

Fascinating. This came just

1:11:48

yesterday, so I haven't read very

1:11:50

much of it, but in the

1:11:52

acknowledgments, they acknowledged Bob and Gretchen

1:11:54

Passantino. Do you know who they

1:11:56

are? Nope. They were the journalistic

1:11:59

couple. who exposed

1:12:01

Lauren Stratford, who wrote

1:12:03

Satan's Underground, a

1:12:06

pseudographia book about her being

1:12:08

in a satanic cult. She

1:12:11

pretended to have grown up in a

1:12:13

satanic cult and then later pretended to be a

1:12:16

Holocaust survivor. Oh no, so they get some

1:12:18

of their knowledge of the occult from these

1:12:20

fakers? No, Bob and

1:12:22

Gretchen Passantino are the

1:12:24

cornerstone journalists who busted

1:12:26

Lauren Stratford. Oh, good for them. Doing

1:12:29

the actual Lord's work. So Bob and

1:12:31

Gretchen are acknowledged in this. So Bob and

1:12:34

Gretchen, who I think of as sort

1:12:36

of sober voices, apparently knew David

1:12:38

Jeremiah. Got it, interesting. There was

1:12:40

a story about a flight mysteriously

1:12:42

disappearing. And so I instantly went

1:12:45

to look for the Skeptoid episode

1:12:47

about it because Brian- What's the

1:12:49

one with a funny name like

1:12:51

Foxtrot or? Yeah, exactly. The

1:12:53

call sign was Foxtrot 94. And

1:12:56

this was in 1970. Apparently

1:12:58

he saw an unidentified object and went

1:13:00

to go investigate it, but then was

1:13:03

only found later at the bottom of

1:13:05

the water without him in it and

1:13:07

the canopy was never opened. So

1:13:09

what happened to him? So I checked

1:13:11

with Brian directly because I didn't find a

1:13:13

Skeptoid episode and Brian's like, I've never heard

1:13:15

of it. So maybe a future Skeptoid episode.

1:13:18

Well, David Jeremiah mentions like, well

1:13:20

now there's a theory that when he hit

1:13:22

the water, the top of it just

1:13:24

like clunked back on the top of

1:13:26

the plane. That was one of the

1:13:28

theories. Reasonable. Sure. Yeah, at another point

1:13:30

he mentioned a UFO conspiracy and he's

1:13:32

saying, I'm not saying it's aliens. I'm

1:13:34

thinking, oh, I'm glad you have a

1:13:36

line that you're willing to draw

1:13:39

somewhere. That reminds me of

1:13:41

one of my repressed memory therapists

1:13:43

for the trauma projects. He

1:13:45

told me that he doesn't believe in

1:13:48

government mind control. So that's off the

1:13:50

wall. But then was very happy to

1:13:52

talk about like witchcraft abuse that I

1:13:54

had survived when I was nine. You pick

1:13:56

your beliefs, I guess. I guess so. Okay,

1:13:59

so when in. invasion of other gods, similar

1:14:02

to what you were saying about

1:14:04

how every generation feels like, oh,

1:14:06

things are getting worse. So this

1:14:08

is from 1995. And he

1:14:11

writes, those of the baby boomer

1:14:13

generation now in their 30s and 40s

1:14:15

make up close to one out of

1:14:17

two households, and many are frightened about

1:14:19

the future. They see their

1:14:21

children being exposed to more immorality,

1:14:23

violence, choking their cities and governments,

1:14:26

eating their dollars. Yeah,

1:14:29

I think those are constants in life.

1:14:31

Like every older generation thinks that the

1:14:33

younger folks are just, the kids aren't

1:14:36

all right. The world's falling

1:14:38

apart. These people aren't serious. And

1:14:40

in the same way, every generation thinks things

1:14:43

have never been worse than they are right

1:14:45

now. Right. And to

1:14:47

flip it on its head, like every younger generation thinks

1:14:49

like, oh, these old guys are so outmoded. They don't

1:14:51

get them like I do. I won't be

1:14:53

just like them in 40 years. Right, right.

1:14:55

I don't have anything to learn from them just because

1:14:58

they've been here longer. Hey, I've got a

1:15:00

call to action here. So he writes, some

1:15:02

people question using the word rapture because the

1:15:04

term is not in the Bible. Okay,

1:15:07

he concedes that. But 1

1:15:09

Thessalonians 4.17 says, we will be

1:15:11

caught up, quote unquote. The

1:15:14

Greek word Paul used was

1:15:16

harpazo. When the New

1:15:18

Testament was rendered into Latin, the translators

1:15:20

use the word raptura, which means to

1:15:22

catch up or snatch up. From

1:15:25

this, we get our word rapture, which,

1:15:27

okay, that was new info for me. Interesting.

1:15:31

But I'm going to say, why don't we start

1:15:33

referring to the rapture as the harpazo? Yeah, it's

1:15:35

a better name. Yeah. Better

1:15:37

name. All right, everybody. Let's do it.

1:15:40

Harpazo. Are you ready for the harpazo? It sounds

1:15:42

like something that comes after your pizza. And it's

1:15:44

like Harpo, which is Oprah

1:15:46

backwards. Yeah. With an AZ

1:15:48

added. Well, that's like her business is harpo.

1:15:50

Okay. That's how you can

1:15:52

remember it. With an AZ right there, the

1:15:54

alpha and omega harpazo. At the time

1:15:56

that he was writing this book, he believes that

1:15:59

the new. Spirituality is

1:16:01

the greatest threat to the Christian worldview

1:16:03

today. Okay, I'm not sure. Now

1:16:05

that just feels so outmoded. Yeah, I'm not

1:16:07

sure if he listed a new greatest threat

1:16:10

in the great disappearance. Yeah, this all

1:16:12

feels so dated now, you know, like

1:16:14

there's this hand-wringing about crystals

1:16:16

and Transcendental meditation and just stuff

1:16:18

that you know at the time

1:16:21

to Christians obviously felt like a

1:16:23

really big deal on Heralding some

1:16:25

big change and now it's just

1:16:27

like oh I kind of remember

1:16:29

these names Oh, yeah, I guess we were kind

1:16:31

of talking about this in 1995 Right

1:16:33

and there will be millions of copies of this

1:16:36

book 40 years from now

1:16:38

and no one will care about that because

1:16:40

they'll be reading some other new book about

1:16:42

the rapture and or the harpazzo Rather because

1:16:44

that will have caught on by then and

1:16:46

how it is imminent. This is interesting He

1:16:48

quoted a section from Hal Lindsey's book the

1:16:50

late great planet earth. He's quoted lots of

1:16:52

people But there was a passage he used

1:16:54

here and I had to go

1:16:56

look in the back just to see that he

1:16:59

was quoting Tim LaHaye and it was just weird

1:17:01

like why aren't you saying that you're quoting Tim

1:17:03

LaHaye rather than just like footnoting it

1:17:05

Yeah, he said I read a paragraph

1:17:07

recently that created this vivid picture and

1:17:09

then he shares a long paragraph from

1:17:11

Tim LaHaye And I

1:17:14

just wondered at that moment Like did he

1:17:16

realize that he kept quoting the same like

1:17:18

three people over and over again? C.S.

1:17:21

Lewis Tim LaHaye Hal Lindsey C.S. Lewis

1:17:23

Tim LaHaye I also liked how he

1:17:25

had just very few charts in this

1:17:27

book. It's mostly just writing There's no

1:17:29

like illustrations or anything every now and

1:17:31

then he has a chart and

1:17:34

he gives us the rapture sequence

1:17:36

the return The resurrection the rapture

1:17:38

the redemption the reunion and

1:17:41

those are all ours for each one he gives a

1:17:43

verse and For number three

1:17:45

the rapture and number five the

1:17:47

reunion the scripture verse is exactly

1:17:49

the same It's first Thessalonians 4

1:17:52

17. I just thought it was funny Just seemed

1:17:54

a little out of sequence they impulse to

1:17:57

make everything in our make everything

1:17:59

like rhyme and stuff. It's

1:18:01

such a destructive way to teach. Oh

1:18:03

yeah, because every time, you know,

1:18:05

liar, lunatic, lord, you end up

1:18:07

just not choosing an ideal word

1:18:10

because you're really fighting to make

1:18:12

this happen. Exactly. The seven C's

1:18:14

of creation, as answers in Genesis

1:18:16

does it, and now

1:18:18

I'm fighting to remember a specific one,

1:18:20

compromise, you know, like, that kind of

1:18:22

fits. Yeah, yeah. It's like,

1:18:25

if you need to make a list

1:18:27

like that, don't worry, we'll figure out

1:18:29

how to remember it later. We'll figure

1:18:31

out the mnemonic to just pick the

1:18:33

best word. Yeah. We'll work with

1:18:35

it. Yeah, exactly. And when it's like

1:18:37

a list of seven, like this one,

1:18:40

you're not going to memorize it anyway. He has

1:18:42

a comparison of John 14 with

1:18:45

1 Thessalonians 4 in a chart.

1:18:47

And so he says, look at

1:18:50

this, they're like addressing the exact

1:18:52

same things. The problem, the point,

1:18:54

the proclamation, the promise, the purpose,

1:18:57

the plan, the place. Great.

1:19:00

Good job. Oh, C.S. Lewis.

1:19:02

Yeah. Now we got C.S. Lewis in invasion

1:19:04

of other gods. That's so funny you say

1:19:06

that. I was just looking on this page

1:19:09

at a mention of C.S. Lewis. Oh, wow.

1:19:11

He loves C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis comes up

1:19:13

a lot. I assume most of you are

1:19:15

familiar with him, author of the Chronicles of

1:19:17

Narnia and also a theologian. Screwtape letters.

1:19:20

The great divorce. My

1:19:22

wife is dying and it hurts a bunch. A

1:19:26

grief observed. A grief observed. I read that

1:19:28

one. I did too. I read about one

1:19:30

C.S. Lewis book a year. It seems to

1:19:32

me. He also wrote the the

1:19:35

space trilogy. I read that one in

1:19:37

high school. Yeah, Paralandra. It

1:19:39

was set on other planets and

1:19:41

you have like this wildly alive

1:19:43

and populated Venus. And then later

1:19:45

on I learned that Venus was

1:19:47

like this oven of a planet,

1:19:49

you know, where nothing lives. I

1:19:51

never got into Narnia. You

1:19:54

and Kara. Kara feels very proud that

1:19:56

she recognized as a child that it

1:19:58

was not great literature. I

1:20:00

read each of the books at least four times as a

1:20:02

kid. Oh, okay. I mean just like

1:20:04

fantasy that kind of fantasy Oh sure. That's right. It's

1:20:06

not even up your aisle in the first place Yeah,

1:20:09

but yeah he's talking here

1:20:11

about how it's interesting that C.S.

1:20:13

Lewis visualize the possibility of someone

1:20:15

disappearing on earth and Suddenly being

1:20:17

in another world when talking about

1:20:19

the Chronicles of Narnia He's trying

1:20:21

to say like so interesting that

1:20:23

he had this thought that you

1:20:25

also find in Scripture It's like

1:20:27

yeah, he was a theologian. Yeah,

1:20:29

he's reading the same thing you're reading He had a

1:20:31

lion that was Jesus lion that you know

1:20:33

gets killed for everybody sins Yeah,

1:20:36

of course. He's gonna be influenced by

1:20:38

his own faith. Dr. David Jeremiah just

1:20:40

missed the causal arrow in which direction

1:20:42

It was pointing in that case It's

1:20:44

so much keeping busy these people just

1:20:46

read like the same ten books Over

1:20:49

and over and like find new meaning

1:20:51

from the same stuff. Yeah, it's

1:20:53

just it's kind of a bummer Like

1:20:55

I'm like I've learned so much since

1:20:57

I thought like this and you're still writing

1:21:00

the same book Right because

1:21:02

these are smart people Mm-hmm.

1:21:04

Who believe this baby? Yeah, it's kind of

1:21:06

a mind wasted Yeah endlessly

1:21:08

trying to you know, and maybe some people

1:21:11

choose to be scholars of the Bible. That's

1:21:13

great That should be an approach. There are

1:21:15

some people who are scholars of the Iliad

1:21:17

or the Odyssey, you know, that's great But

1:21:19

not this many people. Yeah, dude my

1:21:22

old youth pastor Mike who I've mentioned a bunch

1:21:24

of times Super brilliant person teaches

1:21:26

at Princeton. Mm-hmm You know one of the

1:21:28

smartest people I've ever met and a Christian

1:21:30

and reads like, you know A hundred books

1:21:33

a year like reads a bunch is a

1:21:35

scholar But when he writes

1:21:37

about it at least it's interesting stuff

1:21:41

Yeah, new ideas Yeah

1:21:43

having come from that community where everybody

1:21:46

just all the time was talking about

1:21:48

one book and reading books about that

1:21:50

book Yeah, once you get out of

1:21:52

that books are so exciting I remember

1:21:54

like whoa, this is science. Oh my

1:21:56

goodness. It's so compelling because like people

1:21:58

are actually looking at all these things

1:22:00

and thinking about hard problems and gathering

1:22:02

it from, oh my wow, this is

1:22:04

such a much bigger world out there

1:22:06

intellectually than what I was getting fed.

1:22:08

I remember seeking out these apologetics books

1:22:10

that made me feel like I was getting

1:22:12

my questions answered because I had so much

1:22:15

angst, you know, and I needed like a

1:22:17

smart Christian to be like, no, no, no,

1:22:20

I still believe and I have these

1:22:22

questions too and here are the answers.

1:22:24

But I would seek those out so

1:22:26

judiciously. I was so looking for like

1:22:29

who can both quell this thirst for

1:22:31

knowledge and not expose me to so

1:22:33

much knowledge that I feel nervous. Oh,

1:22:36

interesting. Okay. You know, I

1:22:38

need to know before I even crack this book

1:22:40

open that you're going to lead me back to Jesus.

1:22:43

Right, right. Okay, you may be standing a

1:22:45

little near the edge, but we're not going

1:22:47

to get that close to it. Yeah. Interesting.

1:22:49

You only live here because you know that there are people like

1:22:52

me who need you, but you're going to redirect

1:22:54

me. The importance of the C.S. Lewis's and

1:22:56

the William Lane Craig's, you know, we can

1:22:58

say, oh, well, they've considered this, but they've

1:23:00

come back over here to tell us, don't

1:23:02

worry, it all works out. Don't worry. I'm

1:23:05

very smart and I'm back. Yeah, yeah, that's

1:23:07

totally it. There was an

1:23:09

interesting chapter about other raptures that

1:23:11

have happened in the Bible. Oh,

1:23:13

right. Because there have been some people who

1:23:15

were raptured. Who have been taken

1:23:18

up. During, yeah. They never died. Yeah.

1:23:20

Enoch is one of them. He

1:23:22

only lived at 365 years. Embarrassing.

1:23:24

In the time that people are living

1:23:27

over 700 because, yeah, he walked with

1:23:29

God and at some point God took

1:23:31

him away. Oh, yeah, that's not explained

1:23:34

well in this book. But anyway. The

1:23:36

same with Elijah, the prophet. He was

1:23:38

taken up in a fiery chariot. Bomb.

1:23:40

Jesus Christ himself was raptured. Probably. Well,

1:23:43

you know, he went up

1:23:45

into the clouds as C.S. Lewis thought

1:23:47

was very embarrassing. The rapture

1:23:49

of Paul. This was interesting. I never thought of

1:23:51

it this way. Now, this wasn't how he ended

1:23:53

his life, but he was taken up to the

1:23:56

third heaven. And he talks about like a little

1:23:58

mini vision he has up there. Now,

1:24:01

does David Jeremiah at all deal with

1:24:03

the fact that Paul said the third

1:24:05

heaven? And what does that mean that

1:24:07

there's a third heaven? You know,

1:24:09

it's very interesting. Do you know about the

1:24:11

rule of threes? I

1:24:14

love this. Yeah, like, you

1:24:16

know, the Mormons can use that as a...

1:24:18

See, there's multiple levels of heaven. Yeah. But

1:24:21

he was describing it and he said he was caught

1:24:23

up using that word harpazo. Remember? That's what we're calling

1:24:25

the rapture now. So he got, you know, it was

1:24:27

like a near-death experience. He got taken back to earth.

1:24:30

But I don't know. Then do you call every near-death

1:24:32

experience a little mini harpazo? Little

1:24:34

rapture? Right. Good point.

1:24:37

This was a total cheat. He said the

1:24:39

rapture of the two witnesses. This hasn't happened

1:24:41

yet, but there's these characters in Revelation called

1:24:43

the two witnesses. And this was

1:24:45

interesting. Us. Oh, you

1:24:47

and I? Probably. Okay. Or

1:24:50

Elijah and Moses. Okay. So

1:24:52

he tells us they're gonna come back

1:24:54

and they'll be raptured up. Damn. Okay.

1:24:58

So, man, it sucks to be Elijah when

1:25:00

you're Elijah and Moses. Everyone's gonna recognize

1:25:02

Moses. It's like, yeah, like he even

1:25:04

mentions in the Transfiguration, this is a

1:25:07

little moment before Jesus's death that Moses

1:25:10

and Elijah show up there and

1:25:12

the apostles recognize them. And

1:25:14

you're like, how? They didn't have photographs. Yeah, come on. Apparently

1:25:17

it's that thing where just someone gets the

1:25:19

vibe, oh, that's gotta be Moses. That's gotta

1:25:21

be Elijah. Oh, what's those things? So I

1:25:23

don't know. For whatever reason, I was not

1:25:25

aware of this. That's a common belief that

1:25:27

those two witnesses will be Elijah and Moses.

1:25:30

Yeah, interesting. And they will be killed or

1:25:32

so it will be thought, but three days later

1:25:34

they will arise just like Jesus. They'll be raptured.

1:25:36

By the way, Ross, is it? I'm Ross. I

1:25:39

broke my toe. Oh, no. I know.

1:25:41

Good thing we went to see a faith healer. We sure did.

1:25:44

Can't wait to tell you more about

1:25:47

that. But I'll tell you this, I have

1:25:49

a broken toe still. Oh, are

1:25:51

you implying that the faith healer did not miraculous?

1:25:54

I don't know. What am I saying? I have

1:25:56

a broken toe. Still hurts. Still

1:25:58

hurts. Oh, my God. A couple

1:26:00

days ago. It's been almost two weeks now.

1:26:02

Yeah. It's been almost two weeks

1:26:04

since you broke your toe. Yeah.

1:26:08

Nice. Monday will be two weeks.

1:26:10

And by three weeks, I'm allowed to

1:26:13

walk uphill. Oh, is

1:26:15

it still discolored and pointing the wrong

1:26:17

way? What do you think? Yeah, yeah,

1:26:19

okay. Now it's more localized,

1:26:21

but I'm seeing the purple

1:26:24

of necrosis. Yeah. She's

1:26:27

gonna make it, folks. It hurts so bad.

1:26:29

Don't break your toe, people. Oh, no. Have

1:26:31

you ever broken a toe? I don't think

1:26:34

so. I'm pretty sure I've gotten like hairline

1:26:36

fractures as a runner, but whatever it is

1:26:38

is healed up. Yeah, it sounds painful. And

1:26:40

you were carrying cat shit? Yeah, I was

1:26:42

carrying 100 pounds of cat shit. You fell

1:26:44

in it? Yeah. Okay. You

1:26:46

want me to tell the story? Sounded very inglorious. Yeah, yeah.

1:26:49

Okay. As I keep flipping from new talking points.

1:26:51

I just told the story also on my

1:26:53

famous podcast at Nicky's today, so I'm experienced.

1:26:56

Okay. So, we have

1:26:58

a litter robot. I'm a

1:27:00

litter robot. Exactly. It

1:27:02

collects my cat's shit into

1:27:05

a drawer. And

1:27:07

then once a month, we just open it up

1:27:09

and you take the feces out. At

1:27:11

feces and urine, right? There's all those big clumps

1:27:13

of urine. Yes. Oh, yeah. So

1:27:16

when you take it out, it's like 20 pounds. It's really heavy. And

1:27:18

so Drew was cleaning it out. He pulls out

1:27:21

a bag of cat shit. He's like, hey, can

1:27:23

you grab this? I grab it. He's like, oh,

1:27:25

while you're taking that. There are some on the

1:27:27

porch. A walk to the porch.

1:27:29

It turns out on our porch, there are

1:27:31

four other bags of cat shit waiting

1:27:34

for me. So I try

1:27:37

to pick up all five bags of

1:27:39

cat shit. So now I've got about

1:27:41

a hundred pounds of cat shit. And

1:27:43

I think to myself, even though

1:27:46

it's 10 PM, even though I

1:27:48

have no shoes on, even though

1:27:50

it's pitch black out there, I'm

1:27:52

going to walk down these stairs and I'm going

1:27:54

to take a hundred pounds

1:27:56

worth of feces to trash it. I'm

1:27:58

crushing the hundred pounds. I don't think I

1:28:00

could lift 100 pounds of anything. Really? Well,

1:28:03

it's a lot of catch it. It was a lot of

1:28:05

catch it. Okay, so then, but

1:28:07

since it's five different bags, now

1:28:10

you have five different like. I guess

1:28:12

I can lift my wife and okay, all right, depending on how

1:28:14

you do, all right. But now there's five

1:28:17

different like swinging balls of

1:28:20

catch it. So they swing

1:28:22

in different ways and then they

1:28:24

come together like a wrecking ball and

1:28:27

then the wrecking ball comes to war me. Who

1:28:29

knew there would be two wrecking ball references in one

1:28:31

episode. It comes at me, it

1:28:33

hits me in the stomach like I'm fucking

1:28:35

Houdini. I go over the front. And it hit

1:28:37

you like a wrecking ball. I

1:28:39

go over the front of the wrecking ball. Oh

1:28:41

no. Like

1:28:44

I'm propelled forward. I land

1:28:46

on the shit and then

1:28:49

my foot is pulled behind

1:28:51

me onto the stair and

1:28:53

one little toe gets

1:28:55

pulled all the way

1:28:58

the wrong way. This little toe

1:29:00

goes all the way the wrong way.

1:29:02

Oh no. And I had

1:29:04

heard so bad and I yelled for Drew and

1:29:06

then I said, I think I broke my

1:29:08

toe and I'm definitely laying in

1:29:10

catch. Yeah, oh, that's so sad. It's

1:29:13

one of those physical pain

1:29:15

plus. Indignity. Indignity, right,

1:29:17

yep. That's

1:29:20

more or less what Natalie said too. She's

1:29:22

like, oh, the broken toe is

1:29:24

bad, the cat shakes the word. Oh

1:29:28

man. Okay, David

1:29:31

Jeremiah hits one of my

1:29:33

pet peeves here. Okay. So he's talking

1:29:35

about how we need to have our sins

1:29:37

forgiven. And he said, had there

1:29:39

been another way of redeeming the human race,

1:29:41

do you think Christ would have gone to

1:29:44

the cross? And that bothers

1:29:46

me so much because God

1:29:48

makes the rules. He's

1:29:51

God. Yes, Lewis did this too in

1:29:53

the Chronicles of Narnia. And I remember

1:29:55

this bothering me that it was saying

1:29:57

that Aslan had to go and be

1:29:59

broken. upon the altar because there

1:30:02

was older magic. I'm like, what

1:30:04

older magic? What is this? There's

1:30:07

no analogy for that in Christianity. There's

1:30:09

no older magic that's beyond God or

1:30:11

that God is bound by. Oh, I

1:30:13

see. Oh, older than God? Yeah. Oh,

1:30:16

weird. Essentially the point, Lewis had some

1:30:18

really weird ideas of you actually read Lewis, which

1:30:20

many people don't. They just rely on him for

1:30:22

being smart and still being a Christian anyways. And

1:30:25

I suppose Christians would say, well, he can't be

1:30:27

other than he is. It's about his nature, but

1:30:29

still it bothers me. He could have just

1:30:31

forgiven everybody. God? Yeah. Totally.

1:30:35

You've been like, you know what? I forgive you. Totally. Yep.

1:30:38

I forgive. If I have met you and

1:30:40

you have wronged me, I hereby forgive you.

1:30:43

This is all in my podcast. Your forgiven

1:30:45

is fine. Oh, okay.

1:30:47

Yeah, like, I mean, it's not

1:30:49

that hard. You know, you're

1:30:51

God. Yeah. I just have

1:30:53

a podcast. I just thought about that for a few

1:30:55

seconds and was like, okay, you're like the four people

1:30:58

I really told something. Yeah, it's fine. You're

1:31:00

God. You can't do that.

1:31:02

You can do that. It really bothers me

1:31:04

had there been another way. Of course there

1:31:07

was another way that there doesn't have to

1:31:09

be blood sacrifice. Yeah. What

1:31:11

rule is that? Someone has to shed

1:31:13

blood. Yeah, it's ridiculous. He also would

1:31:15

want to use like very specific stories

1:31:17

where the metaphor itself would be

1:31:20

fine without you telling me this really happened

1:31:22

at a particular fair that you're going to

1:31:24

name for me now. Just

1:31:27

get out with the analogy. No, sure. No,

1:31:29

it's not that unusual, but the theme park

1:31:31

ride stopped. Let's not pretend that... This

1:31:35

was the Minnesota State Fair in

1:31:37

2013 and Gabby and Amy. I

1:31:39

mean, I do appreciate details that

1:31:41

can be corroborated in pastor's stories

1:31:43

because that's rare. I'd

1:31:45

be surprised. If he gave those details, but

1:31:47

it would check out. When he's talking about

1:31:50

the new bodies, he says, just

1:31:52

as the battered, bruised, bloodied and

1:31:54

broken body, again with the alliteration

1:31:56

of Jesus Christ came out of the

1:31:59

grave in a glorified... state in

1:32:01

parentheses, except for the wounds in

1:32:03

his hands inside. So the

1:32:05

bodies of believers, regardless of their condition,

1:32:07

will be raised in an immortal state

1:32:09

and be reunited with their souls. But

1:32:11

wait, why except for the wounds in

1:32:13

his hands inside? Do you get your

1:32:16

perfect spotless body that

1:32:18

can't be harmed or have disease

1:32:20

or food poisoning or any of

1:32:22

that? Why would those wounds be

1:32:24

preserved? Why? Because Thomas was going

1:32:26

to ask him a question and he had to prove himself to

1:32:28

that one guy and we're all supposed to rely on that one

1:32:30

story of that one guy who asked a

1:32:32

decent question. Right. That annoys

1:32:34

me too. I'm doubting Thomas. You get the sense of

1:32:36

how I hate read this book. Yeah,

1:32:39

I mean it's like if someone asked me

1:32:41

like, yeah, how's Ross doing? And I'm like,

1:32:43

he's doing good, he's doing good. He's got

1:32:45

wounds on both of his hands, he's got

1:32:48

big gaping wounds on his sides. But yeah,

1:32:50

no, he's doing really well. That's his definition

1:32:52

of not doing well. He's doing perfectly.

1:32:54

His body is perfect. Except for the

1:32:56

spear opening in his side. So you're

1:32:58

describing Ross dying. Go find him. He

1:33:01

completely threw holes in his hand. Otherwise,

1:33:03

ideal. It's

1:33:06

not the quiet part out loud, but he

1:33:08

very clearly stated the objective here. Our objective

1:33:10

as Christians is not merely to be included

1:33:12

in the rapture, but to take as many

1:33:14

people with us as we can. Right,

1:33:16

of course. That's what this is

1:33:18

all really about. Oh, speaking of

1:33:20

Thomas here, this is another little like

1:33:22

have it both ways kind of thing

1:33:24

where everybody scolds Thomas for not believing.

1:33:27

Thomas is one of the disciples and

1:33:29

he's the one who like doesn't quite

1:33:31

buy it when Jesus comes back and

1:33:34

wants to put his fingers in Jesus's

1:33:36

wounds to prove it. Baller. Yeah, I want

1:33:38

to make sure it's not painted on. Yeah.

1:33:41

Let me put my finger in there. Put

1:33:43

my finger in your wounds. You hear about

1:33:45

that like with early assassinations, like people sticking

1:33:47

their hands in to try to fish out

1:33:49

the bullet or something. You're like, don't put

1:33:51

fingers in there. But this is before people

1:33:53

knew about microbes. Anyways, so yeah,

1:33:55

you got it. As Jesus promised his disciples that he would

1:33:57

leave to prepare a place for them and return. to

1:34:00

take them there, he added, and

1:34:02

where I go, you know, and

1:34:04

the way you know. Immediately, his

1:34:07

analytical show-me-disciple, Thomas, said, Lord, we

1:34:09

do not know where you are

1:34:11

going. Yeah, Thomas, yes. And how

1:34:13

can we know the way? Yeah,

1:34:15

I know, like the voice of

1:34:18

reason. Jesus answered with

1:34:20

one of the most important statements in

1:34:22

the Bible. So I'm like, sounds like

1:34:24

you like the question then. Yeah, touche,

1:34:27

touche. We wouldn't have gotten that answer

1:34:29

without Thomas asking the reasonable

1:34:31

question. Don't get mad at the

1:34:33

reporter. When you

1:34:35

and I and our friend Matt applied for

1:34:37

the American Bible Challenge, our team name was

1:34:39

The Doubting Thomases. That's right. I really wish

1:34:42

we'd gotten chosen. That would have been fun.

1:34:44

Would have been cool. It was hosted by

1:34:46

Jeff Foxworthy. We were in

1:34:48

the evaluation rounds. They took our pictures.

1:34:50

They made us take a little scripture

1:34:52

test. And then they told us that America wasn't

1:34:55

ready for an atheist team. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if

1:34:57

that was really true or if we just didn't quite see

1:34:59

the house. Someone on the side is like, oh, the producers

1:35:01

weren't wild about the atheist team. But you guys did really

1:35:03

well on your time. This

1:35:06

was written for us. You may be reading this

1:35:08

book as an unbeliever. Yes, that's us.

1:35:11

Oh, yeah, I read it. I wrote yes. Perhaps

1:35:13

out of simple curiosity. And I wrote no. You

1:35:17

have never recognized Christ as your Lord or

1:35:19

submitted your life to him. Oh, not quite.

1:35:21

I did. You may or

1:35:23

may not have grasped everything you've read here. I

1:35:25

wrote I have. But I hope this is one

1:35:27

way to enjoy the book. This

1:35:30

is Ross commentary all over. But I hope

1:35:32

you can at least see that God will

1:35:35

bring an end to the chaos of the

1:35:37

sin-damaged world and restore his perfect rule over

1:35:39

it. Ross writes, I want a

1:35:41

taco. I wrote I don't. But

1:35:46

a taco would be nice. Yeah,

1:35:48

he has delayed his return for centuries

1:35:50

to give you and others like you

1:35:52

the opportunity to come to him before

1:35:54

the door closes. And I wrote is

1:35:56

delayed the appropriate word. Has he delayed

1:35:58

it? planning to do it

1:36:00

earlier? You're like, halfway through,

1:36:02

you're still able to engage with it on

1:36:04

this level. Like I'm just writing like, this

1:36:07

again! This whole caps,

1:36:09

this again! This

1:36:12

again. Yeah. Um. I

1:36:15

have lots of notes. Oh my god, I was getting so annoyed by it. Oh

1:36:18

yeah, there's on page 132, he's arguing

1:36:20

for like, I don't know, why we'd

1:36:23

want to go to heaven? The chapter's

1:36:25

called What's Up With Heaven? What

1:36:27

are you selling at this point? Yeah,

1:36:29

everybody knows heaven's good. And that is

1:36:32

not one way to be rapture ready.

1:36:34

Right, but he basically says,

1:36:37

you should want to go to heaven

1:36:39

because, okay, his first argument is because

1:36:41

it's a place? Heaven

1:36:43

is a wonderful place filled with

1:36:45

glorious grace. This is not an

1:36:48

argument though. Because heaven is a

1:36:50

wonderful place, I want to go

1:36:52

there. Sorry. I don't know, we got it.

1:36:54

I brought a song to my mind. So it's a

1:36:57

place, it exists and will

1:36:59

always exist. There's mansions

1:37:01

in it. What do you mean by place? Um,

1:37:03

oh sure. Yeah, where is it? In

1:37:06

which direction from the earth could we

1:37:08

point a telescope and see heaven? You

1:37:10

can't. Our redeemer is there,

1:37:12

our friends who have died are there,

1:37:14

our money's all there, our resources, we

1:37:17

have an inheritance there, we have a

1:37:19

residence there, and it's precious

1:37:22