Why would God tell Israel to kill its enemies? The Book of Acts and the missing end of Mark's Gospel 

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To deliver craftsmanship worthy of your table, a slice of something special folded into every moment worth savoring because dedication means delivering only the very best horse hat committed to craft since 1905. Hello and welcome to the Ask NT Write Anything podcast, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. Where I'm joined by Tom Wright from Witchiff Hall in Oxford. Tom, how would you be this day? Well, it's been a long day already, for various reasons. We've had family staying and they had to leave very early this morning to catch a boat. So I've been up quite a while, but as long as there's exegesis on the table waiting to be done, that's okay. That's good. I get you out of bed in the morning, exegesis gets you out of bed. Yes. Often, yes. Yeah, I'm on an early morning person. Nothing is more terrifying than the words breakfast meeting. You know, I don't mind a brunch meeting, a lunch meeting, maybe an afternoon tea meeting, but I don't like morning meetings before, around breakfast time. Breakfast meetings, I think are an Americanism, aren't they? Sometimes I've been in America, my hosts have said, "Now we've got a meeting of breakfast tomorrow morning," so we turn up, and sometimes I've been into a hotel restaurant, and there's two or three tables where they're already three or four men, usually men, sitting there reading the Bible together. People don't do that in England or Scotland, and reading the Bible together in restaurants at sort of 730 in the morning. I'm always thrilled when I see people reading the Bible at any time of the day, but that particular thing, alas, we don't do in England or Scotland. I want to, I'm prayerfully support them from the comfort of my own room after I've got up, woken up, had a shower, done my morning of blotions, and got ready. Then I'm ready to tackle the world, I'm having meetings at 730 AM there, maybe a violation of human rights. I don't know, Tom. But anyway, we've got some good questions this week about the ending of Mark's gospel, the purpose of the book of Acts, and a very difficult one, which is about violence in the Old Testament. So let's get stuck in. We've got a question from Roy Jacobson of Charleston, USA, and this is about the ending of Mark's gospel, which is a bit of a puzzle. He says many scholars believe the ending to Mark's gospel was added by later editors in order to harmonize with the other, with the other gospels. While Mark does not deny Jesus's resurrection, what do you think about this sudden and dramatic ending? Now, for those who don't know, our earliest and reliable manuscripts of Mark's gospel have it end at verse 8, where the women went away from the tomb of Freud and they said nothing to nobody, which is a really weird way to end the gospel. And there's a number of other endings you can find in other manuscripts, where there is a variation of how it all pans out. And there's one particular longer ending that became part of the majority text that came into the King James Bible and became for a long time the most popular ending. But in terms of the manuscript evidence, it's not the best attested. So we've got a few different choices from manuscripts as to where Mark ends. Does it ends in verse 8? Or do we go for a longer ending of Mark or is it the case Tom? And I suspect this may be your view that there was a longer ending of Mark's gospel. But unfortunately, it's been lost either because Nero's police came and arrested Mark just maybe when he had his last manuscript and it got torn, Mark's gospel was neglected in the tradition of New Testament manuscripts, the gospels of Matthew and Luke by attestation, the number of copies were by far the most popular books of early Christianity. So maybe Mark got sort of, you know, eclipsed by Matthew and Luke and John so we don't have many copies of Mark's gospel and maybe that explains why we don't have a full copy of the ending. Tom, what do you think is happening with the ending of Mark's gospel? Right. This is one of the New Testament questions which I remember being fascinated by from my very early days in seminary. I think my first term in seminary, the then principle of which the fool where I was studying did a series of Bible readings on Mark and I can't remember what he said when he got to chapter 16, but I do remember that I thought, well, if Mark is following Peter's preaching at this point which and that's one of the traditions that Peter preached in Rome told people about Jesus and that Mark was his assistant and wrote stuff down, then maybe this was as far as Peter had got and so that's as far as as Mark had got. And then another theory formed itself into my mind which was that maybe this is the point at which Mark is saying in one of those little footnotes which we would insert, but he didn't have the means to do that. That when you're reading this at this point in the story invite your friend so and so or such and such who happens to be here with you who was there on the first days today and let them tell their story and so that I would then imagine Mark's gospel ending with a kind of a rubric at this point bring on your eyewitnesses. Now, that's plausible, well, I wouldn't say plausible, possible, but not hugely likely in my view. My view has sort of settled down into a different point of view and I expound this in detail in the relevant chapter of my book, The Resurrection of the Son of God. It's chapter 14 on Mark's resurrection narratives, but my view really came to me more firmly when I was in Jerusalem for the first time and I went to the Israel Museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls are displayed. Now, I love the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've studied them intensely for a long time and I'm fascinated by them and I wish people would find more similar things because it's just wonderful to see the actual artifacts from the ancient world before your very eyes. Almost all those scrolls are truncated either at the beginning or at the end or both. There's very few of the scrolls where we seem to have the actual ending and the actual beginning. There's a good reason for that that the scrolls are on parchment but they were attached to sticks, to rods, to wooden things, in other words, and that in the course of time the wooden stick that the scroll was wound around, of either end, has rotted and has pulled away the bit that was attached to it with it. Now, here's the thing. I think not only was Mark's ending lost, I think Mark's beginning was lost as well because at the beginning of Mark's gospel, there's a very odd little passage which says, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, and then we get a quote from Malachi. And it just doesn't seem quite to fit and it looks to me as though the beginning of what we have as Mark now, which reads, "Archea, Yuvangelio, Yezu, Christu, Hu, Yothu, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, then as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, I suspect that that was added later, because though you can have a gospel which ends with a sort of dot, dot, dot, it will be very difficult to have one which began with a dot, dot, dot, dot, so that some very, very early scribe will have found a text which just plunges straight into a bit of Malachi as well. then Isaiah. And some scribe has said, well, no, this is the beginning. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, son of God, there's a textual question about that as well. But then as it is written, and he glances down, he sees its Isaiah coming up. So fine, in Isaiah the prophet will have a bit in Malachi in brackets and then Wilkett to Isaiah. So I think it's highly likely that the beginning and the ending were lost. And that's highly likely historically because that's what happened to a lot of very early manuscripts precisely at that time. Now, when we then go to the ending, they said nothing to anyone. This is the women of the tomb because fear and trembling had fallen upon them and they were afraid. F on Buntargar. I remember people used to write whole articles. Maybe they still do on canna gospel end with the word gar. And the answer is, yes, sentences, even books, paragraphs can end with gar. It's unusual. Normally you would expect to go on beyond that. But then people have built whole theories about this over the last century or so. Some people have said, well, but that's what Mark wanted to stop at because he didn't want to make anything explicit because the gospel is all about mysteries and penetrating the darkness and not knowing what's going on and having to live by faith instead. And so I think a lot of that is modern or even postmodern fantasy because there are lots of passages in the New Testament in Mark as well, which speak of people in fear and trembling like the woman who comes and touches Jesus in the crowd. When she's identified, she comes. It's the same phrase with fear and trembling. This is a perfectly good way of saying these people are aware that something is going on here, which is much bigger than they had imagined. And so the ending as it is makes perfect sense. But here's the thing. Passage after passage after passage in Mark has Jesus predicting two things that he's going to the cross and he's going to be raised from the dead. He's going to the cross. He's going to be raised from the dead. Ever since chapter 8, Jesus has been repeating that. And then when he stands in front of Caiaphas the High Priest, and the Caiaphas as either Messiah or the Son of the Blessed, Jesus' response basically means, yes, in a different sense from what you thought, but you will see me vindicated. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of him. That's not a way of saying Caiaphas will see Jesus returning coming downwards. It's a way of saying Caiaphas will see Jesus exalted like the Son of Man in Daniel 7 or like the king in Psalm 110. And so Mark has then had these predictions. He's going to be crucified. He's going to be raised. Then he's spent the long chapter 15 describing in a lavish detail how Jesus was crucified. So it seems to me highly likely that he will have had a section talking about the resurrection as well. And if as many think Mark was following, but Mark was followed by Matthew at this point, well, what we see at the end of Matthew's gospel may be, maybe, I wouldn't put it stronger than that, maybe something like what there was originally at the end of Mark's gospel. One thing I'm quite clear about is that the two further ending was the short one and the long one are definitely secondary. They're added by scribes in order to make up what seems to them a rather obvious deficiency. So people get worried about all of this because of the theory of inspiration. How could the Bible be sort of incomplete like that? And I think the Bible, this doesn't mean the Bible is getting wrong. The Bible is a human book like any other human book and the Bible or every book of the Bible has been written by somebody edited by somebody transcribed by somebody. It's not a big deal. God works through all these processes. Inspiration doesn't mean that God dictated a perfect text and somebody simply sat down there with the mind going blank and transcribed it. And this is probably petrine testimony. Films had through Mark and there probably was a resurrection narrative. This is what we would expect at the end of the story. And I just think it's been lost. That's a shame at one level, but it's a tease and a pointer at another level that maybe we today reading this account should say, well, as we get to this point, what is our experience of the risen Jesus? How did we come to faith? How do we know Jesus today? And maybe Mark's gospel invites us to think that way, even if it's original author, didn't expect that. Yeah. Yeah. Thomas, I go back on four with this. I think on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I think that Mark's gospel finished at verse 8. As if Mark is saying, look, I can take you to the empty tomb. I can show you the women in fear and trembling, but you've got to decide for yourself whether you're going to believe and follow the risen Jesus. I mean, that's one way of thinking about it. But as you say, Mark does kind of set us up for belief in the resurrection. I mean, you've got the three passion predictions where he says this man will be handed over. He'll be marked or crucifying him on the third day. He will rise. So you think Mark should have a resurrection narrative there, but because of the relative neglect of Mark's gospel compared to particularly the gospels of Matthew and Luke, it's likely that maybe very early on Mark's ending was lost to us and then some scribes have tried to fill in the gap. The only final thing I'll say, there is one interesting thing about the longer ending of Mark. Yeah, that's the version you get like in the King James Bible. It's attested by the time of Justin Mara. So although it's late and secondary, it's still relatively early. You could probably date it to about 125, 150, AD. And what's really fascinating, though, Tom, is it incorporates elements from all four gospels and the book of acts. So the longer ending of Mark, I don't think it's, you know, what was Mark the evangelist actual ending, but it is proof that by the second quarter of the second century, people were already reading and collecting together the four gospels and the book of acts. So the longer ending of Mark is a very good witness to the collection and synthesis of the fourfold gospel and the book of acts. That's what I think is the real payoff from the longer ending of Mark. I think it's original to Mark, but it's a very interesting window on the gospel culture of early Christianity. That's that's really helpful. And I was struck as well at some point. I forget where I first saw this by the fact that verse nine, which is the beginning of the longer ending, actually repeats what would be a whole resurrection story. In other words, verses nine onwards isn't really an addition following verse eight because it begins when he rose on the first day of the week. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene. In other words, it's as though the longer ending is giving you a whole resurrection story and not resurrection story part two. So I think I agree that it's a way of some scribe saying, okay, I'll pull together from the other gospels and from acts and we'll tell the whole story just in case anyone is worried about how this whole thing gets wrapped up. Yeah, that's a good way to put it, but it's a great mystery. For those who want to do a deep dive on this, there's a thing called the Mark 16 project, which some scholars who've got a research grant are going around collecting all the manuscripts on Mark. They're looking at all the parotextual paraphernalia like when people have got comments, scribes, writing things in the margins, people are drawing things maybe like big question marks like going what happened to the resurrection story. It's a great project. You can check it all out. But Tom, let's move to our second question. And this takes us from Mark's gospel to the book of Acts. This is a question from Martin Inchley of Christchurch, USA. And this is what Martin writes to us. When discussing the book of Acts, sometimes you, Tom, say it's part of Paul's defense for his trial, showing that the authorities had constantly found Paul innocent. But then you also say it proclaims Jesus as the world's true Lord in a way that must have been plain even to a pagan reader. Are these two perspectives not at odds with each other? Well, my response to that, Martin, so I don't think they are mutually exclusive. Luke can emphasize Paul's innocence repeatedly when he gives his testimony. And Jesus is Lord of the whole world as we find in Acts 10, 36. But Tom, can you break down for us for Martin? What do you think is the purpose of the book of Acts? Is it a manual on how to do church planting? You know, as if, you know, we've been in Acts 28, but now we need to go do our own Acts 29, which I think would make a very good name for a church planning network. Oh, I have to try Mark that one. But anyway, Tom, can you help us out? Help Mark now. What is the purpose of the book of X? Yeah, yeah. I think there is a primary purpose which gradually comes into focus. I think chapters 1 to 12 are an extraordinary summary of the first generation in Jerusalem. But then chapters 13 to 28, focus on Paul. Of course, they have quite a bit of Peter in as well. And you have the debate in Jerusalem in chapter 15. But increasingly, Paul is the one who is the center of the story, which we know historically is only a small part of the story. The danger of reading acts as simply early church history is that it implies this is the only real show in town. Whereas we know that there were other missionaries, some going south to Egypt or Ethiopia, some going east towards India according to very early tradition, Thomas went to India, etc. So we're only given a piece of it. And I think I've come to the view that Paul is not actually really the hero. The real hero is the gospel, the gospel itself, the word which does things which is powerful, which calls people to discipleship, which does its own work in communities and hearts and minds. And Paul is the one who is articulating this word. But then within that larger story of this is how the gospel arrives in Rome, and since all roads lead to Rome, all roads lead from Rome. So just as the book of Acts begins by having Jesus say, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So I think part of the point of the ending is for Luke to say, here we are. They have been witnesses to Jesus in Rome, which in principle means to the ends of the earth. Because once you're in Rome, people are going to travel in all directions as we know they did. But then within that, I think Luke has woven quite cleverly into that the sequence of trials in each of which sometimes against their better judgment as it were, Roman officials declare that Paul is innocent again and again. He's on trial, but actually, no, there's nothing again in him. He's on trial, but well, he could have been set free if he hadn't appealed to Caesar. The people in mortar think that he's a murderer because a snake fastens on his arm, but then he shakes it off and he's okay. And so they think he's a god, which is another confusing issue. The centurion was had to stop the soldiers killing the prisoners on board. And so at point after point after point, Paul is being rescued by the Roman authorities. And I think all this is pointing in Luke's intention towards saying, so when Paul comes before Caesar, somebody should make this case. I'm not saying that Paul himself would make it, but that Luke wants this to be known. This was the attitude that Roman officials took. When there was the riot in Ephesus, it wasn't the Christians who quelled, and it was the local town clerk, the representative of the Roman Empire, who said, "Hey, guys, you're going to be in a mess here because if Rome hears about this, they're not going to be pleased." And if Paul is done anything wrong, well, Sue him, take him to court, but if he hasn't, then sit down, shut up and go home, and which they do. So that at every point, it is as though the story is designed to say, "Actually he's innocent. Actually, it might surprise you, but he is not guilty. Actually, don't worry about it, but Paul is okay." But then within that, how do you put that together with, as our questioner says, with the whole emphasis that Jesus is now the Lord of the world, the Kirios Cosmo. Well, my mind on hearing this question went straight across to the letter to the Romans. The letter to the Romans begins very emphatically with Jesus as the Son of God, as the Lord of the world, as the one who is basically sending out messengers to claim believing allegiance from the world, and through the message about this, the gospel, which is also a Roman imperial world, then justice and peace and salvation have come to the world. All of this is a way of saying everything Caesar claims. Jesus has done it in spades and far beyond. At the same time, when Paul gets to Romans 13, he says, "When not into violent revolution against the principalities and powers, against the powers of B, you are not to be known as troublemakers. You are to be known as good citizens because we're living in a different dimension. We are witnesses to new creation, not to a cheap and cheerful revolution, which simply keeps the wheels of the old world turning, as we know, military revolutions and so on, usually just replace one bad system with another." Paul has seen that and says, "No, we're not into that, but that doesn't at all pull away from his firm emphasis in Romans 1 to 8, then in Romans 14 and 15, straight after 13, that Jesus is the Lord of the whole world." So, theologically, there actually isn't any incompatibility. In order to tease that out, one would need to write a book on Jesus and the powers. And actually, I think you and I did write one of those. So, we did Tom. Cracking good read, may I add, a cracking good read. So, well, yes, I think that's a great way to put it. Tom, you've also got your own book about the vision of Acts. Do I have that right? The vision of Acts. It's the challenge of Acts. Yeah, I mean, I use these clichés like vision and challenge and so on. It's a way of saying, "This book is about Acts, and by the way, it's a big challenge." Yes, that was an exciting book to write because I only had eight lectures to cover the whole of Acts, 28 chapters. So, I decided to take each chapter as four chapters of Acts as an introductory thing and then Acts 1 to 4, 5, 2, 8 and so on. And that was an extraordinary way of doing it because, obviously, you can't treat every verse anything like, but it was like standing back or going up in a plane and getting the 30,000-foot view of the book and how it works. I found that enormously refreshing. And out of that, this double conviction comes that again and again, Jesus is the true Lord of the world. And so, ultimately, He is calling Caesar to account. But He is also saying, too, the Roman authorities, Paul has done nothing wrong. And there's a straight line from there to the apologists in the second century who go on saying, "Jesus is Lord," but also go on saying, "We're not troublemakers. We keep the laws. We pay our taxes. The only thing you'll find wrong with us is that we won't worship your gods." That's like polycarp and people like that. So, and that is an authentic early Christian position, which some in the Roman world obviously didn't like because they burned polycarp to death and they did the same similar things to others. But it's a position in which the early Christians and Luke among them are sketching out a way of seeing the community, the Christian community, following Jesus as representatives of a new world order, which isn't just a transition to more of the same in the old world. It is a whole new way of being human, a whole new way of doing community. Well, thanks a ton. I think that's that's a good summary as you're going to get on the purpose of the Book of Acts. And it's not just one purpose. There's multiple things that are going on in the Book of Acts. We're going to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to have a look at one of the most difficult and challenging topics in all of biblical study. And that is how do we understand? How do we grapple with some of the strange and brutal violence we find described in the Old Testament? More on that? You know, moment. Ministry comes with a lot of responsibility. Pastors prepare sermons, counsel, hurting people, and walk alongside others through life's most important moments. The NLT Pastors Bible was created to help you serve faithfully in every aspect of ministry. It combines the trusted accuracy and understandability of the new living translation with resources to help you engage Scripture deeply, including access to the free filament Bible app with study notes, videos, maps, and more. Discover the NLT Pastors Bible today at tindle.life/pastorsbible. Welcome back. Now we have a question. And it's not from one person. I would say this question is from many people from the land of everywhere. So I mean, I'm not joking. We've had about six different people right into us asking about the topic of how do we understand violence in the Old Testament. I'm not going to read out all of the six questions. but I'm going to summarize them all with this basic question, Tom. And Tom, I think this is one of the hardest questions we're ever going to wrestle with on the show, and it's this one. Why would God call Israel to kill, to eliminate the very nations they were to bless and bring light to? Now, this means we've got to get into the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua, the various bits of tribal violence we find that characterize the ancient near east, the rise and fall of empires, the brutality that went with it, the kind of strange descriptions of ancient Eryst and warfare that we find even in the holy and inspired Bible. I mean, what are we to make of these, dare I say these texts of terror that we sometimes find in the Old Testament? I mean, there's an easy temptation here, which is to go the Marcianite route and say the God of the Old Testament was an angry God who commanded, you know, the elimination of whole peoples and tribes and the sacking of cities, and the God of the New Testament is better than that. But if we believe the God of creation and the God of salvation are the same God, that the God of Israel and the God of Jesus is the same God, well, that's not theologically possible. Tom, do you have an answer to many of our audience who are inundating us with questions about how to understand. I don't have the answer. I don't have a secret line, which will trump all the other lines that have been explored from time to time. There are two or three fixed points in my mind, which I think we have to bear in mind as we stand back from all of this. One of them comes in the call of Abraham in Genesis 15, where God says to Abraham that his descendants are going to be going off to be slaves in a foreign land, and that they will come back in the fourth generation. And then there's this odd explanation for that. And it's because the iniquity of the amurite is not yet full. Now, it's as though God waits until a whole society has become so wicked, so corrupt, so horrible in itself with child sacrifice and all kinds of human wickedness. That the only word to be said is a word of judgment. Now, we've had judgment before in Genesis, of course, because when the wickedness of humans gets so bad, God sends the flood, and in a sense, that's an advanced warning that God will not forever tolerate ongoing evil. Now, this is difficult for us because since if you're raised Christian and taught Christianity, then you want to say that there are always ought to be a second chance that the people of Israel should have gone into the land and said, "Hey, guys, there is a God who is a redeeming God, so please stop your wicked ways at once." Now, I would love to believe that, but the older I get, the more I'm aware, looking around the world, looking around society, that there are some movements and some people of whom perhaps the only thing we can pray as in the Psalms are, "Lord, may they fall into the pits that they have dug for others." Recording this, I am aware of certain great world leaders whose names will be familiar to everybody who just seem to tell lie after lie and use one wicked violence after another, excusing them this way and that, and just trampling on all sorts of human issues and defenseless people. I want to say, of people like that, that there has to be a moment when God says, "Enough is enough," when not just going to wait around for such people to repent one day, we have to do some sort of judgment. It seems to me that the perspective of Genesis from Genesis 15, that line about the Iniquity of the Amorites, is a way of saying that those people currently in what we think of as the Holy Land have gone so far down the road that the only thing to be said is a word of judgment and that then the kind of holy violence which is commended in Joshua is going to be the way to deal with it. Of course, in the book of Joshua itself, there are exceptions like Rahab, who looks after the spies in Jericho, so it's not absolutely every single person. And there are some people who've tried to say, "Come up with different theories about what it's only the real military heartlands or whatever, and ordinary people get away with it." There are others, there are the tribe who play a trick and who pretend that they're coming from miles and miles away, whereas in fact they're just next door, and they do a deal with Joshua's men and somehow they get spared. So there are already wrinkles in these absolute theory, but in general, I think that was the theory behind it, that the wickedness had gone so far that the only possible word was a word of judgment. And then within the book of Judges, as many commentators have said, it looks as though what's happened is that Israel, so far from being a light to the nations, has been running itself in ways which are really rather like the rest of the nations. And then there's a sort of sense of, "Well, they've got to do it this way," and so on. And that, of course, goes on to David. And one of the very interesting things is when David wants to build God a house, and God says, "You can't do that, you've got blood on your hands. I'm going to call your son, and he will be a man of peace, and he will build a house." And so already, even in the midst of David who slaughtered people to left and right him for this time's immobile and goodness knows who, God says, "Yeah, but that's not actually how to create the world that I want, which is a world where I can come and live in the midst of my people." So there is already that sense of, this may have been necessary, or it may have been the only way of doing something or something, but God is already saying there has to be a limit to that. So that's the first thing I want to say, starting from Genesis 15 and moving forwards. The second thing I want to say is that when God called Abraham, back to Abraham again, in order to deal with the problem of humanity, because that's in the narrative of Genesis, that's the role that Abraham and his family have, to deal with the problem of humanity. And God knew perfectly well that Abraham himself and his family were part of the problem as well as part of the solution. So that Abraham is an ambiguous character, a very ambiguous in the book of Genesis itself, but God works with that ambiguity, and we can see that going on all the way through the Old Testament. That God works in his people, through his people, even though they are rebellious, they get things wrong, they too have to be judged, they too have to go to exile, et cetera. And what I see then is like an enormous picture gradually building up of God saying, this is how I am rescuing my world by calling Abraham and his family to be the people through whom I will redeem the world, so that the picture finally grows and we realize it's the picture of God incarnate dying on a cross. And only when I see that whole story can I even begin to think about Joshua and Judges that actually all along God is saying that I am going to take the wickedness and violence of the whole world onto myself in the end. Now, that doesn't explain or justify it in the sense of, well, a part of the problem is people have gone to the Bible expecting to see a nice moral book, a book of good moral rules, good moral examples, and then they see extraordinary things happening, and they think, oh dear, we don't like those bits, so maybe they weren't inspired or something. That's not the point. This is a cosmic story of how the creator of the world decided to come into his world to take its horror and violence upon himself and to deal with it and all that stuff from Abraham through Joshua and Judges through David and all the rest of it. That is all by way of saying that God of Israel is working his purpose out, but the ultimate moment of that purpose is this solitary figure on the cross shouting out my God, my God, why did you abandon me? And so when the world today gets to the point of saying, where is God? Why have we been abandoned? Then it seems to me that God himself is saying, I am here with you, I am working my purpose out. So don't try and have little pet theories about how those earlier bits of Scripture work. look at the larger picture reaching its climax in Jesus. That's about as far as I can get one, could go onto the block of Revelation, which raises all sorts of other cognitive questions. But those are the guidelines I would give within which we might cautiously begin to explore the question. Yeah, I mean, Tom, this is such a huge topic and I find this is one of easily the top five topics I get asked by both Christians and non-Christians when they're wrestling with the Bible. So I think what we're going to do, we'll pause this conversation here for now, but we'll do a bonus episode where we'll get maybe a little bit more granular on a couple of aspects of this topic about, you know, violence in the old testament. So for subscribers to ask, into you write anything, if you want to, if you want to, make sure you don't miss out on that, become a subscriber to our bonus episodes because for the price of a cheap coffee from Nero or Starbucks, you can get four extra episodes a week, including this one where Tom and I will try dig a little bit deeper on this very difficult and perplexing question. But in our next regular episode coming up, Tom, we've got some good questions coming, Tom. These are good ones. We've got a question that will topics we're going to deal with next week on are there profits and apostles today? What about sacraments versus ordinances? And I love this one. Should we try to change people's minds on the rapture? Now on this program, Tom and I, we've done a lot of critiquing of rapture theology, but should you put in the effort to try change people's minds on that topic? So that's something we're going to deal with in our next episode. And I also want to point out that in the premier network, there is a great number of shows you can watch. There is the CS Lewis podcast where they recently did a crack and lacking episode and whether CS Lewis was a bad theologian. Now Tom, I know you like CS Lewis, but you have a little bit of an asterisk next to your admiration of him. Yeah, he was, he was a great storyteller, a great apologist, but sometimes his theology, his eschatology left a little bit to be desired. And so premier has done a great job putting out a podcast and some episodes on CS Lewis. Tom, I don't know whether you know this, but I've also got another program with premier called history's last stand where we go into history. We've been looking at the successes of Alexander the great. We've been doing a series about the last days of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and we're also going to explore fake gospels and hoaxes about Jesus in the end, in the world of antiquities. So people might want to check that out. But Tom, if people want to send us their question, is there some place they should go if they want to hear you answer their question? It's very easy. The website is askinturate.com. If you go to that site, you can submit your question and maybe just maybe your question will get read and answered on this program. But until then, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird. Goodbye from me, Tom Raid. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of askinturate anything.