Ep 1289 | John Luke Robertson Celebrates His New Twin Daughters!

Welcome back to the unashamed podcast. We're back at it. Our Friday at Hillsdale. We left the episode before last saying if we come back then we have, you know, we're going to continue. So Hillsdale has decided to continue this journey. I will give a little caveat this morning. You might hear some construction noise is in the background, but you gotta be patient with us because we, you guys got hammered by the storm

down there and apparently, Sadie's studio flooded, which is right next door so they're doing it. I guess roof work. What's going on over there? They're replacing the roof of the

“whole building. Yeah, I think that is you do the Sadie's podcast. I think it's the building.”

No, what purpose? No, it's her studio. We're just saying it was something happens to Sadie and everything comes to that. But the noise is not coming from my, my office also flooded it. They didn't care. Nobody's going to go into it. Well, good news. Maddie has sent a message to the foreman. So yeah, I'm inspecting everything to come to a screeching hall just in

a second. But to your point out, if the unashamed studio was falling in, I do think that

they might drag the feet a little longer. I don't know. The other way to the emergency end, then we would be going from the side of the road. We're all going back out of the layer. Exactly. We're a bit back at the layer. Yeah. So as they say, pardon our progress. If you hear the noise, and then we also got big news. Papa over there, tell us what, not in your world. Hey, man, you can't do that. I said it about that. I mean, what,

what has happened has, John Luke is now the most prolific man around this table. He has the most, because you adopted the number five, but he, this man has five children. I mean, I'm in press. Are you not press? It's very impressive. It's very impressive. On five children. I think when I met you, you had no kids. Zero. Now you're at five. Yeah. And we're at three. So now we have eight kids. That's actually crazy. Yeah. Five and four kids.

Five and six. Yeah. That was zero. Weekend, right? Is it a week today? A week today. Yeah.

“So we did say about that. And he's here. He's doing the podcast. That's what it's”

about. We have funded, right? We have the question. You, you did not put, you told me the death and the death of the twins versus it. Hey, if you can, you see Luke and I ask him about the podcast. I was like, I cannot ask him about the podcast. I think it's interesting

to do the heavy lift that I was like, just just float the idea. You never know. But

about a week away, he may be ready to go. There was more to form Mary Kate sink and not like that. No, and I was, if I'm not like a, yeah, good luck, Mary Kate. See you later. I'm going back to work. Well, I know that. I'm taking the full week, but this, we worked it out to my mom's air washing them. Yeah. It was awesome. Twins is, I mean, the birth was, I'll let Mary Kate tell the story when she's ready. But suffice to say, it was

a referer than a single one. But they both gave my healthy. It was awesome. And then we went home and get the normal time, which is weird for twins. It really is. And then was a blessing. Yeah, yeah. They were not for the second car and see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was thinking of Phil, he said, why won't say what Phil told me. Yeah, look like, but it's not for consumption on this podcast. Maybe I should say what he used to tell me about before before Jill had

a baby. Should I say this? I don't know. I'll say if we cut it, if we end up cutting this, then that'll be, you know, you guys can decide if we should cut it or not. But when we were pregnant with our first child, Laila and Jill was about to get ready to go into labor and Phil was, you know, obviously he's looking at Jill. She's nine months pregnant. And he was

always a brutal process on. It's like, it looks like somebody's gotten a deer. And of course,

Jill's like, oh, that's not the thing you want to hear. Thanks for the encouragement. Yeah. Yeah, they did encouragement, though. He says, like, gotten a deer. He said, it's a brutal process. You can't unsee it's act. He's telling me that it feels like right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And away, it was his way of doing small talk with women. But if I was just to dad, it's probably better if you just, just nod and give it to him. So just just to walk on by. The nurse told

me in the hospital, she was like, are you going to be okay? Are you going to make it? And I was like,

“yeah, I think I can do it. She said, we had a dad pass out yesterday in the room. We had like”

drag him off to the little corner. And that is a true. If you are a man about to watch, do not think, oh, yeah, I can handle it. Like, I've seen if you haven't seen stuff like that, you cannot hear it. I was a head above the curtain guy. Yeah. Yeah, you didn't get it. You did see the whole process. I saw the whole process. And I will tell you this. I'm still of the air. I was the sit in the waiting room guy. I thought, yeah, you should get it. That's the back of the

be less. No, it's not a bless. I'll tell you why because when I was there for all of the birth,

“every birth of our kids, the first four, and we were there right after Ruta's born. I literally”

came in the right right after she was born. But it was a, it was the strangest moment of, I'm

watching the whole thing unfold. And this, particularly with the first one, because you, you just

have no, you can't anticipate what you're about to see. And I went from like, I'm going to pass out. I had that feeling like this is like, I cannot watch this. It was too gruesome to like the most spiritual moment, like I've ever, like to see a life come into the world. And it was, it was a weird like, I don't know, I'm not the best out. I'm not to go down and then boom. And then you're like, wow. I mean, it really is like you see the whole process of life emerged. I was glad that I sat in on it

because it, it really was such a spiritual experience. I saw Jay Stone fall in like a baby. Come when he came out with, when Carly was first born, and I was like, well, that's something about,

“there's a miracle right there. Oh, about the miracle of birth. And the fact that you”

made Jay Stone crab, I was pretty good. Well, it's interesting, because if you think about, by the way, where this is unashamed for Hillsdale, you can go to unashamed for Hillsdale.com, sign up for the course. We're doing ancient Christianity. I'm really excited about this one, just to hear and learn about the history of our faith is, and that it is really, and actually the

cold open sack was, is the perfect lead-in to our first topic about this because I love what the

that was a Dr. Arne said at the beginning in the intro of this course, that Christianity is a strange religion. And mainly because, I mean, you think about it, what we believe is, is that the creator of the cosmos chose to come to earth and and do what we just described come through a woman to, you know, birthed into, you know, to become one of us. And just think about that. I mean, what no other, I mean, no other religion of all time, whatever have, you know, come up with this.

“That's why we know it's true because who would make this up, right? Yeah. I mean, it's so incredible”

that Jesus came as a baby, even in a miraculous way. But I love that they were talking about many miraculous births throughout history that they kind of kept this dream alive of Messiah. So it is, it is pretty unique and interesting. Any time I go and speak now to pro-life event, that's using my open and line. It was like, if you want to order the word on the right side in the pro-life debate, our, our creator decided to come here through the womb of a woman.

And it was a very unplanned pregnancy, at least from her perspective. And she was a teenager, and she was unmarried. So if you're wondering if you're doing the right thing in this pregnancy resource center by helping these young women who are coming in, that's how Jesus came here. In that exact same situation. So we're doing the right thing by protecting life. That's what I

thought to, listening to this episode, when the guy had never thought about in the Bible to use

X word, when motif had missed, is that birth motif of how it was, um, and then usual birth all the way from Adam. I mean, even you, you can call Adam, he'd actually don't say that. I just thought this, you can call Adam, like, a kind of a miraculous birth that he'd like, creamed him from the ground. But then you've got, uh, you've got Abraham, you've got Sarah, you've got birth order mixed up, you've got who Joseph was, you know, another wife you've got wife from prostitution. You got all these

things all the way up to Mary, which was like the ultimate miraculous birth, and that seems like something God is very, he likes. Is that like humble circumstance birth? Yeah, and then plan. Yeah, idea, and even John the Baptist, right? Right before, right? Same situation, my plan on our part, on plan on our part. Yeah. On the part of the father, I mean, he planned the whole thing. Yeah, it's interesting because when we, you know, I was thinking to say something out of,

and we did not plan that by the way, the cold open would do it would just happen to be that John Lee just had twins, and, um, and it is, I mean, it's the process of that is painful. So you kind of, I was thinking all the way back to the fall, you know, when God said, at the curse, I'm going to greatly increase your pain and labor to the woman, and to the man he said, you know, I'm going to, the ground will be cursed. You'll work it, but it will produce

thorns and thorns and thorns for you, but you're going to work it by the sweat of your brow, but some of what's going to pop up is going to be, you know, a brow patch. And then, obviously, he gave the curse to Satan. But when he made the prophecy to Satan, if you remember,

crush your head. Your, your bruises heel, but he will crush your head in the process,

speaking of, of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ that would come through the seed, literally the seed of Adam and Eve, out of that lineage, Mary came, and then the Holy Spirit and pregnant, uh, Mary with, with the Christ. And so, you know, when you get to the story of Christ, you know, it is, you know, he used a couple of terms that I wanted to unpack. I want to say this to, you know, if you're, because we, some people listen to the podcast, right, man, this is, like,

the CS Lewis got kind of heavy, you know, I mean, and I read some of the comments and this is heavy. It is heavy, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't lean into it. And so, some of the terminology, you may not be familiar with, but lean into the discussion, because you're going to really find that a lot of encouragement from this, but there were two words that he used, I wanted to talk about when it came to God, uh, transcendent, and then eminent. And I don't know if

“you all picked up on those words or not, but they, they seem to be contradictory, right?”

Yeah, and the idea of transcendent is that God is so far, it just means that God is so other than, he's so beyond us that he's like, you came to approach you, he's just, he's out there. He's beyond above, he transcends whatever plane we're on. And then eminent is right here, right now, right in the right next to me, like, and these two things seem to be in contrast with one another, but in Christ, we find that fulfillment. And I don't know if you, if that hit you

guys when he was talking about that at all, that you'll have any thoughts on, on kind of that there's two competing ideas and how Christ fulfills that, or links that. Yeah, I thought it was,

it was spot on. And it also goes right after that he talked about the tension that's always there

between humanity and God. And the same thing, I mean, it's the same idea. There's a tension in the idea. How's God everywhere? And how is he here? But the same tension is there is an our relationship with God, this idea that there's, there's love and he loves us and we love him, but then there's rebellion and you don't act like you love him, you don't act like you love your brother, you know,

“all the stuff we've been talking about in first shot. And so I think those two go together. That's”

the idea is that because God created us in his image and sin came in and obviously threw everything off in off-kilter, which was the whole idea about Jesus coming to begin with, was that he would then recreate that garden. I love that you read that, is that because in that moment, you think about it from God's perspective of being an outside of time in space and yet in our time in space at the same time that when he said that to Satan, this it was going to be 2,000 years before it happened,

but he said it in the moment like it was going to be one of Eve's kids, you know, and it's like yeah, it seems so sudden and yet 2,000 years are going to go by before Jesus shows up, you know, and now 2,000 more years have come by since he was here and yet we still see his purpose in coming. So I just, I think that is the tension for any of us is to understand the bigness of God and and yet the warmth of God, you know, every time I get on an airplane, I just flew into an event

“that we have this moment and I always felt like when I'm, you know, another 35,000 feet”

higher, I'm just a little bit closer in some way. And so I just, I love having that conversation with God and feel like he's right there talking and with me and then at other times you feel

distant. So I love the tension that's always there with that idea. Absolutely. Yeah,

I thought it was cool how we started the lecture kind of talking about the audacious claim of what the Old Testament and the New Testament makes. I feel like sometimes especially as much as we talk about the Bible as much as we're kind of ingrained in it, and think sometimes you can lose sight of, of truly how audacious of a claim it is of what God through Jesus did. And I thought I thought him setting up that framework was really cool because then he goes on to talk about

Judaism, you know, Judaism and then grateful us to be in all these things. But that idea of the monotheism and how audacious of a claim that really is, I thought, I thought it was cool how we set up the lecture going there. Well, we kind of all testified of that. I mean, you think about, you mentioned that that time gap of 45, I was probably what, 45,000 years between Adam and, and the coming of the Christ. But that was a development of human history. Even in Judaism,

you see kind of this, but you see it not just in, oh, I say Judaism may back up, in pre-Judiism, you see that before, you know, there were any nations, you see the default posture man, it's to see God as transcendent, correctly see God as he's out, he's up there. And so, the story that pops in my mind is Genesis 11, when they build the tower of Babel, they're like, we're going to build our way up to the God. You know, we're going to, we're going to

that you see God is transcendent. And then so what they're thinking is, we got to go through and get to him.

“And that really was pretty much the view of all world religions, you know, from, from really”

the corruption of man, is that we're going to work our way and we're going to go up to God. And so God was way up there and to, you know, Dr. Calvert's point, you know, the shocking claim, the audacious claim of the old New Testament is that the God of the universe who spoke the universe into existence, that God now incarnates. And that's the word, that's the link between the transcendent and the imminent. It, what links that is the incarnation of Christ. And so when

you think about the word incarnate, that word incarnal, you know, carnivore, right, what pops near my meat? meat. Yeah, I mean, God came and put himself into the physical meat of a human being. And it's just like, what? I mean, it really is like one of the most, is that one is the shocking, central truth of Christianity is that God put on a human body, the fullness of deity, the quote from scripture, was pleased to dwell in a body and bodily form. That's the central

teaching and that is really the birth pun intended of the Christian faith. Well, and I thought Dr. Calvert to a good job of contrasting that to Greek religion as well as Roman, that that's the one thing

they would never believe. Like, there were tenants that they had about their philosophy that helped

create the opportunity for Christianity, but they could never go there because the one thing God's never going to do is he's never going to take on flesh because flesh is bad, right,

“because it's all about the mind. It's all about the intelligence. And so that's why I was”

so hard for them to get that. Don't forget to sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamedforhealsdale.com. I want to read, he read it in the lecture, but I want to read it again here because it's so central to our faith and to this whole discussion, but in John 1, one through four, John laid it out this way. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made without

him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men, the light chance and the darkness and the darkness has not understood it. And then down at first, 14, the word became flesh incarnate, as I said, and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Fatherful of Grace and truth. And so that central core is everything about our faith, but it's also everything that contrasts us and

makes us different from every other religion in the world. And even today to this day, all these thousand, two thousand years later, the contrast of religion is that is that our Savior, our prophet, our king, whatever name you want to give in whatever title, he is one of us and he is one of us

for eternity, and he's glorified. So it is powerful, it's unique, but it also speaks to what people

“need. I mean, it's a felt need of humanity to have a Savior who understands us. That's what makes”

us different. That's what makes it different. Yeah, that was interesting too, because he was talking about the Greeks and the Romans and how, you know, they were all, you know, Paul at theism. But he was saying, they were all super religious. And I was kind of thinking about that compared to now, because now, if, you know, the way we evangelize and share the gospel, most of the time, it's people don't believe in a God. But then it was, they all believed in God. So it was just,

you're trying to convince them that there was one God, which is the monotheism. But I was just thinking about that when he was saying, everyone then was religious, whether Greeks or Romans or whoever, like they, they believed in many gods. And I was thinking about that compared to today to where most people are either, they either believe, you know, in, in a God, or their, yeah, atheist. What was the things that he, he talked about, and they kept a fire burning

in there. Yeah, it caused a fire, but what was that? Do you know what that was about? He didn't

explain it, but I didn't, I never heard that before. Is that some sort of, that's to sacrifice,

right? The context of sacrifice to constantly be giving up sacrifices to the gods. You know what, what, what Judaism brought to the table was that the, the Greco Roman world, you know, according to Dr. Calvert had no concept of a, of a monotheistic God. They worship the gods.

pagan religions that's the gods, it's the gods. Judaism had the long history of the, the idea

“of the God is one, you know, the larger God is one God. And so, but the Greco Roman world had,”

they had what I would call general revelation, you know, and the Jewish culture and Judaism brought really specific revelation from the Torah and from the Old Testament that we now as a, you know, the precursor to the New Testament. But the Greco Roman world, they were accessing things about God through just general revelation, the Aristotle, you know, his unmovable object observation. You know, that was not something that was revealed to him in a scripture. You know, he had no clue

of the Jews or, or certainly Christianity because Christ had an accordion. But he, he threw mathematics and through logic and through the logos through reasoning, he was able to observe the universe, and he was able to say, "Wait, objects are moving. Why are they moving?" Well, something else that

“was moving bumped into it and made it move, or what made that object move? Well, another, something”

else that was moving bumped into that, and he was just using it kind of like really mathematics, and he determined, there's going to be some object that doesn't move that makes all the other objects move. Well, that's like right in line with the Bible. You know, Genesis chapter one, God created the earth and Dr. Calvert mentioned this ex-Nahilo out of nothing. That's, that's that causation argument that nothing exists and then everything begins to exist in an instant. And we say that because of the

Bible, Aristotle did not have the Bible but came to the same conclusion based on logic and mathematics. So you bring these two together and in this time that Christ came and then you see the emergence of Christianity really in this incarnation moment of the Christ arriving in the form of a baby.

“I need to confess, I'll be real quick. Yeah. I must have not paid attention to history in high school.”

I did not know Aristotle and Alexander the Great were both before Jesus. I thought they were like way after. Yeah, they were before. Yeah. I mean, is that like a common, I don't know, the Alexander that that Aristotle was like a couple hundred years before Jesus was even more. Yeah. It was kind of like common knowledge. I thought it is a few patents. I was walking in the lecture and I was like, BC, I was like, Aristotle. I was like, I was like, yeah, the great sort of before the Romans. That was my

that was my history lesson in fashion. So I'm learning a lot from this, from this, this course. Christian's like the true blue, uh, God was doing it. It's like, wow. Now I'm like, now I'm like, did it both? And I was like, Alexander the Great was BC too. I was, I thought it was, I thought they like got it wrong or something. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. They, uh, yeah, just a little more into the Great and Roman religious beliefs and why Christians. If I thought this was so, it was so good

to make that contrast of the Jesus coming down as a baby and how that was hard to grasp because he was fully God and also vulnerable. Yeah. Because the Greeks and the Romans also had a call it, you call it miraculous birth, like they had the demigods. They had hercules and Achilles and all the different people from the gods coming down. But in all of those instances, it was a sneaky rape essentially of Zeus to whatever the woman was and then that child grew up to be a terrible person.

I mean, their whole thing was that they were good at killing other things in basically every circumstance.

Or they turned it to monsters or whatever, and in the contrast that with Christianity is you had that same thing. You had the Son of God and when the Greeks heard that, they were like, or the Romans heard that. Oh, yes. And of God, we got tons of sons of God, same thing. But then the early Christians could say, no, it's it wasn't a coronal sexual act that produced this. It was a spiritual birth. It was a spiritual act that of love and this child was not just God,

but fully God who then grew up to sacrifice himself for everyone else. And that is radically different than what they had. It was similar, but so different. You're right, because they took the same thing and then applied it to even the impairs, which he talks about that in the lecture

with a Caesar Augustus. Yeah. And the idea, then every one after was always like, oh yeah,

this is a this is he's a odd, you know. And so it was easy to apply that to just anybody.

we see in the scripture at least. I mentioned that already, or did you just come up with that? Because I was just thinking that out. No, you haven't. You haven't. You didn't, but I thought

“it, where I might just think alike. Because I think this was the that's the time when you see”

these sort of a clash of Greek thinking. And I think and and you can talk about it because you

do a better job with it. Maybe I think that Paul, like when he's first starts in, they're loving it.

When he's talking about this idea of the the vastness of God, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, now we're scratching the itch here because that's Aristotle. That's us and everything's going great till he gets to the resurrection. It's like, yeah, it's record stop because that's a what? I mean, why would you want that? We need to get rid of these bodies. We don't need to come back, you know, it's because that's the last thing you want. And so I think it's interesting,

you see that picture. Paul was brilliant because he knew exactly how to lure him into the conversation, but at some point we got to talk about Jesus. And that's when he went to the

resurrection. So tell a little bit about that kind of what what that speech was about because

“I think it's very powerful. Yeah, what's interesting about it is that when you think about”

where he was at, right? He said he's in and we've been there. It's it's in Athens and that place where he was we're Paul was interacting with the Greco Roman world. It was actually the exact same place that Aristotle would have been. By the way, obviously he existed before Paul, but he lived before Paul, but it was the it was the area, I guess, where the Greco Roman elites, the philosophers would go to discuss all the latest ideas. This was like the the center

of their intellectual expression and the community and in Roman Greco Roman life. And so Aristotle would have hung out there, Plato, if Socrates is a real figure. Socrates, we can talk about that later, but this is where they would this, these are what these ideas would have emerged from. Even like, you know, Aristotle's causation argument, I imagine that he presented this in the same place. And now all of a sudden, yeah, the apostle Paul, who had a very unique role in the unfolding

of the Christian faith and that he was, he was, he was called to bring the gospel to the Gentile world, even though he was actually the Jew of all Jews. This guy was incubated in the Torah. He was the Pharisee of all Pharisees, but he also having to be a Roman citizen. So he also knew kind of the Roman philosophies as well. And when he goes into the space, he, he, he, he, he, he merges the two together. You know, he says, you know, I noticed you guys have all these statues and, and all these gods,

you know, lower case G, these guys, you're worshiping, I noticed a statue that said to an unknown god. And he's like, that's the one I want to tell you about is the one you don't know. And then he gives them the gospel of Christ and the idea that God actually became human and incarnated. And so it's interesting because one of the things that is brought out in this course is that this word Logos, which is a Greek word, and then Greek it means reason or rational thought, but the professor,

you know, professor Kevin also says it implies a force that brings reason into and unifies the

“cosmos. So I think this is important because when you get to that John one passage that you mentioned”

earlier that that in the beginning was the word, the word was with God. All things were made through him. The Greek word there is Logos. That's the word that the apostle John uses to describe who Christ is, the Logos. And so this is an interesting fact. It wasn't in the course, but it's actually

true. In the first century they had these, they were called Targamist. And what they would do,

their function was to take the essentially the teaching of the Torah translated into the common language of the day, which was the I think Aramaic. And then they would basically teach the Torah to people in that way. And the word that they use for what they called the second Yahweh was the word Logos. Because they had to figure this out. The Jews had figured, they're reading the scripture and they're like, there seems to be like Yahweh, I think there's just other weird thing going on that's called the word

of Yahweh. And they seem to be maybe different. They didn't quite, couldn't quite figure it out, right? They could, they were like dancing around, you know, the Trinity, but they couldn't quite figure it out. So they, the word that they actually use for, for the word of Yahweh was Logos. And so when, when, when they got into the, the, sorry, what I'm trying to say here, cut this part. So what happened here is that the Greek philosophy actually gave these, these Targamist,

even in Judaism in the first century, I know that's heavy, but it's like, but it's important.

And Paul would have understood a lot of this. And then when Paul comes, he's bringing the full revelation of Christ into the discussion. And that was really when Christianity started to expand outside of just Judaism, but into the Greco-Roman world. There's a passage, I can't recall exactly where

“it is. We're talking when the, when the, I think it's in Galatians, where it says the time had fully come. And then”

this happened. And the idea was, it was an accidental. And then make a good point of that to show the idea of how it took the common language of the Greeks along with the commonality of the Roman Empire for this to happen in that moment for Christianity to explode the way it did to, to happens beginning and it started. And so this, you know, this wasn't God, God obviously knew that. And that's exactly why he came during this, this era, this time. It would be much harder. And you'd think it'd be easier

because the internet now. But yeah, but really not because we now we have more borders than ever, more countries than ever. You know, more people that are unaware of what goes on, me think about what's happening in some country in Africa, right? We have no idea. Yeah, we don't know. What's going on? And they really don't know. They know a more about us than we know about them. But I mean, there's a lot more isolation because the world's so much bigger now. I mean,

you think it would be easier. But it's not as difficult. I mean, we're here. We are trying to like

get the message out as much as we can and it's hard to do. And in the first century, when this

happened, it went everywhere, almost at the same time. And it exploded. And so it really was interesting to be able to look back and see about why God did it the way it did. We won't just sign up to take this course with us for free at unshamedforhillsdale.com. Yeah, we're doing. I mean, let me say this real quick, because I know this is a lot of heavy material. But we're doing ancient Christianity. And one thing, one of the things we're going to do by the way, I did, I meant this

had this earlier. We want you guys to finish the course. Like, if you, and if you finish the course, what we're going to do is we are actually going to have a drawing. If you finish the course, and we're going to invite, we're going to invite two people in the guest that we're going to, you guys would be invited to actually sit in on a podcast that we record on the NSHane podcast. You guys could guys sit in, we don't have, like, a really studio audience, but how many chairs

are there out in front of you? You're looking at them? There's about five or six, and we can

“bring in a few more. So, like, if you want to sit in and watch this record, you got to finish the”

course with us. I know it's kind of, I kind of pushed through it on some of this stuff, because these terms are terms, maybe we're not used to. But I think it will give us a good understanding and a deeper appreciation for our faith. But this idea of the Greeks, one of the things that they brought in was a philosophy called Platonism, and, you know, I think about Plato, and what was the contribution

of Platonism to Christianity? You know, Platonism really prepared the world, and this first episode

of this first lecture talks about this. Platonism, it does stand in context, it is, there are some contradictions between Platonism and Christianity, mainly that the world, Platonists would see the world as bad. The material world is bad. God is transcendent. He's other than that part we agree with. We don't agree that the world is inherently bad though. And the other thing is is they didn't have an idea and could not comprehend like a personal God. Yeah, he was an impersonal force. Yeah,

other than an impersonal, but it did at least prepare the way for the idea that there is some transcendent God. The Platonism could not accept was that God would become man, which is the central

“teaching of the Christian faith, is the incarnation, but I am, I think we should be appreciative”

at least of the contribution because it did provide, you know, we're basically Greeks, we're not Greeks, but I mean, in the Bible, we're Gentiles. Yeah, and it was this philosophy that Judaism could come into and the full revelation of Christ could come into, and then oh, then we begin to see this thing like unfolding. You know what I mean? Yeah, that was what he said. He said the Platonists could not accept the idea of a transcendent God becoming a man,

and then the stoics could not accept the idea of a God who would love Christ and be able to die on a cross. Yeah, the emotion aspect was a problem, but it, right, the Trinity ideas there, also just from a practical point of view, exactly the thing about Western civilization, anything about the Greeks and the Romans. I mean, our whole system of governance, everything is linked back to a lot of the beliefs and systems that were there, they're different, but it was

there. And even the idea of under Roman rule, the idea of freedom of religion, which is still

another thing that was talked about by Dr. Coward in the lecture was the idea that that allowed Christianity to move was because of this idea that you were free to do that and talk about it

“and have these open ideas. So, I think that that part was kind of, I hadn't thought about it that”

much until they brought that out about the idea about how Western civilization ideas have opened the door for us to be able to thrive, you know, in our Christian faith, which was something that

that was very powerful. I loved it. I hadn't thought about it. I was thinking about it just in like

backing up view of this whole lesson in ancient Christianity because in one sense I thought, you know, like, why does this matter to us today? You know, and it was really history matter and I think that's kind of the question. And I think that what how this kind of helps me in my dayday and looking at the news is seeing how God acted from the very beginning up until now informs me on how what God is currently doing in the world at large and what my response to that is.

“You know, I think about age of Christianity, I had this kind of thought while listening this is,”

we're we are Christians with color of Christians, but our religion didn't start 2000 years ago. It started in the beginning of time. Yeah, when you do humanity, when God said, you know, when God created humans, whenever that happened and we started worshiping Him, that is our religion. Like we're Christians, but we're also God followers from way before and God did different things all over the world, all the way up to Christ,

who kind of, they were careful and changed everything and then we call ourselves Christians because we follow Him, but now God is still doing things in the world and seeing God working through knowing that God works through humble birds and knowing that God works through fishermen and priests and in the wilderness and all of these things keys me into what are the things I need to be paying attention to today. That's just smart point

because you think about it, it does. Christianity then has its roots in Judaism, but then we have roots beyond Judaism because when you go back to Abraham and Sarah and the garden, there was, I mean, that was predating Judaism. So I mean, literally it goes back to just a relationship idea and I love that one of the lines that he said, I wrote it down because it was profound. He said, the fall of Eden was not a tragedy. It was just the beginning of the whole story.

And I thought, man, you know, I've always looked at as a huge tragedy. Like, oh,

it's terrible. They were in this garden. They had this perfect situation. But from our perspective, that's just when the story begins with the fall. You know, I thought that was really rich because that helped me to understand that, look, this thing, it is ancient, but you're right. It's also so relevant because God is still working. We still have questions. We still face the same struggles. You know, we're still trying to fight death, even though we know we've conquered it because of the

resurrection. Man, I'm still not ready to jump in the hole in the ground, right? And so all the same

“things are still there that we still have. I think I used to view it as the garden was like the”

mess up. Like God had a plan. Yeah. Oh, man, I really missed that. People are okay. Start over. Let's do that. Now, let's do that. You know, let's do it over again. Oh, then the flood happens. God messes up again. Okay. Let's start over it. I flooded the earth, killed everybody. Save

date people. Okay. Tower of Babel. Oh, and I've always due to his guy continuing to mess up until

finally, he figures it out. And then Jesus came and everything was replaced. And it's not really the, it's not that. It is a story. And it's not a story in the sense of like a fairy tale. I don't mean it like that. It is the story. What's your story? What's the story of humanity? What's the story of the world? So we're actually entering into a story. And I love that language about story because when we say religion, it is a religion. But the problem is that in modern translation, that just

means one among many, right? Well, there's a lot of religion. This is my personal faith. This is what I kind of hold on to personally. But this is my private belief. It's not actually true. This is true for me. That's not the story of Christianity. The story of Christianity is this is objectively true. This is the story of all of humanity. And it hit me, you know, the kids are on tour right now

in the show which I hadn't seen their set yet. So I was a little bit like, I'm just out there and

“watching. And they're doing this like country music songs and like folk music and and Max”

introduced this one song and he said, you know, we're, we're storytellers is what we are. That's hard. We just, we're just telling you guys stories. And of course, I bet they're all screaming us. But I want to tell you this next song is about the story. The true story of all of existence and why we're here. I mean, this is that if you don't miss anything, if you miss anything, they don't miss this. And then they sang the song. Just three, it's just three verses where you

there when they crucified my Lord. And the next verse where you there, when he was buried in the team. And then the third one where you there when he rose up from the grave. And man, it was like a moment of, I mean, everybody in that place was just like in reverent all of this moment because what it did, it took that secular sacred divide. And it just, I just, and that moment says it.

And now he, he entered in the history. And that was, it was so powerful. I think it was powerful

“moment because, wait, and that's why I love this course on ancient history, ancient Christianity.”

And this isn't like, here's the history of Christianity as if it's one of many. Now this, what we're talking about here is what this course is, and I think what Dr. Calvert is doing such a great job in this, he's actually anchoring the story of humanity. And he's, he's walking us through how this, how this anchors into the very foundation of reality, who is God, y'all way to try you and God. This is more than just a fairy tale. This is a true story. So I love that

language, y'all thought was so good. Yeah, it was great. And yeah, that's, you know, it's kind of our approach to, when we go and speak, because we go and speak in different settings, we were just at a a marriage event this last weekend. But sometimes it's other things that we're doing,

raising funds for something. But we're, we always, the way we put his act is, Lisa and I, we say

that the, the story of Christ, when that intersected our story, our life, when that, when that intersection happened, then there was this change, and then this transformation that's still going on to this day. And so again, that's, that's the backdrop and, and the impact that it has almost as well. Be sure. Well, think, be sure to sign up and take the course with us for free at Unashained for Hillsdale. Yeah. Well, think about this, when Christ shows up on the scene and go back to

the Greco-Roman world, I mean, they really did have a very, they had a strong divide between the secular and then the sacred. It was, are the transcendent and the eminent. What was here was this was all the Caesar Augustus and all the, whoever it was, the ruling power that you said, I was going to the grave. Like it was, and then they had the gods up there. I said, think about this day. This was just hit me in the course of just kind of the comparison of Caesar Augustus to Christ, to the

Court, to Jesus Christ. May Christ enters into human history. God enters in to human history. And the birth of Christ was in such a humble way, particularly as you compare it, and Dr. Calvary does this. He compares that to Caesar Augustus. I mean, Caesar Augustus,

I write this down, the two things that he referred to himself. One was, he called himself the first

citizen, which was a nod to the old, the prince up. Yeah, that was the term. And it was, and that just means a first citizen as a nod to the old Republican citizenship, right? And so he's kind of like, I'm just one of the guys here, right? I'm just one of y'all. But then he also refers to himself as the chief priest of the Roman. I mean, Caesar Augustus is like self-establishing himself as like, I'm the guy, and then Christ just comes in to this manger, more and in a manger to this,

essentially a peasant. And you have these two figures here that two men who claim to vanity, and one ended up, we ended up seeing which one actually was the one that we're still talking about. Yeah, well, it says the Romans believed Caesar Augustus to be the Son of God, the bringer of good news and the Savior of all his people. So it really is this, yeah, it's this direct parallelism, and completely contrasting from, yeah, from Jesus' birth, the way he lived this life.

Yeah, he had that inscription, which I was kind of confused on, he said they found that in Turkey and the, the inscription that was on something. But yeah, it was using the word,

“you know, gospel. I can remember if it's, if it's said you want jelly on, but it was, um,”

the, the, the good tidings part where Caesar Augustus was, yes, not the gospel, which is interesting,

especially written in Greek, um, a lot of it is kind of playing off of what things like that were

happening at this time. They're like, well, you, you have a gospel. Let me tell you what the actual

“gospel is. That's why they're kind of using, using words like that to contrast Jesus. But yeah,”

I didn't really fully know that that Romans believed him to be all those things. I knew they believed him to be, you know, like, like he, he, he has, he has the gospel, the good news, but the idea being the Son of God, and actually saved it to the people. Well, and it carried down, because remember, they said it went to what, uh, 284 AD. So this idea was that now this is, the, the, whoever the Emperor of Rome is, that's the Son of God. That's the gospel we had here to, and to you get into the

Constantine area, I guess, who finally submitted his own life to Christ. So yeah, it's interesting

that that became the thing for them. Well, what, what was, what he brought out that I had never

thought about was that Jesus though had the pedigree, because he would have been a aristocrat, had he been a known Jewish, because of his pedigree. You know, you read the lineage in Matthew one, and Luke three, and you see that, I mean, Jesus had the pedigree all the way back to be the guy in terms of the Jewish faith, and yet he was, it was so humble, even the leaders of the day had no idea who they didn't even know where he was from, but they were nicer though, what good,

that's, you know, what good comes out of there. And so they didn't even know he was born in

Bethlehem. They didn't know any, any of the ideas about G, he came so humbly and so quietly

that, and for 30 years, he was nowhere, and then all of a sudden he shows up and he's everywhere. And so I just, I think it's brilliant. Obviously the way God did it through Christ, and it was such the opposite, it's such a good contrast to see if we were humans in trying to make up our gods, we see how we do it. We'd, we'd come up with that Caesar Augustus. That's the way we would do it, but we got it as I know. The opposite of everything you think is what I know. Yeah, because we went

to Rome out, me and you went to Rome with Phil. We fell in there for, I don't know, weaker said. A week in. Yeah, we saw the Roman Coliseum. We filmed outside of the Roman Coliseum. We did all the

“gardens, and we did the whole tour. And, and I remember one of the guys here with, I think I've”

said this before on the podcast, after surveying the ruins of the Roman Empire. This is not Rome, and it's hey, this is the ruins of the Roman Empire. And you try to transport yourself back, you know, 2000 years ago, and you think it was so impressive. I mean, their architecture is so impressive. Like, I mean, even by today's standards, you're like, how do they do this without cranes and modern engineering and, and bulldozers and all the things? And, and you look at what they built. And then

you imagine somebody coming in from a mud hut in Africa, they're coming in from Africa, and they walk into the Roman Empire, and they're looking around, and they say, Caesar Augustus is God. Yeah, okay, I can see how they would believe it, right? Exactly. And so in that time period,

“like I think his claim probably was believable by a lot of people, and then you got this”

guy named Jesus who shows up in a manger and you're like, nothing good comes out of the master. I mean, to your point, the contrast of those two stories, this guy should win every time, but in the end, the Roman Empire fell, and Christianity has exploded. I got a book behind me about Tom, forget the guy's name, Dominion, and you read the impact of Christianity on the Western on the world. Since the time of Christ, it is undeniable that Christ won. So I know we're out of

time there, but Christ won and Christ reigns, and I'm just thankful that we can be a part of this. If you guys want to go to sign up, it's undeniablehills.com. We are in the course, ancient Christianity, let's do this together. Let's learn about our faith and the history of our faith together, undeniablehills.com. Join us every Friday for undeniable, to be powered by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to undeniablehillsdale.com and sign up. It's no cost to you. It's undeniablehillsdale.com,

and don't miss an episode of the undeniable podcast by subscribing on YouTube, and be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.