 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to NakedBiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on New Start Here at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 97, our 12th Question and Answer show. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the cult leader, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey, Mike, how are you? Thanks for that, Trey. I shouldn't have told you that. For those of you who are wondering, I was called a cult leader this week, so congratulations are in order, I guess. Yeah, it gives the details here. Just somebody that says my material is cultish, you know, and so, hey, thanks for that. Be warmed and filled. What I wanted to say was, boy, I must be a really inept cult leader because I don't have any money and I don't have a harem. What was that? I don't have weapons. Was that from a fellow Christian? Yeah. I mean, nobody I know. Someone just had to give me the good news and email, something that they heard in their church. Really? In the church. Okay, it's getting better. All right. Well, Mike, notice we got some more reviews and ratings, so that helps us a lot. Those ratings and reviews help others find us and or decide to listen to us. So we appreciate those who champion this podcast and help those discover this great content. And I want them to listen to the podcast so they can hear questions like this because next we've got about a dozen or so questions again. And this first question for the first question up is Jason from Costa Mesa, California. He wants to know is there sex in heaven? That's not funny, Mike. Does he give a reason for that? He gives a bunch of reasons, but we're going to leave it there so you can have more time to talk about sex in heaven. This probably is related to the thing in the Gossels about the Sadducees. The whole marriage question, who's husband will this woman be and so on and so forth. So the marrying and giving in marriage and heaven and all that, that's what I would suspect anyway. When I've answered this question in the past, I haven't categorically said things like there's no sex in heaven. I actually, my real estimation of this is that we don't have any commentary on this in Scripture, which tells us that, biblically speaking, this is not either an important question or it would be sort of cast as a silly question or, again, just assigning no relevance to it. But what I'm really trying to say when I deal with this question either in the book and unseen realm or in other places is that heaven isn't a realm where there's embodiment that requires procreation. And that's typically, again, I think the major concern here, but obviously the questioner and other questioners have gotten sort of make it more, I guess, pleasure-oriented or recreational-oriented. Typically when scholars address this or even some ancient texts, that's kind of the point. We don't have the need to produce the next generation in heaven because it's not an embodied terrestrial existence. We don't need to do X, Y, or Z like we do to maintain our life here because that's the place of eternal life. So it sort of just gets kind of taken off the table because the things that require us to do to maintain ourselves and our lives are just no longer in play when you get to heaven. Now, from previous episodes, obviously, there's some sort of embodiment. Either I think it goes beyond the visual or we look like we have bodies in heaven. I think there is, again, real embodiment. We've spent some time going through 1 Corinthians 15 about that. But whatever the embodiment is, it's different. Again, it's qualitatively different. But you never actually get a discussion, or when I say a discussion, I mean any sort of exegetical thing that you can kind of hang a discussion on. You don't get any part of scripture that really says, well, this embodiment, this glorified embodiment that somehow allows for or enhances sexual activity. You don't get anything like that. It's just like it's not even a consideration. It's not something that's even on the table. So that's kind of where I would leave it. I don't like to speculate on stuff like that. I don't have anything to hang a position on other than to say there's just nothing going on about this. There is embodiment when you have a divine being become embodied and come to earth. Well, now they're on the terrestrial plane. The context is different. You're in the terrestrial world. You're not in the heavenly world. In the terrestrial world, you have not only the capacity to do these things, but you also have the activity going on because there's necessity to it. You come to earth. You're a divine being. You can eat meals. Well, you don't have to eat in heaven. You don't have to sustain your life, but you can do it. Because why? Well, you're on the terrestrial world. The divine being is now on the earthly plane. You don't see it in reverse. We're in the heavenly plane. We do the same thing as we do in the earthly plane. There's just nothing like that. So you get a treatment of bodily capacities when divine beings come to earth, but you don't get the opposite in Scripture. So I think that's kind of where we have to leave it, which isn't a denial, but it's also not an affirmation. Who knows? Jason does bring up a point about the sons of God. Did they have a libido since they found the beauty of human women and came down and married? So there had to be some form of desire there to start that. Yeah. And books like Enoch actually make that kind of transparently clear. There's this lust element that Scripture doesn't, but books like Enoch certainly do other sources like that. And again, I kind of file this in the category of, hey, since we're talking about the divine realm, I can't really coherently say the divine realm can't do X, Y, or Z, and so if it can do X, Y, or Z, like become embodied, then I also don't have any reason to conclude that the embodiment that is chosen lacks certain capacities that normal human embodiment would. And I take it as some sort of embodiment that operates in the terrestrial sphere along with humans where these capacities are part and parcel of that particular embodiment situation. Now, when it comes to the Genesis 6 thing, this is one of the reasons why some people prefer the, still prefer a supernaturalist view, but they prefer what would be called the mythic view. And that is the sexual language in Genesis 6-1-4 is euphemistic. It's used to convey the idea that sons of God, other divine beings, rival divine beings, rebellious divine beings, raise up their own human populations to oppose the people of Yahweh. So again, it's still a supernatural view, but it takes the sexual language euphemistically. And some people prefer that because it kind of circumvents or avoids questions like this. Again, I'm just open to both possibilities. The reason I put both of them in unseen realms is because I think people should know about both of them. The only thing that I sort of reject is that we can't look at Genesis 6-1-4 and any of these other angelic embodiment kinds of things where you have Elohim beings, divine beings become embodied and do certain things. I think it's illegitimate to strip the supernatural character out of that just for the sake of being able to sort of put it on the shelf and dismiss the passage now, which is something like what the Sethite view does. It makes the discussion go away kind of thing in its totality. So that I object to, and nobody in antiquity looked at it that way in either testament. And so that's a little bit different than this. So I just think we need, if we're going to take the supernaturalistic world view, the biblical writers, seriously, we should do that. But in this case, for some of these things, there is more than one way to look at some of this, especially the sexual language. And just a couple more points that Jason brings up is, does it the form of one's body reflect its function? Paul metaphorically asserted that no part of the body is useless, but each part is indispensable. And then also the motive of the substance. Of course, the context for that, he's using the analogy of an earthly body in an earthly context, analogy of the human body. If we don't have blood in a resurrection body, if we have bodies like Jesus did, where he's not leaking blood out of his hands, well, does that violate what Paul says? I guess blood's no more use anymore. Of course not. One's not a commentary on the other. And his last point is related to the motive of the sons of God for mating with human women. Could it be that they felt unsatisfied with non-procreative sex in heaven and wanted to establish a name for themselves? And if so, doesn't this mean that sex in heaven, if it exists, results in no creation of life and thus no name to establish a competing family line? In other words, is it just for pleasure or just that kind of thing? Well, again, who am I to say yes or no? I don't know because we don't have any material about it. I mean, there is, again, in some of the inocular literature, you get this sense that once the watchers come to Earth and they get human embodiment, then they experience, again, these human impulses and urges and they want to act on them. So there's a little bit of an element of that, again, because they have this terrestrial embodiment. But does that work in the other direction? Again, we're working with no data here. And so, again, I'm perfectly comfortable when I don't have something to hang a view on, just saying, hey, I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Our next question is from Hiram in Puerto Rico. What difference can you point out between glorified believers and the angel of the Lord from the Old Testament? I got a little confused on that from the last chapter of the N. C. Ram in the Revelation 3.12 interpretation. Given when it was pointing out to glorified believers bearing the name. I thought that was the key point for this angel to be Yahweh embodied. Well, what I would say in relation to Revelation 3.12, let me just read it. It says, the one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it and I will write my name on him. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. I think we have to draw attention to the fact that this doesn't say that God puts his name in, the person in the believer. That right away is sort of a difference between the wording here in Exodus 23 where my name is in this particular angel. We don't have that language here that God puts his name in this believer. In the New Testament era, of course, the spirit resides in the believer, but I think the language here just generally is pointing to, again, making... I mean, look, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. So you've already got this sense earlier in New Testament books that the church, Christians individually and corporately, are the temple of God. So I tend to think this language just kind of echoes that. And what's in the believer, the reason we're in the temple is we have the presence of God dwelling in us in the spirit. And you say, well, that does sound kind of like what's going on in Exodus 23, except for it's the only circumstance where you see that. And it refers to, again, this being that is not human, this being that is non-human and is, again, coming in an embodied form and God telling Moses, hey, this person here, this angel, this messenger, this being I'm sending on the way to lead you to the land, is me. Again, we don't have in the Old Testament this sense of the spirit taking up residence in each believer. In the Old Testament, it's much more unusual, much more localized. So I would say that, plus, again, the slight difference in language here, I think distinguishes the two ideas. Our next one's from Ex Avion 251. Not 252, but 251. That sounds like a cult member thing right there. Giving names. These are your peeps. Maybe it's work. Okay. So Ex Avion 251 was wondering what Mike's thoughts are on the geographical location of the Garden of Eden. What do you think of the idea of it being underneath the present day Persian Gulf? Well, none of the proposed orientations or the proposed locations for the Garden of Eden, there have actually been a good number of them. None of them are really completely satisfactory. Of course, there is a sort of a plausibility scale. Some of them are just totally wacky and others have sort of gotten academic attention because of the geographical indicators in Genesis 2. From what I've read, I think this is probably, again, some location near, at, or presently covered by water underneath the Persian Gulf. I think it's fair to say, and I'm not alone here, but I think it's fair to say this is the one with the least problems. And so as of today, it's probably the view that is kind of the most workable, or at least has the most potential to be the answer to this question. But beyond that, I don't think we can say anything with certitude. Okay. Next one's from Jonathan in the UK. What are your thoughts on the identity of Allah, of the Muslims, a distorted view of Yahweh, a rebel Elohim who passed on revelation to Muhammad, or something else? I think that Allah in the Quran is more or less a distorted view of Yahweh because so much of the Quran draws on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament for that matter, and then recasts the single God that Muslims worship and follow. So I think that probably has the most explanatory power, at least in terms of the content of the Quran. I mean, if you're talking about, again, the radicalized thinking and, again, certain hyper-literalistic interpretations of Jihad in the Quran, I certainly think it's within the realm of possibility that that is demonically motivated and engineered. But that's a bit of a different question than saying, hey, when we read about Allah in the Quran, is that just a really distorted picture of the single God knowing, again, that in their geographical context, plus, folks, I don't know if you've realized this, but you ought to read the Quran. And if you read the Quran, one thing's going to become very clear. There's a lot of material in the Quran that comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament. So that tells you they have the same sort of monotheistic orientation point. And so that is what leads me to say that they have just taken the true God, the God of the universe, so to speak, the Creator God, and recast him and refashioned his character to be something more favorable to, again, the religious predilections of whoever produced the Quran. So, again, I don't think we need to see anything more mystical in it than that. But as far as the behavior that's attached to it and the way certain things get articulated within Islam by some who want to use it as a tool for jihad, I think there's certainly some demonic stuff going beyond that. I think that's a distinct possibility. And for our listeners, that snort was not Mike. That was his pug. That was my productivity pug. Yes. That was Mori, the productivity pug. I disturbed him. Yes. I disturbed him. He was on my lap doing his job. Yes. Giving me energy, snapping energy from the pug to do the pug. Well, I'm glad he's enjoying this episode. So, tell him to relax. All right. All right. All right, Mike. Well, the next question is from Matthew. And then the one after that is from Lindsay. They're kind of asking the same question. So I'm going to read the one from Matthew first and then follow it up with Lindsay's question. And Matthew's question is, he would love to hear Mike's take on what the seraph are, particularly in relation to the bronze snake incident and numbers. And Lindsay wants to know, should we imagine there being any kind of physical resemblance between real divine beings and their representative images have found throughout history? That is, do seraphim really look like snakes with wings? Well, I mean, you, do they really look like snakes with wings? But this takes us into all sorts of things. There's, boy, this is one of those cases where I wish, you know, there were certain journal articles that were sort of publicly available. And I'm trying to, I'm racking my brain here. This one might actually be publicly available because it's from Biblika. So if you want to Google Biblika, B-I-B-L-I-C-A, and then journal and put in the last name, P-R-O-V-E-N-C-A-L. Okay. I think his first name is Philip, but I can be mistaken there. There's an article on the term seraph, the seraph terminology. And I think this is really a good article because it goes into the zoology, behind the terminology. And there's a lot of good material in this, in this journal article about how the term, the biblical term seraph, which is often kind of assumed to be the verb, you know, to burn, sort of that typical view kind of overlooks the fact that we also have a noun here and we have an Egyptian term, SRF, okay, for lack of, you know, being able to illustrate hieroglyphs here. But we have an Egyptian term or the same consonants that means snake, okay. And specifically, you know, this idea of a winged serpent isn't actually a serpent with like wings, like a bird. It comes from cobra imagery where, you know, when you're looking at a cobra, it can, the skin on the sides of it can become sort of flanges, that protrude from its body on either side. That is where the ancient, you know, Semitic idea of the winged serpent comes from because it looks like it's got appendages. And this terminology, again, from Egypt, really kind of covers both the burn and the serpent because, you know, you have certain parts of the Middle East that where you had spitting cobras and if you were hit by the venom, it would burn or if you're bitten, it would burn. You know, so the fiery serpents, they're not like serpents that are flames, you know, kind of, you know, flitting around in the sand. It's metaphorical language for the pain that it inflicts and you have the same situation going on here. So you have SRF to burn, you have SRF, you know, serpent. And they're kind of like two sides of the same coin. So as far as the terminology, I think that is, you know, the right way to understand the term itself. It's not just burn, it also, again, is serpent. And so when you go to the Biblical seraphim, you know, the question is, is this actually what a seraphim looks like? Well, you know, on one level, yeah, if you're Isaiah, you're in the throne room and you encounter, you know, if you're in the throne room of God, you know, shouldn't this be the way they look like? Well, the problem with that is you have, you know, a seraph, an SRF in Egypt, this particular term, is also used of a Divine Throne Guardian. You say, well, why is that a problem? Well, because the Bible not only uses that term for a Divine Throne Guardian, but it also uses Cherub, Karuv, Akkadian, which, again, in Mesopotamian, you know, thinking is also a Throne Guardian. So you can't really have a Throne Guardian that looks like a serpent, and then, you know, well, did it change its appearance when it looks like, you know, a cherub, a winged, you know, kind of bovine character or something like that? You know, or a winged, you know, Leonine character, depending on the Mesopotamian iconography. I don't think we can look at this material and say, hey, you know, if like, well, I'm walking down the road some day and I'm encountered by a seraphim, I don't know what they're going to look like. I don't think that's the point. I think these terms are used of Divine Beings whose specific role is thought to be guarding the Throne of the Almighty. You say, well, why the two different orientations? Why the two different terms? Why the two different, you know, iconographical appearances? Well, you would use, you're going to see Cherub and this, I'm going to leave the statement at what I'm going to say here on why, picks up on why this would be controversial. But you're going to see Kharuv, the Mesopotamian term used in texts that were composed in a Mesopotamian context because that is going to communicate with the immediate audience of the day when the biblical writer uses Kharuv, Kharuvim. People are going to know instantly what that is and what its role is because they've seen that in the Throne iconography of the particular location that they're in. If you use the SRF, Seraph, okay, in Egyptian, if you use that, well, that's a good indication that that text was composed in some historical context where the Egyptian iconography, the Egyptian trappings of royalty would have been seen and understood and evident. And so that is why the biblical writer uses an Egyptian term in one text and a Mesopotamian term in another. It has to do with the context in which the original readers would have been familiar at the time of the writing of the text. I'm going to leave it there and again, we'll see if listeners pick up on why that might be a controversial statement. And if it is, you can send that to Trey and we can comment on it in the next Q&A. But I don't think any of these descriptions can really be used to sort of zoologically classify divine beings because divine beings by nature are not actually embodied. You say, well, if they came here to Earth, if a Throne guardian came here to Earth and they wanted a human to know it was a Throne guardian, could they pick that appearance so someone familiar with their Bible would know that, hey, that's a Throne guardian over there. Well, I suppose so. I suppose that could happen. But what you typically see is these are heavenly visions where prophets or whoever are, again, transported into the divine realm. And again, that's how the role of this particular divine being is telegraphed to the one who views it. But by nature, they're not embodied. They don't have the forms of beings that would, or excuse me, that creatures that would correspond to sort of the terrestrial life. But when we're writing about those things, that helps to communicate what they do in the spiritual world. So that's why this kind of language is used. So I don't know if that really helps. But again, that's my perspective on it. All right, Lindsay. Second question is, if after Jesus's return, we are to take the place of the rebellious divine council members and rule the nations, Revelation 2, 26 to 27, of what whom do the nations consist? Does Mike agree with the premillenism idea that resurrected, glorified saints will rule over a still-fallen world that includes un-glorified unbelievers? If not, who is around to make up the nations? Well, I view the final consummation of the kingdom to be the new Eden. And that's really about all I can say. I know that doesn't conform to either necessarily of the options that the questioner put into the question. So in that respect, I don't follow either traditional premillennial thinking or traditional amillennial thinking. I think that the final form of the kingdom is going to be on earth. And I view it as the new earth. So who's occupying the nations? The answer would be people, glorified people, and whatnot. I don't think you have to have bad guys to be able to rule over the nations, to be able to displace and replace the rebellious sons of God and reconstitute the divine council. I don't know why you need fallen people to do that. Because the whole idea of ruling over the nations is you maintain, you go back to Eden, you maintain, you administer, and you of course enjoy the creation that God has made. You enjoy it for what it is, you maintain it, you care for it, you do whatever God wants you to do for it and with it, using the original Edenic setting, the original Edenic commands as a model. And again, we're not told a whole lot about how this is going to work, but I don't see the necessity of having fallen people in a future millennium. I actually don't even like the term millennium, even though I believe in a coming earthly kingdom, because to me, millennium is too short. And if I'm identifying it with the new earth, again the globalized Eden, then it's too short. We're not going to limit it to a thousand years. On the one hand, I affirm this element of what premillennialism traditionally has affirmed, a coming future literal kingdom, however you want to say that. And that amillennialists just don't seem to like. Again, they're preferring the kingdom being now, totally, period. And then we go off into heaven, whatever that is. But I think the biblical idea of heaven is actually the new earth. So if that fits in somebody's system, that's nice. If it doesn't fit into somebody's system, that's okay too. I don't worry about how I'm sort of tiptoeing through systems too much. Alright, Brian has a pair of questions, and the first one is, Dr. Heiser has been on the Trinity's podcast in the past with Del Tugge. Del is a Christian Unitarian, and I don't think Dr. Heiser interprets scripture this way, but I could be wrong. Can Dr. Heiser? Correct, I am not a Unitarian. That was easy. Alrighty. Second one is, I wonder if Dr. Heiser would have any guidance on the scholar George Hawkins. A friend of mine bought his Pimper collection, and I wondered about the quality of his work. Yeah, I can't really comment on him because I've not heard of him. So that was easy too. We need more questions. Well, can you talk about the Pimper? Well, I don't know a whole lot about Pimper as well. I know we have this sort of older creationist model. I'm not sure if Pimper, was Pimper a gap theorist? I can't recall specifically if Pimper adopted the gap theory or not. I mean, if he did, then a lot of listeners are going to know that I'm not positively predisposed to the gap theory. Yeah, I have this book, Early's Earth, and I can't remember. I kind of think he is, but I don't want to tag him with that without actually going back to look it up. Yeah, that's probably all I can contribute to that question. Early's Ages. I need to go back and read that one. Yeah, I'm just not sure where he's at. Alright. The next one is from Jad in Melbourne, Australia. I apologize if I put your name, Jad. Here is his question, and this is a important one. How should I approach talking to members of my church about much of the subject matter that is discussed in your work? I'm frequently told by my older brothers and sisters in Christ whenever I hint at some of these topics that I shouldn't bring up subjects that could cause the faith of others to be lost or weakened. What do I go to to talk about these things with at all? I'm being a little sarcastic here, but there's an element of sincerity here too. I don't know how it would harm the faith of other people to know their Bible better. Now, if you're talking about things like talking about the book of Enoch or something like that, I can see that a little bit more because that's an external source to Scripture. But for the life of me, I really don't understand how walking up to someone and saying, hey, let's devote ourselves for a month to studying Genesis 6-1 through 4 and seeing if the sons of God and Nephilim were just normal people or something beyond that. How does that harm someone's faith? What? If you're linking the gospel to stuff like this, you've got bigger problems than Mike's book. Then you don't understand the gospel, period. If he means harming the faith of someone to mean something like making people have questions about Bible passages, well, that's sort of a byproduct of having a pulse. To be honest with you, if you're a thinking adult and if you're devoting yourself to reading Scripture, I don't know how you could read Scripture and not have questions pop into your head because the alternative to that, if questions never pop into your head, then it's like saying, well, everything in the Bible that I'm reading here is self-evident. There are no questions. I understand everything completely and perfectly. I just don't know how anyone who would be a sincere reader of Scripture could ever think that. I don't really quite know how to approach the question other than throwing out those random thoughts. Look, I guess on a bad day, if I were at this person's church or small group and got this question, I would say, look, if you really believe this thing that's sitting on your lap is the Word of God, why wouldn't you want to know all that you possibly could about it? And if you have questions and you're bound to have questions because the Bible, it just transcends a surface self-evident reading. I've never met anybody who reads the Bible that didn't have a question about it. So how does wanting to get an answer to a question, how is that a questionable enterprise if you really believe this is the Word of God? I don't understand the approach of anyone who would believe that and then would turn around and say, well, good grief, I don't want to know too much about it. If I have questions, I don't really want to probe it too much. I don't really want answers to these questions because that might generate other questions. And I don't really want to know too much about the Word of God, do I? I just don't get it. I don't get the whole approach, the whole premise, the whole mindset. And again, I feel for the question or the struggle because I still get this. I mean, I'm not sort of like living off in my own, maybe I am, I'm living off in my cult commune here and I never come into contact with real people here that have these sorts of questions. Of course, that's just absurd. I mean, I still do get these kinds of questions and I can read on people's faces that I interact with that they're a little disturbed and when you ask them the question, they're going to, well, of course I want to know about the Bible and then my follow-up question is, well, then what's the problem? This is part of growing as a Christian. This is part of hungering for truth. God bothered to give you truth and why you would want to sort of turn the spigot off at some point. I don't understand. It really comes down, I think, to sort of comfort level kinds of things with people. They like the feeling that they have everything kind of nailed down. They like the feeling that their pastor has sort of got everything under his belt and if it's important, the pastor will tell me about it. But again, I don't see how that really honors the idea that God has given us this thing we call the Word of God. We are commanded to study it, to show ourselves approved, all of the verses that we know, and yet somehow our process of doing that is having it dispensed to us through an authority figure. I just literally, I have difficulty comprehending even the whole approach, the whole hesitation, but I know it's real. All right, our next one's from Andrew and he writes, I often hear preachers say in salvation context that we must contact the blood of Christ and baptism. I can find no such passage that claims we must contact it or that it is even contactable. If we follow the allusions to many of the sacrifices that offerings in Leviticus, it doesn't even appear that the blood and the worshiper ever contact each other. The only reference I can find where man and blood are connected is in Exodus 24. Do we contact Christ's blood and baptism as is suggested from pulpits? Or are they selling snake oil? Yeah, this one's easy too. They're selling snake oil. I have never actually heard this idea, contacting the blood of Christ through baptism. Very strange, very strange. And the questioner says, hey, I can't find a single verse for this. Well, that ought to tell you something. I would assert again to the questioner and to the people selling him the snake oil that if we can't find our theology in the biblical text, by definition it isn't biblical theology. So again, that's just sort of an axiomatic thing. To be able to call your theology biblical, you actually ought to be able to find it in there somewhere. So that would be my answer to that. But that's a very, very strange idea. It has me wondering if it's sort of like code language for some other idea that might be more familiar. But I don't want to read into the question. Okay, our last question is from Jay in Midland, Texas. If you were granted an audience with Paul the Apostle after the resurrection, and you could only ask him one or two questions, what would you ask him? This has me wondering if after the resurrection means like when Paul was alive post resurrection, or after the, like when we all get to heaven, or is there any indication in his question that there's a distinction there? No. All right, well, let me, I guess it'll be, I'll assume that it's, hey, when I'm in heaven and I get to see Paul or something like that, I ask Paul, boy, I thought I hadn't, something just popped into my head, but now the question doesn't make any sense. I thought a good question would be, hey, what are you doing up there? But if I'm there, then I already know that. So, well, I, you know, if the point of the question is when I get to be there with Paul, I really wouldn't have any questions. What else could he mean? I mean, help me out here, Trey, what else? Maybe when he was still alive. Read the question again. If you were branded an audience with Paul, the apostle, after the resurrection. Okay. So let's just say here on earth. Resurrection, all right? So I'm living back when Paul's there. So Paul's not in the resurrected body. Paul is Paul, and we're living after the resurrection of Christ. So that's how we're reading it now? Does that sound right? Let's go with that, yeah. All right. So if I went back in time and I talked to Paul, post resurrection, what would I ask him? Boy. Yeah. I've never actually even thought, you know, I feel like I'm in a Star Trek episode where I can be Captain Janeway and say, I swore at the Academy, I would never do that time travel thing. I don't know how many people in our audience are Trekkies, but that's, you know, I've never really thought about this time travel thing. What would I ask Paul? Oh boy. Wow. The short answer is, I don't know. Yeah. So you thought this was a good question to end with, Trekkie? I have no idea what I'd ask him. You know, I might ask him if he, if he really, because this is something I suspect. I suspect that Paul believed that he wouldn't die until he reached Spain. So I might actually ask him that. But again, that presumes he's had his call to be the Apostle of Gentiles and sort of has that kind of rooted, you know, in his heart, in his mind. But if, you know, if I knew that, and he was like on his missionary journey somewhere, I would, that would probably be something I'd ask him, you know, about the whole getting to Tarshish thing. You know, is this how you define completion? And while we're getting into his epistles, I might ask him something like, Hey, do you think that there is a future for national, you know, ethnic Israel? Or is the Israel of God now only the church? Because that's a key eschatological question that I don't think Paul is clear on, you know, in his epistles. So I might ask him for clarification of that particular issue. It's just such a thorny one. And, you know, now that I've said the word thorn and other thing pops into my head, was the, you know, was the messenger of Satan, you know, sent to Buffett him that he writes about, was that a, was that a supernatural opposer? In other words, was he, was he being oppressed, you know, by entities, or it was just sort of an expression, you know, that refers to some physical malady, something like that. So, so there's a few, those are things I'd want to know. But again, you know, are you a Christian yet or not? That, that might be the first one, you know, out of my mouth. If we just ran into each other, you know, in some place, and I knew it was Paul, I'd want to know that first. I'd probably ask him if he prefers Saul or Paul. You know, what, what did, yeah, what was the argument about, you know, when you had to, you know, split up there and you're over John Mark, you know, what was that all about? Well, all right, Michael, that's all the questions we got for this one. We appreciate it. And can you give us an update about your companion books that we can't get? Yeah. Yeah, thanks for putting it that way. Well, hopefully by the time that this, this airs, people will be able to get those books. I mean, the problem is that Amazon, let me just back up a little bit. I had announced on the blog that, hey, you know, the question answer companion by Doug Van Dorn, you know, for unseen realm is now available on Amazon and Ron Johnson's leader guide is available for supernatural. Then somebody emailed me literally the next day and said, hey, you know, I went up and look and Amazon already says copies available in one to three weeks, you know, what's up with that? And in view of the struggle, you know, to get unseen realm launched that we had with Amazon, I just thought, oh great, you know, here we go again. But I, so I asked in the building and they said basically the problem was that Amazon hadn't received the shipment yet from the printer. And so hopefully by, by the time of this podcast, that is no longer an issue. If it is, I got nothing else for you. I don't know what the problem is, but that's what I was told. So hopefully that, you know, will be taken care of. Sounds good. And Mike next week, we have another interview. Yep. Yeah, we do this one. I mean, I always look forward to them when we schedule them and they all have a purpose. You know, I'm trying to get people, you know, involved in the podcast that I view as having some role in divine council content or what we're trying to do. Both now and, and, you know, ultimately down the road with the nonprofit with McClott. And our next guest is going to be Tim Andrews, who was the guy who under, you know, undertook, you know, the task of organizing the unseen realm event in Atlanta last November. Now I didn't know it at the time, I discovered it pretty quickly when I got to Atlanta, that Tim is involved with a pretty large house church network for lack of a better way to describe it and that he's been doing that kind of thing for 20 years or more. And we just had some really interesting conversations because my only conception of house church, I've never been in a house church was, you know, we're a group of people meeting here. We don't like the pastor and there's no other church in town. So we still want to do church stuff. So here we are. You know, so kind of a dumb simplistic sort of thing floating around in my head because the people I've met, you know, that are part of these things are often there because they're disgruntled by something else. But that did not seem to be the case at all. I mean, I'm sure Tim would say they get some of that. But I mean, to have this, to have this, this effort, this thing be so enduring and actually growing. And again, just some of the other things I heard about it, the way they conduct themselves and what they do and sort of what their, their goals are in why they do what they do. It really made me think about the whole, you know, again for people who've, who've read the portent, which is where the term McLott comes from. There is this, you know, this sense of believers who for whatever set of circumstances are just, have just taken it upon themselves to do what needs to be done. And they're not waiting for, again, an authority figure to give them permission to do it. And I've, I've brought this, this up on, on other podcasts. You know, what if church was not a time or a place? You know, what if, what if the things we associate with church were no longer a reality, no longer available to us? Like buildings, you know, if we were monitored by the state, you know, what if churches lose tax exempt status? You know, what if, you know, URLs are taken away from Christian organizations and you can't promote yourself on social media or your, you know, you've got the, the overlords with hate speech crimes, you know, you know, monitoring what, what you say and do. I mean, what, what if it had to be something different for, you know, again, some, some specific set of circumstances, how would, how would we function? And Tim is a guy who has thought a lot about that and has actually tried to experiment and put things into practice and sort of just see how it goes. And they, you know, he was just telling me they've learned an awful lot about doing things this way, both good and bad, things they would do again, things they wouldn't do again. And I thought it would be a really interesting discussion to bring to the podcast because of, again, this is one of the things that McLott is about, networking believers, you know, finding out who, who has experienced doing this or that, that we might, you know, find valuable down the road, who is, who has a particular skill set to help, you know, believers out in some other part of the country. And Tim is really into the Divine Council content. He said it has really helped what they do in terms of their content, teaching, you know, in this network a lot, which is why he wanted to organize the event. So I think it'll be a really interesting discussion just because of those elements, you know, that those, that this is what he, he sort of can bring to the table. And we just want to pick his brain a little bit, you know, and do it in a podcast episode. And I think he'll help us think about these things better. All right, we're looking forward to that. All right, Mike, is there anything else you'd like to add to the show? No, I think that's it. Okay, we appreciate you answering our questions. And just want to thank you all for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast.