 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 177, Hebrews Chapter 2. I'm Delayman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Pretty good. Busy as usual, but can't complain as much as I probably want to. Yeah, I hear you. We could always complain about something. Speaking of which, would you like to inform everybody what happened? Well, yeah, we both won. We both won our games, so. Yeah, but who's currently number one again? Hey, you are. It's just points. Thank you. It's not record. Thank you. What counts is record. I'm still on top, so out of the gates. Feels good. It's early. Got a long way to go, but. Yeah, I'll say it's early. It's one game. Again, you've got to capitalize on it while you can. I have nowhere to go but down, so I'm going to enjoy it while it's up. Who do you play this week? Do you remember? No, I don't. I know we don't play each other, so. Not until like week eight. Yeah, the naked Bible fantasy baseball, this is a playoff week, and I was leading until yesterday, so it's not looking real good, but. Oh, and y'all are in the playoffs. We're in the playoffs. It's the first round of the playoffs, so my mind is drifting to football, anyway. You know, just the grumpy cats are kind of fading, so I don't know if they'll pull it out or not. I hear you. I hear you. Well, hey, do you want to give us an update on your Fort Worth visit? Yeah, Fort Worth was fun. I'd say there were 100 people and something close to that. It was kind of interesting, actually. There were several pastors there who were really into the content, had been making efforts to teach the content in their church, to small groups or even from the pulpit. I mean, people who were quite obviously pretty invested in it, so that was good to see. It was an Assemblies of God church, so I think that's the first one of those that I've been in. But, yeah, Pastor Doug Martin, again, really did a good job of organizing things, promoting it, so it matters when you do that, so it was a good time. Nine hours worth of it. Whoa, awesome. Yeah, but everybody was mentally fatigued by the time they left. Yeah, I know I was, so. Yeah, it was a long day, but, you know, most of the people stuck around for the whole thing, so it was a good day. Awesome. All right, well, I'm ready for chapter two, if you are. Yeah, chapter two of Hebrews. Here we go. I mean, this is sort of a pivotal chapter, and I'm sure it's one of the chapters that people had in mind when they asked about or when they voted for what we were going to do next. And there's some of this that I talk about in unseen realm, so I'm not going to necessarily repeat what's in unseen realm. I'll make reference to it. But I can tell you today, we're going to get into the issue of can fallen angels be redeemed? That's probably the other reason why this chapter is noteworthy. So we've got the Divine Council scene in this chapter. We've got the question of is salvation extended to angels? Is it offered to angels? That sort of thing. And I, of course, have blogged about that before, but we're going to get into that question mostly in this chapter, and I'm going to be quoting some excerpts from the first draft of a new book that I've been working on for Lexham Press. I'm supposed to turn in the manuscript by the end of this month, so in a couple of weeks. So this will be new content, and hopefully it'll get people interested in the new thing that we're doing. But I think at the very least, it's certainly relevant to Hebrews 2 because the book, the new book itself is about angels, just the good guys, really, not dealing with demonology. That'll be a follow-up book. But again, I'm going to quote some fairly lengthy excerpts from that from the first draft in this episode. Well, let's jump in by reading the first four verses of Hebrews 2, and that'll get us started off. So reading from the ESV, and just a couple comments. The very first verse, we hit a theme that we're going to see later in the book, and I'll save most of what I'm going to say for later. Next week we'll be doing chapter 3, and we'll get into this a little bit more and on up through really chapter 6. And that is this notion of drifting away from the faith, so drifting away from the content of the knowledge, and really if we go back to Hebrews 1, drifting away from the new superior revelation that God has given to people through Christ. So there's this whole issue of hearing that, and then believing and embracing it, and assigning validity to it, importance to it, and then drifting away from it. That's a recurring theme in the book of Hebrews. And so here he throws it in in this chapter. So it's been pretty early. I mean, he mentioned that God has spoken to us by various means and times past in chapter 1. But now, today, more recently, he's spoken to us by Jesus Christ. And of course, Hebrews chapter 1 establishes the superiority of Christ to Torah and the superiority of Christ to angels. And now here we get this, well, you know, we need to pay close attention to that stuff, the stuff that we've heard, unless we drift away from it. So we're going to come back to this theme in successive really episodes in Hebrews because it's really part of the reason why the book was written. And we'll say a little bit more about it in this episode as well. But that's where we start. And we get to verse two. Again, he's sort of elaborating on that since the message declared by angels, you know, proved to be reliable. Well, what's that message? Well, that's actually a reference to the law. And I discussed this in unseen realm, pages 164 through 169. It's the whole issue of the law being dispensed or delivered in whatever terminology you like by angels. There are several references to this in the New Testament. And in unseen realm, I'm not going to read those four pages, obviously. But I focus on the fact that this idea probably comes from most securely anyway, Deuteronomy 33, one through four in the Septuagint. If you read that passage in the Septuagint, and I have the Septuagint translation in unseen realm within those pages, that passage links angels and Sinai and the giving of the law, specifically part of the translation reads, the Lord has come from Sinai and he appeared to us from Seir. He made haste from Mount Peron with 10,000 of Kadesh at his right, his angels with him. So again, you get this idea and then you keep reading on there and there's this whole thing about that they were present at the giving of the law and whatnot. This is probably the basis for this comment in Hebrews 2, the message declared by angels. Acts 7 verses 52 and 53 is another one. This is part of Stephen's speech before he's martyred. He says, which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one whom you have now betrayed and murdered. You who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it. And then we also get a reference in Galatians 319. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Of course, in unseen realm, I talk about who that intermediary was at least in my view. I think it was the angel of the Lord, the anthropomorphic Yahweh on Sinai. And so this is what's behind this association of the angelic group, the heavenly host with the giving of the law. And I don't want to elaborate too much on that because people can go back and refresh their memories if they read those pages in unseen realm. The point for our purposes here is that the writer's saying, hey, look, God took the law seriously, like of course, no kidding. Every transgression and disobedience was met with punishment or retribution. And that's going to be obviously familiar to anybody who's a Jew, who's reading this letter. It's also going to be familiar with anybody who has sort of a rudimentary knowledge of the Old Testament. So remember in our introduction, we talked about how Gentiles who would have been reading the Septuagint, Greek translation of the Old Testament, they would have had a good familiarity with the Old Testament. At this point, it's hard to miss. Of course, God considered the law important. And the Old Testament is just littered with examples of people who transgressed the law and paid a certain price for it. There was judgment from God. So his point is to establish something obvious first, and then he moves on. He goes from that obvious point to the next point, verse three, how shall we escape? How shall we escape? We neglect such a great salvation. It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard. Now the reference to, hey, we learned this from people who heard about it, is a reference to newer revelations, a reference to people that they had heard in their lifetime. So what he's talking about in verse three is the revelation of Christ and the incarnation and the gospel, that idea. So he goes from verse two where he says, look, God took the law serious, but now we have this even better thing. We have this thing that God more recently gave us, that's a reference back to Hebrews one. And this material is even more, it's superior to the Torah. So the stuff that's superior to the law, the Torah that God took so seriously, we might want to think about the fact that we shouldn't neglect it. And going back to verse one, we shouldn't drift away from it. God takes this even more seriously is his point. And so it's sort of a rhetorical statement. And again, using the law, something that the Torah that would have been really familiar, and then taking people's minds back to, okay, we have something superior now and God isn't going to treat this less lightly. He's going to treat it more seriously. Now the term here neglect, how shall we escape? We're not going to escape retribution. If we are dismissive toward this greater revelation, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation neglect? It's a Greek term that really speaks of dismissing something, having disregard for something. That kind of mentality. Guthrie in his short Hebrews commentary makes a little bit of a comment on it. He says, the word is the word rendered by him ignore again in the ESV it's neglect means to neglect through apathy, or not to care enough about something. And he actually gives us a cross reference here. First Timothy 414 do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the Council of Elders laid their hands on you Paul writing to Timothy there. So it's the same term. And so back to Guthrie's point. It really speaks of apathy or not caring enough about something that really ought to be cared about. And the something in the context is again the Gospel, the superior revelation from God to people about salvation in Christ. Guthrie adds the word could be used of a doctor or government official who having made a public commitment defaulted on that commitment. So there's this idea of defaulting as well. Thus those who care so little about the word of salvation that they neglected will find no escape from the punishment they deserve. That's the end of Guthrie's quote. Now again, to the Jewish believer, this is going to make sense that God took the law seriously. That's a no brainer. So we need to treat this seriously, this new revelation. And again, anyone familiar with the Old Testament, if they were Gentiles, this is going to be sort of an easy lesson to comprehend. Going back to verse 3, we'll just pick up reading that again. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and it was attested to us by those who heard, continuing in verse 4, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders in various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. The Lord here, because this is a newer revelation, again transmitted to the writer by those who heard the Lord here, is Jesus. This new message was declared first by Jesus. And this is really a reference to Jesus' teaching about himself and what he was on earth to do, versus like Luke 19.10, the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost. You've got John 3.16, of course, you know, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And this is the message that was first declared by the Lord. And that message was superior to the Torah. And the Torah had been given by angels. Do you see the logic now? Why does Hebrews 1 start by declaring Christ a superior revelation? God, in times past, in various ways, has given us information about himself. But in these days, he's spoken to us by his Son. And his Son, of course, is him in the flesh. He is the Apagospa. He's the radiance of the glory and he's wisdom. He's all these things. All these things we talked about in the previous two episodes. The book starts by establishing Christ's superiority to the Torah and to angels. The logic, of course, is that those two are connected. And that's what he's getting here in Hebrews 2. The message declared by angels. The Torah, again, was dispensed by angels. There's this angel of the Lord thing going on. There's the divine counsel thing going on at Sinai. Again, we talked about that in Unseen Realm. But the writer of Hebrews is saying, look, this message that we were taught by those who actually heard it firsthand is better. It's superior. This takes me back to my statement I made that the very first episode, the introduction to Hebrews, was, I don't know how you can be in the Hebrew roots movement and like the book of Hebrews. Because you not only get sort of explicit statements of Christ's superiority, the superiority of the gospel. And by the way, the gospel is the offer of salvation by faith in the work of a person whose death atoned for sin. It has nothing to do with the Torah. Christ is connected to the Torah because he is the ultimate fulfillment of it. He is the embodiment of Torah just as he is the perfect image of God. You see Jesus, you see me, you've seen the Father. Where you see Jesus, you've also seen what it would mean to live out the law. But what he actually does to effect, to accomplish forgiveness of sins in the gospel is do something the law couldn't do. The law couldn't become incarnate and die. The law couldn't lay down its own life. It's not a living entity. So again, the superiority, and I would say even the necessity of this revelation is what the author is getting at here. I say necessity because of what else we're going to run into in chapter 2. But we have a reference again to declared at first by the Lord, that's Jesus. It was attested to us by those who heard. So the writer again is saying, look, I'm not one of the 12. I wasn't one of these people who followed Jesus around while he was on earth. We heard this from some of those people, but he doesn't include himself in that group. And then lastly, God bore witness to it. He validated it by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will. Of course, the one reference there, you've got signs and wonders. Again, the Gospels, synoptic Gospels are full of signs and wonders to validate the ministry of Jesus, to validate what he's saying. We have references to the Holy Spirit, distributing gifts. Again, I discussed this in Unseen Realm in the leading captivity captive passage. It's actually a reference to Christ, what happens at Pentecost, giving the Holy Spirit, distributing the gifts. This is what the writer of Hebrews is hearkening back to. And that takes us up to chapter or excuse me, verse 5. And I'm going to read, I think I'll read the whole thing here. Let me just say, how far do we want to go here? Yeah, let's just read 5 through 18, just so it's in the heads of the listeners. This is really the rest of the chapter. So beginning in verse 5, you get after these comments about the Gospel, again, message being superior, being validated. We read this, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, quote, he's going to quote the Old Testament now. What is man that you are mindful of him or the Son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet, unquote, back to the writer. Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. Again, just to stop here for a moment, we're going to be talking about the necessity of the incarnation and the connection of the incarnation to the offer of salvation. The connection, the bridge between the two is humanity, and that'll become important as we proceed. Verse 10, For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all of one source, that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers, in the midst of the congregation, in the midst of the council, I will sing your praise. And again, another quote, I will put my trust in him. And again, another quotation, behold, I and the children God has given me, unquote. Now the writer takes up again, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, and think of the necessity of the incarnation here for salvation, the connection between the two. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. That's the end of the chapter. Now, again, you go back to verse five, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come. This is a reference to the inheritance of believers, this world to come. There's an intrinsic link between inheritance and rule in the New Earth and redemption. Let me repeat that, because it's important. There is an intrinsic link between inheritance and rule in the New Earth, the New Eden, and redemption. Angels are excluded from that. They don't rule in the New Eden, do they? You go to the visions of the New Eden. Again, I address this in Unseen Realm, Revelation 2, Revelation 3, 1 Corinthians 6. We are the ones who share the messianic rule in the New Eden. Angels do not. The sharing of that rule is directly connected to the offer and acceptance of redemption, salvation, forgiveness of sins. Angels aren't excluded. In fact, we displace them. We displace the fallen Elohim, sons of God. Again, these passages that I just referenced, Revelation 2.26, Revelation 3.21, 1 Corinthians 6.3, we have greater authority than angels. Again, it's this council hierarchy thing. We are going to rule over angels. We are the ones who share the throne with Jesus. We are the ones who are put over the nations, not them, not them. And that exclusion is significant because of the link between rule in the New Earth, the line in Hebrews 2.5, and the offer of redemption. And of course, all of that hinges upon Jesus becoming incarnate, as we'll see in a moment. You get to verse 2, go back to verse 6. It has been testified somewhere. What is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Yeah, and when everything is in subjection under his feet, who does he share it with? The angels? No. No, he doesn't. He shares it with human believers, the human redeemed. Now, I want to take a little bit of a rabbit trail here before returning to this angels and redemption thing and the importance of Hebrews 2 for it. That quotation you just heard, you know, what is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you care for him? That is a quotation of the Septuagint of Psalm 8.6. In English, it's actually verse 5, Psalm 8.5. In Hebrew, it says, a little lower than Elohim. And the Septuagint that gets translated, a little lower than angels. Now, here's the rabbit trail I want to take. And this might be of interest to some of you, but I want to put it out there so that there's a record of it. This is material that did not make it into my dissertation back in 2004 because of page count. But you will find in readable form, in non-academies, I hope, in my new book on angels. And that is, there's an academic myth that you run into that sort of suggests that, well, by the time you get to the Second Temple period and the New Testament, the Jews don't like the idea of divine plurality. They don't like the idea of there's multiple Elohim running around because, you know, at one time that was okay because Israelites used to be polytheists and then they evolved to this magnificent breakthrough idea of monotheism. And once they hit the monotheistic wall, they never wanted to go back to the polytheism. And so the writers of Second Temple text and the translators of the Septuagint and the writers of the New Testament take great care to eliminate references to their older polytheism of the Israelites. That's bunk, okay? There's an academic word for you, bunk. Now, I published an article in Tyndale Bulletin on the Dead Sea Scroll material. There are over 160 references to plural Aleem or Elohim, many of them in divine counsel scenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So somebody didn't get the monotheistic memo. Somebody didn't get the memo about, oh, we can't use divine plurality language anymore because, because, well, we're monotheists now. Again, monotheism is a modern construct. I talk about this in great length in unseen realm. It's a term that doesn't mean a whole lot to what you actually see in the Hebrew Bible. What you see in the Hebrew Bible is the uniqueness of one God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, among all the other Elohim. Elohim is not a term that has attributes assigned to it. There are half a dozen different things that are Elohim in the Hebrew Bible. Okay, plural Elohim has nothing to do with a set of gods that are essentially interchangeable and all the same. That is, it's just bogus. I don't know, I don't know any other way to say it, but this has become dogma in critical scholarship along with the myth that I just described to you about this evolution to monotheism. Oh, we can't talk about it. We can't use, we can't use Elohim in plural anymore because we're just not allowed to do that because we've had this great religious breakthrough. It's nonsense and it is contradicted by the data. So that's just the Dead Sea scroll stuff. 160 times people don't get the memo. The same is true with the Septuagint. I'm going to read an excerpt from, again, this new book I've been working on about this, again, this myth, this academic myth. Statistically, the Septuagint refers to angels as a group or in the plural three times as often as the traditional Hebrew text. Roughly, if you're going to count them, it's a little over 30 versus 10 references. By the way, angels as a group are not mentioned very often in the Hebrew Bible. It's usually the angel of the Lord, a particular angel, but 10 times or so you get plural angels. But in the Septuagint, you get plural angels a lot more than the traditional Hebrew text. So back to the quotation. The higher count is partially due to the inclusion of books in the Septuagint that are not part of the Hebrew canon. But the canonical issue cannot completely account for the greater reference to angels, Angoloi in the Septuagint. In several instances, the language of divine plurality in the Hebrew Bible, that is references to gods via plural Aelim or Elohim or Bene Aelim, Bene Elohim, all that stuff. A number of those, several of those instances, are rendered with Angoloi. So they have gods rendered as angels. What are we to make of this? Many scholars believe this indicates a rejection of divine plurality as part of a theological evolution out of polytheism toward a rigid intolerant monotheism. This notion, often repeated by scholars, is based on a misunderstanding of divine plurality and a failure to examine the totality of the data. I have addressed the former at length elsewhere. Our focus here is the latter. There are two primary sources for assessing the coherence of whether Jewish writers in the Second Temple period saw a problem with the language of divine plurality in the Hebrew Bible. Those two are the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls. We're going to talk here on the podcast here about the Septuagint. Because again, I've wrote this article for Tyndale Bulletin. I posted it on my blog. They let me do that. You can go read it. But the Septuagint stuff, that's in this new book. So as noted above, the Septuagint does indeed render the language of divine plurality with Angoloi in several instances. But there are two facts that must be considered before drawing conclusions. The Septuagint translators do not do this consistently. And in most of the places where they do opt for Angoloi, there are manuscripts of the Septuagint that render the divine plurality literally and do not use Angoloi. And I have a table in the book of this. I'm not going to try to translate this to radio or to audio, but I'll just try to summarize it. The chart illustrates that there are eight of over 30, so about a quarter. Eight passages where a Septuagint translator has taken the language of divine plurality, some reference to Aleem or plural Elohim, and then rendered it as angels. But the chart indicates there are more places, more places, where the Septuagint translator decided otherwise, preferring a more literal equivalent. Some of those instances, Psalm 29.1, Psalm 82.1, Psalm 89.7, Exodus 15.11, are among the most frequently cited passages by scholars seeking to argue the Hebrew Bible preserves vestiges of polytheism. If Jews of the Second Temple period were concerned that such language might be taken as polytheism, it makes little sense to leave passages like these intact, rendering them as theoi or some plural of theos. Gods, the unevenness of what we find, it shows that the Septuagint cannot be regarded as proof for a campaign to erase, you know, supposed polytheistic language and downgrade instances of divine plurality to angels. It just doesn't do that. The argument that the Septuagint sought to eliminate this language gets even weaker when one investigates the text critical data for the eight passages that take Aleem or plural Elohim and translate it as Angeloid. There are variant Septuagint manuscript renderings preserving the more literalistic theoi, the plural of theos in half of those. Of the eight, of the one quarter that take the divine plural language and use Angeloid, half of those, four of them, have alternative readings in Septuagint manuscripts that call them gods. They use the plural of theos. Of course, the other three quarters of the examples, references to plural Elohim or Aleem and the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint translators feel just fine, referring to them as gods, again, a plural form of theos. So again, the Septuagint translators didn't get the memo either. The Dead Sea Scroll folks didn't get it. Septuagint translators didn't get it. Again, the idea is just bunk. It really is. It does not conform to the data. But you'll see this argued in academic circles all the time because God forbid that we have a faith, a community of faith like the Israelites in the Biblical period. God forbid that we have someone that didn't sort of see everything polytheistically and then all of a sudden didn't. Again, my view is that the Biblical writers saw the superiority and uniqueness of Yahweh from the get-go. There was no shift. They understood that Yahweh was unique among the gods, and that uniqueness is not conveyed by the term Elohim. The uniqueness is conveyed by what they say about that Elohim and don't say about any other. Again, this is why, again, my own dissertation to sort of again try to complete their arbitrary or land the plane, I hope made a contribution because this other idea, again, this academic myth is just honestly circular reasoning. It's really, it's an unexamined thing that is considered self-evident in academic circles, and when you actually look at the data, it makes no sense at all. So end of rabbit trail. Let's get back to Hebrews 2. I just want to bring that up because I know I'll get, if I didn't, I would get questions, well, Mike, did you see that angels here, a little lower than Elohim in the Hebrew Bible, what's going on there? Well, I just told you what's going on there. You know, they're not denying the content of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, again, just to, I won't quote the book here, but in the New Testament, on the loss becomes a generic term for residents of the spiritual world that are not in rebellion against God, the good guys. All the good guys get called angels. All the bad guys get called daimon, which we transliterate into demon. There's sort of this winnowing of the language. Again, you're losing the nuancing of the terms. You essentially make them white hats or black hats in your translation. But the fact that the Septuagint writers in the New Testament, of course, uses the Septuagint quite frequently. The Septuagint writers, translators, had no problem rendering plural gods with plural of theos three quarters of the time. There is no agenda to eliminate the language. It's just good guys versus bad guys. So back to Hebrews two. Let me just read to get our minds back in the passage. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified, all of one source, that is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers. I'll just stop there at the end of verse 11. Question, were angels under the penalty of death? Are they spoken of in the same terms? You could argue, well, they're putting the pit and the rest of them are like, yeah, you're going to get destroyed. You're going to die like men. You could say that. Is there a passage that links? Here's the second and better question. Is there a passage that links that sentence or the relief of that sentence with the atoning death of a substitute? The answer is no. Well, didn't you just read it? Mike, no, because he's talking about humans. He's talking about the one who would die the substitute death became a man. He did not become an angel. If you really think about it, the sentence that humanity is under is different because we are embodied. The curse of death, again, in the New Testament passages, we have Satan described a couple of times as, again, being the Lord of the dead, owning the souls of humanity. That's never said about angels. Adam and Eve, they get expelled, they start to die. The curse is linked to mortality, which starts to take effect right away in the human world and becomes a problem. Are we going to remain in shield? Everyone dies and that sort of thing. Whereas the angelic stuff is put off to the day of the Lord, to the eschaton. There are differences, but the fundamental difference is the link of the solution to becoming a man, becoming a human. The substitute became the thing that was the object of the atonement. The object of that atonement was not angels. It was humans. You go into the passage a little bit more. He's not ashamed to call them brothers. I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. I will put my trust in the whole eye and the children. God is giving a series of quotations. Look at verse 14. Again, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death that is the devil. And deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. It's the slavery of death. Your life is but a vapor. The angels can't say that. The angels are everlasting beings until the eschaton. That's not the case with us. We are a whole person when our body and soul is fused. It's not that we lose identity when we're disembodied and we're with the Lord, the Paul to be absent from the bodies to be present with the Lord, that whole thing. Our immaterial part still has identity, but our existence as we are born with it, as we are born to understand it, the existence that we can comprehend is inherently tied to mortality. We all know, we all learn at some point we're going to die. It isn't going to be too long. It's like a curse. It's the subject to lifelong slavery is the way he puts it here, but the next verse is just a kicker. For surely, surely it is not angels that he helps. Who's the he? Well, he's the one who partook of the same things back in verse 14. He's the one who became a man so that he could conquer death and conquer the one who has the power of death that is the devil. Surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, verse 17, he had to be made. He had to be made like his brothers who are his brothers. A few verses that we just read, preceding. His brothers are humans. He had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God. What was the point? To make propitiation for the sins of people. Again, I don't know how much clear this passage could be. This is the key text that undermines the idea that angels are offered redemption. Now there might be some out there that don't like that. Sorry, I don't write the material. I just go through it and observe it and read it and talk about it. I did blog about this a while back. Can fallen angels be redeemed? Again, you can look that up on my website. In that post, I talk mostly about the language of Revelation 1 through 3 because that's kind of how this is argued. I did get into Hebrews 2 toward the end of it, but we're going to say a little bit more about Hebrews 2 here. I'm going to drift a little bit, very little, into Revelation. Then I'm going to go to Colossians 1, 19 and 20 because that's the other passage that angelic redemption, that idea is based on that I did not get into in the post online. Between this and the blog post, and of course the new book, most of the chapter is going to be devoted to this. You know, we'll have covered the basis of the topic. Now, since we're in Hebrews 2, let's focus there. Again, I'm going to quote you part of what I have written in the new book about this issue. So just to jump in here, the supremacy of Christ over angels is the central theme of the first two chapters of the book of Hebrews. Hebrews 1, 13 and 14 establishes that point, quote, and to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Are they, that is the angels, not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? In other words, they're not the ones who inherit salvation. They serve the ones who inherit salvation. And the ones who inherit salvation will sit at his right hand, okay? Well, you know, the passage that is referring to Jesus sitting at the right hand. Yeah, that's correct. But Revelation 2, 26, Revelation 3, 21, 2021, that's referring to us sharing the throne and us having a messianic psalm, Psalm 2, about ruling the nations with a rod of iron. Jesus quotes a messianic psalm and applies it to us. He doesn't apply it to angels. He applies it to us. It's quite consistent, completely consistent with Hebrews 2. Now back to my chapter here, my excerpt. Note the wording of verse 14 carefully, angels are ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation. The passage distinguishes angels from those who inherit salvation, in turn suggesting that angels do not inherit salvation. Now why this wording? Why would the writer focus on human beings when it comes to salvation and apparently exclude angels? Hebrews 2, 5 through 18 answers those questions and in so doing shuts the door on redemption for fallen angels. Consider the first four verses. Again, we read this a couple times. Again, four was not the angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. And then we have this series of quotations, you know, presenting, you know, Jesus a little lower than the angels and so on and so forth. I'll skip reading it again, verses five through eight and pick up here with the excerpt. The writer makes reference to the world to come. The New Earth described in Revelation 21 and 22. The New Earth is cast as a global Eden there, the climactic consummation of God's salvation plan. Eden is restored. Human beings inherit this salvation precisely because the original Eden and the world itself were created for human beings. God's original plan was to live among his human family on earth. We who are who were made lesser than the divine beings. Okay, lesser than the Elohim. That's what mortals are. We're destined to become members of God's household. At the fall, this goal was derailed. The rest of the Bible is about God's effort to restore what was lost to dwell among his people, transforming the earth into his kingdom. The point is straightforward. The plan of salvation is focused on human beings because human beings were the original object of eternal life in God's presence on earth. Angels were not the focus because the fall disrupted unearthly enterprise. God's human images were corrupted, left estranged from God, left unfit to live in God's presence. In the end, it will be human beings who will share authority with Christ in ruling the New Earth, not angels. This is why passages in the Book of Revelation about the same eschatological outcome as Hebrews 2.5, the same eschatological outcome, those passages focus on human believers, not angels. Now I'll read them. I've referred to them a couple times, Revelation 2.26. The one who conquers, and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father. And I will give him the morning star. Revelation 3.21. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. The Apostle Paul makes the point emphatic by reminding the Corinthian believers that they would one day judge angels. 1 Corinthians 6.3. Human believers have a higher status in the New Earth. The writer of Hebrews continues describing the hope of the eschaton. Hebrews 2.8. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we don't yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Again, and we get into the council presentation there. I won't read that again. But who's the everyone in the beginning of the passage? Okay, who is the everyone that he would taste death for everyone? Who is that? If we care about reading in context, it's the human beings, the writer referred to a few lines before. What is man that you are mindful of him? The Greek term translated everyone is pontos. The grammatical form is masculine singular, a reference to the totality of humankind. In verse 9, Jesus is compared to these humans, inferior as they are to angels, because Jesus was human. He became human. He was a human being. The second person became human. God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation links Jesus to us. Why was the incarnation important? Because atoning for the sins of the world, a world of humankind, John 3.16, required an eternal sacrifice, but eternal beings can't die. And so God had to become a man. The eternal Son cannot die for sin unless he is human and capable of dying. One cannot have a resurrection that defeats death unless there is first a death. In other words, atonement for sin could not be accomplished without incarnation. Do you see the connection? The second person of the God had become a man because the object of the atonement was fallen humanity. Second Corinthians 5.21, I'll just quote this first. For our sake, our sake, he made him, God made Christ, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus became a human because he needed to save humans. Becoming human was necessary because its ultimate purpose was a death that atoned for humans. Becoming human had no necessary link to angels who are not human. Christ's death for sin substituted for our death for sin. The necessity of a human sacrificial death means the death of Christ did not have angels who are not human as its object. As such, the atoning death is not linked to angelic sins, but to human sins. Again, I could read a few more things. Let's do that. Since we're into it, we might as well. I'm going to read 14-18 again, once more. We're in Hebrews 2, so let's do Hebrews 2, and we've been doing Hebrews 2, but let's go through the last four verses again. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. There are a few key lines in those four verses. Verse 14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he, that is Jesus, partook of the same things. That language establishes the rationality incarnation. Jesus became a human because we, the object he intended to redeem, are human. Second, another line, also part of verse 14, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. The obvious point here is that human death had to be overcome. Less obvious is the related thought that the devil also had to be dealt with because he had the power of death over humanity. The idea is that without redemption, Satan's power over humans, his quote-unquote legal ownership of every human being estranged from God in the wake of what happened in Eden, would remain intact. But scripture nowhere endorses the notion that angelic sin resulted in the same sort of bondage to Satan. Humanity is under the curse because of Eden. Angels are nowhere said to be under the curse of Eden, which is what the atoning sacrifice of Jesus targets. Nor are they under angels under any other curses that give Satan legal claim to their existence, to their lives. Third, for surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. These statements, verses 16 and 17, make what we've been discussing explicit. The sacrifice of Jesus does not help angels, it helps human believers, the children of Abraham by faith, Galatians 3, 26 through 29, believers. Let's just read those verses. For in Christ Jesus, again, he's writing to a Gentile church, Galatians, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. Isn't that an interesting piece of wording? You're all sons of God. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male or female for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Again, it's just so clear. Jesus had to become like his human siblings, lower than angels, Hebrews 2, 9 through 11, to atone for the sins of his siblings. In summary, the language of Hebrews 2, 5 through 18, leaves no doubt that the object of Christ's redemptive work is humanity, not angels. Now, again, people want to argue about the book of Revelation, Revelation 1, to 3, the language there. A little bit on that. Again, this is from the new book. Ultimately, it is the grammar of Revelation 1 through 3 that provides the greatest clarity with respect to how the angels of the church should be considered. The argument here is that when Jesus speaks to the angel of the church of, fill in the blank, and then somewhere in what is said, there's something like repent or some other extension of forgiveness. People will say, well, look, he's talking to the angel there, so the angels can be redeemed, they can repent, they can believe, all this kind of stuff. Well, it's not quite as simple as that because there are other things going on in the passage. So listen carefully. In each of the seven directives given to the churches, to the angel of the church of X, write, each church is addressed with second person singular pronouns, all of them. For example, Revelation 2-1 begins with a directive to the church at Ephesus. The speaker then says, I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil. In each case of the second person, the words your or you, the pronoun or verb form is grammatically singular. The point is that while the angel of the church is addressed by the directive, the messages are not for the angel. They are instead for the collective church. You say, well, how do we know that? Well, this perspective makes sense in light of the fact that when John first was first commanded to write in the book of Revelation at the very beginning, when he was first commanded to write, the intended audience was specifically said to be the seven churches, not the angels. Revelation 111, quote, write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches. Okay, so they're for the people, they're for the collective people of the churches, each directive to each church. Okay, so you get this language, you know, we just read, you know, something, okay, the, under the angel of the church of so and so, right, and then somewhere in there, you know, in a couple places, you have this, you know, about a command to repent or something like that, something that makes it sound like, hey, you know, if you repent, you know, you're going to be saved, you're going to be forgiven, and people say, well, see the, that's extended to the angels. Well, not only do we have Revelation 111, tell us that John was writing to the churches, hey, the congregations there, not only do we have that, not only do we have, you know, this collective sense in the pronouns, but get this, each directive to each church, each church concludes with the formulaic wording, he who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the angels, no, what the spirit says to the churches. This indicates clearly that each message was for the entire congregation, though each directive is addressed to an angel, its content is for the church, for the, for that congregation. The angel of each church is therefore some sort of surrogate, you know, he's, he's a conduit through which the message is given, he is not the object of the message. The angels and churches are not identical, but they are related. The fact that the intended audience of the messaging of the risen Christ is the human membership of each respective congregation must not be overlooked. It is significant for discussing, you know, what's going on here, discussing the, the argument for angelic redemption. By the way of example, again, consider the examples from Revelation 2, okay, we've, you know, we look at this, let's just take Revelation 2 in, to the angel of the church of Ephesus, right, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lamb stands. Remember, you know, this is verse five now, remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come remove your lamb stand from its place unless you repent. Okay, this is again, sort of the familiar pattern, you know, repent, you know, be faithful unto death later on, you know, the different churches, you know, that you get this kind of language. Now it's noteworthy in each of these instances, each of these instances contain the statement that makes it clear that the intended audience for these statements is the whole congregation, the church. Why? Because each one ends with you who have an air to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Again, the angel is a surrogate, the angel is a conduit, the angel is, dare I say, a messenger boy. That's what angels are. Okay, Christ is giving a message to an angel and the angel is to take that message to the congregation. This is what angels do. They are messenger boys. The content of the message is for the churches. Revelation one through three affirms this point over and over again. So the content of the messages is for people. The angel is not the church, the angel is a communicative surrogate for the church. Consequently, the angel is not the target audience for calls to repent. Moreover, there is no indication that the angel surrogates are fallen. Think about that. Why would we conclude that the angels of the churches are fallen angels that need to repent? There's no reason to think that. There's nothing in the passage that suggests God is now using fallen angels in rebellion against him to take messages to believers. It just makes no sense and it has no textual basis. I could go on and on with this, but I want to hit one more point as we're getting a little long on the long side here in the podcast. What about Colossians 1.19-20? Reconciling all things. Here's the other verse that angelic redemption will refer to. Again, I think Hebrews 2 kills it. That was our chapter for the day. Revelation 1-3 doesn't support it at all. It makes no sense at all, but we need to throw Colossians 1.19-20 in this. Here are the two verses, for in him, in Jesus, in the context, in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself, and the Greek phrase there is ace outon, through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Now, most scholars would acknowledge that all things, whether on heaven or on earth, includes the heavenly hosts. I would, given that assumption, the issue that requires consideration is the meaning of reconcile. Most readers presume that this language refers to the forgiveness of sins, but that is not the case. The idea of reconciliation is actually multifaceted. For example, the work of Christ is connected to the renewal of creation. That has nothing to do with forgiving sins. Creation didn't sin. It committed no moral offense against God. Hence, its reconciliation means something different than forgiveness of sin. Now, O'Brien in his Colossians commentary discusses the passage again this way, and he makes some interesting observations. He says, quote, the unusual feature of this passage is that it refers to the reconciliation of all things, and that as a pet, it refers to the reconciliation of all things as a past event. Now, that might not sound self-evident, but it will just hang with me. So O'Brien says, the unusual thing about this passage that it refers to the reconciliation of all things as a past event. Although 2 Corinthians 519, and you can cross-reference John 316 and other passages, speaks of the reconciliation of the world, the cosmos. It is clear that it is the world of men which is in view there. Further, it is argued that the freeing of the creation from its bondage to decay so that it obtains the glorious liberty to children of God is a future, a scatological event, Romans 819 through 20. Three related questions therefore arise. What's the meaning of the phrase to reconcile all things to him? Second, what's the relationship of this expression to the words which follow, quote, having made peace to the blood of his cross, and see? Third, is it possible, or even desirable, to equate verse 20 with the notion of God's leading the evil powers in his triumphal procession in Colossians 2.15? Now, that's the end of his quote, but you have to realize Colossians 1.19 through 20 is not the only reference to invisible things in heaven. There are other passages, even in that chapter, Colossians 1.16, and of course, Colossians 2.15. What O'Brien is saying is, we might want to consider Paul's talk about these powers together, all of it. That might be a good idea, and I would suggest it is. Now, two points are especially crucial for accurate parsing of the question about angelic redemption. First, the reconciliation of which Colossians 1.20 speaks is a past event. It's something already accomplished. Many who presume the passage is about the offer of salvation, now being open to angels, fail to grasp this point. And the point derives from Greek grammar and syntax, which again, most of those people aren't going to be looking at anyway. One scholar explains, Asauton to him here does not indicate the completion of imminent reconciliation, and thus does not indicate a futuristic occurrence. The expression, which is construed in the heiress tense, all things are reconciled with him, is to be interpreted in parallel, in stanza to Colossians 1.16. All things were created in him. And its special significance derives from that earlier passage. It signifies, as the use of the heiress tense shows, the fulfillment of the corresponding expression in Colossians 1.16. Accordingly, reconciliation has its foundation in the creation, and is now arriving at its completion in the dominion of the sun over all things, unquote. Now the point is that the statements in Colossians 1.16, think with me here, I'm going to translate the academies. The point is that the statements in Colossians 1.16, which says all things in heaven and earth visible and invisible were created by him, that statement must be understood in tandem with Colossians 1.20. All things, whether in earth or in heaven, are reconciled to him or reconciled with him. Both statements are in the same paragraph, and both verbs are heiress tense, the Greek tense, which focuses on completed action, not action in process or action yet unaccomplished. Hence, the commentator, I just read was Marcus Bart, hence Bart's statement that the reconciliation of Colossians 1.20, which of course we still need to define that, is rooted in creation. And now after the cross is moving toward its consummation, which is the dominion of the sun over all things. Now the link of the reconciliation talk of Colossians 1.20, and the original creation order of Colossians 1.16, those two passages are linked to Colossians 2.15. And let me read that to you. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. All three of these things need to be understood in tandem. The basis for this, the basis for understanding the relevance of these things to Colossians 1.20 is that all three of them reference invisible spiritual beings in heaven, things in heaven, supernatural powers. They're created by the sun in Colossians 1.16, they're reconciled to the sun in Colossians 1.20, and they are triumphed over in Colossians 2.15. All three passages are talking about the same things, same guys. Now again, are we going to keep these things together, or are we going to pull one out and make hay with it? Back to, again, an excerpt from my book. Now note first that the cross results in the offer of redemption for humanity. Let me read Colossians 2. We read 2.15. Let me just go back a couple verses. Now listen to this. This is about the triumphing over the rulers. But the first, the preceding two verses says this, or say this, and you who were dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Again, what the cross results in is redemption for humanity. But for supernatural rulers and powers, what does it result in? Their defeat. Colossians 2 doesn't view the effect, the impact of the cross the same way with respect to angels, the same way with respect to supernatural non-human beings as it does to human beings. Does it? Again, the text is clear. The effect of the curse of fiction is different for humans than it is for angels. It just is. Again, I don't write the material, but there it is. The implications of connecting Colossians 120 with Colossians 116 and Colossians 215 is that reconciliation does not mean an offer of forgiveness that is still on the table for angels. It means something else. In accord with Colossians 116 and 120, all the verb forms in Colossians 215 are, guess what, heiress. And therefore, they describe a real condition that is completed. The reconciliation that is being described in Colossians 120 must be defined as an already completed reality that is consistent with both the original creation order and the kingship of the risen Christ. You have to honor these contexts when you talk about reconciliation in Colossians 120. Now, of the various suggestions made by scholars for understanding the meaning of reconciliation in Colossians 120, there's only one that both acknowledges the supernatural beings must be included and that remains true to the verses relationship to Colossians 116 and 215. And I think the best articulation of this is by Edward Loos in his Hermioneia commentary. He writes this, although there has been no previous mention of it, it is presupposed here that the unity and harmony of the cosmos have suffered a considerable disturbance, even a rupture. In order to restore the cosmic order, reconciliation became necessary and was accomplished by the Christ event. Through Christ, God himself achieved this reconciling. The universe has been reconciled in that heaven and earth have been brought back into their divinely created and determined order through the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. Now the universe is again under its proper head and thereby cosmic peace has returned. This peace which God has established through Christ binds the whole universe together again into unity and underlines that the restored creation is reconciled with God. Contrary to apocalyptic expectations, peace is not something that will come only at the end of time, rather it has already appeared in all things and the cosmic work of redemption has been done. Here's the already but not yet again. Back to the quotation, as the one who reconciled the cosmos Christ has entered his kingly rule, because he is the mediator of reconciliation, he is therefore also praised as the mediator of creation, as Lord over the universe and over powers and principalities." Now the point is that reconciling all things in heaven and earth in Colossians 120 refers to the restoration of creation order and authority. That's what it means. It's not about the forgiveness of sins. In Colossians 120, reconciliation means the return to the creation order and the reinstallment of Christ to his position of rulership at the right hand of God. The right hand of God is referred to a lot of passages, Acts 7, 55, and 56. Ephesians 120, Colossians 3, 1, Hebrews 1, 3, and 13, 1 Peter 3, 22, Revelation 5, 1, a lot of them. After he is restored to his position of rulership at the right hand of God after his incarnation, remember Hebrews 2, he was made a little lower than the angels, had to become human for a while. He's restored to his position of rulership at the right hand of God after his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension. An offer of salvation to angels is not in view. Instead, the aberration of their dominion over the affairs of men is corrected. Their authority is now illegitimate. They, of course, will not willingly surrender power, and so that power must be and will be taken from them. Humans still estranged from God are thus deceived and enslaved by powers unauthorized by the true king. That is the point of the Great Commission, setting captives free and to wrap up Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2 is just central to all of that, and we don't want to lose sight of Hebrews 2 amid, again, this rabbit trail of angelic redemption, even though it's a core thing to talk about in Hebrews 2, but we don't want to lose sight of the main points here. So as we wrap up again, Hebrews 2 makes several points. I'm just going to number them. Number one, the gospel is superior to the Torah because Christ was a superior means of revelation. Number two, taking no heed to the gospel was as serious as taking no heed to the law had been, had been. The law is now lesser. It is, in many respects, passe. It is under subservient to lesser than the revelation of Christ. Third, the law could not say it was neither eternal nor was it a sacrifice for sin. Only an eternal being who could die, and again, think about that paradox, could succeed in propitiating God and fulfilling the covenants and guaranteeing eternal life. This is why God had to become a man in Jesus Christ. The incarnation is essential to salvation. Christ was the fulfillment of the law, the perfect image of the mind and will of God. He died and rose again, making salvation possible. What I mean by that is that Christ could be the perfect fulfillment of the law. He could be the perfect reflection of the mind and will of God. But if he wasn't mortal, he couldn't die. And he had to die to rise again. And he had to rise again to defeat death. The incarnation is essential to redemption. And the object of it, because Jesus became human, why did he become human and not something else? Because humanity was the object of the plan, not angels. Fourth, the incarnation also means humanity is the object of redemption, the object of forgiveness of sin, not angels. God didn't become an angel. Angels will not inherit the new Eden. God became a man so that humanity could be forgiven and inherit the new global Eden. Mike, you just upset a lot of Elohim listening to the show out there. They're not going to be happy with you. Do we worry about them more than the Hebrew roots folks? Or the angelic redemption folks? I mean, that's a small crowd. But there it is. What can you do? I guess we're not going to need the angels delivering our messages because we have email now. Well, see, they're made out of electrons. They're made out of energy particles. They're the ones that correct your spelling wrongly. There you go. And speaking of those mischief, his angels, we're working through the email there. And speaking of absurdity, next weekend, Mike, our show is going to be about the end of the world because the world is ending next weekend. That's right. That's right. And we're going to do the show on why the... We were just talking about think about the paradox here. We're going to have a show on why the world isn't going to end. And we're going to record it before September 23rd. Is that how the calendar works out for us? Yeah, 20 seconds when we record it. There you go. Okay. So again, I don't feel like I'm spinning in the wind there going out in a limb. But that's what we're going to talk about. Why didn't the world end on September 23rd? So we'll record it before then and you'll hear it after. There you go. If we're still around, that is. So hopefully, we hope you hear it. But you know what, Trey, I'm not crossing my fingers. I don't think I need to do that. Yeah, I hear you on that one. All right, Mike, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.