Lightning Round Part Five

Published Oct 3, 2023, 6:00 AM

Welcome back to season five of Enter the Bible, a podcast in which we share "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bible...but were afraid to ask."

In episode 13 of season 5, our hosts present their fifth Lighting Round!

Watch the video version on YouTube at https://youtu.be/ckQZ5FpjI6c

Do you have Bible questions you would like answered? Go to our website at https://enterthebible.org/about to get started. This episode of the Enter the Bible podcast was recorded on July 26, 2023 on Riverside.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston.

And I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker. And today we're doing what we call the lightning round with sound effects, which is just some questions that came in that probably aren't enough to to do a whole episode. And so we're just going to address three questions that have come in from our listeners. And as always, if you have a question that you'd like to submit that you would perhaps like to have as the subject of a future podcast, go to Enter the Bible and give us your question. We we can't address all the questions that come in, but we do our best. So we're going to do this lightning round on three questions that came in, the first one of which, well, let me just give them all to you and we'll we'll do them in this order. First question is, what is the call to Abraham? Second question is, what is a good online Bible? And the third one is, I've heard that there will be two who return prior to Christ's return. One is Elijah, who is the second one? So kind of a mixture of theological, biblical and just kind of practical.

Practical, Yeah. Everyday. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. So. So first one, what is the call to Abraham? Go ahead.

Are you asking me? Is this a pop quiz? This is a pop quiz from my Old Testament Professor, everyone. Let me see. Okay. So the call to Abraham is, well, the caller, the. Okay, I'm going to mess this one up so bad because I was thinking like the covenant, which was posterity and land and blessed to be a blessing that Abraham would be blessed to like bless the entire world, his posterity would bless the world. But maybe, maybe I'm getting that mixed up. And the call to Abraham is something else.

You pass.

Did I fail?

You pass.

Yes.

Good job. No, I mean. I guess I'm not completely sure what our listener is asking about. But let's talk about two different things. One and and they're connected. So the call to Abraham is just what you said, Katie. And we find it first in Genesis 12, and it's combined with a call to Abraham to leave his kindred and his father's household and the land where he grew up in Mesopotamia, and to go to a land that God will show him. But included in that and it's a radical call, right, because there's Abraham. He's 75. He doesn't have any children. God tells him to get up and leave, basically his social safety net, his father's household, his kin, his tribe, and to go to a new land. And that's that's a pretty radical thing to do today, but especially in the ancient world where your family really is your Social Security. Right. As you get older. So yeah, yeah. But included in that call is a is as you as you already said, Katie, a three fold promise to Abraham. So key verses are Genesis 12 one through three. Now the Lord said to Abram, He's known as Abram. Then Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. Those are the first, right? Meaning you will have offspring. You know, you'll be the father of a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you. I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So first promise is of offspring that Abraham will be the father of a great nation. Second is the blessing. You will be a blessing to all the nations. And then the third one comes just a few verses later in verse seven, Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said "to your offspring, I will give this land". So the third part of the promise is land. And that that promise really plays a huge role in the rest of the of the Old Testament, certainly perhaps even the whole Bible

And the yeah, I would say like I think Paul sees Jesus as fulfilling those promises to Abraham. Right. That's not a we've talked about this I think several times, especially recently. Just had a conversation with AJ Levine about avoiding anti-Semitism in our interpretation of the New Testament. And I think a key to that is understanding that it's not a discontinuity from the promises God made to Abraham when Jesus comes. And and then Paul, you know, is called to be a missionary to the Gentiles. But actually that's the fulfillment or Paul sees that as the fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, that through through Abraham and through the Jewish people, the entire world would be blessed. Like God sees Jesus being the one through whom then Gentiles are grafted into those promises, right? As he talks about in Romans.

Yeah.

So I do think that that's a central, central theme throughout all of scripture. I think it's kind of one of the most important touchstones to kind of understand what what the story of scripture is and how it all connects together.

Yeah. I mean, arguably the rest of the Bible is kind of a working out of these promises. And certainly in the Old Testament, it's, you know, this this is the the family, right? Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. This is the family that whose story occupies the whole rest of the Old Testament and moving into the New Testament. I want to say a couple of things about one, that promise is reiterated to Isaac, their son in Genesis 26 and then again to Jacob, their grandson in Genesis 28. And it plays a huge role in in Exodus, where the people worship the golden calf and God's ready to destroy them. Right? These descendants of Abraham and Moses brings up this promise that God makes all the way back in Genesis 12 to convince God not to destroy the people. Right? God says, Remember what you said. Remember what you promised to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob. It's like, you know those arguments where, you know, you've won the argument. If you can quote the person back to them.

Person's own words

It's so frustrating.

You said.

You said.

Remember when you said

Exactly, remember when you promised, which is so frustrating when you're on the other end of it.

But I know my my kids use that on me all the time. You said we could do this and that. Ah, dang it. I did, fine.

So, yeah. So in Exodus 32, God, God does not destroy the people because of that promise. Now, Moses has other parts of the argument, too, but that's another story. But so this promise, I think it's important to note the promise binds God, right, as well as the people that God will be faithful to God's promises, which is what Paul talks about in Romans as well. What you just referenced before, Right. God will be faithful to to God's own promises, even when the people don't hold up their side of the bargain. So. So this promise. Yeah, it's not just binding on Abraham and his descendants, but but on God, God's self. And the last thing I want to say about it, and then I'll hand it back to you, is that that one phrase right through in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Lots of people have trouble with this promise to Abraham, right? Because it seems like God's playing favorites. It's the it's the, the, the theme of election of God choosing a particular people.

But that doesn't seem that doesn't seem fair in a sort of Western egalitarian, you know, democratic society. We don't like that very much.

But but here, you know, they're blessed not for their own sake or at least not only for their own sake. I think I think there is a special relationship there, but they're blessed in order to be a blessing. They're the conduit through which God's blessing will flow to the whole world. So, yeah, lots more could be said about the call to Abraham or the blessing of Abraham.

Well, I remember my the senior pastor at the church where I where I am also a pastor, but I guess a junior pastor. I don't know, like a lesser, just kidding. He did a he did a he did a great job. We're doing the narrative lectionary, which means that on Sundays we kind of go through we read the story of the Bible kind of in order throughout the whole year so that people can get a sense for what the kind of narrative arc of the whole Bible is. And when we were in the, you know, when we were in the part about about the call to Abraham and Abraham's blessing, I thought he did a great job at sort of pointing out how a lot of times when you're called and you're blessed, it's kind of a bummer for you. There's a lot of suffering that goes along with that in the scripture. And you think about all of the suffering of, you know, the prophets and you think of all of the suffering of, you know, the Jewish people throughout the centuries, and you think of Jesus suffering and dying on the cross and you think of us being called to take up our crosses and follow Jesus into death itself. You know, like it's not it's not hashtag blessed, right? It's not. It's not it's not about money and power and status. But most of the time when God calls you and blesses you, I think of the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those

who are persecuted,

who are persecuted. Like it's kind of a drag to be called and blessed from a biblical standpoint. And so maybe that reminds us a little bit that it's not like a power play in that kind of way that we might hear that through our, you know, Western 21st century ears.

Yeah, no, that's an excellent point. I totally agree with what you said. It's not hashtag blessed. Look at my beautiful children and power and house or whatever. It's blessing. You know, sometimes I think the chosen people are like, "Can't you choose somebody else?" Right?

Choose choose these other people. We're tired of it. I feel that way sometimes, like in my own callings and vocations, I'm like, oh my gosh, you want me to do what now? You want me to have patience? For who? Yeah, you know, so but but.

It is, it is. And a real blessing, obviously, because it's in that choosing that there's a relationship with the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, with Jesus. So yeah, but we should probably move on since it's a lightning round.

Here we go.

So thank you for that question. Whoever submitted it, here's another one that should be a easier to answer or shorter to answer. What is a good online Bible? I'd like one I can access on my phone and iPad.

Yeah. So I, I have a couple on my phone. My phone is broken. I can't I can't touch it. So here it is. If you're on YouTube, you can see I can't put in any numbers to like log in anyway, so I can't show you, but the, the one that I use most of the time is Bible Gateway, which is awesome. It has a whole bunch of different versions of the Bible and you can search it and it's really cool. And then another one that I have on my phone is called Dwell. It's called the Dwell app, and it is an audio version of the Bible that is quite beautiful. It has beautiful music. The people that read it, they have several different voices from like different with different, you can tell backgrounds and ethnicities and stuff like that. And they read it. They read it really well. It's lovely. And so that is another one. Sometimes I'll put that on when I'm, you know, walking or driving or something like that, and you can kind of listen and it's lovely. So those are a couple that I use and they both have apps for your for your phone or iPad.

I would add probably a couple more. I use Bible Gateway as well. I wasn't familiar with dwell. I'll have to check that out. Thanks Katie. Yes, Bible Gateway is useful. As Katie said, there's many, many different translations of the Bible, many different English translations. I don't don't know if there's other languages there, but Bible Gateway, Bible study tools, dot com is another one that is helpful to, I think similar to Bible Gateway. You can search for verses or particular words. The one other one I want to mention, this is more of a little more academically focused. It's called the Net Bible, Net bible.org. So net stands for New English Translation. So it is just one one English translation of the Bible. Very good English translation, a modern one. Net Bible org. But the nice thing about this website is that it has the original Hebrew and Greek. So obviously Old Testament in Hebrew, New Testament in Greek. So if you have an interest in the original languages in Hebrew or Greek, I would highly recommend the Net Bible because it can help you, even even a beginner, to kind of see the nuances from the original languages. And it has study notes saying why they translated a verse in a particular way. So that's another one I would recommend, but it's not it's perhaps not for kind of daily Bible reading. It's more for if you want to kind of do a deep dive into a particular text or a particular word.

So one one that's similar to that that I used when I was in seminary is Bible Hub, Bible Hub dot com. And that one actually does have a bunch of different translations and it also has the the Hebrew and the Greek. So like when I took Hebrew and Greek, which heaven bless me, I remember nothing from, you know, it would have it would have it kind of in English and then it would have it like, like then it would have the, the original language below. Yeah. And then it had like transliteration. Like it would have. Yeah. So it kind of does something similar if you're wanting to get into the original languages. "Inter linear" is the word. My our producer Ben just popped that in our in our chat. Thank you Ben. That's the word I was so let's listen struggling.

For again so Bible Gateway, Bible Study Tools Net Bible, Bible Hub. Dwell.

Which is the audio app. Okay. And yeah, okay, so there's a bunch. There's a bunch of great resources. Of course. Enter the Bible, dot org. We don't have the whole Bible on there, but lots and lots of good Bible study and, you know, information there.

All right. Third question for this lightning round. I've heard that there will be two people who return prior to Christ's return. One is Elijah, who is the second one? All right. So this is a little esoteric.

I don't know this one. I fail

I'll jump in. Okay. Okay. So. This is going to get into several different texts, so maybe we can put those in the notes under the podcast. But at first the first text to mention is 2 Kings 2, which is where Elijah ascends into heaven. And Elijah, of course, as I'm sure our listeners know, is very prominent prophet in the Old Testament. We read about him in first and Second Kings. So 2 Kings, 2 Kings 2 is where Elijah is taken up by a fiery chariot into heaven. And Elisha, his his disciple, his successor, watches him ascend and receives Elijah's power and Elijah's robe. Um. So Elijah is taken up bodily into heaven. This is the this is the story in Scripture. And so then the second text to mention is Malachi 4, Malachi 4:5-6 , where the God through the prophet says, I will send Elijah before the day of the Lord, before the great and powerful day of the Lord. So just as Elijah is taken up into heaven. So according to Malachi 4, he will come back before the day of the Lord, before, before the end times or at the at the beginning of the end times. And you can kind of see the the, you know, the reasoning there. Right? Because because Elijah is taken up bodily into heaven, he doesn't die. He will come back from heaven to to before the messiah comes. We see this even today in this belief, even in Passover celebrations, where traditionally a chair is left empty for Elijah because Elijah will be one who comes before the Messiah comes. But who's the, so it's pretty clear that, you know, Elijah will come back before the Messiah. By the way, Christ is just the Greek translation of Messiah. Meshiach in Hebrew, the Anointed one, the Son of David that will come back at the end times. We Christians, of course, believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Um, I liked how AJ Levine put it.

Oh, when the Messiah comes or comes again. Yeah.

When the Messiah comes or comes again.

Comes back again.

We'll see who's right. The Christians or

We'll see. That was funny.

All right, but who's this other figure? Well, it's the prophet. It's just the prophet. So going back earlier in the biblical canon, another text to look at is Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses says, God will send a prophet like me and you shall pay heed to that prophet. Now Jewish tradition read that verse, interpreted that verse eventually as saying that there would be a figure, a prophet like Moses, or perhaps even Moses himself, who would come back with Elijah before the day of the Lord or before the Messiah. Now, where do we see all this play itself out? Well, two other texts this time. This time in the New Testament. So, John, chapter one, turning in my Bible. I should have had it open. Um, so John the Baptist is asked by the the priests and the Levites "Who are you?" So I'm looking at the Gospel of John chapter one, starting in verse 19. This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you? He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, I am not the Messiah. So that's the first thing, right? Are you the Messiah? Are you the Son of David that's coming? He says no, not the Messiah, not the Christ. And so then they ask him in verse 21, What then are you, Elijah? He said, I am not, right. So are you the one that's coming before the Messiah? Are you Elijah? No. And then this is interesting. The next question: Are you the prophet? And he answered, No. Right. So they you can see this this tradition, this belief about who's going to come in this text. Then they said to him: Who are you? Let us have an answer. He said, I'm the one. I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord. He's quoting Isaiah 40, and then just in verse 25, they ask him, Why then are you baptizing? If you are neither the Messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet? It's these three figures that are going to come back at the end times and the other. This is the last text I'll mention. In in the Gospels, we have the story of the Transfiguration. Right?

Right

Where Jesus go takes Peter, James and John up to a mountaintop. And who appears, there? Moses and Elijah. Now, I grew up hearing that Moses represents the law and Elijah represents the prophets. I've heard since I've learned since from my Jewish friends that that's not quite it. That that that these are the three figures that will come at the end times, right? Jesus says the Messiah, Elijah himself coming to prepare the way for the Messiah and then the prophet, the preeminent prophet, not just any prophet, but Moses himself. So Moses is the prophet who will come, Elijah is Elijah, and then Jesus is the Messiah. That's who we see on the Mount of Transfiguration. So the disciples see that and, and they, they know this, this tradition, this Jewish tradition, that these are the three figures at the end of time. Which is why, of course, Peter wants to build three tabernacles, three tents to stay up on the mountaintop.

So I think it's interesting that the phrase of the way that the questioner phrased this is that there will be two who return prior to Christ's return. And I think we might have talked about this before in another episode, I can't remember. But. It sounds to me like that's maybe a misunderstanding of the of the biblical record because it sounds like they already came. And it wasn't for his return, but it was for his coming the first time. Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's not like a, right, so it's not we're not, um, there's probably, I don't know, I heard this to growing up that, you know, like before the, you know, before the end times. And we, you know, I grew up in a tradition that believed there would be like this big war and there would be Armageddon and all these horrible things would happen. And like, then the, you know, Elijah and this other dude would, like, show up and then Jesus would, like, come down the mountain of Mount of Olives or something like that, which is probably a lot of things that were meant to be taken symbolically that they have decided to be literal about. But I think it's like this has happened already. Yeah, we're not like waiting for it to happen again. It it we, it happened. Yay, yay.

Yeah. Done. No, I think I think. Is that right? Okay. I think so. I mean, according to, according to the gospels, you had. Yeah. Moses and Elijah show up on the Mount of Transfiguration as a sign that this is the Christ.

Right? That this is the Messiah.

Right. And it's worth noting that even though in John, John the Baptist says he's not Elijah elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says, Yeah, he is Elijah, he is he, he is the figure like,

like Elijah.

Like that will come. Yeah, yeah. To prepare the way of the Lord. Yeah. So, yes, awesome. That's hopefully clarifies it a little more. But yes, I think the main point or an important point is what you said, Katie, that according to the biblical witness in the New Testament, this has already happened.

Woo hoo.

Right. Well, I think that's I think that's it for this lightning round. We'll do another session with three other questions. Thank you again to those who sent the questions and feel free to offer your own questions and Enter the bible.org where you will find more videos and podcasts and essays and all kinds of things to hopefully open the Bible more fully for you so you can learn more about this Word of God to us. Thanks for listening.