Was the Book of Enoch BANNED from the Bible...!? | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Summary

Podcast Summary: Was the Book of Enoch BANNED from the Bible...!?

Podcast: Live Free with Josh Howerton (Lakepointe Church)
Date: December 8, 2025
Host: Pastor Josh Howerton
Co-hosts/Guests: Carlos Horazo, Paul Cunningham
Episode Focus:
Examining viral claims about the Book of Enoch, discussing myths about the formation of the Bible, and what Christians should believe about biblical authority, with a heavy emphasis on how these issues relate to faith, culture, and holiday themes.

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Main Theme and Episode Purpose

This episode takes on three primary topics:

1. Viral confusion about the Book of Enoch and its supposed “banning” from the Bible.
2. Deep theological dives into the Christmas story—revealing rich Old and New Testament parallels.
3. Responding to modern deconstructionist takes on the origins and authority of the Bible, as popularized by viral social media videos.

The tone is lighthearted, strongly biblical, and deeply pastoral, aiming to equip Christians to process internet controversies with solid truth.

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Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. Christmas Theological "Deep Cuts" (08:00–45:30)

- Hidden Symbolism and Prophecy in the Nativity Story

• Pastor Josh:
  • Explores prophecies in Malachi about the Messiah having “healing in his wings” and connects this to Jesus’s garments as a rabbi (“kanaf”; 11:16–12:35).
  • “This lady had read Malachi chapter four... She had faith that this is the one who was promised. And so in faith to Malachi, chapter four, she walks up and touches the fringe, the kanaf, of his garment. Boom, she's healed.” (12:22)
  • Bethlehem means “house of bread”—profound parallel to Jesus as "the bread of life." (13:14)
  • Joseph was likely a stonemason (“tekton”), not a carpenter, based on Greek translation and regional building practices (13:33).

- Angelic Announcement to Shepherds

• Significance of Shepherds:
  • Angels appeared to the lowliest (shepherds weren’t considered reliable witnesses; 14:57), symbolizing God's grace to the humble.
  • The shepherds in Bethlehem likely raised sacrificial lambs for the Day of Atonement—the Lamb of God is born into this setting (18:14).
  • Paul: “Whereas Caesar would have come in and pomp and circumstance, the Savior and king of the world comes in in a manger and appears to the lowest of lowly. So it’s this very politically subversive message.” (17:44)

- Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Lamb

• Scarlet Thread through Scripture (21:10–29:35):
  • From Genesis’ animal-skin covering, to Abraham and Isaac, to Passover lambs, through to Jesus’ birth, life, and crucifixion.
  • The manger as a stone trough for animals links to the laying down of sacrificial lambs.
  • Jesus’ unique cry from the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—signifies spiritual agony, not mere physical pain.

“Jesus could handle some pain. But there’s one time where Jesus is recorded as crying out... when the sky goes dark, Jesus cries out, here’s why. Because as the sky’s dark for three hours, what’s happening is God the Father was turning his back on the Son so that he could turn his face toward you.” – Josh (29:21)

• Veil Tearing as Theological Symbol:
  • The temple curtain tearing from top to bottom at Jesus’ death reveals open access to God for all believers (29:35).

- The Magi and Daniel Connection

• Josh: Proposes the Magi were descendants of magicians/wise men taught by Daniel in Babylon, awaiting the Messiah based on Old Testament prophecy. “There is a little part of me that wonders if these guys kept the gold that the Babylonian empire plundered from the temple... and they knew that the boy that was going to be born as Lord was actually God.” (33:57–36:24)

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2. Applying "Fear Not" – Living as Christ-Followers (36:44–45:57)

• How can Christians obey the command ‘Fear not’?
  • Anchor your mind in God’s promises and not in feelings or anxieties.
  • Use biblical truths as the “wallpaper of your life”—repeat and meditate until it shapes your perspective.
  • Examine your thoughts: “Put that thought in like a cross examination chair and ask the question, who sent you and what kingdom are you coming from?” – Josh (41:09)
  • Recognize that faith places confidence in the promises (“facts”) of God, not merely in current emotions. (43:22–44:24, Paul)

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3. Book of Enoch Explored (46:02–71:00)

- Viral confusion and modern fascination

• Multiple listeners and commentators ask: “Why did you talk about UFOs and not the Book of Enoch?” and “Was Enoch banned from the Bible?”
• Recent Rogan podcast clip claims Enoch was removed from the Bible by a political council, replaced by Revelation, and that “hidden” or “suppressed” knowledge abounds (47:23–49:02).

- What is the Book of Enoch?

• Paul Cunningham:
  • Clarifies it’s a pseudepigraphal work (falsely attributed to Enoch, Noah’s great-grandfather), compiled between 3rd–1st century BC (50:43–51:46).
  • “They would put someone else's name who had credibility and authority on their writing... and so therefore we should hold it to be true, but it's actually not.” (51:16)
  • Like “fan fiction” attributed to biblical figures.

- Was Enoch Ever in the Bible?

• No. Never in Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), never in the Greek Septuagint, never in Catholic Bibles or any Christian canons except the Ethiopian Orthodox Church—whose canon, historically, is much later than often claimed (55:23–57:08).
• Rogan’s “oldest Bible” claim is factually inaccurate. Manuscript history does not support it.
• “If by ‘banned’ you mean, he was in there and then they decided they didn't like it and took it out later: No. If you mean that they considered his opinion and didn't consider it valid, then, yeah...” – Paul (54:25)

- Jude Quotes Enoch—So Does That Give it Authority?

• Jude 14–15 does quote Enoch 1:9. But quoting a non-biblical work as containing a true statement does not mean the whole work is inspired or belongs in the Bible. (60:44–62:20)
• New Testament authors also quote pagan poets for illustrative purposes.

- Warnings About Using Enoch Authoritatively

• “If you think, hey, even though every Jewish community, except for even...Qumran, didn't accept it at the same level... and you're still going to accept as authoritative: by what criteria?” – Paul (66:48)
• Obsession with hidden or speculative knowledge (“rabbit holes”) leads people away from the revelation God has made clear in Scripture and toward endless, fruitless debate (68:09–70:25; 1 Timothy 1 reference).

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4. Viral “Deconstructionist” Video on Bible Origins (71:00–96:49)

- Breakdown and Refutation of Common Myths

• Myth 1: “Jesus wasn’t a Christian and didn’t mean to start Christianity.”

  • Jesus fulfilled the Jewish religion (Matthew 5:17) and established a new covenant (Last Supper, John 14:6).

• Myth 2: “The Bible was compiled hundreds of years later by a pagan emperor (Constantine) for political reasons.”

  • Josh & Paul: Council of Nicaea (325 AD) did NOT decide the canon—issue was Arianism (was Jesus created or not?), not scripture. The first full New Testament list appears in Athanasius’ letter (367 AD), with widespread quotations predating Constantine.
  • Early church fathers quoted nearly all New Testament books as authoritative within a few generations of the apostles (78:34).

• Myth 3: “The Bible has been changed through translation/retranslation, argument, and committee.”

  • Manuscript evidence for the New Testament vastly outweighs that for other ancient texts (Plato, Aristotle, Caesar), with 99.5% agreement among thousands of ancient manuscripts (90:03–92:15).

• Myth 4: "Old Testament God is different from New Testament (Jesus) God."

  • Both testaments reveal judgment and grace, and Jesus himself claimed continuity (“before Abraham was, I am;” John 8:58). Marcionism (two gods theory) is an ancient, refuted heresy (93:35).

- The Importance of Scripture’s Authority

• You read the Bible to know how to follow Jesus—the “person” cannot be detached from the “pages.”
• “If the Bible is fallible, good, that means it’s human...the point was never the pages, it was the person. And he still says the same thing today. Follow me and be free.” (Viral Video)
  • Pastor Josh: “How do you figure out how to follow the person? You read the pages.” (96:49)

- Overarching Point

• Christians must stand on the authority, trustworthiness, and sufficiency of the Scriptures as God’s revelation—above “spot inspiration,” deconstructionism, or viral internet claim.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There’s only one answer to how that [the Bible’s unity] can happen. It was written down by men. It was authored by the living God.” – Josh (88:52)
• “If I was a demon, I would love for you to endlessly obsess over things that you can never know for sure instead of the God that...created you to know him for sure.” – Paul (70:52)
• “We search the Scriptures, because they point to Christ, so that we might know Him.” – Josh (82:51)
• “You need to evaluate who sent this thought. There’s a lot of thoughts that you have...but actually their nation of origin is from the kingdom of darkness.” – Josh (41:09)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Christmas “Deep Cuts” Theology: 08:00–45:30
• Living 'Fear Not': 36:44–45:57
• Book of Enoch: 46:02–71:00
• Viral Deconstruction Video Reaction: 71:00–96:49

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Structure & Flow

Each section of the episode naturally builds from theological richness (Christmas) to apologetic defense (Book of Enoch, Bible canon), always aiming to ground listeners in historic Christian orthodoxy while identifying and debunking modern myths.

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Conclusion & Call to Action

• Christians are urged to focus on revealed truth and deepen their discipleship in community (Rooted small groups).
• Avoid speculative “rabbit holes” that distract from sound doctrine.
• Study, trust, and feast on God’s Word to know Christ and live free.

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For further discussion, listeners are pointed to Lakepointe’s resource guides, small groups (“Rooted”), and additional episodes covering topics like the Apocrypha and spiritual myths.

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Final Word from Pastor Josh:
“The point was never the pages. It was the person. How do you figure out how to follow the person? You read the pages.” (96:49)

Transcript

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howerton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Pointe Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the word of God, tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now let's dive into today's episode.

[Carlos Horazo]

Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Horazo, and I'm here with Pastor Josh Howerton and Paul Cunningham, and we are coming to you from Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. And on this episode, we will be talking about the Book of Enoch. Should Christians teach their kids about Santa Claus? And we're going to be responding to this viral 15 million view video that is confusing literally millions of Christians, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I bet. I had. No joke. At least 20 church members sent me this thing, and that thing shook people.

[Carlos Horazo]

It kind of went viral out of nowhere, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

It shook people. So. And this dude, as you're going to see, he essentially takes, like, a bouquet of every myth.

About the origins of the Bible and Christianity, and he just clumped them all into one and threw them at you.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's right.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So, like, what? We're going to hit this. It's going to be fun.

[Carlos Horazo]

It's going to be a fun episode. You guys doing good?

[Paul Cunningham]

Doing great.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I would be better if you had a cowboy hat on, bro.

[Carlos Horazo]

I have an announcement, first of all.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, Okay.

[Carlos Horazo]

I have a very important announcement. I watched Tombstone.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yay.

[Carlos Horazo]

And I was going to bring a cowboy hat because I don't own any, but. But Amazon prime did not come through.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Dang, dude.

[Paul Cunningham]

This leads to a crucial moment, though. What did you think?

[Carlos Horazo]

But hold on. Before I say that we need a.

[Paul Cunningham]

Review, I need a review.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

What's an El Salvadorian? It's because it's very Americana.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah. I will say this. I did buy my first pair of boots.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, I did.

[Carlos Horazo]

So I don't know. You might see me with some boots in a little bit. I liked it. I thought it was good. I will say this. Probably not my best date night movie.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Carlos texted us and he was like, date night? What's Brooke gonna think? Me and Paul were like, it's probably good enough for her to like Amy.

[Paul Cunningham]

She Said she, like.

[Carlos Horazo]

I mean, Brooke is open minded.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You.

[Carlos Horazo]

You know, it's probably not the best day in a movie, but I liked it, man. I can see how much of a classic it is. It's full of like, epic lines for. It's like the whole movie. Yeah, a lot of things made more sense.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Top five quotable movie of all time.

[Paul Cunningham]

I was about to ask what your favorite line or moment was.

[Carlos Horazo]

I'm your huckleberry.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I'm your huckleberry.

[Carlos Horazo]

It's a classic.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I'm your huckleberry twice.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, that was pretty good.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, before we get into this, can I. Can I do something I wish I would have known on last week's pod?

[Carlos Horazo]

Please do.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, so actually, first of all, we talked about this. Last week's pod. We just finished Christmas at the movies was last week. Dude, did you guys know this? I don't know if you knew this. All the data ended up coming in. It was over 33,000 people in person at services that week.

[Paul Cunningham]

That's nice.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And heads up, there were tons of live free listeners who had not ever hit a Lakepoint campus before that came. So shout out Live free nation.

[Carlos Horazo]

Let's go, man.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

But cramming 33, 000 in there was amazing.

[Carlos Horazo]

We keep on hearing stories of people literally flying from different states just to come say hi. All right, And I love that.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Here's so shout out live free nation. Here's what I wish I had known. All right, so this dude, his name is Jeremy Wayne Tate. I don't know anything about this guy. I ran across this and he had this post that also went viral about how Home alone is a Christian movie. Bro, this kills me. I was like, how did I not know this? All right, so, like, we're going to show screenshots because Jason and these guys are telling me that they'll take the episode down off of YouTube if we play the clip. All right, so here. So go to the first one so that you know. No, no, no. The first one. The first. That one, that one. So it's the. It's the. The scene where Kevin's walking into the church, right? And so I'm going to read this. This is nuts. I can't believe I nerd this. Before he says, watch this scene very carefully where Kevin is drawn into the beauty and warmth of the church. As he walks inside to O holy night, he hears the words, fall on your knees. Oh, hear the angel voices. Now next screenshot. I'm setting the mood.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, I like it.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

A sanctuary candle passes across the Foreground, indicating that Christ is present inside the church. Then, next screenshot. Kevin has an encounter with a Christ figure. Now, if you think this is crazy, just stick with me for a second. Kevin has an encounter with a Christ figure. Old man Marley. Now, this isn't in the post, but I'll just point this out.

[Carlos Horazo]

We're.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

When you first meet old man Marley in the movie, what's he doing?

[Carlos Horazo]

He's, like, shoveling snow. Right?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Shoveling snow. But remember, what's he got in his Salting?

[Carlos Horazo]

Salting.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

He's salting the earth. Oh. Oh, he's salting the earth. Okay, now, so check this out. So old man Marley, Christ figure, Kevin makes a confession to him, then shakes his hand. And we see a bandage on Marley's hand. Now, check this out, bro. Check this out. It's never explained in the movie why his hand is wounded. But earlier in the movie, we see drum roll. Go to that next one. Go to the next one. His hand is pierced all the way through. So I actually had two pictures. Do you have both of them? Trinity. So top there, blood. Go back to the other one. Bottom, blood. His hand is pierced all the way through. Like the nails driven through Christ's hands on the cross. At the end of the movie, Kevin cannot save himself from the burglars, and so Marley appears again to rescue him. Home Alone is a Christian movie. Good. Wow. Isn't that amazing? That's crazy. I don't know.

[Carlos Horazo]

I've never heard this before.

[Paul Cunningham]

It's compelling.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

It's compelling. I'll also say this.

Do you have the picture? Actually, I don't. Nah, I didn't send it to you. Here's another thing that's interesting. At the end of the movie, his hands are healed when he shows up to save Kevin.

[Carlos Horazo]

And he says, hi.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And he says hi. And he waves, and his hands are healed. So I don't know, man. Could be something there. Home Alone. I like it.

[Carlos Horazo]

I like it.

[Paul Cunningham]

I think there's enough smoke that there might be some fire, let's put it that way.

[Carlos Horazo]

I was like, he's not buying it, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I'm out, dude.

[Carlos Horazo]

He's like, it's pretty cute, but I'm not buying it.

[Paul Cunningham]

I saw that post on Monday, and the same thing, like, literally the day after. I mean, it was the day after at the movies, and I saw it and I liked it, but at the same time, I was like, okay, I like it.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So then I read in the comments that I guess the guy that wrote the script is, like, a devout Catholic. So I mean, there could be. I like. It could be something there.

[Paul Cunningham]

I'm actually.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Thank you, Carlos. Thank you, Carlos.

[Carlos Horazo]

If Paul is a little more of a skeptic, it's okay with some of.

[Paul Cunningham]

The stuff that we're covering today. I think that's why I've been studying up and I'm more in a skeptic mood for what we're covering.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Book of Enoch.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, well, we'll get there.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Did we get all the stuff in the Bible we're supposed to. All the things we're going to Paul's about debunking myths today.

[Paul Cunningham]

Today. That's probably why I'm a little bit more of a skeptical mood because of.

[Carlos Horazo]

Speaking of Christmas services, in two weeks, we have our candlelight Christmas services.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

How many do we have? Do you know?

[Carlos Horazo]

A bunch.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's like over 30. Yeah.

[Carlos Horazo]

So you mentioned for people that maybe are within driver driving distance. Of course we want to see you here. But even if you're not, we would love for you, you know, come say hi.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Come say hi.

[Carlos Horazo]

It's going to be fun. And so if you want more information, text the word Christmas to 20411. If you're curious about which one you can be joining us. Every week we do a hat giveaway as well. And by the way, we had this dispute that we need to settle this one time. For people setting up their Christmas trees before Thanksgiving, it seems like the winner is. Drumroll, please.

After Thanksgiving.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's the wrong answer. The wrong answer.

[Carlos Horazo]

Paul, you think that's the wrong answer?

[Paul Cunningham]

I used to, and then I got married.

And now we do it before we.

[Carlos Horazo]

Have a winner because we do this every week. So winner of this week. Last week's was Egg man. Tim.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So that's YouTube. Assign weird names. YouTube assigns weird usernames.

[Carlos Horazo]

I actually googled that name just to make sure that we're not showing anything inappropriate here. So it's fine. Yeah, I don't know, man.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, that's good.

[Carlos Horazo]

So, hey, for this winner or for the this week's giveaway, here's what I want you to comment. Comment below. To enter this week's giveaway, Christmas pajamas for adults. Cringe or awesome?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Cringe or awesome.

[Carlos Horazo]

So comment below. Cringe or awesome. And you will be participating in today's giveaway.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And then we'll pick somebody and send a hat.

[Carlos Horazo]

We'll pick a winner and we'll. Yeah, that's right. And then one more thing before we dive in. Hey, thanks for liking subscribing, sharing all the things. Also, we Believe that discipleship happens in relationships. And your next step after listening to this podcast is community. Find your band of brothers and find your people. And this is why we've compiled all key takeaways, additional content and discussion questions coming from this episode so you can use it as a tool to take it to your life group. And so to get the show notes, aka our discipleship guide, text the word notes to 20411 or go to Lakepoint Church show notes. Pastor Josh, I have a question for you.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I prepared.

[Carlos Horazo]

What did it make to the sermon?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, I didn't say I will allow.

[Carlos Horazo]

I was going to ask you if.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You allow that question a lot. Honestly didn't make it in the sermon because. So here's what we're doing. We're in series called Glad Ties. We bring. It's really interesting when the angels show up in Luke chapter two, and we're going to deep dive this here for a second. They essentially, they announce four things to the shepherds. Fear not, good news, great joy, all people. And so what we're doing during the series is like we're just, we're deep diving on each of those. Fear not, fear not, good news, great joy, all people. That's the, that's what Christmas does for the human soul. So a few things, there's a lot here. We did Luke, it was Luke 2:8 through 14. So this is the, it's the most famous Christmas account in the scriptures. A couple of things are really interesting. Number one, so we're going to zoom out and like get a running start theologically. So a lot of people miss this. The Old Testament ends last. The last verses. The book of Malachi, bro, I did, I didn't know this until last two weeks. The last verses of the book of Malachi, which is obviously the last book of the Old Testament. The last verses prophesy about a coming messiah. And dude, one of the things it says is that there's going to come a quote, unquote, son of righteousness with healing in his wings, says it's going to turn the hearts of the children of the fathers and the hearts of the fathers of the children. So then essentially God leaves Israel on red. It's like the bubbles, you know, on the. For 400 years. Okay, so, so that is prophesied about the coming Messiah. Dude, I didn't know this. So when Malachi says he's going to have healing in his wings, the Hebrew, I stumbled across this this week. The Hebrew word is the Hebrew word kanaf, which can get translated wings or it can get translated a fringe or an edge, like of a G. So I didn't know this. So then, okay, bro, this is. This is a little deep cut. Jesus shows up. Jesus is obviously a rabbi. He's a teacher. And when the rabbis, what they would wear is that they wear these robes that would have these, like, these fringe tassels on their robes. The word that was used for those was knoph. In other words, that's the. The rabbi's wings. So, dude, this is really interesting. Then you fast forward, you go to Mark, chapter five. You got the woman with the issue of blood, right, bro? Okay, you know where we're going with this? You got the woman with the issue of blood. I've read that story a million times and be like, man, why did she just walk up to Jesus? And it specifically says, she touches the edge of his garment expecting to be healed? Bro, this lady had read Malachi chapter four, and she knew for 400 years they've been waiting for Messiah to come who would have, quote, he healing in his wings. And she had faith that this is the one who was promised. And so in faith to Malachi, chapter four, she walks up and touches the fringe, the knife of his garment. Boom, she's healed. Wow. And all of it is a fulfillment of the messianic prophecy from Malachi chapter four that leads up to, obviously, the very next thing that happens in the biblical narrative is the birth of Christ. So it's like you get this running. Have you ever heard that before?

[Carlos Horazo]

I've never heard that before, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I stumbled across that this week. That's absolutely amazing. I love that. Let me do a couple other things real quick. Number one, obviously this stuff is cool. It's just like a little theology nerd, deep dive stuff. Obviously, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. I'm sure both of you guys know this, that Bethlehem, it's a Hebrew conjunctive word that means house of bread, which is kind of cool, because Jesus, obviously, number one, he says man should not live on bread alone. But in every word that comes from the mouth of God, Jesus is the logos, Jesus is the word from God. But then also Jesus says he's the bread of life. So I just think, like you. So almost nowhere else in the Bible do you start getting these sovereign, like, crazy deep cuts. There's no way this could have been orchestrated by anybody but a sovereign God. You get that there? Golly, dude, there's a bunch I didn't get in.

[Paul Cunningham]

I don't want to.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I don't want to labor this Fun little fact. Joseph was probably not a carpenter.

This is very interesting. In Matthew, people get that from Matthew 13. In Matthew 13, people are, like, skeptical of Jesus and they're like, man, is not this. The. And our English Bibles often translated, is not this Joseph the carpenter's son? That's actually. It's a little translation error that goes back apparently a few hundred years. The Greek word is tecton or tecton technon or tecton. That it actually, what it should be translated is simply craftsman or builder. So what happened was, when they were originally translating it, what craftsmen primarily worked with was wood. But In Jesus Day, nine out of 10 Craftsman projects would have been stone, not wood. So Jesus. Actually, Joseph and Jesus were probably stonemasons more than they were carpenters. It's just fun little fact. A couple of things that I do want to hit that didn't make it in. Obviously, very interesting. Theologians have pointed this out for centuries. It's kind of odd that the angels appeared to the shepherds. I. I think this becomes, like, very significant here in a second. So, like, just give me a second on this, and. And then we'll. We'll start processing this. Okay. So shepherds, it's. It's a little weird. Why appear to the shepherds? Why not an emperor? Why not a chief priest? So Dion shepherds is essentially like.

They were kind of like lowest dudes on the blue collar totem pole in Israel. So, like, if you couldn't do anything else, you kind of got stuck with, like, if you dropped out of community college to smoke weed and watch porn, you became a shepherd. Like, that's. I'm serious. Like, they were just, like, rough around the edges. Like blue collar dudes. Like, not awesome dudes so much. So from what I read this week, shepherd's testimony were not admissible in court because they were like, these guys are just a bunch of liars. There's a bunch of rough around it. They'd fight you at the drop of hat. Like, think like your normal Philadelphia Eagles fan. And it's like, guess what you got on a shepherd. So then, okay, well, then why. It seems significant. Why do these angels appear to the shepherds to announce the coming. There's two things going on here. Number one.

What you have is God is acknowledging the type of people that he came for. So again, man, it's like, hey, it's not that good people are in and bad people are out. And it's not that religious people are in and irreligious people are out. It's that the humble the lowest are in. The people who can admit their need, they're in and the proud are out. So this is really fun. If we ever go to Israel sometime, we all need to go to Israel together. If we ever go to Israel together. If you go to Bethlehem, they built a Catholic church. Built Catholic church, essentially took every cool site and ruined it by sticking a chapel on top of it. That's what they did. So they did this at the likely place of Jesus birth. Like there's a little cave there and it just fits the geographic description. And the Church of the Nativity at Jesus birth, they stuck a little chapel there. Um, it's actually kind of cool. Trinity. Go ahead and toss that up.

This was a cool move when the Catholic Church built the Church of the Nativity. The entrance to the Church of Nativity is that door right there. It's like two and a half, three feet tall. And they intentionally built the door so that the only way to enter into the presence of God would be to lower yourself in order to enter.

[Paul Cunningham]

So cool.

[Carlos Horazo]

Amazing.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's it.

[Paul Cunningham]

That even hits on a common theme. You see in. In chapter two, where really Luke two is extremely politically subversive. At the very beginning of the chapter you get Caesar Augustus. And here's a few titles for Caesar that would have been used of him Savior and Lord, and that he would have brought peace on earth was called the Pax Romana. And so all of a sudden here waters two or three. Two of the three titles that Jesus has given. Savior and Lord. So they're saying, hey, Caesar isn't savior and Lord Jesus is savior and Lord Jesus is king.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's it, dude.

[Paul Cunningham]

And it says, and he is bringing peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests. And whereas Caesar would have come in and popping circumstance, the Savior and king of the world comes in in a manger and appears to the lowest of lowly. So it's this very politically subversive message. And also, I don't know if you were going to hit this, but around Bethlehem was where they would have raised many of the lambs that were slaughtered.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You're beating me too.

[Paul Cunningham]

And so even the idea of appearing to the shepherds.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

The Lamb of God.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

Who has come to be slain for the sins of the world. All of a sudden you get this image in Bethlehem that these were the lambs that were slain. Like, no, this is the lamb that will replace all those lambs once and for all.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Dude, you totally beat me too. I'm sorry. Because this Is. This is amazing. All right, so there's another thing. You know, we do Christmas in the winter, almost certainly. We know because it says the shepherds are keeping watch over their flocks in the fields at night. We know from, like, Jewish historians and things that shepherds would not sleep out in the fields with their flocks at night during the winter months. They would only do that during the summer months. So it's probably warm. Here's the other thing we know. Okay, bro, this is amazing. Here's the other thing we know is the day of atonement. So, like, the peak day where lambs need to be slain typically would fall on the calendar in September. So here's what a lot of people think are happening. Bethlehem is only a few miles from Jerusalem. It's not far at all, like, literally walking distance from. From Jerusalem. So what. What some people think is happening is the angels are coming to these shepherds. They're literally raising the lambs in their fields there maybe sometime in August, warm months. That's why they're out in the fields at night. They're literally raising the lambs that are going to be slain at the day of atonement. And the angels are essentially coming to say, you're not going to be needing those anymore because the lamb is coming. He's going to be the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So, dude, there's. There's a lot going on here, man.

[Carlos Horazo]

I love it, too. Because back to what you were saying, Josh, even the. The fact that God wanted to find these shepherds that were the lowest of the low. The lowest. And, you know, again, just this idea that, that God chooses those whom the world considers unworthy, not just to bring blessings to them, but also to empower them, to bring blessing to people around them. Because if you keep reading, it's interesting, these shepherds become the first evangelists of this gospel. Even before the disciples, before the women at the tomb, before Paul. These shepherds, the Bible says in verse 16, they hurried off and spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds had said to them. And so it's like, like, you know, he. God not only revealed himself to them, but he also empowered them to be the evangelists of this gospel. And so again, this, I think it goes back to. This is what God does for us. He chooses the. Those that are considered unworthy by other people. Maybe you're thinking, man, I'm not as impressive as, you know, Paul or Josh or this other person that God seems to be using mightily. Well, God. That's why God chooses you, because he wants to demonstrate his power through you.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

He's amazing. Yeah.

[Paul Cunningham]

It's interesting because in a sense, yeah, they're the first ones. And then when you mentioned that shepherds, their testimony wasn't allowed in court. You know who else's wasn't? Women. Who. They were the first witnesses of the resurrection. And so it's just a common theme throughout. Yeah, that's good.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Can I do a couple other deep cuts? Yeah, right. This is. I love this stuff so much. This kind of stuff. I was like, wow, I wish I had time to get in the sermon. So number one, it's like, let me just. Let me get a running start and go back to the. The sacrifice to end all sacrifices. All right, so again, you got. You have a couple hints. He appears. The shepherds. The shepherds are. It's possible they're raising the lambs. They're gonna be slain of the day of atonement. Okay, that's interesting. Number two, whenever it says. This passage says in Luke 2, that they. Verse. It says verse seven. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling claws. And it says, and laid him in a manger. Okay, now this. I took this picture. Go ahead and toss that manger up. I took this picture. If you go to Israel, these mangers, that's a manger. And they would typically be in, like, horse stalls or animal stalls. So think about this. You already have. They're appearing to shepherds who are raising lambs to be slain. Then when Jesus is born, they announce his birth to those shepherds. They put Jesus in the same thing that a newborn spotless lamb would be put in upon its birth. Bro, this is like inception level stuff. Okay, so then. Okay, let's go a layer deeper. So this is how when theologians talk about this, there's a scarlet thread that runs this way from Genesis to free in Revelation. And it's all the slain lamb. Okay, so here's. It culminates in this story. Okay, so like, just give me 30 seconds here. Okay, so you get Genesis 1 and 2. Adam and Eve sin. That is the first appearance of fear. I mentioned this in the sermon. That's the first appearance of fear in the entire Bible. So then God goes and finds them. Theologians call it the proto Evangelion, the first telling of the gospel. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sin. God puts on his Sitka gear and he goes and it says, he kills an innocent animal. And then he think about it, he covers them in their sin with the skins. He covers them with the slain animal, maybe a spotless lamb. Alright, then you fast forward, bro. And then you get to the Abrahamic covenant. Genesis 15. God establishes the Abrahamic covenant. By the way, both of the genealogies of Jesus in Luke and Matthew are extremely explicit. They have to trace the lineage of Jesus back to Abraham. Interesting. Why? Okay, so then Abraham, he's taken Isaac up on the mountain, right? We know the story. And Isaac's like, jesus, where's the sacrifice? Or no, he's Abraham, where's the sacrifice? And essentially it's like, well, Isaac, you're the sacrifice. And he gets up there and think about it, think about it. Abraham's son, his only son that he loves, he's about to sacrifice. And then at just the right time, they look over and God provides another innocent animal. Ram caught in a thicket. They sacrifice the ram and the son goes free. Okay, that's very interesting. Now you skip forward and obviously you get to the Passover. Passover in ancient Egypt, angel of death is coming by anywhere they. Anywhere the angel of death saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and the lintels of the homes. We talked about this in sermons before when they would have taken the hyssop, dipped it in the blood of the lamb and put it on the sides and the top of the doors. A lot of Bible scholars say you would literally have been walking through Egypt and would have seen bloody crosses on the front of all these doors. And anywhere the angel of death saw the blood of a slain lamb and a cross, it decided to pass over and not visit the sins of the house on the house. Okay, now skip forward. You get. We're building to Luke chapter two, bro.

[Carlos Horazo]

Wow.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, then skip forward. Then after this, they go out in the wilderness and God gives the law. At the giving of the law, God begins to outline what's called the Day of Atonement. And dude, I could spend 30 minutes, we could talk about the day of Atonement and just deep dive on it. The Day of Atonement was the one day every year, if you get in the temple, if we go back and look at the temple, there was like a room inside of a room inside of a room that was the holy of holies, where the presence of God was. All this is going to make sense here in a second. Just stick with me, bro. This is important. And what separated the presence of God from the people of God was a curtain. And that curtain, a woven Curtain would have been about the. Literally the thickness of your hand. Ain't nobody going to tear that curtain like a woven curtain, the thickness of your hand. One day a year, and only one day a year, only one dude, the high priest, chief high priest. You have to go through all these cleansing rituals. He'd have to slay again, check it out. A spotless, innocent lamb. And he would have to purify both himself and all the instruments of the temple with the blood of the spotless, innocent lamb. And as long as he was covered with the blood of the spotless, innocent lamb, that one day, year, they would literally tie this true story, man. They would literally tie a rope to the dude's ankle, and he could one day a year walk into the presence of God, into the room inside of a room inside of a room, behind the curtain and the people and intercede for the people of God in the presence of God. The reason they tied the rope to his ankle was if he had any unconfessed sin, if there was any impurity on him, then he would die. And they needed a way to pull his body out of there. Okay, so that's Day of Atonement. Then you get to stinking Luke, chapter two. And we've had thousands of years of slain lamb. Slain lamb, slain lamb. And then who do the angels appear to? Shepherds raising the lambs to be slain on the day of atonement. What do they put Jesus in? A manger that a spotless lamb, when it was first born, would have been put in. And then, dude, John the Baptist sees Jesus. You remember this? John the Baptist sees Jesus in just a few chapters. My goodness. There's a reason we get emotional as a Christian when you talk about this. It's Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Did not our hearts burn within us? John the Baptist sees Jesus for the first time. You remember what he says. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. All right, now skip ahead again, bro. Then you get to the Last Supper. And at the Last Supper, it's really interesting. Everything that would have been normally at a Passover meal is mentioned in the Bible. The bread, the cup, the spices. There's one thing that's not mentioned, the lamb. They should have been eating the lamb. It's never mentioned in any of the Gospels. And the implication is the lamb is not on the table because the lamb is sitting at the table. So then bro keeps going, bro. So then you get to the cross, and if you go, the Bible tells us exactly the hour at which Jesus was crucified. The hour at which Jesus was crucified is exactly the hour at which the Lamb was commanded to be slain for the Passover meal. It is the exact same hour that the Lamb of God is slain on the cross. Exact same hour that the Lamb should have been slain for the day of atonement. So then Jesus is on the cross. And I just want to point this out, bro. Jesus never cries out in pain. Ever. He does not. He is not recorded as crying out in pain when they beat him. He is not recorded as crying out in pain when they flog him with a cat of nine tails and literally strip the flesh off his back. He is not recorded as crying out in pain whenever the exposed nerve endings of his back have a roughshod, splinter filled cross rubbing up and down. There is one time, and one time only that Jesus ever is recorded as crying out. Jesus was a dude, like he could. Jesus could handle some pain. But there's one time where Jesus is recorded as crying out. The Bible says that darkness began to fall. And when that darkness fell, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Only time Jesus ever cries out, why did Jesus never cry out in pain? But in that moment when the sky goes dark, Jesus cries out, here's why. Because as the sky's dark for three hours, what's happening is God the Father was turning his back on the Son so that he could turn his face toward you.

And Jesus had lived his entire life in such face to face intimacy with the Father, that for that one second to have that intimacy with the Father taken from him, that was his breaking point. And that's when he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Now let's go one layer deeper. The Bible says at that specific moment, the curtain that separated the presence of God from the people of God, the curtain at the front of the holy of holies. Remember, bro, this thing's a woven curtain as thick as your hand. Ain't nobody's going to tear that thing. The Bible says at that moment, the curtain was torn. And it says from top to bottom, not bottom to top, top to bottom, tall curtain. The implication is God tore the veil. God tore it.

[Paul Cunningham]

Why?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Because when Jesus was separated from God, everything that separated us from God was removed. He was separated from the Father so that we could be united to the Father. Which brings us all the way back to Luke, chapter two. Behold the Lamb of God born to take away the sins of the world. Come on, man.

[Paul Cunningham]

So good.

We can keep going. Wow. Because, like, in Revelation, it says, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. So in other words, cross was always plan A. It was always plan A. It was always a plan A. And then even, like, as you're talking through, you know, the. The tenth plague, another connection. Ninth plague, you remember what it was?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Oh, dude.

[Paul Cunningham]

Was that the darkness covers the land.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yes.

[Paul Cunningham]

10Th plague, death of the firstborn.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Whoa.

[Paul Cunningham]

On the cross, it's a. It's a darkness covers the land and then death of the Son of God.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I've never heard that before.

[Paul Cunningham]

And to think about it, that's even your connection to gospel, which was so beautiful. Pastor Josh was in those plagues. God in the Old Testament was taking out his wrath on his enemies. Is on the enemies of God. But on the cross, Jesus becomes an enemy on behalf of the enemies of God, so that we might become sons and daughters of God and friends of God.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's the gospel, bro. In the words of my daughter Clockett.

That'S so good, man.

[Carlos Horazo]

The Bible is just like. There's just so much more. Like, it's rich, rich, rich, with, like, parallels and connections. It's one book.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's why we started this stinking podcast. Because all this stuff like that, that I'm like, I never have time to get that into certain. Can I do one more deep cut? Go ahead, let me do one more. And then we're going on. There's more layers of the Christmas story than like, anything else in the whole Bible. Now, first of all, if this makes it into Christmas Eve service sermons, I get them all again, I'm allowed to say this twice, but just in case it doesn't, I want to get it in. So do you. So the other people that. Should I do this? All right, I'm going to do it real quick. The other. The other people that mentioned that visit Jesus, in addition to the, you know, the shepherds, they do their thing, are the. The Magi. Do you know the thing about the Magi?

[Paul Cunningham]

I'm not sure where you're coming.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, this is amazing. All right, here's another. Like, I can't. I can't believe the Bible's that cool. So for people have always wondered, like, it just. There's these weird Magi, mysterious Magi, which is just a short for magician. They just show up, like, who are these magic? Who are these magic? Says Magi from the East. That's all we know about them. Magi from the. So People are like, where in the world are these stinking magi come from? Who are these guys? All right, all right, bro, rewind. I think it's 600 years. Rewind. 600 years to the book of Daniel in the Bible. So Babylon conquers Israel. This is like the best Christmas deep cut ever. Babylon conquers Israel. When Babylon conquers Israel, they plunder all the gold from the temple and they take them into Nebuchadnezzar's thing and they get, they got all the gold from the temple and they make all this stuff out of it. Right, so then the Bible tells us Daniel gets set up over the magi in Babylon.

[Carlos Horazo]

Astrologers.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, but it specifically uses the word magi. He gets set over the magicians and astrologers. But specifically, some translations of the Bible literally use the wor gets. He's the chief magi in ancient Babylon 600 years before. Okay, so Daniel gets set up as the primary Bible teacher in. In Babylon. The back half of Daniel are all these prophecies about a coming messiah someday. This is amazing. All right, so all we know is Daniel spends the rest of his life teaching these magi in Babylon about a coming messiah. And here, here's what isa. You can just imagine this. He's in his classroom. Here's what the Bible says, that someday he's going in Bethlehem and the Bible says that, and he's teaching about all these prophecies. All right, all right, so then he dies and the book of Daniel's over. So then you fast forward to Matthew chapter two. And these Magi come from the east. All right, well, the ancient Babylonian empire, modern day Iraq, which just so happens to be due east of Nazareth where they come to visit Jesus. These dudes, these magi, here's who I think they are. I think they are the direct descendants of these magi from Babylon that Daniel taught the Bible to. These dudes, great, great, great, great, great great great grandfather, bent their knee to the lordship of Jesus. They believed the prophecies from the Bible and they handed it down to their children and their children's children and their children's children's children for 600 years. So that when Jesus is born and they start hearing these little rumblings about a king that's born in Bethlehem, they're like, man, my papa told me someday this was going to happen. And they were Bible believing men. And so they travel all these miles because they believe these prophecies and they show up and remember, it says they bring three gifts. Frankincense, myrrh, and gold. And, dude, there is a little part of me that wonders if these guys kept the gold that the Babylonian empire plundered from the temple. And they knew that the boy that was going to be born as Lord was actually God. And they essentially come back to say, we. We came to bring your gold back. Wow. And these dudes are the direct descendants of those dudes. I think. I think that's a possibility.

[Carlos Horazo]

Daniel would have taught them numbers 2417 that says, a star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. And they would have been able to recognize that star and be like, I think that's the star. We need to go this way. And then they saw their king, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

It's amazing. We can keep going.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah. And because the Lamb was slain, Pastor Josh, that means that we don't have to fear.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Fear not.

[Carlos Horazo]

That means that we fear not for.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Our bringing good news of great joy. That was the sermon this week.

[Carlos Horazo]

Let's go, man.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Fear not, man. The elimination of our fear.

[Carlos Horazo]

And so here's my question, because I want to make it practical, because this is amazing and I love this. We could keep going with this. But when the Bible says fear not, it doesn't say it as a suggestion. It says it as a command. It's over and over, over, like, all throughout, hundreds of times. Some people say it's 365 times fear not.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I read 366 this week. So you can throw in leap year.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, you can, I guess. Yeah. Depending on the translation, I'm assuming and what language you read it in. Paul's like, yeah, that's right. Paul's like, that's right. You better make that caveat. Fear not is not a suggestion. It is a command. God is telling us, hey, don't fear. How do you do this? If somebody's listening to be like, wow, that sounds just not realistic. How do you do this? In fact, one of my favorite quotes, G.K. chesterton said Jesus promised his disciples three things, that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. So somebody might be asking, in the midst of my trouble, how can I not be fearing? How do you do it as a Christian?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Well, first of all, go listen to sermon. Because that was like. That was. I will say, man, if you're going to boil it down to one thing. So there's a reason that the word of God was written down for us and that we can wake up in the morning and I, you know, this morning, my bible reading was Second Corinthians 1, 4. And there's a reason God gave that to us. Here's what I would say. Man is. First of all, we are commanded. I want to just reemphasize this. We are commanded to be fearless people. A Christian is somebody who should have only one controlling fear, the fear of God. And we talked about this during the sermon, man, a lot of people, they are gripped by fear of man because they do not have a fear of God. And when you live in a fear of God, it eliminates fear of man. What I would say, man, is. And I'd love to know what you. Your thoughts on this, Paul. What I would say is you can't control what you feel, but you can control what you think about, which is why the Bible is constantly like, hey, man, it gives us a command. Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. So here's the. Here's the example I would use. I had a mentor one time who said, man, Josh, whenever God gives you a promise and he, like, personalizes something in your life, he said, make it the wallpaper of your life. Memorize it, meditate on it. Think about it over and over again. I won't. I won't do it again. I've talked about on this podcast how when I had the little season of the anxiety attacks, I literally just like, listed promises and memorized them, made it the wallpaper of my life. So here's what I would say to a Christian that is like, you know, we get. They're full of anxiety or fear.

Is. Here's. Here's the analogy I'd use. So it's like last week on X Elon and those guys. Did you guys see where they. They made the country of origin visible on all the X accounts.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's right.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay. So, bro, this is really. I actually screenshotted, like, dozens of these. This is really interesting. There were all these, like, huge. I'm going somewhere with this. These huge accounts, like, with hundreds of thousands of followers who have been, like, tweeting things to stir up fear and division in America. Like, fear and division. Fear and division. Fear and division. Fear and division. And these accounts are, like, posing as American citizens or prominent leaders, and then they, like, they made the country of origin visible. And it was like 90% of them were like, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India. Like, tons of them were from India.

I didn't see any El Salvador.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's right.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Hey, man, same team. Same team.

[Carlos Horazo]

There you go.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Same thing. So, dude, so here's the example is there's all these accounts that Were putting thoughts out into the world that you thought were on our team, but they were actually working for the enemy. And they were stoking fear and division, fear and division, fear and division. When the Bible commands Christians to, quote, take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ, what it's saying is every thought that we have, man, you need to pause.

Put that thought in like a cross examination chair and ask the question, who sent you and what kingdom are you coming from? You need to evaluate who sent this thought. Because there's a lot of thoughts that you have that you might think are from you or you might even think are from God, but actually their nation of origin is from the kingdom of darkness. Satan is an accuser and he's the father of lies. And so man, when you're thinking things like, man, God hates me or I'll never be happy again, or you know, I've messed up and there's, there's no, there's no hope or there's my, my family will never be reconciled, what that stuff will do is it'll stir up fear in your heart. And what you got to do is like, you got to, okay, let me, let me sit that thought down for a second and ask the question, what's your country of origin? Do you come from heaven? Is that Jesus Christ? You know, it's good. And when you do that again, it's like you, you can't control how you feel, but you control what you think about and make sure that the thoughts you're thinking are from the Father.

[Paul Cunningham]

That's right.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's good.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Additional. Agree, Disagree. Additional comments I agreed.

[Carlos Horazo]

I heard this from Pastor Mark Driscoll. He, he, this is helpful to me because once you start thinking about if you are feeling fear, the way you override that fear is through your faith. And so this is, this is what I found helpful. He said, fear looks out, faith looks up. And so if you're looking out torture problems, you're going to get fear. But, but faith looks, does not look out, it looks up. Fear listens to the world. Faith listens to the Word. The more your attention and your focus goes to the world. Bad news, whatever's going on out there, the more fear you'll have, the more attention and focus goes into the word of God, the more faith you have. Fear causes people to stop living. It paralyzes you. A lot of people, especially in this generation as well, they're paralyzed because of fear. Faith causes people to start living. Faith is active obedience is what does the word of God say, let me put it in practice right now. This is why we do the podcast. We live free. We don't just talk free. We want you to apply whatever we are having, whatever conversation we're having. And then fear keeps changing your mind. Faith settles your mind. Even when things are not well. You can say, man, God is with me, and I have faith that he is. And he said, don't fear. I can trust him. It is well, amen.

[Paul Cunningham]

I think it was Watchman Ni, a Christian from, I believe, the 1900s from China. He talked first about the idea, if you've got facts, faith and feelings, the proper order is. What I just said is, what are the facts? I'm going to place my faith, my mind on the facts, and then after that, the feelings will catch up. Now, that doesn't mean they're always going to be there. Sometimes you're still going to feel afraid, but when you do, you don't look back at your feelings. You look forward with your faith to the facts that are still true, regardless of my feelings. But what so many Christians do is they change the order. They put feelings first. They put their faith in their feelings and then say, that must be the facts.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

They say, oh, however I'm feeling, that must be true.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

And so now I'm going to feel afraid. Whereas, hey, you actually might still feel a feeling of fear. It's a feeling when you feel it. You have to remind yourself of what is true, that God said, I will never leave you or forsake you, that greater he is he who is in you than he who is in the world. You've got to choose, though, to your point, to set your mind on those facts even if you're not feeling like they're true. It doesn't matter what you're feeling. Put your faith in the facts, not in your feelings.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

Amen.

[Carlos Horazo]

Or God did not give you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self discipline.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Amen.

[Carlos Horazo]

Amen. Well, hey, guys, one of the reasons we are intentional in creating these kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the live free podcast is we want to model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group group where we come together and open up the word of God together and grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. For this reason, we love that you're tuning in, but honestly, we don't just want you to be a passive listener we want you to be an active participant. And so if you have not yet joined a group, you need to get into Rooted. Rooted is a 10 week discipleship experience that helps you grow closer to God, build meaningful relationships and discover the purpose he has for your life. Rooted guides you to practice the seven rhythms of following Jesus to transform your faith from something you know into something you actually live out every single day. And so whether you're exploring what it means to follow Jesus and you're ready to grow deeper in your faith, or maybe you're searching for people to do life for it, Rooted is for you. Just text the word rooted to 20411 and our teams will follow up personally. Do not wait. Your next step starts now. Hey, I wanna, I wanna switch gears a little bit.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And we doing, we talking Santa, we talking Book of Enoch. Where are we going next, man? We got a lot.

[Carlos Horazo]

A couple episodes ago we talked about UFOs.

And so I want to make sure that we follow up. We had some, a decent amount of comments, bro.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Can we show those this?

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, we got, we got some comments of people asking about one particular topic that I want to bring up. So this is somebody saying the Book of Enoch makes it clear that demons are actually the disembodied Nephilim. And they keep going about fallen angels. There's another one over there, Trinity. Oh, I'm so glad for somebody to confirm this about angels. I came to this conclusion after reading the Book of Enoch.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Book of Enoch, Book of Enoch.

[Carlos Horazo]

And then there's another one here. I'm really curious if you guys have dived into the Book of Enoch and what your thoughts are in it. So I want to, you know. And I got some emails.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

One more. Enoch describes demons as the spirits of the giants. Part angels, part humans. Because of that, they cannot leave the earth. They hated us and they were alive and they hate us now. By the way, we need, we need to do an episode on the Nephilim.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's right. That's coming soon.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

We'll get there.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, but I want to ask, I want to bring this conversation because people are, you know, some of you are like, the Book of Enoch. I don't remember reading that one.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Did Joe Rogan mention it?

[Carlos Horazo]

That's right, he did. And we actually have a clip. I want to show it.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You got that clip?

[Carlos Horazo]

We Trinity, you guys.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Well, let me say this. So, yeah, here's why we're going to talk about this. And I'm going to leave this to the chat. G. Paul T. The psycho people are on a huge Book of Enoch kick lately.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yes, they are.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So you got all these comments, but then this week you even had Rogan going viral talking Book of Enoch. You want to show it?

[Carlos Horazo]

Yep. Trinity, let's go.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Rep. Luna, she came on my podcast too, and she, she was telling me some stuff that was just like, mind blowing.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And she really got me to read.

[Paul Cunningham]

The Book of Enoch.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

She's like, you gotta read that. So you have the Ethiopian Orthodox text, which has I think, 88 books of the Bible in total. But in the Ethiopian Orthodox text, it's basically kind of like a mainline OG version of the Bible. And then sometime in the 4th century, there was actually a group that came together and they removed certain books. And.

The story goes that Revelations actually had replaced placed Enoch. And so it's interesting because when you're looking kind of full circle on, you know, you hear the stuff that some of these people are talking about, and then you see, and you read the Book of Enoch, which is a wild read. Okay. And then you look at kind of what our modern day description is of what angels and entities are versus what Enoch was seeing and reporting in his language and ability at that time. I just, I think that there's a lot that brings you to. Then ask the question, well, why would they remove this information? If it's truly, you know, written in.

[Carlos Horazo]

Part, why would they.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

This Bible in the world, why would they then take it out?

[Paul Cunningham]

Easily been attached to the religious canon.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You tell me.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Some rabbis disagreed with it because it didn't vibe with the Torah.

[Paul Cunningham]

So, like, let's chuck that one out. But it's in the same lump of Dead Sea Scrolls. They have the Book of Isaiah, which.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Is, which is really fascinating because Wes.

[Carlos Horazo]

Huff, when he was on my podcast.

[Paul Cunningham]

Explained to me that the Book of.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Isaiah that they found in the Dead.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Sea Scrolls is verbatim the same as the Book of Isaiah that was a.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

A thousand years more recent.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's good.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, Paul Cunningham. Paul is our resident Book of Enoch.

[Carlos Horazo]

By the way, you know the episode, the episode's gonna be good when you.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Got like four books.

[Paul Cunningham]

I've got a Hebrew Bible, a Greek New Testament, a Catholic Bible, and left.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Behind all the essentials. All right, so, Paul Cunningham, I have two questions.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yes.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Number one, why when we talked about aliens, did everyone start mentioning the Book of Enoch? And then number two, what's up with the Book of Enoch? Is this something they just cut out of the Bible because to protect the aliens.

[Carlos Horazo]

And then number three, what the heck is the Book of Enoch.

[Paul Cunningham]

So many things there in terms of aliens. Rogan goes on in that clip to talk, almost connect the idea of what's called the watchers, which is a term used in the Book of Enoch for angels or the spiritual Watchers is used.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

One time in the.

[Paul Cunningham]

It's actually used two or three times in Daniel. Okay, so it's a book, it's a reference that is. Is also used in Daniel for angels or spiritual beings that we often call angels. And so he goes on and basically says, oh, maybe this was aliens coming and basically creating mankind or something like that. Probably the reason that most people, when we did that episode reference it is because we talked a lot about angels and about demons. And the Book of Enoch was a writing that was really compiled between the 3rd century and 1st century BC over a period of time. And a lot of its emphasis is on angels and demons and their origins, that there were multiple schools of thought about angels in ancient Judaism. There was not one school of thought. There's multiple schools of thought. And basically this was this schools of thought of way of saying, hey, this is what actually happened. This was some of their origins. And they ascribed it to Enoch, who was the great grandfather of Noah. And there's actually this.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Sorry, I just want to go.

[Paul Cunningham]

Go ahead.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So they, they were claiming the book was written by Enoch, the grandfather of Moses.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yes.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Even though it was written in the first through the third century B.C.

[Paul Cunningham]

That'S exactly right. So this is called pseudepigraphal writings, which literally means false writing. And so think of it today, when we want to plagiarize today, we'll put our name on someone else's writing so that it can have more credibility and authority and validity. In this day. They would put someone else's name who had credibility and authority on their writing and say that this was actually from Enoch who was alive a long time ago and this is his testimony. And so therefore we should hold it to be true, but it's actually not. That's why there's a little bit of a stretch. But I actually brought Left behind, so. Yeah, you did. I did. I brought. I'd be honest, half price books. Thank you for having this. I do not own this book.

[Carlos Horazo]

Looks like you've been highlighting and this.

[Paul Cunningham]

Is like your real copy.

Yeah. And so here's the thing with this is what Left behind is for those who don't know, is written about 30 years ago by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. And they're talking about what could happen in the future. But it's A fiction book. It's like fan fiction of what could happen in the future if Revelation happened today kind of a thing. But I want us to imagine for a second if it was written now or even like a thousand years in the future. Instead of having their names on it, all of a sudden it had like, like the apostle John or James or things like that and saying, oh no, see, this is legit. This really did happen. And so whereas that would be more about what could happen in the future, people are falsely ascribing Enoch to themselves to say here's what we believe happened in the past and authoritatively try to saying, this is what happened in the past. But it's only one school of thought. Now, a few things here. One is honestly when I watched that video and that I forget what her name was when she began speaking. I literally, while we're nerding out, I'm going to just kind of go to Star wars wars right now. Because there's this line in Star wars from Luke Skywalker where after Kylo Ren kind of goes off, Luke looks at him and says, amazing, every word that you just said was wrong.

And so when I watched, I was.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Like, I feel like Paul looks at me like that sometimes.

[Paul Cunningham]

I was like, where do I even. Where do I even begin? And so with this, a lot of people nowadays think, oh, the Book of Enoch is this ancient book and it actually tells us the truth and it was once in the Bible and it's banned from the Bible and that's simply not true. So I've got some different Bibles with me up here. I've got a Hebrew English Bible. The Book of Enoch has never been in the Hebrew Bible ever, ever. It was never in there, never taken out, because it's never in there to begin with.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So but she said, oh, hey, it was. And some rabbis just kicked it out because it enjoyable doctrine.

[Paul Cunningham]

I'm going to get how that happened and why that. Because it's also attributed to the C. Weird false belief. Although I think I know how it developed. But I'll get to that in just a second. So I've got a Greek New Testament, let's say we combined in a Greek Old Testament, often called the Septuagint with this. Here's the thing, you'll not find the Book of Enoch in here ever. It was never in the Septuagint, which means that not only Hebraic Jews, but also Hellenistic Greek Jews never believed it was a part of the Bible ever. I've got a Catholic Bible with me now. If you open a Catholic Bible, it actually does have more books than the Bible that Protestants use called the Apocrypha. What's interesting is the book, by the.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Way, we hit that on a previous podcast. You should go listen to it. We should stick that in the show notes. Yeah, if you want to go. If you want to go back and listen, why are there some books in the Catholic Bible that are not in a Protestant Bible? Link in the show notes. That's important. All right, sorry, go ahead. You're good.

[Paul Cunningham]

So in the Catholic Bible, you've got books that are often referred to as the Apocrypha. So for example, I've got second Maccabees open. But if you look through it, you will not find the Book of Enoch. And it was never there. So literally in every canon list in every Bible that we have, except for one, it was never in and so therefore was never taken away. So even I laugh sometimes when we use the idea of, oh, it was banned from the Bible. It was there. It was like. Well, if by banned you mean like, and this is true. Alexander Hamilton wanted the president to actually serve a lifetime, save for a lifetime. You know, like they banned him from the Constitution. I'm like, well, if you mean by that that he was in there and then they decided they didn't like it and took it out later. No, but if mean that they considered his opinion and didn't consider it valid, then, yeah, in a sense that they decided not to include him. Now, there was one text that was used that used the book of Enoch and that had it in their canon. That is the Ethiopian Orthodox text.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's what she. That's what she mentioned.

[Paul Cunningham]

And here is a common myth. It's like, oh, that's the oldest Bible. And so therefore that's like the og the original. And then all the others conspired and took it out. The problem is it's simply like not true at all.

[Carlos Horazo]

Amazing. Everything you just said is.

[Paul Cunningham]

Everything you just said is.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I award you no points.

[Paul Cunningham]

We are all now dumber for having scratching you.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You always need a Billy Madison.

Reference.

[Paul Cunningham]

Don't go and necessarily 100.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

He saw Billy Madison before Tombstone.

[Carlos Horazo]

I have no idea why, but I know Billy Madison and he probably liked.

[Paul Cunningham]

It more than Tombstone.

[Carlos Horazo]

No, that's not true.

[Paul Cunningham]

Anyways, Anyways. Okay, that's simply not. Here's how I believe this came about. As you do something. You do have something called the Garima Gospels. I think we actually have a picture of those up here. This is an Ethiopian text that was written about 500 A.D. it is the first illuminated Gospels that we have. And when I say illuminated, the picture, if you're listening to this instead of watching it, it has a drawing or a painting in there. So it is the first illuminated text that we have. But it is not the first gospel that we have. Full gospel. It is definitely not the first Bible that we have. In fact, the first.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

You said 500 A.D. that's 500 A.D. so it's like way I was about.

[Paul Cunningham]

To say, so we have something, I think we have another picture of Codex Vaticanus, but it's from the early 3002, which contains almost the entire Old Testament and New Testament in Greek. And it definitely has all the complete texts of the four Gospels. So almost 200 years before the green Gospels, we have this text and we have the complete, complete Gospels. The first complete Ethiopian Bible we have, by the way, dates between the 14th and 15th centuries.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Holy Moses.

[Paul Cunningham]

So over a thousand years after this. And by the way, in the early 400s, we had the Latin Vulgate, which has the complete Bible as we know it. Again, that's almost a thousand years before that as well. So I think what happened was, is people somehow took this idea that it was the first illuminated Gospels and then they started just saying, oh, this is the oldest thing we have, when that's simply not the case. Not the case. No one used it. And so real quick, can I just explain why no one dove in used it. And so, and then I'll get to a common objection, I think that maybe even someone put in there in a comment of a. Wait a second. One of the books of the New Testament refers to the book.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah, I got some questions for you.

[Paul Cunningham]

But you know, and it does.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Jude.

[Paul Cunningham]

That's Jude. That's Jude.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Jude quotes it when it's doing the Janus and johnbris thing.

[Paul Cunningham]

Well, and it specifically talks about Enoch the seventh from Adam, of how he prophesied and he talks about that kind of stuff.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I'm sorry, you go ahead.

[Paul Cunningham]

Oh, no, no, you're good, you're good. Why would none of these people, including in. Let's just say this again, no Hebrew Jew, no Hellenistic Jew, and no other Christian except for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Why did none of them include it? Two big reasons. Number one, as we earlier said, it's a pseudo pseudepographical work, it's a falsely attributed work. And so big for both the Old Testament and New Testament is they wanted these writings to be as close to the events as possible and written by authorized prophets. In the Old Testament, say, or sages or kings, people like David, David, Moses, all the prophets of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, it had to be as close as to the apostles, specifically written by an apostle or one associated with an apostle. And in the same way, I'll just put this in the same way that we would not take left behind and put it on par with the book of Revelation. By the way, that, that whole thing that she said, probably not the, the Ethiopian text has the Book of Revelation. So I literally have no idea what she's even talking about.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, because she says, she said in the clip they replaced it.

[Paul Cunningham]

And if you go to. Because there' actually 81 books in the Ethiopia, not 88. If you go there, they're both there. So again, I just like, when she kept going, I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Anyways, I'm sorry, I'm getting kind of fired up and taken away here. So in the same way that we would in no way read this thousands of years from the time of the apostles and say, well, hey, if it had a name of an apostle on there, then it must be true. When in fact we know it's too far removed from the original. It's the same thing. It was too far removed. They didn't hold it as authoritative. The second thing is that because some of the things, things in the Book of Enoch actually contradict what we have in authoritative scripture. One thing, for example, is that in scripture what we see is that the angels fell before, before the world was created. Whereas what's happening in one place in the Book of Enoch is you have in Genesis 6, it says, when man began to multiply on the face of the earth and the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took them as their wives that they chose.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So that's the Nephilim.

[Paul Cunningham]

That's the Nephilim. Some Jews which, including the people who wrote the Book of Enoch would say, hey, these were fallen angels who slept with with women, then had basically giants that we call the Nephilim that then it. This is whence more angels fell. So basically it's like, well, hey, we see inscription and they fell before the creation. The Book of Enoch is saying, no others fell after creation. It doesn't jive. So that's just a few reasons. A few reasons why now some may point out, like, wait a second, the book of Jude refers to it. So if it refers to it, then surely then it's inspired and it's also the word of God. You want to look that up real fast.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I do. I want to see the exact verse.

[Carlos Horazo]

It doesn't quote it to. To clarify that it doesn't.

[Paul Cunningham]

It quotes it.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I think it direct.

[Carlos Horazo]

Okay. It quotes. Doesn't have to refer it. It actually like quotes. It cites it.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, it quotes it pretty directly. Here's how I like to tell you about this. We have to make a big distinction between what is inspired and what is true. True. If something is the inspired of word of God, it is necessarily true because it was inspired by God. If something is true, that does not necessarily mean that it was inspired. So anything that is inspired is true.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's good, Paul.

[Paul Cunningham]

But something that is true is not necessarily inspired or mean that the thing that it came from is completely inspired. So let's actually leave the Book of Enoch and give my favorite example from the New Testament of this, because they would often quote other works of people. And my favorite one is from a guy named. Can I talk today?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Epimenides.

[Paul Cunningham]

Epimenides.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Acts 17. Is that where you're going?

[Paul Cunningham]

Acts 17. But actually I was going to go to Titus where Paul calls him a prophet and he says that he tells this, basically this thing of all Cretans are liars. Titus is on the island of Crete. And so Paul's like, this is true. The issue with that is that that is in the context of the same poem it actually quotes in Acts 17. That is a hymn in praise of Zeus.

So my question, does this mean that Paul actually believes Zeus exists and that we should worship him alongside Jesus and stuff like that? No, of course not. What he's doing there is he's taking a work that they are familiar with and that they would understand and saying, hey, in this specific thing, this is true. And he's trying to connect with them. I believe it's the same thing in the Book of Jude where Jude is taking something that early Jews would have been aware of and saying that, hey, this specific thing is true and is representative of the truth without the entire Book of Enoch having to be true as well.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So here's the verse. It's Jude. It's only one chapter in Jude. Jude 1415 is a quotation of 1st Enoch 1:9. So it says it was also about these, that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying, behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of their deeds of ungodliness, that they have committed in such an ungodly way. And of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him. And that's apparently a quote of First Enoch. Like I said, 1, 9. But you're saying just because the Bible references this work doesn't mean the Bible.

[Paul Cunningham]

Is affirming the entire work or that the entire work is inspired. Again, in the same way that Paul is in no way saying that Epimenides is an inspired author and that everything he says is true. He's just simply taking a truth in there and using it for his context and for his purpose.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So what's. I'm curious. Yeah. Because we didn't talk about this. So it's like, what's the warning that you. So for people who were in the comments, this is good. And they were like, hey, man, it seems like when y' all are talking about angels and demons, you know, manifesting as things that people are confusing for, you know, alien activity. And people are, you know.

Using the Book of Enoch as like a legitimization for that kind of thing, like legitimate for them to do that. What's a warning you would give before you go there?

[Carlos Horazo]

Because what they're saying is basically like, here's my Bible and here's the Book of Enoch. It's basically like the same authority. That's what a lot of people were saying, actually.

[Paul Cunningham]

And even, like with this, I think it's important even as an ex. Because some people are like, well, wait a second. Even some early Jews did have it, because even, like Joe Rogan said in that one clip, and I forgot to address this earlier, and this, this will lead into a response. This will say, well, go wait a second. That early Qumran community had, like, Isaiah, and they also had the Book of Enoch, which was true, but they didn't hold them on par with each other.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah. And to clarify, Paul, because you're using terms here for people that don't know. So Joe Rogan said that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the earliest manuscripts found of the Bible, that in addition to the books of the Bible that we are familiar with, like the Book of Isaiah, they also found the Book of Enoch. So he's saying, well, it was kind of all together. So why is the Bible. The Bible, but then this one's not exactly.

[Paul Cunningham]

And so the. This was an early Jewish community, like kind of like a sect that lived out in the middle of nowhere. It was a community. And they would collect these scrolls and yeah, they wore together. But here's the key distinction. They did not hold them equally. And so we know that both by how they refer to the different things and how they talk about them. But also there's something called pesher style commentary, which is where they would take actual books that we know as of the Old Testament and they would make comments on them to try to explain, hey, this is how this is being fulfilled in our day. Guess what does not have that? The Book of Enoch.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Oh, interesting. So you can, you can even tell. Was that the Essenes.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, those Essene community. And so like with that, they have it all over the Torah. Because the Torah was accepted as the authoritative.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Because they were essentially writing commentary.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yes, exactly.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Almost like a study Bible.

[Paul Cunningham]

Exactly.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

They would take the verse and then. And then you're saying they did not do that from Book of Enoch. And that very clearly indicates these dudes did not consider that.

[Paul Cunningham]

And so actually using like this table as an example right here is like, imagine like I die in a thousand or two thousand years from now. They find my library, and in that library they find all my Bibles and then they find. Left behind. By the way, you will not find that because I'm gonna probably return this after the show is over. Sorry, I have price. You're getting your money back. But anyways, I'm getting my money back.

[Carlos Horazo]

You can donate it through three bucks. They'll pay you three.

[Paul Cunningham]

I have comments, but I don't want.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

To get angry emails. Anyways, Nikolai carpathia on the YouTube video. And we will send you this.

[Carlos Horazo]

That's hard to spell, bro.

[Paul Cunningham]

But anyways, imagine if they said all. Oh, Paul must have held all of these in equal esteem to each other.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

They were all on his.

[Paul Cunningham]

They were all in the bookshelf together. Yeah, it's, it's, it's just guys, it's, it's silly. It's silly. So in terms of some warnings I'd give.

[Carlos Horazo]

And before that, Paul. It's true too, that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's not just like the Bible, there were other writings. Oh yeah, there are other. A bunch of different things. So it was a whole library.

[Paul Cunningham]

And even that connects to like, well, why, why did the Ethiopian church like accept all these? Best we can guess is that in the 4th century, missionaries did come to share the gospel with them. And then also there was an Ethiopian Jewish community there that had some of these writings, including the Book of Enoch as well. So our best guess is basically around the same time that the canon was being received and finalized in terms of, hey, these are the writings that are authoritatively from God. The Ethiopians had all these different things. They're like, oh, we'll just take them all, is basically the easiest and fastest way to explain it.

[Carlos Horazo]

So now warnings for sure.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, So a few warnings. Number one, if you're hearing this, like, well, that's nice, but I don't care. I'm still going to accept as authoritative. My question would be, by what criteria? So in other words, if you think, hey, even though every Jewish community, except for even, like we said, Qumran, didn't accept it at the same level, even though every Jewish community did not hold at the same level as the Bible, and even though, with the exception of one, every Christian community in the world at that time rejected it, they did not include it. It was never in the Bible. They simply rejected not include it. If you reject their criteria, okay, so what is your criteria? What is it that you're going to be saying that this is the ground of truth? Because you're saying, like, what we believe about God and the world God has made really matter. There is a real God who wants to be known for who he really is and loved and worshiped for who he really is. And he wants us to know about the world he really created and how he really created it. And so what is your criteria? And my sense is this actually leading a few minutes to the next video, because you'll see some elements of this too, is that if it's simply you're choosing it based on what you like and don't like, well, your God's going to become a lot like you.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, that's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

He's going to be you. He's going to be a figment of your imagination instead of the real God. So if you want to reject it, I'd say, hey, what is your criterion number two? I'd say this. And I see this. I've always seen this. But I will say it's increasing danger I do see is that there is this obsession with things that we can't know to the neglect of knowing the thing that we can know.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's very smart. Yes.

[Paul Cunningham]

In Deuteronomy 29, it says, that's exactly what I was going. Hidden things belong to the Lord, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children, so that we could basically do them and practice them kind of a thing. And so, man, what? It's just so interesting to me that people will spend so much energy trying to speculate on things we will never know this side of heaven and may never even know on the other side of heaven. And yet we neglect to know the God that we can own, who is infinitely noble. The way I like to think of it is like, imagine if explorers all of a sudden stumbled upon this continent that is vast and that just so much to see and explore, and then they just decided to stay on the shore. That's how so many Christians treat God.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

Like people will want to dive into these things that we can never know. When there is a God through his word that we can know, by the.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Way, that is like a temptation in every age. That's why in the New Testament, Paul is constant. You have that in your notes. Paul is constantly warning. And I just want to say this for church members and Christians in general, like conspiratorial thinking and let me go down the rabbit hole and that kind of thing. Like we're literally specifically warned in the New Testament. He says, stop devoting yourselves to myths and endless genealogies. And what he's doing is he's pointing back to the same principle from Deuteronomy. He's like, no, no, man. There's some stuff that the Lord has locked up. You're not going to know this side of heaven. Quit focusing your mental energy on the things that are hidden and give your mental energy to the things that have been revealed. What has God clearly revealed to us in the scriptures? That's where your mental energy needs to be. Not trying to figure out if the watchers are aliens.

[Paul Cunningham]

Exactly. I'll read this text and I'll say something I said to Carlos, who we'll come back around, we come to the Nephilim, and I'll have to share it again. But this is actually, you're just quoting First Timothy 1, where it talks about, don't devote yourselves to myths and endless endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. Then he goes on, a few verses later, says, certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into what vain discussion?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Bingo.

[Paul Cunningham]

And. And so let me even ask you like this, because this, this revealed like, like to the Nephilim and everything. If you knew who the Nephilim were today, what would it change about your relationship with Jesus tomorrow?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's a great question. That's good. That's a good question. That's good.

[Paul Cunningham]

And, and I would also, by the way, you can substitute any other thing that people endlessly debate about that we can never know, that ultimately is not the core of our faith. And yet this is the thing we become obsessed over. And frankly, it's funny because people are using this to talk about. About demons. If I was a demon, I would love for you to endlessly obsess over things that you can never know for sure instead of the God that was you that created you to know him for sure. So, yeah, that's great.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Speaking of doing. Yeah, that kind of dovetails.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Carlos Horazo]

So speaking of, how do we actually get the Bible? There is a video that we're going to be reacting to. Please do.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, dude, I. No joke. I want to talk about this because. No joke.

[Paul Cunningham]

Joke.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

At least 20 church members sent me this thing, and it's at 15 million views just on Instagram. It had at least that many on YouTube. And if it felt like for like, two weeks, like, every Christian was like, oh, no, what do I think about this? But then, honestly, I watched it and I had the Billy Madison response. Yeah, I award you no points.

May God have mercy on your Zel. We are all dumber. And I don't mean to, like, dunk on a guy, but I kind of do. Okay, so here's what this. By the way, do you know who this guy is before.

[Carlos Horazo]

I do not. No.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay. This just went, like, mega viral. And here. If you're a Christian, here's why I want to do this real quick. You're going to get this stuff constantly thrown at you, and I mean constantly. Because what this dude does here in these, like, three minutes is he essentially takes, like. Like, every gaslighting myth about Christianity and the origins of the Bible, and he tosses it all into one bouquet and throws it at you. So are you all ready?

[Carlos Horazo]

We're ready. Also, this is what you're going to hear is basically, like, textbook Deconstructing Christianity 101. Like, that's exactly. Like, I've actually, you know, I've. I've been there. I've read all the books as well. And, like, everything you. You'll hear him say is literally like, all the main points for a path towards deconstruction. But go ahead. Let's. Let's dive in.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, so here. Here we go. Let's break this down.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Jesus wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew. And he didn't come to create a religion. The Bible as we know it didn't even exist when Jesus walked the Earth.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, pause.

[Carlos Horazo]

I'm sorry.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

First of all, I'm already dying. Okay, let me say a few things, and then you guys chime in. First of all, Jesus wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew. Okay, first of all, yes, obviously, yes, that's true. Jesus was a Jew. But I just want to say, like, what do you mean Jesus wasn't a Christian? He wasn't a Christian because the word Christian literally means little Christ or follower of Christ. Newsflash. He can't follow himself.

[Paul Cunningham]

He would not say, I am mini me.

[Carlos Horazo]

He's not little Christ, he's the be Christ.

[Paul Cunningham]

Different movie reference there.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right now. So then he goes on and he says, and again, this is the kind of stuff, if you're a Christian, you hear it in an Instagram video. And this guy, this soothing voice, you know, oh, he has the backwards hat on. Obviously it's very compelling. Then he says, and he didn't come to start a new religion. This is what he says. Okay, so I would say, number one, yes, but he did come as the fulfillment of the Jewish religion. This is very important. Matthew 5:17. Jesus very specifically says, do not think I came to abolish the law and the prophets. That's the Jewish religion. I've not come to abolish them, I have come to fulfill them. The other thing I would say, and we'll rapid fire these things, is no, he didn't come to start a new religion, but he did come to establish a new covenant. In fact, he specifically says, what is a covenant? That's a big Bible nerd theological word. A covenant is an agreement with God between God and man about the way that God is choosing to relate to mankind. Jesus specifically says, at the Last Supper, holds up the cup and he's like, this is the cup of my blood. This is the new covenant. So yes, Jesus did come come to establish a new covenant and a way that we relate to God.

[Carlos Horazo]

In John 14:6, he literally says, I am the way, the truth, the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. No other religious leader in history of a major religion has said that. Buddha literally said, do not look to me for salvation. I am not your final refuge. The Quran literally says, muhammad is only a messenger. No Hindu divinity says they're an exclusive access to God. Jesus did say that. Therefore that's like, like that's new.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's new.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah.

[Paul Cunningham]

And one thing, real fast, we can keep going, although it's going to be hard to honestly go more than a few seconds stop. But is that, yeah, there's a bad term of religion, but another term of religion that sometimes people forget is that it just means basically what are the acceptable beliefs and practices in association with a specific person. And so part of, I think even what this Video is going to get over time is like, oh, you can just believe whatever you want, except Jesus doesn't really allow you to do that. And he doesn't talk that way. He literally says when he's praying to the Father about his disciples after he leaves, he says, whoop. He says, sanctify them in your. Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right.

[Paul Cunningham]

In other words, it's not. You can believe whatever. No, there are certain things and beliefs about God that are right and there are certain things that are wrong. So yeah, just a few thoughts, but.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Didn'T even exist when Jesus walked the earth. Not when Paul wrote his letters, not when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John recorded their accounts. The Bible was literally compiled hundreds of years later.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Pause. All right, this is killing me, bro.

[Carlos Horazo]

Wait, there's a little bit more. Bye bye.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

By who? Okay, yeah, by the emperor for political reasons. Okay, pause. Okay, so a few things. This kills me. Okay, so it says the Bible as we know it didn't even exist when Jesus walked the earth. Well, that's because the New Testament is a recording of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and you can't write it down until after it happens. So I'm like, yeah, bro, of course. So I would just say it like this, like, hey, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they can't read something that they wrote before they write it. Yes, exactly.

[Carlos Horazo]

And also Jesus had a Bible. It's called the Old Testament. Literally. That's why he quotes quote the scriptures over and over and he affirmed the law and the prophets. Matthew chapter five. So I mean, that's God's word.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yes. So here's what you gotta understand and this is gonna become important in the next few seconds of this video. What you have to understand is, okay, here's what Jesus did do. Jesus specifically prophesied the fact that fact that the New Testament, the New Testament scripture was going to be written. So these are the important verses. John 16:13. Jesus said, but he, when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you, the apostles, into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come. He's specifically saying ahead of time the Spirit is going to author new scriptures just like he did in the Old Testament. He's saying that the. There you also have this in second Peter 3, 15 and 16, you have already the apostle Peter during the writing of the New Testament referring to the writings of Paul as the scriptures. So I just want to pause you'll see this, like, with all the deconstruction guys, you're going to see this throughout this thing. What these people are asking you to do is they're asking you to believe that man, Man, Paul and Peter, who actually, like, knew Jesus. Yeah, they missed it. But me, 20, 25 years later, I figured it out.

[Paul Cunningham]

And then he makes the assumption that, oh, it all wasn't brought together till 300 years later by pagan emperor. We'll get that. Because that's literally like, not true at all. But with that is also, like over the next 200 years, you have church fathers who are quoting the New Testament as scripture. That literally. If we just took. And we. By the way, I think we'll get to this a minute. We've actually also got lists that are given before eventually it is settled on. But if I just took, for example, like in 180, there's a guy named Irenaeus and he doesn't give a list, but he quotes every New Testament book except Philemon third, John and Jude. Clement, again, he quotes every New Testament book except Philemon second and third on John, James and Jude. So if I just took people's citations, they are quoting the things that we now have as the New Testament. Like that is the scripture and they're quoting it as authoritative scripture.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

And this is really important. This is important for listeners because a lot of people don't know the dates. So when you're saying Irenaeus 1:8, first of all, isn't it went John, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and then you had Clement.

[Paul Cunningham]

You had Clement in there as well, the very end of the first century.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So I'm talking about the discipleship chain. Wasn't it the apostle John and then he discipled Polycarp. Polycarp discipled Irenaeus, I believe so. I think that's right. So you essentially have this guy was discipled by a guy that was discipled by an actual apostle. And you're saying that was 180 A.D. yeah, well, what a lot of people do is a lot of people put the writing of the Book of revelation between like 90 and 100. Right. So you've got like within one lifetime.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yep.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay. So then the other thing he says is, he says, I mean, you got it right there. The Bible was compiled hundreds of years later by a pagan emperor for political reasons. Chap. G Pal t was the Bible compiled by a pagan.

Constantine hundreds of years later.

[Paul Cunningham]

I was about to say, he's most likely referring here to Constantine. And the answer is no. It's right. Sh. Would say say false. Trying to get as many.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, Battle Star Galactic.

[Paul Cunningham]

Trying to get as many different random movies and TV shows in here as we can.

[Carlos Horazo]

No, identity theft is not a joke, Tim.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Keep going.

[Paul Cunningham]

I've got to be careful. I'm not going to be able to recover. Oh, yeah. We're running out of time. Okay, so most likely he's referring to the Council of Nicaea that were actually in the 1700 year anniversary of this year. The problem with that is that we have accounts of the Council of nicaea. We have 20 what's called cannons or rules that were passed there. And you know what? None of them have to do with scripture and the. And what was the New Testament whatsoever is that the Council of Nicaea was really around a debate about something called Arianism. And that was. Was, hey, was Jesus an uncreated divine, like what we think of now? He was the Son of God uncreated or was he a created being? Aryans would say he was created. Orthodox would say, no, he was not. And that's homo.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yep.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, exactly. And so Constantine called.

That council, but it was the bishops who decided again, what were they not deciding? They were not deciding scripture whatsoever.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

This is a really. I just want to highlight this because if you're a Christian, this kind of stuff, you're gonna get thrown at you constantly. There is a persistent myth that Constantine in 325 A.D. around there, he just sort of decided the New Testament again for political reasons. Literally. There's not a scrap of evidence anywhere, anywhere that the Council of Nicaea or Constantine had. So it's essentially like, like, what's your source? Trust me, bro.

[Paul Cunningham]

And in fact, like, well, like literally the first council that adopted like officially, although in 367 a guy named Athanasius released this festal letter and he proclaimed what we get, what we now know as the New Testament, the 27 books as the New Testament scripture. But it's the signage of Carthage in 397, you know who wasn't there any emperor. Constantine had already been dead for a good amount of decades and no emperor was there. In fact, a little quick thing saying while Constantine called the council at Nicaea and he did enforce it, what's interesting is, is his son actually then tried to enforce Arianism become the official doctrine. So really the only time in those first, like that, that time frame that an emperor tried to force doctrine on people, it was trying to force false doctrine. Now, now that we have Christian doctrine. So it's actually the opposite of what Everyone always says, let's keep going, let's keep going.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

That should tell you something.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Something.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Now, does that mean we throw the Bible out? No, I love the Bible. I read the Bible every day. It's the most important book in my life.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Listen.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

But it does mean we have to stop worshiping it like it's God and be honest with ourselves and start listening to the truth that is behind it. And if you doubt me, do your own research. The Bible was literally voted Keep going, Keep going by a bunch of politicians and bishops in a room deciding what made the cut and what didn't.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I made it up.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

He just made it up centuries after the fact. That's like building your spiritual life around the minutes of a corporate board meeting.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, pause. So first of all, we've already established it's complete. It's literally just an out of thin air fabrication. Do your research.

[Carlos Horazo]

It's good advice.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's what he says. He said, do your research. I'm like, you should have done that before. So let me just say. So he said we have to stop worshiping it like it's God. Hey, first of all, true.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Let me just say that's true.

[Carlos Horazo]

Yeah. And just so you know, just because you believe the Bible doesn't mean you worship the Bible. That's another false dichotomy there.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's right. Now, should we treat the Bible as if it every word of it is true? Yes, because God says every word of it is true. In fact, Jesus says every word of it is true. Not a jot nor tittle of the law will pass away until heaven and earth pass away. I will just say one thing he's saying there that's true. Because I want to acknowledge that we should not that there actually is a way, Jesus says, to elevate the Scriptures above the person to whom they put point. In fact, Jesus says this is what the Pharisees did that was wrong. He specifically says this to the pharisees in John 5. He says, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is they that bear witness about me. So he's saying, bro, the whole point of the Scriptures is for you to look through them to have a relationship with me. Fun little side note, that's why Martin Luther, Protestant reformer, he called the Scriptures the swaddling clothes of Christ. He was like, man, it's inside of these things that you develop a relationship with Jesus. Now, the one thing that I will say is really subtle. You're gonna. You see this in what he just Said, and you're gonna see it in the next few seconds. And what he says, really subtle. What he's doing is he's saying, hey, man, you need to look past the Bible to like what's behind it. Now here's what's going on, bro. If you get down underneath everything, what he's doing is he's essentially going, hey, hey, Carlos, you need to trust yourself to be inspired to evaluate the Bible. Instead of just trusting the Bible to be is inspired so that it can evaluate you. That's really what he's doing. A lot of times theologians, they call it spot inspiration. And they'll say, man, some people believe that the Bible's inspired in spots. And they also just so happen to believe that they're inspired to spot the spots. Yep.

[Paul Cunningham]

Basically, it's the same thing as before. I'm picking what I like and what I end up as. A God, a lot like me. And with that, he makes this other thing. And this is like, oh, there were other texts. What's interesting is all those other texts, because there were other quote unquote Gospels written. Do you know what they all have in common? They attributed themselves to who? An apostle. So even like, the criteria was that it had to come from an apostle to be authoritative. So even the false gospels, we call them false, people might think they're true. Although I would actually encourage you to go read them. People say that most of them have never actually read them. And if you go read them, they're really weird. And you would not want to believe what it actually says about Jesus. Just going to say that you can go read it for yourself. But what I was going to say is like, so then I'd come back to it. So then what is your criteria? Like, if we believe that we're worshiping and believing in a true historical person with events that either happened or they didn't, we would probably want to get as close to those events, into the eyewitnesses of those events as possible. Who are who? The apostles.

[Carlos Horazo]

So we'll keep going.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, let's keep going.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

And Jesus never said, read my book, because the Bible didn't exist when Jesus was here. He said, follow me, his God.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Let me just never read my book. He said, follow me. Here's what I want to go. Well, then how do you figure out how to follow him? You read the book. Yeah, but there's no other way to figure out.

[Paul Cunningham]

And oh, by the way, what is that you said? The basically is implying the Bible has been kind of corrupted because it Was put together by politicians, and we can't completely trust it because said, well, how can I know that I can trust the verse that says, follow me.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, there you go. There it is.

[Carlos Horazo]

And he also said, have you not read.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Have you not.

[Carlos Horazo]

Sounds like he wants us to read it.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That he said, the scripture cannot be broken. All the things.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, let's keep going.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Gospel was not about denominations, and it wasn't about brick and mortar churches. He was talking about the church in the heart of men. Those in pursuit of the truth, not the dogmas of men. And. And it's important to note that God did not write a single page in the Bible. The words came through. Men. Deeply flawed men.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Pause. Okay, bro, this is the big deal right here. So let me riff on this for a second. He said, it is important to note God did not write a single page of the Bible. It was written by men. Deeply flawed men. Okay? This is the most important thing. All right, Trinity, will you toss that. Toss that diagram up here? All right, so this is what Satan does in every generation, starting in. In Genesis, chapter one, is. Is. God did not surely say, that's what he always is doing. He's trying to undermine the authority of the word of God. Always. Okay? What Christians have to have is a solid rock underneath their feet. Like, hey, bro, you can trust the Bible. Okay? So, like, here, I'm gonna give you one. I'm just gonna give you one thing to help you here. Okay? Here's what you're looking at right here. This is like one of my favorite diagrams. That is a diagram of every cross reference in the Bible. So every time that the Bible connects to directly or indirectly, another part of the Bible. Okay? So it's vast. All right? Now what you got there is you have 63,779 connections from one part of the Bible to another part of the Bible. Now let me just say this, bro. You look at that thing. If one person did that, if somebody wrote a book that did that, everyone in the world would say, masterpiece. Like, greatest author that ever. Nobody's ever done this before. But that book was not written by one guy. That book was written down by 40 different men over 1500 years across three continents. Europe, Asia, and Africa in three different languages. Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. It has one united story. It has zero contradictions. Let me just say this. There is only one answer to how that can happen. It was written down by men. It was authored by the living God. So listen to when he's just making naked assertions. Not one Page of the Bible is written by God. You're just making a naked assertion with no evidence. In fact, in the face of all the evidence and in contradiction to what the Bible says about itself, where the Bible itself says that it was inspired by God.

[Carlos Horazo]

Not only that, I mean, all these references in the Old Testament. Thus says the Lord.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Bingo.

[Carlos Horazo]

There are parts of the Bible where God literally says, write these words. And then he speaks, and then the author writes. So Exodus 17, write this on a scroll. Jeremiah 30. Thus says the Lord. Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you. Revelation, chapter 21.

[Paul Cunningham]

Down.

[Carlos Horazo]

Write this down. For these words are faithful and true. I mean, it just keeps going. Oh, Jesus said in. In the Scriptures. Have you not read what God said to you? And it points to scriptures. I mean, it's just.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

It's all over everywhere, man. All right, let's keep going.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Written, rewritten, translated, re. Translated.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

This is very barred.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Airmen, kings, priests, and politicians. And then argued over by 45, 000 different Christian denominations who all swear they're the ones who are right for 2000 years until it made it into your hands. If that's not confusing, I don't know what is.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, pause. I know I'm pausing a lot, but this is like, bro, Christians need to know, like, this is. This is insane. So first of all, he does the whole thing written, translated, rewritten, retranslated, as we all know. So, like, I. I want you to know, like, how trustworthy your Bible is. So this comes from. It's Josh McDowell compiled this. Will you toss that? Toss that.

[Paul Cunningham]

That.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

The chart up there. All right, so here's what you're looking at. This is. I don't think people realize, like, how trustworthy the text you're holding in your hands is. I don't think people realize it. So what you're looking at here, and it's worth going over to YouTube if you're not to actually see this. This. This is the manuscript evidence of both the level of attestation to ancient men, ancient documents, and the accuracy of the copies of the documents. Now, dude, we could do a whole podcast on this. I'm not going to do that. But it's like, you know, when you read in high school about the writings of Plato, for instance, okay, we have seven ancient copies of Plato, and the time gap between when he wrote it and the first copy we found is 1200 years. Wow, you can do this on a bunch of stuff. Julius Caes Caesar, we have 10 copies, 10 ancient copies of his writing and the Time gap between when he wrote it and the earliest manuscript we have is a thousand years. Aristotle, we have 49 copies. And the time gap from when he wrote it to earliest manuscript is 1400 years. Okay, then you get to the New Testament. What you have in the New Testament is you have, and this is the most conservative estimate, you have about 6. 6,000 extant ancient copies of the New Testament. And they date to within less than 100 years of the events of the New Testament.

[Paul Cunningham]

The movie makes it sounds like, oh, it went through all these changes to get into your hands, as if like you. It had to go through all these different things, like a giant game of telephone where literally I've got here, like I've got the Greek New Testament.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, like.

[Paul Cunningham]

And what I love is at the bottom, you can't see this, but at the bottom, any place where there are any variations at all, they actually tell you. So there's nothing to hide, nothing's hidden. Yes, we do have a lot of different translations of the Bible and guess what? They are all based on Greek New Testament and then Hebrew old Testament with.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Six, by the way, with 6,000 ancient manuscripts by which to back test the.

[Carlos Horazo]

Accuracy, to verify themselves that corroborate themselves.

[Paul Cunningham]

That's right, exactly.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

So then, and you got this, you know, if you go back and look at it, the accuracy of that, when they took the 6,000 early manuscripts, Greek manuscripts in the New Testament Testament, and they back test them against each other, the accuracy of the copies exceeds 99.5%. Yeah. And then the only little, you know, the only variations there are things like was the word the right there or it's little stuff has nothing to do with doctrine. All right, let's keep going and finish this up real quick.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Now, this is something that Christians do not want to address because it destroys the entire idea that the Bible is flawless. And all you need is the. This book that mainstream Christianity has turned into something of an idol. And for further context, the Old Testament God smiting people left me right here. Is not even the same personality as Jesus in the Gospels telling us to forgive our enemies. We're talking about two totally different characters. It's like trying to mix a Metallica concert with a Mr. Rogers neighborhood special and calling it one genre or religion. The God of the Old Testament is not the. The same God as the one that Paul wrote about in his letters.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, pause, pause, bro, that is.

[Carlos Horazo]

Literally like, did God really say of the Old Testament? Yes, basically what he's doing.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Well, that. That's also called Marcianism.

[Paul Cunningham]

I was about to say, where did you get any mar.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

That's Marianism, Patrick. The. So that's a. Marcianism is a, A heresy that essentially says what he says.

[Paul Cunningham]

Two different Gods.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Yeah, two different gods. Old Testament God, New Testament God. I just want to point this out because if you're a Christian, you're going to get that thrown at you a lot. Lot. And this is like, honestly, it's one of the, like most mind blowing little deep cuts in the, in the Bible. All right? So what people will do like this guy is they'll point to, he says, smiting the innocents. Ah, the slaughtering of the innocents. And in the Old Testament they do slaughtering of the innocents. And the New Testament, they don't do that. So they're different gods. I just want to point this out. When it comes to the slaughtering of the innocents in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, I have good news and I have bad news. Okay.

Good news, good news. There is no such thing as the slaughtering of the innocence in the Old Testament. Every time you see a quote, unquote, slaughtering in the Old Testament on behalf of God, it is not genocide, it is sinicide. There are no innocent people. That's the bad news. There are no innocent people. So here's what's really interesting. Like, let's put our theological hats on. Here's our theological hat. There is actually only one time in the entire Bible, Bible that there is a slaughtering of the innocent. It was not in the Old Testament. It was in the New Testament. Ambro, listen, God did not do it to man. Man did it to God. When we crucified the Son of God on the cross because of the wickedness of our hearts. So listen, you want to talk about slaughtering the innocence, that's in the New Testament, not the Old Testament. There is a radical continuity between the character of God in the Testament Testaments.

[Paul Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah.

[Carlos Horazo]

And then the correct. The caricature is that the Old Testament has judgment and mercy. And then the New Testament is hugs and kisses. Actually, like both the Old Testament and the New Testament both have judgment and mercy. And so again, and then obviously you need to read Revelation as well. There's a lot of judgment there.

[Paul Cunningham]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The imagery is insane. Like one, like when people bring this up, I say, okay, if so, if Jesus was so different than the God of the Old Testament, then why didn't Jesus ever rebuke that God? God?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

It's great, Paul.

[Paul Cunningham]

And why didn't he ever say, oh, no, no, no, no, don't believe in that one. Instead, like he said, again, I've not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. That I'm not, not the smallest little thing is going to pass away from those. Like, he came to fulfill all those things, and he did things that were only attributed to Yah. And he actually said before, Abraham was, I am. And so actually, you know what Jesus was saying? I was that one who ordered that.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

Right.

[Paul Cunningham]

And so when we say all this, I'm kind of like, it just constructs this false narrative. I'm like, Jesus, literally, like, you're apparently holier than Jesus. So that's all.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

All right, let's finish it up. Here we go.

[Joe Rogan (clip speaker)]

And neither are the same characters. Jesus from the four gospels. Jesus said something really interesting once. He said, be like little children. Kids do not need theological degrees. They need simple truth. The gospel was meant to be clear, freeing, and alive, not locked in denominational arguments and weaponized like the woke left and the stone casting right. Because the real gospel, the gospel that Jesus taught, is not about control. It's about freedom. So if the Bible is fallible, good, that means it's human. And if it's human, then the point was never the pages. It was the person. And he still says the same thing today. Follow me and be free.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Okay, let me just say the point was never the pages. It was the person. How do you figure out how to follow the person? You read the pages. I'm going to end right there. Yeah, that's good. I think.

[Carlos Horazo]

I think we're good, man.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I think we did, man. We. We got to talk about Santa. Next time.

[Carlos Horazo]

I know. Wait, you don't want to do it?

[Paul Cunningham]

Three minutes.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

No. You know, you recall. I. I think we save it for next time.

[Carlos Horazo]

Okay, we'll save it for next time.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Time. Should Christians do Santa Claus?

[Carlos Horazo]

Good teaser. Pastor Josh, would you pray for us?

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

I would love to, yeah. Father, thank you. Thank you for your great kindness to us. Thank you for. Thank you for the bread of your word. I pray for every man and woman that are listening that they would fall in love with the word of God and they would feast on it. Because man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Father. Father, I pray that you'd bless them. I pray that for people who are walking through valleys of shadows, of death this Christmas season, that they would know that you are with them and that your rod and staff will comfort them. So I commit them to you in the name of the boy who was born Lord and grew up to be crucified for their sins. Jesus Christ. Amen.

[Carlos Horazo]

Amen. Live Free Live Free, brother.

[Pastor Josh Howerton]

Thanks for tuning in to Live Free with Pastor Josh. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture and faith as you live free in Christ. If it encouraged you, be sure to rate, review and share the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Join us for Lake Pointe Church Online every weekend and find more resources at Lakepoint Church Livefree. We'll see you next time.