Blurry Creatures - EP: 455 What Really Happened to the Apostles After Acts with Dr. Bryan Litfin

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

The Bible tells us the apostles scatter. Then it goes quiet. Dr. Bryan Litfin picks up the trail right where Acts drops it. The Liberty professor and early church expert takes Nate and Luke back into the first century to trace what actually happened to Peter, Paul, and Thomas. Peter dies in Nero's circus at the foot of what is now the Vatican, crucified upside down while Christians burn as human torches around him. Paul is beheaded outside the city walls. And in 2009, someone drilled into his sarcophagus and tested what was inside. First-century male bones.This one goes deep, and it goes weird. Handkerchiefs lowered on strings to touch a martyr's bones. Thomas walking east down the Silk Road while Paul walks west toward the end of the world. A worldview where holiness was something you could physically touch, where power moved through cloth and bone the same way it left Jesus when the woman grabbed his robe. Litfin makes the case that the early church believed the blurry stuff too, and that it was the Enlightenment that finally drained the supernatural out of the faith. The apostles left more behind than a book. This is the rest of the story. This Episode is Sponsored By: https://preborn.com/blurry — Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://www.bruntworkwear.comBLURRY — Get $10 Off at BRUNT with code BLURRY at checkout and enter THE BRUNT POTTY OF GOLD SWEEPSTAKES for your chance to win $50,000. No purchase necessary. Ends 9/18/26. Official rules apply. #Bruntpod #sponsored http://blurrygold.com/ — Get a FREE Gold & Silver Kit while supplies last! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And with available all-wheel drive, you can handle your to-do list with total confidence. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Details at J.D.power.com. The grave of Paul, the slab that's on top of it, there are these holes in it, and they would put a handkerchief on a string, and they would lower it down so it could contact the bones, and then they'd pull it up,

and then you'd have the martyr's holiness would be there. Now, that sounds so ridiculously and superstitious. It does, yeah. But you know who it doesn't sound superstitious to? All Christians prior to the Enlightenment. This is actually not only the biblical worldview, but the church historical worldview, until the Enlightenment pulled the holy

and the sort of de-enchanted the world. But is this the worldview of everyone at the time, too? Yes. The bones of the saints were the absolute most important thing a kingdom could have. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right to bust the paradigm,

It all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Okay, so today we're going back, back into time.

And we're going back to the early church, Luke. And we're taking Brian lifting with us, who's the expert on. all things early church. And you're a professor at Liberty University. You were at Moody. You're also an author. Thank you for coming into the basement today. I think it's a conversation we've been having since the beginning of, okay, the early church believe these things. And then we kind of skewed over here into an alternate timeline. And now we're coming back and people are interested in the blurry stuff. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you for, you know, being willing to go on the blurry ride

because it gets weird here. So what do you thoughts on Bigfoot? We're going to start there and then move into... Okay, I have to confess, I don't get the whole Bigfoot thing. You don't. So I would need to be brought up to speed. And I'll say the reason is because, like, the Nephilim, you know, are the hairy? Like, what's the deal with hairy people?

That's not really a biblical concept that I know of. Is it? Well, there was one hairy guy, at least. There's some hairy guys. Yeah, but he was good. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's not a big foot.

He's not in the woods. Like, so it doesn't fit my biblical categories. You can't call people. bald in the Bible. That's not a good thing. Yeah, right. You can't do that. You can cut your beard off. That was supposed to be shameful. We all got beards here. Samson's a hairy story. Yeah, so you get the hairy people, but they just don't match up. It doesn't... Something magical about that hair, though. Yeah, hair's magical. And Paul cuts his hair, famously. I just don't understand the biggest, it's just, I don't get it. I think it's probably like

feral appellation people or something like that. I think most professors at Liberty know a lot about Bigfoot. I think it's a common. Don't you? Apparently, I haven't run into those. No, but I mean, we started talking about that and we never in our wildest dreams thought that we'd be interviewing professors and, you know, theologians. Learned doctors. Yeah. And Dr. Liffin, we, the reason we got connected is we had Kathy Lee Gifford in studio, her book, Nero, and Paul, you wrote with her. He also wrote Herod and Mary, which is here on the set. And we are super interested talking to Kathy about you and your work as you're a New Testament

Yeah. And you really, as Nate said, you talk a lot about the early church, the apostles. As I hit the mic stand. It's cash here. It is. The apostles, you wrote a book called, you wrote a book called After Acts, which talks about what happens to the apostles after Acts. You're an expert on the early church and early church fathers.

And this is stuff that we have kind of talked about in platitudes, but not really drilled down specifically. And we talked pre-roll about. about Dr. Michael Heiser, about a lot of the overlap between the supernatural, the unseen realm and what not only the apostles, but also the early church fathers, how they operate in that same sort of mindset or paradigm.

And I thought today we'd start, I'd like to start with the, what happens to the apostles. And this is such a fascinating thing. This is a conversation that I had with Dr. Joel Matamali, as we were talking about about some of your work, it was, you know, we know that the apostles continue on after the death of Jesus. We know about the martyring, but what kind of happens,

we lose track of them at some point, to what the rest of the story. Right. And I think there's, there's a crazy tradition, yeah, I mean, there's a crazy tradition and there's archaeology around what happened to Peter, Paul, Thomas, and others, and it's really about the spiritual world

and what the early church was navigating. So where do we want to start with this? because this is such a fascinating conversation because it's, in a lot of ways, our show likes to try to fill in some of the stories that we don't get, right? The Bible doesn't give us a lot of Genesis 6, we get four verses, right?

The Bible doesn't give us a lot of, perhaps what happens pre-flood outside of what it does give us. Yeah. And a lot of, in that case, a lot of Second Temple literature fills in some of that. But in this case, there's a lot of early church fathers and a lot of more contemporary literature

of that Hellenistic time that gives, answers, right? No, I love it. Thank you for having me on. And let me just say that I really, I'm fairly new to the Heiser conversation, but the more I get into it, the more I realize that it kind of needs to be extended into the ancient church. Like it's, so far, it's kind of a biblical conversation. I mean, he started it with, you know, much more the Old Testament. That's who he is, the Hebrew, the A&E world, ancient Near East. And then, you know, Dr. Joel and kind of New Testament and Pauline backgrounds, and it's all there. But the more, the more. I'm kind of becoming up to speed on the unseen realm,

the more I'm seeing how much of that is actually part of the ancient church. The church father's like 500 years into it. And frankly, frankly, it goes right into the middle ages too. I mean like a Thomas Aquinas is talking about angels all the time. It's the reformation and the enlightenment where that unseen realm just disappears. Yeah.

Especially the enlightenment, I think. I mean, maybe not the reformation. Luther understood the devil very profoundly. But the enlightenment just killed our awareness of that. So all that to say, I'm so glad that we're having this conversation, because I do think, in addition to it being an Old Testament conversation, an intertestiment conversation, a New Testament conversation, it's also a patristic or Church Father's conversation.

And I'd love to be part of that. But yeah, well, we can talk about, like, you know, what happened to Peter? Maybe people are fascinated with that because, you know, you got the Vatican and the popes and all of that. You know, like, what happened to Peter? Right, because I actually was in Rome last year. Oh, you were. I went to the Vatican. Okay, okay.

And my dad has sent me the book, The Fisherman's Tomb beforehand. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. Did you go down into the crew? No, at the point, there wasn't tours the day we were there, but we got to do. So there's like two levels. Like there's the more common level, but then there's the special permission from the excavation. Yeah, did you go down to where you could see the first century tombs? Yeah.

Okay, so that's the third level. And yeah, you see these tombs that are front, like it was an open street. So should we set this up? Should we talk about Peter? Yes, let's start with Peter. Okay, so like you went to Rome. So whoever's been to Rome. You picture it, St. Peter's Square, there's the Vatican, there's this big obelisk that's in the middle.

If you're looking straight at the doorway of the front of St. Peter's Basilica, you have to imagine that it's a little off center because to the left of it, there used to be, in the day of Peter, there was a huge circus, which is a racetrack. So it was chariot racing. I mean, we talk about Nero today. Neuro just absolutely thought he was like God's gift to chariot racing. So it was the circus of Nero and Caligula, and like I say, it was sort of over to the left. And the obelisk that's in the middle of St. Peter's Square was once on the spine of that circus. So they brought it from Egypt. It's Egyptian. And the chariots would race around it. Now, and obelists are dedicated to the sun, the sun god raw. So chariots are also part of sun worship, solo worship. And of course,

Jesus is the bridegroom and the gibbore in Psalm 19. you know, the Giborim, the champions, who rejoiced to run their course and ride in a chariot. So Jesus has this solar imagery. But anyway, at the Vatican, Peter, by all the evidence that we can see, was martyred in that circus,

along with a bunch of other Christians. In Nero circus. In Nero circus. And Tacitus talks about this, where Christians were rounded up and for entertainment. And of course, Nero thinks he's Mr. Charioteer, so he's there, you know, riding around

in the garb of a charioteer. But they did two things to the Christians. They would either set them on fire, wrapped them in these garments that had like flammable pitch in it and burn them. So they call it Nero's torches. So they would burn as, when night fell, they were lit to slow burn as torches for this event.

And all the elite, you know, Romans are there. But the other thing they did is, and this is very blurry, is they would, they put some of those Christians in like skins of prey animals, like mammals that would, be like a deer or something. And then they let loose these super fierce dogs. So there's this kind of animal prey. And so they were inside the fur and the dogs would like hunt them down and eat them.

As an animal. But probably Peter was one of the ones that was burned. And so even the scripture speaks about this where it talks, you know, stretch out your hands. And another Jesus says, and another will lead you where you do not want to go. And that stretch out the hands is a reference to crucifixion. And so, and they really have his bones there or no? Okay, should we get to that topic? Well, we'll skip to how he's killed. So he's, we're getting there.

So he's being, so he was crucified upside down. Yeah, like I was going to ask about that because that's what you hear. So, so the evidence is pretty good from like this, a lot of what I'm talking about comes from a second century text called the Acts of Peter. Now, it's full of a lot of story and folklore, but it does record that he was crucified upside down. Not, as is later said about him, because he was unworthy of being crucified like Jesus, but he gives this kind of, like, Gnostic speech about the inversion of the cosmos. So there's these things that get added into texts like Axo Peter that maybe is a little sketchy. But anyway,

he's upside down. And then they take his body. So here's the circus over here. There's a street, and then there's a necropolis, which is what you went down into it, which is the city of the dead. So there were tombs. And they put his body in a grave next to the circus of Nero. And so eventually that circus falls into disrepair and it becomes ruins. And the Christians of the second century said, well, we don't want to lose this spot. Like he was dumped in this grave. We know where it is, but the next generation might forget. So we want to build what's called a trophy and we could get into what trophies are. We think of trophies as like, oh, a little cup.

You would have, you know, like, look, I won the state championship. But originally a trophy was a Roman and Greek where you would pile up the armor of your defeated enemy. You would almost make like a little effigy of a defeated man. You'd put a little, you'd hang a spear and put a little breastplate and a little helmet. Like a scarecrow? Yeah, it would be like a scarecrow, but it was victory. Okay. But it was like a little, and you'd pile the armor and like, look, the enemy, we've despoiled the enemy. Look, here's his

He's just a scarecrow now. And then the Romans kind of took it and made it something more monumental. But the trophy was a victory monument. From the beginning of Blero creatures, I remember we talked to Dr. Michael Heiser and he said, God has a family. Family is important.

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Or give securely at preborn.com slash blurry. That's preborn.com slash blurry. Together the blurry verse can save lives, just one heartbeat at a time. So Peter gets a little trophy. And they built a little thing with like a little canopy and a little pill. over that grave. The one grave that was important to the Christians had a marker.

And by the late second century, there's a deacon in Rome, and he's trying to say why Rome's an important city. And he says, you know, if you want to know where the graves of the apostles are, you can go out to the Vatican field

and out there is a trophy of Peter. And you can go on the Austrian way, south of the city, and you can see the trophy of Paul. So the trophies were these markers. And in the 20th century, so the question about the bones, in the 20th century, in kind of the World War II era, they started digging around underground, under the floor of the Vatican. So like say you're walking down the main, you know, nave of St. Peter's Basilica.

Am I talking too much? No, no. No, you're talking about. I got a quick question, Brian, though. So does Peter get, just to recap for me, I know they burned Christians and they hunted Christians. Was Peter, in your mind,

he was crucified upside down at the circus of Nero? I think there's good evidence of that because it's in the second century. Okay. So I think that was probably an eyewitness remembrance. But in the story, he requests it. I doubt that it's something they said, sure, we'll accommodate you horrible criminal.

If you want to give a message, you know, go ahead. You know, so it's probably, it's well attested that you were crucified in all kinds of positions. Do we know how Peter ended up in Rome? Is that part of the? Yeah. I mean, in First Peter, he says the church in Babylon greets you. And Babylon is code for Rome. Okay.

So he's probably there. There's good evidence that Mark's Gospel is written there. And Mark's gospel has this kind of Latin-based, he explains terms. And certainly there's true. traditions, very, very early traditions that he came in the time of like Claudius. So if we get to, so you need to fast forward to the 20th century. Yeah. And then is this lost then kind of at two time as to the Catholics? Not to the day. I mean, so you have this trophy, right? Yeah, yeah. No, this is not lost. But it's not famous. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah,

it's lost to time until the 20th century. Like nobody, nobody, nobody. Sometimes the trophy falls down and everybody kind of. It actually didn't fall down. It just got buried in the sands of time. So what happens is, I got to the 20th century too quickly. It's a ruin and there's a trophy. Constantine comes to power. We should talk about Constantine. He's very blurry, but we'll do that later. But Constantine comes to power and he,

this is such a Heiser kind of thing because he has adopted Jesus as his cosmic warrior lord in place of Hercules and other gods. But anyway, Constantine says, I want to honor this God that I have taken, this Jesus that I've taken as my God. And so he builds the first St. Peter's Basilica. And he mows down the necropolis that's there.

And the obelisk is still there. It's just sticking up out of the ground or the ruined circus. So they built it on a graveyard almost. They did because the grave is the grave of Peter. They built it over Peter's grave. So later Michelangelo rebuilds it. I'm doing too many layers here. But later in the Renaissance period, the current St. Peter's goes up.

Not the Constantine, old St. Peters, but the new one. And Michelangelo's dome, that's the famous thing, is directly over the papal altar, which is directly over the grave of Peter. It's just a straight line. You can see it from inside the chat. You have a glass thing and you can kind of peek down in there. Yeah, that's wild. So, I mean, obviously, I think a lot of people think that these things just become famous instantly. But over time, they kind of become famous as time moves on. Like, oh, that's where that happened. And then they started kind of building this site over it. Okay. Well, and Constantine built it. It was a, it wasn't a church like you would go to on Sunday.

It's still not. It's not like a Sunday basilica. It's not even the Pope's Sunday church. Yeah. That's St. John Lateran. It is a pilgrimage basilica because, and we can get into this, but the early Christians wanted to be near the bones and relics of their leaders and their famous heroes.

And so this Constantine built it so you could come and kind of process around it or come to it. And then it was dilapidated by the time you get into the 1500s. So that's where they said, the Renaissance guys said, let's build a new one. And they did, and the dome is right over it. But because the spot had been preserved essentially by that trophy from the second century, which is living memory to people who saw it, it's likely to be the spot. Now, you asked me about the bones. Okay.

So here's what happens with the bones of Peter. You know, probably don't want to linger on this topic the whole podcast, but it is fascinating. Which is that in the 20th century, they really did want to find these bones. And there was this guy named Ludwig Koss. He was a Nazi sympathizer who then escaped, or he was part of the Nazi German thing. And he came down to Rome. And they gave him the job of overseeing the Vatican building, the Basilica, St. Peter's Basilica.

So they started excavating and the professional archaeologists would work by day. But Ludwig Koss would come at night and poke around. He's just a Catholic churchman. He's not a professional archaeologist. and they kept looking at these different graves that should be in the right spot and they could not find the bones of who they would think could be Peter.

Well, Ludwig Koss one day, the trophy was one way and there was kind of this later addition. It was called the Red Wall or the Graffiti Wall because it has this early Christian graffiti written all over prayers, prayers to Peter. And so this graffiti wall is perpendicular to the trophy. And come to find out it has a little receptacle in it about kind of, you know,

waist high. And Ludwig Koss tells this digger that is employed by him, hey, what's in there? So the guy says, oh, there's bones. But because they're up off the ground and they're in this receptacle, they think, well, that's not going to be Peter's bones. Just put him in a box and stick him over here. So Ludwig Koss passes. But that worker is still on the scene. And the next archaeologist is Margarita Garducci, who is way more of a professional. She's like the best, It's a woman, which is shocking in the mid-1950s or whatever, but she's really, really world-class, and she can read this graffiti and knows what it is.

Well, one day, this guy who, they're looking at this receptacle, and she's like, I wonder what was in there. And he's like, oh, ma'am, years ago I took some bones out. And she's like, what? What are you talking? Oh, yeah, your predecessor told me take these bones. They're in a box over here. And so they had been ignored because they didn't think they came out of the ground.

So they go and look in this box, we'll come to find out. It has like golden and purple threads on them. It's the skeleton of a first century male of a robust frame. And so those are the bones that eventually the Pope says, that's it. Somehow they got moved up into that receptacle. And if you go down there, if you did, they have them on display in that little receptacle. It's just some guy named George. Yes, an ossuary.

Yeah. George. Just some guy named George. Don't say that. Or as a pope will put you on the wreck. Well, I mean, yeah, it's funny. Well, I mean, I was there when I was like 30 years old and kind of going through that. Isn't someone, isn't like a famous Christian buried in the Parthenon, too?

I remember going through there and looking at the names. The Pantheon? The Pantheon. Not the Parthian. Yeah, it's Victor Emmanuel. And it's one of the Renaissance artists who's there. Yeah, there was some guys in there too. I don't think there's any early Christians in the pantheon.

Yeah, so when you go to Rome, I mean, obviously you're just seeing all this old stuff. Oh my gosh, I love Rome. I've probably been 15 to 20 times. Rome is more obelous than Egypt, which is a fascinating fit of trivia. They're all Egyptian. The Romans went through it, and this is kind of a blurry thing, but the Romans had this huge fascination, this like Egyptopheilia or something. They loved Egypt. When you go into the Coliseum, you're just, they got that cross in there.

Yeah, yeah. And you can kind of see. So how are they finding these Christians? I mean, what's defining them in the early days to pick them up and, you know, torture them? I mean, how is the early church existing at that time? Well, it is a bit of a mythology that it's kind of like everybody's persecuted constantly and like underground. Like, for the most part, the truth is, for the most part, the Christians were left alone unless a kind of a pogrom would kind of well up, you know, or some moment in time.

Now, eventually, you get in the fourth century, the third century, you get this great persecution. And that is much more empire-wide, it's the fourth century. And before that, though, it's much more intermittent. But it could crop up at any time. So you live under the fear of it. And the instigating factor is often emperor worship. And that's huge. I mean, that fits this podcast too.

Right. because it's the powers. You know how the emperor worship worked? You had to make an offering to the Gainius. The word is Gainius. We would say genius. Like we would say like, oh, he's so brilliant. Einstein, he's a genius.

What you mean is there's some inhabiting spirit in him that's beyond mortal men, is what you're saying. Everything started with this podcast with one big footprint. And that guy, he doesn't even. He needs boots. He don't. He's got them built in. But the rest of us do. Well, Brunt workwear is a new partner of blurry creatures and they've got incredible work boots for all those guys out there and gals that are really punching the clock, working the hard hours and making things happen here in America. Brunt boots are comfortable right out of the box. So you don't have to deal with

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So you had to placate and worship and give honor to the genus of Caesar. But you know what the Greek, that's a Latin word. You know what the Greek equivalent of Gainius is? Daimon. Oh. Demon. Yeah. And so the early Christians, you say, why were they persecuted?

If they were ever brought to the point. So even in the beginning, like Plenty, Plenty the elder says, or plenty of the younger, Plenty the younger says, the way you find a Christian is you try to make them swear, deny Christ and swear by the Caesars, and the true ones won't do it. If they do it, let him go. They're clearly not a Christian. It's the real Christians who will not do it. Because as Jesus says, if you deny me before men, I will deny you before my father in heaven. Like you're literally, it's a Heiser thing. You're literally changing your allegiance. It's like I'm, I'm renouncing my American citizenship and becoming a North Korean or something like that. Like I'm, you know, to deny Christ, to swear by the genus of Caesar is to do that. And so the true Christians wouldn't do it. And that's when they would often be put to death. So why Peter, of all the disciples, you think that's like the most famous? Is this because his grave is, everyone knows where it is? Well, it's because he's the founding of the Catholic Church, right?

It's Matthew 1618. Well, yeah. You know, if you go into the dome, 2 S. Petrus, at Superhank Petram, Adefakabo, ecclesiam me, at Tibby double-clavis, arregnichalum. You are Peter, and these letters are five times fast. They're like, they're like Luke's height, you know? Like the letters are tall of you. Yeah.

They're huge. They're totally in me. Rock up in my church. And so like, yeah, you are Peter and on this rock. And there's a lot, there's a lot of importance there. But we've learned a lot about like where that rock was and kind of some more blurry history behind me. What's the blurry concept of that rock? Well, that was the gates to hell where Jesus is preaching. Oh, okay, right, right. That's the three Philpah. Yeah, yeah. So it's at the base of Mount Hermann. Yeah, yeah. So it'd just be a little bit of an overread of what Jesus is saying there. Like this rock. Yeah. This, this is the gate to the underworld.

this is where I'm building my church, not you, Peter, you're the rock. But as Jesus is, though, I think we've always kind of contended that there's, much like a parable, there's sort of multiple meanings to all of it. So he's also declaring his dominance over the dark powers and that place of defilement. He's also charging Peter. And he's also claiming victory. So he's doing all these things. Yeah, it could be more multiple meanings.

It's the yes and. Yeah, because the apostles are the foundation of the church in Ephesians. I don't take it as meaning a pope, but I do think when Jesus says, you are Peter, and on this rock, he doesn't like flip it back to himself. That's an evangelical interpretation.

You are Peter, but on me, the rock, I will build my church. Yeah. I think he's doing a kind of an Ephesians thing where he's a you are Peter, and your generation will be the foundation of my church. But yeah,

there's also that conquest of the... Well, then we have acts, right? And this is what you've written your book on, and the apostles after the day of Pentecost and all that, I mean, they're taking, they're taking the gospel. They're evangelizing to the edges of the earth. To Spain, as we talked about, pre-world,

as far as they could go. And so these guys go out, right? And I know that famously, like, they, we wonder what happens to him. And we got Peter kind of, we think we know where he's at. He's underneath the church there. I think it's a good chance.

I give it a high likelihood that at least that's the spot of his grave. And pretty decent chance those are his bones. So all the people bear. there are Christians? The other people in the necropolis, many of them weren't because it was pre-Christian necropolis. Okay. But as you progress closer to Peter's grave,

you get second century graves that are clearly Christian. There's one in which Jesus is like a charioteer rising above the heavens and he's this solar imagery. So later, and maybe those aren't second, third, I forget the time, but those are after Peter, some Christians said, I want to be buried near, the prince, you know, near Peter. I'm going to be buried near him. So I want to go through like all the other ones. It's like a long time. But I do want to, I wanted to ask you at the beginning

in the show, like what would you, if you could get a first century Christian or like early church father in the room with like a modern theologian today and they were having a conversation? How do you think that would go down? What would they, how different would they be? And how confused of each other would they be? That's a good question. I mean, if you sort of put out all the, you know, the modern, you know, what's the TV, you know, whatever. Like, if you just, if they were just talking theology and could communicate, I actually think there'd be a lot of overlap. I don't know if they would totally understand like a modern worship set with like the smoke. Well, they could get to the smoke. If you put a little incense in the

smoke, you know, you could suddenly make that work. And, you know, I don't know if they could understand that. But if you put them in a more liturgical church, I think they would kind of, you know, to get what that is all about. Or like the earliest generations, you put them in like a house church setting. I think they would understand what that would be like. And once you start to talk about the risen Christ,

then there'd be a lot of overlap. They might wonder why, if you start talking about the gospel, they might wonder why you keep talking about personal sin and being afraid of death, and you don't bring in the third part of that, which is victory over the power. Like the fathers might think that that should be part of the gospel message.

That's interesting. Yeah. I feel like I'd be a wild ride to be on the fly on the wall for that conversation. When I get to heaven, I'm going to spend the first 10,000 years exclusively with ancient church fathers. I've got forever. Yeah. That's a short time.

In fact, in fact, you know, I believe in a literal millennium. So I might just use my 1,000 years to hang out with the ancient fathers and have them have them tour me around Rome. Well, it's cool because we just said an episode of Terry LeCobald, and she asked us, like, who, what disciple would we want to hang out with? Yeah. And Jude was my pick because he wrote a lot of the weird, blurry stuff. And so he had this, he had this kind of mind that I felt like would be interesting to interview.

And he's the brother of Jesus. Yeah. This is a lot there. But I think that all these guys are, you know, the founders and the fathers of why we still believe today and they all kind of went on their own paths. So Jesus, sorry, Peter's grave is sort of the most famous and obviously he's probably the most famous disciple. Yeah, I mean, to evangelicals, Paul kind of takes precedence over Peter. You know what I mean? Like the Catholics put Peter at top because of the papal thing. But born again, Christians tend to put Paul in Peter's place.

He wrote most of the theology. Yeah, exactly. Right. And you get his story in Acts. a little bit more in detail than compared. So what about Paul's demise? I love that church in Rome. Yeah. Have you been to, you've been to Roe? Yes. Okay.

And did you go out to the other one with St. Paul outside the walls? I don't know. It's been a while for you. We did. That's a great church. Whenever I take students there, they love it. St. Paul outside the walls, it's called. Because you, and the Vatican is outside the ancient city walls, too.

But you never buried inside the city walls. So if any church is out, outside the walls, it's a grave church. It's over some saint or apostolic grave. And so it was just outside the ancient city walls on the Austian way. So it was on the road south out to the coast, out to Ostia, which was Rome's port.

And there's good traditions too about Paul. Paul was a Roman citizen. So unlike Peter, you couldn't put him in a burning cloak and burn him up and torture him. You got a better death if you got sentenced to death if you were a citizen. So he was beheaded. and there's good evidence.

And of course, you know, we know he got there because, you know, the Book of Acts tells us that. Now, did he go back to Spain, go out to Spain and come back? There's debates. But there's good evidence that Paul's executed in Rome outside the city. Yeah, because the Bible doesn't specifically talk about how or when he's... Yeah, that's right.

I mean, Acts ends... Well, and 2 Timothy, he's in a kind of imprisonment, which is more intense than what he's in in Acts 28. So it's likely that's a second imprisonment. Is this under Nero? Yeah, under Nero. Okay. And so like in Acts, it's Jesus, or it's an angel or Jesus around the time of the shipwreck that

says, don't worry, I've appointed you, I think it's Jesus who says, you're going to go testify in front of the emperor. And that would have been Nero. Wow. In the 60s. Nate, listen, gold. Gold. And precious metals have been around since the dawn of time.

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That's blurrygold.com. So if he gets beheaded, then he's buried outside the city walls. Yep. So like Peter, there was a trophy put up. We know this because that deacon says, there's a trophy on the Vatican and there's a trophy for Paul on the Ostian way. So around the year 200, there is something there. Now, we don't know what that is. But so what happens again is that Constantine, because the trophy marked the spot, when Constantine says, I want to patronize the Christians, I want to support you, I want to give churches for your famous sites, they put a little chapel up in the fourth century there, which then, a little bit later in the fourth century,

became a huge basilica. It was so popular, they were like, this chapel isn't cutting it. We need a big church. And that church stayed there from the late fourth century until 18, So that's why I think there's a pretty even better chance that the grave and the bones are legitimate. It's because it was just encapsulate. There wasn't all this funny business, but a workman up on the roof in 1823 accidentally started a fire.

And so this glorious church burned, mostly burned. Some of it survived. So if you go there today, you can see the arch and there's this mosaic and it says this church is sanctified by the body of Paul, the teacher of the world. because Paul is, Paul is the ultimate reversal of the Deuteronomy 32. I mean, Paul is the mouthpiece to go to Malachi 11,

to the, where the sun sets, to the end of the world. And so he's called the doctor of the nations, the teacher of the nations. And so that church today, if you go to it, it has the same thing where you can sort of peek into a window. Okay. And there's a sarcophagus in there. And I wanna say it was like 2009 or something,

not that long ago. They drilled into it. And they did a testing on the bones. And they found that they are first century male bones. Really? Yeah. Wow. Is that in relation to Peter?

So it's out, it's, it, if you went there today, it would feel like you're still in Rome, but historically you were outside the walls of Rome. So I'm no professional here, but I think most people understand, obviously, like in church history, there's like the Orthodox and then the Catholics, and you have different traditions. Yeah, there's others too,

the Assyrian Church of the East. And then you have modern day Christians who think any sort of homage or worship to relics or people that are dead is bad. Okay. Okay. Okay. This is, yeah, this is what's coming to. Yes. It's a good topic. Yes. Yes. Because, yeah. Yeah. We didn't get to Thomas's relics. Should we do Thomas first? I can do Thomas. You get to the reasons. Sure. Let's do Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. So Paul's outside the wall. That church is probably the location of Paul's death. We don't know much, but it's assumed he's beheaded. Yeah. By Nero. Yeah. After being imprisoned, which we get from 2 Timothy. Is that if I'm first Timothy? And there's the acts of Paul is a second century text, which tells the details of it. Oh, wow.

And so the second century is plenty close enough for living memory to have been recorded. Okay. And so most of that text is Paul in this lady named Fecla, who like trots around with him and does all these like daring deeds, and she's like this heroine, and she's in danger, and she's kind of a damsel in distress, but she's heroic. But in the end of it is this part called the martyrdom of Paul. And it talks about his confrontation, always, both Peter and Paul. In both of these second century texts that talk about their martyrdom, it's all couched in battle language.

Nero is the enemy, just as he is in like the Book of Revelation where he's like, you know, he's the ultimate Antichrist. Yeah. And then the language is Paul or Peter are recruiting warriors or soldiers for Christ. And Nero is indignant. How dare you try to recruit your kingdom's fighters in my territory? So there's this territory thing, there's this invasion motif, there's this Christian, like, raising this underground army. And so they get executed because they are like seditious against the kingdom of Nero, which is hugely blurry. And so these, all martyrdom is like that, actually.

All the martyrs are in cosmic, they are sacraments of a cosmic combat. Wow. They are, what is the sacrament? It's a physical representation of a higher truth. The death of Christ, his blood, his body broken, is. seen visibly or baptismal waters shows the interior cleansing. And so a sacrament is a visible word. It's a proclamation of a truth that you can see. So the martyrs are sacraments of the cosmic combat because they are fighting the Romans or the authorities. They're in a sporting place,

a sporting arena, which is a warfare place actually. Yeah. And so metaphor for war, but the higher battle is always with Satan and his forces. So how do we get on that? Peter and Paul's stories of martyrdom are couched as warfare against Rome and the gods and the powers of darkness. The powers of darkness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you asked about Thomas. Yeah. And then we'll get to the reason the bones because this got to be fascinating. I mean, because and we'll get to that. But there's a ton of the Bible about the significance of bones. But what happens with Thomas? Yeah. Bones are huge. Whole Whole kingdoms in church history rose and fell on whether they could have bones. Which is wild.

Oh, yeah. The bones of Mark in Venice, oh my gosh. How they got secretly stolen from Alexandria. So the early church fathers just, they had no problem with these. We have to come back to it because we had to do Thomas. We'll do Thomas then. So if you go to Rome today and you're at St. John Ladron, which is the Pope's official church, near there is Santa Croce in Jerusalem, which is the sacred cross in Jerusalem.

And it used to be Constantine's mother's palace, her personal palace, Helena. Helena is the one that went to the Holy Land and started all these churches there. And among the things that she did is that she supposedly found the fragments of the true cross. So I've written novels about this. So that got passed around.

Well, there's a whole bunch of things that purport to be the true cross or fragments of the true cross. But maybe the most famous one, famous one was that Helena found it. But if you go to Santa Croce, so she literally brought dirt from Jerusalem, or someone did at some point,

and they spread it on the floor so that like, oh, I'm walking in the dirt of Jerusalem, like it's under the ground. Like I'm in the Holy Land. We've brought a little bubble of the Holy Land to Rome for pilgrims to go to. So there's relics there. They have the crossbar of the good thief.

They have thorns from the crown. But the main relic that you can find in Santa Croce is this like, it's like this silver urn, it's behind glass, and there's like this finger bone. And it's the bone of Thomas, with which he probed the wounds of Christ. Is that true?

So Thomas, all the traditions about him point east. Like you were just talking about Catholics and Greek Orthodox. And so those are the Western traditions. You know, if you look at like Paul's journeys, even these books, Paul's journeys, he's going west. He's going to the inner,

of the earth and he knows perfectly well, I cannot get to the end of the earth to the east because the Silk Road goes to China, what they knew was China, I can't get that far. If I'm going to get to the end of the earth, I got to go west because I can get to Hispania. Hispania is

in the Roman Empire. That's the end of the world, to the west. So all of Paul's missionary journeys go west, but many Christians go east on the Silk Road. And they don't have the Greek language. They don't have the Latin language, of course. They have Aramaic or what's called Syriac, which is essentially Hebrew, Hebrew, Aramaic. So they're still speaking the language of Jesus himself. And they go east

into the Syriac-speaking church, which is the Assyrian Church of the East, the Church of the Middle East, the Church of Iraq in Iran, Persia, the Parthian Empire, right? So Thomas is completely associated with that trajectory. And there's two different Thomas traditions. So like he gets to India, they say. But there's two areas. Is it northern India or southern India? Both would have been reachable. So like northern India would be kind of if you went from Antioch down the Silk Road. And you have to go through Edessa, which is probably where his body ended up, Edessa. But even further, you get into like Northern India and the stories of the acts of Thomas talk about a king named Gandhuforis, who's a real king in sort of what we would call Pakistan or Afghanistan or Afghanistan or

India or the Indus River Valley. So there was like tradition about Christians going there. But there's also today in India, the southern part of India, Kerala, the Malabar Coast. That's where the Christian casts are today, for the most part, the ancient Christians. And they have these ancient songs and pillars that record a very early Christian presence. And that was very reachable from Egypt. So there you would go from Egypt, you would go by sea, the Red Sea, and just kind of cut around. And the Romans were totally trading with that part. of India. So which one is Thomas? I think if it was one or the other, it was probably the northern one. And eventually his body gets brought to Edessa. Does he die as a martyr? Yeah. He

dies as a martyr. Later, the Portuguese come. Now this is like, you know, the 1400s or something like that. And the Portuguese Catholics come to India and they cook up a story that there's a gray in Chennai, which is on the east, and he was speared and all this stuff. I think that's probably folklore. It's too late. But he was, but he does die as a martyr. Yeah.

He's spirit. He's spirit. Spirit, I think is what happened. More than likely in the northern Pakistan. Yes, yes. And that's, that's what you're hearing. You know, like the spear and. Yeah, the spirit of Christ.

Yeah. Often they imitate Christi. Imitatio Christi is a huge martyrdom motif. That you, that the martyr die. like Christ, he's crucified, or in some way, imitates what Jesus did. Making fun of them. Well, no, no, no. It's that, it's, however the per-

I don't think most of the soldiers were aware enough of theology to make a mockery. Yeah. It's more that the Christians reinterpret the details of the story to show them as a Christ figure. Yeah. It's more of a reading of what happened,

there's eyewitness rim, rem. Isn't it sort of like, isn't it elevated as well, Brian, like where if you were, there's something even more sacred to die as Christ dies. Like, but not exactly because Peter wants to be upside down or if that folklore is true. Yeah. So yeah.

So it's kind of set the scene. You've got different guys going different places based on languages they know and other traditions. Or they just divide the world up and they're like, we're going this way. Some of them aren't listening to Michael W. Smith. They're not going west.

I thought of that too, actually. There's, um, there are traditions. Like, for example, Rufinus says, after Jesus went to heaven, all of the apostles got together and formulated the Apostles' Creed. And then they all apportioned out where they're going to go. And each one gets assigned a territory. And each one contributes a clause to the Apostles' Creed. And then now they go and take it everywhere.

So is it that organized? Is there like a mission sending? It's much more organic. Because you can see like when we grow up like, oh, Peter and Paul had a little bit of a, they were like, they argue about stuff. Oh, that's a huge thing actually. In Galatians, it's like, it's, yeah, now that's a huge aspect of the early Christian studies of Peter and Paul. You know, growing up in the church, you just think, oh, they all this get along. It was this rosy story, they go off and everything.

There's tension in the New Testament, but the martyrdom stories put them back together. Sure. The martyrdom stories, they call it twinning them. They get twinned. So they even say, I think it's June 6th is that when they were going to their martyrdom, Peter and Paul met on their respective paths and exchanged a kiss, and then each went to their martyrdom. Wow. So they,

where the New Testament has some friction between Peter and Paul. Yeah, yeah. Like, for example, in Romans, in Romans 16, Peter writes to all these people. He doesn't mention Peter. Why doesn't he? Peter was probably there at that time. But anyway. He leaves the Mount Paul's like, we're not talking about Peter right now.

I mean, that's what scholars say. Is it that even in the New Testament era, there was this kind of tension that they had agreed to work in Rome in separate spheres. I'll go to the Gentiles, you go to the Jews. You know, or something like that. And divide up the, yeah. Kind of divided up. But anyway, we were talking about Thomas, kind of early church drama.

So Thomas more than likely is spirit in Pakistan and somehow his finger is retrieved. So what happens is, what happens is Edessa, because it wasn't quite, it was in the boundary where it was sometimes in the Roman Empire, sometimes in the Parthian Empire, it has enough, like, it gets scooped into the Roman orbit. And so Edessa becomes the place

where his bones and his grave is. So in the fourth century, this lady, pilgrim comes from Spain and she does a Holy Land pilgrimage and she's in the Holy Land but she goes up to Odessa and says look they have a beautiful church Thomas's grave is here but when the Crusaders come the Crusaders create a kingdom of Edessa like there's four Crusader states one of them is the Crusader state the kingdom of Edessa so now the Crusaders are in charge of that area and they bring his relics back to Italy or Tona I think is the town So his full skeleton is there.

But I guess one of the popes was like, you know what, guys, we need the finger. Like most of Thomas isn't famous. There's one part of Thomas that's super famous. And that's his finger. So they get the finger into Rome. Brian, I mean, how sure based on the record, are we that skeleton belongs to Thomas?

In the book that I did, another book called After Axe, where I look at these traditions, I give a report card where I score these things, and I forget the score that I gave, but like the reality of the finger are pretty low. I want to say like D-minus. Thomas going to India or what, you know, the far east or the middle, you know,

that would have been sort of a middle area for them. Likely. His grave in Odessa pretty likely. Okay. Yeah. But real finger, I'd be more confident of Peter or Paul than I would have Thomas. So to Nate's question then as we circle back, like this idea of like kind of this, why the bones?

Yep. The cult, I think you said when we were talking about pre-interview, like the cult of the saints, this idea that like, why do these things so important? Yep, yep. Well, for one thing, you do have some scriptural basis for this. People say, oh, that's this nonsense. But you have like the bones of Elisha and Second King, Second Kings, when someone is dead and their body gets dumped into the grave next to Elish's bones, he comes back to life. And so you're like,

that's in the Bible. Or in, in Acts, you have handkerchiefs that even just touch the apostles. They not only do healings, they do exorcisms. That's in the book of Acts. The handkerchiefs that swipe up against an apostle are able to, you know, to be transferred. So these are called Brandeia. They're called contact relics. There's something that contacted the holy and the holiness imbues itself into the into that item that can then be taken away. So like the grave of Peter in this church outside the walls, the early version of the church or Paul, or Peter or Paul? Paul, thank you for correct.

Yes, Paul. The grave of Paul, the slab that's on top of it, it says, Paul, Paul, Apostle and Martyr, and there are these holes in it. So it was the marble cover of his grave, but it has holes cut in the top. and they would put a handkerchief on a string, and they would lower it down so it could contact the bones, and then they'd pull it up, and then you'd have the martyr's holiness would be there

in, or the saint's holiness was in the cloth. Now that sounds so ridiculously superstitious. It does, yeah. But you know who it doesn't sound superstitious to? All Christians prior to the Enlightenment. This is actually not only the biblical worldview, but the church historical worldview, until the Enlightenment pulled the holy

and the sort of de-enchantment, de-enchanted the world. But is this the worldview of everyone at the time, too? Yes. Yes, yes. The bones of the saints were the absolute most important thing a kingdom could have. Every mighty king who wanted to create a Christian kingdom in the Middle Ages, they had to build a cathedral.

They had to have an altar with saintly bones underneath it. And they, I mean, the theology around this, I guess, as you said, comes from Acts, right? There's these, we've got stuff in the scriptures that says the things that have contact with, it's hard to imagine how this, you know, like from our standpoint, post-enlightenment

and more just materialistic, you know, logically thinking, it's hard to make this not feel funny. Yeah, like Jason, like,

what was it, Jason Giambi wearing a golden thong for the Yankees to break his, out of his, out of his slump. You know,

there's, it feels like baseball. He don't touch the line. Well, even the people in the Blurryverse who understand all these things are still like, that's crossing the line.

That's too much. Well, I'm glad you see. say that. And I want to kind of go on your record here and say, like, I am not a person trying to stir up evangelical Christians to worship bones of the sense. Like, I love the catacombs. And there's a spiritual beauty and power of the catacombs. And I'm very much aware of kind of that. But I'm not trying to say that that's proper. However, let's think about what was in their mind. It wasn't a problem to them. No, because whenever you see healings in scripture, you lay hands. So for example, the woman with

the issue of blood. She just incidentally brushes up against Jesus and it says power left him. Yeah. So power is like a substance that can flow through physical contact. That's just a biblical, that's a blurry verse, that's a biblical worldview. Yeah. Yeah. Is that power and is for good or for ill, because it can flow out to do damage too, right? And so whenever you heal, so like Ananias, he lays hands on Paul and the scales fall away. Or when in the, shipwreck on Malta. When Paul wants to heal somebody, he lays hands on him and the power flows through. Jesus heals through saliva and mud and laying hands. So power has physical contact as its conduit. Yeah. So I mean, in Jesus Day, during his ministry, is that kind of,

are there churches around that are built on some of the people that have died in the past? In that time, you think? Not in Jesus' day. I mean, you'd have, You got some of these bones of Moses. Yeah. So the Jews have always been, it's always been important to bury. Yes. They don't cremate. The body is treated as a kind of a holy thing.

And so you do get these like famous graves of, you know. The patriarchs. Yeah, the patriarchs or something. Like yeah. We think about Joseph, like really man, one of his bones has got a return. Exactly. And you think we think about like there's that really wild story in Jude about Satan. And Michael fighting over the bones of Moses.

What was that saying? That is biblical and overlooked. Yeah. When I say, I'm not trying to get people to worship bones? Of course not. Am I trying to say that we're overlooking something that the ancients took for granted both Testaments and the early church and the medieval church actually? Yes.

And that is that the presence of the holy, you know, like this is what this book is about is that the temple, which was to come into the physical place to access God in the Holy of Holies, has been inverted. Now, we are the temple of God. You want to access the divine. You access it in bodies. I mean, Mary, think about this. God, the first place that God ever became incarnate was in the womb of a virgin. She becomes the temple. A lot of the traditions say Mary as a little girl worked in the temple as a weaver, that she was. wove the veil of the Holy of Holies. That's wild if true, right? Yeah, and it's a second century story, Proe Evangelium of James. And if it were true, it could be remarkable, but at the very least, we know that God chose,

who is the least in society, male or female? A woman. Who among females is, you know, insignificant, not the older, wise woman, the young girl who accomplished nothing? Who's even worse? One who is thought to have had sex outside of wedlock and is not a virgin.

I mean, she was the bottom of the social, hierarchy. And God says, that's going to be my temple. Right when Herod thought that the temple had to be this magnificent golden billing. And God says, no, no, the kind of God that I am is the kind of God that makes the lowest of the low in your society as my temple. And he takes up habitation in the womb of the virgin. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. That's good. We were talking about that yesterday. the disciples of the fishermen, they're kind of flunk out. So making it to the, to the, the weak things of the world. Yeah, they didn't make it to the top of the, you know, the academic paradigm.

And so, but Jesus says, you know, follow me. They're instantly in. Yeah. And now they're, he's their rabbi. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, you know, the bones, I mean, obviously we've talked about how other cultures and like, especially the giants, you know, that went on. all over the place are making these burial mounts and putting their bones in specific.

And they're venerated. Yeah. And they're worshipping those bones of their ancestors. And those things are here in America and all over. Yeah. And it's, Mississippi and culture and all of that. Yeah. It's weird. And these. Does it, where does it jump the shark though? Is it, is it jump the shark when you began to pray to these bones or begin to. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't think you pray or address these things. So what you need to do to make it real or relevant for today is to, to tell their stories because a big part of the pilgrimage and the orientation of going to the grave is to tell the story along the way and to rehearse the life of the saint. I mean, that's what, you know, that's what Chaucer wrote about in Canterbury Tales. They're all going

to the grave of a saint and they're telling the stories along the way. And it changes you. You know, when you go through Rome, you see all this ancient history, you see the Coliseum, You see these graves, you see these ancient churches. I mean, you leave and you're like, I do not take whatever I'm doing as serious as I did before I came here. And I've seen that so many times because I take students on these trips. And one of the main things that I want them to do is to see that their faith is not just smoke and rock bands in 2026. That's fine if it is.

But that there's also this kind of antiquity and this historicity and this historicity and And the word that I would really use is Catholicity with a little C, that they belong to something so much bigger, that these people that we're telling, not just biblical figures as important as they are, but the saints of the ages, both men and women, are part of this thing called the church, this warrior, this brave people that are taking the message of the gospel and they're beating back the powers of evil and the gates of hell will not withstand. And so modern Christians, and so, you know, Luke, you say, well, what's, what do we do with the saints? today. We don't worship their bones or prey to their bones. We live into the legacy of the Hebrews

11. Let us also run with endurance the race that is set before us as we all run towards the king. It's a marker, right? It's a, it's a, or a bar. You go, let us try to, let us try to, let us see the bar that's set and run and try to run that race. I used to begin one of my church history classes with that. Do you want to be the lazy generation? Like I'll say it to your listeners. Like, do you want to be the sloppy, lazy generation? Do you not see? what, Hebrews 11, the heroes of the faith? Do you not see the martyrs of the church, the apostles, all those that came after?

The bar is set high. Raise the bar, Christian, in 2026 or whenever. Like, strive even higher for Jesus. What do we do with, like, stories of just quickly, like, of, there's more modern-day stories. I actually watched a special on this. I can't remember what it was. There was a whole series, probably on Netflix,

about relics and stuff. And there are purportedly, modern day people that encounter things. You mentioned the true cross or some of the bones of the saints and they shroud which we just actually this week. Kathy's big. You ought to have Kathy back on the shroud. We said Jeremiah Johnson just said we,

that episode comes out today for us. The people are still purportedly having encountering or having a miraculous encounter experience with relics. That's kind of hard for a lot of people too to be like, doesn't healing power come from the Holy Spirit? And doesn't that come from Jesus? And yet you've got, and so people will either go, to zero some, they'll go, well, that's just all demonic

and what's happening with like saint worship and saint prayer. Maybe that stuff can happen, or maybe there's this and view of point from antiquity that says that, like, this is, and what do we do with some of that in your mind? Okay, it's a great question. Yeah, let me speak to that. I think it's important. And another way this would come up. would be like icons in the Greek Orthodox Church

where you're praying towards an icon, you're praying to a scene. So I've thought a lot about these topics. I think the way to handle it theologically is to go back to the incarnation. So that in the incarnation, what you see is that the eternal and the divine, the second person of the Trinity,

has forever joined himself in perfect unity with materiality. And in that moment, he takes all cosmic materiality, reality into it. He doesn't just take a body. He takes the cosmos into himself. God joins himself to physical material existence. And so what that does is it kind of re-enchance the material, that it doesn't bifurcate them in this platonic way where the realm of the forms is up here and the realm matter is no good. But it re-enchance, and maybe that's not quite the right word, but it re-spiritualizes physicality, which is why bread and the cup can give us, spiritual power, which is why water and baptism, which is why pilgrimages to holy lands.

And so the places where a person was buried or the lands where they walk, people say, do the footsteps of Paul, do the footsteps of the heroes of church history, even, you know, reformation. There's a kind of incarnational truth that the material earthly plane is connected with the spiritual world. And it's liminal, right? Liminal. I mean, that's a great word for you guys. It's the word where there's a line and you're sort of both and. You're on one side of the line and on the other side of the line at the same time. You're liminal. And that's blurry.

The line is very blurry. The line is very blurry. It's the back of the wardrobe, right? You know, you're through the wardrobe and there's Narnia back there. And so you handle those kind of things, not by worshipping bones, but by recognizing that earthly places where events happen, territories that are given over, places where footsteps were and mighty deeds were done and deaths were died and and even interment and memory memory is physical. I mean, even our brains are putting memory into a physical form. And so physicality and

memory go together. And so why would we not think that spiritual realities and forces are interconnected with these nodes, these little nodes around the world of places where things happen? I think most Christians would be, feel like their discernment goes off. or they feel uneasy if they walked into the temple and they see incense burning. Oh, no. And they see the Ark of the Covenant. And inside are items, staff, Aaron's staff, right?

And then the... Tablets of the law. Yeah, the tablots of the law. And so these things, these items are important. Of course, they'd be dead by having walked into the whole world. But for a moment. Yeah, for the moment. Wow.

But you know what I'm saying though? I do. I do. I do. A modern Christian would be offended by, you know, the design that God set up. And I think that you have all these stories of these items. But they are offended by it.

A lot of Christians are offended by it when they walk into, like, in Bethlehem, the church of the nativity. Or they walk to a Greek Orthodox church today. And they're like, this is, what's going on? This is horrible. What's this incense? The incense is the prayers of the saints. Like God inhabits this incense, like as these prayers go up.

And, you know, smells and bells. And so liturgy and structure, all of these things are actually deeply a part of Old Testament worship. not as much New Testament because it was the code of a house church movement but as soon as the Christians were able to begin sort of constructing a Christian apparatus they constructed an old testament type of apparatus.

It's amazing because I think that when you're talking about the physical and how much Christ becomes physical and how important that is, I mean people will say because I believe there was a tree in the Garden of Eden because of the cross not because like I could go back and understand Eden. I can understand the cross.

And so I know that piece of wood is symbolic all the way back. And so obviously if somebody finds the cross, somewhere later, there's going to be something significant about this is the cross that Jesus thought on. There's probably rumors for, you know, hundreds of years of this is actually the wood that Jesus. So in the place where that was found, there's in the, in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem today. Deep underground, you go down steps. There's the chapel of St. Helena.

And that's the place where she supposedly found it. People don't know this. It's hard to find. And one of these monks or whatever has control of this area where there is an ancient Christian graffiti. And it depicts a boat. And so these are pilgrims that came. And this is deep underground.

So this would have been like under the Temple Mount because the Temple is destroyed in 70 AD. So some Christians got themselves to the, to the, I'm sorry, it's not the Temple Mount. It's the plaza that Hadrian had put over the grave of Jesus. So Emperor Hadrian puts a plaza like a temple to Venus over the grave of Jesus. So it's not the temple mount, but it was a platform like that.

And these Christians got themselves underneath that platform and crawled in and got as close as they could to where the empty tomb would have been. Because again, Hadrian was trying to obscure it with a pagan temple. But in so doing, he marked out a spot. Yeah, no, that's exactly what happened. Because Constantine says, get rid of that platform. We're going to put the church of the Holy Sepulchre right there. And so the hill of Galgotha stuck up out of that plaza. But anyway, these Christians got there and they made a graffiti of a boat.

So they came by sea. And they wrote the words, Lord, we have come. And what did the angels say in the tomb? Come. Yeah. See the place where he lay. And these Christians got underneath a pagan temple's platform and left a graffiti that they got as close as they could. But that's the area where the fragment of the cross was found.

Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That is crazy. Again, I'm not saying that, you know, like if you found that wood, it would have power in and of itself, I don't think. Yeah, but I think to some people, though, right, and this was a conversation we had with Jeremiah Johnson was that is that, is a tangible evidence, as you just pointed out as well, like tangible places and purported tangible evidence are like signposts for apologetics, really, to say, I just don't believe something that feels far away or, You know, I just don't need more faith. I can actually go touch things and see things and walk places.

And I can see, walk, be to the physicality, to the liminal. Like, I can be there. And there's a power to that. We were supposed to be in Israel this last spring. Of course, that didn't happen. But we will be next spring. Okay. As long as the war doesn't start again.

Yeah. But part of that too was to go see and be in those places where Christ walk. That's great. The places of scripture, right? Being in Rome was super cool. for that. That is such a, like you were saying before, that's such a transformative thing in someone's Christian life. Like pilgrimage is a huge thing. Everybody should try to do it. I just, I don't know what the line is. I think we've become so, we've removed ourselves so far from history.

Yeah. And just the ancients and how they viewed things that even if you read and, you know, Moses had a staff. Why? That's not, God doesn't work that way. Raises it up. Yeah. And parts the water with it. And it isn't. They put a serpent on it. See, he's losing the war when his hands go down. And then he, there's all these interesting stories that kind of blur the lines between a physical item and a relationship with God. Yeah. And I don't know what the answer is. Think about John 316.

That is everybody's favorite. Like that is. Tebow, baby. Yeah, exactly. That's right. I mean, you hold it up at the end zone. Yeah. Try it by every field goal.

Yeah. Nobody ever, you know, notices the verses that are right before that, which is, that the pole in the Old Testament with the serpents on it, and it was lifted up in order to be salvation. You know what I mean? Like you were saying about like the cross and the trees and so forth. I mean, there are all these like images of that. Like you've got the tree in the Garden of Eden.

You've got the tree of life in the book of Revelation. Cursed is he was hung upon a tree. Like the tree that joins that, the tree that joins, you know, the two trees at either end is the tree of Christ in the middle of it, you know, which is prefigured by that where the pole, looking up at the tree

is what brought you salvation. Why there was snakes? That's a little strange to me. What, I mean, what, so we've covered some of the relics and the ends of these apostles, but like, I think one of the things that is an early church guy, um,

the first believers, they operate in a world that they understood, I think much more like, if we talked about the Heiser paradigm, right? And this site of cosmic power. and kingdom of darkness, spiritual entities, demons inhabiting temples, fallen angels were active in history. How did the church fathers view this worldview?

We kind of touched on the beginning, but like what we talked about the community of the saints and the graves, you put anything down into Paul's grave. Relics, of course. Martyrdom. Martyrdom. And that with cosmic combat. Yep.

Do you guys know Gustav Al Lane? Have you heard of this guy? No. Good friends. Good friends. Gustav. He's not the same guy that was digging around for Peter. He's not alive. It's a book. It's a book. Christus Victor is the name of his book. Christus Victor. Yeah, yeah. You've probably heard the concept is huge.

And so he was a Swedish bishop, I think, in Lutheran in the 1930s or whatever. His book is published. Christus Victor is like Heiser before Heiser for the ancient church. Like basically what Gustav Alain says is that This is an atonement theory It's an atonement theory. Exactly right. It's the theory of the atonement that later comes to emphasize

like legal methods and substitution and things like that. And I'm a huge believer in penal substitution. I would never think we should lose that doctrine. I think it's huge. It's essential. It's how almost, it's what Billy Graham said at every crusade. It's how everybody comes to Christ. Christ took my punishment, died in my place. I don't ever want to lose that soteriology.

But what Alain shows in Christus Victor is that in the Middle Ages under Anselm, you get more of an orientation of the atonement toward God, where something is being given toward God. And what Alain says is that, well, that takes the emphasis on God being the one who carries it through from the beginning.

And so what Elaine says in Christus Victor is that there was a pre-medieval, ancient Christus Victor view in which God himself is reconciling the world to himself. He's the initiator. He's the one who comes in. He sends forth the son. It's not that there's this transaction where God is the recipient of the son's transaction. I think that's in scripture. But there's also the idea where what Elaine calls is the dramatic. It's the story method.

Yeah. by which there's this kind of divine story of invasion and defeating of the cosmic powers. And so, like, Elaine is laying these things out, reorienting soteriology in the ancient church to what it really was, sort of forgotten. That's why I say it's like Heiser before Heiser. Well, I remember either Heiser said this on our show

or on a different show I was listening to, but he said, I believe in all the atonement theories. Yeah, good, good, good. They all have their place and understanding the cosmos. And I think as Christians, we do hang on to penal substitutionary atonement. I think a little bit more from the guilt-driven part of us, but not understanding the cosmic story of there is an enemy. There is a, like, reclaiming his people.

There is this victory of Christ. Going down into death, breaking open the doors of hell and rescuing people, too. So there's all these interesting. I think we talked to Kirk Cameron a little about that for a second at the end. He was like, oh, I'd never heard about that. this and I was like, well, I mean, this for me, that's what this podcast is for. When I was walking away, kind of like disenfranchised by the modern, just evangelical church combos, I was running into some of these old dudes talking about these things going,

I feel like the story's bigger. Yeah. I feel like it's crazier. I feel like it's harder to understand. And so there's a ransom theory, a couple of those other ones. So there's, ransom theory is somewhat connected to. Christ's victory because it's making the devil is kind of the object of it.

Exactly. So you do see ransom language, you know, in the church fathers. I don't think it's a very, it's not the best way to think about the atonement, but victory certainly is. Sure. And victory is a huge thing for Constantine.

So a lot of the talk about the ancient church tends to stick into the second and third century where it's like they, you know, sort of close to the apostles. And then Constantine is often cast as like, oh, he's the bad guy that ruined everything. But actually Constantine, first of all, I think his conversion was legit. I take that view.

There's debate about that. But that it was a real conversion to what he would understand. It took him some time to grow into it. But there's a whole cosmic battle thing happening with Constantine as well in the ancient church. And so most of the big wig church fathers are after Constantine, like Augustine or the Cappadocians.

Athanasius is right there in the middle of it. So John Chrysostom, you know, a lot of the the leading lights are living in this new Constantinian world. The creed of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed. We said, we were talking, you know, offline, and you said that some of the ancient church fathers, the monastic church fathers were very, very blurry, as you put it. Like, you know, talk about that.

I mean, the desert fathers went out to the desert. The monks, yeah. I mean, they were making, they were making beer, that's for sure. Anyone's ever had plenty of the elder. It's a very good, good beer. The brewing of fine ales. Interesting. Well, I think of that. You know there's a plenty of the elder beer, right?

In the younger, they have these. They're actually very hard to get. That's the name of the beer. Interesting. They're very hard to get, and they're actually phenomenal. Egypt was a beer drinking culture because you had grain there. Israel didn't have enough grain to be very beer. Mesopotamia was beer drinking.

Wine was the drink usually in. Manishavits. But I don't think, you know, St. Anthony probably wasn't swilling too much beer out there in the desert. Anthony's interesting. So they're talking about the monks. and kind of being these like blurry figures. They were, they were like the OG blurry people, you know? Because they lived in that liminal world,

like you said, like the desert. Like they were called hermits, right? Hermits. So there's two kinds of monasticism. There's Arametic and Chenobitic. You've heard of this. Arametic is hermits, single figures living by themselves alone. Chenobitic, Koine and Bios,

it means common life, so it's communal. So that's like Benedict's rule. Like a monastery with a monastery where the brothers would come and live together. But the original form was like St. Anthony, Aramitic. But that's the word for the desert. So like Jesus says, like, oh, the demon will go out into the arid places. And they'll live there and go back. That's where you can go find a bunch more demons and bring them back to civilization.

Well, they send the scapegoat. Is Azazel is sent to the desert. Christ is tempted in the desert. Exactly. The desert is the place of the... The dry places. Or like the garrisoned demoniac. He's living in ruins.

Yeah. Because there's no water of life there. And there's no civilization. So the formless and void is still there. There's still chaos out there. There's still emptiness out there. There's the world is still vain there. It's like the pre-primordial.

Yes, primordial world. It hasn't yet been subdued and made productive. So demons love it. So the monks go there. So the monks go there to do war. Wow. They don't go there to escape civilization. They go there to do war where the demons are.

They enter the domain of the demons. And like Anthony, would, like Obi-1 Canobi, just going out there. But these are like the Desert Fathers, they're going out to... I don't know, man, I feel like Obi-Wan was kind of like shirking his duties a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, just kind of chilling until Luke would come along. They came up with that character based off a monk. He kind of... Yeah, or like a samurai. I think Lucas originally wanted this like samurai guy to do it.

And then they got... Not like a warrior monk, like Nach Libre. Yeah. But these monks were. And Anthony, they say, would come back, you know, whenever, he would come back, he would be like bruised and damaged, which is like what Tucker Carlson said when he has a demonic attack. Yeah, so I remember reading, my buddy went to Mount Athos and he was telling me, he was telling me about the hermits are on like the coast and then the other guys are like,

but they take these trips to make sure the hermits are all right. You do it okay out here and they're just all by themselves. So I did one of those trips one time and I was, I have to admit, I was sorely disappointed. So our students at Moody one time, we lived on a ship. and we sailed in the EGNC, and we put in at different historic ports, and we studied, we did life together, we lived on this small ship, there's a sailing yacht. And we put in and hiked up a hill to meet one of these hermits.

And I thought, oh, for sure, this guy is gonna be so wise. And we're gonna just like, a Gandalf. Yeah, he's gonna be like a Gandalf, or he's gonna like understand all these things and explain. He was the most rude and works salvationist guy I've ever met. Like he was mocking our female student. you, yeah, you know, you sleazy, you know. And he's like, you're just getting pleasures now, but I'm going to go to heaven better.

So I was so disappointed. But some of them are good. You probably get both, both and you probably get some of that are like, have become wise and have like sort of, I don't know. He kind of went crazy. Yeah. And then I think you have knows. And then I think you have knows. And then I think the humans are designed for that.

No. But the point is that they are going into this context as kind of these warriors. and they were understood as such. So another, you know, just to kind of put, like, put this, connect this to, like, the scholarly world, but like Peter Brown. So Peter Brown was a Princeton University professor. I think it's Princeton, University of California.

Anyway, brilliant guys published through those presses. But Peter Brown wrote on the rise of the Holy Man in late antiquity. He also wrote the best biography of Augustine. Like, I love his biography of Augustine. But he also wrote about the rise of the holy man in late antiquity. And what he says is that there's this traditional view of like the ancient and the medieval is like, oh, there's the fall of Rome. And like overnight, they kind of fall and the legions disappear. And everybody wakes up and is like, oh, Middle Ages.

Okay, you know, let's put on my suit of armor and find a princess. Like, I'm medieval now. You know, like very sudden. And what Brown said is, look, there's this whole phase called late antiquity where it's still like got this like Roman thing happening, but there's also like this Germanic European thing happening and they're sort of mixing. But one of the markers of late antiquity is the rise of this figure

of the holy man who is this go-between figure. And most of the Christians knew they could not do what the holy man or woman because there's these female aesthetics. many of them are female, so it's holy man or holy woman. And we couldn't go do it, but we are so glad that these monks exist because they are like our Navy SEALs. I mean, that would be what it would be like today. It's like, I know perfectly well, I cannot be a Navy SEAL.

But I am so glad that there's somebody who is special forces who can go do that, you know, find the giant in Afghanistan or whatever. Yeah. You know, just fight battles that I know I can't fight. And the monks were like the Navy SEALs for the people, for the common people. They went into the foreign, they scout, they went into the foreign territory, they defeated the powers on behalf of us all. And we always think of monks as like, what good were they? Like, that's the evangelical thing.

It's like monks were sort of they rejected evangelism. No, they kind of like did the ultimate evangelism because they cleared away the demonic powers. You know what I mean? We kind of kind of like the Amish. They just went and they did their own thing. their own, right? They siloed themselves. And I guess you could even say it's, it's kind of self-serving. Like they just didn't, they wanted to do for themselves. But this view is, yeah. There's like a, there's a salt and they, they preserve society. But those guys were doing spiritual warfare on

the front lines. And there's, there's blurry stories associated with them, like weird things that happened. Oh yeah, that's pretty much all their stories are like that. I mean, like how, you know, these, like if you look in the artistic tradition of like St. Anthony, it's always like, you know, here he is. And there's like these, these wild looking creatures, like in the paintings of the Reformation. You know, there's all these like crazy, you know, three-headed monsters. They're all attacking him. And they're all attacking him, pulling his hair and lascivious hags or like presenting their body to him. And, you know, he's just sexual. And yeah, I mean, look at the art of St. Anthony. You'll see it. I think, I think our listeners have been wondering,

since the beginning. I'm waiting for us to ask you, is there a Holy Grail? Is this just your question? Is Holy Grail a big part of the blurry verse? No, I'd just say growing up. It was a part of Indiana Jones. Yeah, well, totally.

I was raised on those stories too. Star Wars, Indiana Jones. I mean, is the cup of Jesus out there somewhere that he drank in the Last Supper? Is it? Yeah. I think it is? I don't think I would say that it is.

Because I feel like these items were probably like sought after for a while. Well, there's at least a couple places that think they have it. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, which is interesting. But there's places that say they have a vial of the breast milk of Mary. Yeah, I mean, it's bizarre.

You know, so I don't put. It's a little far. Some guy at the gym, you know. I think Brian for like the, I mean, I think my last, the last, that makes sense to me, like, to kind of close out this question, this, this conversation on the early church fathers and, you know, the martyrdom of the apostles and all that is, is like, for someone who's studied this, teaches. teaches this as a PhD in in this space like what do you think the ancients knew that that we've forgotten what do these church fathers know that we've forgotten or or lost because we try to regain a lot of that right I mean this whole conversation really is a in a lot about our show is recovering this supernatural worldview it's re-enchanting the Bible right and as we said in

the beginning the church fathers didn't need a re-enchantment they live in this space where everything was there's no separation. So that's one of the things, and I think our conversation today has probably brought that out. And that's one of the things I would say is that the Hebrews and Israelites and the Jews, they understood this. Intertestamental Judaism understood it. New Testament Christians understood it. The church fathers also understood it and even up into the Middle Ages. So that is part of it.

Another thing I would say, and I think this will be a good thing to say for your podcast, which I don't know very well. Like, I'm getting to know you guys. And so I, you know, I'm kind of becoming part of the, count me as a member of the blurry verse. Oh, I was glad to have you. Like, I'm there. And I'd like to extend it into the patristics. But one of the things I will say that the, I think the church fathers would have said, someone like Ironaeus, someone like Turtallian, who I wrote my PhD dissertation on Turtolian, is that they would warn against Gnosticism. And in particular, where you take the Christian narrative, but you all, you all, you all, you would warn against Gnosticism.

narrative, but you also bring in so much of the secret, the recondite, the esoteric, that it becomes like elite knowledge, that you use strange and foreign texts to interpret the scripture, and you build up narratives of what happens among the demonic powers. You have to remember, they first and foremost are deceivers. So Book of Enoch is not inspired. And so these Second Temple Judaism texts are not inspired. The church fathers are not inspired. So, the demons know how to cast a kind of story, they always do. Every civilization has a mythology. Oh, Zeus did this. Oh, we tell the stories of the gods. Aliens, you know, look at aliens, what aliens do, and this is how they came from this planet and they give us this technology.

The more you live in that blurry verse and you kind of are engaged with it, you run the risk of becoming a modern-day Gnostic, where the average Christian just doesn't get it. They're not sort of enlightened, but we who have access to recondite texts are able to sort of reinterpret the narrative of scripture. And I'm for giving a clear biblical, canonical, canonical emphasis on demonic powers. Like that's important. But be cautious that you don't unwittingly create a kind of fascination with Gnosticism. Because again, you say, who would have believed that? Like, who would believe in salvation by nosis, but nosis is very attractive. The sound of the Gnostic is the sound pst, over here, here in this podcast, here in this subset, will enlighten you to what's really

going on with the angelic powers. And I just want you guys or myself or any kind of Christian to be very cautious about a kind of modern Gnosticism where these deceptive powers are able to use well-meaning Christians to sort of give stories that are not actually true. The true biblical story certainly does involve cosmic combat, Yahweh is warrior, all of that, Christus Victor, but the true biblical story is encapsulated in, this is what I wrote my PhD on, in the rule of faith, which is what we would call like the Apostles Creed. Like the Bible, and this is what Ironaea said, this is what Turtallian said, stay away from the Gnostics. They do not offer you the actual story. The true story is if you said the Apostles Creed, I believe in God, the Father

Almighty, Jesus Christ's only son, our Lord. And just kind of like that central storyline is the biblical storyline. And there's nothing about angels in there. I mean, you have the descent into hell, which is the closest to it. That's a whole topic we could talk about. So I think what, to answer your question, Luke, what would the church fathers say they would warn us about the attraction of secret knowledge blending into the biblical story. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. I mean, we talk about that a lot of the new age. I mean, that's literally like, we get secrets here. We've got stuff that like. But what I'm saying is it's like easy to come into Christianity too. I think, when you call it new age, you think, oh, that's so obviously not us. That's the overt part.

But when you do it, it can hide. I think it creeped into the church in the middle, in the middle a lot because a lot people say when you're talking earlier in the podcast about the physical physical blend. I mean, the Gnostic version is it's all spirits and it's all this. It's not actually physical. Like the angels weren't physical creatures. So I think we're trying to get out of that and go back to like, you can trust Genesis 6. You can trust the cross. You can trust the tree. Yeah. Because the physical universe that God indwelled in is is not a Gnostic idea. Right. And I think that we got into some of this weird Gnostic explanations for these ancient stories that we read somewhere where we didn't understand them and kind of gave

them a spiritual explanation. But people say, oh, it's supernatural, it's spiritual. That's a Gnostic thing to say. Yeah. That's not actually how I think an ancient Christian would say. Yeah. Like, it's all, it's all a part of, you know. So anyway. They understood the materiality of the world, which is why relics and Eucharist and all of these things were so important to me. Yeah. Which is fascinating because it's like, because that's, becomes, is now weird to a lot of you angelicals, right? Right, right. But that was the original belief. Yeah. But we definitely do find ourselves like wondering that line, but I think that's why we come back to. No, I know you guys are solid. Yeah. I wouldn't say that. Well, thanks, Brian. That's great.

I appreciate that. Some days we have too many salads and it's not so solid. What else though? Anything else that you think that they would say that we've forgotten? The ancient, the church fathers would say we've forgotten here in 2026. You might have to die. Yeah. That's probably, you know, the martyr consciousness was part of their, you know, after Constantine comes, that it sort of flips to dying to self. Sure. So you get the baptism of blood, the baptism of tears. So the martyrs, they die.

But that's a reality, though. I mean, if you're in Nigeria right now as a Christian, if you're in Libya, if you're in some of these places, that's actually a reality. And I would even say it's here insofar as you say. are they going to kill us? No. Do we have to die to self, not just sort of mortify the flesh, but like maybe I need to die

to like the American dream because the cost of being a Christian in some near point in the future is going to cost this or that from me. And so like Nigeria, bloodshed. Maybe not bloodshed. I won't go so far as to say that America is going to start that.

But like a lot of people have paid serious prices in recent times in the West, in the UK, in Canada, maybe in America, that if you stand for Christ or Christian types of things that are associated with the Christian worldview, you will pay a price. And the early Christians would be like, yeah, that's actually the norm.

You forget that the Messiah was crucified, you know, the glory is on the other side of that. And so the wise ancient Christian would probably try to unravel our blending of the American dream with Christianity. Yeah, there's the, I mean, that's really the impetus or sort of that ground is which the prosperity gospel came out of, right? Is that this God wants to, you to have all this material stuff and you just don't believe enough because you don't have enough because you don't believe enough, right? And yet I think

the ancient fathers would be like, what? Like the ancient Christians would be like, our expectation is that we die as Christ died physically. Yeah. Because of what we believe. And I think that's a hard, that's a hard paradigm for a lot. As we sit here, it's hard to be like. Right. Right. I don't even like saying that because I know I have to apply it to myself. Sure. And what, what can I just loftily throw out there into the blurry verse that the Lord will say, okay, my son, let's see if what you just said is going to be part of, like, let's see if you can back it up. Yeah. You know, in the near future. Yeah. Yeah. And be, the ancient Christians would say be, um, be appropriately fearful. Like have, have, you know, like, like, you know, daring to wrestle with these powers. Like,

like, be cautious. Like, you can't just be arrogant. Christ is the victor, but that doesn't mean these powers aren't very strong. Be afraid of them in a certain sense. Like, recognize that they loom over you all the time. Like, when you go around and you tour at Rome or something, you're like, oh, look at this statue, these sort of beautiful carvings that they, those were real powers. Those were idols. They localized, again, I don't, the presence of God. I mean, that's part of our conversation, is that to be an image bearer is to localize God's presence

in a visible way, image. You see it, right? And so they would tell us to be very aware that the powers loom over and they are deadly and destructive. Their appetites are exorbitant. They want to eat, they want to consume, they want to eat flesh and blood. That's an interesting thing, isn't it?

I know we're at the end here, but flesh and blood. Like those, like they're cannibals, right? Yeah. In the Book of Enochs, like they, they eat flesh and blood. Oh, the Genesis too, that they consumed everything. Yeah, they're consumers, right? And the ultimate essence of Christianity is the giving of divine flesh and blood.

That's right. Not even in the temple where you say the grace is to give the substitute. Like that was how the grace was given at first. Oh, Isaac doesn't have to be sacrificed on Mount Moriah, which is where the temple is, because the substitute is the ram. or the temple can be built on that exact same spot where the substitute that you don't have to be, there's a scapegoat, there's a substitute,

so the mercy is there. But in Christ, the mercy becomes not just sort of that paradigm, but merciful and substitutionary. In Christ, the paradigm becomes the giving. Now I give to you. Instead of me consuming your flesh and blood, I, without you doing anything, grant you divine flesh and blood.

So it's like reverse cannibalism. in that sort of sense, which is, again, John 6 is very, very stark. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you can have no part of me. And everybody's like, that's weird. You don't really mean, yes, I do. That's weird. Yes, I really do mean you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And he loses a bunch of disciples in that passage.

Yeah. But the point stance is that the Christ paradigm is instead of consuming the means and the good and the flesh and the productivity of human life, all of that is being granted to you as free gift. It's amazing. That is amazing. Yeah, there's a lot of humility required. Yeah. Whether you're walking into an old church, where you're saying a prayer over somebody,

or you're reading the ancient stories. Yeah. I think it's easy to kind of get an ego at somewhere along the way. And it really changes everything. Yeah. Kind of keeps you from that relationship, which is, I mean, it's a long story. And it's a hard one. to kind of sometimes get a 50,000 foot view of it to really see. I think that's what Heiser did

for a lot of people is he kind of made sense of these parts that weren't connected. Right. Right. So we kind of understood this chunk. Can we understand that chunk? But there's no way to read the Bible linearly and understand it. Yeah. But he helped a lot of people understand like, oh, this is how I can inquire some, you know, add some things in Deuteronomy that I don't understand. Because you're reading, you're reading blurry things in the day. I was reading Deuteronomy the day And it's like the clothes didn't wear out. When they're out there wandering, they have supernatural clothes on. They just don't break down.

You know, they didn't have to go to Miller's. It's that early Carhart. Miller's out. And we always thought like Daniel and the Lions did. Like, you know, you see it in Sunday school. It's just a cute Sunday school picture. Then you look at Daniel now. You look at Daniel 10.

Yeah. These powers, the princes of these nations. Yeah. And suddenly it's like, I think what Heiser did, you know, for me or for who, for many people, is he like foregrounded what was kind of backgrounded. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I don't deny that.

But, and he said, hey, this is actually foreground. Yeah, and here's the context. And this is why it makes sense. Yeah. It's like the old meme like that the angel just showed up with a laser pointer in the lion's den and just, that's how Daniel stayed safe all night. Yeah. Which I'm sure you think that was the, it was Christ, right?

Take that in there as the Jesus. Yeah. But I think an ancient, you know, if an ancient father could come today and talk about some of these things, a lot of people go, oh, okay, I get it. Because they were closer to it. Yeah. So I think understanding their worldview just goes, okay, that's why, you know, for us, that's why grandpa did that, you know. And so many generations go by and we just kind of don't understand it.

It's like, oh, you guys are weird. That's why I like studying the ancient church. I think this is kind of what got me into it. I went to seminary at Dallas and I thought, well, once I learned Greek and Hebrew, then I'll have the key that I'll know how to interpret what the Bible says. But learning the languages just gave me more possibility

of many different interpretations. Because I had more skill to sort of use different languages to come up with other things, not to mention the manuscripts. So then I realized there has to be some kind of like wisdom context around scripture. And I found that in the early church. They're not, you know, solo scripture, right?

You know, like tradition, Scripture is above tradition, of course, but tradition is wise. And that church fathers lived in the same Greco-Roman world, you know. So I got into them because they were still inhabiting the world that the apostles had. The same culture, same culture, still the Roman Empire. I mean, the medieval, okay, now you're living in something different. But the church fathers, like you're saying, they lived in the same awareness of the unseen realm. Brian's been awesome.

Truly the bone zone. I love it, dude. I mean, this is like, if it's history and it's scripture and archaeology and kind of uncovering these, these very cool ancient truths, I'm all for it. So I love this. So you've got, of course, we've got two books here on set that you've written with our friend Kathy Lee Gifford.

She's great. Nero and Paul, Herod and Mary, but you also written on your own. Yeah. You know, after Acts. After Acts, published with Moody publishers, early Christian martyr stories, which is a Baker book,

getting to know the church fathers. That's probably been my most popular book, getting to know the church fathers. I think we'd love to have you back and do just one on the martyrs and kind of run through that. I would love that. There was too much today to get to get to,

but this was... We need to do the martyrs. Awesome. You need to meet, you know, your listenership needs to meet perpetua and polycarp and all of these. We'll have to get you back out here. Yeah, sounds good.

Thank you. Thank you for having. It's truly an honor. Tell everybody where they can find, I mean, find your books, I'm sure anywhere books are sold, but I'm not sure if you have a website or a place that you collect your work. My name is a website. So if someone wants, hey, who's this guy? Right. Brian with a Y and then L-I-T-F-I-N. So just Brian Litvin.com. So you can find out about me there. But I mean, I like to put these out there because Kathy is such a rock star and popular person. So if you want to, if you want to just get into the life of Mary and the life of Paul and like a villain and a divine instrument.

instrument being juxtaposed. Like the way that God works to the lowly, even when the mighty and the powerful, like Herod or Nero or dominating, the real divine way is the way of love, the way of Christ, which is the way of Paul and the way of Mary. So these books, your listenership would probably like that.

It's been awesome, dude. Thank you. Love it. Appreciate it. Thanks Brian.