Blurry Creatures - EP: 460 What REALLY Happened On The Mountaintop with Robby Gallaty

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

The Transfiguration might be the strangest scene in the Gospels. Jesus climbs a mountain, his face lights up, and two men who have been dead for centuries, Moses and Elijah, are suddenly standing there talking with him. Most sermons rush right past it. Robby Gallaty wants to stop and sit in the weirdness. Robby is the senior pastor of Long Hollow Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee, the founder of Replicate Ministries, and a preacher with a PhD who has given his life to making disciples. And he says that to understand the Transfiguration, you have to understand the mountain. Set against Mount Hermon, a place the ancient world treated as thick with supernatural meaning, the scene becomes a window into the enchanted world Jesus actually lived in.Robby argues that the modern church has a truncated view of the supernatural, and that we have traded the awe that changes us for the amazement that only entertains us. He unpacks the rabbi culture behind the words come follow me, the difference between knowing about Jesus and being known by him, and the single comma in a 1611 Bible that he says kept the church in a coma for four hundred years. This episode is part Bible study, part testimony, and part invitation to wonder again. Maybe the real question is this. When was the last time you sat long enough to be in awe of God? This Episode is Sponsored By: https://rocketmoney.com/blurry - Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster! http://blurrygold.com/ - Get a FREE Gold & Silver Kit while supplies last! https://homechef.com/blurry - Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box & free dessert for life! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-C-E dot com. quins.com slash blurry. What the 16-year-old boy would do is he would go in the community and find a rabbi, a well-known rabbi. And you would go to the rabbi if Luke was the rabbi and I'd say, Rabbi Luke, could I study? He looks like a rabbi. Sensei. Can I study under you? Now the rabbi would ask himself a lot of questions about you. Does Robbie have what it takes? Is he passionate enough? Does he have the discipline? Is he teachable? Is he a learner? And if you thought I was able to enter, you would give me an oral exam that was unbelievable. Even if you thought I had what it took, you would say the greatest three words

in English you could ever hear. Come, follow me. Let me frame this for you. After John was put into prison, Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee and looked out and saw two brothers Peter and Andrew fishing. Why are they fishing? Because their dad's fished. Yeah, and. Because they didn't make it. They washed out. They didn't make the cut. Now you have on the seashore this Galilean rabbi. He walks by the seashore. He sees two brothers in the sea, casting their nets for their fishermen. And Jesus says to them, come, follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. This would be like Jesus saying, Peter, Andrew, James John, I see something in you, nobody else sees. The world may overlook you, but not me.

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 a 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 chair. 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 Hermann event. And this guy defects from the kingdom.

That's a big deal. All right, I'm excited. Let's just keep this energy going. coming off a fresh sermon yesterday, an awesome sermon, my pastor, Robbie Galli, is in the house, in the blurry basement. And I remember asking Dr. Heiser about the Transfiguration. So I was sitting in church going, I hope he goes. Moses comes back in the Transfiguration. One of my favorite parts of the New Testament and the Bible itself. It's just such a weird thing. But welcome to Blurry creatures. Thanks for coming in. For years, I've been sitting in church going, man, that needs to be

an episode. And we made it happen. Well, thanks for having me. And I'll always, your pastor, but your friend. We're buddy. That's right. That's right. And we disc golf partner. That's right. And we disc golf.

And I've been looking for disc golf partners for a long time. Yeah. Since I was 20. Not since college. But you played. Yeah. Let me tell you a funny disc golf story about Nate. Okay.

This is funny. So I've been playing disc golf. 2020 I started playing when I gave up regular golf because every time I'd play regular golf, I come home mad and back would hurt. Okay. So, yeah, every time. You're a tall guy. You're tall too.

So my wife would say, on your day off, you're paying to be mad. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. So my buddy played disc golf. He was a youth pastor. And I said, man, disc golf's for guys who can't play real golf. What is disc golf? Well, then I went out and played. Okay, so I've been playing for like five, six years.

So Nate joins our discipleship group. We have a discipleship group. We meet in with a bunch of guys once a week. And one of the entrances into the D group is you have to play disc golf, right? Some of the guys are here with us, they'll tell you. And so Nate's, I'm like, Nate, you play disc golf? He's like, I played a little bit back in the day in California. Luke, this dude comes out first.

throw, he throws further like 60, 70 feet past anybody. I'm like, this is a ringer. This guy's a professional hair disco. And then he found out that he went to college for recreation. And you realize he spent four years refining that disc golf. Yeah, it was a rec major at Cal Poly. That was the requirement to graduate. He had to throw a frisbee. Yeah, he had to throw a frisbee. Over the mountains. That's right. Well, we're going to ask you about the big guy today. And for the first time, we have a guest in the studio that's bigger than Luke. So I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel, I feel proud. That's a tall order.

Finally. I feel like the short guy in the name, dude. That's right. Usually like we take photos in here and it's me and Nate on one side and someone stands in the middle and says, gosh, you guys are giants. Are you 6-5, Luke? No, 6-4. 6-4.

Yeah. If you ran into Sasquatch in the woods, I think you just shake hands and be like, nod and keep going. People have actually called me Bigfoot. I have a 16-sized shoe. My shoe is 16. Let's go. I've actually been called Bigfoot.

So what's your thoughts? You even said this in church, which I died of embarrassment. Like he even talked about Bigfoot in church. Oh, man. Robbie shouted us out. Gave you a shoutout league. Did you know that a week? He sent it to me.

I've seen it. Thank you, Robbie. Well, here's this is funny, though. I preached a whole sermon, 40 minutes. The only thing people talked about the next week was the blurry creatures by craters. I'm making a big impact. Let's go. No, you know, it was funny about Bigfoot.

So I grew up in a home. My dad was always into like conspiracy theories and UFOs. UFOs. And so I did a summer as a new believer. I went to Gloria in New Mexico. I was a camp pastor for a summer. My parents were going to make one trip to see me for the summer. My dad had one goal in mind. And that was to get an SUV and drive to Roswell. Now, I was still like, I don't know what I believe about aliens. We're at the, have you ever been to the Roswell Alien Museum? The whole town is bizarre. Yeah, I've never been there. Aliens and Green Men everywhere. And so I was raised, you know, with an eye for skepticism and questioning things.

So I'll be honest, I've always believed Bigfoot's out there growing up. And then later I thought, well, I don't know. And then I started listening to the podcast. And you guys have reinvigorated my interest in Bigfoot. Here's what I say about Bigfoot. We'll talk about this hopefully later. But there's a difference between Western American, the way we look at things compared to the eastern, Middle Eastern culture of Jesus of his day. And I think when people understand the distinctives,

it changes everything, right? But think about this. And if you go to the Eastern culture today, they live in a world that is bent toward the supernatural, invisible realm. Yeah. Right. Even in history, you know this historically. People would worship gods and you had Parthenons and pantheons of gods, right? So the spiritual world was primary, the visible world was secondary. You come to America. We're always about the visible natural realm. And if we can't see, it, we don't believe it. So we already have this propensity toward that. And so I would say, for people that say, well, Bigfoot can't be real. My response is this. We read a Bible. I've given my life to preach this Bible that is full of giants and Nephilim and unexplainable things that we can't

unexplainfully. And I think, Nate, we talk about this. That's the problem with Christianity today. We've lost the joy of mystery. Don't you guys think? Yeah. Like we don't like mystery. We want facts and figures and outlines and treatises. But the world of Jesus was mysterious. They lived with a sense of awe. And so I would say, have we shrunk God down to a world where if we can't put it under a microscope? Big fit, then we don't believe it. Of course. Now, we'll tell you this. I did a little research, Simon. Just a little. A little research. And I went and watched. There's a video online. I can't remember I watched it. And the title's called AI. I don't know if you've seen this. AI finally analyzes the 1967 Patterson Gimlin film, okay?

The actual footage of the Bigfoot, you know. Which is a very hot topic as of the last few months. Yeah, I know. I know. Did you see this? No, I haven't seen this. No, I haven't seen this where you're going to go. Watch this.

This is what the findings are. You ready for this? So they put the image in AI and AI tried to determine factors. How does it walk? Is this a man in a suit? Is this a human being? Is this an animal, basically? And what they found out was, they found out was the way the skin on his arms and legs looked, it could not be a man in the costume because it would bunch up.

They had the AI say this. But another thing I thought was interesting was the gate of the walk was not human. And AI couldn't definitively say, because obviously, I don't know why, but it couldn't definitively say it was real or not, but they say it was inconclusive, but you can't prove it either way. So I don't know what that does, but that's where I land. Could be, couldn't be. Could be. Well, this is a footprint from that day. Ooh.

From the Patterson Gimlin video? Yes. Stop. This is a replica of the footprints they took in the... It broke in the mail. Yeah, it broke in the mail, but it's still there, but you can see the size and the toes. I mean, that's... Do you want to get your foot out and push it?

Let's do it. Put my foot out right there. Look at this. Just don't break that plaster. Oh. Whoa. Might have wear a 16. Maybe.

Whoa. I got a 14. It's a little bigger than I've got. But this is a bluff creek. 19 October 1963 Wow Okay

Yeah Okay So it's right in the same area That they cast Or shot the famous Patty video Don't you think We event I'd always tell people

Just wait long enough And we'll figure it out Because with trail cams And videos Eventually we'll find out something Yeah Bigfoot can't hide forever It is I think

I think your point's interesting I think the reason that we have This show in a lot of ways Is that You know Folks like Dr. Michael Heiser Would say We need to re-enchant

our worldview or our understanding of the Bible. It was this idea of re-enchanting. Yeah. A guy used to love to read Bob Goff is always, he's always talked about how we've lost our whimsy when it comes to, that's the term he loves to say, we've lost our whimsy when it comes to our interaction with God and the Bible. And that's why this show is what it is.

It's to sort of reinvigorate, re-enchant, re-insert the supernatural back into the worldview of the Bible. And I know that's kind of where we're going to go today. And so excited to do that with you. I mean, you're a pro. You already transitioned from here to there with this. You did research on Bigfoot. And I'm proud of you for doing that. Well, thank you. Where do you want to go today? How many pastors want to? Listen, let me just say before we move. I have a discipleship group. It's a hodgepot. You know, I've given my life to discipleship. I'll talk about my story. I was disciple by a guy named David Platt. If you're familiar with David Platt. He wrote a book called Radical. He's a pastor now. But he was a seminary student. And he disciplined me. So for the last 23 years of being a believer, I'm disciple guy. So I will say on record, this is the blurriest discipleship group I've ever had.

And Nate brings some ways to the tech. I got another guy in our group named Nate Sala, has got a YouTube channel with half a million subscribers. I got a chiropractor. I got a guy who's in the group who used to be on staff at Hillsong up in the East Coast. We've got an IT guy. I mean, we've got it all in there. And Nate always keeps us blurry. So when we're studying the text,

Shocker. Nate's always asking. And then I don't hunt for a little. living, but I like chasing rabbits, so we will go two hours later. We're like, what do we just talk about here? But anyway, that's right. Sounds a lot like something we do here sometimes. Oh, I love it. Something lurks. You may not see it. You may not hear it. But every month, the $7 monster returns and takes a bite out of your bank account. And he keeps coming back every month until you figure out what this mystery creature is. That's right. It all started in 2022. When you

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reach your financial goals faster. Join RocketMoney.com slash blurry. That's rocketmoney.com slash blurry. Rocketmoney.com slash blurry. Well, I'm thankful in some ways I have a job that the church isn't blurry, you know, because it's like we've sort of have this little niche that we've carved out because a lot of these things don't get talked about. But today we're going back. And I appreciate you as a pastor willing to talk about these things. because I know it's hard to walk that line sometimes. Because people in general, I mean, I'm there. I've been in that camp for six years.

And then before that, was doing all the documentaries and researching all these things. But you have to, you know, we don't have a, like the whole committee of people that can cancel us or get mad at us and then split off. And church deals with so many more politics than a podcast does.

And so sometimes it's really brave to talk about these things. But when you did the shout out in church, I thought you were just going to say, if you want to learn about more about giants and Nephilim, listen this podcast, but you were like giants of them and Bigfoot. Oh yeah, wait for it. No, wait for it. You went right in. I even said, I needed answer for the show. Which, you know, Longhall was a big church. So it's, I was like, man, this is going. I lost people over.

Let me say before we go on. Yeah, let me go back something you said, which I've been thinking about this a while. You got, you, you triggered something in my mind. I started to do a study in the Bible on the difference. You don't hear this a lot, but the difference between amazement in the ministry of Jesus and awe or wonder. Now, think about this. So my back story is I'm a magician. Well, let me rephrase it for the church card. I'm a card illusionist, illusionist. Don't email me. You say magician.

It's an illusion, Michael. Yeah, exactly. I do you, coach. I learned waiting for the Bacchus parade in junior year, my high school. I was wasting time. Went to the Jacks Brewery, which was on Burbich. I'm from New Orleans, so I was waiting for the parade and saw this guy doing magic at the Magic Masters.

He was about 25 years old. I was 16 and hot. headed and knew it all. And I'm looking at this huge crowd gathering around this guy doing tricks. And I'm thinking, who does tricks for a living? Like, that kids do tricks, you know? Well, he sees me in the back. Obviously, I can't hide. He's like, hey, won't you come to the front? I was like, okay. He said, hey, big man, come up here. He said, I'll make a deal with you. If you can figure this trick out, you don't have to buy it. But if you can't, you have to buy the trick. I was like, I'll figure it out. He takes a silk cloth, Nate, puts it in his hand, makes it

disappear, leans across the table, pulls it out of the top pocket of my shirt. I said, how much? I was in. This guy tells me, I just moved here from Vegas. I'm a magician from Vegas. I have no car. If you drive me around, I'll teach you everything I know. Well, that started a journey. I mean, I've seen David Copperfield twice, Sigfried and Roy. I mean, you name it. Penn and tell. I mean, I was all into it. I mean, I was all into magic. I would do tricks. I went to college. I went to college with a briefcase. I would go into the fratisces with the briefcase and click it open and do tricks for the night. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is I got to know people. But anyway. So one of the things about magic tricks, and you've been... It's amazing you're married. You've pulled me. My poor wife, bro. We're just getting started. Nate knows my wife, my wife candy.

No, but here's the thing. When I would do a trick for someone, like if I do a trick now, at the end of the trick, you're what? Aw or amazed. You're amazed. Yeah. You're amazed. That's amazing.

That's amazing. And what you say is do another one. Right. Okay. When Jesus would perform miracles, and here's the connection I found, every time the word amazement is found in the life of Jesus, it's always connected to the crowd. So the crowd would be amazed.

He performed the miracle of the feeding 5,000. The crowd was amazed, but guess what they wanted? Do another trick. Perform for us, Jesus. Put on a show. When you see the word awe or wonder, it's different. The two main ways it's found, and the thing about amazing one more thing,

is you're affected, but you're not changed. Aw, wonder changes you. When you're in awe, mystery changes you. Watch this. There are two times we see this word awe or wonder or amazement, or awe and wonder. It's found in the life of Mary. The first time is when the shepherds come to Mary and say,

we just saw a bunch of angels, and they told us, this is the man wrapped in swalling cloths. And it says, the shepherds in the crowd was amazed. Mary treasured these things in her heart. She was in awe. The second time we see it, same chapter, Luke two, later on, when Jesus is lost, I don't know how you lose Jesus in the temple. I mean, they lose God.

Every parent's nightmare. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, they're home alone. They're all. So they come back and Jesus, it says, he responds. He says, what are you looking for? And by the way, the cool thing about that passage is just sideboard. That's the first spoken words of Jesus in the Bible.

He's 12 years old, about to be 13, when every boy is going to participate to be a man, Bar Mitzvah, Bar, son of, mitzvah, commandments. You're going to take on as a son of the commandments. You're going to be a man. And most people at 12 or 13, declared what their profession was for the rest of their life. And what is Jesus' first words? Why are you looking for me? Because I must be doing the business of my what? Father. Father. He's saying, I'm working for him. Yeah, I mean, an earthly father, but I'm working for him.

And the text says next. And Mary treasured these things in her heart. The idea is, when was the last time you sat long enough? And I'll speak to those listening. And you were in awe of the wonder of God. an amazement over God, looking at the stars, sitting under a sunset or a sun. And I think we've lost that today. You know, we want bullet points and facts. We want answers to things. That's why I love this podcast too. Very Hebraic.

I don't know if you know this name, but very Hebraic. An American Bible study, you go in with questions and your goal is to leave with what? Answers. Answers. And if you don't leave or a sermon, you leave with answers. If you don't leave with answers, you feel what? Let down. Oh, man, I didn't get my answer.

answers. That is very Western American. It's not bad. It's just what it is. It's Greco-Roman and Hellenistic. A Jewish Bible, a Hebraic Bible study, you go in with a few questions and you leave with more questions. Here's why. It's so insightful. Because when I give you an answer, let's say you say, what do you think about Bigfoot? And someone says, Bigfoot is this, this, and this. You put a period at the end of the conversation, and it's done. But if I leave with questions, then I'm marinating, meditating, meditating. I'm in awe. and wondered, wonder for the rest of the day or week, and that's very Hebraic.

So it's just your minds on the things of God. So anyway, I just wanted to say that that's very Hebrates. Well, then I would make you think about when Jesus marvels, remember he and he marveled at their faith. So he has this, Jesus also has these moments of awe. That's good. I never thought about that. That's good.

Of awe. Or someone impresses him. Yeah, well, it was the centurion. Yes. You never see faith like this. And he marveled. And it was like. And he was closer to other people, you know,

that kind of were marveling. with him and kind of had that whimsy of themselves, like obviously Enoch and Elijah, these guys are closer. And I always thought that was interesting growing up. Like, how do you, how do all humans, you know, some of us have a better relationship with God than others? And what does that look like? And what is, what are the requisites of how we can get closer to God here on earth? It's interesting. Evelyn Underhill did some study for a book I'm working on. She was, she studied the mystics. Evelyn Underhill, she was actually a big mentor of Dallas Willard, if you may bring with Delaware. Evelyn Underhill wrote about this. She was studying the mystics. These are people who had this

connection with God at a supernatural level. You know, they say the mystics were able to find on earth the thin places. I love that idea. Where the present reality and the supernatural were thin, right? And so we read about these mystics. And she said, it's not that, I love this line, it's not that God cared for and attended to them more than others. It's that they cared for and attended to God more than the rest. And I tell people, you have as much of God in your life as you want. And I'm here to tell you from my own experience, there's so much more to have. And many Christians, Western Christians, settle for surface level, substitute,

synthetic versions of Christianity. And you guys know there's so much more out there. Yeah. What I like about your story, too, is you didn't start in the church, you didn't grow up in the church, You obviously have a blurry story yourself, which you can probably tell us a little bit more background of how you got into preaching. And you tried a lot of different things, obviously, and got into addiction as well. And I think that for a lot of people who listen to our show, they come out of the new age or they come out of, they didn't grow up in church. Or if they did.

They got church hurt. Yeah. We got burned by the church at some point. We get these emails, like, for the first time I'm understanding some of these things that I didn't understand before. So maybe tell us a little bit about our listeners, like your story and how you. got to where you are today. Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I haven't always been a pastor.

Obviously, my past is a roller coaster, but I was raised in New Orleans. I had really good religious parents. My mom and dad, we were Catholic, half Italian, and we weren't like CEO Catholics, like Christmas Easter only Catholics. We went every week. And if we miss church on Sunday, Nate, we went to confession the following Saturday. And you know, you'd go in for Father, Forgivity for I have sin. It's been X amount.

And then you're trying to share just that. the minimum amount of sins, so you do the less amount of our father's salaries. You know, that's how I grew up. And I knew who the Lord was, so I really appreciate that base that I had of knowing I went to Christian, I went to Catholic schools, parochial schools. In the seventh grade, I got kicked out of school because I had undiagnosed ADHD. And back then it was either Ritalin or the Feingold Diet, which is a crazy, you go back to the 80s, the fine gold diet for those listeners may remember this. I tell people, I didn't eat chewing. I didn't chew a piece of gum until I was 12 years old. My parents had a restrictive diet where I couldn't eat

no artificial flavors, no colors, no preservatives, nothing. Now, what would happen was my parents would pack me a lunch for school and I learned very early how to work my salesmanship at the lunch table when I would trade and barter my sandwich and my treats for other people's lunch. And my parents couldn't understand how the first half of the day Robbie was good. Second half today, the wheels fellow. So in the seventh grade, they said, Mr. Mrs. Gallaty, this boy needs to go. They kicked me out of the school, a long story. But my parents said, we're going to fix him. They put me in an all-boys Catholic high school called Holy Cross in New Orleans run by the brothers with paddles for wiggly little boys. And that'll straighten you up, Nate. I mean, you go there, Luke, and you start messing around,

and they take it one time paddle, it's over. Hey, I got spanked at my Christian school. Did you? Yeah. They did that. Elementary school, yeah. I remember them spanking kids in my at my Christmas school in kindergarten. I never got it. I did. There was a couple kids I remember

that I wonder where they are today. It was red. The 30 for 30. The two kids got spanked it. Well, that's going to be a thing in the future. Like, where are they? Grandpa used to get spanked at school. No, I know that.

That was normal. Yeah. My dad went to Catholic school growing up and I was like, stories about the nuns just smashing him with rulers. I ought to hit you with rings. I mean, and you and you were both were bouncers. I know.

We're getting to that story. I haven't got there. I have to behave in this episode. I'm surrounded by now. You used to work out. That was different then. Now, you remember that viral meme? Which one?

No. Or deep down in the south. They thought they saw a leprechaun up in a tree. Did they say yeah when they saw the lepricon? Everyone said yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, there's an easier way to get gold. Is there?

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so don't wait. Go to blurrygold.com right now to request your free kit. Don't go looking for a tree in a leprechaun. Go to blurry gold.com. That's where the gold's at. Yeah, so you were, they spanked you at school. Well, one time is all it took for me. That was a wrap for me.

I'll learn quick. I just need one paddle. I learned one paddle. So I played basketball in high school and had a scholarship to UNC Greensboro, which is a college in North Carolina. And I'm dating a girl at the time, and she's like, you're not going to go that far away to college, are you? You need to stay close to home.

I'm going to LSU and I was like, you're right. You know, I thought I was in love back then. I was like, of course. So I opened the phone book. I'm going to date myself here for those who've never heard of it. It's a book with lines and addresses. There's yellow and white pages. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you remember that. So I opened the phone book and I found William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Have you heard of the college before Luke? No, I haven't. I haven't been to Hattiesburg. Yeah, me neither. I never heard of it. It was small school.

Southern Miss is there. No, Southern Miss is right there. But this is NIAA. Small School. I call the coach and I say, Nate, can I come try out for the team? The coach says, you're crazy. It's a few weeks before school.

What are you talking about? And I said, coach, I had a D1 offer. Can I at least try out? My mom went with me and I had the best, I mean, it was like the stars aligned. Everything was in place. I was throwing it off the backboard, dunk in the ball. I mean, everything worked. And my mom told me years later after they gave me a full ride.

She said, son, I have to be honest. She said, I've never seen you play that good before that day. And frankly, you haven't played that good. That day, but on that day, what a time to shine. Thanks, Mom. Yeah, yeah. My mom was honest, yeah. But here's the thing.

I go to that school, full ride. The girl I'm dating breaks up with me two weeks into the semester. I can't make this up. And I am stuck now, unbeknownst to me, at a Southern Baptist college as a Roman Catholic. And what that means is I'm the target of every evangelism class on campus. Everybody knows who do we share with Christ, the lost guy Robbie, they had game unbeknownst to me, convert the Catholic. the deer in the headlights. Second year, I heard the gospel by a guy named Jeremy Brown.

He did something mind-blowing. And Nate knows Jeremy. He's our head of security now at our church. But he was a student. He did something mind-blowing. He just became my friend. While everyone else was trying to convert me, we got to tell Robbie, but you don't want to go to hell.

Jeremy just became my friend and earned the right to share the gospel. Well, I wouldn't accept Christ then. I would tuck that away until seven years later. In college, I got into a network marketing company, kind of like Amway. You remember in the 80s? everybody Excel was it juice were you selling juice or what were you doing well it was Amway and then it was Excel ACN I mean I was a MLM bro once you get in dude you're I never got in you never got in you had friends it did I made fun of all of them that's right

I'm still laughing me I almost I think I signed it for Quickstar once that was it for like two weeks and I'm like no I'm doing this I'm gonna bother my friends I remember I got I got roped into a couple of those meetings and I was sitting there like oh man this is so uncomfortable But I remember there was like kids at the Christian school and their parents did Amway and they were always like, they were always decked out. Brand new cars in the parking lot and that's like, what do your parents do? Amway? Oh, okay. And I remember one of the girls in elementary school, she brought in those Amway mouth sprays.

Oh, yeah. The mouth fresheners and she just had bags of them. So we were all running around the elementary school playground just with cinnamon, fresh breath. Oh, yeah. Thanks, Amway. That's how they get you. That's how they get you. I still remember the line.

If the money was right and it fit into your time schedule, would you be interested in looking at a serious business opportunity? I mean, I had that. Well, the business grew. My dad had the money and the contacts, and I had the wherewithal and the energy. By God's grace back then, I didn't even know the Lord, the business blew up,

and we had, at the height of it, over 2,000 people on our downline. We broke every record in New Orleans. I moved back from college. I didn't want to do anything in the business where I was going to be in network marketing. Tony Robbins, I'd seen twice, met, I mean, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, that was the world I was living in. And the business I was in was run by Teddy Turner, Ted Turner's son. It was called LocalNet. We had left ACN, went to LocalNet. We were some of the first in this business. Year and a half in, I'll never forget the phone call. I was 21 years old. No, I just made 22. I got a call from the main office. They said the business just got investigated by the FCC. The FCC.

Federal Commission, we are shut down. It's a pyramid scam. You need to call your downline and tell them they won't get a check again, and neither will you. At 22, I was not ready for that. I went through a season of depression, and I got out of the business. I said, I want nothing to do with working with business. And so I had this bright idea. I was just finished college, and I thought, you know what I'll do. I'll train MMA fighting because I always box, you know, big guys will be boxed. But when guys I get in fights with, you know this, Luke, they always wanted to take me to the ground. and I knew nothing of what to do on the ground. The ground guy had no ground game.

Now this is 1990. How do you know about fighting on the ground? He's a boss. Yeah, well. I've got two brothers. That's true. That's true. You learn the hard way.

Well, they learned the hard way, yeah. Oh. Here we go. Yeah. My brother was six years older, so there was no ground fighting. If I was on the ground, I was done. You were dead, yeah. You never wanted to get on the ground.

Yeah, I mean, you've always, I mean, we'll get into this part. But, like, if you saw dudes that had cauliflower here, and you know there's wrestler guys, you just didn't want to, didn't want to mess to those guys, didn't want to end up on the ground. That's just, you want to stay up.

You're a big guy, you've got reach, you just want to stay up. Yeah. This is 98 too, so 97, 90s. It's not huge.

Now we got the, you know, the jets flying over the White House over the UFC fights last night. Who would have thought? UFC now is on the rounds of the White House. I know, so 98,

nobody's making money. This is not, the UFC just started in 94. And so nobody's making money. It's not prestigious. The guys I'm training with at the dojo, none of us have health insurance. So you go to a fight, you'd win the fight. The prize money is less than the hospital bill.

I mean, it was this insane. And so, but I'm 6-6-285 pounds back then. I'm about, you know, 30 pounds bigger than I am now. And a guy sees me one and out of the restaurant. Like a just prototypical defensive end. I should have played, man. I could have played football, but I didn't. But my, but I'm at a restaurant.

Guy walks up to me. He's like, hey, would you want to be the head bouncer at my club downtown New Orleans? the middle of Mardi Gras. I looked over and I said, let me get this straight. You're going to pay me to fight. I'm in. I mean, this is like job of a lifetime. And I did that for a season. And we found that Luke used to be a bouncer. When I say it was the wildest, I was there for about a year, but the three, four months I was a bouncer. It was the wildest season of my life, if you can imagine. And I was talking to you earlier, but here's what I found. The craziest, hardest people to deal with, of the most unruly people, with all due respect, were drunk women, believe it or not.

Because the man, you could kind of talk them out of it. But the women, I had a guy that was walking her boyfriend out. This girl walked up and hit one of the other bouncers with a beer bottle and shattered it over. I was like, what is going on? Am I right? You got to watch the girls. I mean, I did it longer than that. I mean, I bounced for a couple years while I was finishing my master's.

I did my MBA at San Diego State. And I worked a couple bars. We've told some stories pre-roll. but I was a big guy. I was in really good shape then. I was probably about 260 pounds and like, let's go. And big and not the 260 pounds I could be now, right?

You could use it back there. Yeah. Everyone's wondering how many women you guys have thrown around. They threw me around. Yeah, you were right, though. That's the hard part. I'm right? Because you can't.

And you can't do anything. You really can't do anything. And it's, that's a wild job in general because you're dealing with people They're intoxicated and then. What's the wildest story? Could you give us one at the bar? Yeah. So I worked at this place.

I'll shout it out too. The place called The Shack. And it's in Wind and Sea. It's in San Diego. Yeah. And I worked Thursday nights. I worked at the door there and some other nights. But the Thursday nights were kind of crazy.

This bar was like a powder keg because it was the Hell's Angels would roll in there along with all the frat fraternity brothers and boys from the University of San Diego or UC San Diego. and University of San Diego, which that was always interesting. And there was a surf gang. This doesn't even sound real. Sounds like Roadhouse. Yeah. Sounds like point break. Yeah, there was a, it does sound like point break.

There was a surf gang called the Wind and Sea Surf Rats, and this was all like their place. And so without fail, every Thursday night, there would be just massive brawls. It would be like Frat boys talking to Hells Angels or the Wind and Sea guys talking to it. And there was a few steps up to the bar. So next to a 7-Eleven. I don't know if it's even still there. It's been so long. but there was a cop from the Hoya that was like always on patrol.

His name was Mark. And he'd pull up in right there and sit in 7-11. And literally at some point in the night, I'd end up being throwing people down the stairs and out the bar and right onto the hood of his cop car. It's nice to be fighting. And I'd push him out and they'd have to fight right on his, like a couple nights they'd fight right on his, like right and end up on his hood. And he'd be like, all right, thank you.

We just had this laugh. We're still friends this day. He's a retired police officer. He lives in Texas now. And I mean, We had wild nights. And then I worked at another bar up in Incenitis. I just don't think he's there anymore.

It's called Beachside. And we had a couple nights there where like it just was a wild time. We're like going to school all day, like doing my MBA. And then we're just, I'm like, end up having to take guys out of the bar full Nelson, you know, breaking up. Yeah. See, the rule of thumb is as he knows. The only, our job is just to get them out of the bar. Yes.

Once they get in the street, they're your property. But you got to get them out of the public because then it's a, the liability is inside. Well, I believe you get them out. You've heard the legend of Heaven Chef, haven't you, Luke? No, fill me in. They're just walking through the wilderness, and bread just fell out of the sky. It's not that easy. Well, that's the food of angels.

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Homechef.com slash blurry must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. I believe you guys. The only time I was ever like really fought in college was a girl. We used to get in a gorilla suit and hide in the ivy and the sororities. And I was in it that night and I was in this grill suit. I pop out like, you know, midnight 1 a.m. and scare the girls. Well, I think this girl had a full ride for softball. She started, she booked right at me. And I go running up. up the hill and I look back and she's gaining on me and I'm in this full monkey costume,

you know, very very iconic for blurry creatures. And she tackles me on the lawn right in front of some cops. And she's like, she's like, don't move. And I'm like, what? She's like, we're both drunk. And I'm like, I'm not drunk. She's like, well, I'm going to leave. So she like, belly crawls out and then goes back down and that was that. And then I get up and I start walking towards like where I was going to get picked up by the guys and cop shines a light on me. goes, hey. And I'm like, he goes, it's a jungle out there. Oh, wow. And that's it. But the only thing is the only thing. Yeah, but it was this girl. She tackled. I mean, summarize the story. Ney got beat up by a girl in college. That was the only

time. Just told the story. So what I'm saying is, I believe you guys. The women were on really. Those softball girls, they come in and start beating people up. Yeah. There's shade on women here. Just telling the show. So you work at this, uh, bouncing here. The, like, the network marketing goes, goes away. I get back to your story. And then, um, you know, what happens in this in your life with so i'm coming home from work i moved from bouncing to bartending guy pulls a gun on me in the parking lot and i thought okay i need a career change make a lateral move bouncing to bartending thought that was the right thing actually yeah yeah which even even bartending i'm still bouncing you know how that works but yep uh i'm coming home from work uh november 22nd 1999 and

uh i have a mustang at the time for mustang and 18 wheeler the lanes come together where the high rise is of new allans if you're for me where metery meets the city and an 18 wheeler doesn't see me. I'm in his blind spot. He comes across two lanes of traffic, 65 miles an hour, slams my car into the guardrail. And my seat broke off the hinges and the seatbelt lock, so it torquered my back. I went to the doctor. This is 1999. So I went to the doctor. I'm 22 years old. The doctor sends me home. This is the front end of Purdue Pharma oxycotton crisis. This is when they were saying oxycotton's fine to take. It's not addictive. And they send me home, I'm not making this up with 90 oxies, 90 volume, 90 soma, 90 percocet.

Oh my gosh. Now, I'm an athlete, never done drugs before, but I'm in pain, you know. And so I started taking the drugs four to six hours as recommended. And you know the story. Within two, three months, I'm a full-blown addict. They say now seven days of oxy cotton. You can be addicted, full-blown. I'm a full-blown addict now on drugs.

And now I'm going through the 30-day script in two weeks. I have to find this sensational to feel the sensational desire. I have to get high. And so a guy comes to me and he says, hey, why are you buying pharmaceutical drugs? Why are you going to doctors? I was doctor shopping as well. He said, when you can buy heroin and cocaine, you can buy it in bulk from a dealer, bag it and sell it and make money. I said, great. I took the business knowledge from, I already knew network marketing. So that was a gift and a curse at the same time. And I worked my way up. I started an illegal import business at that time. And, you know, by the world standards, if you would have looked at me, man, I had it all.

I mean, I was selling ecstasy, GHB, Special K, which is not a cereal, if you know, marijuana. And I'm not telling you this to impress anybody. I'm just trying to impress upon you how far the Lord brought me from back then. Times were great in the beginning. I mean, we had tons of money. We would walk in the clubs. Everybody knew us selling, I mean, we did a deal one time for almost 4,000 ecstasy pills. So we were like really into it.

But like every sin, this is what I learned. I didn't know now. I didn't know them, but I know now. every sin addiction in life always those three things takes you further than you want to go cost you more than you want to pay and it keeps you there longer than you ever want to stay and we know this it's like porn or or addiction or alcohol whatever it's manageable until it becomes unmanageable and i thought i could manage it well the wheels fell off i was running out of money and um i did the unthinkable good italian family uh we ate dinner together every friday and went to the movies every

Saturday ever since I was a kid close family but I didn't know what to do I took my dad's credit card number he owned a body shop collision center and so he charged like uh you know 15 20 000 worth of parts so I figured I could slowly siphon money off memorized his credit card number and over the course of two to three months I stole over $15,000 this is 20 this 30 years ago 25 years ago so almost bankrupted my dad's 30 year business my mom found out about it she was doing the books and She said, I never forget the call. It was February of 2001. She said, Robbie, we found out about what you did. Your father's furious and I'm disappointed. You're not welcome. Don't ever come to this house again. And I was pride for an arrogant. I was lost. And I said, you know what, mom, I don't need

you. I never did need you. I don't need you guys now. I hung the phone up, took the little bit of money I had and I blew it on the rest of the drugs I was using. And for the next three and a half, four months, it was hell on earth, literally. I live, they first turned off the, gas. It was winter still. We lived with no hot water, no hot air. We mastered the art of the cold shower. It's crazy. I was on cold bass before they were cool. We go in. I don't recommend it back then, but I would go in, lather up, freezing cold, get back in. We did that for three and a half months. Then they turned the electricity off. They turned the water off. They turned the phones off until the bill collectors couldn't call. And they kicked us out. And I remember going back to

my parents, by God's grace, they took me back in. I told them I lost everything. They took me back. in, put me in rehab. Of all places, Tijuana, Mexico. That's another story. Wow. Wow. Yeah, I went to Mait, Tijuana. Came back. I was better. I mean, it was a 10-day treatment, N-A-D. They pumped through my body, changed my life. Long story short, moved to Mobile, Alabama. I got a job at Powerhouse Gym. I'm training and selling memberships. And I decide, after hurting my back, squatting a bunch of weight, I decide, I'm just going to go back. This is what I thought, to the same doctor in New Orleans. This time, I'm not going to use all the drugs. I'm going to Keep them just to have and I'll sell the rest.

That's what I'm thinking. And you know how it works. When you relapse on drugs and alcohol, you don't start over. You pick up where you left off. And I picked right back up where I left off. $200 plus dollar a day heroin and cocaine addiction. Let me back up because I know people listening here would say, man, I have a family member. I have a friend.

I have a mom, a dad, or a spouse who's addicted to drugs. A lot of people have a story like mine. You know this in athletic world. shoulder injury, back injury, toothache, and then they get on drugs and alcohol. A lot of people do that. Here's what saved my life, because I've thought about this. What saved my life? I've lost since the beginning 19 friends.

During that time, eight died, six went to jail during the period, but I've lost 19 since then. Close friends, not acquaintances from drugs and alcohol, the epidemic of addiction. But I thought about why did I live and why do my friends die? I mean, obviously God. but my mom exercised something on me called Tough Love. And when my mom called and said, you're done here, it was the hardest thing she ever did, but she had a father who was an alcoholic and a brother who was an addict so she knew. And so the line I've come up with, and I'll share this if you're listening,

every drug addiction that's perpetuated in a person's life, and I've counseled hundreds, if not a thousand people since I came to Christ, you can always go back to an enabler, somebody who enables them for the addiction. And it's normally a mom or a dad with good intentions. Like you think you're helping them, but you're actually going to kill them. And so what I tell people is this. If you're the enabler, I say this with a lot of love. But if you keep being their savior, Jesus never can be.

Wow. Because think about it. Why would I turn to Christ when I could turn to dad? Why am I going to run the God when I can turn to mom? And so my mom created essentially a bottom for me to get so low where when I came back after second relapse, I'm in my room, back living. with my parents. I had back surgery. My life is in an all-time low. I'm still addicted to drugs. And I literally go to rehab for the second time. And I come back home the second day. And this is what

I tell the Lord. I just say, Lord, I know who you are from college, obviously. I didn't have much faith, Luke, but I had enough to be radically saved. And I just said, God, what do I have to lose? I might as well give you a chance. And I took the little bit of faith I had, which was a little, but it was enough to be radically saved because I put in in as much of Jesus as I knew, my whole life changed. And we talked about this at breakfast. I'm not going to share it, but look at Nate,

he's got a twinkle in his eye. Well, you know, yesterday you were talking about Moses, how he hits the rock instead of speaks to the rock and their consequences for his actions, right? And I think that we read about that all the time in the Old Testament. And you were saying we wrestle with these things whenever God gives us consequences,

but I think what you're making that point, but they're necessary. You have to have some tough love somewhere in there in order for you to write the ship and go the right direction. I think sometimes we are in this culture where it's like, oh, well, you know, there's consequences, but they're not that bad, you know. Well, that's also God's story with his people. I mean, sure. He's like, oh, we're going to be apostate. Well, off to exile for you, you know, I mean, like, this is, this is sort of the, this is the consequences of your action. Oh, we're going to, we're going to bring other false gods into the temple.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to hand you over the Philistines. But we don't really know, you know, a lot, when the bottom is there. And obviously your mom allowed you to figure out, okay, I'm at the bottom. You know, I'm here. And good for her, you know, because that's difficult. Save my life, yeah. Especially from my mom.

I mean, usually it's the dad that's like son, you know, and getting a little fight and match yourself with dad. But mom to put down and put the brakes on, that's pretty cool, I think. Yeah, mom saved my life. I mean, dad was kind of the enabler. He was my best friend. He eventually, obviously, was the best man in my wedding. and so God's allowed us to be reconciled back to the Lord.

So you give your life to Christ in this moment, and you say everything changes. What do that, practically, what does that look like? I mean, you're laid up with back surgery, out of a second standard rehab,

and you are, this is rock bottom. I guess this is the bottom of the bottom at this point. Yeah, so here's what happens. And this is not a unique story. I hear this all the time with many born-again believers. So I'm a brand-new creation in Christ.

I'm a Christian now, radically saved. And Nate and I, maybe one day I'll tell my blurry story, but I spent 24 hours with the Lord Jesus, 24 hours. I didn't know what happened to me at the time. And people always say, why that happened to you? It doesn't happen to me. And I think, Luke, it was, I was so far gone. Like, people would come to share Christ when I was, you know, bouncing a bartending and knock on the door.

I'd say, get the F. What do you? Get off my property. I don't want to hear about Jesus. So I think, you know, Jesus says it's better for those who haven't seen and believed than those who have seen and believed. I think I just had so little faith I needed that. Now, I would need that for the rest of my life, you know, spiritual warfare and stuff that I would go through. But I had this 24-hour encounter with the Lord.

I liken it to like a middle, now in America, it's odd. But like I said earlier, in the Middle East, and I went on a mission trip with my dad to Africa, the Middle East, Istanbul. And I remember hearing testimonies from underground church pastors. And my dad was with me. Very few people know my 24-hour experience. I told Nate a snippet and I already shared on the air. Yeah, maybe one day, maybe one day. I think the only reason, it's a long story.

But anyway, my dad and I were hearing these testimonies and people would say I had a vision of Jesus or I had a dream about Issa or, and my dad leans over after like the fourth or fifth testimony. He said, son, your testimony in America is abnormal. But over here, it's normal. It's wild. Wild.

So America, and the thing is, my mentor, David Platt, I asked him, should I, I was going to write a book about my 24-hour experience and call my buddy David. And he said, what do you have to lose? You have everything to gain at this. point because I'm not downing stories, but you know, heaven's real, the little kid, he told the story of going, and then it came out, they fed him the story. And then, you know, all these guys. So, and then you have preachers regularly saying, I went to heaven to see Jesus. Again, when the

time's around, I think I may share it. But anyway, so after I get radically safe, and I'm not the same person. I go to my dad the next day. My dad who is nine to five, hardworking, you know, eight to five guy, hardworking, body shop, drink a Budweiser every night on the way home kind of guy. and Catholic, you know, far from the Lord. I said, Dad, God's call me to preach. My dad looks up from the lazy boy, he's in, and he says, he's thinking, what are you smoking? I thought you just went to rehab. He didn't even have a category for that.

He's like, what does that even mean? Yeah. So I wander for the next eight months. I don't know how to read the Bible. I don't know how to memorize scripture. I don't know how to pray. I don't know I should, right? I do all these things.

And so I'm at church one Sunday, Edgewater Baptist Church, Paris Avenue, downtown, downtown Louisiana. and a 15-year-old looking blonde-haired blue-eyed seminary student named David Platt. He's a seminary student. Comes over and says, hey, would you want to meet once a week, study the Bible, memorize scripture, and pray? I said, I'd love to. He said, pray about it. I said, I already have. When do we meet?

And so, Nate, for the next two and a half years, every week I met with David early on once a week, then it was twice a week for about a year and a half. He encouraged me to go to seminary. Went to seminary to get my master's. He encouraged me to stay over and get my Ph.D. I became his assistant. I was, I travel with him. I worked in the office with him. And it changed my, he baptized me, stood my wedding.

And so the reason I'm so passionate about disciple making is because I'm the product of disciple making. Now, I just assume, Nate, everybody makes disciples in the church world. Not so much. Come to realize we're interested in converts and Christians and decisions. We're not passionate in a sense about making disciples. Yeah. Why do you think that is?

Is it because it requires investment and it requires time and work? I got a couple. Yeah. What do you think? Because you're now in a group with me. Have you ever been disciple before this group intentionally like this? Yeah, I did have a pastor when I was in seventh grade. I was kind of throwing stuff out.

And the pastor actually pulled me aside and said, I want to disciple you personally. So he would take me out to, you know, we'd go to dinner once a week and we'd go through this thing. I think it was called Encountering God. I can't remember. And there was another book that he did. So at a young age, I think because I was in Christian school a lot, I would always ask the different questions on Sunday because I've been thinking about it all week.

And when we got to church, so I did have a couple people pouring to me in an early age and thank God for them because it kind of kept me coming back even just when I was thinking, I don't know what I think about all this, kept coming back to those moments where some guys poured into my life at a young age because my dad was working two jobs.

He was a firefighter, and then, you know, he was doing countertops on the, and I was the youngest of four kids, and we were all in Christian school, so I barely saw my dad growing up. So I was disciple of a young age, and that stuck with me. But it's been a while. And, you know, obviously life gets busy and you get her out there. And then you're moving around. You don't really have, you, you just have kids of your own and you're trying to be that for them. And then you're like, well, what about me, you know? Totally. So I think the church, yeah, it's difficult because I think it, like most things, it can become a business. And you do the right formulas and we don't have enough time and we got to keep going through the cycle and the motions. And that can kind of lead to a loss of relationships, real relationships for people learning. I don't know. But. Luke, what about you? Yeah. There's been a couple. I mean, there's some stories I'm not sure. There's a couple of discipleship things in high school. One of the guys, and I survived all this, but a couple of the guys I know that we're not. the subject did not, but there was a guy that was disciplining high school, high school kids who ended up being a predator. Oh gosh. And it ruined a bunch of the kids that I knew. Yeah.

Not me though. I always joked that I was, I was bigger than the dude. Like, I don't think he never tried anything with me or my brother. Like, I think he would have ended up on the wrong end of. Yeah. But that was weird. But also, I mean, I had some really amazing mentors in college. I went to, did YWAM discipleship training school.

So I learned how to disciple, how to evangelize a disciple. disciple people back, you know, and we did, we went into, and evangelized foreign countries. This when I was, when I was 23 with Huawei, an amazing time my life saw, and I've told stories on podcasts, stuff about the healings and the things that I saw God do supernaturally. I mean, I've been in the same Bible study now for six years with a bunch of guys

that I would say we were in a discipleship group of all through COVID, a bunch of a bunch of boys from church of the city. It's been a pretty amazing thing. But yeah, but I also think I know that's not, I know this is exceptionally rare for what, for the norm for a lot of Western Christianity. A lot of people who are aged that are walking around or younger don't have a lot of mentors that are strategically and specifically pouring themselves into the younger generation's life in order to bring them up, which is a very, you know, we talked to the top.

Like one of the things we're going to get into is this this Eastern versus Western you know, paradigm, point of view, understanding culture. And, you know, Jesus was grew up in a culture where you chose a rabbi and you followed that rabbi. And that rabbi poured into you and you became a teacher in the same way that that person was. And you brought questions. And the rabbi gave you questions as you talked about the top. And that was culturally the way the things worked. And we just live in a different.

The materialism of the West is very different. The church in the West is very different by and large. Well, discipleship groups are authentic, right? You get to this authenticity where you have to be real and be open. And I think that for a lot of people, that's not how they're wired. I mean, with ADHD and I know that you just, you want authenticity. Like, you crave it. So you go into these situations and you want it. But most people aren't really wired that way. If I follow somebody, if somebody knows everything about me, they're going to call me out on stuff. And then there's a cost to that. And I think that is a big, I think, deterrent. for people wanting to get involved. That's a good point too.

Yeah. I mean, I would say, I think you're all over it. I think there's a couple of factors, I think. Number one is, discipleship is hard to measure. Conversions are easy. Sure. Like you raise your in the church. And here's my take on that.

Sadly, we have allowed business metrics to gauge biblical maturity in the church. And again, think of a normal church, a typical church in USA America. You have a church of 2 to 300. It's run by. a board. The board looks at the pastor and his job is to grow. You better be growing the church. The finances need to be up and to the right. And if that's not happening, something's wrong. Well, the problem with discipleship, it's kind of like the growth of a tree in the winter. If you study agriculture, the tree grows the most in the winter below the surface where you can't

see anything. There's no fruit yet. But in order to produce fruit down the road, you need the deep, solidified, fortified growth below the surface. So that's the first problem. But I have another suspicion. And again, I have to preface what I'm going to say because I don't want to get emails and I don't want you to get emails. But I love, let me go on record, I love the original King James version of the Bible. Okay, so let's just establish. I love it. I've done a lot of study on it. Nate been in my office. I have an actual page of a 1611 she version, which is the actual wrong version on my wall. Nate's seen it. I love the King James version. Forty-six different scholars. They worked in six different teams, Westminster, Cambridge and Oxford. Three-year,

process. It was painstaking. They translated from the textus receptus. It took them nine months to go to press. A lot of people don't know this. Nine months to go to press, typesetting every single letter on sheet. I love the King James version of the Bible. It was the Bible. Think about this. There was no rival for 300 years. No rival. Okay. So I love the King James version of the Bible. However, when the translators were translating, they had to make choices. When you understand how translation works, how Greek and Hebrew works. You know, Greek, Hebrews, a whole other animal, sticks and dots, right to left. Even Greek. Greek doesn't have punctuation. There are no bold italics. We know that. Okay. So the translators have to make a choice. They have to supply the punctuation.

The quintessential, if you will, the apex passage of discipleship is Ephesians 4 11 through 13. You'll know this passage when I quoted. And he gave, God gave the, is Paul talking to the church? And God gave the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelist, Shepherds, and Teachers. So you can say the mentors, Apostles, Apostles, Prophets, Shepherds, Evangelist, teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. You know this passage. Now, in the original King James, look it up online, 1611. This is how it translated that passage. Apostles, prophets, available, as Sheppers, and Teachers, to equip the saints, comma, to do the work of ministry, comma, to build up the body of Christ.

So if you're reading that at face value back then for three, 400 years, you think the role of the leadership, the mentors in your church is threefold. Watch this. This is crazy. People, you see that,

I preach a sermon on this called, I know what this is going. It's good. Bro, watch this. Yeah. I preach the sermon, the comma that kept the church in a discipleship coma for 400 years. And here's the comma.

One comma. So think about it. If the job of the pastors is to do the work of ministry and it's threefold, to equip the saints, to do the ministry, to build up the body, then what does the church do? They sit idly by and watch you, the paid professionals, perform the ministry. But that's not how the text is corrected in every modern translation, NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB, L-SB, you name it.

Even the new King James corrects it, but the original didn't. They take out the comma because we know it reads, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers, equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. So it's not a comma there, it's one phrase. And so here's what I tell people. Normally in churches, what will happen is pastors feel like, okay, so you come with your family. Hey, Luke, so glad you all are here. This is your family. Yeah. Well, I want to serve at Long Hollow. I say, great, great. You need, have you been to seminary? No, I haven't. Okay. Wow. Well, have you taken courses? No, I haven't done that. Yeah. Have you been any conference? Okay, well,

let's start here. And what we say is maturity is the first thing that leads to ministry. So you need to have maturity to do ministry. But if you read the passage in context, Paul's saying the leaders equip the saints to do the work of ministry. And so when I tell people is ministry is the pathway to maturity, not the other way around. Meaning when I get you to, now I'm not saying you put somebody up on a stage preaching next week as a new believer. But the reality is, but the reality is, when people grow in their faith, they do that through hands-on disciplining relationships. I mean, for example, one of the things I try to do,

you miss this because you were out of town, but one of the things I try to do is take my discipleship group to the prisons. We have seven campuses at Long Hollow around the state that watch live every week. We have people bring the sermons. It's crazy. We do live worship in prisons and jails in the city.

And so I brought two weeks ago, I brought some of the guys in this room, went with me, and they get to pray, Luke, with the people, and get to encourage the guys. Well, they learn more about prayer in that one, two-hour session than they can ever learn from Wayne Grudom

and Millard Erikson. Why? Because they're doing it. So the point I think is that kept this in a coma. The Catholic Church with the chasm between the church, the people and the laity and the pews and the priest just makes the chasm wider. And I think people don't know that God,

no, God's called you to ministry. Another thing, one more thing too, is I think it's this fascination also with going to heaven. and conversion. Because if the goal of Christianity, and I preach on this a lot, but if the goal of Christianity

is to secure a spot in heaven so that when the spiritual scanner in heaven comes God, you want to make sure you have the right barcode on you so that when he scans you, you get in. If you believe that is Christianity, someone sold you a bag of goods, that's not biblical.

Christianity is not just going to heaven. Christianity is bringing heaven to earth today as we impact the kingdom. Dallas Willard used to say, the earthly life is training today for raining tomorrow. Training for raining. And so that's why I love discipleship. It's not just making sure you have a spot tomorrow when the role is called up beyond your be there.

Training today is so you can be the best godly man, the best godly father, the best godly human being to bring the kingdom wherever you go where you live, work and play. It's interesting. Cal Poly's where I graduated alma mater. It's learned by doing. Is there a thing? So they have all these classes where you're like, it's big in ag. So people are out there like working with the animals and they've got, you know, full orchard on campus.

And it was unlike any college experience, I was like, man, everyone's doing these, taking these crazy classes. And I remember thinking like, like education should be more like this. Or they throw you in the fire and say, or throw you in the deep end. Let's swim, you know. And I think Jesus obviously does that. That's why the word discipleship comes from how kind of his, he took these guys. He didn't take too many, but not too few.

And they lived life and they kind of went from place to place to place. None of them were ready. I think the Bible was about all these people that God calls it, not ready. Moses is like, I can't speak to, I can't speak at all. You only speak to Pharaoh? David was like, I'm just a shepherd. What am I supposed to do with this giant? And it's almost like that's how God designed it.

He's like it's not, like you said, just didn't go and grab a bunch of Pharisees and say, you guys have got the degrees now. You guys have got the position. Come with me. He's like, you're a bunch of fishermen. They weren't, yeah. But all the, all the, you wanted was them to say yes. And it's like, let me walk you through the, to the maturity.

They weren't indoctrinated, you know. They were ready to learn something. And they also weren't, I mean, even what's great about the disciples, they were never really ready, right? They still don't even feel ready. No. They're like, where are you going, Jesus? Yeah. You bring it at the kingdom.

Yeah. Well, think about this too. This is, let me give you some biblical precedence for this. When I first learned this, it changed everything. Guess how many times the word Christian is used in the New Testament? Take a wild guess. Zero. The word Christian.

Three times. That's it, three times. Price is right. I was closest. You're close. Two of those times. I was going to say one. Well, you didn't.

Well, three would be. Would or should have coulda. Three would be, you missed it. You missed it. So I missed it. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it's, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a, uh, it's a

twice an act. Yeah. It's twice an axe once in first Peter. Okay. And the thing is in the first term, the first time they use the word Christians, it's a derogatory term, according to Harper's dictionary. They're putting them down. They're saying, you're following a dead man who died on a cross?

What are you talking about? You're a Christian, really? So the first two times, the first for sure, is a negative term. In contrast, guess how many times the word disciple, Mathiteus is used in the New Testament and in the Gospels? This is mind-blown. 238 times in the Gospels alone, 269 times in the New Testament. So it begs the question.

What does Jesus want you to be? A Christian, which is a static term, it's descriptive. or disciple, which is a dynamic term, which implies action, doing. You're going to replicate your life. Go there for it. And make disciples. It doesn't say make Christians converging decisions. He says make disciples.

And so, again, the Bible is pretty clear on how to do. But that is a relationship, right? Like that is sort of this path, this road we're on with God is all relational. It's not, yeah, I'm born into this country and therefore I'm just, you know, an American citizen. And they know you have to walk the road to learn what it means to be an American. And I think that takes time. And that means you have to develop a relationship with somebody, some teacher or some. And I think you see that all throughout scripture where God is developing a relationship with one of his prophets or somebody he's using.

Right. And that's, there's no real like book on how to be close to somebody. It's just something you have to figure out how to do, right? Right. Well, and think about this. Again, you got me thinking about how the culture thinks differently. We read the Bible today. Most Christians read the Bible today for information.

So we open our Bible. We want to learn a truth. We write it down. We want to teach it. That's fine. The Hebraic culture of Jesus' day, and even today, they learn not for information. They learn for intimacy. They read for intimacy with a person.

See the difference? So now it's not just gathering it for, I want to get to know somebody. There's another difference, too, in how we learn. I call it the bloated Christian syndrome, okay, the bloated Christian syndrome. This is the idea that Christians just are so bloated with information because we want to learn more and more, and I'll prove it to you. Think about the church you grew up in, okay, back 30 years ago, 20, 30 years ago. You went to church on Sunday morning and you heard a sermon by a pastor about a particular topic, and he's been studying for 15, 10 hours a week to preach the Word of God to the people of God, okay?

one sermon, one topic, you're trying to apply that truth. Then when you leave the sermon, where did you go? Normally. Lunch. Well, before lunch. Sunday school. If you were a good Christian. Good Christian.

You went to Sunday's good. Yeah, yeah. You didn't go to lunch. But normally you go to Sunday school. Okay. And you still, they call it life group, connect groups, call whatever you want today. Then you walk in, you're going to hear another lesson by another teacher who studied probably not as much, but some, on another topic, on another text.

And now you just leave that session. And now you just divided the. impact of the morning sermon and half. Because now you're trying to apply two topics. Then you come back a good Christian on Sunday night. This was 30 years ago for Sunday night service. Not to mention the five o'clock training union. Y'all remember that. We're not going to go there, but that's a whole other animal. But then you come back on Sunday night. The pastor himself gets up and he's going to preach another sermon, normally through a book of the Bible, another topic with another text to apply. and he just unknowingly cut the impact of his morning sermon by a third.

Then you come back on Wednesday night. Now you got Wednesday night church. You're gathering with your friend. Actually, it's a fourth. So it's a half and then a fourth. Then you come back on Wednesday night, albeit a devotional 15, 20 minute message. Another text, another topic, another sermon. By the pastor, you just cut it now by an eighth.

And if you're super spiritual back then, you went to the Tuesday or Thursday morning Bible study, another text, another book, another, and you cut the impact of what you learned by a 16th. And here's the reality. Feel the way to this. We wonder why that generation is undiscipled disciples. We have bought into this fallacy that we think we grow through transfer of information. That's a very Western American Greco. I'm not against that.

That's where we go to college. You go to school. You learn information. You regurgitate. And we can't remember anything from reclac. You can't remember anything. Nothing from biology. Except Presby.

I remember that. I remember that. It's not a real. It's not a real degree. It's true. I've gone over that before. But think about it, it's regurgitation of information. Do you think this is why God asks his people to do bizarre things often?

Like dip in the lake seven times or, you know, there's always just like, why does it go that way? You know? He's pushing them out of the comfort zone. Yeah, like Jesus is spitting on mud. That's weird. Like, you know, he can just snap his fingers. Do it from here. Did the centurion.

I can do it from here. But he does these intentionality things that are, sometimes I don't even know why they. Well, I got an answer for that. He's calling back to Genesis, but I'll call, but I'd get that and say, but let me just finish this. Watch this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that's how we were raised. Let me give you a very Hebraic, this what we do at Long Hollow, and I think this is more Hebraic Jesus-like. So I found a quote in the Mishnah, which was, which is a commentary on the Old Testament. So it's kind of like a commentary we have where the rabbis would give their opinion of the Old Testament. In the Mishna, it said this line, and it wrecked me years ago. The line was

this. He who studies his lesson 100 times is not as effective as he who studied. studies his lesson 101. Now, why does that affect this? Because we don't want the iPhone 6. We want the iPhone 20. We want the next, latest, greatest, newest thing. We want the old computer. We want the new computer.

We want the old car. We want the new car. So we have this addiction, this preoccupation with new, better, more. But the culture of Jesus said, no, before you move on to the next topic, let's make sure you know this topic. John Wesley, who started the Methodist, denom. nomination was he was the great John Wesley, he was respected and one, he was teaching a class one day and one arrogant student, one of the testing said, Mr. Wesley, got a question for you in front of the whole

class. He said, he was in London. He said, Mr. Wesley, what do you think about this? Maybe asked him a blurry question. Who don't know? Never. Yeah. And Wesley said, I thought about it for a second. He said, man, I don't, I don't think I have an answer for that. Student said, wow, John Wesley, no answer. I got another question for him. And then he spoke up again in front of the whole class. Hey, Mr. Wesley, do you know the answer on giants in the Bible? I don't know. And Wesley thought for a second, he said, man, I don't have a good answer for that one. And the student said, how is it that the great John Wesley doesn't have answers to questions

in the Bible? He doesn't know all things in the Bible. And John Wesley spoke back to him and said, son, it's not the things in the Bible that I don't know that I have a problem with. It's the things in the Bible that I do know that caused me to pause. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't you.

What he's basically saying is focus on the. the things you do know. Live in the light that God's revealed and start there. And then God will reveal more light. And so always say, if God can trust you in the little things, then he will be able to entrust you with greater things down the road because he can trust you. And so that's a very Hipparic way. So at Long Hollow, so think about this, on Sunday morning, so our church is reading through a plan called the F-260. Our D-group's doing it. My wife, Candy, and I have put together three Bible reading plans. Not your typical plans. If you're interested, they're called the F-260, you can download them for free. One's Old and New Testament. One's New Testament. One's all Old

Testament. Here's what I learned, Luke. After reading the Bible for years with groups, five to six chapters a day, off, five to six hours a day, no days off. You're trying to read all these chapters. You're doing great in Genesis with January. You're cruising through Exodus in February. You know where I'm going. You get to Leviticus and what? Crash and burn the wheels fall off. Man, this is rough. Yeah. And then you're just box checking, right? Like, Leviticus 16, check. How much? You feel like you're in the wilderness. 16. And when I would lead groups, they'd get to the summer, like a lot of us, and poor Ezekiel, he's thrown out because you don't have time. You're on vacation.

Yeah. And you can't catch up. And at the end of each year, they would say, I tried, but I didn't succeed. And I felt like the goal was not to read all the Bible if you're just trying to check boxes, the goal was to have the Bible in a sense read you or the Bible to impact you by reading slower to digest more. So the plans we created are one to two, normally one, chapter a day, five days a week off on the weekends. Now you won't read every passage of the Bible, but you'll get the metanarrative of the scripture. So we have these plans. And for the past few years, our church is encouraged to read daily. So every Monday, let's say we start in Genesis 1, the entire congregation of Long Hollow,

most that are reading. Watch this. Every age is on this. Every age and stage is on the same page. If you're a pastor preacher in a ministry, this is, this is crazy to think about, but think of the impact of this. Every age and stage on the same page. So when he goes and ministers to his boys, he can say, what did you learn today at church? Because that's what I learned from my pastor. So they're reading individually. So that's one impact. When Nate comes in Sunday, as he read through the week, I'm preaching on a passage that we read through the week. So it's not like, like you walk into a church, no offense, but the pastor gets up and says, turn in your Bibles to Obadiah. And you say, Oba, who? Yeah. Okay. Minor profit. Major, major impact. So he read,

great name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He read Deuteronomy three this week, along with the church, and that's what I preach, Deuteronomy three. Now, what did I just do? I just multiplied the impact of his reading by two. Then, when you leave there, either on campus or off campus, all of our life groups are sermon-based. So it's not a new subject, new topic, new lesson. It's reinforcing what we just learned about trusting God. My sermon Sunday was, it ain't over till God says it's over. Moses thought he died in the wilderness. God says, no, Mo, I'm bringing you back on the transfiguration. You got one more job to do. And the point I was making is you may think it's over now, but until God says it's over, it ain't over. Well, what do you learn in your life group? You learn how to live in light of that.

So now you just multiplied the impact by three. Then Nate comes with six other guys on Wednesday night, every Wednesday night, and we meet in my office, guess what we're talking about, Luke? The reading from the week. We just multiplied the impact by four. And then if you're, or actually, I'm not mad as bad, but, you know, another impact. And then when you minister to your children, most guys particularly tell me the reason they don't disciple their kids is twofold. Number one is they don't know what to do. And number two is they won't have an answer for the questions they ask.

this eliminates that. Because you're not ministering out of the sky, you're taking the reading that they're reading and you're reading and out of the overflow of your heart, you're ministering to them. Again, John Wesley, and I'll be done. But John Wesley's my favorite quote. He says, I don't study the Bible to preach.

He said, I preach because I've studied the Bible. It's out of the overflow of our life. So now you just multiply the impact by eight or whatever the number is. So you see the difference. So I always say, what kind of ministry do you want? A divisive ministry, or multiplication. And that's very Hebraic.

That's what Jesus did. He taught the same patterns over and over and over. Do you apply that to the entire church? And it's like even if you show up, you're still kind of being disciples in some way, shape, or form. That's hard to do. I mean, on a macro scale, you know, and you guys do a good job at that. And I kept wanting to come back.

I mean, because I was like, you know, for me growing up, and I think, you know, in the music world, it's like, there seems to be this sort of, I don't know, like hipster mentality of if it's big, it's bad, or if it's like, if it's underground, it's cool, you know. Grassroots. Yeah, exactly. And you guys did a really good job at that. And I kept wanting to come back. I mean, obviously I moved to Hendersonville in 2019 and then quickly went through a divorce and found myself just almost it was, it was cool for me because I was at church.

And I felt like I could kind of be with people, but sort of be alone to sit with God for a second and go, I don't know what to do with my life now. But I didn't really want a bunch of people bugging me and coming up to me and being like, well, you're here. There's only 10 people here. It was a nice place to start over. And I just appreciate what you guys do. And it's inviting for even someone who is kind of a jaded kid, church kid, who I had all that story. But then I was in Christian school all day. So I was there Wednesday. I was there Sunday. I was there Sunday night. And then I was Monday morning at Christian school. And it was like, I didn't, I think Saturday was the only day we didn't do anything. and that was the day to get into trouble. So. But for the boys. But for me, yeah, it's, I just appreciate that. I just want to shout out what you guys do because I think I was pretty anti-church, anti-big church.

I didn't know where I was. And so I can feel that in everything that's done there. Well, in the underlying mindset of Longhot, when you have a discipleship first mindset, you're always saying what kind of, see, because when you're discusing, when you disciple a person, like when you succeed, like with the podcast, not only do I get excited, but our discipleship group celebrates, men celebrating other men. And it's not this zero-sum game we live in today in the world where if Luke wins, I lose. And for me to win, Luke, that's not biblical and that's not Jewish. That's not the Bible. So in a discipleship group of trusted friends,

I have another one we talked about on Wednesday, which for these guys in the music industry, they have nothing like this. They can't trust anybody. Right. So they come to this safe place where you know, man, I'm cheering you on, and it's a safe place and a confidential place. So we've tried to build a church around that. It's taken a while. I've been there 11 years. It's taken a little while. But we want people to leave and say, the church is not trying to get.

So you go to some churches like, what can you do for me? Right. Or we say, hey, you need to serve the church. You need to serve the Lord. But I need you to do it here. Watch kids, greet at the door in the parking lot. We always say, how can we invest in you so that your greatest ministry is not one to two hours a week, let's say one hour of the 168 hours a week.

It's what you do outside where you live, work, and play. Yeah. And it's flipping it's on its head to help you minister where you live. Yeah. Which is the design of the church in the first place, right? Outside the four walls. It's supposed to be. Yeah.

Well, I think, yeah, just being thrown in the fire, I think that's a biblical thing. Just get in, do it? You know, here we go. And I think that, do you think it's because of the way Western does education? Like, you have to go through all these. classes and you sit there and you don't learn a dang thing. You come out. I remember there were some people come out of college. They don't know how to start a business. They don't even know how to file any of the paperwork. They've never done anything. No, he's not to play the game. Yeah.

Because this is really, you're tested. Yeah. So you said, do you just learn and you regertitate and you're like, I had a year of inorganic, a year of organic chemistry being pre-med, and I couldn't tell you anything about covalent bonds. Well, I have a 17-year-old. Rigg's going to college. I mean, he's going to be a senior this year. And we're thinking about college. And I'll be honest with you. Charlie Kirk talked a lot about this, too, about the money pit of college. And I'm not downing education because my son wants to go to school. He's in music and acting. But I'm really asking, is that the most effective way or the best way to spend a quarter of a million dollars? Because that's what school costs? I mean, it's crazy.

It's crazy. I mean, it's bonkers. I thought school was still like two to three thousand a semester when I was, no, no, no, that's not school. But the question is, is that setting my son up for the best return when he gets out when he has that kind of debt. So let's go back. I'll give you a Hebraic way to look at it. So Jesus, the schooling of Jesus' day was very different than the Hellenistic world that they lived in. In the Hellenistic world, Alexander the Great comes on the scene. This is pretty crazy to think about. If you know anything about Alexander the Great, he is a, he's not like every leader before him, like the Persons or the Assyrians that use brute force. Have you studied Alexander Gray? He's fascinating biography. Oh, yeah. He's a

They had the Macedonians. And they, and they essentially, this small little country, city, state country, and took over the entire world. The whole world. He got bored at the end. I think he was like 32. Conquer the whole world. He said, what else I had the world? I mean, it was crazy.

But here's how he did it. Okay, so I did a deep dive on this. And then I'm going to compare it to the day of Jesus. I heard he had a nice library, you know. He had a pretty good life. I heard about that. Many leather mountain books. A lot of books, yeah.

Yeah, that's good. So he decides not to use brute four. So the Romans would come in after him and say, you worship Caesar or you die. Your choice, pick it. Yeah. Here's a sword. Here's incense.

Burn it to Caesar or die. And that works for a season. Alexander the Great comes in. And what he decides to do is he sets up a system called Hellenism, where he basically says, I'm not going to force you. I'm going to give you options. I'm going to give you options.

He took over the world. It's fascinating. But he took over the world with four areas. that I like to say Hellenism is what it was called, is connected to Hollywood today. You'll see the parallels. You know the four things he took over. Media, sports, entertainment, education.

Media sports, entertainment, education. So the first one's media. The Jewish culture in the Old Testament, they didn't care about world news. They could care less. Who was conquering who, who was invading, who. They were a community that was worried about themselves. They supported each other.

In fact, in the Jewish culture, we'll see this with the athletics. There's, I always joke and say, there's no Guinness book of Jewish world records. Did you know that? You won't find one in the Old Testament. You won't find it. I was listening to a rabbi last night. He said, you won't even find nonfiction books written by Jews in the past because, in a sense, they didn't live in that world. Why would I compete against you in sports?

That's competition. God created us for cooperation. You're my brother. Although John might disagree because he was the fastest of all disciples. And he let us know that. Also, yeah, and also Elijah tucked in his robe and he ran fast in the chariot. So, I mean, there was a little bit. I think the fishermen were out there like, look at this one.

Yeah. It's a big fish, you know. But by and large, but by and large, you support the hospital. Yeah. Okay. So media. So what does Alexander the Great do? He brings in this secular world.

And right next to Jesus' hometown, when I go to Israel, used to go to Israel, I'd take people there. Right next to Nazareth is a town called Baychion, which is an intact Roman Hellenistic city. Greek city is still there. They have an amphitheater you can go to. They have a theater you can. I mean, it's bonkered.

They have the bath halls, the massage area. You still see it all. It's still there today. And one of the things about media, and then they had this long flea market walkway where he would bring in rugs and spices and an item. Now, it doesn't seem like it's a bad deal on the surface. Seems kind of binary and significant.

But think about what it does. It's the pull of the world from being faithful to God. These Jews people were faithful to the Torah and God and they were insular. And now you have this subtle pull media. Number two, you have athletics. Again, I love sports. I was an athlete. But think about this.

You didn't compete against your brother because you were on the same team. And so what does Alexander the Great do? He brings in the Olympic Games. He brings in competition. And now I've got to win, but you have to lose. And so now you have this infighting with competition. And it's a draw from the Lord because on Shabbat, when they're getting ready, when the city of Nazareth is slowing down, the city of Baytchian is ramping up with sports and entertainment and races. Okay.

So it's media education, entertainment athletic. Sorry. So entertainment. Okay. Prior to the Greeks bringing entertainment in, the Jewish people were not into plays and shows. But here's the thing. It seems subtle, but they were able to. indoctrinate that culture with entertainment.

So they created the plays. And Jesus borrows a word. We know this because Jesus borrows a word from the Greek theater in order to teach the disciples in Matthew chapter six. He says it repeatedly. Beware of practicing your righteousness to be seen by others before men because if you do, you'll have no reward from your father in heaven. Don't be like the, remember this word?

Hypocrats who love to stand on street corners and be seen for their many words of prayer and they dirty their faces when they're fasting. Don't be like the hypocrites. That word hoopacritos is a Greek word barred from the theater. Those theatrical plays, they would have all of these people playing parts, but they wouldn't have a lot of actors. They would use the same actor for different parts. On the corner of the stage, there was a box of masks on sticks. The actor would come, grab one of the masks, put the mask on, play a part, and then come back and change parts. He could change mask. That's the word hypocrite. You're playing a part. Okay. So the theater, so what they would do is they would always have the same storyline. It was a couple just like them with a family just like theirs struggling financially, just like their home. And then all of a sudden they pray to the false god Zeus or Aphrodite or Dionysus for fertility. They have a child. The God wins in the end and it's always the same storyline. It seems subtle. But think about Hollywood today. Think about the movie industry today. It's so subtle. You don't even know you're being indoctrinated. The final one is the one of the one of the one

will save is education. So education in that world, the Jewish culture studied one book. That's all they studied. Yeah. Do you know what it was? It was the Torah. The Torah, the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. The Torah. So school was going to, it was going to temple. It was going and that was school. That's it. You didn't study geography. Early too. Early. I'm going to show you five years old. So you didn't study astronomy. You didn't study biology. You didn't study mathematics. You studied the Torah. So at five years old, boys and girls collectively would go to school. Now, girls would break off around 10 or 11. But at five years, every boring girl went to school.

For the next five years, guess what they studied? The Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. By the end of Solomon until you're 12, right? Well, that may be. That one's a little bit spicy. Yeah. I get Solomon's up. Yeah, yeah.

I get Solomon. But you studied the twid the, they might never get now. But no, they studied the Torah. And here's what's fascinating. And people push back and say, I don't know if I agree with that. They actually, and there's records to prove this, they, there were some students who really excelled who knew the entire Torah by memory. Yeah. And you have to have a Bible.

And the Bible's not codified to the 14th, 15th century. So they don't have, or the 15th century. They don't have a Bible. They don't have a written copy. There's one Torah scroll in the whole town and it's very expensive. A year's wage to own it anyway. So there's one in the synagogue. And so what happens?

They have to memorize. They have to hide the word in their heart, David says, which heart in the Old Testament's mind, hide the word in your mind so you won't sin against God. So if you want to remember God's word, you have to take the time and effort to hide it. So they hide it. It's crazy to think this, but they could quote, not Genesis 1 in the beginning God. Genesis won all of it, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Now, I found, I read about this in a book years ago.

And I found there's something called pinprick rabbis in New York, New Jersey, New York, that they call them pinprick rabbis because these rabbis, the Babylonian Talmud is like three times larger than the Bible. It's this enormous, if you're watching on video you see, it's this enormous book. Pen prick rabbis. You could search this online. They could take a pen, Luke, put it inside the Babylonian Talmud, open the page, and the rabbi from memory can quote the section. This is documented. I found this like a New York Times article. Okay.

So it can be done if you, why would it not be done? You got to understand. They loved the Bible. This is not random words on a page. This is the breath of God. God, our Savior, our creator did not leave us alone. And if you go into synagogues, even back then, if you would have walked in, people regularly get excited to hear the word of God.

It was not uncommon for ladies to be clapping and people to be dancing and shouting, people to be crying. Why? Because they realize God hasn't left them on their own, that they actually can hear from God. How times have changed. America, the world, we have more access to the Bible today than ever before. We have more ability to read. Back then, they were illiterate culture. 20% of the world back then could read. That's it. But today, a lot of people in American, Westernized cultures, can read. Here's the problem. We are more literate today in the world, but we are illiterate to the Bible. You walk into church, what do people do?

They take their Bible and they throw it across. Save that seat for me, bro. I got to, and I'm not saying the Bible's an idol, but we flippantly use the Bible. People say, Bible, God doesn't speak to me today and always push back and say, you can't say that with a closed Bible by the bed. Let me ask this thing.

Jesus spoke on this too. Like for the most literate people with the Bible that knew the word that way. And how do they miss him? Because there's the disconnect, right? I think in the fullness of our faith is there's this disconnect between knowing the whole thing verbatim and then missing the Messiah as he stands in front of you. I mean, you say their culture doesn't have sports, but in a way, memorizing the Bible is their

athlete. They were the mathletes of, you know, that became their sports, right? And then this is competition. It's because you're keeping to get better. Yeah. So who knows the Bible? Who can memorize it faster? That's good.

I never thought about that. In a sense, that was their sport. They gave their life to God. Yeah. To your answer. Where's the disconnect? Because you can know everything. And then they can't see Jesus when he's there.

So they know their Bible, but they're blind. Okay, here's the disconnect, I think. The word no. Okay, so let me give you a comparison. We think of knowledge as the English word data, D-A-T-A, data, information, downloaded to the hard drive of our heart and mind. Or data, however you want to say it. Okay, data data, okay, let's do data. Let me tell you of data because I'm going to play on words.

But data, okay. In the Hebrew, there's another word called da-a-a-a-a-t. So data-da-a-a-a-a-t, A-T, in Hebrew. The word da'at in Hebrew is the word for no knowledge. In the New Testament, it's nosis knowledge, but in the Old Testament, it's da'at. Okay. There's a difference between data, Western culture, and Da'an Hebrew culture. What's the difference?

The first time we see this word da'at is Genesis chapter four. Adam knew Da'at Eve, and they conceived in what? Bore a son. He knew her biblically. That's one of those final ones to say. Yeah, he knew her. He was waiting for that. It's a family show, so we're going to keep you clean.

100%. Yeah, the reality is that knowledge is different than intellectual assent. That is an, it's like the discipleship relationship. I've known Nate, because I listened to the podcast before we went to D group and before we even met, I thought I knew it. And people listening to your podcast, people do this at Long Hollow, they'll say, man, I feel like I know you. I've watched your sermons.

I listen to your YouTube, whatever. And I feel like I know you. Well, they don't know me, but they know a lot about me. Right. Yeah. And they'll meet you Luke on the street. Hey, bro. and you're like, I don't really know you, but I don't really know you. Okay. How do you get to know

somebody? You hang out with a guy. You spend time together. You play disc golf together. You hear stories. You hear tests. That's how you know a guy. Okay. So knowledge for the Jewish culture. And that's what the Pharisees had a problem with. They could check every proverbial box on a test. They knew how to pass and fill in all the letters and questions on a Scantron. But Jesus said your hearts are far. Your head is right, but your hearts are far from it. You know about me, but you don't know me. Okay, here's a difference. When Jesus says, this is a very confusing passage, when Jesus says, many will call to me on

that day and say, Lord, Lord, this is a controversy, I got a hot take on it. Lord, Lord, didn't I cast out demons? Then I prophesying your name. Didn't I heal the sick? Jesus said, I will look to you and say, depart from me, I never what? Knew you. New you. Yeah.

I never knew you. Okay. How is that even possible? How can a man, you know, prostitute the name or use the name of Christ or propagate the name of Christ or do miracles in his name and not even know him? Okay, here's how. I think the difference is not, do you know Jesus? We live in Middle Tennessee. Everybody knows Jesus here.

I mean, most everybody. The question is not, do you know Jesus? Everybody would say to know Jesus. The question I ask, if you're listening to, is, does Jesus know you? Does Jesus know you? We went, I'm preaching to our students, our students at camp. I was just putting a message together this morning. I'm a shoe guy.

I'm in the Jordan. I love Jordans. When you got a 16 shoe, Luke, you know, it's hard to find shoes. I got a 14. Yeah. We said, Joe, people don't realize this, but like pre-internet, the only way to do it was like East Bay. When East Bay came along and you had a catalog, you could actually, you had to order.

No, back in the day, bro, I'm old school. You had to call the store. Oh, of course you did. You're calling. Sorry, no 15, no 60. Sorry, okay, you have it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then you got East Bay. And it was a, it was revolutionary. And somehow they missed the boat because they were there first and then they didn't transition to the online world. Another whole other conversation podcast. Shoo guy. So I'm a shoe guy. Yeah.

I love shoes. Okay. So one of the guys I follow, my son and I love shoes, is a guy named Rami the icon. You ever heard of this guy? No. He's out in the West Coast. So his deal is he works at a shoe store or AMI, if you're interested, he works at a shoe store. And Rami takes shoes that people bring in and he gives a value on it because people always trade and buying shoes, try to keep them clean.

But his claim of fame is he can detect a fake. Like this guy could take the shit. He hits it. He said it's got to sound like a coconut, not a coconut, but a water. I mean, I don't know how he does it, but he could say, and people try to regularly slip in fakes and say, oh, this is worth like $1,000. Romney's like, man, that's a fake from China. So he's able to do this.

Okay. So we watch this guy all the time. It's fun seeing him call out these fakes. So every senior, I mean, every time my sons, I got two boys, I made a deal. Every time they went to high school, I'm going to take him on a trip, just me, you know, dad and son. And then when he go to college, I do the same, just kind of a ride of passage. So my oldest son, he is in high school. And I say, where you want to go?

You can pick anywhere in America. We can go just for two or three days. Guess where he picks? Sneaker con and Florida. I think we went to Tallahassee or Fort Lauderdale. I think it was. Fort Laudelago, Sneaker Con. So if you don't know what Sneaker Con is, it's Jordans and sneakers on steroids.

I mean, there's sneakers and collectors and sellers. And so we're there at SneakerCon. We had a great time. We hung out. Went ate seafood. It was awesome. We're standing in line. This is crazy.

We're standing in line. And all of a sudden, guess who walks up? Rami the icon. We had just watched him the night before. Romney the icon from the West Coast, you know? So now, I've watched this for like two years. I feel like I know the guy. So I walk up to, and as crazy as this is, you can believe this.

I'm showing this clip to our students. He's got his whole film crew filming him. Of all things, we found out after, we make the video. The videos we do. Not a lot of things give me inside, but this is a guy who said. So I'm in the video and I said, Rick, That's Rami. We go crazy. So you see me in the video. I'm like, hey, bro, you might have to take a picture of what? So here I am, taking a picture of him as he's filming me. But the point is,

he didn't know how I am, but I know everything about him. Yeah. Okay. That's how a lot of people know Jesus. And the problem is when you stand before the Lord on judgment day, you want to be sure that when God says, why would I let you in heaven? I don't know if he's going to say this, but let's imagine, why would I let you in my perfect heaven? If your answer is anything other than perfection, because that's the only way to get in heaven. That's why the Adam and Eve got disconnected from the garden. If your answer is anything but perfection, then God's going to say, or if you say, hey, I'm here because of me.

I did good. I worked hard. God's going to say, well, you're a sinner. And if you come with your sin, you pay the price for your sin, which means you die in your sin and the wages of sin is death. On that day, you're going to want, Jesus said in the court, in that courtroom, it's the son who determines who gets son. in John 6, I think he said.

Jesus says the son will be the judge. And watch this. It's like going to Jesus and say, hey, Jesus, you remember me? Mike, I went to Life Sunday school. You remember me? Here's the reality. And it's sobering. Jesus may look back and say, do I know you?

Hmm. Have we met before? Hey, Jesus, you don't remember Susan? I was teaching LifeGre. I went to that camp. I walked the aisle, went in the walk. Do we, excuse me, do we know each other? Yeah, it's even the demons. Jesus I know, Paul, I know, but who are you? Even the demons, bro. So, and I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not trying to get you doubt your salvation.

This is like the scare one of the scariest verses in the Bible though. Bro, but this is you can do all these things and then, but Jesus like I didn't know. I didn't know you. I didn't know you out of here. Everything is wrapped up in this, you know, and I think we, I mean, what we're seeing now is kind of like, they were like the human AI version of the Bible back then. You know what I'm saying? What about that? Like, they knew they could, you could put the pin in and find exactly. you can ask AI, what verse is this and give you the exact answer? But the thing about AI that's so, you know, as Christians, we understand it is it's not alive. It's not real. There's no soul. There's no point behind it. I think, you know, we can, as the data, we can read the Bible from a data mindset.

And Heiser said, if it's weird, it's important. So we skip the weird because it's, you can't put that in a file. So we go over the weird and we've done that forever. And we take the relational part of the scripture out. of the stories because they're wrapped in the weird parts. And that is where I think we... That's where the gold is found. Yeah.

And that's where we grow close. Well, we'll say this too. Think about this. That's the human, that's the human propensity is to just put it in a file. Put it in a file. Put it in a file. Like not sit with it. Yeah.

Not go round and round and round and round. Like you said. I don't know. Well, like people, they have a very big issue with hell and heaven and, you know, how we go. Take away fire, burning, pain, stuff. Take all that away from hell. Okay. Think about this for a moment.

Hell is a place. where in a sense, the absence of God's love is there, the absence of the spirit is there. Now, God's everywhere, he's omniscient, but there are times like the palpable presence, manifest presence of God, you can sense God. God's always here, but there are times you, hell is a place where, and it's hard to imagine,

there is none of that. Full disconnect, yeah. Now watch this. The worst thing for a, so people say, why would a loving God send people to hell? And my response is, think of it just the opposite. The worst thing a loving God can do is to force somebody into heaven who doesn't want to be there. People that go to hell,

Luke, think about this. Their whole life, what they say to God is, leave me alone. God, I don't want you. I don't need you. I don't want anything to do with you. I'm not going to worship you. So when you stand before the Lord, the worst thing God could do is say, go to heaven. What God does is on that day is he answers and gives you your request. Your entire life, you said, leave me alone and God says, you have your answer, go to hell. Because you didn't want me anyway. So if you think of it that way, it's not, well, God's punited. No, people in heaven, it's all about Jesus.

I tell some people I've church all the time, if you don't love Jesus, you're going to hate heaven. After all, he's everywhere. You're going to bump into him all the time, right? So you're going to love him now. You're definitely going to hate it there. I heard someone else put it very similarly to your point, said that if you don't want to spend your, this short period, this vapor of your life with Jesus, why would you want to spend all of eternity?

Ooh, that's good. Right? It's just a different way, forever. Like, an answer that it is, you know, what is it? In Tombstone, said, deserve and got nothing to do with it, right? It's like, I don't think we have, I think there's some idea that we deserve that regardless if that's how we want to live, right? And we want both things.

We want to live the way we want, but we also want heaven. But the realities are, is if you don't want to spend time with, you don't want to spend time with, you don't want to spend time with Jesus or live for him with him now. Why would you want that? Well, if I live with my wife Candy, but then I had Susie on the side that I was visiting during the week, would that fly with her? No. If you know my wife, there ain't no way they fly. So why would we think that would fly in a relationship with God? If we're prostituting and cheat, yeah, but that's how we are. We think, oh, that's fine. I'm going to live with the world and Christ. I'll have them both. So, I mean, I think in this Hellenistic kind of view of what intelligence is, it seems like the Hebrew culture had humility built into the system. So you be. became humble as you were a part of it.

And I think what we don't value in Western culture is emotional intelligence. You read the Old Testament. You're like, God was angry. God was sad. You have all these emotional descriptions of him. And like, how could God be sad? How could God have emotions? Like a human has emotions.

And our emotions are most of the time, you know, we feel something. And the next day we're like, oh, you know, crap. I was off on that. Like, but we're emotive creatures. That's good. And everything in politics, is trying to sway you emotionally and we're divided because of that. And humans have always been emotionally unintelligent.

And when you read it, I think Jesus shows up and there's this whole, he has, he has, not only is he most intelligent, but he's also, he knows exactly how everyone's feeling. Yes. He knows the feelings of the Pharisees and the feelings of the people. They don't say a word. He already knows what they feel. And he calls him out on your hearts are already dark. I can just, I know it.

And I think that is something that the church doesn't teach people how to have that emotional intelligence when you read the Bible. And it's not just the actions. See, Jesus has got, the Pharisees acted perfectly. They won an Oscar. Exactly. But Jesus is judging the motives, like you said, the desires behind the desire, the action, the mindset behind the action. So as you, as you, the T up, we're almost done here. I just want to finish this guy.

Keep going. Now I think this was, how much time we got here in this podcast? League, we're gone. I don't know. We're gone. I don't know if the audience is still with it. but I'm going to finish this up. They're here.

They're here. But let me tell you, because this will, this will tie it all together, I think, because you're right. They were ingrained in this culture of the Bible.

God, his word, the culture. That was their Olympics. I never thought of it. That's a great insight. That was their athletics. They gave them,

and it was. It's hard work. We memorized scripture and I group. You know that. He's on pretty good, by the way. He doesn't have a lot better. It doesn't have an all way.

He does get his script. My memories. My memory is full. He's got to wear his special beanie. So his brain works. That's right. That's how he hits it sometimes. There's a lot of stuff that goes in our brains on a week of days.

No, listen, we're all struggling. Okay, I'm not saying. We're all struggling. We're all struggling. We used to be a jeopardy guy, and I can't do it anymore. Yeah, yeah. Can't remember anything. We're getting older.

It's kids, too. Kids will do that. Getting older is not for the pain of heart. So. Kim trails are making us all dumber. That's what I think. What is it? We're not on the rabbit trail.

We're not on the rabbit. Robbie, continue on this rat. Okay, I'm trying to get the wheels back up. Yeah, let's go. Okay, so the age of 10, there was a split, 10 or 11. Most of the girls would go work. And by the way, the girls in school would learn some of the Torah, but they focused mostly on the Psalms, believe it or not, historically.

But at this age, there was a split. At the age of 10 or 11, most of the boys went to work and they chose a profession, 11, 12, the family business. So they declared, I'm going to work with the father in the family business. If the dad was a vineyard owner, guess what the son did? Worked in the vineyard. If dad made sandals, you're a sandal maker. If your father was a fisher.

and owned a fishing enterprise, like Zebedee Incorporated fishing, you work for the family. So that made sense. But the elite, those who excel, those who really had what it took, they got to go to the next level of study. The first level is called the bait, sephor, just for context, house, bait is house, like the bait adenai, the house of the lord, bait is house, bait, sefour, house of the book. The second level of study was called the bait Talmud or the house of learning, a little more intense. At this time, at 11, 12-year-olds, the boys would go to school.

From this level of study, they would move from the Torah and they would focus on the rest of the Old Testament. Back then, it wasn't 39 books. I think it was like 22 books, same books, different order, condensed. But they would learn the rest of the Old Testament. But they would also learn the oral law because the Jewish culture believes, and you've probably heard this for, Moses comes down from the mountain with 613 commandments written, but he also comes down with the oral law, which becomes the Talmud later. Okay.

So they learn the oral law. They learn interpretation. They learn Hebrew. At the end of this level of study at the age of 15, maybe 16 at the top is the big shift. 99% of the students, the boys, would go work for the family. But the top elite, like the PhDs of the day, the scholars, those who are, you know. Valedictorians. The valedictorian.

You know, I didn't have that. But these are people who, they called it having chutzpah in Hebrew. Hootspah, passion. Abraham. Randy Savage, that's your moment. He had a lot of. Green with the crap. Green with the crop, yeah.

What do they go? Where do they go? They go to the last level of study. And again, it's just a small percentage. But there was an entrance exam to get in. So they would go to the last level of study called the Bait Midrash or the House of Study, which is just overwhelming to think about. When I got my PhD, there's a big entrance exam. You have to pass the entrance exam.

to get in and it's like a big deal and you gotta translate, you know, some disciplines Hebrew and Greek from fly. Then you had to translate German. I mean, it's a big deal. So I know the pressure of this. This is 10x, here's why. What the 16, 15, 16 year old boy would do is he would go in the community and find a rabbi, a well-known rabbi, rabbi Gamilell for Paul or Gamaliel for Paul or Rabbi Akiva,

Rabbi Shammai, Rabbi Hill, these were rabbis. And you would go to the rabbi if Luke was the rabbi and I'd say, Rabbi Luke, could I study? Yeah, he looks like a rabbi. Sensei. Yeah, Sincere Luke. Yeah, you're ready. Rabbi Luke, can I study under you?

I want to devote my life. Now, what I was saying is this, for the next 15 years of my life, I'm going to follow you to the age of 30 when most rabbis began their ministry. You'll see the connections here. No accident. Jesus at 30 starts his ministry when the culture said it would, okay? So you go to this rabbi. Now, the rabbi would ask himself a lot of questions about you.

you, before he even gave you an exam, he would say, does Luke, or you'd say, does Robbie have what it takes? Is he passionate enough? Does he have the discipline? Is he teachable? Is he a learner? And if you thought I was able to enter, you would give me an oral exam that was unbelievable. You'd ask me questions about the Torah, questions about interpretations, questions about the oral law, questions about Hebrew, questions about commentary. And if you thought I was good enough, if you thought I was smart even if you thought I had what it took, you would say the greatest three words in English you could ever hear. Come, follow me. Now, let me frame this for you. Jesus and Mark one, Mark begins the gospel this way. After John was put into prison, Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee and looked out

and saw two brothers Peter and Andrew fishing. By the way, sidebar here. Why are they fishing? because their dad's fished. Yeah, and. They didn't make it. They washed out. They didn't make the cut. Yeah. They didn't make the cut. They weren't the VAL of Victorian.

Right. They weren't good enough. They were second name in a sense. I'm not down at it, but they weren't smart enough. They weren't sharp enough. They didn't have what it took. They were overlooked and looked over. Yeah.

If they wanted to know what they were going to do the rest of their life, they only had to look to their friends and their father if you were James and John. They got the Harvard rejection letter. They got the rejection letter. Okay. I'm not downing fishermen because it was an upstanding profession, but here's where they are. Jesus walks by the seashore and he calls out to them. Now, let me just tell you a backstory because when I was studying this passage,

it brought me back to the sixth and seventh grade. When I was at the school I was six, fifth, seventh grade, and I was acting up and I was causing problems. Was this your magician phase? No, it was way before the magician phase. I didn't do a trick. Did you ever get out of that phase? Are you still doing magic? I'll do one right now.

No. I'll make you come to our conference. Go on, bro. We're going to make you come to our conference. Have tricks. We'll travel. We'll do our D-Grored one day. Continue.

No, okay, so here's the thing. I'm in the fifth, sixth grade. And believe or not, I think this is why I got into fighting in MMA because I was picked on mercilessly as a young boy. I was tall. I think I was done growing. I was 6-6 at 16, 15. I was done growing at 16, 6. But I was tall, uncoordinated, size 15, 60.

My feet grew with me. 12. I was in a 12, 13, I was in 13, 16. I was in a cigarette, very uncoordinated, very awkward, and I got made fun of a lot. And I still remember six, seventh grade, coming home to my dad crying regularly, because, you know, it would always play this game where, you know, you remember the game, they'd line you up on the fence, and the two guys picking the team to play football. It was always the one guy who had failed twice, his name was Philip, and everybody knew that guy, so he was the bully, he failed twice, he was held back. And

then his partner in crime, Kerry, who was scared of Philip, so they bullied everybody else. And it would always be the same. They would. I'd always, you know, pick on us and they rub clobbers in my face and put grass in my mind. I mean, it was always the – but the thing that bothered me more than that was this. I still remember it like yesterday, which stand on the fence and they'd say, oh, we're going to pick teams. Now, Luke probably got picked. I never got picked.

They'd say, we want Nate, you know. We want Justin. We want Robbie. I mean, we want Randy. We want Jeff. And then to get down the end, it'd be me and like two or three other guys, you know, and we'd look around. And the only thing you didn't want was what? We picked last.

To get picked last. Yeah. Or even worse. Not get picked at all. Not get picked at all. Yeah. And Nate, every time, I'm not going to say, every time they'd say, they'd look around and they say, oh, I think we got enough.

Maybe next time. Jeez, bro. Bro, I'm telling you, I mean, I get emotional. Now I'm thinking about it, but back then it affected me a lot. I would go home regularly and cry to my dad. And I would say, Dad, I just want to be picked. I just want people, I just want somebody to like me. I just want somebody to accept me.

I just want, listen, I just wanted somebody to see. something in me just to affirm me. Okay. So what does that have to do with Jesus? I don't know for sure, but I imagine that's what those four disciples felt like. They're going through the motions, mundane, routine seasons of life. But this day's different. Because now you have on the seashore this Galilean rabbi, broke itinerant rabbi, but he yells something out. Remember what Jesus says? He walks by the seashore. He sees two brothers in the sea, casting their nets for their fishermen. And Jesus says to them, come, follow me, and I'll make you fissures of men. Do you know what he's saying to us today?

This would be like Jesus saying, Peter, Andrew, James John, I see something in you. Nobody else sees. The world may overlook you, but not me. And if I told you guys what I'm going to do with you the rest of your life, you wouldn't believe me. But all I need from you now is a step of obedience. And if you trust me, I'm going to change the world through you. that's what makes the call of Jesus so profound.

Now, here's why I tell you that. If you don't know the context and culture, you miss it. And that's why I've given my life. I've written books on this. I've got a podcast, got a YouTube channel to tell people, if you don't understand the Hebraic culture, it's like reading the Bible in black and white, like the TV behind you.

We grew up with that box and that square, and it was fine. But the moment we go back and look at that and compare it to 4K high-deaf, O-L-E-D-T-V-V, it's a night-day difference. Same show, same show, different experience. That's incredible because it's like they got the acceptance letter and they didn't do the interview. He knew who they were and they did it in reverse. You're in.

Right. I didn't even apply. I didn't have to go through the job interview. I didn't get through the oral exam and all the other things I had to do. What are you saying? No, that's good. And here's another thing I forgot to mention. Jesus is the first rabbi in human history.

You can document this. who goes after his disciples. Yeah. Every other system set up in Judaism or the culture back then, the student went to the rabbi and said, can I follow you? Jesus flips the script.

And if you're listening, aren't you glad today that Jesus still does that? He still comes after his disciples. And he called me and he called you and he called you and he said, come follow me. And I could have said like my past, what do I have the author?

I've got nothing good. And Jesus says, no, I know you're not good, but I am. And I'm going to do something with you. And if you trust me, I'll change the world and you get a front row seat to it. And that's the greatest thing about Christianity. I tell people, it's called the great commission, not the great mission. He could do it without us. The great commission, he lets us have a seat at the table.

And what a journey. What an adventure to be a believer today. That was awesome. I love it. It's very much in the vein and akin to what we talk about in sort of the Old Testament work of Dr. Michael Heiser, who's been a big impetus for the show, was he was famously was just say this, his book was, Bible was written for you, but not to you.

Unless you understand the cultural context and the ancient Hebrew peoples and the things that sort of were surrounding the context of this writing, you're going to miss a ton of it because a lot of things don't make sense. But when you say to look at what you've talked to say about, Ravi and understanding the Alexander of the Great and the Hellenistic impact,

on the culture that Jesus would have grown up in and started his ministry in, and then also understanding that the way that it worked for rabbis, I mean, it's easy to read, and guess what? It's good enough the way that it is. You will hear the gospel and respond to it, but it is like a bottomless well or like an onion, you can continue to peel back

when you start to understand the cultural layers on this, the context, the hidden gems and meanings within this, it just makes it that much more alive and deep and, and, and, impactful, especially as we... Think about today. I mean, and not to go to show, but think about today. The reason, the reason I said that,

the question is, how are we being influenced by Hellenism today? Think about it. Media. If somebody disagrees with you, that's not for the faint of heart. Try to talk to somebody who doesn't agree with you politically, or with the media, or the media you listen to,

or the entertainment, or a sports team. Yeah. I mean, entertainment. I mean, so the question I always ask myself, and I try to audit my own spirit. spiritual life, what are the biggest influences in my life right now? And normally it's not the word and believers in the, it's normally the culture and the context. So you need to take, as Paul said, every thought captive and discern, every spirit test to discern what you're allowing in your

mind and heart. It's funny because it's like, I think now when we, a lot of times in church service, I've always sort of been prone to this as a kid, is like, how does this make sense? relationally isn't a question we ask a lot. It's how does this make sense as a business decision in the church? And I think often Luke and I, when we're talking off like, how do we do this? How do we make this move inside blurry creatures? Well, this makes sense relationally. Because when you claim to be a Christian and when you claim to understand the story of Jesus, the relationship drives everything you do. And I think a lot of churches flip that cart and they go, well, this makes sense for the for the business of the church.

But if we fire this person, how can we do that relationally? If we move on from this thing, or if we look at this story in the Bible, like you would have probably read over that Jesus calls these disciples. But if you look at it, what makes sense relationally is these guys were heartbroken. And he calls them. And I think most people aren't really wired that way. We're wired to think, well, you got to protect myself. And if I'm vulnerable, I can't.

You know, and I just think that when I read the Bible now, it's like, oh, that's why God does that because that down the stream, that's how much of a relational God he is to his people. And these all make sense of why we go through struggles, why we go through a lot of people, like why you went to the bottom and why you had to get there and how God reclaims all that. And it comes back and you have a deeper and stronger relationship. And nothing's wasted, you know. and it's just incredible to kind of read it now as an adult with a little bit of that, that knowledge and go, okay, now I get this story.

A lot of us interpret a lot of these biblical stories at a young age when we're just getting into college. And we walk away from our faith because we don't understand that relational depth that's going through that story. So it's great to always go back there. So I love this podcast too. I mean, you haven't said this explicitly, but I would say one of the things I try to, and y'all do this here, but one of the things I try to do with my own boys I'm disciplining. The problem with people walking away from the faith, in my opinion, is we have taught them what to believe.

We haven't taught them why they believe what they believe. There's a difference between saying you've got to believe this, this, this, and this. Or allow, like, my boys, we have, they question everything in our home. Where is Sheel and Hades? We talk about this all the time, and I allow them. And I don't have all the answers, and that's okay. And the thing I love is, which you said relationally, we always have a lot of, about relationally with people, but I would tell, like when people come in and ask for marriage

counsel, which I don't do, but I used to, they would say, before I asked them anything about each other, I say, hey, tell me about your relationship with God. I'd ask the husband and the wife. Because if the vertical is jacked, then the horizontal will be hijacked as well. And so you said earlier, the relationship, I would say focus on your relationship with the Lord. And the more you press into God and the more you seek the Lord, it's amazing how relational things start to fall in place. We have to do another part two. We can talk about angels, but not today. I know, man.

I had all this stuff on angels at the garden and angel. There were three times angels are in the Torah. It's a teaser. It's a teaser for next time. Let's go. Yeah. And my last thing I'll say is that I think getting into these topics, when you hear the fear in someone's voice, if they saw the Bigfoot creature or something, that to me was

the most important part of their story. Not, well, I got the tracks and I got the data. I got the hair. I got the DNA. I can prove to you statistically with the data that this thing exists. It's like I could hear the fear in their voice. That's just how I've always been and go, this thing appeared to this guy.

This guy saw this thing. I don't look at it from maybe the scientific viewpoint that Greek mindset. It's like, this guy's will not hunt anymore because of what he saw. And he knows the difference, right? And that was the impetus of wanting to start this podcast because like, this is more than just fairy tales. This is more than just imagine. if people are imagining things.

So throughout your, obviously you can go to Long Hollow and see Robbie, preach every Sunday and you do an amazing job at that. And you have a way of making a big church feel small and intimate, which is an incredibly difficult task. And just it's cool to see what you guys are doing. It's cool to be a part of it. Thank you for inviting me to the discipleship group and just seeing me in the midst of a crowd. And for whatever help I can bring to the group, it's, it's,

It's always funny, but I think that starting blurry creatures, just I never thought that like it would get into some of these conversations. I never thought Bigfoot and talking about the disciples would ever be in one conversation. But God has a sense of humor and that's what this show feels like to me. And we're just like in the backseat, like on the ride of our life having these conversations. But you have a podcast, you have books out and just anything you want to pitch. You have a YouTube channel now. Thank you so much, Rob. You help me with the YouTube.

You and Nate, I watched you guys. And I realize on YouTube and podcasts, that's a whole different audience that I'm reaching on Sunday. You know, back in the day, people would turn on TBN or radio and listen to sermons. Not many of our children. And if you're listening grandchildren, I'm not doing that anymore. They're on YouTube. You know, 26% of the market's on YouTube. So sort of YouTube channel is my name, Robbie Galli.

You can search that. I have a podcast called The Forgotten Jesus. I do with my wife. And we do all this stuff, old, New Testament connections. You got merch? I got some shirt. Yeah, I got this one shirt. There's a little something somewhere here.

But here's the million-nine question before we go. Thank you for that. But the million-line question is, Luke, what do you think of Nate's new haircut? He shows back up. I didn't even know who this dude was. I mean, he cut the long hair off and he shaved the beard down. I know. Are you liking it?

You know? I like it in the sense of that I can't give him grief about it every week. He was getting, he was back in his band face for a minute. I love to give him some, a little bit. He likes to talk about hair on him. I do love a good head of hair. He's got some nice, dude. I mean, it's not beautiful blonde like the angels have.

Just keeping the lettuce changing is always a... Apparently the angels had blonde, beautiful blonde hair. So we'll talk about that. The next episode. The next episode, the hair of angels. Thanks, Robbie. Thanks, Robbie. Appreciate it.

Amen.