Theology in the Raw - 757: #757 - A Red-Headed Australian Army Vet Becomes a World Renown Biblical Scholar: Michael Bird

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

Preston is joined by his long-time friend Dr. Michael Bird. Mike is a renown biblical scholar who just finished writing a definitive introduction to the New Testament with N.T. Wright. Preston and Mike talk shop about all things related to New Testament scholarship, women’s ordination, Anglicanism, N.T. Wright, Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles, and American evangelicalism. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends, and welcome to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If this podcast has encouraged, blessed, or challenged you in any way, would you consider supporting the show for as little as five bucks a month? You can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. You can look at the different giving tiers. That's T-I-E-R-S, not T-E-A-R-S. Although maybe some of my givers do have lots of tears after listening to the show. Anyway, if you want to support the show, you want to give back to Theology in the Raw, then you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw.

That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. And if you support the show, you get premium access to premium content in return. It is not just a pure gift. It is somewhat of a transactional gift. You get access to more premium content that only my Patreon supporters have access to like once a month podcasts, once a month blogs and other goodies that come out throughout the year. So again, if you want to support the show,

this is a listener supported podcast and go to patreon.com forward slash theology in a row. And then I will also be in Richmond, Virginia, New York city, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, um, in the fall and several other cities that are already lined up in the spring. So we'd love to see you out at one of these events again, centerforfaith.com and go to the events link and get All the information for all those events

Okay, my guest on the show today is Dr. Michael F. Bird If you don't know who Michael Bird is, then you need to know who Michael Bird is And if you've never heard of the name Michael Bird Then I'm super excited for you to listen to this episode Michael Bird is A

Wow Five years ago, I would say he's quickly becoming a world-renowned New Testament scholar. I would say now he is a world-renowned New Testament scholar. He's written more than 30, or written or edited more than 30 books. He's, I think, 20 of those books at least are solo books that he's written on his own. Almost all of them are high-powered academic books, and he's only 45 years old. This guy is just a machine, cranking out not just a high quantity of theological books, but a very high quality of theological books. And if you resonate with my perspective on scholarship, on the Bible, on theology, on evangelicalism,

on just, if you're listening to the show, if you're not just starting to listen to the show because some friend told you about it and you're just checking it out, but if you've been an ongoing listener, you probably resonate with some or a lot of what I say. If that's you, then you will absolutely resonate with Michael Byrd.

He is a brother from another mother. We met in Scotland several years ago, back in 2005, I believe. And he's been a good friend from a distance and just a top notch biblical scholar. The dude is writing, or he just wrote a comprehensive introduction to the New Testament with N.T. Wright. So it's Michael Byrd and N.T. Wright. So if you don't know who Michael Byrd is, hopefully you know who N.T. Wright is. So that just tells you that this dude is legit. So we talk about a bunch of stuff. We talk about his, some of his scholarly interests. We talk about just New Testament scholarship as a whole. We talk about other more practical things like the American Evangelical Church. We talk about women's ordination and all kinds of stuff.

I can't wait for you to listen to this episode. I had a great time catching up with my good friend from Melbourne, Australia. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Michael right. I am live. Um, actually I'm not live. I'm recorded recording with my, uh, gosh, good friend, Dr. Michael Byrd. And I've got so many stories about Mike Byrd. We actually go way back to my early Aberdeen days. I'm going to say around 2000, maybe 2005, when you were teaching at Highland Theological College out on the coast of Loch Ness, literally, on the shore, right by Loch Ness. And you came out to Aberdeen, we hit it off, got our families together. We've been

friends from a distance largely ever since. So for those who don't know who Mike Bird is, why don't you give an intro to who you are and the kind of work that you're interested in. I'm sure that'll lead to all kinds of other conversations we can chase down. Yeah, my name's Mike Bird. I am Australian. I'm an Anglican priest, New Testament scholar, and theologian. I write, teach, publish in those areas of biblical studies, and I enjoy hanging out with my friends like Preston Sprinkle,

and pretty much what I do for a living. Oh, also did ridley college right right and you so you've been at uh you did your phd in queensland then you got hired on directly if i remember correctly to highland in scotland right right right after your phd it is it is literally top theological college in the united kingdom i mean geograph tend to be to the north of it. Unless they have the Artists' School of Theology, it is literally the top theological college in the United Kingdom. Yeah, yeah. Your audio is fading out. It was great before we hit record.

Now it's a little sketchy. Any changes? I haven't touched nothing. Okay. Yeah, that's good. Okay. I'm holding forward. So if I can sum up, Mike Bird, I mean, you produce more content than anybody I've probably ever met. Now, as you know, from being in the U.K., U.K. scholars are typically kind of skeptical of, in particular, Americans who like to write like two books a year. There's so much kind of capitalism wrapped up into that and money and all this stuff. And I remember Simon Gathegel, who my advisor and a friend of both of ours, you know, he said, my one advice to you is don't overwrite, you know, write a book every five years, maybe, you know.

One advice to you is don't overwrite, you know, write a book every five years, maybe, you know. And I haven't really lived by that, but but I understand the concern. Now, long story short, what makes you unique, in my opinion, is that you produce a ton of stuff, but it's so high quality across a diverse spectrum of disciplines. Like you're writing on Paul, you're writing on Jesus, you're doing early church stuff, you're doing theology, biblical theology, systematics even more recently. So I don't, like, I don't know if I know any, but maybe N.T. Wright, maybe, who produces such high quality with such high or high quantity that's also high quality. How do you do that? How do you produce such high quality academic books in such high quantity?

I know you don't sleep very much, right? I sleep better than I used to. Okay. I sleep better than I used to. I think there's a number of factors. The first thing you have to remember is I live inside my head. The external world is just the matrix. So for me, the real world is inside my head. And this is just where I come to set people free. Secondly, in that vein, it feels such a shame. I've got all these ideas in

my head. It feels such a shame to keep them all to myself. You know, I could be sharing this love and what I've learned with so many others. So I guess that's part of it. The other thing is, when I spent some time in the army and I worked in military intelligence, and one of the things you develop the skill is to absorb copious amounts of information. You then have to very quickly analyze it, synthesize it, and then disseminate it in a very quick fashion because people's lives matter

based on what you do with information. So I learned a skill very quickly of processing a lot of information, analyzing, synthesizing it, and then getting it to the people who needed to hear it. And I did that for several years, which was probably one of the best ways of preparing for a career in research.

So that's probably the thing. I've got wide-ranging interests. Jesus, Paul, the early church, the apostolic fathers, the Septuagint, you know, Jesus, Paul, the early church, the apostolic fathers, the deceptive religion, uh, systematics, biblical theology. And I just like, you know, working and writing in multiple fields. And I like the idea of being a generalist rather than spending, you know, working on Luke acts. Uh,

I prefer working on a wide spectrum of areas. Now the danger is you can end up doing that somewhat superficially. Eventually, the knowledge you acquire in all these different areas eventually feeds in altogether. So when you write on someone like Paul, you're doing it with a much wider and broader perspective, which forms it. So you've written, I mean, several. Gosh, how many books?

I mean, you've probably written, I'm looking at your Wikipedia page. By the way, Mike Bird has a Wikipedia page. I didn't know that. Not by me. Not by me. I always wonder that. How do people get Wikipedia pages? Just like one of your fans and followers says, I need to post something here.

But how many not edited books? You've edited a few books we worked on a project together but you've solo written books by yourself are you up in the teens, the 20s how many books have you lost track of? I think all up

with edited books it's about 30 but I think in terms of just books by me it's about 20 and again I can't emphasize enough the difference between writing an academic book versus, you know, compiling a bunch of sermons. Like some, you know, and not to detract away from the need for popular level books. Okay. But to put together a sermon series, spin it into a book, you know, if you have a mega church, any publisher is going to say, yeah, if you got, if we can,

you know, sell tens of thousands of copies because you got to have a big platform, we'll publish your book. Doesn't really matter what it is. We'll just publish it because it'll sell. And, um, but to write an academic book, I mean, it takes a ton of, again, some academic books take five, ten years to write. You have, I think all your books would be considered academic, right? You don't have any like prayer of Jabez type books, do you? Some of them would be very textbook-y. Okay.

Like for first-year seminary students. Some of them are obviously a little bit more technical, like a commentary on first Esdras according to codex vaticanus wait is that a thing you actually wrote a book on that that's a book you've written yeah first esdras first esdras can you explain my audience might not even know what that even means can you unpack that yeah that's a book that's a book from the apocrypha that's basically um uh most of esra part of nehhemiah, and a couple of other apocryphal stories that have been thrown together in Greek.

And you wrote a commentary on that? Yeah. Who had a gun to your head to force you to write? Well, it was when I was in Scotland, you know how the universities have to produce these highbrow, very academic pieces that nobody reads. So while I was in Scotland, I committed to one of those projects. So again, for about the 15 people who care about one Ezra's, my book is kind of like

the latest thing from about five or six years ago now. But for the rest of the English-speaking world, it never really happened. I actually dreamed, during my PhD, I dreamed of writing a commentary either on the Psalms of Solomon or Pseudo-Philo. I have since left that dream, although there's still that itch that's always there in my heart, even though I've moved on to more

kind of in between popular academic, academic level stuff. But I get it, man. I, I don't know. Just, just pursuing,

pursuing the knowledge, the study of something that might play a tiny sliver in understanding the Bible, but still somebody needs to do that sliver. And I just have so much mad respect for people that are going to do that. I mean, Simon Gattergill said, I think we need an actual Christian who's an expert in the gospel of Thomas. So he's taught himself Coptic and spent five years studying this and produce a

commentary on the gospel of Thomas. And I think that is a small sliver, and yet such a massive, respectable sliver that is needed in the church today. There is something about going through an ancient text, an ancient Jewish test, poptic, or whatever, and just working through it methodically, you know, at the level of its language, its sources, what it's doing, looking at the various manuscripts in close detail, and then thinking, and how does this tell us anything about the history of Judaism or early Christianity?

That was the best thing. I mean, from that one Esdras, although it's a very technical academic, I really did learn a lot about ancient Judaism. I learned a lot about ancient manuscripts from doing it. And it did feed into sort of other things I've done in the future. That's good. Yeah. I mean, I still look back on my PhD days when we first met and how much time I spent lingering in early Jewish literature.

I mean, I don't know how many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours I spent in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I just just the other day, I kind of cracked open my paperback copy of the two-volume, you know, Garcia Martinez. And man, the notes I took in there, the highlights,

the underlines, you would think I was like a convert to Qumran Judaism, you know, like it was more marked up than my copy of Romans. But I, those, those, I don't know, like, like, and some people would say, gosh, why would you spend so much time meditating on that kind of material? And, and I don't know if I'd have space for that in my life now, but I have zero regrets of that. Like, that's just, I learned so much about the New Testament ultimately, and Jesus ultimately, by truly understanding Jewish material on its own terms, not just as like backdrop material, but actually trying to get inside the head of these.

Yeah, yeah. I'm the same. I mean, my Dead Sea Scrolls, I went through and underlined every reference to Gentiles, Romans. Yeah. So, you know, I wanted to know what the jews thought about the fate of gentiles because i wrote my thesis on jesus and the gentiles so yeah i was the same thing i spent like copious amounts of hours yeah doing that i'll tell you what was sad for me i had this huge chapter on you know gentiles in the Jewish world, what you were saying about Gentiles. And I'd spent, like, you know, months working on that chapter,

but I had to cut it out of a PhD thesis when it got published because there was no room for it. And that felt like losing a limb, which is why I then resurrected it as a separate volume about Jewish history activity in the ancient world. Yeah, so tell us about just, yeah, briefly, I don't want to go so deep that my audience turns off the podcast, but sum up your, your, both your dissertation,

your thesis and during your just during your PhD and also that second book that you, that you're just referencing. Cause that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a sub discipline within New Testament studies that 99% of Christians aren't even aware of. and yet it warrants... Well, here's the problem I dealt with. You know, Jesus was Jewish. All of his followers were Jewish. It was a very Jewish movement located largely in Jerusalem and a bit of Galilee.

But within 40 years, it's become pretty much a Gentile religion. This is called Christianity. 40 years it's become pretty much a gentile religion of christianity it's gone from being a kind of messianic sect to uh effectively a gentile religion in the greco-roman world and how do you get from a to b now of course everyone says well it's all the apostle paul and all that and he's the gentiles but what happened at a what was happening with jesus that would turn this jewish restoration movement into a uh a religion that would turn this Jewish restoration movement into a religion that would incorporate you know Romans and Greeks into it and basically my thesis was this. Jesus is a prophet of Jewish restoration etymology. In other words he came to bring to fulfillment those great promises

from Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel about the new Exodus, the new Israel, the redemption of God's people and in that story you know a transformed Israel would transform the world. God's people when they would renew would be the hundredth of the renewal of the world. So that's the basic story that Jesus was part of. And you can find that throughout the Old Testament. And that explains a lot of Jesus's interactions with Gentiles, such as the Syrophoenician woman you get in Mark 7, or the centurion you get in Matthew 8,

and I believe Luke 13, and that type of thing. So I just went through and tried to explain all that. That then leads to a sort of an earlier question, to what extent were Jews trying to convert Gentiles to Judaism? There was a little bit of it going on. You know, every now and again, you get some Jews, such as in Josephus Antiquities, Chapter 20, where you get people trying to advocate Judaism to, you know, Gentile kings. But more often than not, I think the Jews were willing to accept converts. They didn't really aggressively go out and seek them.

So that sort of, there is a fairly newish, proselytizing thrust in the early Christian movement. newish, proselytizing thrust in the early Christian movement. So there wasn't a lot of Jewish missionary activity during the Second Temple intertestamental period, or was there a little bit? I know Scott McKnight is written this.

It all comes down to how you define missionary, but we only have spasmodic references to this happen. Like, you know, Matthew 23, 15, where Jesus says to the Pharisees, you cross sin land to make a single convert and you make him twice the son of hell

as yourself. Yeah, yeah. I've always wondered that. Like, really? Does that ever happen? A Jew? Yeah, well, the issue is, is Jesus being hyperbolic? Is he exaggerating something? Are Pharisees trying to convert other Jews to Pharisaism? That sort of pros proselyte. Or is it referring to Pharisees trying to actually convert Gentiles to Judaism? Cosefus' Antiquities chapter 20 to see a story about that. But from what we know of literature, generally, they were not, the Jewish people buried everywhere, were not all that active in doing that.

They were quite happy to accept converts, but didn't sort of aggressively go out seeking them. Okay, interesting. Your latest book, which comes out, oh, November 2019, just in time for ETS SPL, I'm sure. You co-wrote with N.T. Wright. That's insane. So you're co-writing a book with N.T. Wright called The New Testament in Its World, An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, which, by the way, I love that title.

It's just provocative. It's raw, real. The book abbreviates NTW. Yeah. So it's done, obviously, because it's coming out in a couple months. So what was that process like, and how did you get the opportunity to co-write a book with NTW? That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, being asked to co-write a book with N.T. Wright? That's pretty amazing. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, being asked to co-write a book with Tom Wright is like being asked to sing a duet with Beyonce. You know, you can't say no. Even if you can't sing, you can say no. Yeah, no, that book came about because SPCK, as a publisher, said, do you have any book ideas you'd like to run past it so I said well you know I'm pretty busy and pretty full up at the moment I said you know you should get someone to work with Tom Wright and to go through his various

writings work closely with Tom and to construct a new testament theology based mostly on his life's work and then just sort of supplementing it as need be. And they said, that is a great idea. And, hey, Mike, why don't you do it? I said, well, yeah, I mean, I've met Tom a couple of times. We get on. We get on. Well, I'm a bit of a fanboy. But Tom may have his own people.

He may have his own people. But they ran the idea past Tom. And he was like oh yeah that sort of you know a strange aussie girl yeah he seems all right um uh so yeah and we got underway and then uh then zondervan got on board um which meant it went from being like a small sort of black and white book to this all singing all dancing uh incredible show uh we've even got like two dvds coming out of the book. There's one which is a church-based curriculum

called The New Testament You Never Knew, which is designed for church groups, for lay people, which is basically just me and Tom traveling around Jerusalem, Greece, Rome, talking about the New Testament and that type of thing. And then we're bringing out more of a seminary-based curriculum later down the track. And it's been a lot of fun, a great adventure.

Tom is terrific to work with. It's a little bit depressing because you just see how wonderfully he writes. And then I've got to add my own little thing on the side or my own little marginal gloss here and there, that type of a thing. But it's great fun. And I think we've produced a book that will be really valuable for students, for teachers, for anyone who wants a real comprehensive overview of the new Testament in its

world. I think we'll really benefit from this book. Well, you're, you're being humble. I, I'll never forget the IBR conference. IBR – what does that even stand for?

What's IBR stand for? Institute for Biblical Research. Institute for Biblical Research. Where have you been? I know, I know. You're out of the game, man. What's SBL? Is that the Society of Baseball League or something?

This should be gosh darn it so so ivr the institute for biblical research is in my opinion the highest level of evangelical biblical scholarship and what i mean by that is biblical a society where biblical scholars people studying the Bible on a high academic level who still believe that Jesus is Lord, that we should preach the gospel, that repentance is necessary for eternal life, so on and so forth. I would say it's the perfect balance between ETS, the Evangelical Theological Society, which typically is very conservative, like, you know, not ultra right, but very far right. And society of biblical literature where you may have a, you know, a Buddhist monk who is also an atheist talking about gender theory in the Book of Romans, you know, which is fine. You know, there's a place for that. talking about gender theory in the book of Romans, you know, which is fine. You know, there's a place for that.

But IBR kind of blends the academic power of SBL and the Christian, the Christianity maybe of ETS, and it's a happy medium. Anyway, all that to say, IBR has an annual meeting. And several years ago, they always have one plenary speaker and then somebody who responds to the keynote address. This year, N.T. Wright was the keynote speaker and Mike Bird was the respondent. And at that time, obviously, everybody knew who N.T. Wright was. And I would say a good percentage knew who you were. But I will never forget bro and i'm saying this and i'm not you're not paying me money but nt right gave a talk it was good i mean it was it was nt right it's of course no matter if he just opens his mouth it's gonna be good you came on and responded and your talk was i hope nt right's

not i'm pretty sure nt Wright's not listening to my podcast. If he is, I'll live with that. You were head and shoulders better than he was. I mean, you were precise. You pushed back on him. You were funny. You were, I mean, it was so good. I sat there in awe.

I literally was thinking, I know that guy. I was like looking around like we edited a book together. I promise you. Like that guy was – you lit that room up. I mean you had to have gotten great responses. I mean give me just – set aside humility. What were the responses like from that talk? It was an incredible talk.

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what the most depressing was. The most depressing thing was like I was on the podium. Tom finished speaking and I think about 10% of the people got up and walked out. They missed it! So that's the first thing I was encountering. I was kind of like the after-dinner mince for a lot of people. But no, I kind of did my know, we both know, Preston, I'm primarily a comedian.

New Testament studies is just my medium. I was able to do about 15 minutes of stand up and interspersed with a bit of biblical studies and theological dialogue with Tom Ryan, which was a lot of fun. But, yeah, a lot of people said that, you know, that was terrific. That was great. Yeah. which was a lot of fun but yeah a lot of people said that you know that was terrific that was great yeah um uh you know i had i i had a i had a good time uh i had a good time doing that so this introduction you worked on with him can i and i don't know how much you can share publicly and if you're like i can't really speak into that is it primarily nt writes pre-written material and you kind of put it all together or did he do any fresh writing for it are you allowed to say oh it's a bit it's a bit of both the one hand we've gone

through um tom's various works you know pieces of the victory of god resurrection of the son of god some of his popular level commentaries and you know i've gone through all the material and basically fashioned a new testament introduction out of it but it hasn't hasn't just been like a cut and paste okay in a kind of patchy way we know we've systematically worked through everything to give it a nice sense of flow make it clear crisp coherent we've got we've got tons of pictures and tables and charts. It's very pictorial. It's very graphic. One of the good things we've got is like an ongoing conversation between a professor and an American seminary student asking questions. It's all emails from the edge.

So the student will say, like, you know, I was reading somewhere about the testimony of Josephus to Jesus is likeesus is his like you know a fake or a forgery like what's up with that there's all those sorts of questions along the way or you know what does the king james bible mean when it says he's not considered robbery equality with god what the heck is robbery going on here yeah um so it's got a whole bunch of good things like that but tom has also added a lot of unique material to this, particularly in the introduction and the end of the book. He's really added some good stuff on why the New Testament matters and what are the benefits you can get from reading it. So at one level, you could say this book is Tom Wright's greatest hits all in one volume, put in a nice, easy, readable, user-friendly fashion. It's also got my own little bits and bobs along the way as well, or a bit of, you know, a bit of comedy relief, maybe a bit of eye candy on the side, however we want to put it, I don't know.

But then also added to that, we've got something that shows why the New Testament actually matters. And, you know, we do start a bit of the process of asking the question, well, so what? How is the gospel of Mark going to affect the way you eat your wheat dicks on a Tuesday morning? Yeah. That type of thing. Man, I can't wait. Yeah, I literally can't wait to read it. It's probably pretty long, right?

What, four or 500 pages? I think it's about 800 pages. Oh, wow. Okay. So it's meaty. Yeah. It's rigorous. But I mean, this is a book I really hope serves a generation of students, teachers, pastors.

I think this book is different to every other New Testament introduction that's going around. How so? Because there are a lot of good introductions. Here's the thing. We don't just want to give people more information about the New Testament. It's not like here's a bunch of data for you to roughly remember. We want to change the way people read the New Testament. And we want people to remember that they're reading history, they're reading literature, they're reading theology. And your objective is to take this material and find ways to live it out. And we start giving you a few tips along the way and how to do that. And I think that that does make it a little bit more unique. We do try to bridge the gap between knowledge and application, and we do try to bring all these things together

of how the New Testament is part of the theological message, part of the revelation, part of history, but it also has its own unique literary forms. I mean, even at 800 pages, I mean, if any pastor or just thoughtful Christian out there leader, um, I mean, you, you can get, if you just said, Hey, I'm going to spend 20 to the year 2020 working through this book, you know, that's just a few pages a week. Really? I don't know. I don't, I don't have the math in front of me. I mean, 20 pages a week, 50 pages a week, whatever. I mean, that, um, that's, that's not that tough. And I think people would just learn tremendously from, from an exercise like that. So, um, I'm going to, you know what I'm yeah, on the spot, I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to try to

spend 2020 work working through this, which I, because all I read right now is on sexuality and gender. It's actually rare for me to read anything outside of that, but I think it's healthy for me to, to do so. So I'm going to, I'm going to take that on. Um, let's shift gears a little bit. Um, you're not just an academic. I mean, you are absolutely a man of the church. Um, you still love Jesus. I mean, I say that, but I laugh, but I mean, a lot of people who go through the academic trajectory journey that you and I have to come out on the other side at, you know, I'm 43, I think you're 45, 44. Yeah.

To still be like passionate about the gospel is actually more rare than people may, may think, or you end up being so cynical or so liberal that you basically are kind of worth it. But you are still, I would say a very very level-headed, thoughtful, gospel-centered evangelical, not in the American sense, but in the actual sense of being an evangelical. Tell us about your church journey. You have gone from being a Baptist to Presbyterian and now an Anglican priest. Is that correct? Yeah.

So tell us about that journey. Yeah, well, I mean, I did not grow up in a Christian home. You know, growing up, everything I knew about Christianity, I learned from Ned Flanders. And Ned Flanders. That's pretty much. So I did not have a religious upbringing. It was a little bit, you know, it wasn't too bad. It was a bit dysfunctional.

And so when I was 17, I couldn't get into college. My grades in school were not good enough. So I went and joined the army. And I did that for a number of years. And it was while I was in the army, I got invited to church for the first time. And I just assumed all churches were filled with moralizing geriatrics that were afraid somewhere, somehow, a young person was having a good time. But I went along to a Baptistist church a new church plant and it was great the people were very different wonderfully different supernaturally different and they shared with me the good news of the gospel and in 1994 i prayed to receive christ and the world's been a different place

ever since so i hung up in some bapt circles, moved around a bit with the army, got a little bit of a taste for theological education. I honestly thought I would maybe train to be an army chaplain, maybe with an academic thing down the line. But as I went through theological college and through seminary, it became clear that my giftings

were probably more on the academic side rather than on the people skills side. So I pursued the academic side, got a scholarship to do my doctorate at the University of Queenstown, which was great. You know, Jesus and the origin of the Gentile mission. I eventually got one in a wonderful place in the north of Scotland, Highland Theological College. It's a great place. Had a great time there for five years. Met wonderful people like Preston and Joey and Nije and so many other wonderful people I've got to know over the years. Then after that,

my mother-in-law threatened to break both of my legs if I didn't bring her daughter and grandchildren back to Australia. So I spent a few years. So when I was in Scotland, I mean, pretty much, there's some good churches there, but you pretty much have to be Presbyterian. There's like 10 different types of Presbyterians. Right. So I did that for a bit.

And yeah, just hanging out with the Presbyterians. And they kind of like beat out some of the Baptist stuff out of me too. So I thought, okay, fine, let's baptize babies. Let's just get over and done with a bit of covenant theology. You're all children of Abraham, let's baptize them. That's a very simplistic way that will probably offend a lot of your listeners. But I've got a blend of, yeah, paedo-baptists and credo-baptists or however you want to word it.

But I think the one thing all my listeners have in common is it's not a hill to die on. So, yeah, keep going. So I went back to the Brisbane School of Theology for a while, and I attended a Presbyterian church there, which I loved. It's still a great church. But basically I was becoming a closet Anglophile. Because when I was in Scotland, I found out that F.F. Bruce, he's a famous biblical scholar, he kept two books on his desk,

a Greek New Testament and a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. I thought, well, that was pretty good for F.F. Bruce, so I might give it a try myself. So I started reading the Book of Common Prayer and learned to love it. It was so biblical. It was very Trinitarian as well, than the side of you know the jesus sort of modest sort of worship um you know in australia we sing a lot of hill song worship kind of like you know jesus you're terrific for you i'd swim the pacific yeah baby yeah baby yeah

yeah yeah um so if you've been singing that for a while the book of common prayer can be rather refreshing in its uh blatant Trinitarianism. So I wanted to move into an Anglican setting. And I got the opportunity when I was invited to join the faculty down here in Melbourne at Ridley College, when I was able to really cross over and join the Anglican fold. And for me, the best thing about being Anglican is you get to be reformed and Catholic at the same time there's a very strong heritage of the ancient Catholic heritage of the faith you know the creeds of the church the church fathers the church mothers that's all part of our heritage but we

also embrace the reformation distinctions about the gospel and you could argue that the Reformation was the attempt to recapture or to rehearse the apostolicity of the church, the apostolic message of the gospel. So that's why I tend to think of being Anglican as a type of reformational Catholicism or Anglicanism. At its best, what it authorized, at its its best is what the Catholic church would look like if it embraced the reformation and returned to its apostolic roots. So that in short is why I like being Anglican and all the cool kids are doing it. You know,

John Stott, Alistair McGrath, C.S. Lewis. On the way over, I just listened to your podcast with Tish Warren. Yeah. And if you want to be cool, you should do it too. Cool.

You don't have to go to Denver to be cool. Well, you know, I'm still, I mean, I won't even get into my whole church past or present or future, but of all the traditional denominations, I've often said that I think Anglican, the Anglican church is probably the most attractive to me for various reasons. A lot of what you hit on, I think the flexibility. Men in purple. Men in purple, Preston. There we go. And women in purple too.

I just want to wear that cool color. Like I just, I feel like I would, people would finally respect me for once. You sitting there with your neck all exposed. So are you, are you, uh, are you ordained in the Anglican church? You're an Anglican priest then? Is that? Yes, I am. I am an Anglican priest. That just sounds sexy in 2019. anglican church then you're an anglican priest then is that yes i am uh i am an anglican priest that just sounds sexy in 2019 an anglican priest yeah i go to places where they call me father mike and it does sound a bit weird because i'm in the anglo-catholics of our tradition they they do like the father mike my kids don't even call me father mike when i'm pulled over by police and they say son you can call me father mike yeah. I only use Father Mike when I'm pulled over by police. And they say, what's your name?

Son, you can call me Father Mike. That's the only time I pull out that language. What is your... Real quick, you mentioned in passing reform. Would you consider yourself reformed? And what does that mean to you when you say that? That means so many... I like the word evangelical.

It's a little bit loaded. There's different types of reform. There's reformed in the sense of the German evangelisch. That means basically not Catholic, which is a very broad, meaningless thing. Then there's also reformed, meaning holding to the sort of Protestant Confessions of the church,

the London Baptist Confession. And then there's the more cultural sense of reformed in the sense of being vaguely Calvinistic. And then you've got what I call the viciously reformed, people who are very Calvinistic and very, very angry about it for some reason. I'd explain my reformedness or my idea of Calvinism is basically this.

People suck. They suck in their sins. They are sucking us unto death. And the God who is rich in mercy takes the initiative to save them when they cannot save themselves. That is pretty much my Calvinism. The rest is commentary. I cannot agree with that more. I wrote a blog a while back on why I'm lower, you know, reform, but not reform, like why I'm lowercase r reform, but not capital R reform, meaning there's a lot of cultural, in particular, American baggage that comes with that label of being reformed. And I just don't fit in those communities, even if on paper we might sign off on 8 out

of 10, 9 out of 10 doctrinal points. Just the manner in which we sign off on those, you know, mine's going to be much more like, yes, this is where I'm at now, but I might not be there next week. Whereas for other people, it's kind of like, this is where I am. And if I'm not here anymore, I might not be a Christian kind of thing, you know, which is just ridiculous to me. Yeah, I think we need to get away from the idea of reformed basically means holding to the main tenets of the synod of God. Reformed basically means holding to the main tenets of the synod of God, the five points of Calvinism, while having thick glasses, a big beard, a flannelette shirt, and kind of tight jeans and drinking craft beer. I don't think that's what Calvin had in mind when he was reforming the Church of Geneva. Well, Calvin was a wine drinker, too.

I think he had how many gallons of wine written into his church contract? Oh, his contract. Yeah, his annual contract. Wine. You've also changed on your view of women's, whatever phrase you want to use, women ordination. Can you tell us about that trajectory? I would describe myself as a recovering misogynist, to put it bluntly.

I did not have a good relationship with women growing up. My mother was a very, could be a very kind, loving, selfless woman. But sadly, she was also a very angry drunk. So I grew up having a very difficult relationship with my mother. And then I had a difficult relationship with everyone mean till i was about 20 years old i was convinced all women hated me uh because i i had pretty much had no female friends kind of like a bit awkward and strange i did not i didn't have any sisters had no real female friends and which was which was kind of sad because they they looked nice and they had strange curves and they often smelled nice so So it was kind of sad in that sense. But eventually I developed a few more social skills,

eventually met a wonderful young lady called Naomi who agreed to marry me. The secret to longevity of my marriage is making sure that my wife never goes to an optometrist. I just tell her everything. Everyone sees things blurry up close. And because I had that kind of, you know, that sort of background, I took to a real hard complementarianism very quickly and very easily. Not the kind of, you know, more extreme versions,

but a very conservative kind of hyper-Grudem sort of complementarianism. But a number of things changed my thinking on that. One was, you know, I was part of a very good church, but they kind of like banned women leading worship during Bible studies. Like even like talking about the lady with a guitar leading a few songs of Kumbaya, Like even like talking about the lady with a guitar leading a few songs of Kumbaya, which I'm pretty sure is not what Paul was worried about. And then I went through and read Romans 16. And I remember thinking to myself, man, if Paul did not want women preaching, then why did he send, you know, Phoebe to deliver this letter? Who's probably the first one, not just to deliver, but also to explain what the the letter was about given what we know of letter carriers in antiquity yeah um yeah then you've got the other women you've got um um you've got junea you've got mary all the co-workers they're using the same language

you use as describe uh timothy and titus i was convinced that one timothy two isn't a text i think you know women will be saved through childbirth. I think that's echoing something of the heresy in Ephesus that's quite specific. So I didn't see in 1 Timothy 2 a broad blanket prohibition of women teaching men always and forever. I think this is rooted in the particular context of Ephesus. If not, then I don't know how to make sense of the rest of Paul's writings about women and his co-workers. So I came to the conviction that women can participate in the didactic life of the church. They can lead the teaching life of the church, and they can serve in the highest positions of ministry in the church. In fact, I kind of set out a case for this in a short little

booklet, which I think has got a catchy title, called Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts. A case for gender equality in ministry. If you want to buy a book that's got the word babes in it, this is the one to buy. This is the one book about babes your wife won't mind you buying. Or bossy wives. So it's an e-book published by Zondervan is that correct or is it an actual paper book well

it's both oh it is okay you can get it as an e-book but it's also available as like a little booklet and that's pretty much where i set out the case and i keep getting emails from people who have read that a lot of people have read that book it's only saying like 7 000 words or something but a lot of people have written to me saying wow this book was you know life-changing for me um seeing how you can you can maintain a very high view of the scripture very rigorous biblical interpretation yeah um but believe that that you know spiritual gifts do not come in pink and blue. The Spirit's been poured on all flesh, and our sons and daughters will prophesy. And I would say my biggest critique of complementarianism these days would be this,

that the so-called biblical manhood and womanhood is really a post-world war ii reflection of white middle-class suburban culture interesting yeah i mean like in you know i talk to people in i've got students from sudan from asia other parts of the world and the idea that dad goes to work, mom stays at home, looks after the kids. That only works in a very affluent and consumerist society. Everywhere else mum and dad works. You know maybe mum works for the government or dad works on the farm or that sort of thing. You know grandma still at home. And grandma may be called on the shots because you're living in a matriarchal culture or something like that. You know, that there is just a far wider assortment of cultures than the one that we live in. And, you know, you've got to think, well, how do the household codes relate to that context? You know, like China is very easy. China is a very

egalitarian culture in some ways, which it's absorbed in various ways. So, you know uh like a china is very easy china is a very egalitarian culture in some ways uh which it's absorbed in various ways so you're trying to get a real hardcore complementarians on some people from from certain parts of china is very difficult to resonate since in their view you know women hold up half the sky uh that kind of a thing so yeah i became disenchanted with i mean yeah at the same time there's different types of complementarian as well. We shouldn't pitch and hold them all in the same point. And I've got colleagues and friends who are complementarian, and we have a few good discussions here and there. But I think it is possible, even in a seminary, to have different views about the roles and qualifications of the ministry and still get along with each other.

No, that's so good. I often, you know, and I've said this so many times in the podcast, I don't want to get into it, but I mean, I'm, I'm officially pleading the fifth. That's American phrase, I guess. I'm sure you know, but like, I don't, I was raised like you, heavy complimentarian, never had the personal disdain for women. In fact, the personal disdain for women. In fact, I did deep down, I did kind of find it odd and very patriarchal that men were kind of running the show, but I never really questioned it just because I respected everybody. And I, you know, first Timothy too, whatever, long story short, I'm just, I, I'm

right now there's so many people I, I, well, I, I just, I haven't done the work to know where I land. But I often tell people the fact that people like Michael Byrd and N.T. Wright and several others who are so biblically centered, who I see eye to eye on theologically on so many levels. levels, the fact that they are not no longer complementarian or egalitarian, whatever phrase you want to use, non-hierarchical complementarian, one of my friends uses that to me, I'm like, okay, there must be something to the egalitarian view that I haven't seen yet. So I'm officially like, I'm not sure where I'm going to land. I need some space in my life to study it out. I want to, yeah, I want to, I haven't read your book. I've seen it since it came out and I've always like eyed it and just haven't

taken the time to read it. So I'm going to take the time to read that one as well. So there's two Michael Byrd books now that I have publicly agreed to read in the next year or so. um, yeah, maybe you can, uh,

so here, I guess on the egalitarian side to me, and I hate saying this, but just aside from scripture, it makes zero sense why only men would be qualified or called or able to serve in positions of leadership. able to serve in positions of leadership, even if, and this is going to spill into gender studies or whatever, even if males stereotypically or generally are more hardwired at being qualified for leadership kind of roles, any psychologist worth his or her salt is going to say that's still a generality. There are still, yes, even if men are generally more emotionally stable than women, yes, even though men don't experience, you know, a period and that plays with your emotions. Yes, even though there are these generalities, it's they're not absolutes. There are still some men that are would exhibit exhibit more typically feminine, emotional characteristics, whatever.

And there are some women that would exhibit some typically masculine characteristics. So it doesn't make sense to me to make a categorical declaration that all women, 100% always are not qualified or called to leadership. If this doesn't make any sense to me now, I'm still, I'm still a Biblicist to where if the Bible says it, I'll believe it and go with it. But it just, it doesn't make sense that all females will be excluded. It might make sense that 70% of leaders might, might be male. I'm okay with that. I respect sex differences. It doesn't make sense that a hundred percent would. So that would be my one major

concern with the complementarian position. Um the flip side, on the arguments, I often hear arguments for egalitarian or women's ordination begin with something like, well, I used to be a complementarian, but then I met a woman who was an amazing preacher and teacher and theologian, and therefore it kind of changed my view. I'm like, okay, I see that, but that's not technically a scriptural argument. In fact, that's why so many Christians are affirming of same-sex relationships now. Why used to be a firm traditional marriage, but then I met a bunch of gay couples that were amazing. And now, you know, it's like, okay, I get the power of that, but that's not really a scriptural argument. Um, and also it does. So respond to this. And I really want you to convince me otherwise.

Jesus, especially Jesus, seemed to push back against the patriarchal culture, elevating women. I mean, Luke 8 with, you know, being supported by women and Mary and Martha and on and on it goes. And Paul and Phoebe, as you mentioned, all these others. it goes. And you have Paul and Phoebe, as you mentioned, all these others, the new Testament doesn't seem to shrink back against pushing back against the patriarchal culture. Why is it then that we still have all male apostles? And I would say we still have, and you might throw in Junia and we can go there and we, and we still have no, can I say this and critique me? No clear example of a female in a elder or pastoral or teaching role in a local church context,

aside from female prophets. And we're not, I'm not sure where they would fit in. But you have Paul's letter to Timothy and Titus, not, you know, Carol or Mary. And you clearly have male, all male. Why don't we have six female apostles? Even if you take Junia, it's like, okay, why don't we have six Junias? Or, you know, there still does seem to be a trajectory of male leaders, leaders in the sense of what we're talking about today of like occupying the office of eldership or being a pastor. I mean, I think the issue is, Preston, when we look at the New Testament and the first Christians,

we want to know why they weren't more like us. Why isn't Jesus traveling around preaching smash the patriarchy, hashtag slave lives matter, occupy Rome? We want them to be just like us and for our concerns to be their concerns, our priorities to be their priorities. So we're kind of saying how come they were not like us because obviously we are the normal christians they were they were just like the john the baptist preparing the way for us that type of thing uh we've got to remember that you know they're dealing with faith

god the realities the imperatives of their world as they understood it and we look like well how could you like treat slavery as if it's like a normal thing how can you talk about patriarchy as if it's if it's normal that was the only world they knew and they may not have conceived of another world and god speaks into that world into that context with the concerns uh that they had now i i do think you see things that start to change the trajectory of things i think we see that with start to change the trajectory of things. I think we see that with Paul and slavery. I mean, Paul, as I've said, Paul was no William Wilberforce.

But without Paul, I don't think we would have had William Wilberforce. You know, Paul was, I wouldn't call Paul a radical feminist. But as anyone can tell you, Tom Holland's recent book Dominion is a lot of what we believe on white values in our world today goes back to people like the Apostle Paul there's neither you know

free male and female a lot of this goes back and what happens as a result of this slowly being absorbed into a high and entire civilization yeah so I don't think we should expect that they're going to have the complete package that we have after 2,000 years of germination okay all their embryonic stages so I'm not so much concerned how come the whole of the later package is not there at the

beginning. I would push back a little bit on your presence. Look, they did have female prophets. They're also women leading Christian households, like Chloe in 1 Corinthians, Nympha in... Chloe in 1 Corinthians. Nympha in 1 Corinthians. Hey, Mike, Mike, Mike, real quick. It's whenever you turn your face away, I lose your voice. So just stay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I picked up on where the glitch is. Yeah, so just. Okay. Do I need to say anything? So Chloe, women leading households. Yeah. Yep. So I would push back a bit and say, no, we do have women leaders. We have female prophets.

We have female leaders like Chloe in Corinth, Nympha in Colossae, and all these various other workers that Paul nominates in Romans 16 and in Philippians 4 and the like. So I do see women involved. And if house churches were kind of coterminous with households, I think we have the reality of women household leaders.

Now, Paul doesn't come out and say that because he didn't have to. He just assumed it was well known. So that's, I guess, here's what I don't know. We can also assume, I think, Lydia in Philippians 16, right? Probably a wealthy woman. I've always thought that those women household who were opening up their homes,

these wealthy women who are opening up their homes for believers to gather, that that doesn't necessarily mean that they were leading the house church in a didactic pastoral role. I've often, I've always assumed that yes, a woman could certainly, a wealthy woman could open up her house, have people gather, but that doesn't necessarily mean she's overseeing that household gathering in the first Timothy three kind of sense. Am I wrong in that assumption? Is that a, is that a leap you're, is that a valid leap you're making, but a leap nonetheless, or is there evidence that no, if you actually own the home or believe you're meeting,

you are by definition also leading that, that congregation? Yeah, well, at one level, I have to say there are some blanks in the gaps here that we don't know, but let me compare two examples. Okay. that paul writes to philemon and i think his his his uh was it wife apia or sister apia and then he refers to the dude um uh archippus yeah okay now the impression you get is philemon is the patron and archippus is kind of like the pastoral leader in that house church. Okay. Okay.

That's where there is a difference between the patron and you might say the pastoral leader. Okay. Although it's a kind of, you know, a different relationship. However, when Paul mentions these women like Chloe and also Nympha, he doesn't mention and oh, and so-and- so who's the pastoral leader there he doesn't mention an archippus type figure he just mentions nympha he just mentions chloe and um he doesn't mention and who the pastoral like an archippus figure so that would suggest

to me that they probably were uh a leader of some type in in that church or a senior leader maybe not the only one but they're the one person that he mentioned and i think their role went more than just setting up the chairs um in the nice triclinium and putting out the flowers um i think they had some degree of some degree of authority over that, which is why Paul mentions them. Paul mentions the people, those who have the authority, not just those in the teaching role, those who have an authority and a responsibility for what's going on in the house church. So if the household host, whatever, was not the leader, host whatever was not the leader then paul probably would have identified both the household host and the leader but if he doesn't distinguish between those two and we do have evidence where

he does distinguish between the person who owns the house opens the doors versus the one who that okay that's see that's that's it's these kind of arguments that i want to wrestle with i um because i i mean to be honest i desperately want to be fully and passionately egalitarian. It makes more sense to me. And yet I am enough of a Biblicist that I don't want to just do so because of non, not unbiblical, but non-biblical kind of reasons. I mean, just, it doesn't, again, it doesn't make sense that all women categorically a hundred percent would be excluded from teaching roles, even if the majority might be men, maybe,

it just doesn't make sense. So for, I mean, first Corinthians 14 is never, well, it's first Corinthians 14 is an issue for everybody. Women be silent in churches, go ask your husband. So what are the single women do? Literally silent? Like, can they not pray out loud? Can they not raise their hand and ask a question? I mean, it's just as it's a bizarre verse.

So I don't think conservatives or complementarians can just take that as proof, whatever. So really, it does come down to, in my mind, First Timothy 2. And then also the kind of, well, i need to rethink the whole household thing but the the lack of crystal clear evidence that there were women in a didactic kind of authoritative teaching role um but then i have female prophets to me i even asked tom schreiner once i said okay tom give me what do you think is the best argument for the egalitarian position as you and i both know i mean he's passionate passionately complementarian, and he immediately says female prophets.

He was very honest. He's like, we don't know what to do with that. We have to say that that's not an authoritative role, but he kind of said, with a glimmer and a twinkle in his eye, a prophet is not authoritative? That's a tough one for us. Yeah, I mean, I heard that. When my bourgeois babes book came,

it sounds so dodgy, doesn't it? When my Bourgeois Babes book came out, one guy said, well, there's two types of prophecy. There's kind of like, you know, Isaiah prophecy, and then there's what's called, he called it congregationally based suggestions. So he said there's two types of prophecy. There's real good proper prophecy, and then there's the second type of prophecy, congregationally based suggestions, because if women can do it, it obviously can't be that important. Is that the argument? That's horrible. That was his argument. Well, there must be a different type of prophecy, because if women can do it, it can't be all that important. That's the most circular thing I've ever heard. All right, go ahead. Yeah, that's what it was.

All right, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was. Um, oh my God. Okay. So let's, uh, we have a few more minutes, but, uh, so you're, you're, uh, obviously Australian, you live in, you've lived in and ministered in the UK. You've spent a lot of time in, in the U S, um, teaching and speaking and preaching and

so on. teaching and speaking and preaching and so on. Give us an outsider's perspective on American evangelicalism. And I'm going to leave that as broad as it sounds, because I want you to take any kind of, you know, approaches you want. When you think of American evangelicalism from an outsider, Jesus loving gospel centered biblical scholar perspective, what would you want to say to my audience who is, let's just say, 80% American evangelical? Yeah.

Okay, well, first of all, I love America. I think America's great. It's the land that invented Chick-fil-A. So I'm a big American fan. So I'm a big American fan. I would say American evangelicalism, at one level, it is so broad as to be practically meaningless. I have to explain to Australians that everything they know about evangelicalism is pretty much wrong. It's not the caricature and the stereotype they give.

American evangelicalism has the best and the worst of American religious culture. So they've got they've got Kristen Sprinkles and Joey Dodson's. Or is it Joey Dodson and Kristen Sprinkles? I can't remember which one's the bad one. They've got the best and the worst of everything in abundance. I'd say one thing is I think Americans need to be able to discern better what does it mean to be Christian and what does it mean to be American. In other words, I find they're not very good at distinguishing between what is Christian and what is American. And I become, I'm never more than aware of this when I'm discussing two issues with Americans, which is healthcare and gun control.

Not that I want to offend everyone, but let me put this to you. Every Western democracy from Norway to New Zealand has universal healthcare for its citizens, except for the wealthiest nation on earth um now i'm not gonna i mean healthcare is complex the american system as it exists complex uh but you know the idea that it's just inherently wrong to have a universal health care uh christians in in norway south africa new zealand, Australia. No one else thinks that.

It's only you people. And, yeah, the same on the gun stuff. Like, I understand the role of guns in American culture going back to the, you know, the War of Independence. I understand, you know, you've got your Second Amendment, so it's got a particular legal thing, you know, the right to bear arms for militias. You've got a land border with Mexicoxico and there is a lot of um bad hombres um coming across the border so i understand part of

that but who wants to live in a country where you have a mass shooting like every week yeah um and who needs an ar-15 to go i mean look i'm not some ultra left-wing tree-hugging femo-nazi from yale i'm a military man okay um you know i i'm you know i'm not i'm not i'm well actually here's why i'm not a pacifist i'm not a pacifist i i believe there is a place okay a lethal uh sadly in this world uh but i don't know why anyone needs to have an ar-15 yeah that type of a thing um whether it's hunting or protection I think a bolt action rifle or a shotgun will kind of do the job and

yeah I just look at America and some of these issues I think wow you people are strange and you think we're the crazy ones type of thing so there's some issues like that I think the America is now more polarized than ever before yeah and it is it is vitriol violet I mean there seems to be a lot of revenge

fantasy going on you know we want to get and we're gonna do this and again and I don't know what's going to happen I just hope we can find a a centralist American president you know Republican or Democrat, someone who can bring people together and try, you know, create connections and coalitions of like-minded people. And, you know, America needs to do what Paul says in Romans 14, 19. And this is, I think this is true of evangelicalism, but also America. We need to see the things that make for peace and mutual encouragement um you so you definitely need a a president like that whereas i think a lot of people want a kind of what i call the luke 1927 president um you know as for those who did not

want me to reign over them bring them before me and slaughter them. You know, a lot of people want a president as that is his motto, Luke 19, 27, but I think we need more like a Romans 14, 19 president in the future. But, you know, I love my American friends. I always have a great time when I go to America and there is power, power, wonder-working power in the American evangelical church. Mike, that's a great word to end on. Thanks so much for being on the show. One of these days we've got to hang out in person. I spent five weeks at your home in Australia, sans Michael Byrd.

And my house still smells like Budweiser and Old Spice. I try to replenish all the wine that I drank when I was at your house. I don't think I did so well on the espresso machine because I pretty much... I could not tell this. I mean, I don't know, Preston, but I hate coffee. I despise coffee.

Oh, really? Yeah, my feelings about coffee are very similar to how Nancy Pelosi feels about Donald Trump. I mean, I will not kiss my wife after she's had coffee. Tell Naomi I'm sorry for drinking all her. We had plans to replenish, and then we went out the night before. I specifically remember the stores were not open. There was some bank holiday or whatever, and I was like, oh, my gosh.

You busted your ankle up real bad as well. Oh, gosh. bank holiday or whatever and i was like oh my gosh busting your ankle up real bad as well gosh i think so right out yeah your neighborhood as you come out of your your street if you turn right and then another right and then the main road on the left i forget that road what's that road um george's road yes george's about a quarter mile down um there's a little bus stop and so there's a shadow on the curb right there which hid the curb and i stepped off it rolled my ankle both ways i still a year and a half later um it's like 80 i trashed it trash the doctor said he's never seen an ankle injury so bad

from just stepping off a curb on a jog so So, anyway. Oh, wow. Fun memories in Australia. So, let me get you. You came to Australia, and it wasn't the jellyfish, the crocodiles, the snakes, or the dingoes. It was the bus stop. It was the curb. It was a travel warning. Oh, my word. Now, dear American tourists, forget the dingoes. Where are the bus stops?

Those things are a killer. The shadows on the bus stops. They will cripple you. They will cripple you. They will cripple you. Mike, thanks so much for being on the show. We'll have to do this again sometime. Many blessings on your life, your ministry, and especially your publishing output.

I hope you keep cranking out as many books as you've been doing. Thank you, Preston. It's always good to connect with a great buddy. All right. Take care, man.