What does an experience of the Holy Spirit actually look or feel like? Within the Christian tradition, there is often a sharp divide in how this question is answered. Some believe the Holy Spirit frequently acts independently of the Bible, providing direct instructions for specific life situations. Others maintain that the Spirit speaks exclusively through the written Word of Scripture. However, a closer look at the New Testament reveals that both positions capture a partial truth while risking a significant error.

The Subjective Risk: Those who believe the Spirit always acts independently of Scripture run the risk of confusing their own emotions, bad attitudes, or selfish desires with the voice of God.

The Restrictive Risk: Those who believe the Spirit only works through the reading of the Bible can inadvertently "imprison" the Holy Spirit, denying His power to lead and guide His people in their concrete, day‐to‐day lives.

In this episode, Chuck and Aaron explore why the work of the Spirit is almost always a "both‐and" reality. While God’s Word is our "more sure" and primary source of truth, God is not bound by the page; He often uses our conscience, our study, and our circumstances to apply His truth directly to our hearts.

Ultimately, discerning God's voice is not a mechanical three‐step process, but a relational one. To avoid deception, we must weigh our intuitions against the Bible and submit them to the wisdom of the Christian community.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep135.

The word Paradise is used infrequently in the Bible. Jesus tells the thief on the cross that they will be together that day in Paradise, and Paul says in 2 Corinthians that he had a powerful out-of-body (maybe!) experience in Paradise. Paradise is a Persian word describing a cool, relaxing garden in an arid climate, and it looks like Jesus is using this word to describe the intermediate state to promise the thief on the cross that after death - but before the resurrection - his spirit will be in a comfortable resting place with Jesus himself. This corresponds to the place Christians typically call “heaven”, as in “going to heaven when you die.” Although this usage amongst contemporary Christians is common, the Bible never says Christians go to heaven when they die. Instead, the biblical language of “heaven” describes the realm of God - a realm which overlaps and interlocks with our human realm in the person of Jesus. In other words, heaven is a reality Christians are experiencing already, but not yet completely.

Chuck and Aaron also discuss the notion of “soul sleep” - a concept describing the possible unconscious state of believers in between their earthly deaths and the return of Jesus. Since Paul describes this state as “better” than life on earth, and as a “being” with Jesus, Chuck and Aaron both lean toward understanding this intermediate state as a conscious presence of the human spirit with Jesus while the human body remains on earth awaiting the final resurrection.

And the idea of Purgatory - common in Roman Catholicism - has no attestation in the Bible. However, the Reformers’ teaching against it by (rightly) insisting that the spirits of dead Christians are immediately with Jesus led to an unfortunate overemphasis on the intermediate state and an underemphasis on the resurrection of the dead, which they didn’t emphasize since they shared this belief with their Roman Catholic opponents.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Those who have not grieved deeply are often disturbed during the holidays by those who have, since the latter sometimes seem to refuse to participate in the jollity of the season. This notion—that the joy, lights, and merriment of Christmas ought to raise the spirits of those who have lost loved ones—betrays a shallow view of grief, which cannot be alleviated by mere happiness.

In addition, Christmas is frequently a reminder of Christmases past where the lost loved one was present.

Because of this, Christians should be aware of two things: first, the presence and power of the grief some experience at the holidays, not becoming frustrated at it or ignoring it. Second, they should be willing to walk with those who grieve, not in an attempt to make them feel better, but as a way to model and embody the presence of the God who grieves with and walks with us.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Everyone knows that it’s not possible for a virgin to get pregnant. Many have considered this impossibility as the open-and-shut reason for disbelieving in the biblical teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus. Others though, have seen this impossibility as the whole point of the story: if God exists, and he has decided to become a human being in order to save the world, then doing something radically impossible to make that happen seems like the kind of thing God would do. But what does the virgin birth mean? It can’t be the necessary ground of Jesus’ sinlessness, since Mary herself contributed her humanity to Jesus’ birth. Instead, it’s best to see the virgin birth of Jesus as an exemplary instance of God’s grace. He breaks into humanity purely of his own volition, for his own purposes, to display his own glory, and to act in love toward his own people.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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This episode is a sister to Episode 126: Israel and Palestine. Many depictions of Muslims in the West picture Islam as a religion of violence, and in a post-9/11 world, it’s certainly not difficult to believe that this is true. But while there is certainly violence in its past, the vast majority of Muslims share with other humans a deep desire for peace and safety.

For Christians, being on guard against this false narrative is absolutely essential. St. Paul says in 2 Timothy 1 that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of self-control. Fear is what holds us back from loving each other and living out the Gospel for our neighbors. Specifically, fear saps the three gifts Paul identifies:

* **Power:** Fear keeps us from the strength it takes to live with selflessness and love in a broken world.

* **Love:** Fear keeps us from the love that’s needed to serve those who disagree with and maybe even dislike us.

* **Self-Control:** Fear prevents the kind of self-control needed to proactively, instead of reactively, respond to others with love.

Since Jesus has risen from the dead and won the victory over the world, we don't need to be afraid of or angry with anyone.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep131.

Many Christian church bodies in the United States have presidents or bishops that function as administrative heads or public faces of that particular church. But none of these quite matches up to the role of the Roman Catholic Pope—the Bishop of Rome. Does not having a single, strong authority open the door for theological and practical innovations in a church? This has not turned out, in practice, to be the case; single, powerful leaders have not historically been able to protect the church from error. The alternative, however—complete autonomy for all individuals—has also been fruitless. The solution is the Bible’s vision of the Body of Christ. Jesus has poured out his Holy Spirit and gifted his whole church with his Word, and God promises that his Spirit will lead and guide his Church into truth through the careful, communal study of the Bible, guided by trained leaders.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep130.

Many Christian churches avoid talking about biblical election - the teaching that those who are believers have come to faith because God chose them - because it seems exclusive and non-egalitarian. How can God love everyone but only choose some? But in the Bible, the historical foundation of this doctrine is God’s choice of Israel to be his chosen people - not so that they could have a special status but so that they could be his agents for bringing the blessing of his redemption to the rest of the world. And this is the meaning of election for God’s people today: God has chosen to save and rescue them so that they can be his agents to live and preach his love in Jesus to all the world. Far from being exclusive, the doctrine of election is a guarantee that God loves his world, wants to save it, and is actively sending his people out to that end.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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It might be easy when visiting a church to think that the pastor is in charge. But many times once you get involved in that church and see behind the curtain it becomes apparent that other groups hold the power. What all of these churches have in common, though, is the temptation to find in the world the template for their governance structure. But what the Bible teaches is that the power God gives individuals or groups in the church is to be used to support those who need that power and strength to do the ministry God has gifted and called them to do. So pastors should not be CEOs, and ministry teams at a church should not function as corporate boards.

Instead, everyone in Christ’s church should function as members of Christ’s body, loving and serving the whole body in its calling to be Jesus’ body in whatever context in which that church finds itself.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep128.

Humans long for God, if he exists, to prove that existence, and many Christian philosophers have proposed arguments, or proofs, for that existence. Many arguments have been advanced toward that end; for instance, the cosmological argument which states that since everything has a cause there must be something which ultimately caused the universe to exist; the teleological argument which argues that the complexity of the universe suggest design; and the moral argument which suggests that the human belief in right and wrong can only come from the type of standard provided by God. But ultimately, there is no argument or bit of evidence that would prove that God exists. We humans believe what we want to believe, so the issue finally comes down to whether or not our hearts have been transformed to believe in God.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep127.

The current day nation of Israel was established in 1948, a place for many of the Jews who survived the holocaust to call home. Many Christians in Europe and North America consider this to be a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies to Abraham and his offspring that they would inherit the land on which Israel and Palestine now exist. One result of the establishment of political Israel has been the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, a geopolitical move which has been the primary cause of decades of violence from both sides toward each other. At the heart of this passionate fight for this particular bit of property is the belief–by many Jews on one hand–that the promises God made to Abraham are for his son Isaac’s offspring, and the corresponding belief–by many Muslims on the other hand–that the promises God made to Abraham are for his son Ishmael’s descendants. Many Christians, believing that Old Testament Israel and current-day national Israel are organically related, support without question any decisions national Israel make.

But the New Testament teaches that the offspring of Abraham who inherits the promises made to Abraham, including the promise of the land, is Abraham’s true Offspring, Jesus, who inherits the whole world as the Son of God who is the one true Jew. And Paul also insists that all those who have been baptized into Jesus are–by virtue of union with him–also the offspring of Abraham and thus heirs of the promises made to him. As a result, Christians do not need to unquestionably support either Israel or Palestine, because in Christ all those who believe in him are the true owners and inheritors of the land.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep126.