It seems "soon" is ambiguous in God's vocabulary.

We explore the fundamental conundrum of waiting 2000 years for the "soon" return of Christ. There are a variety of ways to make some sense of this dilemma, but it is not well served by simple or trite answers. As well as Bible passages in 2 Peter 3 and Psalm 90, we reach for "friends of the podcast" C S Lewis and George McDonald for some provoking insight. 

How did Jesus' disciples respond to his resurrection?

The Bible contains a few fascinating anecdotes about how the disciples responded to the resurrection. We start with the road to Emmaus and then think about whether or not Thomas deserves his "doubting" title.

What does Christ's death on the cross mean for us?

It almost seems a silly question, but there's a surprising variety of aspects to unpack on this topic. We consider a question from the lesson about "adding to what Christ has already done for us", and briefly explore what kind of understanding of the death of Jesus is revealed in Gamaliel's wise counsel in Acts 5.

Resurrections before the cross often involve children.

We look at the story of Elijah saving a young boy's life twice - and the second time is after he's died. Like many of the Old Testament resurrections, this story is remarkably connected to people outside the explicit community of God.

What is hoped-for in the Old Testament?

Some OT passages seem to fit our picture of the resurrection, but there are others which seem to come from a different picture of hope for the future. We explore a few of these that represent the variety, and see what we find out about hope.

What if the pondering the state-of-the-living is more valuable than the state-of-the-dead?

This is a shorter episode because life seems particularly busy for us at the moment - and maybe it's the same for you! Ecclesiastes 12 has verses which sometimes contribute to discussions about what happens after death, but the passage seems much more focussed on how we live here before death. 

Is theology more like an umbrella or a colander?

Travel plans over the long weekend made it difficult to schedule a recording. Instead, here is a tasty morsel of contemplation that emerged during our post-recording "cool-down" conversation. Luckily it was captured in our backup recording, and we hope you enjoy this episode even though it is rather brief. This will make the most sense if you listen to the previous episode first, or at least take a look at Ezekial 28.

We consider the origin of evil, and wonder how much can be learnt of this story from old testament metaphor.

To launch a new season on death, dying, and the future hope, we dive into a malediction given to Ezekial about the King of Tyre. There is a bunch of imagery here from the Creation story, so is it valid or useful to read Satan into this passage. After a robust conversation we stumble on a gem: maybe the point is not just that Lucifer fell, but that he is always falling - and perhaps we might continue to fall also.

Wilderness temptations are a crucible for Christ.

These are recorded in both Matthew and Luke (with an interesting difference of sequence), and immediately precede the beginning of Jesus's ministry. The story seems to link back to Edenic temptations and also prefigure aspects of the struggle in Gethsemane before the crucifixion. We ponder the ways in which these clearly labelled "temptations" match that term, and some subtle ways in which faithful Christians might be tempted.

We help Cameron write a sermon about responding to people in crucibles.

Luke 8 has featured previously (season 2), but Cameron wants to preach on it and so we do an experiment in this episode: can a podcast discussion and sermon preparation be combined into a single activity?