The Bible Reset

One of the key skills we need to read the Bible well is understanding and "playing by the rules" of the various types of literature we encounter. Apocalypse, often misunderstood as a checklist for the end-times, was a common literary style in ancient times, and is better understood as an "unveiling." Today we talk about some key things to keep in mind as you make your way through the Bible's strange and wild apocalyptic literature.

Have you learned or talked much about literary genres? Send us an email here: [email protected]

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

Most of us are familiar with the book of Lamentations and the many Psalms of lament, but what role does lament play in the New Testament?

Rebekah Eklund, Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland and author of Jesus Wept and Practicing Lament, joins us to explore the significant role of lament in Jesus' life. In the time between the resurrection and the eschaton, Christians are still called to lament – to cry out to God to come and make all things new.

Also by Rebekah: The Beatitudes through the Ages

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

Clay Crofford was a student at Indiana Wesleyan University when he realized that his confusion and discontentment with the Bible was not unusual. Among his friends and classmates, a lack of connection with Scripture was the norm.

For his senior project Clay produced a documentary, Reading Blind, that explores the true costs of misreading the Bible and the possibilities of a different way forward. Today he joins us to talk about Gen Z's struggles with Scripture and his hope for his generation becoming immersed in its story.

Watch the Reading Blind documentary: https://youtu.be/RV7St0zvTfA

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

It's The Bible Reset's 50th episode! To celebrate, we invited listeners to submit their questions about anything we've covered on the show so far, about IFBR's work, or about the Bible in general.

Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and to all of our listeners who have made this show successful!

Links to some resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode 35: Powers and Principalities: The Bible's Most Overlooked Storyline
Episode 36: Jesus' Upside-Down Victory Over the Powers

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience
Invite IFBR to speak to your organization or on your podcast
Got a question or comment? Get in touch via our contact form

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The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

What happens to us (and our loved-ones) when we die? Christians have long held the belief that we go to somewhere called "heaven" for the rest of eternity, but another look at the New Testament shows that the answer is a bit more complicated and mysterious than that.

To read more on this topic, check out:
Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright
A New Heaven and a New Earth by J. Richard Middleton

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the Bible tells stories of people using their status to subvert the status quo and serve their neighbor. Dominique DuBois Gillard, author of Subversive Witness, joins us to talk about how Scripture and the gospel call followers of Jesus to use privilege to sacrificially love their neighbors, enact systemic change, and grow more Christlike as citizens of God's kingdom.

Get the book: Subversive Witness: Scripture's Call to Leverage Privilege
Watch IFBR's 2020 webinar, which Dominique participated in: How The Bible's Story Helps Us Talk About Racism

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

What does it mean to have faith in Jesus? If the gospel is more centered on Jesus' kingship (as we've explored on our previous two episodes) perhaps Christian faith looks more like allegiance. Matthew Bates, Associate Professor of Theology at Quincy University, joins us to discuss the relationship between the gospel, salvation, faith, obedience, and grace.

Matthew's Books:
The Gospel Precisely
Gospel Allegiance
Salvation by Allegiance Alone

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

Have we made the gospel too small? Personal salvation and "Jesus dying for my sins," are certainly essential to the good news, but the gospel presented in the Bible is so much bigger and so much better.

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight
How God Became King by N. T. Wright

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

We can be tempted to think of the word "gospel" as a private, spiritual word. But in Jesus' day, "gospel" was public news with implications for the whole world.

When Jesus was born, he entered a world that already had it's own gospel: the good news of Caesar and the Roman empire. The similar language is striking, and shows that the announcement about a Jewish Messiah directly confronts the Roman story.

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/

Records and sources showing how Rome told their story:

Roman statesman Pliny the Elder declared that Rome was a universal gift to the world:

The Roman peace has a boundless grandeur, a peace which takes in not only men in their different lands and tribes, but also the mountains and peaks soaring into the clouds, their offspring and even the plants. May this gift of the gods last, I pray, forever! Truly the gods seem to have given to the human race the Romans, as it were, a second sun. 

Later, Aristides, another historian, added this about the rise of the empire: 

Before the rule of the Romans the dregs came to the surface and everything happened through blind chance; but since your appearance confusion and revolt have come to an end. Order has returned everywhere and in everyday life and in the state there is clear light of day. Cities now gleam in splendor and beauty, and the whole earth is arrayed like a paradise. 

A decree about Caesar Augustus, written just a few years before Jesus was born:

The birthday of the most divine emperor is the fount of every public and private good. Justly would one take this day to be the beginning of the Whole Universe . . . for when everything was falling into disorder and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave to the whole world a new aspect. Justly would one take this day to be the beginning of Life and Living for everyone.

Virgil, a friend of Augustus, wrote in the Aeneid:

This, this is he whom so often you hear promised to you, Augustus Caesar! 

Son of a god, who shall again set up the golden age in Latium,

Amid the fields where Saturn once reigned,

And shall spread his empire past Libya and India, 

To a land that lies beyond the stars 

And in the Eclogues he says:

He will live as god and observe the heroes of ancient times;

walking among the gods: they will behold him in amazement.

Peace he will bring to the world, governing it with the Father’s power. 

The goats themselves will come home with udders full.

No longer will the herds of grazing cattle fear the lion,

Even from his cradle sprouts a wreath of flattering flowers.

The serpents will disappear; harmful, poisonous plants will vanish; 

the fields of Assyria will yield balsam in abundance. 

Now, offspring of Jupiter, dear child divine,

Already comes the time; assume the dignity sublime!

See the heavy burdens of the world convulse and heave, 

Lands and seas’ breadth alike, and the depths of heaven, 

See how they all rejoice at the golden age that now appears.

A Roman inscription found near Ephesus, written in 4 BCE:

[Caesar is] the god made manifest, the universal savior of human life. Land and sea 

have peace, the cities flourish in harmony and with an abundance of food, there is 

an abundance of all good things, people are filled with happy hopes for the future 

and with delight in the present.

An inscription found in Asia Minor from 9 BCE:

The Providence which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal, 

has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, 

by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a Benefactor among men, and by sending 

in him, as it were, a Savior for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, 

to create order everywhere; the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning for 

the world of the gospel that has come to men through him. 

In the final episode of our mini-series on the Lord's Prayer, we take a look at what this ancient prayer means for modern Christians. If each line creates a connection between the Exodus story and Jesus' specific historical moment, does it still have a place for us today? How might we pray a New Exodus prayer in our own lives?

The Institute for Bible Reading is a nonprofit ministry. Support our work, including the production of The Bible Reset podcast, by joining ChangeMakers: https://instituteforbiblereading.org/changemakers/