#yes this is real warrior nun has been brought back

[dodecademons]

#is this something? #I'm so unfunny it's unbelievable #warrior nun #warrior nun is saved though 🎉 #a show with a sapphic character getting saved after getting canceled seemed impossible but yall did it #yes this is real warrior nun has been brought back #updated tags because so many people are still so shocked lol

[terapsina]

@pegxcarter​​ (reposting because it didn’t show up in the tags (edit, well actually it turns out it showed up in SOME tags and not other, and this also showed up in some tags but not others, and so I’m just gonna keep both posts, you can reblog whichever one you want i guess, I hate this site so much)

Sure, and believe me it’s a FUN RIDE. I’ve just finished all 10 episodes and believe you me I was thoroughly entertained.

It’s a story about the Order of the Cruciform Sword, which is a holy order of warrior nuns whose sacred mission is to fight demons. And their holy ‘weapon’ is a halo that gets embedded in the back of the sister who then becomes the Warrior Nun (capital letters and all).

It actually kinda reminds me of the Slayer mythos a bit. Except that for the most part the nuns actually get to consent.

EXCEPT then of course stuff hits the fan and instead of being placed in the next nun as they were supposed to they get interrupted and place it inside Ava Silva. A 19 year old recently deceased orphan. This was NOT supposed to happen.

Her being brought back from the dead because of it has ALSO never before happened. And so cue the entrance of Ava, the girl who did not choose this, does not want it, does not understand it and would really rather enjoy the life she suddenly has.

And I know this can be a really annoying trope, I get it. The inexperienced Chosen One who fucks everything up, keeps running away and discarding her duty (that she didn’t choose) when there’s a whole bunch of women who would probably have done a better job? This trope can be a real drag BUT here it’s saved by a few facts: 1)She’s not yet another dude; 2) Until she died and woke up with superpowers she’d spent the majority of her life almost entirely paralyzed from the neck down and getting emotionally and mentally abused by her ‘caretaker’ at the orphanage so who can really blame the girl for wanting to live a little?; and 3) She’s utterly charming and funny (in a ‘makes endless puns and then laughs at them herself’ sort of way).

Plus at the end of the day, when the cards are on the table and all the shit hits the fan she always comes through.

And then there’s the Sister Nuns.

Lets start with Shotgun Mary.

I don’t want to tell her story because I feel like that would take away from the way she tells it herself. Just know she’s a complete badass but one who we also get to really know beyond just the way she can beat people up and use shotguns (though the scenes where she beats people up and uses shotguns are REALLY COOL). Also she and the previous halo bearer were totally girlfriends (like... they don’t really come out and SAY it but the subtext is so heavy it might as well be text, and yes, I guess it’s got that annoying dead girlfriend trope and if she was the only representation we got I’d call foul but it’s not).

Then there’s Sister Beatrice.

Spoilers. She’s a lesbian. I just wanted to put that out there. I’ll let the rest be said by her in the show itself but I wanted to make that clear. She’s absolutely a 100% queer. Canonically. Also YET ANOTHER badass, actually near the beginning of the season she gets my absolute favorite fight scene, you know that trope where someone takes down a whole roomful of dudes? YEAAAAAAAAAH GIRL!!!

After that we’ve got Sister Lilith.

(the one on the right)

She’s the nun that was SUPPOSED to take on the halo next and she might have some issues about it BUT if you’re expecting to end up hating her you’ve got another thing coming. She starts out cold but believe me you’ll end up wanting to wrap her in warm blankets and keep her safe from the world forever. I’m almost getting tired of saying it but... ALSO a complete badassssssss. Let’s just say if Mary is shoot them in the face!badass, and Beatrice is martial arts!badass, then Lilith is TERMINATOR!badass.

And finally there’s Sister Camila.

She’s the baby. The newbie. Well if Ava wasn’t there then Camila would be the newbie anyway. She’s awkward as hell but the SWEETEST person there. We all love and adore her. But give her a submachine gun and grin at the chaos.

Those five are who I’d say are the core of the show (or at least will be, it takes a while to get there but the road is fun and once we get there it was SO worth the wait).

Now you might be tricked into thinking it’s just a show about the demon of the week but actually it’s a very serialized show with an overarching plot that ends up dealing with a lot more (including institutional patriarchy that might have been taking advantage of these girls for centuries, and the morality of using a line of Warrior Nuns that keep dying in their fight against darkness).

And it’s just a very fun show that kept me entertained all the way through. And just to cover my bases, here’s the trailer:

#warrior nun #ava silva #sister beatrice #shotgun mary #sister lilith #sister camila #netflix warrior nun #warrior nun netflix #terapsina rambles #terapsina watches warrior nun #answers #pegxcarter

[liquidink21]

If I were doing the Avatar Remake

Just a list of things changes and tweaks to the original I would make to Avatar if I was in charge of this netflix remake, given that we’ve all lost hope in it and now I’m just speculating to make myself feel better. I’ve already made a list of things it really needs, and this list includes them, but I’m just going to go hog wild with my imagination and opinions on Avatar. In a rough order of when I think and them and what episode it becomes relevant.

How long are these new episodes going to be? I’d like to extend them for more story content, though am wary of overdoing it. How does thirty minutes sound? Enough for some more depth to some episodes.

I think it should be pointed out earlier on that there are more villages across the South Pole. This is canon, and would make the Southern Water Tribe feel more alive.

Aang’s friends from the past: in addition to Kuzon and Bumi, give him a Northern Water Tribe pal. He’s never been to the South Pole, and was deliberately coming to make new friends somewhere the Monks wouldn’t think to look for him. We can reference this friend again when we reach the North Pole.

Somebody, probably Iroh, mentions Zuko’s name in front of Aang. It’s always infuriated me that the Gaang know’s Zuko’s name suddenly in Warriors of Kyoshi without anyone telling them what it is. I don’t think it needs its own episode, just somebody says it while he’s captured.

The terms of Zuko’s banishment don’t restrict him from the colonies in the Earth Kingdom, so they don’t consider those colonies to be proper Fire Nation territory. I feel they should have their own name, just to make the politics of the show feel deeper. “The Eastern Protectorate” is a nice reference to the Chinese “Protectorate of the Western Territories.” Zhao can namedrop it when they go to his port.

The fact that Kyoshi Island has such a different culture from the main Earth Kingdom should be brought up. The answer is a mix between isolation and cultural exchange with the Southern Water Tribe. Katara and Sokka probably have a passing knowledge of the island. “Oh, that’s where we are.” Also, if Aang knew to come here for the Koi fish, how didn’t he know about there being Kyoshi revering settlements there?

There should be an adult Kyoshi Warrior training the others. She approves of Suki training Sokka, and comments on the rarity of outsiders and men being Kyoshi Warriors. I feel Sokka is the first outsider, but there was another man. Adult warrior gives the explanation that when she was a young trainee, a man working on the docks was teased for “fighting like a girl” so warriors taught him exactly like a girl.

There should be an Earthbending Kyoshi Warrior. I mean Kyoshi herself was a bender, the art can’t be exclusively a non-bending form.

Maybe point out that there are multiple villages on the island. This is in fact canon.

Haru’s mother and village could use some actual names.

We never see any non-bending Earth Kingdom soldiers. I loved how the Fire Nation has different uniforms for its bending and non-bending warriors, and I’d like to see the same for the Earth Kingdom troops.

I want to know more about those pirates? The captain is ethnically a Fire Nation citizen. Is there a story behind that? A navy deserter? Like an opposite of Jeong Jeong, deserting not for ethics but because he didn’t like duty getting in the way of fortune? I’m probably just overthinking it.

The names of the Freedom Fighters are obviously pseudonyms, and Jet probably urges the Gaang to adopt some themselves.

While I don’t actually feel that Aang lying to the two groups in The Great Divide is an unforgivable wrong, I feel the lie itself was a little demeaning and could have been a little more sophisticated.

I have seen that post saying there needs to be more Indians in Avatar than just Guru Pathik, given how many Indian concepts are in the show. Many people also share the opinion that there should be Indian airbenders, so yes they should appear in the flashbacks in The Storm (and The Southern Air Temple as well). Also some Earth Kingdom villages should be Indian based as well. I think the market from The Waterbending Scroll could be a good place to start, maybe the port from The Storm as well, though probably somewhere that isn’t just a background place as well. Maybe the nuns in Bato of the Water Tribe too.

Iroh could be less creepy with June.

Ah, The Northern Air Temple. Honestly I feel that while the ultimate message of Aang being okay with the Mechanist and his people settling in the Air Temple is okay, I feel it needs to end with a greater emphasis on the Mechanist’s people being more respectful to the site. Ramming pipes through historical mosaics and demolishing statues is really not on. Also, while Sokka being cool with industrialisation is in character, I do think he’d disapprove the desecration.

I feel the fact that a lot of the Fire Nation’s technological might (not all of it, though) is riding off the back of a blackmailed Earth Kingdom citizen is something that could be brought up more often.

Yue’s story with the Moon Spirit needs to be explained almost immediately, so that it’s not kind of an arse-pull when the plot needs it.

Legend of Korra makes a big deal about the South gaining independence from the North, but they’re already treated as separate nations? I think it should be mentioned somewhere, probably from Hahn, that the South is technically subservient to the North, though operates with a great deal of autonomy that comes with not being able to contact each other.

The North is pretty sure it’s the original Water Tribe, but can’t say for sure. Hahn thinks of the South as nothing but a colony, though Arnook is more progressively minded and notes there are no records of who came first and treats the South as a sister tribe.

I think there’s another character worth adding, a captain of the Northern warriors. He can appear several more times throughout the series, which I’ll elaborate on.

Zhao comments “there’s a reason they’ve survived a hundred years of war” whereas other comments suggest the Northern Water Tribe has been sitting out of the war. Apparently the North did take uniforms from soldiers 85 years ago, so I think the idea should be that they received one big siege back then, and since then they’ve been experiencing raids since then culling their villages and forcing them into that single fortified city-state. Since then, their ability to send ships out has been impeded by Fire Nation ships patrolling those water but not engaging the city itself until Zhao’s siege.

Yue, when mentioning the waterbenders learning from the Moon, should reference humanity receiving bending from the Lion Turtles, just to introduce the concept that bending could be given and therefore by implication taken away.

There’s a historical character I want to introduce: an Earth Kingdom general that was nearly able to push the Fire Nation out of the Earth Kingdom around half-way through the 100 Year War, but was taken down by internal Earth Kingdom politics. The Fire Nation had to do its conquests all over again because of him. It would help fill out a century of history that is poorly explained. I think he could be introduced by Sokka asking General Fong how they still have an outpost on the west coast when most of that region has been occupied by the Fire Nation.

Azula’s blue fire should be depicted like blue flames are in real life: very straight jets rather than the flickering things you see in the animation. Since it’s basically just powerful fire, I think it should be seen with a couple of other firebenders, though Azula is the only one that exclusively uses it. Jeong Jeong and Iroh would be good people to use it.

I saw a post once by a Korean rightfully upset that the only Korean characters in the show (Song and her village) are lumbered in with the essentially Chinese Earth Kingdom as if they’re the same culture despite Korea obviously being separate and having a poor history of China attempting to enforce hegemony over it. I think maybe something could be made of Song and her people being a distinct culture that has had a generally poor relationship with the Earth Kingdom at large. Maybe the previously mentioned Earth Kingdom general was screwed over for being of this culture.

I’m not sure how to depict the Swampbenders. They'll no longer be caricatures of the guys in the next studio, so they’ll be more respectfully treated and not hillbillies. I’m not sure if they should be Vietnamese (given the original characters have Vietnamese names) or southern Native Americans (given they’re waterbenders, and the other waterbenders are Inuits).

After failing to get Bumi as Aang’s earthbending teacher, they throw around suggestions. Since Aang is learning waterbending from Katara they consider a similarly aged Earthbender. Katara suggests they go find Haru, while Sokka suggests the earthbending Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned before.

I saw a post once suggesting that the Beifongs were collaborators, and while I think this is somewhat extreme, I would like to explore the interplay between their wealth and their position in the war. Also, the fact that Toph had been sheltered from the war and has far less of an emotional stake in it needs to be explored in more detail.

In the Zuko Alone flashbacks Azula really needs to be made out as a normal child with a bad influence (her father) instead of an inherently bad child. My sister points to this episode and claims Iroh or Ursa should have just drowned her and that’s something incredibly fucked up to say about a ten(?) year old.

In that vein, Iroh’s “no she’s crazy and needs to go down” line really needs to be changed to something more compassionate. Most Avatar meta states that Iroh doesn’t actually hate Azula; he’s just prioritising Zuko’s safety, and his line here needs to reflect that.

Aang should recognise the Lion-Turtle, and know that they gave humanity their bending powers. Just to keep that concept in mind, so that when it comes to the energybending climax it’s less of an arse-pull.

Wan Shi Tong’s morale compass and lumping a bunch of kids attempting to avoid genocide in with conquerors needs to be called out more, and I feel Katara should be the one to do it.

Suki gets to stay on for one extra episode and help fight the Drill. It also makes for a better explanation of how she got back. Right now it’s implied she went back across the Serpent’s Pass; in my own she’d explicitly head along the wall and go back with the ferries.

I want more discussion of Ba Sing Se’s social stratification. Was Jin able to visit the Jasmine Dragon? Or was she blocked from entering higher rings?

Toph’s lie detecting thing made into a spiritual or chi related thing. The whole heartbeat thing is pseudoscience.

The Northern Water Captain I mentioned earlier reappears, having met and joined his men with Hakoda’s. Hakoda praises his son with helping bridge the gap between the two water tribes.

Ty Lee gets more appearances in Book 3, even if just in the background. She got some nice development in The Beach and I want to see more of it as Azula’s brought her out of that circus and back into the Fire Nation nobility.

Sparky Sparky Boom Man’s tattoo has a different design that is not a villainised appropriation of a Hindu symbol. Something nice and geometric, maybe sun based.

Hawky at some point returns to Team Avatar. I want them legitimised as a member of the Gaang! Equal status to Momo and Appa! Also I suppose bringing a letter back from the Beifongs could have significance to Toph. But let Hawky return!

Hama has a more compassionate ending. I feel after she’s led away, Sokka figures it’s pretty fucked up that they’re handing one of their own over to the Fire Nation so they go and rescue her. They give her a choice between joining them to fight during the eclipse or returning to the South Pole to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe (given that there’s Notherners helping rebuild she could help make sure they rebuild it in the style of the south and not a facsimile of the north). She chooses the latter.

No weird Guru Pathik during Aang’s hallucinations please.

While discussing the allies that Hakoda picked up, he mentions some people he couldn’t get: they couldn’t find the Kyoshi Warriors, the Sandbenders didn’t want to come, the Omashi Resistance wanted to use the eclipse to retake their city, and General Fong’s outpost had been overrun. Just flesh out things a little.

Sokka and the other Water Tribe warriors should be wearing that facepaint for the Invasion.

I want more interaction with The Duke, Haru, and Teo with the Gaang.

Chit Sang’s girlfriend and friend join with the second escape instead of being strangely absent. Also, who is he? Sokka probably looks him up to make sure they’re not bringing a serial killer into their midst. Preferably not, I like to think they were thrown in there for opposing the war.

I’d like Suki to learn from Hakoda that the other Kyoshi warriors are alive, if imprisoned.

Suki doesn’t like wearing prison clothes and attempts a facsimile of Kyoshi islander clothes by stealing Katara and Haru’s clothes.

Some more emotions between Sokka and Suki relating to her imprisonment please. There’s a lot of pent up trauma there and I’d like them to work through it.

People like to play up Katara’s “you obviously didn’t love her as much as I did” line into an insight to a horrible character rather than just something stupid said in the heat of the moment, though I do think Katara should apologise, if only to show the haters that this isn’t her personality.

Training with Aang, Zuko finds out he has the peace of mind to do lightning. He wouldn’t use it against Azula, but it would be a nice demonstration that his inner turmoil is more or less resolved.

The adult Kyoshi Warrior I mentioned at the very beginning of this reappears as a White Lotus member. She, for whatever reason, has a replacement warrior uniform for Suki, because I feel Suki shouldn’t have to go through the climax in a Fire Nation disguise. Also maybe Sokka should be wearing his warpaint too? I mean it’s culturally significant to him.

You want lightning? No I don’t. Azula’s growing inner turmoil denies her the use of lightning, mirroring Zuko’s original inability to use it when he was lost and confused. So when it comes to sneakily zapping Katara it’s just her fire, but a flame more concentrated (and by implication, rage-fueled) than we’ve ever seen from her. A veritable beam that Zuko has to put his all into deflecting, opening him up to an attack. A non-lethal attack; Azula still has that line about “the family physician”. She doesn’t want Zuko dead and leaves him be when he’s down. Despite going off the deep end there is a spark of compassion in her that stops her from doing that.

As I’ve stated previously, Aang needs to do something slightly more significant and spiritual in order to access the Avatar State again rather than that stupid rock. Some sort of spiritual lesson.

As I’ve said a few times now, the Lion-Turtles should be known to the audience by now, along with their ability to give bending to humans, so that the ability to take bending has been implied.

The weird orange-vs-blue lightshow with the energy bending was kind of melodramatic, though the corruption-vs-purity thing could still be visually represented by Ozai trying to physically overpower Aang and failing.

Possibly to be continued.

#avatar

[gamearamamegathons]

Dragon Quest VI: Finally, a JRPG With Class

Circe here! When we left off, we had just saved the world. So that's pretty cool, but apparently that's not enough to win a video game anymore. So we venture out into the world to explore. At this point, we're free to sail the sea as we please, but we're still enclosed in a little circular area that limits how far we can travel. Our first destination is to revisit the Shrine of Dhama. The chancellor in Reidock said that he dreamed the shrine was restored when Mudo died. When we go back to the shrine, it's still in ruins, but remember, we can travel to the dream world from here. When we do so, instead of traveling back to the big hole in the ground, we find that a second Shrine of Dhama has reappeared when we defeated Mudo. Apparently he sealed this place away, because...this is where the class system comes into play!

I very much enjoyed the class system when I originally played the DS remake, so I've been looking forward to this. The way classes work is quite different from previous games. Here, you can assign any class you want to a given character, and as they fight battles, they will gain ranks in their class and learn new skills and spells permanently. Mastering different classes will unlock higher-tier classes that are even more powerful. In practice this means that, with a bit of patience, it's possible to teach any character pretty much any ability. For now, though, I make Sen and Hassan soldiers, Muriel and Barbara wizards, and Chamoro a priest.

With that done, I set off to find the plot. The next place I stumble across is a town called Monstros. All the townspeople are talking about the town hero Amos, who recently protected the town from monsters. However, he was bitten in the fight, and has been ill ever since. The townsfolk act very suspiciously and don't want us to stay at the inn, but they relent when Amos invites us to stay. When we sleep at the inn, we are awakened in the night by a loud comotion outside. The innkeeper doesn't let us leave, but we can climb onto the roof and jump off, to find a monster rampaging through the town. We fight the monster, but before we can finish it off, a townsperson intervenes. They say that this monster is really Amos, and sure enough, the monster transforms into an unconscious human form. The townsfolk finally explain that ever since Amos was bitten, he transforms into a monster every night, but they put up with it because he's a hero. He isn't aware of his transformations, and they keep it from him, because if he knew he'd leave the town to protect everyone. Thus, they demand that you keep this a secret from him.

So this is quite a lot. After all this unfolds, you can go talk to Amos if you like. The game gives you the opportunity to tell him what happened. If you say yes, it asks you if you're really sure. Now, at this point I have a bit of a side note about this. When I first played through the DS version of the game, I was thinking about this question from a roleplaying context. Ethically speaking, it seemed to me that it would be wrong to withhold this information from Amos. So I gave it some serious thought, and I decided that yes, I really do want to tell him. At first, he laughs it off as nonsense, and nothing else comes of it. But, even though the game doesn't make it clear, telling him about the transformation makes it impossible to complete this sidequest. Amos will apparently change his mind and believe you, and will disappear from the game permanently. As a bit of game design, this still really bothers me, because it really just seems like a big trap for the player, especially since it deliberately misleads you about whether telling Amos will have any effect.

But, knowing that, I just don't tell him. You're supposed to talk to townsfolk and learn about a cure for the transformation called a Seed of Reasoning, which can be found on a mountain to the east. So, I head off in that direction. The mountain is kind of a tough dungeon, but there's no boss at the end, so it's not too bad. There is a talking plant at the top, which is *not* the Seed of Reasoning. The seed is just lying on the ground nearby. So, er, I have no idea why the talking plant is here. Oh well. We bring the seed back to Amos, and, I guess, crush it and rub it on his face? That seems like a weird thing to do without explaining first, but it works, so that's cool. Now, Amos gains the power to control his transformation, and he joins our party. I dunno how much I'm gonna use him, but he can use his transformation in battle, which is potentially quite powerful.

Time to go wandering some more! To the northeast I find a castle called Arcbolt. On our way in, an adventurer passes by carrying a coffin behind him. Normally this indicates a dead character, but he doesn't seem interested in explaining his situation, so I just go on into the castle. It appears that the kingdom is trying to dig a tunnel to the north, but construction has halted due to a monster attack. The king's soldiers are testing strong warriors to find someone capable of taking the monster on, so that means a series of boss fights. Things go pretty smoothly for me till we get to the captain of the guard Brast, who manages to kill off everyone but Hassan, who pulls off a last second final blow. Kinda loses out a bunch of EXP for everyone else, but at least we pulled that one out. The king is suitably impressed, and he says that he wants us to put the body of the monster in a coffin and bring it back as proof of our success. I guess that explains the other guy's coffin, then. We learn that the other adventurer's name is Terry, and there's only one prize for the person who kills the monster, so we'd better go catch up with him.

After getting my ass kicked pretty hard by Brast, I end up playing this dungeon pretty conservatively in anticipation of a difficult boss fight. But it turns out I needn't have worried so much. When we get to the end of the dungeon we see Terry facing off against an axe-wielding dinosaur, because why not. You might expect that we would join Terry in battle or something, but nope, turns out he kills the monster all by himself. He takes the monster's body and heads off, leaving us with nothing to do but leave.

Back at Arcbolt, we find that, of course, Terry got the prize, a Sword of Thunder, and we get nothing. Everyone in town is singing Terry's praises, as though the game is quite determined to rub it in. More importantly, though, the tunnel is now clear, and we can reach the other side. On the other side of the tunnel there's a few small houses, and a staircase that leads back up to the dream world. Going up the staircase leads us to an island with a town called Calcado, which looks almost like a desert ruin with a handful of people living there. Everyone is talking about a floating island that stops at the western peninsula sometimes, and will take people to a Land of Happiness. Everyone seems quite eager to go, and it seems that nobody who gets on the floating island comes back. Sounds extremely suspicious, so of course we should do this immediately. When we enter the church and chat with the nuns there, it shifts the game to night (serving as a somewhat awkward reminder that the game has dumped the day/night system, I guess) and the floating island appears.

The island has a building on it that seems quite crowded, with staff serving the passengers. We rest there overnight, and when we wake up, a couple monsters are there to lead us away. Turns out that this is as predictably fishy as we expected. The monsters lead us into a temple, in front of a big crowd of monsters. Speaking to them is some sort of griffin-like creature named Jamiras who talks about Mudo's death, and his plans to lead monsterkind in Mudo's stead. Apparently the humans are brought here to be sacrificed, and he kicks things off by attacking us. Luckily, I'm able to pretty comfortably take him on, and once Jamiras is defeated, we free the humans who were captured, and we commandeer the floating island back to Calcado. The villagers have no use for this island boat thing, so they let us keep it. So now it seems we have a means of sailing over the seas in both the real world and the dream world. That's convenient.

As an aside, it strikes me that over time I've spent less of my posts talking about the mechanics of these games, and more about their plots. I was thinking that over, and I think that a big part of it is that, in addition to having more plot, these games are becoming more and more recognizably what we might call "generic JRPGs". Dragon Quest is the base template for what people consider a JRPG to be, and while the early entries were in some ways unusual, the series has become more refined into a more familiar form. Aside from this game's class system, I'm not sure there's anything new to say about it, mechanically. I would be worried about this becoming dull, but don't worry. After this game, we're going to hit a big patch of spinoffs before DQ7, and things are going to change quite a lot. So in the meantime, let's enjoy our time with Dragon Quest 6 before we start to see some radical departures from this formula.

#circe #marathon #dragon quest #dragon quest vi

[douxreviews]

Robin of Sherwood - Series Review

“Nothing’s forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten.”

When the BBC decided to finally pull the plug on its (frankly rubbish) version of Robin Hood back in 2009, I decided to take a look back into the distant past, to the decade that style forgot, and rediscover another (far superior) take on the legendary bandit, Robin of Sherwood.

Forget what you think you know. This is the definitive interpretation of the popular English myth, reinventing all that came before and influencing everything that would follow. Even the BBC’s naff version, which basically just ripped-off the Kevin Costner movie that in turn ripped-off this series.

Created in 1984 by Richard ‘Kip’ Carpenter (creator of Catweazle), on the surface Robin of Sherwood seemed like just another run of the mill version of Robin Hood, chronicling the adventures of Robin of Loxley (Michael Praed) and his merry band of thieves, Marion (Judi Trott), Little John (Clive Mantle), Will Scarlet (Ray Winstone), Much (Peter Llewellyn Williams) and Friar Tuck (Phil Rose) as they robbed from the stinking rich and gave to the poor. Added to the mix was the Saracen warrior Nasir (Mark Ryan), not a traditional part of the myth, but the producers and cast were too amazed by Ryan’s performance not to keep him around. As a result, every future version of Robin Hood would include a token Saracen character (something that still irritates Carpenter). As always, the bad guys were the Sheriff of Nottingham (Nickolas Grace), his brother, the corrupt Abbot Hugo (Philip Jackson) and their ever so blond lackey, Sir Guy of Gisburne (Robert Addie).

Beside the inclusion of a Saracen warrior, what really set the series apart from all the other Robin Hoods through the years was the way Carpenter presented us with a world that was a perfectly balanced mixture of authentic medieval dirt and grime, historical fact and pagan mythology. This was a Robin Hood who, when not battling Norman soldiers or vengeful Templar Knights, nattered with ancient forest spirits, was the chosen one of Herne the Hunter (John Abineri), fought evil sorcerers, witches, satanic nuns, demons and even Lucifer himself. All with total conviction and sincerity, no room for hokum and cheese.

Amazingly, all the fantasy and magic never clashed with the series' medieval realism. Carpenter was eager to avoid all the usual clichés of previous Robin Hood series and show a realistic and historically accurate 13th century England. Unlike the writers of most Robin Hood films and series, Carpenter actually bothered to read a history book. In this series, Richard Cœur de Lion was not some kind and noble king, but an arrogant brute, more concerned with foreign wars and claiming territory than with the welfare of his own people. His return didn't end the merry men’s troubles, it only prolonged them. His death only allowed for his brother, Prince John, to became king. The series would later chronicle key events of John’s reign including the dispute over the throne with Arthur of Brittany, his marriage to the 12-year-old Princess Isabella of France, and the build up to the Welsh uprising of 1211.

Above all else the series was propelled by an exceptional cast. Michael Praed made for a heroic and decent Robin, trading cocky bluster for an ethereal grace. This Robin was not a disgraced nobleman nor a veteran of the Crusades, he was a simple peasant, an orphan of Norman tyranny. A genuine man of the people. Plus, unlike some other Robin Hoods he could speak with an English accent. Along with Praed's Robin there was never a Marion as gutsy and bewitching as Judi Trott, a woman who didn’t need to dress up as a ninja to prove how tough she was. Elsewhere, Clive Mantle, later of Casualty fame, made for a kind and gentle giant as Little John and Mark Ryan proved that less is indeed more as Nasir. But the real standout was Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet. Yes, that Ray Winstone! Winstone said he based his entire performance on football hooligans and you believe him. His Will Scarlet was a vessel of barely controlled rage, a borderline psychotic, one step away from snapping.

While the series had many great villains, including Anthony Valentine’s demonic Baron De Belleme, Rula Lenska’s satanic nun Morgwyn of Ravenscar, Phil Davis’s unhinged King John and Richard O’Brien’s bog-eyed Gulnar, it was Nickolas Grace’s deliciously Machiavellian Robert de Rainault, Sheriff of Nottingham, that reigned supreme. This Sheriff never became a hammy caricature or shameful scene-stealer, easily putting both Alan Rickman and Keith Allen to shame.

It may seem like a cliché to say this but you do get the sense that these people really did enjoy working together and took pride in making the series. Everyone plays it absolutely straight, no ham or cheeky winks to the camera. Despite all the mysticism and magic this felt real and genuine. Good people died. Episodes didn’t always end with a freeze frame of our heroes looking smug at having foiled another of the Sheriff’s plans.

Along with the excellent acting and some terrific scripts by Carpenter, the series was always brilliantly shot and directed. Just look at the opening scenes from ‘The Swords of Wayland’ as the Hounds of Lucifer ride out of the morning sun and prepare to be completely wowed. The soundtrack by Irish band Clannad may seem dated by today’s standards but a lot of it still stands up and is not as cheesy as some would have you believe.

Sadly all things must eventually pass. At the end of the second series Praed decided to depart for Broadway and, later, Dynasty. Rather than call it quits, Carpenter decide to incorporate the other myth of Robin Hood, that of the nobleman Robert of Huntington, into the series and introduce a brand new Robin. In a move motivated more by media buzz than common sense, Jason Connery (son of Sir Sean) was brought in to take up Praed's bow and arrow. The producers all but admit he was cast due to his famous name rather than thespian ability. Connery, despite his nice hair, often came across as more wooden that the trees around him. He was fine with the action sequences, but the romance scenes with Marion could be excruciating. Along with the inferior leading man the third series also suffered a downturn in overall quality. Carpenter took a backseat, handing much of scripting duties over to other writers. As a result the third series was more uneven than the previous two, dodgy episodes such as ‘The Inheritance’ and ‘Cromm Cruac’ clashing with classics like ‘The Sheriff of Nottingham’ and ‘Herne’s Son’.

After one series with Connery under the hood the show was cancelled due to Goldcrest, one of the key financers, being forced to pull out of the venture after one cinematic flop too many. But Robin of Sherwood remains a lyrical, elegant and emotional series. A true unsung classic of our times. It has not been forgotten, it will never be forgotten.

Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011.

#Robin of Sherwood #Robin Hood #Robert of Huntington #Michael Praed #Jason Connery #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 6/4/2021 - THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, SPIRIT UNTAMED, CHANGING THE GAME, ALL LIGHT EVERYWHERE, GULLY and More

So yeah, I can happily say that the Weekend Warrior is back to where it began and where I like it to be, which is primarily a weekend preview about box office. I’ll still do a number of reviews each week, but that was never the plan when I started this column… are you sitting down? Nearly twenty years ago, this coming October, in fact.

Anyway, this past weekend, the extended Memorial Day one, ended up being quite a boon for the box office, which had been struggling ever since theaters slowly reopened last Fall, joined by New York City and Los Angeles this past March.There had been a couple strong weekends, but it took the might of the sequel, A Quiet Place II, and Disney’s prequel, Cruella, to really kick things into overdrive and mark the start of a real summer movie season where we finally had a box office where the top 10 grossed more than $100 million for the first time since March 2020.

With that in mind, we come into June with two new wide releases, both of them franchises, but one of them a much bigger and more lasting one. THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (New Line) is the third movie following the case files of supernatural investigators Ed and Larraine Warren, as played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. The first two movies were directed by James Wan before the series branched off into a number of spin-offs, including three movies about the haunted doll, Annabelle. This is the first movie with “The Conjuring” in the title in five years after The Conjuring 2 also opened with over $40 million and grossed $100 million total domestic.

The third movie in the initial franchise branch follows another case of Ed and Larraine Warren, this one involving a young man in Brookfield, CT named Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor) who becomes possessed by a demonic presence while helping the Warrens with an exorcism on the 8-year-old brother of his girlfriend. When he brutally murders a friend, he’s sentenced to the death penalty, and the Warrens need to find out how he got possessed and prove this to the court to spare his life.

This one is directed by Michael Chaves, who also directed The Curse of La Llorona (which was sort of tangentially connected to the series), and I’ll write more about the movie in my review below, but if you like exorcism movies and the Conjuring movies, then this is a good one.

There are a couple things in play with the latest “Conjuring” movie, the first one being the fact that it’s opening on the second weekend of the super-strong A Quiet Place Part II. While John Krasinski’s horror sequel should continue to do strong business with probably $25 million or more, the question is whether strong word-of-mouth might take away from potential business for the new “Conjuring” movie. At this time, it’s hard to imagine there isn’t enough theaters and screens to handle two big horror sequels, although people who finally got out of their house to see A Quiet Place Part II might feel more comfortable about returning to theaters, and a “Conjuring” sequel is a good follow-up.

On the other hand, the “Conjuring” is a franchise that has started to peter out with only 2018’s The Nun, which tied directly into the events from The Conjuring 2, actually opening even better than the original two movies with $53.8 million. It was followed by the less-connected The Curse of Llarona and Annabelle Comes Home, both which grossed less than $100 million domestic. And those were both in the “before times.” Although A Quiet Place Part II should still be going strong, it’s likely to drop from the people rushing out to see it last weekend. Another problem this Conjuring faces is that it is available to watch on HBO Max, which to many, could be the way to see it, essentially cutting into its opening weekend potential.

I think The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It should be able to capitalize on the return of theaters and the popularity of other movies about demonic possession in general to make just a little over $26 million this weekend, although it’s likely to be a very close race for the top spot at the box office against A Quiet Place’s second weekend, depending on how far it falls.

Mini-Review: I have to admit something before getting into this review. I actually lived not too far from where the original true story on which this movie was based took place when I was 16. Being quite an impressionable teen at the time, I was fairly familiar with the actual case. Because of that, this Conjuring probably connected with me in more ways than the others, but also, I think that having had experience directing the first two movies allowed James Wan to step back and just act as producer (and co-plotter) in order for Chaves to really shine as a director.

The movie starts with the Warrens in the midst of an exorcism for 8-year-old David Glatzel (Jullian Hillard), who has been possessed and is violently tearing up the house before Ed and Larraine do their thing. David’s older sister Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook) is dating Arne, who bravely calls for the demon to take him instead. In the midst of being attacked by the possessed David, Ed has a heart attack that puts him in a coma, so he’s the only one who realizes that Arne has been possessed. Days later, Arne repeatedly stabs and kills a friend of his.

I don’t want to go too much further into where the movie goes from there, other than it’s almost like a procedural mystery movie where the Warrens end up investigating another case of a missing girl that might tie into what’s happening with Arne. The film cuts between Arne in prison and the Warrens trying to solve that other mystery.

Wilson and Farmiga are great as always but they really up the game of everyone around them including 8-year-old Hilliard, who is already a genre superstar, but really creates a lot of the terror in the opening sequence, which ties closer into the overall story than other prologues in the previous movies. I especially liked how the Warrens are clearly older now and much more vulnerable to the demons they’re trying to beat. Farmiga even gives Larraine an older woman’s hairstyle, more akin to a woman of her age in the ‘80s.

But the real selling point for this new “Conjuring” movie is that it once again uses everything possible to create some insanely great scares, and not just the hokey jump scares we see in far too many horror films. As with Wan on the first two movies, director Chaves and his team brilliantly use sound and lighting to create the eeriest situations for the Warrens to enter, and boy, is it effective at making you wonder when the next scare is coming.

As much as I enjoyed the first two “Conjuring” movies and appreciated them for the amazing work Wan and his team did in creating scares, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It offers new layers and levels to what Ed and Larraine do, including a particularly apropos nemesis that makes me that there might be a lot more cases to be explored in such a manner.

Rating: 8.5/10

The animated SPIRIT UNTAMED (DreamWorks/Universal) is more of an anomaly, because it’s a new movie in a series that began with the early DreamWorks Animation movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron from way back in 2002 (back in my first year doing this column!). It opened over Memorial Day weekend against the second weekend of Star Wars Episode II and the fourth weekend of Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man, and yeah, it got demolished. The movie opened with $17 million, which isn’t really bad for 2002, but it also went on to gross $73 million domestic, which is great. In 2017, DreamWorks Animation brought the animated horse back for the Netflix animated series, Spirit Riding Free, and obviously, that did well enough that they wanted to return Spirit to theaters.

I’m not going to review Spirit Untamed, because honestly, it’s not really my kind of movie, but I did enjoy it, and I think a lot of younger girls who dream of having their own ponies will love it as well. It’s just a very well crafted film, directed by Elaine Bogan that goes into a lot of nice places while staying away from some of the typical animated movie tropes -- i.e pratfalls and body humor for the youngest of kids. It’s just a sweet and exciting young person’s adventure that I would recommend to parents for sure.

This is an extremely hard movie to gauge in terms of the interest that might bring families out to theaters. Presumably, the Netflix series is popular enough, but people are learning that movies like this will eventually be on VOD and streaming. In fact, DreamWorks Animation’s NEXT movie, a sequel to the hit The Boss Baby will be both in theaters AND on Comcast streamer Peacock at the same time. Spirit Untamed will probably be available on VOD in 18 days as is the case with most Universal films post-pandemic.

I’m not sure how many theaters this will get (maybe 2,000?), so I think Spirit Untamed might still be able to pull in $4 million this weekend, but maybe it’ll surprise me and do better. Even though little girls still love horses, I’m not sure it’s enough for their parents to buy tickets rather than wait until this is on streaming.

Oh, you know what? It’s a new month, and that means that I might as well bring back a section that has lapsed in the past year …

REPERTORY!

Yes, a lot more movie theaters in New York and L.A. have now reopened, so I’ll see if I can fit in some repertory offerings in the column each week.

Exciting news at my own local theater, the Metrograph, as they’ve just announced a Metrograph TV APP, available on Fire TV, Apple TV and others. This means that you can now become a Digital member ($5/month; $50/year) and you can digitally stream Metrograph programming directly to your TV set. (Me, I’ve been using mirroring from my computer for the past year.) If you’re a member you can watch Lisa Rovner’s fantastic doc, Sisters with Transistors, which I wrote about before. If you get on board now, you’ll be able to watch the Metrograph’s upcoming “Whole Lotta Herzog” series, which features two months of the German filmmaker’s work including some quite obscure little-seen offerings as well as a number of true classics like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Nosferatu The Vampyr . If you’ve missed some of Herzog’s great work, now’s a great time to be a Metrograph member. Oh, yeah, and the theater will be reopening its theaters to in-person audiences in September!

Uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, they’re finishing off “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2021” and showing JIa Zhangke’s latest film, Swimming Out Til The Sea Turns Blue, in its theater. Okay, fine, neither is repertory but we’re glad to have FilmLinc back!

Back downtown, Film Forum is showing Jacque Deray’s 1969 thriller La Piscine, starring Alain Delon & Romy Schneider, and Fellini’s 8 ½ only in its theaters, and similarly cool stuff streaming, so yeah, nice to have them back as well. Also, a new 4k restoration of The Ladykillers, starring Alec Guinness will open at Film Forum this Friday.

A few blocks away, the IFC Center continues to show George Romero’s long-lost 1973 film, The Amusement Park, which is also available this week on Shudder.

Okay, I think that’s enough repertory. Let’s get back to the new movies.

This week’s “Chosen One” is Michael Barnett’s documentary CHANGING THE GAME, which is now playing on Hulu, a full two years after it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. This is an amazing and quite timely film about a trio of teen student athletes. First up is Mack Beggs, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Dallas, who by Texas rules or law has to compete in the girls’ wrestling division, because he was born female. Part of his transition involves taking steroids, so he quickly becomes the state champion, beating all the teen girls he takes on, although he’d much rather be wrestling boys, because he is a boy. Living in Connecticut, transgender runner Andraya Yearwood is allowed to compete against other girls, but even that is deemed unfair (mostly by the parents of other girls) since Andraya is much bigger and stronger than her competition. Lastly, there’s transgender skier Sarah Rose Huckman whose state of New Hampshire requires student athletes to get gender confirmation surgery in order to compete in the class of her choosing. The catch is that one has to be 18 to get said surgery.

These are three really interesting entries into the ongoing debate about whether transgender youth should be allowed to play sports. Beggs is a particularly interesting case because he WANTS to wrestle against boys but isn’t allowed to. Sarah Huckman doesn’t have quite the challenge of Andraya, because she is diminutive and better at passing as female. She’s also pretty amazing as an activist, fighting against the discriminatory laws of her state, in such a way that she really creates some inspirational moments even if Beggs gets a lot of the attention in Barnett’s film.

But the way Barnett tells these three stories is what makes it such an important one about a very complex issue, including interviews with the three kids’ parents and immediate families, all of whom are quite supportive even as their kids garner ridiculous amounts of hate from other parents.

This is the thing. Transgender boys and girls should have equal rights with their peers, and that includes playing sports. They’re already forced to go through a lot due to their gender dysphoria, so to have to, on top of that, deal with scorn and derision from jealous over-competitive parents whose own kids aren’t able to achieve the same level of competition, I mean it’s just bullshit. This movie really hit me hard in the gut, because I have close friends who have transitioned who are constantly dealing with hatred and scorn and to have politicians in states like Texas and Florida and other places making their situation worse, it just kills me. THESE ARE KIDS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

I’m quite shocked that it took so long for someone to release Barnett’s film, but this also couldn’t be better timing to add to a conversation where there’s just too many people in this country who do not or will not try to understand what trans kids are contending with on a daily basis. Changing the Game is the perfect conversation starter, and a great way for people unable (or unwilling) to understand the trans struggle to see it from a fresh, new perspective.

One of the fairly high profile docs out of this year's Sundance Film Festival was Theo Anthony’s ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE (Super, LTD), a really intriguing movie that seems like science fiction at first but actually is an in-depth look into surveillance cameras, taking a particularly detailed look at the Axon body camera system used by many police, cameras triggered by the use of officer’s weapons.

It takes a little time to understand what Anthony is trying to achieve with what is essentially a thesis paper done via cinema verité-style documentary (not my favorite), but it pulls you in with its look at the history of surveillance and footage that might seem disparate at first but comes together as the movie comes along.

I found this to be a particularly compelling film, especially with the music, which is a bit of a musical cacophony, though it seems to work with the robotic female voice-over that tells us what we’re watching. (Something that tends to lack in most cinema verité films.) As you can tell from the image above, the film is fairly avant garde with a lot of gorgeous images that might not necessarily fit in with the subject, but it does add to the overall narrative about surveillance and vision. I thought it was funny that my first reaction to this was similar to my reaction to last year's Oscar-nominated Time, because I went into both movies not realizing they were documentaries.

Ultimately, the film does become kind of scary because we have heard so much about the importance of body cams on police, but Anthony’s film shows how unreliable that footage is as evidence in a case. While All Light, Everywhere is a very different movie from what I was expecting, it shines a focused light (sorry for the pun) on a piece of technology that we’ve become so reliant on to achieve justice but is still clearly quite flawed.

A couple other docs that I wasn’t able to find the time to watch, both involving sports, are Graham Shelby’s CITY OF ALI (Abramorama) and Chase Ogden’s SUPER FRENCHIE (Greenwich). The first one is pretty obviously about boxing great Muhammad Ali, but it deals specifically with the week after his death when the people of his Kentucky hometown and the rest of the world came together to celebrate the greatest boxer of all time. Super Frenchie is about professional skier and base jumper Matthias Giraud, who takes on bigger challengers and more dangerous stunts just as he is about to start a family. These both sound great, and I’ll do my best to watch and write about them once I do.

Actually, I watched Super Frenchie just as I was finishing up this column, and it’s pretty great if you love amazing footage of fantastic skiing stunts. I’ve seen quite a few great docs in this vein -- Free Solo comes to mind -- and I generally liked this one, too, especially since it covers quite a long span in Giraud's life and gets into him becoming a father. I actually would have loved to see this in a movie theater, but you can, since it’s opening in theaters Friday as well as Virtual Cinema and TVOD, so lots of opportunities to watch it.

Next up is Nabil Elderkin’s GULLY (Paramount Home Entertainment), which hits theaters on Friday but then will be on Digital and VOD on Tuesday, June 8. This one also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, oddly enough, and it ALSO follows a trio of teenagers, but this is a narrative film, not a doc, but it very well could be a doc with the honesty it handles its subjecet.

It follows three young L.A. friends -- Kelvin Harrison’s mute Jesse, Jacob Latimore’s Calvin and Charlie Plummer’s Nicky -- kids who are constantly getting into serious trouble and in danger of ending up in the system. As we watch them committing crime and complete chaos, it’s counterbalanced by Jonathan Majors’ Greg, a longtime friend of the boys’ families, who himself is being released from jail and trying to stay out of the life that put him there. There’s also Terrence Howard as an enigmatic street poet, who doesn’t seem to serve much purpose until the end, while Amber Heard plays Nicky’s mother, who seems to be a stripper or prostitute of some kind, I couldn’t really figure it out.

I can definitely tell why critics might not like Elderkin’s work, because he comes from the world of music video and has a kinetic style of filmmaking that keeps things moving, which might not be the case in normal indie dramas, which might involve a lot of dialogue vs. just showing these three kids and their lives. These are all kids that have been damaged by familial relationships and society as a whole, who have pretty much been left to fend for themselves. The thing is, and this might be another issue that other critics had with the film, is that Calvin and Nicky are especially unlikable due to the violent crimes they get up to, and at one point, the movie reminded me a bit of a modern-day real world A Clockwork Orange. By the way, Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time.

What Elderkin has going for him is this amazing cat. This is earlier work by Harrison, an actor who is quickly becoming the dramatic actor to keep an eye on, and the same can be said for Jonathan Major. I’ve long been a fan of Plummer and this is a very different role from the nice guys he’s played in the past. Latimore also gives a really exciting performance, as well, and the only one who disappointed me a little was Heard, who at times gets a bit out of control with her performance.

Gully is a tough and challenging film, but it’s one with such a strong message delivered so well by Elderkin and his cast, that it bums me a little this might not be seen by a very big audience, competing with so much other content right now. Maybe it’s not quite as strong narratively as other films of its ilk -- Monsters and Men comes to mind as an improved version of this -- but it’s a compelling character study that ultimately delivers what’s intended.

Hitting Shudder on Thursday is Damien McCarthy’s Irish horror film CAVEAT (Shudder), starring Jonathan French as Isaac, a drifter who is hired to look after a psychologically troubled woman whose husband committed suicide in an abandoned house on an island. Once he gets there, he learns that he’s forced to wear a chain securely fastened to the basement floor to prevent him from going into certain rooms, but he soon finds out that there’s a lot more to that one simple “caveat.”

I’m always excited for a new weekly Shudder movie, and this one looks quite fantastic with a tone that makes it feel sort of period while in fact being quite modern. The way the premise is set-up is certainly quite compelling, and I wanted to see where things go, especially after the opening where we see a sullen woman walking through the house with a toy rabbit that bangs on its drum mysteriously. For some reason, I assumed that this movie would involve ghosts or spirits or something similarly scary, but no, it’s just a guy chained to the basement trying to solve some mystery of the house’s dead inhabitants. This ended up being quite disappointing even though it started from such a good premise, but it’s one that never goes quite far enough in terms of scares.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Dominic Cooper star in Michael Haussman’s EDGE OF THE WORLD (Samuel Goldwyn Films), a period drama set in 1839 with Rhys-Meyers playing Sir James Brooke, whose adventures in 19th century Borneo were the inspiration for films Lord Jim and The Man Who Would Be King. When Brooke’s ship is attacked by pirates, he teams with local princes to seize a rebel fort, agreeing to be crowned Rajah, as he joins his new allies.

I’m not going to review Haussman’s film at this time, because I wasn’t able to give it the full attention that it deserves, but it’s a pretty gripping film on par with James Gray’s The Lost City of Z and other films about explorers. It’s a beautiful film with some great action and an amazing score, and honestly, I wish I had more time to give it the attention it deserves, but that’s what happens when you’re trying to run a site full-time and continue to write reviews for this column. Some things just slip past me or don’t get the time they deserve.

It will be available on Digital and On Demand starting Friday, but honestly? This would be a great visual movie to see in theaters.

Other movies (and new series) out this week, include:

UNDER THE STADIUM LIGHTS (Saban Films/Paramount) FLASHBACK (EONE) BAD TALES (Strand Releasing) MONUMENT UPHEAVAL (Abramorama) SWEET TOOTH (Netflix)

That’s it for this week. Next week… In the Heights and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway!

#The Weekend Warrior #The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It #Spirit Untamed #Movies #Reviews #Changing the Game #Gully #All Light Everywhere #Streaming

[johnchiarello]

kings 16

KINGS 16

 Kings 16

https://youtu.be/sPH-fvrad94

https://vimeo.com/248864066

 ON VIDEO-

.Review

.Great courses

.Higher criticism?

.Why was revelation written in a lower form/style of Greek?

.We see consistency in the DOCTIRNE of John’s writings- all of them

.Social media- how is it affecting our children? [adults as well]

.Jehu the prophet speaks

.Joshua spoke too

.Ahab- Jezebel and Elijah coming next

.The discipline of writing/documenting in the history of the church

.Septuagint

.Renaissance

.Gutenberg printing press

.They preached the Word- Jesus Christ

  Other Videos- [Every night I upload/share videos on my various sites- I’ll try and just link those to upcoming posts from now on- that’s what you see here]

Acts 11- http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/111046772

Paintings of the atheist- https://flic.kr/p/Dec9ug

The seed http://dai.ly/x6c85uk

God of the living https://youtu.be/fC4aEuHMrMw

Fathers day- https://vimeo.com/248814180

Matt- Jimmy- Steve https://flic.kr/p/21RPoXq

Sunday sermon http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/111115803

Apologetics- Philosophy- Prophets http://dai.ly/x6cbdav

 NEW- I made the video- Kings 16- ‘off the cuff’- in the middle of a busy week- but wanted to keep doing the Kings study.

I’ll add my past teaching below and do a few points here.

 We see Jehu the prophet ‘pronounce’ certain things [judgment]-

1Kings 16:1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jehu the son of Hanani against Baasha, saying,

1Kings 16:2 Forasmuch as I exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people Israel; and thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin, to provoke me to anger with their sins;

1Kings 16:3 Behold, I will take away the posterity of Baasha, and the posterity of his house; and will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

1Kings 16:4 Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth of his in the fields shall the fowls of the air eat.

And sure enough- these words come to pass-

1Kings 16:10 And Zimri went in and smote him, and killed him, in the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his stead.

1Kings 16:11 And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends.

1Kings 16:12 Thus did Zimri destroy all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake against Baasha by Jehu the prophet.

Even though wicked men carry them out- yet they happened by the word of the Lord.

We also see the introduction of Ahab- and his famous wife Jezebel- in this chapter.

 Which means we will see Elijah the prophet over the next few weeks [or months?]-

Which makes the next few chapters a bit more interesting.

 At the end of the chapter we see what might seem to be an obscure detail-

A man decides to rebuild the famous city of Jericho- destroyed many years earlier under the rule of Joshua [you remember- the walls come tumbling down].

But during the conquest of the promised land- Joshua placed a curse on the man who would build it some day-

Joshua 6:26 And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

 And sure enough- these many years later- the curse came to pass-

1Kings 16:34 In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.

I also taught a little bit of history- and mentioned the writings of the apostle John- and his theme of the logos- the Word of God.

Actually- in a way it fit with the Chapter- we see the events of history as being framed by the word of God.

 Jehu spoke the word of the Lord- and those words did indeed come to pass.

Joshua spoke by the anointing of God- and his words came to pass years later.

The Word of God- spoken by the people of God- carries great authority.

 God spoke his Word- he sent his Son as the incarnate Word- the Word made flesh.

And it is thru this act- which we just happen to be celebrating at this season- that all men can find peace and hope.

 Yes- the words spoken by Jehu- and Joshua- did bring judgment.

But the Word that God speaks today is life- hope- healing- yes- as many at this season say- peace on Earth and good will towards men.

 Because the redeemer has come- and his name is called- THE WORD OF GOD-

 11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.

13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

Rev. 19

 PAST POSTS- [Past teaching I did that fits with today’s post- Kings 16]

KINGS-

https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-kings/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/29/kings-2/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/04/12/kings-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/04/27/kings-4/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/05/04/kings-5/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/05/25/kings-6/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/17/kings-7/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/07/05/kings-8/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/07/18/kings-9/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/08/01/kings-10/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/08/22/kings-11/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/09/15/kings-12-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/10/19/kings-13-2/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/11/09/kings-14/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/12/06/kings-15/

https://ccoutreach87.com/john-complete-links-added/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/12/25/sunday-sermon-20/

https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-updated-2015/

 I mentioned Oral tradition on today’s video- Kings 16- below are my past teachings where I brought it up-

The Iliad and Odyssey [Homer]

I want to cover some of the classics of Western Literature- when I do the philosophy and science stuff- the purpose is to show how God- and ‘religion’ are an inescapable thread that we see all thru out history- and in fact- the rise of what we call ‘intellectualism’ did indeed come from the Judaic/Christian tradition [for instance- the modern day university system did come from the Church].

 Ok- lets start with what most believe to be the greatest work from antiquity- outside of the bible.

 These are 2 poems by Homer- the Iliad and Odyssey.

 These poems were written in the 8th century BCE- and cover the Trojan war- which most believe was a real war- that took place in the 12th-13th century BCE.

 In Homers works we read about this epic battle.

 The war starts with- once again- a ‘woman’ issue.

 Prince Paris of Troy steals Helen of Greece- from her husband King Menelaus [king of Sparta].

 The Greeks- led by Achilles- lay siege to Troy.

 In Homers telling of the event- the Greeks are actually defending the honor of marriage- and are carrying out a just retribution against an unjust act.

Sort of the same themes we read in scripture- when the sons of Jacob defended the honor of their sister Dinah- when she was treated unjustly by the pagan nation that took her- forcefully- to be the wife of a kings son.

 The brothers meted out justice- by tricking these pagans to get circumcised- then- while recovering ‘from surgery’- the sons went in and wiped out the city- to their fathers dismay!

 In the story- Achilles is a warrior- who displays extreme violence- and also the human traits of a man who acts out of selfish motives.

 At one point in the war- he removes himself from battle- because he feels his honor was betrayed.

 The only thing that brings him back is the killing of his close friend Patroclus- by Hector.

Achilles leads the Greeks to victory- and reflects the struggle between living a long life- or dying young- yet dying for a just cause.

One of the more famous quotes form Homer’s Poems- attributed to Achilles- is ‘I carry 2 sorts of destiny to the day of my death. Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life- left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.’

 There has been some debate over the historicity of the war itself.

 Some scholars believe it was Myth [I’ll get to this in a moment].

That is- they believe the war itself was not true- but a sort of Oral Tradition- that encompasses the reality of the human condition- and that Homers Poems are simply mythological ways to reveal the true condition of man.

 Yet- much like the debate that took place in the 19th century German universities- over the ‘Myth’ of the bible- later on- the rise of what we now call Archaeology [because of the Industrial revolution- a new field arose- men started digging up the ground- for the primary purpose of extracting materials from the earth- and at this time we also discovered ‘lost worlds’- that is we could actually trace cities and lands that were once deemed fake].

 So- as with Homers Troy- and bible lands- these archaeologists did indeed find Cities that matched the stories.

 In 1870 the German Archaeologist Schliemann discovered remains that seemed to find the city of Troy- the area is known today as modern day Turkey.

 This same thing happened with the bible- we did indeed find historical evidence that seemed to back up the historicity of the stories we find in the bible.

 As a matter of fact- a famous doubter of the bible embarked on a search- to prove the bible was ‘myth’ yet- after researching carefully the historical names and places we read about in the book of Acts- he came to believe that the book of Acts- written by both an historian and doctor [Luke] was the most historically accurate writing that came from the first century [Acts has lots of names of political figures- court proceedings- stuff like that- and when doing research like this- it is quite easy to debunk the historical reality of a fake work- but- when these names and places were researched- from actual historical records dating back to the first century- it was amazing how the pieces fit].

 The Trojan War is found in many works of Greek literature- and art.

 But the most comprehensive account comes from Homer’s 2 poems.

 Now- in Homer’s poems there are obvious references to Mythology- Goddesses- Golden apples- the Greek gods intervening in the affairs of men.

 So yeah- we see that there are obvious mythological aspects to the work.

Yet- the ancient Geeks did indeed believe the war itself was a real war that took place at around the 12th century BCE.

 Some believe that Homer never actually wrote the poems- but that he told the stories- like Oral Tradition- and they were later written down by others.

 Sort of like the classic- Paradise Lost- by John Milton. Milton was blind- and told the story to his daughters [oral tradition] and the actual work was penned by those who heard it.

 Jesus himself used this method- he never wrote a book- or letter in the New Testament- yet the gospels were compiled by his men after his death.

 We read about this when Luke [who I mentioned above] gives the reason for his documenting stuff in the book of Acts [read Acts chapter one].

 Luke also wrote his gospel a few years after the death and resurrection of Christ.

 So- some believe the same thing happened with Homer- those who heard him tell the story multiple times- simply put it together later on.

 Most scholars believe that Homer did indeed write the poems- and that the famous Trojan War was a real historical event. See the rest here- https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/1-12-17-acts-1.zip

  Last year- when in North Bergen- my atheist friend Daniel said he watched a PBS show- and he said ‘even a priest said the bible was Myth’.

 I explained to Daniel that when the more liberal scholars use this term [like in the writings of Bultman] that they do not mean ‘fake’- like Greek Mythology.

 But they mean that some of the stories in the gospels might be a compilation of the many Oral teachings of Jesus- and they were put together as one story [some think the Sermon on the Mount was actually multiple teachings Jesus did- and they were compiled into one event].

 Now- when I explained this to Daniel- he said ‘see- even you believe it was Myth’.

 I told Daniel that no- I do not hold to this theory [not 100%] but that I was simply telling him that even those who use the term Myth- when talking about Theology- they do not mean Myth- as in fake.

 So- I find it interesting that both the New testament- and Homers poems- got the same scrutiny.

 In these poems we do indeed see the condition of man- which Homer depicts as one of constant war- not peace.

 The letter of James in the New Testament says- James 4:1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

James 4:2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

James 4:3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it

[parts]

MY VIDEOS

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/10-18-15-nietzsches-twilight-of-the-idols.zip

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/10-28-15-jean-paul-sartre.zip

 Talked about Renaissance- below are past posts on it-

[1770] TREASURY OF MERIT

 Let’s pick up where we left off 2 posts back. We were talking about Martin Luther and the events that led up to the Protestant Reformation.

 In order to understand the key act that caused the protest- we will have to teach some Catholic history/doctrine.

 In the 16th century Pope Julius began the effort to build St. Peters basilica in Rome. He got as far as laying the foundation and died. Pope Leo the 10th would pick up after him.

 The church needed to raise money for the project- and the German prince- Albert- would play a major role.

 It should be noted that both Catholic and Protestant scholars agree that the Popes of the day were pretty corrupt. They came from what we call the Medici line of Popes.

 If you remember last month I wrote a post on the Renaissance- I talked about the Medici family and how they played a major role in supporting the Renaissance that took place in the 13th century in Florence Italy that would spread to the region.

 Well this very influential family also played a big role in who would get top positions in the church.

 At the time of Luther and prince Albert- if you had the right connections and the money- you could literally buy a position in the church.

 Albert already held 2 Bishop seats- and there was an opening for an Archbishops seat in Mainz [Germany] and he wanted that one too.

 It should be noted that official Canon law [church law] said you could only hold one seat at a time- Albert was bidding on his 3rd one! And he was too young for all of them.

 So even the Pope and the officials held little respect for what the church actually taught at the time.

 So Albert opens up negotiations with Leo- and the bidding starts AT 12,000 Duckets [money] Albert counters with 7,000- and they agree on 10,000. How did they justify the numbers? 12- The number of Apostles. 7- The 7 deadly sins. 10- The 10 commandments.

 Yes- the church was pretty corrupt at the time.

 So Albert works out a plan with Leo- he will borrow the money from the German banks- and pay the banks off by the Pope giving Albert the right to sell Indulgences.

 What’s an Indulgence?

 Okay- this is where it gets tricky.

 The ancient church taught a system called The Treasury of Merit. This was a sort of spiritual bank account that ‘stored up’ the good deeds of others over the years.

 You had the good deeds of Jesus at the top- but you also had Mary and Joseph- the 12 Apostles- and other various saints thru out time.

 The way the ‘bank’ worked was you could tap into the account by getting a Papal indulgence- a sort of I.O.U. that had the Popes guarantee that it would get so much time out of Purgatory for a loved one.

 The actual sacrament that accesses the account is called Penance [confession].

 When a penitent does penance- he confesses his sin to the priest- and he is absolved by the authority of the church that the priest has. The priest usually tells the person ‘say so many Hail Mary’s- Our Father’s’ and that’s a form of penance.

 One of the other things the church practiced was called Alms Deeds. This term is found in the bible and it means giving your money to the poor- it is a noble act that Jesus himself taught.

 In theory- part of the sacrament of penance was tied into Alms Deeds- you can access the account thru the practice of giving to the poor- which also meant giving to the church that helps the poor- and in the hands of the Medici line of Popes- meant outright giving money to the Pope.

 So now you see how the abuse worked its way into the pockets of the faithful.

 Albert now had the permission from Leo to sell these indulgences in Germany- and he would pick a certain corrupt priest to sell them in a place called Saxony- the region where Luther operated out of.

 It should be noted that the Catholic Church never taught the crass act of ‘buying your way out of Purgatory’. The practice of including giving money as a part of the sacrament of penance was tied into the biblical principle of giving to the poor- a good thing.

 But Tetzel and others abused the official meaning of the indulgence- and did make it sound like you could by your way out of Purgatory [in theory- a loved one might be in Purgatory for so many years- and through the indulgence you are actually getting time off for them- because the good deeds of others are now applied to the account].

 The money Albert would raise- half would go to Rome for the building of St. peters- and half would go to pay off the banks in Germany- it was a sad system- and a sad time for the church as a whole.

 It would be wrong to judge the entire church at the time as being corrupt- you did have many sincere Priests and Catholic men and women who saw the abuses and did not take part in them.

 But there was corruption at the top- and this would eventually lead to the breakup of the church- and the launching of what we now call the Protestant Movement.

 As a side note- it should be said that many Catholics and Protestants are not aware of the whole treasury of merit system- and the church never officially changed her position on the doctrine.

 There were 3 Church councils since the time [Trent- 1500’s, Vatican 1- 1800’s and Vatican 2- 1962-65]. The Treasury of Merit never came up for change.

 Obviously Protestants don’t believe in Purgatory- and it’s not my purpose in these posts to change Catholics into Protestants or vice versa- but to give all sides a clear view of the issues that divided us- and to try and be honest- and respectful during the process.

 Does the bible teach anything like a Treasury of Merit? Well actually it does. The bible teaches that the righteousness of Christ is the treasury that people can access- by faith- and become righteous in the sight if God.

 The idea- applied to Christ- is good.

 But in the hands of the Medici Popes- and the ambitious prince of Germany- it would lead to disaster.

     www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John

 (1327) GALATIANS; INTRO- Okay, finally made it, been wanting to teach this letter for a while. Let me overview some church history that I feel would be helpful in understanding the book. During the 16th century Reformation you had an explosion take place within Christianity, though the official ‘schism’ dates back to the year 1054 between the western [Catholic] and eastern [Orthodox] expressions of the church, yet in reality it was the 16th century upheaval that really split the church. A few centuries before [14-15th century] you had rumblings within the church that had well taught Catholic men challenging many of the institutional concepts of the church; men like John Huss, Wycliffe and others. These men were extremely influential and had an effect on the church. Then in the 16th century you had Catholic writers who remained within the Catholic Church, but they too challenged the status quoi. Men like Erasmus of Rotterdam, these intellectuals would call for the idea of going back to the original sources of study [Greek New Testament and also other renaissance ideas] and this too would lead to the historic Reformation. But without a doubt Martin Luther [the Catholic monk out of Wittenberg, Germany] would be the firebrand of the movement. Martin was a well trained Augustinian monk who struggled with the guilt of sin for many years. Not normal guilt, but extreme. A fellow Catholic leader would encourage Luther to trust in the grace of God for his forgiveness. While reading the book of Romans [whose themes relate strongly to Galatians] he would come along the famous passage ‘the just shall live by faith’ and in Luther’s mind this was a total release from the bondage of trying to appease God thru all the religious works that he was going thru. In essence Luther discovered the historic gospel of grace thru the reading of Romans and was set free. Now Luther had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church, but as a very influential teacher/scholar out of the university city in Germany, he had lots of influence. The Catholic church at the time was worldwide and you had differing views of the church in various states. Many saw the state of the church in Rome as having given in to materialism and become too worldly. Rome was at the time trying to raise money for the restoring of the religious buildings at Rome and one of the priests going around selling indulgences was named Tetzel. The abuse of selling these ‘get out of purgatory early’ things was offensive to many Catholics, and Luther had ‘no small stir’ when Tetzel reached his area. These things would lead to the famous nailing of the 95 questions on the door of Catholic academia and would be the beginnings of the historic split. While it would take way too much time to go into all the theological differences between the Protestants and the Catholics, one of the main issues deals with how we as Christians view ‘being saved’. The historic Protestant position is called ‘justification by faith alone’ [Sola Fide] the Catholics counter with ‘the only time ‘faith alone’ is mentioned is in the book of James, where it says a man is not saved/justified by ‘faith alone’. Ouch! The main point I want to make is this letter deals with the early church’s belief that man is accepted with God based on the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Paul will challenge the ‘Judaisers’ [those who believed you needed to keep the law in order to be saved] and will argue that the law itself [Old Testament books] teaches that men are justified/accepted with God based on believing in the free gift of God thru Christ. Make no mistake about it, the New Testament clearly teaches this doctrine. Catholic and Protestant theologians BOTH agree that man is freely saved by the grace of God in Christ. But at the time of Luther’s day these glorious truths were lost in the morass of religious tradition and works. As we read thru this letter in the next few days, I want all of our readers to see the argument Paul is making from this basic theological view point. Is man saved by works [keeping Gods law] or grace? The bible teaches grace. Now I don’t have the time to also introduce the modern controversy between the ‘new view’ of Paul between Protestants [called new perspective]. There is an ongoing debate over whether or not the historic Reformation view of Paul is correct [men like N.T. Wright and John Piper are hashing it out] and I do think there are some merits to this discussion, but before we can delve into that aspect, we first need to see the historic question of works versus faith, and this letter is one of the best to deal with the issue.

 In the last Philosophy post I hit on the 10th-14th century development of modern thought- today I want to jump into the 16th-18th centuries. Like I said in a previous post- after the Renaissance and the Reformation and the great scientific revolution- you had the world in somewhat of a tailspin.

  What I mean is for hundreds of years people trusted in the old institutions [like the Catholic Church] to tell them what was true or false- then with the development of all these modern movements people began questioning stuff.

 Was it good to question things? Sure. But some challenged the very foundations of thought and knowing [called Epistemology] and went a bit too far.

 Some thinkers went  back to the thought of Plato [400 years BC] and said that the mind is the main source of all knowledge- these were the 17th century Rationalists.

 Rationalism- as a philosophy- was an outgrowth of all the great strides that man was making in all these other areas of life. The Scientific Revolution totally challenged the age old beliefs of many in the church.

 Math became a sort of new ‘god’. How so? As science invented the Microscope and Telescope- man was able for the first time to peer deeply into the heavens- and to see deeply into the microscopic world.

 As the great minds [Copernicus] showed us that the Universe was different than what we thought [Heliocentric versus Geocentric] man was able to do mathematical calculations and to say that a specific planet or star [or Comet] would show up at an exact date- or spot- and Walla- it would happen [you could look thru the Telescope and sure enough the math was right- the object that was calculated to be there- was.]

 These calculations were mathematical formulas- so math began to be seen as the new religion in many ways.

 There are even some thinkers in the modern day that still say the only ‘real truth’ that exists is mathematical formulas. Yeah- one guy wrote an entire book on the subject- the problem? Well- his book was not written in math- but words.

 Yes- even the extreme deniers of Objective truth do make mistakes.

 Now- what’s wrong with rationalism? Of course being rational is okay- but the philosophy itself denied real Objective truth. Truth that corresponds to some other ‘outside’ reality.

 This form of thinking [rejecting outside reality] is called Relativism/Subjectivism. While there is some truth to all the various fields of thought- yet extreme Relativism denies ‘reality’ as most of us understand the term.  There was a strong resistance to the 17th century rationalists- we call this Philosophy Empiricism.

 The main thinker in this field was John Locke. Locke lived most of his life in the 17th century- but his thought laid the foundation for the 18th century Empiricist.

 This philosophy says that the mind does indeed play a major role in the knowledge of things- but this knowledge does not originate in the mind [Plato] but in the ‘thing’ itself [Aristotle- remember when we covered these men? Plato was an idealist- Ideas were more real than matter. Aristotle was a Realist- closer to the thought of Locke].

 Locke developed a theory called the Correspondence theory- that truth that the Mind discovers corresponds to real things that actually exist apart from the mind.

 Locke was a practicing doctor- and most of the other thinkers of the day had room to speculate about reality in a way that Locke could not.

 He lived in a real world with real patients who had real symptoms- in a nutshell Locke had to diagnose his patients based on his findings- he could not deny that there was a real problem- he had to have his ‘feet on the ground’ [based in reality] while engaging with his head up high.

 Okay- I think we’ll end with this. Maybe you can go back and read some of my previous posts on this subject- just to become a little more familiar with it.

 As Christians- we are not ‘required’ to know Philosophy- or current events- or science- but it helps us engage the culture when we do educate ourselves in these areas.

 Go slow in learning [not too slow!] and try and see how the Christian Worldview agrees with- or rejects certain aspects of these different felids of thought.

 Most Christians would reject Rationalism as a Philosophy- because it denies real objective truth- it says truth is relative- whatever the mind can conceive- or think- can be defined as truth [Unicorns?]

 Biblical truth is based on real historic events- 1st Corinthians chapter 15 says that if we deny the physical  resurrection of Christ- a real event- then our faith is in vain.

 Christians base their faith on a real historic event- not simply on a belief system.

 [parts]

 And here’s some past teaching where I mentioned the Septuagint-

 Because our bibles were written in Greek [which shows you how strong the Greek influence effected the early church- our first New Testaments were written in Greek- though the Roman Empire was the world Empire of the day.

 But Alexander the Great- the famed Greek conqueror who came a few centuries before Christ- he instituted what we refer to as Helenization.

 A form of conquering where you let the people you conquer keep their culture- but you also use parts of your culture [in this case the Greek language] to permeate the vanquished.

 So- the Roman Empire of Jesus day [who at one time were under the rule of the Greek Empire] continued to write in Greek.

 It wasn’t until around a few centuries after the time of Christ that the first Latin bible was written [by Saint Jerome].

 But even his bible [the Latin Vulgate] used the Greek Old Testament [called the Septuagint] instead of the Hebrew- for his Latin translation.

 Ok- the point being- the Greek world did indeed have a strong influence on the early church.

 And the church had to refute the belief that all matter was evil.

 The Christian doctrine of creation [developed under saint Augustine- the 4th-5th century bishop of Hippo- North Africa].

 Was the teaching that matter was good- that God created the material realm- so it is not  inherently evil.

 But- after the fall of man [Genesis 1-3] a curse did indeed come upon the earth [some times when the bible says ‘the world’ it is speaking of the earth- but other times it is speaking of the fallen order- the sinful realm of man. That’s why there is some confusion- till this day- among Christians. They might read verses like this- and think the bible is saying the earth itself- the planet- is wicked. Actually in those verses it is speaking about the fallen order of sinful men. See? ‘For all that is in THE WORLD- the lust of the flesh- the lust of the eyes and the pride of life- is not of the father- but is of the WORLD- and the WORLD is passing away’- this is one example from the epistle of John- here the World is not saying the planet- but the world of sinful man- a fallen ‘world’ order.]

 So- in conclusion [if I ever get there!] we- as believers- reject the belief that all matter is evil.

 No- man was created in the image of God- and God is the creator of all things- both visible [earth- man- etc] and invisible [mentioned in the above chapter].

 The evil we see in the ‘world’ today is simply a result of mans sin- mans choice to live in rebellion against God.

 We can’t escape ‘this world of sin’ by simply denying ourselves [though that is one aspect of the Christian life].

 But God sent his Son into the world to redeem man- Christ died for all men- and this is the Divine act of Salvation.

 When we as humans partake of this Salvation- we are then free- free to enjoy this life- that God gave us- and we don’t have to have the mindset of a Socrates- who saw this natural life as evil.

 The apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans;

 ‘Present your bodies as a living sacrifice- HOLY and acceptable to God’.

 See?

 Our bodies- the actual flesh we live in- can be Holy- sanctified- when submitted to the will of God.

  This is from my Romans teaching I did a few years ago- ROMANS 11-13

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/3-12-15-romans-11-13.zip

[note- there’s much more on the video than the post]

.ROMANS 11

.ROMANS 12

.ROMANS 13

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St. Thomas and Augustine.

 I mean these are 2 of my favorite Catholic scholars.

 Augustine- the 4/5th century Bishop of North Africa- and Thomas- the great 13th century Doctor Angelicas [Angelic Doctor].

 Yes- these are some big players in Theology and Philosophy.

 So why have the media reported that the pres used them in his war strategy?

 They are also famous for the development of the Just war Theory.

 Yeah- people for centuries have appealed to these great thinkers in their justification for war.

 But Obama- how does he find the time to read these guys?

 I mean- unless their names are on the golf balls [he just played his 100th round!]

 I don’t see him having time to read them.

 So why mention it?

 Because he fumbled the ball with our Catholic friends [who just began a 2 week prayer and fast against the repression of religious liberty- because of the presidents demands that they provide birth control thru their institutions].

 And he needs to make amends- so lo and behold- he loves reading the Catholic scholars!

 If you put all this together- the ongoing scandals- not just one.

 The actual lies- the ones they have been caught in- on paper.

 I mean even a mainline reporter could not believe that the revealing of this was ‘no big deal’.

 And now- the fact that the pres came out the other day and addressed the nation ‘me and my Whitehouse have not released any CLASSIFIED information’.

 ‘It’s an insult to think this’.

 Then- one week later- on Friday- they sent a letter to congress- declassifying the drone war

in Yemen.

 They were basically saying ‘yeah- we were behind the releasing of all the info- it’s just we ‘declassified it’ first’.

 He is going to say when he released the info- his office first ‘declassified it’.

 But when he addressed you- and me- he was outraged- he made it sound like he was not aware of the leaks.

 And 99 % of the public took it this way.

 Look- when you get caught doing this- over and over and over- I mean this is not a one time affair.

 Then it does make the public wonder about everything else.

 And when the public asks for answers- and you respond by playing the race card- then it’s time for some people to resign.

[parts]

AN UNJUST LAW

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/4-20-16-an-unjust-law-is-no-law-at-all.zip

https://youtu.be/oQMmaWERTYk  An unjust law is no law at all

 [parts]

ACTS 17- Paul heads to Thessalonica and preaches 3 Sabbath days in the synagogue. Once again the unbelieving Jews follow him and stir up trouble. Paul heads to Berea and speaks the word. The Bereans are said to be more noble because they heard Paul out and then searched the scriptures to see if he were telling the truth. The message he preached is that Jesus is the Messiah that the Old Testament prophets spoke of. In 1st John, John says ‘whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God’ Paul was showing them that Jesus was the Christ. Again trouble arises and Paul sails off to Athens and sends for Timothy and Silas later on. Now, Paul spent 3 weeks at Thessalonica. No huge budget, no message on ‘how can we reach Thessalonica without lots of money’ [I have heard it taught that you cant even begin to think about planting a church unless you have $250,000 dollars!] Paul believed in the power of the gospel. It took 3 weeks of simply sharing the gospel to plant this church! He will write them a few letters and give them some instruction, but the simple truth is every believer has the ability to ‘plant churches’ [speaking the gospel to people groups and those people believing and becoming ‘the church’]. At Athens Paul is troubled by all the ‘superstition’ [religion]. He runs into the philosophers. It said the people there spent all their time in either telling or hearing some new thing. An ancient form of ‘the view’ [the television show where the ladies talk about nothing all day long!] So Paul disputes with them and uses their own altar to ‘the unknown God’ and declares Christ unto them. Recently a Catholic priest made headlines because he advocated for Christians to use the name Allah instead of God. He felt the name was referring to the same God. Does Paul’s use of the ‘unknown God altar’ fall into this category? No. When any religion names their god and defines him, then this god is a false god [unless your speaking of the true God]. So in this case Paul was simply saying ‘this altar to the God you don’t know, I will show you how to come to know him’. Now, why were these philosophers in Athens? A few centuries before Christ you had the rule of Alexander the great. The Old Testament prophet Daniel speaks in detail of his rule. Alexander ruled one of the greatest empires known to man. He established the greatest library of the ancient world. He made Greek the common language. This is why the New Testament was written in Greek. Though Rome was the ruling empire of Jesus day, the culture was still Greek to a degree. This is called ‘Hellenization’. The Greeks even translated the Old Testament into Greek before the days of Christ. This translation is called the Septuagint, which means 70. This comes from the supposed number of scholars who worked on the translation. This period just prior to Christ was the time of the great philosophers. Plato, Aristotle and others. These Philosophers laid down a foundation of sorts for morality and the cultures that would develop down the road. The church fathers disagreed somewhat to the degree of mixing Christian faith with the thought of the pre Christian philosophers. Origen thought these men were Christian to the degree that God used them to instill types of thought and belief in the immortality of the soul and other concepts as a precursor to Christ. Others thought they were competing worldviews for the religion of Christianity and should be rejected. Paul himself will write the Colossians and warn them of the philosophies of men. Many thinkers were affected by the ‘new age’ concepts that came from these groups. Augustine, the great 4th-5th century Bishop from North Africa was into Manichaeism prior to his conversion to Christianity. He eventually would sit under the sound teaching of Ambrose and leave his former ideas. These groups had strange beliefs and concepts that would sound like the scientology adherents of our day. Others were not as drastic but would still be seen as on the verge of Christian truth. Marcion was sort of in this class. The point is Paul will take advantage of the philosopher’s willingness to delve into all types of ideas, and use this as an open door to preach Christ. Some breakaway groups from the more Orthodox churches will claim that the Catholic churches belief in the immortality of the soul is not scriptural. These groups teach that the ancient church picked these beliefs up from the philosophers of the day [some of the seventh day brothers say this]. You also find some Protestant brothers challenge the authenticity of various bible translations based on the Septuagint translation from ancient Greece. The church father Jerome will use the Septuagint in his popular translation of the Latin Vulgate. Some Protestants see Jerome’s version as less than pure. This is also why the Catholic bibles have the Apocrypha in them [The books between Malachi and Matthew that the Protestant bibles don’t have]. When Jerome translated his vulgate, he brought these books over from the Septuagint version. Jerome did put an asterisk next to the apocryphal books, he noted they were included from the Septuagint, but were not seen as authoritative. Simply added for historical content]. So we see the tremendous influence that Greek culture and philosophy played in the early stages of the church. Paul knew their thought, but his gospel was founded on more than some new belief system. Paul claimed that Jesus had been raised from the dead!

 And below are past teachings where I talked about the Gutenberg printing press- also mentioned on today’s post- Kings 16-

https://youtu.be/-x4Bz60irJo  Christian- Muslim dialogue

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/1-15-17-christian-muslim-dialogue.zip

https://youtu.be/0i-V7qr7Kbg   Corpus Christi- Questions [I posted the video yesterday- but wanted to tag it to a post- Because I talked about current world issues as well, things that I feel are relevant right now]

ON VIDEO

.Muslim encounter at Kingsville Fire Dept.

.What makes Christianity unique?

.Muslims shared some of the same concerns as many Protestants

.Iconoclast controversy

.Expressions of the Trinity

.The development of the office of Bishop- 5 main cities

.The ‘pre’ renaissance that took place within Islam

.Aquinas responds to Islamic apologists [13the century]

.Ad Fontes

.Florence Italy- the Medici’s

.Gnosticism

.I bought him a Persian bible

.Erasmus- Luther

.Protestant Reformation

.My Muslim friend [at Timons]

.Who gave Bobby a ride?

.Wycliffe- Huss- Coverdale

.Gutenberg came just in time

.Catholic church warned ‘you will have too many splits’.

.They indeed were correct

.I quote from the Quran at the end

PAST TEACHING [Past teaching I did that relates to today’s video- verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.com/islam/

https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

JOHN 6

John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

https://youtu.be/--3fJK_dqiU  John 6

https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/7-3-16-john-6.zip

GALATIANS [Links]

https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/26/galatians-1/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2016/12/30/2nd-samuel-3-homeless-friends/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/02/galatians-2/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/10/galatians-3/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/12/the-seed/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/16/galatians-4/

 ON VIDEO-

.See the quads

.it was a test

. ‘We don’t have enough money for the ministry Jesus’?

.What did Jesus do- multiply the money- or the bread?

.Don’t  leave the crumbs behind

.Nungesser’s bowling alley

.The acid trip

.Manna a sign

.A little Greek stuff

.Zwingli

.Lake Geneva

.Renaissance

.Florence- Italy

.Medici family

.Aquinas

Aristotle

.Greek lexicon

.Proof texting a no no

.Hocus Pocus?

.Fundamentalism

.Aldous Huxley

MY LINKS [verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/further-talks-on-church-and-ministry/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/house-of-prayer-or-den-of-thieves/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/overview-of-philosophy/

MY LINKS ON JOHN

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/amos-5/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/jesus-christ/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/father-abraham/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/the-flood/  John 3

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/the-well-john-4/

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/2016/06/30/john-5/

[parts]

The renaissance was the 13-14th century revival of culture and learning that was lost for centuries- It began in Florence Italy.

The catch phrase for it was ‘Ad Fontes’  meaning ‘back to the sources’- both in philosophy- as well as in Christian learning.

This began a revival of studying the Greek New testament again from its original language.

The Catholic Humanist- Desiderius Erasmus [15-16th century] - re introduced the New Testament in the Greek version [He was referred to as a Dutch renaissance Humanist- as well as a Catholic Priest and scholar]

Now- Erasmus was a critic of the Church- like Luther- but chose a ‘middle road’- he did not join the breakaway Protestant Reformers- but chose to stay within the fold of Rome- while speaking out against the abuses he saw.

But his first Greek translation of the New Testament did indeed set a spark- because it allowed the Priests to see the bible in its original language.

And Luther was actually teaching this book of Romans to his students in Germany when the Reformation began.

Today the Catholic Church [as you can see in the official Catechism that I have been posting] does indeed teach the bible as God’s Word.

The divisions between Protestants and Catholics are many- but they did agree that the bible was the Word of God.

Some Protestants do not know this- they think the church holds Tradition higher than the bible.

No- the church does believe that God speaks both thru tradition- and scripture.

They see the tradition of the church as simply another means by which God uses the church [Magisterium] to explain scripture- but the Catholic Church does not elevate tradition over the bible.

And indeed- it was a catholic scholar- Erasmus- who introduced the first Geek version of the New Testament.

NOTE- Erasmus disagreed with Luther on the doctrine of Predestination- which I covered in the last video. Luther was for it- Erasmus was what we would call ‘Free Will’.

In his writings- which were very influential- he wrote in Greek and Latin- the language of the elites.

He did this on purpose- for his target was the influential leaders of the Church.

He rejected offers of money- because he did not want to align himself with any particular movement- so he could be an independent writer with no strings attached.

He had many criticisms of the Catholic Church- and was very influential for the later reforms- those we see at the Council of Trent [Though the church criticized him- they said he ‘Laid the egg that hatched the Reformation’].

He taught that the church/priests/popes should be the servants of the people-

He rejected the idea that the Priests/leaders made up the ‘whole of the church’- but he believed all believers made up the true church.

Erasmus was a firebrand in his own way- rejecting the language that Luther and some of the reformers used [they were vulgar at times]-

Luther respected the works of Erasmus- he thanked Erasmus for debating with him on the nature of Justification by Faith-

He disagreed in the end- but said this debate was at the heart of the gospel- and was glad that Erasmus was willing to engage.

 RENAISSANCE ARTISTS-

The famous renaissance artists- DaVinci- Michelangelo- Raphael- used their artwork as a form of knowledge- the images taught things- they were not just paintings.

DaVinci’s most famous work was his painting on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican.

It took him 4 years to complete.

The renaissance period- from about the 13/14th century to the 17th- [though there was a sort of Renaissance that took place- yes- in the Islamic world before the European Renaissance] was marked by what we term Humanism.

Today we associate this term with ‘secular Humanism’ which often has a bad connotation- especially among Christians.

But it meant something different back then.

It was a new focus on breaking the limits off of man- and for man to excel in knowledge and skill- and to see man as having value.

There was somewhat of a break away from the church in a sense- in that the church and its teachings were not the only source of wisdom for man.

But- Jesus himself taught that ‘the Sabbath was made for man- not man for the Sabbath’- so- the Humanist spirit- elevating the value of man- does have a Christian basis in my view.

Leonardo daVinci [15/16th century] was what we refer to as a true Renaissance man- meaning his knowledge was in many fields- not just art.

He actually considered himself a sculptor first- then an artist- though he is most famous for his Fresco mentioned above.

Here’s my study on The Reformation-

https://ccoutreach87.com/protestant-reformation-luther/

And my past teaching on the Western intellectual tradition-

https://ccoutreach87.com/western-intellectual-tradition/

 VERSES-

Isaiah 42:19

Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blindas the Lord's servant?

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

2 Corinthians 5:7 [Full Chapter]

(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)

13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.

14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it

 [parts]

 GW BRIDGE- https://youtu.be/70CVdZxFIMg  GW bridge

ON VIDEO-

.Foundation stones

.Why Bishops?

.Gnostics and Docetism

.Dads boat

.GOV Christie and hot dogs

.Restore the paths

.Isaiah and John

.Memories of a kid- train tunnel

.Robert Moses to blame?

.Mayor LaGuardia

.The argument for Rome

.Church fathers

.Mystics

.Suicide signs

.Apostolic succession

.What church is the ‘true church’?

.Most amazing intellectual discourse ever? Only if you don’t hear [have to watch to get it- sorry]

.Bedrock

.I am homeless- can you spare a 5?

VERSES-

Galatians 2:1 Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also.

Galatians 2:2 And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain.

[parts]

ACTS 9- Paul gets permission from the high priest to go to Damascus and arrest the believers. On his way the Lord appears to him and Paul is told to go to Damascus and wait for instructions. He is blind for 3 days. God gives a vision to Ananias and tells him to go to Paul in Judas house, because he too had a vision of a man coming to him and laying hands on him. Ananias is afraid but does it at the Lords insistence. I want you to see the role of visions and divine guidance in this event. The purpose of the visions and supernatural events has nothing to do with the canon of scripture. Some teach that the only reason you had supernatural guidance in the early days was because the canon was not complete. But after its completion you no longer had these types of things. First, no where is this doctrine taught in scripture. Second, you did not have total agreement on ‘the canon’ [all the books that make up our bibles] until the 4th century! Now you did have a basic group of letters and writings that were accepted as authoritative, but there was not total agreement. Many early believers had the epistles of Barnabas and a few other letters that were accepted. Some did not include Revelation at all. Others questioned Hebrews and James. You also did not have a workable, readable ‘bible’ in actual book form until the 12th-13th century! That's right, the actual form of our modern books was not invented until that late date. Plus the availability of books on a mass scale did not appear until the Gutenberg printing press of the 16th century. Just in time for Luther’s Reformation! The first book printed on his press was the Gutenberg bible. So the point is, the idea that somehow right after the early Apostles died off you had all believers going to ‘their bibles for direction’ as opposed to having dreams or visions or other divine guidance, really isn’t a workable solution. In this chapter God needed to get orders to his people, he gave them visions! Now Paul immediately preaches Christ as the Son of God and Messiah. He stirs up the waters and they sneak him out of town and send him to Jerusalem. The church at Jerusalem are leery of him, Barnabas vouches for him and he is received. He starts preaching there and once again they want to kill him. He eventually is sent back to his area of Tarsus. Now Peter is still on the road preaching Christ. He heals a man at Lydda and many come to the Lord. A woman named Tabitha dies at Joppa, a town close to Lydda. They call for Peter to come and he does and raises her from the dead. What are we seeing here? An early church [community of believers] preaching the gospel and doing miracles and affecting large regions without lots of money. Without hardly any organization. Without setting up ‘local churches’ in the sense that each area has separate ‘places’ they see as ‘local churches’ with salaried pastors running the ‘churches’. You are seeing a radical movement of Christ followers who are sacrificially giving there lives away for the gospel. No prayer meetings on ‘how in the world are we going to reach the region for the Lord. We need tons of cash’! They believed the simple instructions Jesus gave to them on going into all the world and preaching the gospel. Sure there will be times where support is sent to help them make it to the next location. But the whole concept of needing tons of cash and to build huge ‘church buildings/organizations’ and to set up salaried ministers is not seen in this story. I do not think the development of these things over the centuries means ‘all the churches are deceived’ type of a thing. All ‘the churches’ [groups of believers who are presently identifying themselves this way] are great people of God. They are doing the works of Jesus and functioning to a degree in the paradigm that they were given [either thru their upbringing or training]. But today we are seeing a rethinking of the ‘wineskin’ [that which contains the new wine] on a mass scale. As we read this story in Acts I want to challenge your mindset. Don’t fit the story into your present understanding of ‘local church’. But let your understanding of ‘Local Church’ be formed thru scripture. This chapter said ‘the churches had rest and were edified and were walking in the fear of the Lord’. The ‘churches’ are defined as all the communities of believers living in these various locations!

 Let’s cover a little more doctrinal stuff- and if I get a chance I’ll do some practical stuff too. Okay- in the last post I covered some historical stuff about the bible- I mentioned how Catholics have 15 more books in their bibles than Protestants.

 Why did this happen- or how? Okay- this might get a little technical, but those of you who have been reading my posts this past month will remember that I covered some ‘Intertestamental’ history- which means the years between the last book of the Protestant bible [Malachi] and the first New Testament book- Matthew.

 These years are actually covered historically in the Apocrypha- during this time we also had a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. Remember how I spoke about Hellenization- which was the attempt by Alexander the Great to introduce one Greek language and culture into all the conquered territories.

 Well one of the things the Greeks did was had the Jewish bible [our Old Testament] translated from Hebrew into Greek. This version is called the Septuagint- which gets its name from the so called number of scholars who translated it- it means 70.

 Okay- this version was also popular in the early church- why? The early believers did read Greek- Greek was the common language of the first few centuries- when the church was born. [thus our New Testament is in Greek- originally]

 Now- the early Christians had sort of a common consensus on what made up ‘the bible’. They accepted the Old Testament books- because these books were recognized by the Jews as being Canonical [which means inspired by God]. But what about the N.T.?

 Like I said in the last post- the early church had a collection of writings that they used/understood to be ‘from God’. That is they had the acceptance- generally- from the Christian community. But they did not have ‘a bible’ like we have today- that is everyone walking around with a bible in book form [called codex in those days- an early book] they all did not own copies of the bible.

 Remember- publishing as we know it today- didn’t arrive on the scene until right around the turn of the 16th century with the Gutenberg printing press. So any copies of books- or any efforts to put a bible together- well it would make sense to maybe include some history books along with it.

 And this is also why some of the early letters seem to have ‘copied’ parts of other letters in them [Jude and 2nd Peter] not because they were plagiarized- but because books were not easily purchased- and it was acceptable- for standards of the day- to include some material from another writers pen [with his permission] in your own letter.

 Okay- now when the early believers decided it was time to actually say ‘these books are in- these are not’. They had general agreement on what was in- with a few exceptions. Some early believers had the Letter of Barnabus in their bibles- others did not have Revelation. Some believers haggled over 2nd Peter [because of what I mentioned above] and others wanted a few more books in.

 But the basic corpus of our N.T. was accepted by the church at large.

 Now- after a few centuries the church felt it important to put her stamp of approval on the books. And the early church had a council or 2 and finally agreed on what we have today.

 One of the early Popes asked a church father- named Jerome- to make a Latin translation of the bible. Jerome included the Old Testament and the N.T. - and he also included the 15 books of the Apocrypha. Why?

 Jerome’s bible- called the Vulgate- was translated from the early Greek Old Testament- the Septuagint. Now- the Septuagint is/was a good scholarly work- but the original Old Testament was in Hebrew- not Greek. The Septuagint did have the Apocrypha in it.

 And the inclusion of the Apocrypha was a utilitarian thing to do- if you could get these historical books in the bible- then good- you don’t have to have early believers trying to get hold of a separate history book that would fill in the blanks- remember- books were hard to come by.

 Okay- Catholics and Protestants have argued over whether these extra books should be in. Protestants [and some Catholics] argue that the Old Testament books are called ‘the Law and the Prophets’ these books are quoted hundreds of times in the N.T. - even by Jesus. Yet there are no quotes from the Apocrypha.

 This side argues that the Jewish people did not believe these books to be inspired- and that the N.T. itself does not put the same weight on these books as they do with the Old Testament.

 The Catholic scholars argue that there are a few allusions to the Apocrypha in the N.T. [there are a couple- can go either way in my view] and they do make the point that all the bibles did have these books in them right up until the Protestant Reformation [remember- the Latin Vulgate did have the Apocrypha- though Jerome did say in the notes that the Jewish people did not recognize them on an equal plain with the ‘Law and the Prophets’- the Old Testament].

 Okay- then during the 16th century Protestant Reformation- at one point in the debates the Catholic scholars argued with Luther- and they did quote from the Apocrypha to prove some doctrinal points.

 Luther and the other Reformers challenged the canonicity of the books- and with the plethora of English versions of the bible being printed for the first time in centuries- the Protestants did not include these books in their versions.

 The Catholics stuck with the books.

 Okay- do debates like this mean we can’t agree on the actual message of Christ? No. There is really no problem in reading the Apocrypha- even if you’re a Protestant. We [Protestants] don’t accept them as ‘canon’ yet as readers of history- we should be able to read them.

 And even if our Catholic brothers and sisters do accept them- there are really no major doctrinal departures from the rest of the bible. To be honest- there are a few references that Protestants do have problems with- but overall they don’t undermine the main message of the N.T.

 And just a point of interest- the first 2 books [1st, 2nd Esdras] have been challenged- even by Catholic scholars- as not being part of the bible. Yet in 2nd Esdras we find a reference to Christ that does seem to be prophetic. It speaks of a king entering Jerusalem and he is standing in the middle of the people- handing out Palms.

 This depicts the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem- which is in the gospels [Palm Sunday]. So it is interesting that this reference might actually be prophetic in nature.

 Okay- got into the weeds somewhat- but wanted to show you guys that all Christians agree on the main points- and just because there are things we disagree on- yet the message of the Cross doesn’t change.

 Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say ‘we might not all be able to sit in the same pew- but we  can all meet on our knees under the shadow of the foot of the Cross’ Amen.

    www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

      [1708] OVERVIEW OF THE BIBLE

 Let’s cover some biblical history- that is the making of the bible itself. A few days ago I did a post on Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises of God made to natural Israel. The post showed how the early Jewish people saw Jesus as their Messiah- the promised one that they were always looking for.

 The earliest mention of the promise goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. God tells Eve that her child shall bruise the serpent’s head- and the serpent [actually the ‘seed’ or child] will bruise his heel. There have been works of art [statues/paintings] depicting this scene for centuries. It was fulfilled at the Cross.

 So we have the 4 gospel accounts- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John- and these accounts give us the history of Jesus- his miracles and teachings- and they show us the fulfillment of God’s promise- made centuries before- that he would send them their Messiah.

 Out of the 4 gospels- only one- John- has a different outline. The first 3- we call them Synoptic gospels. They follow the same basic structure- Johns stands alone.

 John’s gospel contains no teachings about the end times- like the others. John doesn’t mention the parables- or the Sermon on the Mount. John’s gospel focuses more on the last week of the life of Christ- while the others cover the 3 years of Jesus earthly ministry [none cover the early years of Jesus- except for the account of Jesus being left behind at the temple when he was 12 years old].

 The whole bible [Old and New testaments] have 66 books- 39 Old- 27 new. Only 3 original apostles actually wrote parts of the N.T. Matthew, John and Peter. Out of these 3- John wrote the most. He has his gospel- the three epistles [1st,2nd and 3rd John] and the book of Revelation.

 The majority of the N.T. is made up of the collection of the apostle Paul’s letters. Paul is without a doubt the most influential person in the N.T.- besides Christ.

 We also have the historical account of the early church- called The Acts of the Apostles- written by the same Luke that wrote the gospel. Luke was a doctor- and an historian. Then you have what’s called the General epistles- the kind of stand alone letters- Peters 2 letters, Jude, a few more like that.

 And the New Testament closes with the apocalyptic book [prophecy] of Revelation- written by John [most think the apostle- some think another John- called ‘John of Patmos’]

 Okay- one of the major themes of the N.T. is what we hit on the other day- a teaching called Justification by Faith. This is the main thrust of Paul’s doctrinal epistles [Romans, Galatians] and becomes a point of contention in the early church. The teaching is simple- it means the N.T. is a covenant- made by God with man [and with Jesus] that says God will give eternal life to all those who accept the death and resurrection of Jesus. That Jesus died for the sins of man- and because you believe in this free gift- your are/will be saved.

 Now- the bible obviously says a lot more than this- but this doctrine becomes one of the main ones because this is the controversy that the apostle Paul dealt with for most of his ministry years.

 I mentioned this the other day in a previous post.

 Paul also has 3 epistles [letters] that are called The Pastoral epistles- these are 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus. These are called Pastorals because these young men were protégés of Paul- he trained them up as local leaders who he could recommend to the early believers as trustworthy leaders- after he would leave a community.

 These men did not function like what we usually call Pastors in our day- that is sort of a speaker  preaching every Sunday at the ‘Main church’ building- but they were spiritual overseers- they led the flock in a way that if problems arose- these men could be looked to as honest guides.

 Remember- in the 1st century- you did not have means of communication like we have today- so if Paul left a community [which is what the word church means in the bible- Greek- Ecclesia]. And if a problem rose up- like those who were coming in and saying the Gentiles had to become circumcised and keep the law- then the believers could look to the men Paul left his stamp of approval on.

 Paul would of course correspond with these early communities- thus the letters- but until the letters arrived- the ‘Timothy’s’ would do.

 Okay- the last book of the bible- Revelation- has gotten a lot of use- often too much- in the sense that we- especially lone wolf Protestant groups- have really done loops with the book.

 Overall- the theme is about Christ [Lamb of God] being the central focus of this new kingdom of Priests and Kings [us] and even though there will be tough times [lots of the images of tests and trials] yet at the end of the day- we are ‘married’ to this Lamb [Jesus is called the groom in scripture- and the church is called the bride. God restores in the last book of the bible- what was lost in the first book- relationship- pictured as marriage] and we all live in a new heaven and new earth- and the story ends well.

 Okay- just a few more points. The main message of the bible is that God made man [Genesis] he wanted man to be in communion [friendship] with him. Man sinned and this began the long process of God making promises to man [through/to the nation of Israel- and eventually it would extend to all men- thus the apostle Paul working with the Gentiles] that he would save man thru the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 All people who simply accept this benefit- they will be children of God. The focus should not be on anti Christ- or when the end of the world will happen- or on any other of a host of teachings that the church likes to dwell on- but the focus is God loving man so much- that he sent his Son to die for man- and we can be saved thru him.

 Over the coming weeks I hope to do a little more on the development of the bible- why do protestants have 66 books- and Catholics have an extra 15? I’ll cover it fairly- giving the Catholic view as well as the Protestant one- and promise not to push only one view. But things like this are real questions that honest people have- and I want to help people get a better hold on the thing.

 Okay- try and read some of the N.T. these next few days- overview some of the letters I mentioned- maybe read John’s gospel- Romans. I would wait on Revelation for now- I hope to give some hints that will make it easier to understand- so after I cover that a little more- then that would be a good one to read too.

 And as you read Johns gospel- notice how many times the word Believe appears- being connected with those who believe have eternal life. That’s one of the strongest promises in the bible- and its Jesus doing the talking! So maybe memorize a few of them- like the famous John 3:16 verse- those types of verses last a lifetime- and longer.

    www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

      VERSES-

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:2 The same was in the beginning with God.

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

2 Timothy 3:16 [Full Chapter]

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

 1Kings 16:1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jehu the son of Hanani against Baasha, saying,

1Kings 16:2 Forasmuch as I exalted thee out of the dust, and made thee prince over my people Israel; and thou hast walked in the way of Jeroboam, and hast made my people Israel to sin, to provoke me to anger with their sins;

1Kings 16:3 Behold, I will take away the posterity of Baasha, and the posterity of his house; and will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

1Kings 16:4 Him that dieth of Baasha in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth of his in the fields shall the fowls of the air eat.

1Kings 16:5 Now the rest of the acts of Baasha, and what he did, and his might, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

1Kings 16:6 So Baasha slept with his fathers, and was buried in Tirzah: and Elah his son reigned in his stead.

1Kings 16:7 And also by the hand of the prophet Jehu the son of Hanani came the word of the LORD against Baasha, and against his house, even for all the evil that he did in the sight of the LORD, in provoking him to anger with the work of his hands, in being like the house of Jeroboam; and because he killed him.

1Kings 16:8 In the twenty and sixth year of Asa king of Judah began Elah the son of Baasha to reign over Israel in Tirzah, two years.

1Kings 16:9 And his servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him, as he was in Tirzah, drinking himself drunk in the house of Arza steward of his house in Tirzah.

1Kings 16:10 And Zimri went in and smote him, and killed him, in the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah, and reigned in his stead.

1Kings 16:11 And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends.

1Kings 16:12 Thus did Zimri destroy all the house of Baasha, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake against Baasha by Jehu the prophet.

1Kings 16:13 For all the sins of Baasha, and the sins of Elah his son, by which they sinned, and by which they made Israel to sin, in provoking the LORD God of Israel to anger with their vanities.

1Kings 16:14 Now the rest of the acts of Elah, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

1Kings 16:15 In the twenty and seventh year of Asa king of Judah did Zimri reign seven days in Tirzah. And the people were encamped against Gibbethon, which belonged to the Philistines.

1Kings 16:16 And the people that were encamped heard say, Zimri hath conspired, and hath also slain the king: wherefore all Israel made Omri, the captain of the host, king over Israel that day in the camp.

1Kings 16:17 And Omri went up from Gibbethon, and all Israel with him, and they besieged Tirzah.

1Kings 16:18 And it came to pass, when Zimri saw that the city was taken, that he went into the palace of the king's house, and burnt the king's house over him with fire, and died.

1Kings 16:19 For his sins which he sinned in doing evil in the sight of the LORD, in walking in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin which he did, to make Israel to sin.

1Kings 16:20 Now the rest of the acts of Zimri, and his treason that he wrought, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

1Kings 16:21 Then were the people of Israel divided into two parts: half of the people followed Tibni the son of Ginath, to make him king; and half followed Omri.

1Kings 16:22 But the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people that followed Tibni the son of Ginath: so Tibni died, and Omri reigned.

1Kings 16:23 In the thirty and first year of Asa king of Judah began Omri to reign over Israel, twelve years: six years reigned he in Tirzah.

1Kings 16:24 And he bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built, after the name of Shemer, owner of the hill, Samaria.

1Kings 16:25 But Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the LORD, and did worse than all that were before him.

1Kings 16:26 For he walked in all the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin, to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger with their vanities.

1Kings 16:27 Now the rest of the acts of Omri which he did, and his might that he shewed, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel?

1Kings 16:28 So Omri slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria: and Ahab his son reigned in his stead.

1Kings 16:29 And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.

1Kings 16:30 And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD above all that were before him.

1Kings 16:31 And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.

1Kings 16:32 And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

1Kings 16:33 And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

1Kings 16:34 In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun.

Joshua 6:1 Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.

Joshua 6:2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

Joshua 6:3 And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

Joshua 6:4 And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

Joshua 6:5 And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

Joshua 6:6 And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD.

Joshua 6:7 And he said unto the people, Pass on, and compass the city, and let him that is armed pass on before the ark of the LORD.

Joshua 6:8 And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people, that the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams' horns passed on before the LORD, and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the covenant of the LORD followed them.

Joshua 6:9 And the armed men went before the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the rereward came after the ark, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.

Joshua 6:10 And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout; then shall ye shout.

Joshua 6:Joshua 11: So the ark of the LORD compassed the city, going about it once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the camp.

Joshua 6:12 And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the LORD.

Joshua 6:13 And seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD went on continually, and blew with the trumpets: and the armed men went before them; but the rereward came after the ark of the LORD, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets.

Joshua 6:14 And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did six days.

Joshua 6:15 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times.

Joshua 6:16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city.

Joshua 6:17 And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

Joshua 6:18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

Joshua 6:19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD.

Joshua 6:20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

Joshua 6:22 But Joshua had said unto the two men that had spied out the country, Go into the harlot's house, and bring out thence the woman, and all that she hath, as ye sware unto her.

Joshua 6:23 And the young men that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them without the camp of Israel.

Joshua 6:24 And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

Joshua 6:25 And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Joshua 6:26 And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

Joshua 6:27 So the LORD was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.

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