Undeceptions with John Dickson

This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Masterlectures. Get 50% off your first three month subscription with the code 'Undeceptions50'. QUESTIONSWhy did Jesus come during the Ancient period? I get why Jesus came (to fulfill God’s promises and save the world etc.) but why the specific time period and place? Why didn’t Jesus come in say, the medieval era? Or the 1900s? Why was it ancient Rome?In ‘The Flood’ episode, you talk of the story of the flood as a piece of ‘high art’ that should be understood as a retelling of stories that existed in the cultural climate. But would the ancient audience have thought like this or take it at face value as though they were real events that really happened? Do you believe that Adam and Eve are historical figures? In the episode called ‘Global Christianity’, you mention the missionary impulse in Judaism: in the NT book of Acts we meet people who are described as ‘God fearers’. How many ‘God fearers’ who weren’t Jewish were around in the first century? And what motivated them to worship the God of Israel? Regarding the ‘Pro Life’ episode, suppose a pregnant mother in labor has a series of complications. If she births the baby, she’ll die. But if she doesn’t birth it soon, the baby will die. Would it be a sin, if you chose the mother to live, and the baby to die? I teach school students who are blind or have low vision and some have a hard time understanding what their blindness means in regard to their relationship with God. I’m keen to know if you have a way to account for the descriptions of blindness in such a way that my students can hear the different passages and still see themselves as loved and valued by a good God, even if/when they are not healed, and despite the fact that some passages use blindness as a criticism. Can you help? Why is the Catholic and Protestant bible different? What are those differences? Should Protestants read the books that are in the Catholic Bible too? What can Protestants learn from those books? How have those differences changed how Protestants and Catholics view the world? I want to learn more about the Catholic faith and what happened before it became so ritualised. What was it like before the Catholic faith became the Catholic faith? What’s the deal with burial vs Cremation – specifically around our renewed bodies that God will transform us into? Does cremation hinder this? The typical Christian answer to the question “Where does evil come from?” is free will. I.e. God made Adam and Eve perfect, but gave them free will. They decided to turn away from God, and now there’s evil, sin and suffering in the world. But that argument doesn’t really make sense, because free will doesn’t necessarily entail evil. For example, God has free will, and he’s completely good. God could have made us with a good nature, and still given us free will (like what we’ll have in heaven). Based on this, it seems like God must have made evil. Or to phrase it another way, God seems to have made Adam and Eve with a propensity for evil, or made them too weak to cope with the moral choices he was giving them. If an inventor designs something and it malfunctions, it isn’t really fair for him to blame the thing he’s made for going wrong. We’d say that it’s his fault for not designing it properly. So how is God not responsible for our sin?A friend follows Baháʼí  religion and says there is essential worth of all religions is the unity of all people. They regard the major world religions as fundamentally unified in purpose. At the heart of their teaching is the goal of a unified world order that ensures the prosperity of all nations, creeds and classes. It all sounds nice, but how does it play out in reality, and how does it differ from Christianity? I have been reading your book, Bullies and Saints and was struck by your Chapter on the Inquisition. I get it, that the French Revolution in comparison had more deaths and other sorts of sufferings. However when a Catholic friend said to a Jewish friend (in my presence) that the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t so bad, I wondered what the Jews thought of the whole issue? My Jewish friend just looked at him. Also what would be a helpful way to handle this issue when talking to people of other faiths, like Jewish and Muslim, who as you stated in your book were booted out of Spain? I was reading a book by author and pastor Mark Clark who said Jesus would have dropped his ‘h’s, that he had a really distinctive accent, and that other people from Galilee dropped their ‘h’s and that the people from Jerusalem would have thought they were really uneducated because of that. Any other interesting things from Jesus that we might not know from the Bible that would help us connect with him as a man who walked the earth as well as our Lord and Jesus Christ our Saviour. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2023

The more we learn about the world, the more we see how it operates under elegant laws. There is an order to the universe that betrays the randomness you so often hear about.This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Masterlectures. Get 50% off your first three month subscription with the code 'Undeceptions50'. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2023

There’s no such thing as a “New Testament Christian”. While the popular scepticism about parts of the Old Testament is understandable, we're convinced by the arguments of our guest today: Christ isn’t just the hero of the New Testament … He is everywhere in the Old Testament.This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Masterlectures. Get 50% off your first three month subscription with the code 'Undeceptions50'. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

‘Tis the podcast before Christmas, so we’re diving into the fairy lights and tinsel to uncover some of the myths of Christmas - things you might have thought were true but aren’t. And we’ll look at a few of the common challenges to the history of Christmas that aren’t as strong as our sceptical friends reckon.This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Masterlectures.  Get 50% off your first three month subscription with the code 'Undeceptions50'. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

You might think the Chronicles of Narnia are just for kids. But scholars have discovered some amazing historical, literary, and theological keys in the stories that Lewis never talked about openly, and that bind the 7 stories together in a way only Lewis could have imagined.This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Masterlectures. Check out Delores Morris' course Believing Philosophy. Get 50% off your first three month subscription with the code 'Undeceptions50'. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

The Byzantine capital, Constantinople, was famously fortified with an impenetrable three-wall network, which preserved it from foreign conquest for centuries. But the Byzantine Empire doesn’t have to be impenetrable to us, today. This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's new book Five Views on Christ in the Old Testament, edited by Brian J. Tabb and Andrew M. King. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's new book Bully Pulpit by Michael J. Kruger.How we think about time, the value we give to the three parts of time (past, present, and future) really matters. And our special guest reckons it’s part of what makes for the good life.Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

We’re talking all things animals in this episode, starting with why God would create a world that seems to embed animal suffering into the fabric of things. And we’ll get to some practical questions too: do animals go to heaven? Is it OK to keep pets? And, should we all, actually, be vegetarian?

This episode of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's Master Lecture series by Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind. Click here to get 50% off your first 3 months subscription with the code UNDECEPTIONS50.Since their publication between 1950 and 1956, the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis have sold more than 100-million copies in 47 languages.And despite their dated references and sometimes controversial worldviews, they continue to sell over a million copies a year.They’ve also inspired theatre performances, radio plays, television series, and three major films that earned a healthy one and a half billion US dollars.So it’s understandable that many people know of C.S. Lewis only as a fantastically successful children’s author, unaware that he is also the author of a huge collection of books commending and defending the Christian faith, Mere Christianity, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters, and so on. Narnia is wonderful. But it’s a pity people don’t know more about the man, his career, and his famous town–all of which form the backdrop for the incredible fantasy world he created for millions of readers. Visit the undeceptions.com for more content, including the full show notes for this episode.Follow the show on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramEmail the show with your comments / feedback: admin@undeceptions.comUndeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com: Letting the truth out.Theme music: JS Bach's Cello Suites, Prelude, performed by the Undeceptions Band. Hosted by John DicksonProduced by Kaley Payne Directed by Mark Hadley Audio Editing by Richard HamwiSocial Media by Sophie HawkshawAdministration by Lyndie LevistonWriter and researcher: Alasdair BellingOnline Librarian: Siobhan McGuinessCopyright Undeceptions Ltd 2022

From John Dickson: While we’re working hard on our next Season of Undeceptions, I’ve asked the Rev Dr George Athas to have a chat to you about how we can be sure our old stuff - artefacts we’ve found from thousands of years ago - is actually old. George is Director of Research, Old Testament and Hebrew at Moore Theological College in Sydney. We spoke to him at length for our super popular episode called ‘Between Testaments’, so go check that out if you haven’t heard it already. It’s one of my favourites. George has done a huge amount of research on the Tel Dan Inscription, a fragmentary stele that dates to the 9th Century BC. It’s considered the most important - and controversial - inscription found in Israel in recent years. And George wrote the first book about it. So, over to him.