¶1Hello and welcome to the Ask Ant Wright Anything podcast. The program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible, and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia, joined by >> Tom Wright from Oxford, but also the West of Scotland. Now Tom, I have to say uh when it comes to this program, you have job security because we can't do ask anti-right anything without Anti- Wright. I mean me, I'm I'm kind of replaceable.
¶2I mean, you could find another >> another bird. God-fearing Australian to be your co-host, to be your wingman. But but we can't really replace you, Tom. We can't replace you. >> And why would we want to?
¶3Why would we want to, Tom? But >> you'll have to You'll have to before too long. I'm getting very long in the tooth. [laughter] >> Well, I think you I think you got a few few more podcasting and writing years left in left in you, Tom. >> We'll see.
¶4We'll see. >> But I do have to ask you a question. If there was any church council in history that you wish you could have been at, I don't know, the Council of Nika, Vatican 2, maybe the Lausan Covenant, Calcedan, I don't know, the Council of Trent. Is there any church council in history you wish you could have gone to? >> Well, the obvious answer is I'd love to have been there in Acts 15 with Peter and James in Jerusalem thrashing out the the first big question that the church has to face which is um what happens when non-Judans come to faith in Jesus Israel's Messiah?
¶5Do they have to get circumcised or don't they? which is a kind of nodal question about all sorts of things that are going on about the establishment of the church and I would say those are more important questions even than the ones which are being hammered out in Nika and Calcedon. Um I I've read a certain amount about Nika and and Calcedon and I think they would have both been fascinating but also scary. Um I I I not so sure about Trent or Vatican 2, though Vatican 2 I think has been more shaping than we realize, not only for the Roman Catholic Church, but for um other churches um in dialogue with Rome over the last generation. But but for me, Acts 15, that's that's where I'd like to be, except with central heating and things like that.
¶6>> Oh, yeah. Of course. Now, I think I would like to have been at uh the council of Ephesus in 449. It's called the robber sinned, >> and it was pretty much a council run by bishops behaving like gangsters. So, you know, imagine the arch deacon of Ephesus leading gangs of monks armed with clubs and weapons uh attacking a different bishop's acolytes and supporters, street fights between rival theological factions.
¶7You know, I think church politics is pretty boring and like when you see the Church of England sinned, it's really a a cup of tea fest. Absolutely. >> I want to see the arch deacon of Birmingham getting a gang together of like theological hooligans and going after the bishop of Rochester. I mean, I think that would make church life way more interesting. >> It would be way more interesting, but to to misquote Jane Austin at one point, but much less like a church.
¶8[laughter] >> Yes. Um I mean yeah there are there are extraordinary things which have happened in the past and one needs to go back to that time and say what what was actually going on why why was that so important what was at stake there um and I think most of us today just don't understand that but I agree we have become bland um I was quoting to somebody yesterday um a friend of mine preached a sermon in which he quoted um a pastiche of a hymn Um, [clears throat] instead of God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform, this one goes, man moves in a mysterious way, God's wonders to perform. The church resembles more each day a teacup in a storm. And I, ever since I heard that, I've thought, "Yep, that's right. There's the storm of the world going on all around, and the church just makes another cup of tea and maybe disagrees about whether you put the milk in first, whatever." And yeah, it would be good to have people's public perception of the church being more about um this is a group of people who really are convinced that there is a new way to be human, but they are at loggerheads as to how it's going to work out in detail.
¶9Well, that would be interesting. >> Yeah, indeed. Well, Tom, this is this is not a um weird digression because our first question is from Brendan Liger of Albuquerque. I just love saying Albuquerque. No idea how to spell it, but I love saying it.
¶10and he's got a question about ecumenical councils. He says, "Hello, Tom. Under what circumstances should Christians be able to question decisions made at ecumenical councils? Isn't it possible that their methodology could have been flawed in some ways? And we should read carefully through their arguments to determine if they made any errors or should we trust that the Holy Spirit did not cause them to make any mistakes?" Thank you from uh Brendan.
¶11Uh Tom, I mean I think we tend to believe in the authority of holy scripture, but what about the authority of church councils? I mean are we free to criticize, critique, test or abandon them? What are your thoughts on the authority and credibility of ecumenical councils? My thoughts are very much that all authority belongs to God and is vested in Jesus Christ. Um he says all authority in heaven and earth is given to me not even to the books you chaps are going to go and write.
¶12But then scripture bears witness to Jesus and is I would say the divinely authorized um authoritative uh text from which we live. Not that it's the sort of text that enables you to go to the shelf to look up an answer and then just get on with life having learned the answer. Scripture has to be wrestled with. It's the kind of book that demands engagement. Um and part of the trouble about the church councils is that they both are and aren't engaging with scripture and um whether it's Nika or Calcedent whatever they're addressing enormously important questions.
¶13They do not in my view always grasp what scripture is actually doing. Um they quote whether it's quoting from Proverbs 8 about chosological controversies or whatever it may be. Um that's great. Much better to go there than simply make it up out of whole cloth. But um I I would say the more we know about what the New Testament, well the whole Bible um meant in its original context, the more we actually see a fully rounded picture of what Christian faith is rather than something where you can say, "Yeah, we we debated this one and voted here.
¶14We debated that one and voted there. Um so that's it. End of conversation." The that the danger then is that the conversation ends stops. Whereas with scripture, the point is that the conversation continues because as we as the the deeper we go in scripture and this is part of the genius of scriptural authority, the deeper we go in scripture, the more it drives us on in prayer, in study, in fellowship, in discussion um and in as we are serving the needs of the world um to bear witness to God's kingdom. Those are the things which then carry their own authority as it were.
¶15Um out of which if you want we come back week by week as I do um say I believe in one God the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ and in the holy spirit. Um, in other words, the great creeds are there as kind of guidelines I in case in our excited wrestling with and engagement with scripture, in case we've gone completely off the rails, the creeds would say, uh, no, actually here here are the guidelines. Um, if you find yourself straying beyond those, then beware, be very aware, um, of the danger of doing that. But the creeds are not the substance of the faith. that the the Jesus is the substance of the faith.
¶16Scripture bears primary witness to Jesus. The creeds are simply an expression of what wise people, prayerful people in various previous times um believed they needed to say to their generation in order to express their loyalty to Jesus. Um and and I so I would say um all things need to be tested by scripture, but that's a matter of trying to live mentally, spiritually within the first century world so that we're not just addressing sixth century questions and putting a few biblical footnotes in, but that we're actually in understanding what the original meaning of Jesus' announcement of the kingdom was and of the early churches wrestling with it and then coming forward from there. um able then to address whatever controversies come up. And of course, each generation produces its own.
¶17And we always think that our own are the most important ones because they're buzzy at the moment. But actually, if you go back through church history again and again, there have been new things happening. And when the church has answered wisely is when it's gone back and done its exeetical homework. Even if we then disagree subsequently with some of what a particular generation does. I'm thinking of the reformation's rereading of scripture for exactly >> it was very necessary to do what Luther and Calvin did but they would say to us >> look at what we did and don't take our word for it you go and do it yourself and if possible do it better and that's that's been my guideline throughout my professional life >> I I think that's right Tom the people who put together the ecumenical creeds as well as the reformed confessions were trying to be biblical in their own way, in their own time, with the knowledge and light they had.
¶18>> So if you look at all the debates leading up to the council of Nika, they were intensely exeetical. People are debating, you know, what does it mean to say Jesus is the firstborn of all creation? Does it mean he's literally the firstborn or is it preeminence? And what about Proverbs 8:22? You know, that was a uh that was like the John 3:16 of Arenism.
¶19They love that thing. So how does that fit in? And similar with the reformation, uh they're trying to be biblical, but the reformation always recognized that you could use scripture as leverage against traditions, institutions, customs, and cultures where they conflicted with scripture. Why? Which is why the the reformation creed of sea reffamanda gives us a license to always challenge.
¶20And Tom, we actually covered this in a bonus episode recently. Remember we did we talked about William Lane Craig and his discussion or concerns about the eternal generation of the sun. >> Yes. >> And Bill Craig with a number of theologians has raised question marks about that. I think there's no harm in raising the questions and now I think I think there is a biblical basis for eternal generation but people you know are within their right to ask the questions is this really biblical because as you say it's God through Jesus and the Bible that is our is where we find the ultimate authority >> right and and I think that there's a danger in doing what many people did in the kind of rationalistic mode of the of the 17th century where like the western is a confession.
¶21What you have is a theological scheme which in a sense stands on its own but then every paragraph there one or two scriptural footnotes. Um if you chase up those scriptural footnotes the the passages in the Bible which are being referred to both do and don't address the way in which the Westminster fathers were were were lining it up. So um the the question is do we believe in the authority of the Bible or do we believe in the authority of the scheme which we can produce with a few biblical footnotes. Um I I'm with the authority of the Bible but it's that's a more complicated notion than many have have imagined. >> Well Tom let's move to something a little bit less complicated uh which is about righteousness in the Bible.
¶22>> Oh yeah. >> So there's no debates there. No debates there cuz we've got a another question from Daniel Pon in Stockholm in Sweden and this is about righteousness in the Bible. He says, "Dear Professor Wright, I deeply appreciate your work in recovering the Jewish context of Paul's thought and I find the covenantal framework enormously illuminating. As a 21st century western reader, I've been trying to understand what righteousness meant in the ancient near east and in the Hebrew Bible rather than assuming it means what it does in modern English.
¶23The more I dig in, the more I find myself puzzled by the relationship between righteousness and covenant faithfulness. And I'd really value your perspective. When I look at key passages where righteousness is credited or recognized in the Hebrew Bible, I notice what seems to be a consistent pattern. In Genesis 15:6, Abraham believes God and it was credited as righteousness. Yet, the formal covenantal sign comes later in Genesis 17 with Phineas in Numbers 25 also reflected in Psalm 106.
¶24His action is credited as righteousness and the covenant seems to come as a response. And in Genesis 38:26, Judah declares Tamar more righteous than I, in a situation that seems non-venantal, grounded instead in social and family obligations. In each case, the righteousness seems to be recognized before any covenant is established or in situations where covenant isn't really in view. What makes me wonder, is covenant faithfulness the best way to define righteousness? or is it better understood as one very important way that righteousness gets uh expressed?
¶25And our question here, Daniel goes on to say a few other things, but I'll I'll just get to the the main punchline. I noticed that in the New Testament for everyone, you often translate what other versions render as the righteousness of God as God's covenant justice. Since neither the Greek nor the Hebrew behind the phrase exactly contains the word covenant, I found myself wondering whether that translation choice might narrow a concept than its anal context covered a broad range of situations, honest dealings, just governments, care for the poor, not all which seem to be explicitly covenantal. I know you've connected righteousness closely with covenant and the law court setting. I find that genuinely helpful.
¶26But I keep coming back to a simple question. If every instance of righteousness is read in covenantal terms, how is that different from simply saying doing what is right? Does covenant still help clarify what righteousness means or does it risk being treated as the whole of righteousness rather than one important part of the bigger picture. Uh there we go. Uh if I can summarize uh the question we have here from Daniel, it's I think it's the point while covenants require righteous behavior, >> is there righteous behavior that has nothing to do with covenant?
¶27>> Because in the you know the Greek world, righteousness could become a more abstract idea of duties and obligations. And I've seen people play these two things off against each other that there's there's the world of of um laws and duties and everything. And then there's the world of covenant. And I think the problem is people forget that covenants were legally a binding agreement. So you can't play off law versus covenant because covenant was kind of like constitution for a law.
¶28>> So Tom, what's what's your thoughts on the relationship? I I think this is the essence of the question. What is the relationship between righteousness and covenant? >> Uh first I congratulate the questioner on the very detailed and sharpedged framing of the question because the the relationship between um the word that is often translated righteousness and the different meanings that are sometimes found in it is a very complicated one. Um I should say if um Daniel and others want to check out what I've said in more detail on this then the the the discussion of it in my book Paul and the faithfulness of God would give a lot more detail and then there's various other ancillary things that I've written which are referred to in that text.
¶29So I can't possibly say here everything that we've said there. But let me put it like this. As I say in the introduction to the New Testament for everyone, the word uh seedc in Hebrew, sadakam, the word dyio and daisune in Greek. Um these words are like great oceangoing liners that have been sailing around the world picking up different cargo at different ports. And so what the word has now come to mean um is is uh suffused with meanings of from different cultures and times and so on because seems like most human societies have needed to have some way of talking about getting things right and things being put right and things being established and ordered in their society and these words are gesturing towards that but from different angles.
¶30Um the thing which I think is absolutely crucial is to get away from the medieval idea of ustitzia which was uh a moral righteousness a moral behavior which one could acquire as it were a bank account of. So that if Jesus has fulfilled the law perfectly, he has acquired all sorts of righteousness which can then be handed over or ascribed or imputed or or even imparted to people and then people debate which it is. But that's the question has got off on the wrong foot. That's not what um the either Telk or Dyos means in the first instance. Of course, there is a moral component to those words.
¶31Um, but I think that the the the first thing to do is to strip that away and say go back to the Hebrew and Greek texts and to the context. And so we find ourselves back in Genesis 15 as Daniel has said and also its cognate passage in the book of numbers where we're talking about Phineas and then in Psalm 106 where um the phrase is used of Phineas exactly as in Genesis 15 of Abraham that it was reckoned to him as righteousness. That for me is a really important passage because as we know from other passages about Phineas in Jewish writing. Um what what happened was after what Phineas had done his kind of redemptive violence um in the book of Numbers, God established a covenant with him and with his descendants after him. Um uh that was reckoned to him as righteousness for all generations says Psalm 106.
¶32So that cannot mean that Phineas has now been justified by that work or whatever in the sense of being accredited with a righteousness which means he now is in good standing with God. Rather it is to establish a covenant for all generations is a way of saying that God has started something which now is going to continue. And that's emphatically the case in the book of Genesis that Abraham believed God. It was reckoned to him as righteousness eloistic in Greek and that then sets a context within which the explicit establishment of the covenant of circumcision two chapters later. But then the way the whole pentetuke works out from there is all about God's covenant dealings with Abraham.
¶33Now, there's all sorts of other twists and turns here. And Daniel quite rightly cites the example of Tamar where uh she says that or rather where Judah who um has picked her up um and made her pregnant um and then is accusing her of being a wicked woman and she says actually the father is so and so. In other words, it's you. And he says she is more righteous than me. And as all the commentators say, that doesn't mean there is a standard of moral righteousness and she has more of it than I do.
¶34It means she is in the right rather than me. In other words, it is assumed that this is an actual lawsuit between the one and the other. To say that somebody is in the right in this context is a way of saying they are uh in the right and the other person is is in the wrong. Uh, of course that relates to moral behavior in all sorts of ways, but it's not the same thing as saying this person has behaved morally and I've behaved immorally or whatever, even though that was the case on in in that occasion. Now, out of all of that, out of all of that, I want to say there is no easy English translation, nor actually German or French translation, as far as I'm aware, which will pick up all these overtones.
¶35Back to the the cargo ship going down the the coast, picking up bits and pieces. We just don't have words that will do this. That's why sometimes I've used covenant justice, sometimes I've used covenant faithfulness, and each time it's the context which has to tell you what's going on. And the context in um in Romans 4 is about God's promises to Abraham being fulfilled in Jesus Messiah for the benefit of all people, not simply for Judeans, for the benefit of the uncircumcised and circumcised alike. setting up the whole covenant narrative of the rest of um of Paul's letter to the Romans.
¶36Um now what one could spend hours and hours and I've I have done that on many occasions talking about how Romans 4 works. But that's what's really going on. But it means that when we then get the great passage of Romans 6 through8 which as I and others have argued is actually a retelling of the Exodus story applied to what has happened in and through Jesus. Then when in Romans 6 we get the word daune, of course it has moral overtones. Paul is talking about the behavior which is now expected of those who are incorporated into Messiah Jesus.
¶37And if you want to use the word covenant to express that, fine, go ahead. Um there is of course in much modern theology a prejudice against covenant partly because of its Calvinistic overtones and some Lutheran object to it and some others say covenant sounds far too much far too formal etc. But I am meaning it in a as much as I can in a first century Judeian setting. Um, and it's interesting, [clears throat] remember Ed Sanders in his um, famous book on Palestinian Judaism um, where he he says that the covenant is there all over the place and the fact that it isn't so often referred to in explicit words is simply an indication of the fact that it is everywhere presupposed. And I don't agree with Sanders on many things, but I think there he was absolutely right.
¶38Um that the Judeian world was a world of there is one God who has established his covenant with Israel. That's how he is putting the world right. And now how is that going to work out in practice? So the righteousness of God is what God is going to do or has done or will do or is in the process of doing as his way of demonstrating that he is the creator who is putting the putting the world right. And translating Romans 1:16 following Romans 3:21 following um and the the other cognate passages really brings that out.
¶39Um, but we just don't have good English phrases for it. The one other passage I would refer to, of course, if you know me, is 2 Corinthians 5:21. God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And people have said, "There you are. That's imputed righteousness." Well, no, it really isn't.
¶40Paul goes on immediately to quote from Isaiah from the passage in second Isaiah which says,"I have given you as a covenant to the people. Now is the day of salvation." And Paul is saying that he and his fellow apostles that the ministry of the gospel is the embodiment of God's covenant faithfulness. That's what the whole passage is about. It's not a detached statement of of justification. So that Again, check out the various places I've expounded that in detail, but it's really really important.
¶41So I mean the the the the long and the short of it is let's get right away from the medieval ideas of ustritzia and of this accumulation of a kind of a moral credit account and let's actually think about it in terms of Genesis in terms of the psalms and in terms particularly of the expectation of second temple Jews as to what Israel's God was supposed to be doing because he had made the covenant with Abraham. Now, it's time for that to be worked out. And you can see this in all sorts of books like the Psalms of Solomon, like Fort Ezra, um books from the period of of Jesus and Paul. Um uh that that they're waiting for God to do the thing which demonstrates that he is in the right as the creator who is the covenant God with Israel. And then the New Testament comes along and says he has done it in Jesus, Jesus as Messiah.
¶42It just doesn't look what like what we thought because as usual, God acts surprisingly and shockingly as he always said he would. >> You know, Tom, I remember, you know, studying Romans for the first time. You get to Romans 11:17 about the righteousness of God and reading debates about whether this was an imputed righteousness or is an imparted righteousness. But when you go and read Psalm 98, you know, which >> which says I've got it open here, you know, uh, the Lord has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his graciousness and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.
¶43>> Uh, it's hard not to imagine that in light of the covenant relationship. So, you could talk about it, you know, establishing justice in creation as a saving power or something like his >> covenant justice for Israel uh is not far off the mark when when you think about it. >> Yeah, absolutely. And um I I've often said when you read Josephus and uh get into the minds of him and his contemporaries in Jerusalem in the 50s of the first century, they're not sitting around discussing how one can have a particular kind of righteousness in order to go to heaven when you die. They're they're squabbbling about how Israel's God is going to do what we know he's got to do to keep his promises and who will be on his side when that happens.
¶44And that is the big mega question of the righteousness of God that eliminate [clears throat] comes right in there and says God has done it in Jesus. Look at Jesus crucified and risen and you'll see that's God's fulfillment of his yes covenant promises. >> Great. Well, Tom, we're going to take a break there, but when we come back, we're going to have a look at a glance at, not literally, the ascension of Jesus. Back on that in a moment.
¶45[music] If God is real, why does he seem to remain hidden? Is this hiddenness a test of faith or a proof of divine indifference? Could it be that God's presence is subtle, perhaps to preserve human freedom? [music] Or is the simplest and most logical explanation just that he isn't there at all? Could it be that God's reality is revealed through history, morality, science, and reason?
¶46Or are beliefs merely the hopeful constructs of our culture and psychology? If God exists, why the divine silence? Is God deliberately staying out of sight? Or does his apparent absence actually [music] point to something deeper? Well, Tom, our final question for today is from Dan Ridge of East Lancing, which I think is in Michigan.
¶47I hope I'm correct. And this is what Dan asks. Acts 1:9 says, "Jesus ascended into the sky and was hidden from their sight by a cloud." How do we understand what physically happened here? Jesus had a glorified but physical body, ascending into the sky and knowing he went to the father with his physical body. How do we understand the path taken between earth and the father's presence in heaven?
¶48Should we understand that his physical body left the earth but remained physical yet somehow left the material universe? Some kind of portal or wormhole or is it just unknown to us? How do we connect this with you know John 14 there about Jesus going away to make a place for us? Um what do we do? Uh thank you so much for the podcast and for your many books.
¶49Thank you again. Now Tom, we did do an episode on this when we went through God's homecoming. You did a bonus episode where you covered very elegantly, very persuasively, I think, all those exception passages like when the thief says to Jesus or the bandit, you know, Jesus says to him rather, you'll be with me in paradise today. I go to or Jesus says, I go to make a home for you or that where I am, you may also be. So, we've kind of addressed the >> some of those other questions as well, but people really do get stuck on >> what is happening in the ascension.
¶50I love the little bit of sci-fi speculation here that he Jesus went through a portal like like in a Marvel movie, you know, where Doctor Strange goes through one of his portals with a magic ring. >> Wormhole is a theory that you can get to different universes through these >> mysterious secret pipes that join one universe to another. Um, I don't know if you got a science fiction answer here, Tom, but people want to know what it is. I tend to think it's a mixture of Marvel mystery and metaphor. I mean, that's that's how I say it.
¶51It's it's a visual marvel. It's partly metaphor. It's partly just mystery that's hard to penetrate. Can What do you think is the reality of the ascension? That does Jesus just ascend, disappear, transmute into a different realm?
¶52>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting you're talking about portals and wormholes. My mind went straight away to CS Lewis's um uh series, the Narnia series, but particularly it's The Magician's Nephew, where when the children put on rings um of a certain type, they are swooshed out of one reality into another one, and then they find they're in a wood between the worlds. And now, are they going to um jump into a pool here or there um and go on to the next world?
¶53So there are different kinds of portal and I think I think Lewis is kind of juggling his reader out of the the usual um late modern clunky supposedly scientific assumption that this world of spaceime and matter is is all there is a way of saying that uh it's perfectly possible to envisage other worlds intersecting with this one which which work in different ways to ours. And then when I um you know you could take that too far and I think sometimes maybe Lewis does but I want to say that in the Bible the two worlds that matter are heaven and earth. Heaven and earth which are created as the twin halves of God's good creation right in Genesis 1. And the point of heaven and earth as Paul says in Ephesians 1 is that they should be joined together forever in Christ. And Paul says uh that God's plan from the beginning was to sum up in Christ all things in heaven and on earth in him.
¶54In other words, the idea of heaven and earth coming together and of the place where and the means by which they do that is Jesus himself. This is absolutely vital to a larger New Testament image of how you get from uh Genesis to um to Revelation really where the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth. We have to be very careful here because um in in the first century most people I think writing about heaven and earth were well aware that heaven was not simply a place up in the sky to which you could go if you had a kind of first century equivalent of of Elon Musk's space rocket or something. Um, and nevertheless, if you're going to talk about different dimensions of God's reality, then talking about up and down, talking about sky and earth, um, is a is a natural source of metaphors, some of which under some circumstances may by some people be taken literally, as we say. Um, incidentally, the the the translation that our our questioner was using was a bit over translating because Acts 1:9 just says, "As they were looking, he was taken up.
¶55There was no mention of the sky. There's taken up and a cloud um received him out on from their eyes." Um, so he's taken up. We what we don't have in that text is is a specific journey narrative, you know, as though he's okay. He's up in the sky. We see him disappearing again like an airplane.
¶56Um there's there's just a sense of elevation and it it's it looks as though that's a a visual way of displaying um Jesus now being in both heaven and earth. His his body is still his earthly body and which he now has in the heavenly dimension. I prefer to think in terms of dimensions. I know that's another modern metaphor, but it helps me to to get away from the kind of upstairs downstairs idea which otherwise um gets in the way. And particularly we have and I've said this before, we have all those stained glass windows of the disciples looking up with a cloud and a pair of feet sticking down from the cloud.
¶57Um and and you know people see that and they think, "How can I possibly believe that?" The answer is that that's that's not what what we believe. What we believe is that heaven and earth were always meant to be joined together. Jesus has joined them together in his own self and he is now Lord of heaven and earth. The key then is Matthew 28. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
¶58And 1 Corinthians 15, he must reign till he's put all his enemies under his feet. The point of the ascension is that the one who is in heaven is not at a great distance away from us ontologically or metaphysically or whatever. The one who is in heaven is now in charge of events on the earth. And the question then which comes back to us in many many ways today beyond what our present questioner is asking is what does Jesus in chargeness what is it supposed to look like when it's being worked out on earth as in heaven? as it isn't what many people imagine that if Jesus is in charge, he's just going to sweep all before him and and kill all the bad guys and and have done um he he has already commissioned his followers to be kingdom people so that when he is now the ascended one in charge of everything if they are to be sermon on the mount people, if they are to be Matthew 25 people etc.
¶59That is how Jesus elevation, Jesus' ascension is to be worked out in the present age. Now, there's a whole extra sermon coming in here and I must be very good and stop. But but that's that's the primary answer. >> Well, I think that's a good answer, Tom. Uh alas, that is all we have time for today.
¶60In our next episode, we're going to look at the strange incident of Annis and Safara who experienced death due to lying. We're going to look at the UK revival that apparently wasn't and tackle the topics of love and unity in the church. But if you cannot wait another week to hear Tom's wonderful, wise melodic voice and my grating Aussie accent, then you can go to our premium episodes right now and become a subscriber where Tom and I are going through his book, God's Homecoming, wrestling with topics like Old Testament violence, the millennium and Revelation 20, even talking about Anglican heroes of the faith. So, if you become a subscriber to our bonus episodes, you get four extra episodes a month. And Tom, there is a website that people can go to either to subscribe as a bonus um viewer or listener and somewhere where they can submit their questions.
¶61What is that website, Tom? >> Yeah, it's ask anything um dot. Now, is it.org or I always go blank. >> I think it's askantight.com. >> Oh, sorry.
¶62Ask Huh? Can't even get my own website right. ask.com. Thank you. I I confess that when I'm looking up websites myself, I frequently forget whether it's com or or indeed something else.
¶63So askantight.com will get you to us. >> Yeah. And there you can become a subscriber to our bonus episodes or even better send us your questions. But until then, it's goodbye from me, Mike Bird, and >> goodbye from me, Tom Wright, >> and we'll see you on the next episode of Ask Anti Write Anything. Until then, God bless you and take care.
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