Seeing God Through Yeshua's Eyes | The Jesus Way Podcast 01

Welcome to the Jesus Way podcast, a series dedicated to restoring the true Gospel of Jesus. We believe that Jesus showed us the perfect way to God, so we invite you to walk the Jesus Way with us.

Hello and welcome to episode one of the Jesus Way podcast. My name is Aaron ABY, and I'm joined alongside my good friend and co-host, Mr. James Benefico.

What's up, y'all? And we're very excited to be launching episode one today after a lot of hard work, a lot of legwork to get this podcast. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into this.

Yeah, it's been a huge project for us because, uh, we have a huge passion for this subject of revealing what we believe is the true way of Jesus. The first followers of Jesus were called followers of the Way, and we want to go back to the very first Jewish Christian followers of Jesus that called themselves followers of the Way. They were also called Nazaren and some other titles, but what was their understanding of Jesus's message? Because look, if we know one thing, the farther we go away from the origin of something, the more we deviate, the more the purity is lost. And so if we want to know who had the closest understanding of these teachings of this man, Yeshua the Nazarene, who would it be? Would it be the Greek-speaking, Hellenistic Gentile Christians of Rome who never met Jesus and aren't Jewish and never heard him teach in person? Probably not. Not to say they don't have anything correct, but is that the most accurate place to go? And we don't think it is. We think it's Jewish Christianity in the first century, and that what we really prioritize in our passion for biblical scholarship is Jewish Christianity and the history of it because we think it takes us back to the closest reflection of Jesus himself, the historical man who really lived and taught this most beautiful way. And we want to teach that way to the world because we think that man-made religion—Catholicism, Christianity, Protestantism, you name it—man-made religion has lost the plot on Jesus's teachings. In fact, almost everything that Jesus really taught and emphasized in the red letters are absolutely not taught or emphasized in Christianity today, and we find that to be a problem worth correcting because we have the words of the Master. We already know the way that Jesus was trying to show us to God, and so we would do well to protect and preserve these most sacred teachings from the Great Master, Yeshua the Nazarene. And that, my friends, is what this podcast is all about. That is what the Jesus Way is all about: Let's just go back to the source of all of this—before the Christian religion and Catholic Church, Church Fathers, before all of it. What did Jesus say when he walked and talked among us? What did he teach his disciples? And is that what Christianity teaches? Because if not, I'm going to side with Jesus every day. And in fact, I did that at 23 years old by believing in Christianity, but maybe before we dive into today's subject on the ontology of Jesus, we give a quick background on why we're here and why we're doing this podcast.

Let's do it.

Well, my name is James Beno. I'm the founder of a company called Organic Muscle. About 10 years ago, came out with the first ever USDA organic pre-workout. So I spent most of my life, you know, trying to help people get healthy and lose weight and feel good about themselves because I used to be very overweight myself, and I know what it feels like to be unhealthy and how much it disconnects you from God. In a way, it really lowers your level of consciousness, and it makes it difficult to be of service to others when you're unhealthy. You know the Apostle John said, "I wish you above all things that you may be healthy and prosper." Yeah, so I've really dedicated my life to that, and this is why Aaron and I are so passionate about helping people's mental health and their physical health. And it was actually very important to the early Christians, the Nazaren; they absolutely prioritized the health and purity of their physical vessel, yeah, because they knew it was so important for connecting with God and doing God's work in this realm. So that's who I am; that's the background I come from. And I'm not a scholar, you know. I study scholars; neither of us are. We're definitely not scholars, but I just love God, and I love people, and I'm a seeker of truth, and that's what brought us here because God is truth at the end of the day. And, you know, it can be difficult at times to take this beautiful book here and look at some things and go, "This is God commanding slavery in the Bible, genocide, genocide." Now, am I going to be honest with myself and say that doesn't sound like a loving, compassionate God, or am I going to suspend that part—part of my mind—and just try and rationalize something that is very difficult to harmonize? So that's where this conversation comes in about Jewish Christianity because they rejected these parts of the Bible that did not—that were not in alignment with the ontological nature of God that we're going to discuss today.

Yeah, so… well, sad dude. Thank you, man. And you grew up Catholic?

Yeah. Yes, Italian-American Catholic. You know, my family wasn't super religious, but grew up with the definitely the influence for my extended family. My grandparents were super religious, and I love them so much; they were a big influence on my life. Yeah, but uh, it wasn't until I was older and I had, um, a really heartbreaking experience where my best friend passed away that I really started diving deep and searching for truth and meaning because I was in so much pain. And that's where I really started digging into the—into the Bible in a deep, deep way, and just my heart came on fire for the teachings of Jesus, and it transformed me from a kind of a selfish person, from an addict in many ways.

Now you're James the Just. Oh, that's big shoes to fill, but we'll see.

It is indeed. Yeah, I mean, I think the majority of people that would identify as Christian or Judeo-Christian would probably say similar to you, like, "I grew up in it. I wasn't like super devout, or my family wasn't super religious, but it's the tradition I grew up in," and were baptized, right, and all that.

For me, it was the opposite. I was absolutely steeped in Christendom because, um, I'm a third-generation pastor's son. And for my regular audience, forgive me for telling this for the millionth time. I know you all have heard it a billion times on other podcasts, but, uh, for the sake of those who may be joining us for the first time, I grew up as a third-generation pastor's son in Evangelical Christianity. I went to Oral Roberts University and graduated with a double Bachelor's in music and theology because I grew up playing worship music in church, and worship was my life; it was my whole connection to God. And so I was a worship leader for many, many years and wanted to do that to begin my ministry career, to, you know, following my dad and grandfather's footsteps. So I had my whole life planned out, ministry career planned out: I'll be a worship Pastor for 10 years, and then I'll transition to senior pastor. And it was my first church job after graduating ORU, first full-time Pastor role, that, uh, on the very first Sunday, I'm sitting in the front row—I just gotten married, by the way; I was 23 at the time; my wife at the time was 20; we did the whole, you know, get married as young as possible Christian thing—and this woman goes on stage to give an offering testimony, and I noticed there's a man standing a few feet behind her looking very stoic and like bodyguard-like, and I'm on the front row thinking, "Please, God, don't let this be what I think it is," because, you know, I'm aware of the fundamentalism of Christianity. Uh, my dad's church, thankfully, uh, was very blessed; to grow up in just the most epic church, dude. Like, we had revivals for years and years and years growing up. I saw miracles, healings, demonic deliverances; we were doing crazy stuff back in those days. We had over a thousand people in—in our church services weekly because we were the revival church that people were flying from Africa and South Korea to come to our church—church services. Everybody wanted to pack this place out 'cause we were—it was the place to be in the early 1990s in, uh, Sunnyvale, California. Our church was called Springs of Life Fellowship. And so we didn't stress religion; we didn't stress, you know, "God sends people to hell," and the Bibles and there, and the rapture's coming. It wasn't something my dad liked to preach a lot about. My dad was like a Holy Spirit guy, you know, a Jesus guy. He wanted to preach about the love of Jesus, the goodness of God, and our connection to God through the Holy Spirit. And so I didn't, you know, I had the luxury, let's say, of avoiding the dogmatic beliefs in my belief system, but I'm aware that some denominations of Christianity take Paul's words literally, and it's a shame for a woman to even speak in church, and if she should speak, let her husband stand behind her as her covering, for Eve sinned first and then Adam. So it's this just crazy misogynistic idea that women are inherently inferior to men because there's a Bible story that says Eve ate the apple first, and none of us were there to prove that, but we believe it, and you know, we just treat women like they're inferior. So I'm sitting on the front row being like, "There's no way this is happening," and sure enough, once she's done, she goes down and sits down in the pew, and her husband sits next to her, and I'm like, "Ah, man, they really are husband and wife; that means this church really believes that crap." So now I'm realizing I'm working at an extremely fundamentalist and misogynistic church, and then it hits me: "Dang, do I really believe God thinks that way about women?" Because I'm—I still believe the Bible is inerrant, and I have to believe what it says, and all this stuff, and I'm just like, "Absolutely not; there is no way the God that I know in my heart thinks that women are inferior to men." And so I—I reasoned in myself to dismiss that away somehow. I was going to do what apologists do best; I was going to find other verses and grab some context from this verse from Paul and that verse from Paul and put them together and see Paul wasn't really misogynistic. That's what I was going to try to do. So I dove into the Pauline Epistles, and I'd never really studied them before—before this experience—and to my shock, I just kept finding more things about Paul that are incongruous from Jesus, that don't reflect the teachings of Jesus, and it got worse and worse and worse for—for Paul in my mind. And I never really studied Paul up to this point, so I didn't realize all of the narcissism and—and misogyny and lying, disciple-mocking, you know, posturing, boasting, all of these things in Paul's writings that are so clear. I was just like, "How have I never seen this before?" And so I eventually decided that I didn't believe in the Christian religion anymore because I didn't believe the Christian religion was Jesus's religion anymore. I realized, "Holy moly, my religion is actually all based on Paul's teachings, and I can't find almost any of them in Jesus's teachings." And because I'm a Christian, not a Paulan or anything else, I had to—as is the title of one of my first YouTube videos—I had to leave Christianity for Jesus. It was a—a heartfelt decision of, "I—I no longer believe this religion represents the way of Jesus, so I can no longer say I'm a Christian." And that was hard for my dad, my mom, my family, all my friends. It was a decision I grappled with for years because I grew up in Christianity; I am a third-generation pastor's son; I literally didn't know one person who wasn't a Christian. I had no friends who weren't Christians—Christian school, Christian church, Christian family, everything. And so I'm realizing, "I am going to blow my life up if I do this," and it took me some time to come out with it, but eventually the internal conflict is too great, you know. When you're living with something that doesn't feel right, you can only bury it for so long. And so I—I eventually conceded and came out of Christianity, and like I thought, lost all my friends, almost all my family, totally rejected me as a heretic—really, except my mom and dad and sister—but it was—I was willing to pay that price because I want to follow Jesus, and Jesus said we'd be persecuted for following him. And so this is when I started studying scholarship. I'd only ever studied Christian scholars before this point, like N.T. Wright and others, and I didn't even really know that there was non-Christian scholars. I thought that would be like an oxymoron, you know: "Why would anyone want to study the Bible if you're not a Christian?" But I found there's a whole field of—of scholarship that is non-Christian or secular or contemporary, whatever you want to call it, and the very first contemporary scholar I happened upon was our good friend Dr. James Tabor, and started reading his books, and very quickly, to my shock and dismay, I found out I'm not the first person who's ever realized that Paul doesn't align with Jesus, but this is a topic that scholars have been discussing for centuries—Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Je—going back to Swedenborg and really even Schweitzer and others highlight this idea that there is a difference here, and it gave me liberty and permission, a bit, to say, "Okay, I'm not crazy, like all my Christian friends say I am, that I don't think Paul's teachings align with Jesus's teachings. Scholars have been saying this for a long time." And so that began my journey into my passion for biblical scholarship, and I mean, I had a theology degree, and so I'd already done a lot of studying from a scholarly perspective—hermeneutics and exegesis—and it took a little bit of Hebrew, and I loved it, but I didn't want to be a scholar, and I still don't want to be a scholar. I want to be a follower of Jesus and teach the Jesus Way. And so we rely heavily on contemporary biblical scholarship to back up the points that we're sharing about Jesus's true message, which we're going to now get into in this episode, uh, beginning with the ontology of Jesus: What did Jesus believe about the nature of God, and—and how can we come to see God through the eyes of Jesus? Yeah, it's the most important foundation for how we view life itself and especially how we view our spirituality because we're going to take everyone through these characteristics, and it's no easy task to summarize the absolute Majesty of the creator of the universe, but we're up for it.

We're up for a good challenge.

We're up for a good challenge. So you want to get into it?

Let's get into it.

Well, I mean, let's just look at the—the facts that we know: There was an organic Jewish Jesus movement in the first century in Palestine that eventually somehow became a Gentile, Greek-speaking, Hellenistic religion of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church that formed out of it. And so you have to ask the questions, and—and scholars have been asking this question for a very long time: How did a Jewish move—a Jewish Reformation movement, which is really what Jesus was doing in the first century, and we'll talk a lot about that—how did a Jewish Reformation movement become a Gentile religion of Rome? And the interesting thing about empires is that in every single case you can find in history, literally without one single exception, every time an Empire officially adopts a religion, that religion always ends up looking like the Empire rather than the reverse, and that's what we're saying has happened. And—and again, like you said, this isn't controversial. I think the majority of Christians would say that the Catholic Church corrupted Jesus's message at least somewhat substantially, to some degree they would differ on that, but that had happened, no doubt. I mean, scholars call this "The Parting of the Ways," right? The Parting of the Way represents the Jewishness and the Gentileness of the Christian religion as it formed in the first century, splitting off—meaning two essentially parallel versions of Christianity began forming in the first—second century. One was a Jewish Christianity of Jesus and his disciples, the Nazaren, the Ebionites, and then the other was, of course, the Catholic—the early proto-Catholic church and the Gentiles, which took Christianity in a very different direction, largely, I think, due to Paul's teachings and missionary journeys in the first century. And so you—there is this splitting off, right? And so what we do on this podcast is we want to go back to the origin point because if we're—if we're concerned about getting as close to Jesus as we possibly can, well, where do we go? The beginning. You got to go back to the very, very beginning, and in the beginning, Jesus and all of his followers were Hebrew, Aramaic-speaking, practicing Jews and continued to be practicing Jews long after the crucifixion, even long after the destruction of the temple. Uh, what we know through early Church Fathers is that the Jewish Christian movement lasted until about the 4th century, but the Jewish Christians were in a very difficult spot because the temple's destroyed in 70 AD. Uh, I believe Epiphanius quotes Hegesippus's five-volume, uh, work of church history of the Jewish Christians and says they fled to Pella around 66 to 68 AD before the temple was destroyed, meaning, you know, James the Just, Peter, Paul—all the apostles and all the Nazarene Christians saw the writing on the wall and they were like, "Rome's coming; they're not stopping until they get what they want. Let's get out of here and go find a safe place to continue this Jesus movement," the followers of the Way, and they went to Pella, the trans-Jordan region, to escape that, and that's where eventually the Nazaren and Ebionite sects of Jewish Christianity flourished over the next few centuries, but they had a very different situation than the Gentile Christians did, right? The temple is destroyed; all of the Jews, including the Jewish Christians, get scattered all across the diaspora, and the Jewish Christians are sandwiched between two arch-enemies: the Gentile Christian movement, which more and more over time sees them as heretical and all this stuff, which is hilarious and—and paradoxical. The original Christians were a throat—yeah, like they co-opted—again, a Jewish Reformation movement, and then just a few centuries later, they end up naming the very Jewish sect, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, they deemed them heretical, heterodox, even though they actually co-opted their Jewish Reformation movement in the first century. And this Jewish Christian movement was led by Jesus's brother for almost 30 years, James the Just, and then it continued to be led by other relatives. So we have the Catholic Church naming Jesus's family essentially as Heretics, right? And I—I don't think that the early Church Fathers even realized that, but that's another story. The point we're getting to is that the Jewish Christians were opposed by Gentile Christianity and Orthodox Judaism of the day—the Orthodox Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and all of that; they despise the Jewish Christians, and there's—is it Hegesippus who writes about the daily curses they would pronounce over the Nazaren? They put a hex on them. Yeah, there's the—the actual curse itself; I think is in Hegesippus, maybe Epiphanius, but it lists out exactly what they say in their synagogues every day to curse the Jewish Christians because they didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah. So the Jewish Christians had it really rough, to say the least. And so it's—it's a bit of an ambiguous thing to research because you really only have, for the most part, the history of the Jewish Christians surviving in the mouth of their opponents, the—the early Catholic Church Fathers, and then, of course, the Orthodox Jews and the critical Judaism. And so you have to parse out the—the real story, the real message of the Jewish Christians from that, but as we're going to look at throughout this podcast, we believe, as, um, a number of critical scholars are coming to believe, that Jesus and the Nazaren, the early Jewish Christian movement, actually emerged out of the Dead Sea scroll group at Qumran, which, uh, have been notoriously known as the Essenes, and that's the—the common name for the Dead Sea scroll group that even, you know, scholars who—who began studying the Dead Sea Scrolls ascertained pretty quickly, "Oh, this must be that Essene sect that Josephus, Philo, and Pliny talk about in the first century," and they aren't wrong, but the problem is that name doesn't show up anywhere in the Dead Sea. And so the actual self-designation of the Dead Sea scroll group, which we'll look at, was the Ebionites—the "poor ones" is what that means—and this is the—this is essentially the name…

Of the first century Jerusalem Church. So what we're going to do is take you all back to the first century throughout this podcast and show you the history of the Jewish Jesus movement of the first century. And what did they believe about Jesus? What did they say about Jesus? And most importantly of all, of course, what did Jesus himself, Jesus the Nazarene, what did he actually teach us about salvation? Right? And what we're going to discuss today is what did these groups, and what did Jesus teach us about God? Yeah, God's nature. Did Jesus's teachings infer to us what what God is like in his eternal nature? So we're going to be exploring these concepts today, and we think it's so important to start with a knowledge and understanding of God. I mean, if you can attempt to understand God, it's so magnificent. But today we're going to make an attempt to discuss the ontology of God and why this is so important for informing theology.

And why do most people, most religious people, they get their ontology from their religious texts, and that's where they get their view of God from? What do you think is a proper way to understand the nature of God and how H how does this inform our relationship with Jesus? Yeah, in my opinion, where Christianity probably goes the most wrong is by allowing their theology to inform their ontology. What is ontology, by the way? Yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say we probably should define that for people. Ontology is it's a it's a segment of philosophy that studies the science of being, essentially the nature of being. So it's the study of being or existence. And so when we refer to the ontological nature of God, we're referring to the immutable, unchanging, eternal qualities of God. And so that has to be where we start and where we finish. But the ontological nature of God, the truth of God's being, has to be what informs everything else. And the reason for that is because if you're using proper epistemology, and epistemology is the segment of philosophy that studies how how to arrive at knowledge, how to ascertain knowledge correctly using logic and reason, when you use real epistemology to understand the nature of God, you always come everybody comes to the same conclusions.

And this is an interesting thing when I talk with um my Christian friends and we I try to establish like where do we know we agree, and it's always the ontology of God. We always agree that God is omnipotent. Like if there is a creator of the universe, if there is a source of everything, pretty much everybody agrees that Creator must have these essential qualities. It has to be omnipotent. How else could it create the entire universe? If God doesn't have power over the whole universe, that seems logical. God is omniscient, meaning God knows everything. Of course, if God created the whole universe, that means God has to know the whole universe. God is omnipresent. This is attested to all throughout the Bible as well. If God is the only being that exists, the only truth, the only reality, then whatever exists has to be where God is. There can't be ontological separation from God. If God's the only source of life, does mainstream Christianity have that same definition of omnipresence? Because most Christians would say that we are created beings, that we are separate from God. We have a sin nature. So is it possible that sin can disconnect us from God and God can't be present where sin is?

Yeah, you know, this is one of those topics that the soteriology of Christianity, that's that's interesting because I think Christianity, I often will say this to my Christian friends, I'm I'm really not saying like everything Christians believe is wrong and not true. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying actually everything that you believe is way more true than you realize, but it's true from a much higher philosophical level than you're understanding it. And again, this is what man always does with spiritual knowledge is we have to dumb it down or water it down to our level of thinking because it's it takes a lot of spiritual growth to understand high spiritual concepts and truths. And so I think when we're in a rush to understand ontology, theology, and form opinions really quick, I need to make sure I have the right beliefs in my brain, okay, I've got them, these are the right beliefs, all the other ones are wrong. That is a very ego-based approach to ontology. And so we have to slow down a bit and say, look, I don't need to be in a rush to arrive at truth. What's true is already true. All truth is God's truth. And so whatever is not true is not of God, period. And so I don't want to believe anything that's not true. So I think a a true Christian should be more interested in ensuring that they don't believe things that aren't true than looking to try to believe things that are true. Like truth will reveal itself, right? If you just follow natural epistemology, be skeptical in your approach to every belief system, every doctrine you you confront, be skeptical, question it, scrutinize it, because what is true will always hold up to scrutiny. Truth cannot be threatened, can't be threatened, and it's it's eternal, it can't be offended, right? Like I I truly believe that an eternal God of Truth cannot possibly be offended by anything, especially by his children earnestly seeking the truth and asking difficult questions. I feel like God would celebrate that, if anything, us turning our heart to God and saying, God, I truly want to know the truth wherever it takes me.

Well, I mean, we're going to get into the the five O's of our ontology here, but to your point, like that's another ontological fallacy that Christianity continually asserts because I don't think the average Christian thinks through their ontological beliefs far enough because again they're letting they're letting their theology inform their ontology, meaning, well, I have to believe whatever the pastor tells me or whatever the bishop tells me or whatever whoever it is I'm outsourcing to, everything they say has to be true, I have to believe it. So based on what they've told me, then how do I think about God's nature? And you've already put the cart before the horse, right? You have to go to God's nature first, and you don't need anybody to describe to you or teach you about God's nature. It is written on our hearts. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and so there's a part of all of us that resonates with truth, that knows truth when we hear it. And so if you hear a doctrine that seems to contradict any of these five O's that we're about to go through, which the five O's are essentially the five staple components of God's ontological nature, this is actually what the Jewish Christians did, and we'll show this through um in future episodes that the Jewish Christians absolutely rejected any scriptures that did not or or violates, let's say, the ontology of God. They would say, nope, God cannot be angry. That's a human-based emotion. That's a violation of omniscience, right? You cannot have a God who has human emotions like reactivity and anger because that implies God doesn't know something, right? To be angry means you're you're surprised, you're reacting. God cannot react, period. If God is omniscient, there is no ability for God to have a human emotion. And we can see examples of this in our own experience, right? If you watch a movie from start to finish, and then I put that movie back on again, you literally cannot be surprised anymore at all the parts you've already watched because you already know what's going to happen. So try to imagine that blown up a trillion times over. Imagine directed, wrote the movie. Yeah, God scripted it, wrote it, produced it, acted it, everything, and God has known about the script of the movie for trillions of years to infinity, and then imagine God still getting angry at something. Omniscience means God knows everything, and so that's one example of an ontological violation that we'll we'll go through throughout this episode. Now to show you all where we go wrong when we let man-made theology, doctrines, creeds, and dogmas, when we let those things inform our ontology, we get into all kinds of of problems. And so we're going to correct some of those problems today. So so would you mind describing what mainstream ontology in Christianity is like? Can you steal man, what? Absolutely. Yeah, this is the interesting paradox is that again when I when I ask my Christian friends, hey, let's figure out where we agree, you agree God's omnipotent, like just debated Wes Huff a week ago, right? And I asked Wes Huff and Dr. Steven Boyce, uh, do you both believe God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and they were like, yeah, totally. Yeah, you you can't say no. Like how could anyone say no? I don't I don't believe God has all power. He's pretty powerful, about all he's up there, he's up there. It already feels silly, right? We have to give God all power, all knowledge, everything belongs to God. And so Christianity's ontology would say, you know, God is omnipotent, yes, God's omniscient, yes, but God has to honor free will. And so God lets people sin and make mistakes, but he can't force them to repent, he can't force them to accept him. And so if they sin, God is somehow there's a penalty that happens. And Wes was trying to say this in our debate, it creates some kind of metaphysical debt for God to pay off. And not only is that a massive ontological violation to to posit that an omnipotent God, God has all power that exists, that an all-powerful God would need anything is an extreme ontological violation. God can't need anything. If God is eternal and unchanging, then it's a fallacy that God could ever need anything at all, of course. And so not only did they say God needs something, atonement, something, but then they say what that thing is is actually ritual death and bloodshed, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice. God has some kind of metaphysical need for blood in the Christian cosmology. And that there's a double ontological violation there. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-loving, omnibenevolent, then why would God, the source of all life, need death? God is the god of life, not death. And so these are the kind of things that I think the average Christian doesn't think through because again they're told this every week by their pastor or whatever it is. It gets really deeply ingrained. And so again, just like going back to Jesus's words, the source, the origin, we also want to go back to the source of God, the ontological nature of God and say, first, what do we know is true of God? And let's let that inform our theology and our view of Jesus. And so that's what we're going to do today. It's it's really powerful stuff. And as we go through these five O's of ontology, keep in your mind that this is one of the most powerful meditative or contemplative prayer practices is thinking about the ontological nature of God and just meditating on it. If you are ever in a bad mood or having a tough day, just just really feeling that God's omnipotent, all-powerful, that God's present, God's there right now with you, God's omnibenevolent, he's he's all-loving. When you meditate on these concepts, it just fills your heart with so much love, and the anxiety just just fades away. So I hope you'll keep that in mind as we go through these beautiful characteristics.

Yeah, man, I mean, it's it's one of the things I think every Christian should start their day with, whether you want to call it contemplative prayer or meditation, but sit in silence and just connect to the immutable qualities of God, which by the way we'll give you now, uh, the five O's as we like to lay it out. This is the Jesus way ontology. These are the five qualities of God's nature: number one, omnipotent; number two, omniscient; number three, omnipresent; there cannot be anywhere that God is not; number four, omnibenevolent, God is all-loving; and then five is one Deuteronomy 6:4, here O Israel, the Lord our God is one. So oneness or being one is an a very important metaphysical characteristic of God, which we'll get into. But let's back up and show you where scripture reinforces all five of these uh ontological facts about God. And I want to say something to clarify, if anyone's thinking this, we do not derive our ontology or or anything from the Bible. We believe the Bible reflects truth. We believe the Bible. We believe that God speaks through the Bible because I mean, I was again born and raised Christian, third-generation pastor son. I buried myself in this book every day of my life. I read the Bible like nobody's business, dude. And my Christian journey was fully navigated through scripture, and God spoke to me through this book beautifully, right? Even though looking back now it was a very limited way of of communing with God, that doesn't mean that this book can't be a powerful ally in our relationship to God. And so we love the Bible, we read the Bible every day, we study it because we think it is one of the most, if not the most, extraordinary spiritual texts ever written. But we do not worship the Bible. We do not turn the Bible into a golden calf and become idolators of the Bible by saying things like this Bible's perfect and infallible as God is, basically this book is God, and if you don't agree with my interpretation of it, you're evil and going to hell. That's what we don't do with the Bible because to us that is a massively disrespectful view of the Bible and the nature of God. But all that to say, we are going to show you where the Bible teaches these things because again, not because the Bible created these concepts, but because they reflect eternal truth. If this book is inspired by God at all, all it can do is reflect eternal truth, meaning whatever this book says, if it's true, it's been true long before the Bible was written, for all eternity. As Jesus said, the law of God cannot pass away any more than heaven and earth could pass away. So this book does speak, and it does reflect truth. And the writers of this, you know, the authors of this book, the 40-some-odd authors were people that were deeply inspired by God, deeply in love with God, deeply devoted to God, although they lived in very different historical contexts in ancient times and had very unique rhetorical goals and all of that. Nonetheless, they were writing to express their love, their devotion, and their understanding of God. And so this book does reflect all of these points we're going to go through. And so let's begin with omnipotence. So a couple of passages from the Bible that teach or reflect omnipotence: Jeremiah 32:17, Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm, nothing is too hard for you. Beautiful. Then we have Matthew 19:26, With God all things are possible. Matthew 28:18, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. So if Jesus says all authority, other translations say all power, not sure what the Greek word is there, but all power on heaven and earth has been given to me, well, who gave it to Jesus? The one who has all power on heaven and earth, right? So there's a couple verses that that reflect omnipotence in the Bible. There's way more we could show, but just to keep the show rolling, moving now to the second quality, omniscience. We have Psalm 139, I love this Psalm. You know, when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, O Lord, know it altogether. It's beautiful to me. It's so comforting to know that God knows all of my struggles, all of my joys, knows my heart better than I know it. Like when you go when you go in prayer and contemplate that, it brings so much peace. It does, because God knows better than we do. You know, this is one of our other big philosophies is like a human being all by their by themselves cannot possibly know their own best interest. Like we're fools, left 1% of the light spectrum. We don't have all the perspectives we need, but there is one who does, our heavenly Father. And so when we live a life of surrender and humility, we receive the guidance of God's omniscience, as Jesus taught us, when you seek first the kingdom, everything else is added to you, because you don't need to know everything, you don't need to have all power as a human because God already has it. And if God thinks you need it for any purpose, any reason, God will grant it to you in that moment. It flows through us, right? When we open ourselves to the nature of God. Beautifully said, man. Next, we have Job 37 verse 16, Do you know how the clouds hang poised, those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge? Ah, perfect knowledge, perfect. I like the ring of that. Yeah. 1 Chronicles 28:9, For the Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought. This is one of the verses that I think backs up my point that if God is omniscient, then God has to know exactly what it takes for every single person to wake up to the truth, to realize the error of their ways, to repent and turn their heart to God. Yes, God knows exactly the experiences everybody needs. I always use the uh Christmas Carol story as an example of this. You know, Ebenezer Scrooge is this extremely angry, cynical man who hates everybody and judges everybody, and that's because he didn't have the perspective on his life that that would have caused him to be compassionate and kind. And so what happens, the ghosts of Christmas past come and take him through his life and through the lives of other people, and all these things, and he sees what a horrible, wretched, angry, cynical, mean person he is, and it breaks him down into a a place of true repentance and humility. Every time I watch the movie, I cry because at the the end of the movie, he turns into this beautiful demonstration of Jesus's gospel, love your neighbor as yourself, and he goes around and he rights all his wrongs, and he, you know, he does good things to the people that he normally treated horribly. He gives Tiny Tim a whole big feast and all this stuff, and it shows the gospel of Jesus, a heart transformed by the love of God. That's what omniscience can do for everybody. God knows what it takes for every Scrooge to turn into a saint, as it happens in the movie. And so why would God just dispense away with his precious children for all of eternity with no hope of redemption when he already knows exactly what it would take to lead them back to truth? Yes, it's this beautiful process of regeneration where God, this infinite intelligence, is constantly guiding, guiding us all. We have to do is repent and turn to God, and then we can see how all of our experiences has led us to develop our character. It's really a beautiful thing. Yeah. And by the way, we have um a very distinct ontology which we're presenting today, a distinct cosmology, and a distinct soteriology, which is the the study of salvation and atonement that we're going to be presenting throughout this podcast, piece by piece. And it's a lot to digest, so we're giving you bite-sized chunks. But when we get to our next uh philosophical modality here, which is cosmology, how does the universe work, work? What are the laws of the universe that govern everything? When we talk about that, we're going to talk about how everything is governed by immutable laws, the laws of God, which are based on God's nature, meaning the law of God is not separate from God. It's not a second thing, like there's God, God exists, and then there's God's laws which God created at some point. No, they're uncreated, they're unbegotten because God's laws are simply byproducts of God's nature, which we're discussing now. So once we understand ontology well, then we unlock another dimension of understanding, which is cosmology. If we say, oh, everything in creation governs according to these five principles that God is all sovereign over everything, that has to dramatically inform our view of the universe. And so we get to see that the universe is based on a system of laws that cannot be avoided or escaped. They can only be obeyed or disobeyed, and that's what sin really is. It's the violation of God's law. We call it the law of one because Jesus summarized God's law in one commandment, love God, love others. And if you follow that law, you're in perfect alignment with God's universe. And again, the omniscience of God knows exactly and precisely what experiences every person needs to become aware of the truth of God's nature, how the universe works. And the Bible says God's always leading us to that understanding, to that revelation of truth. God is always working everything together for good when we trust him. So omniscience is a huge part of that. And just to round out the last few verses we put down for omniscience.

We have Matthew 10:30, where Jesus says the very hairs of your head are all numbered, and 1 John 3:20 simply, he knows everything, he being God. So there's a little sampling from scripture that we can say, "Okay, omniscience is absolutely taught about God in the Bible." Awesome. Let's move on to the third component.

So next, we have three verses for omnipresence. We have Psalm 139: where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to Heaven, you're there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are also there. Talk about omnipresence, bro. Yeah, God's in Heaven and in Hell. Wow, that can't be true. I thought Hell was a place of separation from God, right?

The funny thing is, when you study near-death experiences, like we do, uh, I've probably read/listened to, you know, a few dozen Christian NDEs where a Christian ends up in Hell because they lived a life of anger and unforgiveness and resentment, and they end up in these hellish realms where there's people suffering. And I've heard some really terrifying experiences. One person I remember describing the smell in Hell that they, they couldn't, like, like it seeped into their DNA, even now when they think about it, they can still recall that smell, which is like the most foul odor you can possibly imagine. And it's like, what a perfect description of what Hell is. Hell is as far away from God's truth and nature as it gets. You know, if God is everything good and lovely, Hell has to be everything terrible and agonizing. And this is very much the way people describe from NDEs that end up unfortunately in these hellish realms, um, how they experience it. And yet, contrary to what Christianity teaches, that once you're there, it's done, God will never forgive you, there's no chance of repentance. Well, not so fast, because literally everyone who's gone to Hell from a death experience and come back to life to talk about it, every single case I've read, as soon as somebody comes to their senses, much like Jesus says in the Prodigal Son story, when people come to their senses and go, "Oh, I know why I'm here, because this is how I lived. This is basically how my mind felt about everybody: hatred, judgment, resentment, unforgiveness, trauma, pain. I've been holding such dark energies in my mind my whole life, and so I ended up in a realm that matches that." And when people realize that, they almost always cry out to God. Some of them cry out to Jesus, and instantly the light breaks through, or Jesus shows up, and they're taken out of the hellish realm, and usually they go to a Heavenly realm and have a life review and stuff. So this, this is perfect proof of what David is saying here in Psalm 139. Although we can be—and I think you asked this question a few minutes ago and I forgot to answer—we can be separate from God in our mind and in our awareness of God, absolutely, and most people today are separate from God in their mind and awareness, but you cannot be fundamentally or ontologically separate from God, because again, then you have to explain how there's a location in time and space that exists separate from the source of all existence. It's not possible. There can't be anywhere in God's universe that is separate from God. There could be no consciousness or experience without it. By what source, by what metaphysical source would you posit those beings or that place is existing upon? Because the Bible's clear: "I am the Lord; beside me there is none else." There is no other source of love, life, or existence. And so you can't have ontological separation from God, but you can definitely have mental separation from God based on our ignorance of Truth. And so David is sort of reflecting this here of, "Hey, look, there's really nowhere I can go that you're not there," and that's a beautiful testament to omnipresence. It is; it's really profound.

One thing I'd like to add about the Hell and the NDEs, of which we've both watched dozens and dozens, is that there's never been a single one, at least that we've seen, where someone is in Hell because they didn't confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior and believe he resurrected after three days. Every single time it's because of how they lived their life. Yep. Every single time. And when they repent, they're saved. Yep, every time. I've listened to an NDE expert who's interviewed thousands of people, and he said the same thing. Dr. Raymond Moody says this every time. And just like the Bible says, God wants a repentant heart. It seems like this is some kind of realm where you go if you're disconnected, if you've turned away from God, as some kind of teaching mechanism. Absolutely. I mean, again, it causes people to come to their senses; people, it takes people dying and going to Hell to finally realize, "Oh, I've been living like a jerk my whole life," and, you know, God has given all kinds of signs and little things to kind of help them walk a better path, and they're just ignoring it. I would imagine this is kind of a last resort where you have such a difficult experience as going to Hell. Well, look, Jesus says four times in the New Testament, "You are judged according to your works," "I will judge every man according to his works." And Jesus said, on all three occasions where Jesus is asked, "How do I attain eternal life?" Jesus says, "Keep the Commandments, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself," and you go, "Oh wow." Near-death experiences validate that teaching of Jesus to the maximum, because those people always, to your point, end up in that hellish realm because they did not love their neighbor as themselves. Not a single person says, "You know, I realized I was there because I didn't confess Jesus," but in fact, just the reverse. Many, many Christians who have a death experience and an afterlife experience with Jesus come back to say, "Wow, that was not the Jesus that I thought I knew before going through the NDE." That Jesus didn't seem to give a crap about my theological beliefs about him or whether I confessed him as Lord. Jesus's only concern, whether it's atheists, whether it's Christians, whether it's post-Christians, anybody that encounters Jesus, it's always the same Jesus. And I find that to be very remarkable, that it's always a Jesus who says, "Did you love people like I love them?" And when they say, "No, I didn't, Lord, I didn't love people like you do," Jesus almost always says, "Would you like to go back and try again to love your neighbor as yourself?" And people, with tears in their eyes, they don't want to leave that place. This is the classic NDE; they say they don't want to leave, and yet, because of their life review and seeing how selfish they lived, they say, "But I have to; I have to go back and make Jesus proud." So when Jesus shows up in people's NDEs, he's not taking them to task about their theological beliefs or confessing him as Lord. And we're going to do episodes, by the way, in the future where we're going to play a number of Christian NDEs and react to them in real time, and you guys will see the commonalities that, yeah, this is pretty much what everybody says, of the hundreds of thousands of recorded NDEs in the world, like something like 90 plus 95% of them have these distinct commonalities of leaving the body, going towards the light, ex- uh, experiencing a God of infinite love; some people call it the light, the source, you know, they feel this, they see this incred- in like radiant light, like 10,000 suns, and it's just radiating unconditional love and non-judgment. And so they say, "God wasn't the one judging me," people say, "I judged me. I watched my whole life back in a flash and went, 'Oh my goodness, I missed the whole purpose of life. It's not to be right, to have the right beliefs, to be better than other people,' all the things that religion kind of pushes subconsciously, is not the meaning of life. The meaning of life is love and sharing God with others through that love, and that is the Gospel of Jesus. And that's why we're so passionate about teaching the Jesus way." This is such a reason to rejoice for all of our Christian friends; this is a reason to rejoice. The Gospel of Jesus is verified by tens of thousands of near-death experiences; that is like the most epic thing I've ever heard.

The other thing I want to add is, we joke about this sometimes: imagine getting to Heaven, a nice person from, say, an area that's not super Christian, the Amazon, maybe some indigenous area or something. Yeah, they get to Heaven, God's there, Jesus is there. Oh, Jesus, you know, "I lived my life full of love for everyone I saw, I really tried to help, I showed mercy, I forgave people." You really can you see a God of love and compassion and forgiveness going to that individual and going, "I mean, that's cool, but did you confess me as Lord and believe in my resurrection?" "Oh, I mean, I just try to be a loving person." "Yeah, I'm going to have to send you to Hell for all of eternity where you're tortured forever." That goes against this next O that we're about to get into, which is Omnibenevolence. Yep. Yeah, like imagine if somebody from an indigenous tribe, you know, a Christian missionary goes there and hands them a copy of the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke, and they've never heard of Christianity, Paul, even Jesus, right? But they're like, "Hey, this guy came from Heaven and told us the perfect way to God, read this book and believe every word of it and you'll be saved." Boom, missionary dips. And so this Amazonian tribe has this copy of Matthew or whatever in their own language, and they read it, and they go to Heaven and they see Jesus when they die, and they're like, "Hey, we did exactly what you said, Master. You said keep the Commandments, don't kill, don't steal, etc., love God, love your neighbor; we did, we kept all 10." And Jesus is like, "Oh, but you didn't confess me as Lord or believe in my death and resurrection." And they say, "Well, no, you never told us to; we didn't; that was never in the gospel we read." He's like, "Oh, but but see, my 13th special Apostle Paul came along, and later he told about that; you didn't get that memo." And they're like, "No, I thought we were Christians." "Yeah, I didn't know we were supposed to be Paul-ians." And so Jesus sends people to Hell for doing exactly what he says. And Jesus had ample opportunity to warn people that, "Hey, this gospel I'm preaching, it expires in a couple days after my death and Resurrection, so don't listen to what I said; there's going to be someone else who comes after, and that's who you base your theology on." There are so many different views in Christianity, but there is a large segment of Christianity, of different denominations, that believe in this doctrine of dispensationalism, which is the idea that everything was just about Jesus paying the blood penalty, that God somehow needs someone to pay. And so it's all about the blood. And so after Jesus shed his blood on the cross, created a New Covenant, everything before that passed away, and you know, unfortunately, Jesus's teachings happened before Jesus's crucifixion, so we're no longer under those teachings. And this is really what is taught in a lot of churches, not every Church, of course, probably not even the majority, but 10, 20%, something like that. And nobody would even think Jesus was the Messiah or the Christ or the Son of God were it not for his teachings. It is the profundity of Jesus's teachings, his gospel message, that makes people go, "Wow, that man came from God." It's the most enlightened, inspired teachings we've ever seen in our lives; that's why we love it. It's not because of the miracles, although the miracles are amazing; there's been people who have who have done miracles over the years. It's because his teachings and words touch our heart in such a profound way that we want to commit our lives to this message. Yeah, because I mean, this is just my opinion, but I'm asked very often, like, "How do you know what's really true in the gospel accounts, because you know they're not super historically reliable according to scholars? How do you know Jesus said any of these things?" My response is simple: it's that these teachings, the parables especially, are spiritual genius at its finest. The teachings of Jesus are masterful beyond belief, just how succinct and direct and laser-like his words were, and then also extrapolating that laser-like precision into these beautiful stories that grip your heart, and there's so many layers to them, you could always peel away a layer and get into deeper meanings. It's profound, and that to me shows these are not made up by some guy who's trying to invent a religion. No one could ever fabricate teachings like this unless they are in the state of consciousness that Jesus was in. So it's like, when you read philosophy of Plato, you know, nobody says, "Oh, Plato couldn't have existed; he was a fake character; some other guy made up all of his teachings." Nobody accuses Plato of being—I mean, not that I know of—accuses Plato of not existing and some other guy made up his teachings. It's like, "No, Plato clearly existed because he revolutionized philosophy forever." That's how we know it's legitimate. I say the same for Jesus; it's like, I believe Jesus did these miracles, at least most of them, but I can't know that for sure, and I don't hang my hat on that. If Jesus never did a miracle, I would still say, "But his teachings reflect the truth of God, and so I can follow them and trust them." Yeah, it's a beautiful place to be in. We don't need the miracles; we appreciate them, they're amazing, but our spirituality is not dependent on them. It's not even dependent on the resurrection; it's dependent on turning our hearts to God, living a repentant lifestyle, and dedication to the way that Jesus laid out. Yeah, because again, nobody would even care about this guy, Yeshua the Nazarene, if he was some crackpot looney who just said a bunch of nonsense, didn't do anything profound, and then gets crucified, and everyone's like, "He was God; he paid the penalty." Like, nobody would think that; nobody would believe that. It's because of the teachings of Jesus that he is and was everything that he was to people. And so that's why we hang our hats on those teachings, because there would be no Christianity without them. And yet, somehow those teachings have been almost completely obscured in the Christian religion, to the point where you will literally never hear a Christian pastor—go to any church you want; you will never hear a Protestant Christian pastor teach a message that the way to eternal life is to keep the Commandments. You'll never hear it, and yet that is precisely what Jesus said on all three occasions he's asked: Matthew 19:16, Mark 10:17, and Luke 18:18, "How do I attain eternal life?" "Keep the Commandments," without hesitation, Jesus says, "Keep the Commandments." He doesn't say, "Well, you got to confess me as Lord and Savior, you got to believe in my death and resurrection, and that I paid the penalty for your sins, and you will be saved." That is nowhere in the mouth of Jesus. And so I point this out sometimes to Christian friends that, "Hey, this is not an insignificant fact; this should cause some caution for you to realize that the pillars of your religion—confess Jesus as Lord, believe in his death and resurrection—the pillars of your religion are absent from the mouth of Jesus." And I think that's for a very important reason, because what if, what if Jesus's real teachings were corrupted and changed by dogmatic men to mean something very different than what he taught? We're not even saying you shouldn't confess Jesus as Lord or believe in his death and resurrection; by all means, but do not make the mistake of those Jesus warned about to his closest disciples. He says, "Hey, just so you know, not everybody who confesses me as Lord, Lord, is just going to enter my kingdom." Jesus was very clear; he did not want pretenders following him around, acting like his disciples while they judge people and ignore the needy and live selfishly. He's like, "No, no, no, no, no; if you do not follow my Commandments to love your neighbor as yourself, I will look at you on that day and say, 'Get away from me, you who practice evil, for I never knew you.' 'Lord, Lord, when did we see you hungry and thirsty without, you know, food and clothes and not help you?' 'Oh, when you didn't do it to the least of these, you didn't do it to me; and when you did do it to the least of these, you did do it to me.'" This is how they'll know you're my disciples: by your theological facts? And oh, wait, no, no, no, it's uh, by your love for one another. That's it, right there. And this is one of our main bones to pick: Christians, for 2,000 years, have been arguing about the Christological nature and, you know, the resurrection and these different doctrines and not spending as much time on loving each other. This is what Jesus came to teach us, and this is what we're commanded to do, and this is what we're judged on. So our goal is simply to get people back into that, that loving activity, like that loving, heart-centered lifestyle: just follow the teachings, follow the way. The way has already been shown to us; all we have to do is follow it. And the way is a reflection of this next O, which is Omnibenevolence. So we're supposed to be benevolent too, but let's get into this O, this nature.

Yeah, yeah. I love the principle of Omnibenevolence, because what, what Omnibenevolence essentially means is that everything the Creator does is towards the flourishing in the life of Creation. In other words, God cannot do harm to God's Own creation, because God is the only being that exists, and so all of creation is an extension and reflection of the Creator. So for God to attack or harm God's Own Creation in any way would mean God is attacking itself; God has a split mind. It'd be like somebody who paints, you know, they're trying to paint something, and they just go into a fit of rage and like, "Screw this painting; it's a piece of trash," and they start ripping it up and throwing it across the room and hitting their paint cans, or just having a ra- forever painting. Yeah, you'd be like, "Hey, man, it's okay, calm down; like, you can make a new painting; you don't have to hate it." God would have to have a split mind, like a human being, to get angry at his own creation, which he already foreknew everything they would do and think and believe forever, and then to still get angry and then do harm to that creation. There's all of these uninvestigated assumptions that Christians hold; one of them we'll get to maybe in a minute, but it's like this idea that because God's Eternal—again, here's theology messing with ontology and where it always goes wrong—because God's Eternal, if we violate God through sin, then our penalty has to be Eternal because God's Eternal, and it seems to make sense; that makes sense. But the contradiction is that you're you're still assuming that God needs anything, and it's the opposite. If God, God's Eternal, God doesn't need anything. God's good, man; you're the one who needs something, and what do you need? Repentance, humility, love, forgiveness, all of the virtues Jesus points us to in his gospel message. So you have to assume that God can be affronted or accosted or harmed or affected by sin. This idea that God can't look upon sin—you've said it before—but Jesus looked on sin constantly; it was completely unfazed by it. I mean, he was accused of hanging out with sinners. Yes. So what do we mean, God can't be around sin? What would happen to God if he looks at sin? Yeah, is God going to melt like the Wicked Witch of the West? Like, what if God, what if somebody sins and God doesn't butcher something through a blood atonement sacrifice, right? What would happen to God, right? Are you, are you assuming that God would suffer something if God doesn't have a blood atonement? See, these are the things that are just never really questioned, and this is why we like the early Christians and the earlier movements, the Essenes, the Nazirenes. When we look at the Bible, we go, "Does this conform to an omnibenevolent God? Does God need a goat to be slaughtered to forgive someone's sins, or can God just forgive that person whenever he wants, especially if a person heartfully repents and turns his heart to God? Why can't God just forgive that person? Why does he have this bloodlust to satisfy?" Well, exactly. Our one of our thesis statements in the debate with Wes and Dr. Steven Boyce was, we believe there are two distinct and even competing atonement doctrines running through the Old and the New Testament. The first is repentance for...

The remission of sins and the second is animal sacrifice. Both of these cannot be true. Either God has to kill an animal or a human to forgive sins; either that's true or it's not true. You can't have both. And I actually asked West this, I think in the debate, and didn't get an answer. But I said, if okay, if God already has a repentant heart, a righteous, humble heart turned towards God, what need does God have then to kill something or have a blood atonement? Does God have a metaphysical need for blood, like a…a cosmic vampire? Where are you getting this idea that an infinite, Eternal God would need human bloodshed?

We all know this concept is satanic deep down in our heart. We know, know that, ball, and some of the older Gods where they would do animal and child sacrifice to…we all know that killing anything or making anything suffer for a selfish reason so we get forgiven is a totally satanic Doctrine. But then when we read the Bible, we put on these blinders and go, "Oh no, in this case it's good." No. This is why the ontology has to inform the theology. Yeah, it's…it's making a graven image of God, say he needs the suffering of innocent animals that he loves and created himself; that he somehow the suffering of an innocent animal or a holy man on a cross is appeasing or helps God in some way.

Well, Christians believe Psalm 50 or Isaiah 53 is a prophecy about Jesus, and it says it pleased the Lord to crush him. It's like, how do you have a God that is love—First John 4:8—that is pleased by death? Imagine your father being pleased by your being crushed; yeah, being tortured and crucified. And think about how infinitely more merciful and compassionate and loving God is than our own. I love you, Dad, you're the best, but God is infinitely more compassionate and loving than any of us. Of course, Jesus said, "If you, being earthly fathers, know how to give your kids good gifts, how much better is your heavenly Father?" And this is why we're so passionate about this. We have the profoundly beautiful and inspiring teachings of Jesus that have been co-opted and twisted into this fear and guilt, blood atonement, sacrifice Matrix, blood cult. It's a satanic blood cult, and those are strong words, but it is what it is. When you understand the ontology and the infinite, Eternal, loving nature of God, you cannot harmonize these two things.

No. And here's…here's how we know God is Omni-benevolent, all good, all loving. Again, what would God need from anybody? If God's all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent—God's everywhere, has everything—everything belongs to God, all power, all abundance, everything, Infinity, eternity. God's got it all. What does God need from you, man? Why would God be angry at you? Why would God need to hurt you in any way? What can hurting you do for God? God's omnipotent, and so because God knows everything, possesses everything, God can only be loving. There is no other metaphysical op…option for God. God cannot react because God knows everything. God can't feel lack and need something from you. God possesses everything. So Omni-benevolence is another ontological fact that we arrive at using this kind of epistemology. If these facts are true, and no Christian denies God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, well then what do those imply? Omni-benevolent; that can only be the nature of God. And James, does the Bible say anything about Omni-benevolence? It sure does. Let's…let's get into it. We have uh, First John 4:8: "Anyone who does not love does not know God," wow, "because God is love." One of the best verses in the Bible, man. The Johannine, you know, passages in the New Testament are…it's just my favorites because they're on that frequency of that Christ energy. And I mean, how true is that? Anyone who doesn't love doesn't know God because God is love. So the moment you step out of love, you step into the ignorance of God. That's what the verse is saying. God is Omni-benevolent. And isn't this what Jesus taught? It is: "Love your neighbor as yourself. Forgive your enemies 70 times. Bless your enemies." Yes. All of this reflects the nature of God. He's teaching us because we are to be the children of God. We're supposed to…this is like the…the doctrine of theosis in Eastern Orthodoxy. What is amazing. Yeah. We're supposed to emulate, align ourselves and emulate God. MH. And it's through the daily following, emulation, practice of the teachings of Jesus, communing with God by loving God in my heart. Like, are you thinking about God during your day? How often do thoughts of God fill your mind? You say, "Oh God, I love you so much. Thank you for your blessings." That's one part of it. The second part is, in the Kingdom of Heaven, you can't keep anything to yourself. In the Kingdom of Heaven, everybody wins together. So my win is your win, and…and vice versa. So if I have God's love, I can only keep that love by constantly extending it to you. And the moment I stop extending you love, I cut myself off from the source of God's love because there's only one love. I can't hate you and then love God at the same time. That's a contradiction. That's why Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies and to love our enemies because when you hate anyone, it cuts you off from that flow. Y. And you know it's…there's plenty of evil people who love their friends and family, but they hate the other…oh, James even says that. That's what James says. Yes. So it's a daily practice, forgiveness and love, even for people who maybe do evil things and stand against what we believe in. It's uh…and it's a very therapeutic process as well, like it just allows you to fill yourself up with more love and understanding when you offer that compassion. It does. I mean, people are supposed to stretch us because they…they require us to love on deeper levels. But I can only speak for myself, man. It…it really is through the theosis that I came to know Christ for real. I mean, I loved Jesus. I was the most devout Christian kid you've ever seen, pastor's kid, again, all that stuff, but I had all of these wrong beliefs about Jesus, that he's, you know, he was the blood penalty, and if I don't confess him, I go to hell, and he…get…maybe he gets upset with me if I sin. And so there's beliefs that kept me separate in my awareness. Once I understood what we're talking about today, I realized, "Oh, Jesus is Love. Jesus's way is love." And so if I want to know God, if I want to have a relationship with Christ, if I want to know my own Christ, I have to do what Christ said to do: love my neighbor as myself. And this is why Jesus's gospel is extremely simple, but not easy. And I don't want it to be easy. I don't want an easy believism, cheap Grace gospel because I want to be stretched. I want to grow. I want something to reach for. That's theosis; is that every day I become a little more Christlike, a little bit more loving, and a little bit more able to experience God as a result of it. Isn't that what we all want? To feel God's love every day surrounding us, to feel God's peace within us? Well, Jesus said, "If you want to feel God's peace, you got to give peace. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called…called sons of God." So God is a God of Peace. So whatever contradicts peace cannot be of God. That's ontology. Wow, beautifully said, man. That's inspiring. It's not easy to forgive people. It's not easy to love people who are doing horrible things, but that's what the Master showed us. He showed us that's the way to God. That's a reflection of God. All merciful. Yes. And it's why Jesus said, "Strive to enter through the narrow way. Many people find the…the broad road that leads to destruction," which I think he's talking about man-made religion, "but strive to enter through the narrow way." Well, that word strive is…I go to zi in Greek, which means to struggle to…with strenuous effort and difficulty. Jesus is painting us the picture right, like following my teachings isn't going to be easy. I mean, Jesus said, "Hey, first prerequisite to being my disciple, kill your ego." That's his prerequisite. Deny yourself. So Jesus isn't teaching us an easy believism gospel. He's teaching us that if you want to know God, you have to know God on God's terms: love, forgiveness, non-judgment. God has it all. God doesn't need or can't even judge because God would have to not know something to judge somebody, and God knows everything. So Jesus had clear ontology, right? When you look at these teachings of Jesus, these incredibly profound oracles that Jesus taught, at least for me as a student of philosophy, I can read them and say, "Oh wow, this…this man, Yeshua the Nazarene, had Immaculate ontology. He had a perfect understanding of the nature of God, and his teachings reflect that understanding." So beautiful. Uh, let's continue with some more of these quotations. We have Lamentations 3:22: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." I…I love that one. If you need an anti-hell verse, there you go. And I mean, again, we believe that there is a place you could call hell that people go, but we don't believe it's an eternal place because we have the evidence of hundreds of thousands of people who've died and come back are letting us know, "No, no, no, it's not an eternal place," but it is very much what Jesus warned: it's a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of great suffering and terror. But this verse, Lamentations 3:22: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases…" I mean, is that an inspired passage? Is that…does that mean what it says? The mercies of God never come to an end? But surely, James, it means unless you don't confess Jesus and then they come…then they end forever, yeah, for eternity. Well, but it's weird, James, it goes on to say, "They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." So God's love and mercy and compassion never ends and is new every morning. It's eternal. It…it sounds a lot like what people who die and come back talk about. They do pretty interesting…very interesting. Uh, Psalm 100 verse 5, which I love: "For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations." This is another one of our…um, you know, when I came out of Christianity at 23, 24, hell was the big first fallacy I was confronting in my belief system of, "Look, this doesn't make sense. This isn't adding up. If God is just, why and how could God punish somebody for eternity for a very small human lifetime of sin?" I mean, to make a just penalty, you would have to…that person would have to be sinning for eternity to be punished for eternity. And it's like…it's like beating your dog viciously for peeing on the carpet. You're at such a higher level of consciousness than a puppy that to get mad…mad at an innocent puppy is insanity. Yeah. And God punishing people for their ignorance is that situation times infinity, right? It's…it's a fallacy. It…and so this passage that says, "The Lord is good, and his love endures forever," shows us that if God's love endures forever…I mean, imagine the love a human mother or father has for their child. Could…could a mother or a father, a human, ever be okay with knowing that their precious child is being tortured in this moment? They're like, "Well, you know, they chose…and it's their way, you know, they…they chose drugs, and they went on this path. Now they're in a…" And the parent has the ability to save them, even if the child rejected them, the parent has the ability and the opportunity to save them from the torture chamber and doesn't because they chose a different path. There is no parent on the planet that would do that. Yeah. This is another false dilemma Christianity paints around free will. They say, "God can't just force free will on people and infringe on their free will if they don't choose God. God has to leave them to their consequences." And it's like, "Well, there's some truth to that. God never violates free will," but this is like saying, you know, a dad is taking his four kids on a hike, and they're, you know, five to ten years old, and the father looks over, and the four kids are about to walk right off of a cliff. Would any good father say, "Well, I can't violate their free will. They clearly don't perceive their own best interest. They don't understand what they're doing to themselves. I have to save them." Yeah. I know better than they do. How much more better than us does God know these things, right? God knows that we…we cannot perceive our own best interest. People get lost in drugs and sex and rock and roll and sin and debauchery because they're hurting inside because they don't know who God is. They feel they're full of trauma and pain, and so they're looking for an outlet to…to get rid of it, and they go to drugs, they go to alcohol. And so many Christians would look down their noses at people living that lifestyle and say, "You're rejecting God. You're going to get what's coming to you." And it's like, "You are so far from the heart of God to think that…" Jesus said, "When you don't love the least of these, you don't love me." And isn't a drug addict the least of these? I think they are. And so God's love endures forever means God would never allow his children to be tortured forever. Maybe that's necessary for a time, for the…the Alchemy it creates in the soul to wake up, as we said, and realize the error of their ways. But all punishment in God's Universe serves a redemptive purpose. All suffering…no suffering is wasted in God's Universe. It all leads us to repentance. It's…it's the Refiner's Fire, as it's described in the Bible. So it's not wrong that we suffer, but there…there's no such thing as meaningless suffering in God's Universe. Like, that…the idea that somebody could be in Hell forever suffering would be the greatest…greatest affront to God's glory; that God was apparently unable to ever redeem them. God…there's nothing God could have done. And so how does God get glory when at least what? 75% of the world that's not Christian is apparently going to roast in hell, and God's gonna say, "Yeah, I got what I wanted out of this universe." Yeah, it…that does not align with an Omni-benevolent God at all. You know that example you said about a father hiking got me thinking. Another example would be a father hiking with his son, and he goes, "Son, stick by my side. I'll guide you." Well, and then when the father's not looking, the son goes off and runs off into the forest. It sees like a squirrel, chases after, and the son gets lost. Doesn't know where he is, gets super scared. Is the father going to be like, "Oh well, I told him to follow me. Yep, he's gone now. You know, I'm not going to go looking." No. Every loving father would go and look for that child. They would not sleep…they would not sleep until they found that child. And when they did, they would give him the biggest hug, and they would say, "I'm so happy I found you. This is why I told you to stay by my side. This is why you seek first the kingdom, friend." It's like, "Did you learn your lesson?" Yeah. It's the Prodigal Son. It's…it's when the father sees the son running down the path or walking down the path, the father kicks off the sandals, throws off the tunic, and runs down the road to embrace his son and immediately is…is in forgiveness towards the son because he can see that the son has a repentant heart. Now the son has learned his lesson. So yes, God let…or the father let the son go wander into darkness for a while, squander his inheritance with prostitutes and gambling. Yes, God will let us wander. No one's disagreeing with that, but the fact that our wandering would elicit an eternal consequence, that there's no redemption from, is an absolute ontological violation. God's heart of Love is way too big for that. And if we're made in the image and likeness of God—Genesis 1:26: "Let us make man in our own image and after our own likeness"—then if we have love for our children and we could never fathom such a fate for our own child, how much more would God not allow that? It's…it…Christianity does the reverse, right? They say, "Well, you're making a God in your own image." No, the Bible says I'm made in God's image. I'm not making a God in my image. My image and likeness: what is most fundamentally true and real of me, of humans, all of us: we love our children more than anything, has to be even more true of God, not less true. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't…it doesn't. And Jesus, again, is pointing us right here to this Omni-benevolence. We're going to go through a couple more quotes, and then I want to challenge you on a few things because there are some quotes in the Bible where it says God creates good and evil, and I want to talk to you about how we balance the evil in the world and the fact that there are some truly evil people who do horrible things to other people, and if God is Omni-benevolent and also omnipresent, he is there experiencing these things, he is there when this evil is being committed. So how do we rectify first that the Old Testament says God creates good and evil, and the fact that there's so much evil in this world that is present? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the verse you're referencing comes from Job. I want to say, "I the Lord create good and evil." Um, this is one of those things where like I interpret all of these passages from a very metaphysical context, not a literal context. But if…if you're going to say that that author wrote that verse from inspiration, then here's how I would interpret it: evil is not ontologically real, meaning evil is an absence of something, not the presence of something. Again, there's only…only one power, one omnipotent power, that's God. There is not a second power called evil that God has to contest with and fight against, you know, the devil versus God. And so evil then is the inversion of what's true. Evil is an illusion, in the same way a shadow is an illusion. We…none of us would deny the shadows we see in this room. I…I'm not saying that shadow on the ground…that's not what I'm saying when I say evil doesn't exist. It's an ontological claim, not an experiential claim. Of course, we absolutely experience the effects of what we call evil, uh, sin, and so forth. But in the same way that if I try to go up to that shadow and investigate it and see if it has any ontological reality, I can't find a single thing. I can't find one trait of reality to a shadow because a shadow is an absence, not a presence. It isn't the…presence of another real, separately existing power, right? That is identically what evil is. Evil is the ignorance of God, the ignorance of Truth, the absence of Truth. And from the absence of Truth in the mind, when the mind is ignorant of God's nature of truth, then it's as if a metaphysical void is created in the mind where now the mind can conceive of all that is opposite to God's nature: hatred, rejection, judgment, torture, violence, etc. And so for Job to say, "I the Lord create both good and evil," we have the polarities here, right? Uh, positive, negative, good, evil. The whole universe is comprised of two polarities. Nothing can exist in the universe without an opposite. That's how we know anything. It's through the contrast, right, of what it's not. And so good and evil are opposites, and so that means only one of them can be real. They can't share any traits together, right? Good and evil cannot…cannot have any overlap. They're perfect opposites of each other. And so if one of them is real, the other must be unreal. And again, we're meaning ontologically unreal. We're not saying we don't experience it, have effects of it, of course not, but it doesn't have its own separate power or source apart from God because there is nothing apart from God. So evil's only able to be experienced when there's some kind of ignorance or absence of Truth, in the same way that a shadow can only be experienced when there's some kind of absence of light. When light gets obstructed by an object, it casts a shadow. So evil is the shadow cast in the mind by the ignorance of God. So can you get into how evil obviously causes a lot of suffering in the world? Why is this suffering allowed? What is the purpose of it? Well, it's what…

We said it's that all suffering has a redemptive arc, has a purpose that ultimately brings God glory. And I mean, even the Bible says, “Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess.” These ideas are in Scripture—that everybody will return to God because God’s the only source. And so here’s another ontological violation: nothing can be separate from God, or, you know, God creates the universe, right? Every soul that’s ever existed comes from the one Creator. So imagine like a sun with rays of light beaming from it; every ray of light is like a different soul. It’s impossible that anything that God creates could not return back to God, because that would mean God is lacking something. God cannot lack. And so for you to say, “God sends out souls, but 75% of them never return; they go to the Eternal barbecue pit and they spend forever there, and God just keeps that measly quarter of the, you know, beings that God created in heaven with God, and God’s happy with that; God sees that as a win”—it’s like, no, literally, God would be lacking 75% of God’s creation. God can’t lack for anything, let alone 75%. So everything God creates must eventually return back to God.

I think outside of just this kind of rigid religious attachment to dogma, I don’t know how any Christian could or would want to disagree with this—that look, we’re not saying people don’t suffer consequences for sin. Oh, very, very much the opposite. We’re going to get into this when we teach the cosmology of the Jesus way, but there are severe and distinct consequences for violating God’s laws—inescapable, inescapable—and people suffer tremendously from violating the laws. But all of that suffering, whether in this life or the next—who knows—all of it will eventually lead them back to God, and God knows that. And so God is patient, God is kind, God’s willing to wait for people while they wander in darkness. But like a loving father, God ensures they never wander too far before coming back to the father again. That is what the Prodigal Son Parable is all about—eventually, every prodigal comes to their senses and returns home.

Amazing. Thank you for that, Erin. Well, we we’ll finish out with these omni-benevolent quotes. We have Jeremiah 31:3: “The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.’” K said, “Loving kindness.” 1 John 4:16: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love; whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.” Sounds a lot like Jesus saying, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Next, we have James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” How good is James, dude? So great! Most—one of the most epic books in the New Testament. Um, I love this verse because it shows our our philosophical analogy of illusion as a shadow, right? This is the oldest analogy, I think, in any non-dual tradition. Uh, this you can find this reference of a shadow as an analogy for illusion in Buddhism, Hinduism, in the Upanishads and The Vedas from 5,000 years plus into the past. This is one of the oldest analogies for this concept—that what is evil, what is wrong, what is sinful is like a shadow. It seems to be there and can can create great effects; it can darken things, right? But it doesn’t actually exist. And so James says, “God doesn’t change like shifting shadows; God is light in whom there is no darkness at all.”

So inspired! There. Yes, it’s extremely inspired. It’s it’s very high non-dual philosophy coming through James right here. The fact that James uses the shadow analogy shows me, at least, that he understands the the non-duality being pointed out here. Shadow—a shadow is an illusion. There’s no illusion in God; God is pure truth and nothing but truth. Wow. Yeah, as you’ll see, we’re huge fans of James on this podcast. James, the brother of Jesus; James, the just. James the just—a huge inspiration to us. We’re going to have a whole bunch of episodes dedicated to James for sure.

Yeah. Legend. Uh, and lastly, what do we have? The fifth O, yeah, which is One—Oneness. Tell us about Oneness. Just like omni-benevolence, it’s another immutable characteristic we arrive at when we use epistemology to understand God’s nature. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, all-loving, all-good, the source of every good and perfect thing, as James says, then that God must be indivisible. They can’t be two of it. There can’t be—that God can’t be divisible at all. So Oneness is the idea from ontology that God is indivisible. Whatever God is, the the nature of God, it can’t be split in half; it can’t be divided or changed in any way. That’s what Oneness means. And in fact, from um, from more of the kind of Eastern philosophy, we have three distinct characteristics of Oneness: the first one is unchanging. And Malachi 3:6 says, “I, the Lord, do not change.” So what is one cannot change because it’s always one; it can never be two, and so it has to it has to be unchanging. So one—what is one is unchanging. Number two: what is one is self-sufficient. And by the way, these are also characteristics of what is real in philosophy. To call something real means it has to be unchanging. If it’s changing all the time, it’s not technically real anymore, but it’s an illusion, right? It appears to be one thing at this moment and then it changes to another thing and another thing. That’s not reality. Reality is unchanging; it has to be self-sufficient, meaning it can’t rely on something else to exist. So a shadow does not meet this criteria, right? A shadow needs three different things, actually. It needs the sunlight or a source of light; it needs an object to obscure that light; and then it needs a flat surface to project the shadow on, right? So it’s dependent on three things outside of itself in order to arise, whereas like, let’s say the sun, being the analogy, the sun isn’t dependent on something else; the sun is self-shining, self-luminescent; it doesn’t need something else to shine. So God is like that; truth is like that; it’s self-sufficient. And then three is eternal. Eternal is sometimes confused for unchanging, but they’re not actually the same thing. Eternal means forever and ever, before time, after time, beginning and end; there is no end to God. So you could technically have a God that’s eternal but changes all the time, right? It’s eternally changing, so they’re not exactly the same thing. So God is unchanging, self-sufficient, and eternal. These are the three qualities of what it means to say God is one.

Incredible. And you know, the Hebrew word for eternal is Olam, so we have another O there. There we go. We have Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one.” One baby! One. What if it’s like, “The Lord our God is two,” two, or now with with Gentile Christianity became three, three? Yeah, I wanted to ask you about how the Trinity and the one, how that plays together, but we could finish these quotes first. Isaiah 45:5: “I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no God beside me.” And so that would mean there’s no no power, no source, no anything beside God. So the devil can’t be another like demigod that’s wandering around God’s universe, tricking people into sin and influencing people to do stuff God doesn’t want them to do. These are on these are some of the ontological fallacies we’re trying to point out. If you have a God who—there is none besides—then whatever you think is the devil must be something else; it can’t be a real second power. And so what part of the Jesus philosophy is that the devil is an ancient world personification for the human ego? It’s it’s the voice—it’s the devil on my shoulder, as they say. It’s the voice in my head that whispers to me things that are antecedent from God’s laws, because again, when I have ignorance of God, it creates a a void in my mind where things that are opposite to God, antithetical to God, can arise in ideation—things like judgment and evil and harm. And so the devil—devil is the ancient world way of describing this this voice of the accuser, which is what the ego is. So it’s very real in that sense, the devil, but it’s not something outside of you, a second power that’s running around in the universe. And sometimes the devil comes to tempt—no, no, no, no. The devil is the part of your mind that doesn’t know God and tempts you to wander from God’s truth. We have to ground these ideas in something real; we can’t just rely on them being fairy tales and mythical ideas that we believe in but have no evidence for. Nobody can show me the devil; nobody can prove epistemically the devil is real, right? What can we prove? Well, we know we all have egos; we know the human ego does a lot of evil in the world. And so whenever uh somebody will disagree with me that the devil or Satan is really an ancient world way of describing the human ego—“No, that’s not true; the devil is real, and there’s an ego”—I say, “Okay, great. Then please show me any evil in the world that you would say that was the devil’s doing, not the human ego. The human ego didn’t contribute to that; it was purely the devil.” Is—can you find something that you could prove somehow was not the human ego causing it? Because I sure can’t. Every evil I see in the world—war, you name it, genocide—always comes from the human mind, from human corruption, from the human ego. And so there’s a more reliable approach to understanding this concept, which again, it has truth to it, but we have to be willing to go beyond our mental ideas about things and say, “You know, I never really thought about this before, but maybe the devil is actually a much deeper concept than I thought; maybe it’s not a a personified entity in the universe that, you know…” This whole idea that the devil was a worship leader in heaven and fell from heaven and took a third of the angels—utterly nowhere in scripture is that idea taught. It’s a complete misunderstanding of different Old Testament passages. We’ll get to that in another episode. But what can I know is that I am tempted to do evil, and it comes through my mind; it’s always in my mind that I’m tempted. So when we look at, you know, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he’s being tempted with all these thoughts, right? You know, “Command the stones to turn to bread,” and all this stuff, “throw yourself from the mountaintop and and prove that you’re God.” It was in his own mind, right? Do you think the devil was hiding in the bushes and like whispering to Jesus from 40 feet away or something? Like, it’s it’s all a story to analogize Jesus’s experience of The Dark Night of the Soul in the 40 days in the wilderness that he went through. I mean, this had to have been a very high initiation ritual for Jesus to subject himself to 40 days in the burning hot Palestinian wilderness in the first century. Most people would die for sure doing that. And so this was some kind of initiation from what we think was Jesus’s community, uh, the Essene Nazarean, but nonetheless, Jesus had some kind of excruciating ego death, right, in that story. And the ancient people that heard that story told and passed it down orally and then eventually wrote it down, they analogized it in ways they could understand. “Oh, and then the devil came to Jesus and tempted him.” But again, we have to go beyond the surface-level interpretation and say, “What’s the deeper meaning here?” We’re all tempted in our minds to stray away from God’s truth. This is the battlefield, and you know, we’re not saying definitively there’s not such a thing as as spiritual beings or demons or whatever, yeah, but it all takes place within the ego. This is where it happens, and this is where we can win the fight and where we can turn our hearts and minds to God. So God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, love, power, and a sound mind.

Sound mind. Well said. That’s incredible. A sound mind is of God. That’s great. Uh, last verse here, we have Malachi 2:10: “Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” Beautiful passage where the Prophet Malachi here is saying, “Are we not all from the same God? We have the same source, and yet we hate each other; we revile each other. Why do we do this when we know we all have one father?” Beautiful. This is why we also talk about having compassion and love for animals. God created animals too; they have the breath of life in them as well.

Yep. And I mean, if Jesus said, “Keep the Commandments,” and one of them is “Thou shalt not kill,” well then, are we really willing to air on the side of risking that, ah, “he probably just meant humans,” yeah? You know, “he probably doesn’t care if you kill animals, really, because it doesn’t say ‘Thou shalt not kill humans’; ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ period.” And we know if someone is—if I was just like murdering dogs all day, we all know that’s evil. Yeah, nobody would say that they think you’re probably going to go to heaven if you’re—oh, but he’s he’s cool to people; I he just kills dogs. Oh, he never murders people. It’s like, why don’t we air on the side of caution as a true devotee, a disciple of God, who says, “Thou shalt not kill.” I’m going to assume God means kill, period. I try not to even kill insects anymore because I’d rather air on that side than the other side, you know? I’d rather find out, “Hey, you know, I didn’t include insects; you could have killed them if you wanted to.” Okay, cool, no big deal. Yeah, no big deal. But if God meant, “Hey, I told you not to kill, and you killed animals your whole life,” that would be a bummer to hear. Should we get into soteriology a little bit?

Yeah, let’s finish up with that. Cool. First of off, what is soteriology? Yeah, soteriology is the study of salvation—you know, how do—what does salvation mean? How do we arrive at salvation? Those are the questions that soteriology aims to answer. And so Christianity has a very distinct soteriology. It’s Paul’s idea in Romans 10:9 that if you want to go to heaven, you got to confess Jesus as Lord, believe in his resurrection, and you will be saved—salvation, right? So Paul’s soteriology was confess and believe; confess and believe. And so the pertinent question would have to be, “What was Jesus’s soteriology? Did Jesus say you got to confess and believe, and then you’re saved?” Well, when we look at it, the answer is a resounding no, because again, Jesus was uh especially clear on this point that he is very displeased with people who confess him as Lord—Lord—and don’t follow his commandments. So it wasn’t Jesus’s soteriology wasn’t confess and believe me; it was “Love your neighbor as yourself; forgive to be forgiven.” And, “If you don’t forgive your brother his trespasses, your heavenly Father will not forgive yours.” And let you confess me as Lord and Savior? No, he didn’t say that. He made it very clear and unmissable: you don’t forgive, you can’t be forgiven. Because in the Kingdom of Heaven, everything is shared. So when I want forgiveness for myself, the first thing I have to do is give it to everybody else. If I want love for myself, if I want to feel God’s love for me, I got to love others. How could I cut myself off from loving others and be connected to God’s love? There—those aren’t two different loves. The only love I can give is God’s love in me; the only righteousness I have is God’s righteousness in me. This is why we don’t believe you can be saved by works, even though Jesus teaches a a heavily works-based gospel in really all four of the gospels. We don’t believe you can be saved by good works as if it’s a transaction—as if salvation is a transaction. We believe works is the only way that you can know you’re saved is when you do the works of faith. Well, then you must have faith, as James says. But if I’m not living a life that’s congruent with what I say I believe, I am not saved, and Jesus will tell me I’m not saved because he’ll say, “Hey, yeah, you confess me—oh, you ran around doing miracles in my name; that’s really cute—but when I was hungry, you didn’t feed me.” You know, Jesus made this so clear, and I think we would do well to heed the warnings of the master on this one: “Say, look, maybe it is all about confession and belief; maybe Paul was right, but I’m going to air on the side of Jesus’s teachings—that I got to really prioritize forgiveness, non-judgment, enemy love, loving God. I’m going to do these things.” And could you ever say that somebody who lives these teachings doesn’t believe in Jesus? Huh? Like, the fact that you’re living his teachings obviously means you believe in him. This is our whole point in the Book of John, when Jesus says, “Believe in me,” believe in me. We’re like, “Yes, we believe in Jesus,” because to believe in Jesus is to follow his commandments. “If you love me, keep my commandments; if you don’t keep my commandments, you don’t love me.” Jesus was clear about this. And so what it means to believe in Jesus is to do what he says. That’s salvation. You know, I think the biggest point about Christian I’s view of salvation is that they will tell you it’s all predicated on free will, and yet when I investigate the soteriology given by Protestant Christianity, I cannot find free will anywhere in it to save my life. I have no idea where Christians think the free will is in their view of salvation, because for you to say, “Look, you got to confess Jesus as Lord and whatever else or you burn in hell”—these are only two options: confess or burn. That’s blackmail; that’s coercion; that’s the total removal of free will, because nobody—I mean, this should be obvious—nobody would ever consider burning in hell forever as a viable option, as a something they could actually choose. That isn’t an option. So you’ve given only one option, and you call that free will? So it there has to be more logic and reason to this. If God honors free will, there has to be real choices available, and we are given those real choices every day, moment by moment. Every moment you have a choice, right, between good and evil, love or fear. And so it’s the daily choosing of fear and evil and separation from God that amounts to what we would call hell—and these experiences we described earlier—but they can’t possibly be eternal consequences, or God is the biggest blackmail artist who ever lived. Salvation becomes a wedding proposal with a gun to the bride’s temple: “Confess or I’ll blow your brains out. Oh, you you don’t have to marry me; I gave you a choice; I’m giving you a free choice; I honor your free will. But if you say no, I will blow your brains out.” And the woman’s like, “Okay, I I do; I do.” And then the Stockholm syndrome kicks in. This parage is great; I love it.

Well, to that point, like we’ve said this many times, that the most significant trauma of Christianity—and there are many—but the most significant trauma I work with people on and continually see is that most of us from childhood were taught this—that God is angry at sin. Sin really pisses God off and gets under God’s skin, you know, and God’s got to take his rage out on something. And so thankfully for you, Jesus stepped in your place and took what God wanted to do to you. So when we look at the cross, even as little children—and I I can remember being seven, eight years old learning about this on Easter and stuff—that Jesus took your penalty, and I’m like, “My penal—God wanted to hurt me?” I thought God loved me. And so now we look at the cross and we say, “Well, thanks, thanks Jesus for, you know, love you Jesus, you’re the best; you took my penalty. But man, that’s what God wanted to do to me. God wanted to rip my flesh open and nail me to a cross while I bleed out and suffocate to death. That’s how angry God is at my sin.” Oh man, what worse universe could we possibly be living in if God wants to do that to anybody? We’re living in a Saw movie—sorry, for real. We’re living in a horrible nightmare that even even if you go to heaven, great, you’re still in heaven with a God that wants to torture people forever. So you—it’s a lose-lose in that in that view of of of the universe. So there’s got to be a…

Better, truth, right? There's got to be a soteriology that makes sense. It's just the opposite of unconditional love; it's the polar opposite. There has to be a soteriology that takes into account free will and sin and suffering, but doesn't turn them into these ludicrous contradictions and violations like, "Confess or burn in hell." Sorry, that is literally the absence of free choice.

And so the other idea that I confront in Christianity's soteriology is the idea that people reject God. It's like, no, no, no, no—you don't get to say God's omnipotent, omniscient, everything good comes from God, like James says, and then say, "But people can know God truly and still reject God." It's like, then you don't have a God who's all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing. If God can be rejected, like, look, you're positing that there would be something better to accept. Like, on what basis could anybody reject God? They would have to have in their minds an idea of something better. If you don't have an option, there's no idea of rejection, right? You reject something because you want something else. And so how does somebody truly reject God? It isn't possible. What they reject is a false understanding of God. They reject maybe a religious, hypocritical depiction of God. And Christians are so quick to say, "They rejected God, going to get what's coming to them." It's like, no, they've never seen God. If—if you think they're rejecting God, well, then we have proof they don't know God. God is the source of every good and perfect thing; all that is lovely and beautiful and true and loving comes from God. Good luck rejecting the source of all happiness and all love. It's—it's not possible. So that's another huge, uninvestigated assumption in Christianity's soteriology. Wow.

So now that we've gone through, through the 5 O's of ontology, why did we make this our first episode? Because this is one of the things we want to offer as an alternative to the way that mainstream religion operates—that we begin and end with the nature of God; and that whatever contradicts the nature of God—and there are many things in this book that do—but we think that that's part of the reason why the Bible is beautiful, because the Bible doesn't shy away from the human element, right? The human influence, the ways the ancient Jewish people misunderstood God, the ways that the ancient Jewish people had their ontology wrong, and the significant consequences that come from that when we misunderstand what is God really like, what does God really want from Humanity? When we misunderstand that, horrible things happen. And through, you know, the infiltration of animal sacrifice into the Torah and these Pagan practices that the Jewish people began following, the Jewish Christians of the first century, the Dead Sea scroll group—this sect split off from Orthodoxy probably around 300 BCE to form their own sect of Judaism in the desert of Qumran because they wanted to practice their own version of Judaism because they believed that the Torah had been corrupted by the lying pen of the scribes (Jeremiah 8:8) and instituted hundreds of man-made ritual laws which God never forgave Moses. And so they rejected those scriptures as being not from God and being the influence of man, because only the nature of God is real; only the nature of God is reliable. And look, the Muslims believe the same thing about the Quran: it's all literally true; you can't question it; it's written by God, dropped out of Heaven. Muslims believe the identical same thing. I'm pretty sure Mormons believe the same thing about the Book of Mormon. Again, just like animal sacrifices, what differentiates Christianity from any other religion if we just worship this book and say, "Well, everything I believe comes from this book and the way I interpret it"? There's nothing reliable there; that's the house built upon sand. Jesus said, "Build your house upon the rock." What does a rock represent metaphysically? Something that's unchanging, right? Truth, sturdy, yes, reliable, eternal—a rock; it doesn't change. So what is the only thing we know that fits that criteria? It's the ontological nature of God. So all the teachings of Jesus, our interpretation of the Bible, and everything about this spiritual philosophy that we're putting forth—the Jesus way—begins and ends with the ontological truth of God's nature, which Jesus, by the way, fully embodied and fully demonstrated, fully. And this—this debate is as old as the Bible itself. We see all throughout the Old Testament the various prophets going, "God never desired sacrifice; God just wants a humble, repentant heart," and then other people coming in and saying the exact opposite. So that's why it takes discernment from us to line up these qualities in the Bible, these passages, and see, "Does this resonate? Is this an alignment with these various ontological qualities of God?" Yeah.

So we hope that you take these five O's of God's nature and remember them every day, and hopefully maybe even begin a meditation practice every day. Maybe just pick one quality of God's nature and meditate for 10 or 20 minutes to start your day on God's omniscience. God already knows everything, and so, "God, I don't need to lean on my own understanding today because you know better than I, and so I'll take whatever answers you give me today, God, for you are omniscient. There's not a single thing outside of your sight; you know all things; you are before all things. I trust in your omniscience today, God." Imagine if you started your day with that kind of contemplative prayer. I'm telling you, man, these qualities get into you; they become a part of you. You more and more are able to grapple, understand, and be aware of these ontological truths governing everything, and you—you no longer—you less and less have the ability to wander into fear and doubt and all the things that represent ignorance of God. When you know God has all power, it can't be argued with. I just can't entertain a thought anymore that evil has power over me. How can you be anxious when the thought comes in your head, "God is good, God's eternal, God loves me, and God is here right now, right now"? How can you possibly be anxious and hold those truths within your heart at the simultaneously? Yeah, you can't; they transform you from the inside out. And so we—we recommend you meditate on these qualities every day and let them be the guiding principle of your life. And from here forward, everything we do and teach and share on this podcast will be in perfect alignment with these five qualities of God's nature. Yes, it's the guiding principle for our lives and our study of the Bible. And guys, we're going to touch on so many amazing topics; boy, you're in for a treat; we got a lot of good stuff coming your way. MH.

So um, we'll go ahead and wrap up the episode there. Uh, if you guys want to be a part of our email list to get notified for upcoming episodes, workshops, master classes we may hold, merchandise, any of it, you can uh, put your email in the link at the description below, and you'll be first to be notified for all the Jesus way content. And uh, anything you want to leave us with, James, before we close? Yeah, if anyone has an interesting question they'd like for us to discuss, or even a CH—a challenge, you know, from a different perspective, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, James_beneo, and if it's a good question, well, we'll discuss it on the show again. God is truth, so we're always seeking truth wherever it takes us. Amen, brother. And uh, last thing is if you guys want to join our email list for the Jesus Way podcast to get notified for future episodes, upcoming master classes, workshops, merchandise—we got a lot of cool stuff coming your way—you can click the link in the description below and put in your email address, and you'll be first to be notified about the Jesus Way podcast. So with all that being said, we'll leave the episode here for now. Thank you guys for tuning in, and until next time, the message is simple: love God, love people, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Jesus Way podcast. [Music]