Ep. 35| I'm Not Deconstructing—I'm Reconstructing

Note: This episode began as a Facebook Live.

You've heard people talk about "deconstructing faith." But what if the real work is reconstruction?

Josiah shares his personal journey: from a Pharisee-like faith full of man-made rules to a direct relationship with Jesus. It started at a church in a brewery—and it changed everything.

• What really happened during the 400-year intertestamental period (and why the Pharisees matter today)
• Marginal glossing: How biblical texts were edited, and nobody tells you about it
• The woman participation doctrine—a perfect example of man-made religion disguised as biblical truth
• Why the church is conflating God's teachings with man's teachings
• The new reformation: Getting back to Jesus, not church rules
• Ask, Seek, Knock: How to find a direct relationship with God

If you've left the church, been hurt by it, or felt like something was off—this episode will hit different.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

All right, we are live. Okay, Coolio. All right, sweet. Um, usually it gives me a countdown, but uh just got frozen up. Man, I'm having all sorts of technical difficulties today, guys. It's the last video that I just recorded was 55 minutes, and uh turns out that I was having issues with my mic. So I'm gonna try to bring the energy. This is my second take, but I want to address this. And you know, a lot of people are seeing my Facebook post and they seem to think that I am deconstructing, all right. Deconstruction is basically the process. If you're not familiar with it, it's the process of where a person basically walks away from their faith and they no longer be, you know, oftentimes it's almost always Christians who you know are part of some sort of a deconstruction movement where you know they no longer believe in Jesus, they no longer believe in the Bible or any of that kind of stuff, right? So you guys are seeing my posts, and uh essentially I have some people messaging me and asking me and you know, talking to me and stuff. They're like, dude, are you deconstructing? Let me just answer it. Am I deconstructing? Kind of, but really what I'm really doing is reconstructing. And let me tell you something, guys. I've never felt more born again, I've never felt closer to Jesus. Dude, I am so thankful. I've never felt this free, I have never felt this good, dude. I am so freaking on fire. And uh, I just want to address everything in this video, and then we're also gonna get into something called marginal glossing, which is something I think that every Christian needs to know about. And uh, it's all gonna be tied together. So let me just kind of start with this. Let me tell you my personal story about being a Pharisee. Before I tell you the story, though, we have to find out who were the Pharisees, okay? So the Pharisees were the religious leaders of the time of Jesus' day, and Jesus was constantly getting in arguments and fights with them because Jesus constantly was pointing out that as the religious leaders, they claimed to make up all these religious rules, and they had they claim to, you know, have all these uh things that you have to do, and they claimed that they were God's rules and they were God's things that people had to do, but in reality, it was just man making stuff up. All right, Jesus got in many, many fights with them. And uh let me just kind of go in their history because it'll help to make a little bit of sense. So there was a period of time, basically between the Old Testament and the New Testament, it was a 400-year period, and essentially there were no prophets, there were no books of the Bible being written or any of that kind of stuff at the time. And what happened is during the in um during the intertestamental period, a group of Pharisees came up, they became the religious teachers and basically the arbiters for the Bible, the Old Testament and God's laws and the law of Moses and all this kind of stuff, right? They were the interpreters, they were the enforcers. Okay, so basically you have this 400-year period where there were no prophets or any of this other stuff, at least that we know about. And after this 400-year period, the Pharisees were in charge. And during this 400-year period, essentially what was happening is that the Pharisees, and there's also the Sadducees, I'm trying to keep this short and sweet, but um, the Pharisees essentially added a bunch of teachings to God's teachings, and then they told the people over time, over a course of hundreds of years, as you can imagine, people started to conflate which teachings are God's teachings, which teachings are man's teachings, and it really just became this big bundled-up ball of string that nobody could, you know, unwind, essentially. And so during this 400-year period is when this whole thing took place. This group of Pharisees emerges, and then an amazing thing happens. The Messiah comes. Okay, the Messiah was the promised one who would reconcile our relationship with God, and he would be basically God living in human form, part of God, living in human form. And uh he would essentially through his life, he would ransom himself for many, and there's kind of like some deep theological stuff that I won't even kind of get into with all of that, but essentially the Messiah came, and when the Messiah came, he was constantly dunking all over the Pharisees, getting in fights with them, getting in arguments, and pointing out how wrong they were. Okay. I want to tell you my personal story about being a Pharisee. I've actually had two conversions, you guys. The first conversion I had is when I first met Jesus, and that was an amazing story. Maybe I'll tell that at the end, maybe not. We'll see. But first conversion I had is I became a believer in Jesus, and I had a really special way, dude. I had like this vision, and it was freaking amazing and all that kind of stuff. If you guys know my testimony, um, it's awesome. I'll share it here in the comments if if you want to hear about it. But essentially, I was doing the dishes one day. Jesus tells me, God literally speaks to me, he says, Josiah, you need to pray on your knees right now. I'm led to this office. I have a vision. Like that was the day that I became born again. Okay. That was my first conversion. My second conversion was I stopped being a Pharisee. And here's how it happened. My parents started going to this church, uh, yeah, that meets in a brewery where they drink beer. They invited me to it. And when I was originally invited to this church, I said to myself, Man, I just hope nobody's getting drunk. That was that was literally my first reaction. And I was like, man, I just I don't know how I feel about this. And I knew immediately, hey, you know what? I should go check this thing out and see what it's all about. Within first five freaking minutes, dude, I show up to this thing and I see how much Jesus just loves every single person in the room, how he's ministering to everybody. You know, I start showing up for a couple months and all this stuff. I see, you know, evidence of changed lives and all this kind of stuff, man. It's freaking amazing. And I realized that my initial kind of conviction with that whole thing may have been misplaced. Okay, that's what got me on this whole path. This was back in October of this last year. All right. That's what got me thinking about this kind of stuff. So that was uh that was basically it. And what I realized through this process now, it's been, you know, eight months or whatever it's been, actually, probably more. But uh, what I started to learn is that, dude, we have absolutely, as the church, ended up in a place where we are conflating the teachings of man with the teachings of God. And as a result of this, dude, people are getting locked out of heaven. People are freaking getting the door shutting their face to heaven because we're doing the same crap that was happening 2,000 years ago, okay? So I want to get into a couple things about, you know, why I'm saying what I'm saying and really where I think we're at. But I'm gonna start here, okay? The very first thing that I want to share with every single person on here. Number one, I believe that we are in a new reformation of the church. I truly do. All right. I think that we live in a very amazing time. So I'm gonna share some church history with you guys. Before I do, though, I want to address anybody from my old churches, anybody who's been a part of a mystery or anything else. First things first, I love you guys so much. I'm so thankful for you. I'm thankful for the relationships. I'm thankful for the discipleship. I'm thankful for the mentorship and all that kind of stuff, dude. I got nothing but love for every single one of you. I think that you are absolutely doing the best with what you got. And I think that you're probably actually doing the Lord's work. Honestly, I believe that God called you to be doing the ministry that you're doing. But I think there's a new thing that's happening, and uh, this is what I know that I'm being called to, right? So I want to share a little bit of church history about how the church has grown over the years so that you guys can see exactly what's going on, and I think it's amazing because I'm not the only one who's deconstructing right now. I'm freaking reconstructing, and I'm reconstructing on the cornerstone of our faith, Jesus. That's what's happening, you guys. I'm getting back to Jesus. I'm stripping the man-made stuff away. I'm getting back to his teachings, I'm getting away from the Pharisee stuff, man. I'm literally living in the light that God has for us all. And he's set my me free in so many ways, and it's so awesome, dude. I just want this for everybody. So, anyhow, um, let's uh so so so let's talk a little bit about how the church grew and and how we got here today, because it's gonna be an amazing thing. So when Jesus first came, essentially, you know, he came, he died, ransomed himself for many, went back into heaven, 500 eyewitnesses, some sort of a shockwave. This is the technical, um, like sociological term, some sort of a shockwave event happened at the time of Jesus that changed all of human history forever. Okay, we all know that that's without debate. Whatever it was, whatever. Something really, really big happened during that time. And what ended up happening is the Christians started to write down letters, all right. And and particularly Paul, who is the first basically like real hardcore missionary, he was he was told to go out and tell all the world about Jesus, okay? Not just the Jews, not just you know, the people in Jerusalem where where um Jesus' main ministry was going on. He was told to go out and share the gospel with everybody. All right. Now, an amazing thing happened at that time where there was an invention called Roman roads. Think of it, just like the road that you drive your car on. This was newer technology at that time. And those Roman roads were all connected to all the lands all across, you know, the you know, Asia Minor and all this kind of stuff, like all in the area. And what the Roman roads did is it allowed for a really, really fast, it was an information system. It allowed for the dissemination of information to travel very quickly. It was an amazing thing that happened at this time. Not only that, but Greek, a certain style of Greek, also was basically being spoken in all these, you know, different countries that have their main languages, but they have Greek too now. And so between Greek and the Roman roads, essentially what happened is people were able to disseminate the gospel of Jesus, his teachings, all that kind of stuff. They were able to get it out very, very quickly. That was the first time that the church really grew very quickly, okay? If we fast forward to around the 1500s-ish, okay, let's say the the 1500s-ish, around that time, uh, we had what's called the Protestant Reformation. All right. Now, this is where I'm going to get into some stuff, and I think that it's important that we talk about it because everybody deserves to know why they believe what they believe, and they believe, you know, and they know that what they're they're basing their opinions on are based on truth. Okay. So around the 1500s, so this is like 1500 years after Jesus came, all right. Um, the Catholic Church, which just means universal church, but the the Roman Catholic Church at this time existed. There's some other, you know, denominations, some of this kind of stuff, but I'm trying to keep it short and sweet. So basically, um, in the 1500s, people started to realize, hey, you know what? A lot of these Catholic traditions were actually contradictory to the teachings of Jesus. We want to get closer to the teachings of Jesus. And so what ended up happening is this is called the Protestant Reformation. This is where people broke away from Catholicism, started to worship God more in line with the teachings of Jesus. But there was some crazy stuff that was happening at this time. And this is the part that we as Protestants, nobody's gonna tell us this. This is where we need to do our own research, okay? During the Protestant Reformation, there was actually a third group of people, and they thought that the Reformation was not going nearly far enough. They said, Hey, this is cool that you guys want to get back to Jesus. This is cool that you guys want to get back and you know, get closer to his teachings and what he gave us and all that kind of stuff. But what ended up happening is these people argued that the Reformation wasn't going far enough. It was still keeping a lot of these, you know, Catholic traditions, things like having a building, things like having clergy, which versus laity, basically meaning that you have like kind of uh, you know, you have your leadership and then you have your everyday consumer Christians going to church on Sunday morning, you have to be there, this kind of stuff. Systematic theology, you know, all these types of things. The the uh this uh there was a third group of people who disagreed with these things, and they said, we need to get closer even to the teachings of Jesus. We should really have in the early the very earliest church, like the first 20 years of the church and some of this kind of stuff. That's what these people argued. They were called the Anabaptist, okay? That means re-baptizer. Why were they called re-baptizers? Well, it was actually a mocking term for them, all right. So, what actually happened during the Protestant Reformation that nobody tells you is that there was a through group, third group of people. They thought that the Reformation wasn't going far enough. You're basically slapping lipstick on a pig, you know, you're swapping priests for pastors, and you know, you're just basically repeating all the same stuff that the Catholic Church did. So that's what people thought. And uh basically this third group of Anabaptists became heavily persecuted. And it wasn't just by the Catholic Church, it was also the Protestants themselves. These were people who were being burned at the stake, they were being drowned. Okay, the the preferred method for killing the Anabaptists at the time was drowning them. Um there's some nuance there, and uh, but basically it's a play on words like hey, if you guys, you know, want to be re-baptizers, we'll baptize you a third time and we'll just drown you to death. Okay, so those were the Anabaptists, right? That's something that, you know, church history, for whatever reason, that's not very taught very much. Um, probably because the Anabaptists were, you know, not down with Calvin and Luther and uh you know Zwingli and some of these guys during that time. And so we all know that the winners write history, that's just a truthful statement right there. Um and so with that being said, that's kind of a lost chapter in church history. It's very interesting. But anyhow, during this Protestant Reformation, while the winners were writing history, and an amazing invention came out. It was called the printing press. The printing press allowed for the rapid dissemination of information. It was an information system the exact same way that the Roman roads were an information system, and it allowed for the very quick dissemination of information. The winners wrote history, they shared it with the world, and now the rest is what we have. Well, out of the Protestant Reformation, and actually through the Catholic Church and everything else, okay, we have 2,000 years. Okay, it only took the Pharisees 400 years to come up with all their man-made craziness. We've had 2,000 years since Jesus has come. And as a result, man, I'm just telling you guys, when you do the research on all of this, when you look at systematic theology and you look at, you know, these things that we've all been taught, or I would argue, indoctrinated into believing, when we look at this stuff, we see that these are not in line with the teachings of Jesus. And here's what I mean by this, okay? John Calvin, who basically accounts for pretty much like the overwhelming majority of the Protestant church today, he was a lawyer and he came up essentially, he he really popularized like this systematic theology of essentially believing that the Bible is the holy, infallible, perfect written word of God. It was written word for word by the Holy Spirit, and um essentially, literally word for word, the Holy Spirit wrote it, which means that the writings of Paul would have been equal to the authority of Jesus' words himself. And then through apostolic succession, these are all these church terms and all this kind of stuff, but through apostolic succession, we, you know, we can trust that the Bible is true and that it's God's word. Okay, this is kind of like the whole thing, right? Well, John Calvin didn't have access to the information that we have today. And and here's what I'm getting at, and this is where I think the church is, all right? If I want to look up anything, I can pick up my phone, and in two minutes or less, I'm gonna have the information that I want. Is it gonna be true? Well, I should probably fact check it, all right? That's that's definitely where we're at in this day and time. These guys didn't have access to all that kind of stuff. None of these guys had access to any of this kind of stuff, all right? I truly believe that we live in an age of information through the internet, and now we have like AI, which is basically the internet on steroids. I truly believe that we are in a modern reformation of the church where the truth is coming out and the truth will set us free, you guys, and it's gonna be an incredible, incredible thing. I want to throw in a quick caveat here, all right? This is very, very, very important. I want you guys to know my personality type. And this is, I want to share this because I am by disc assessments, I am an I D. Okay, I'm giving you guys the goods. If you look this up, you're gonna know all my strengths and weaknesses and everything else. But one of the things that you're gonna find is that people with my personality type, we treat truth as a virtue. It's like our highest, most, highest motivating thing in life. We absolutely love the truth, it motivates us to do every single thing that we do. Whether it's good news or bad news, we don't really care. It's the way that our brains are wired and it's what we love. I am an ID. You can look this up yourself, okay? Along with that, I am addicted to the truth. Anyone who knows me knows about my election evidence program where uh website, where I literally for three years ate, slept, and breathed all the election stuff that was going on. I created a huge database. I literally was pulling two, three all-nighters every single week, documenting every single thing I could find because I was trying to get to the bottom of the truth on the 2020 election. Was it stolen or was it not? I don't know. Okay. Well, actually, I do know. Go to electionevidence.com, you go find out, and then you'll know too. Anyhow, I love this kind of stuff, man. This is what I'm all about. And so what I'm doing right now is I am contextually going through all of the teachings of Jesus. I am contextually going through all of the teachings of Paul and all the New Testament writers, and what I'm finding is that the information that we have been taught is not true. Okay? I know that sounds offensive. Stick with me. Let me keep going, let me cook a little bit because we're gonna talk about some marginal glosses. We're also gonna be talking about some other things that you may not know about, all right? I'm addicted to the truth. I want the truth because the truth does set us free. And I believe that if we have the truth, then we're living in reality, and if we're living in reality, then we can make better decisions, okay? So here's what's going on, all right. We have information like never before, and the information is absolutely fascinating. All right. I can go look on my phone, I can actually research all this stuff, I can research Calvin, I can research why, you know, one of his contemporaries was burned with not just any wood, but green wood, because green wood burns slower and it's more painful and it sends more of a message. There's some nuance there. I'm not saying that Calvin ordered that, but he did order his execution, and that doesn't really sound like something that Jesus would be doing when you think about it, you know, persecuting and burning his enemies and all this kind of stuff, right? Did Jesus ever say, hey, burn your enemies? I would love that. No. All right, well, let's look in. Hey, this is the truth. These are some of these things, okay? And look, I know, you know, systematic theologists will say, Oh, well, you gotta separate the person from the teaching and all that kind of stuff. All right, fine, whatever, it's all good. I don't care. Um to me, it doesn't seem very regenerate regenerative uh to be doing those types of things, but that's fine. We can agree to disagree on all of that kind of stuff. Um but anyhow, so here's where we're at with with all of these things. So I think it's really important too to mention what does contextually learning the Bible mean? What does that mean? Learning the Bible, contextually reading the Bible. This is where you study the history of everything. All right, you're studying how would whoever's writing these letters or these books or any of this kind of stuff, how would this message relate to the people at the time? What were their beliefs? What was their history? What was their knowledge? When when a certain phrase is mentioned, things like the size, you know, stars falling from the sky and all this kind of stuff. Well, contextually, did that mean something to those people? And is that a clue that unlocks the truth of whatever the teaching is, right? Contextual dude, contextual learning is so much freaking fun. And I promise you guys, dude, go through the teachings of Jesus, take some time and learn about you know what a first century Jew would have been hurt hearing when Jesus was teaching. You're gonna be absolutely blown away. It's incredible stuff, man. It truly is. So I've been going through the Bible totally contextually, looking at every single word, literally every single line, every single word. I've been looking at this stuff, trying to find out what does this stuff mean? You know, like what is the contextual teaching? And what I'm finding is that what I have been taught through man made religion is not holding up contextually at all. It's really not, you guys. I can Go through so many examples with you on this. All right. But one of the examples that I want to go through, and I think this is important because this really kind of points out like some of the stuff that I was saying about Pharisees and some of that kind of stuff. I think it's going to come home. And this is one small example. Okay. So modern Christians today believe in something called uh biblical inerrancy. Almost all, you know, like Christians, I guess you could say people who go to church, churches, all that kind of stuff. We believe in something called um inerrancy. It's a form of systematic theology. Calvin made that really popular with Protestants. There's a couple of church fathers who Jesus told us not to call anybody our father. We're going to talk about that in a second. But there's plenty of church fathers who kind of set the ground stage for this view of looking through the Bible, uh, kind of like a lawyer. In fact, Calvin was a lawyer, and he's the one that, again, you know, for Protestants, really popular is this thing. Um, but it's basically looking at the Bible as a textbook, everything's fact, everything's written by the Holy Spirit, and uh everything is perfectly written. Don't debate it. Hey, you can't talk about that. You're denying the Bible, and that's what inerrancy is. Hey, you can't say that. You're denying the Bible. What kind of heresy is this? That's inerrancy, okay? Modern inerrancy, the way that we look at it today. And actually, the early church had a way different version of inerrancy, and this is where it gets all confusing, and this is something else that nobody tells you about. But I'm not even here to talk about that stuff today. Here's what I want to point out. Okay, there is something called, and this is just one example, all right? One example. There's something called marginal glossing, okay? A marginal gloss was when scribes were writing down the Bible, because here's how it basically worked is at this time as the Bible was being made and disseminated and all that kind of stuff, you would have a scribe, and his job was to basically copy the letters for to make a copy so that you could, you know, distribute it all across the planet, right? Or wherever it was gonna go. Well, the scribes used to do something where they would write notes into the margins, and sometimes, you know, it'd be things like, you know, end here, or it's just a note for the next scribes. Oftentimes it was that. A lot of the times it was a scribe's opinion or somebody trying to sometimes, and we have direct examples of this that have been forensically analyzed all the way down to the very ink that's being used that proves that this is what was happening, guys. Sometimes they would put in their opinions, and those opinions somehow ended up in the Bible. This is a true thing, all right? So, what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna cover only one of these things, and I'm only gonna cover this one thing because what I really want to do more than anything is I want you guys to think about this. Okay, if you are a Christ follower, does anybody's words hold more authority than Jesus? I'm gonna repeat that. If you're if you're following Christ, is anybody more important or more authoritative than him? Of course not. He was the Messiah, right? So keep that in mind as we go through this. Are we following God's laws or are we following man's laws? All right. I'm gonna give you one example. One example of a marginal gloss. This is only one example, there's many. What I want you guys to do is I want you to go into the internet and I want you to type in most famous examples of marginal glossing in the New Testament, and you're gonna find all sorts of stuff. Very interesting stuff, stuff that your pastor won't tell you, your priest won't tell you, nobody's gonna tell you this because they're gonna think that you're gonna deconstruct and leave the faith if you find out the truth. Why? I don't know, man. I'm gonna talk about that because when Peter handed when Jesus handed Peter the keys to heaven and he told us to be gatekeepers, is what he was saying in context. This is another teaching that drives me frickin' up the wall. What Jesus was saying in context is that we are supposed to keep the gate open and not shut heaven in people's faces. Okay, that's what he was teaching there. Go read the Greek, go read through it contextually, you'll be blown away. All right, it's another story for another time. Matthew 23, one of the greatest, my favorite chapter of the entire Bible, if I'm being honest with you guys. Matthew 23 is such a freaking banger. But anyhow, so here we are, and um there's something called marginal glossing, where essentially scribes would sometimes write their opinions, or they would write, you know, some notes, and those notes made it into the Bible itself. I'm not gonna go through all the stuff, but you guys are gonna find this out. So I'm gonna focus on only one example, and again, the whole idea behind all of this is are we listening to Pharisees or are we listening to Jesus? Okay, that's the whole point of all of this. All right, let's get into this. First Corinthians chapter 14, particularly the verses of 26 through 40, and those verses focus on this very, very interesting, but those focus, uh, those verses focus on Paul's teaching to church services. Hey, what's acceptable church behavior, what's not, you know, when are some of these types of things? And you know, people were running crazy back then, they were doing all sorts of stuff, and so Paul gives them instructions, happens to focus on prophecy. It also happens to focus on speaking in tongues. These are debated things in the church today, all right. Right off the bat, one thing I will say, if you're actually reading Corinthians, 1 Corinthians in context, what you're gonna find is that prophecy is not what we've been taught it is. Prophecy is a gift where you're speaking to somebody, the Lord puts it on your on your heart to share a message with somebody that means something to them in context. It's either something good and encouraging or it's something convicting. But either way, it's a message that the Lord has for that person at that time. And trust me, I have had people say some stuff to me that hits me, and I know it's coming from the Holy Spirit. That's what prophecy is. It's not talking, you know, it's not about this word of faith, 1950s, you know, prosperity gospel stuff where a guy gets on stage and says, Jesus is coming back soon. Give me your money, you know, give me $10,000 so that you can have your blessing. Okay, that's prosperity gospel, that's trash. All this modern-day prophecy stuff, most of it's trash. Go look at what prophecy was in context to a first century Jew who would have been a brand new Christ follower. What did that mean to the church at the time? You're gonna find something totally different, totally different than what you've been taught. I promise you that, and that is by design. No offense, I'm gonna say it. Systematic theology is a systematic scam. Okay, systematic theology is a systematic scam, and it is designed to honestly keep you further from Christ. And I know that sounds so offensive, and listen, if this is what you guys believe and this is what you do, number one, if you're a pastor, okay, or if you're a preacher or any of this kind of stuff, teacher or any of that kind of stuff, and you're still doing this, I understand where you're coming from, and I love you so much. We can absolutely agree to disagree on these things. And I do believe that God called you to be the person that He called you to be today. I think that as messy as the Protestant Reformation was in its time with, you know, kind of the old guard and the new guard, I think that we're just doing the same thing. In this new reformation, I know that I've been called to, dude, witness to the lost sheep of this world, people like myself, people like my buddies, everybody that I know, you know, like I know that I've been called to, man, share Jesus with the world in this way. I also believe that you've been called to share Jesus in the way that you have to. So I don't want you to feel personally attacked when I attack these ideas, but we are in a new time and we do have information, and the truth is the truth. And if we really love people, okay, here's why I'm doing all this stuff. I'm just gonna freaking uh before I get into the first Corinthians 14, let me tell you something. The reason I'm doing this is because I have friends and family members right now, as we speak, got no problem with Jesus at all. In fact, I'll bet you if Jesus could just be Jesus to them, they would freaking fall in love with Jesus. I'll bet you they'd have a wonderful relationship. But you know what? They're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, all over this board. And you know what? They've heard all their lives, all this crazy religious stuff about all this Phariseeal nonsense, about all these things about baptism, going to church on Sunday mornings, going to a building, all this kind of junk. They see it and they know that it's a scam. Okay? Why? Because it's kind of obvious from the outside looking in. I'm just being real with you guys, being honest about this. And you know what? They're right. The teachings of man and all this religious stuff, which I'm gonna prove through marginal glossing, which is something that all Christians need to know about. There's a reason why this stuff doesn't resonate with them. All this hyper-religious stuff. It's because we're not teaching Jesus. Might think you're teaching Jesus, but are you? Are you 100% sure? We're gonna get into that more. I'm gonna talk about some of the things that Jesus said. We're gonna get into that. I love these people. They are my friends and my family members. They deserve to know the truth on these things so that they too can have a relationship with the Prince of Peace and the Lord of Lords. They deserve that. And you guys as believers, you guys deserve to know why you believe what you believe. Honestly, you absolutely deserve to know why you believe what you believe. You shouldn't feel gaslit that you're learning about church history. You shouldn't feel gaslit that you're learning about these new concepts like marginal glossing and some of these types of things, right? No. You deserve to know why you know what you know and why you believe what you believe. And you know what? Voice of truth, spirit of truth, the truth is like a lion, all right? Set it free, it absolutely will defend itself. You don't have to defend it. All you have to do is share it. Who gives a flying crap if people believe it or not? It's not on you. Can't do anything. Jesus actually taught us that no one nobody can even be convinced that he was the Messiah without the power of the Holy Spirit. Share the information and let people do their thing, but don't freaking wrap it up in a bunch of trash that's not true. That's terrible. That's what the Pharisees did. We're gonna read about that in a second. Alright? So let me give you one example, one single example that goes against this whole theory that the Bible is the holy, infallible, perfect written word of God, something else. Holy? Really? That's some King James stuff, man. Like, holy? Is anything in this life holy besides the Messiah? Really? Anything. Can you name one thing that's holy, especially an inanimate object? Can you name one thing that's holy besides the Messiah in this world? I don't know, man. I don't feel comfortable calling anything holy. Even if it is a book that has holy words in it, has the words of life in it, right? That's all it is. It's a book that has the words of life in it. And the words of life are coming from Jesus directly in those gospels, man. So that that should that should that should give you guys a red flag right off the bat, honestly. What is this? Okay, and we've all been taught too that if you question these things, well, now you're a heretic who's gonna burn in hell and you're gonna die and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're going apostate and you're leaving the church and blah blah blah blah blah. Listen, dude, that's just kind of cult stuff. I'm just gonna be real with you. That's like cult mentality. It is. That's not the truth, it's not what Jesus taught, and you don't have to believe it. I know this because I'm going through all this stuff contextually right now as we speak. So let's talk about this marginal gloss in First Corinthians chapter 14. Okay. The chapter is all about prophecy, uh, spiritual gifts, some of this kind of stuff, how a church service should go and everything else. Now, I'm gonna read it because uh, and actually I'll just pick up at um let's pick up at verse 30. Okay, verse 30. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. What are they prophesying about? They just have good words of encouragement to each other. That's what Paul's saying here, okay. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets, basically meaning, like it's not like you go into a trance or something, you work with the Holy Spirit, works in you to give you the word. For God is not a God of disorder, but a God of peace, as in all the congregations of the Lord's people. Now, here's where it gets weird, okay. So he's talking all about like, you know, church sessions and and you know what should be acceptable and not. And then all of a sudden we get these two verses. Very interesting. Verse 34 says, Women should remain. So here's what it says. So I'll just start at 33 and I'll read it through 34 and 35. So starting at 33, for God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, as in all the congregations of the Lord's people. Then out of nowhere we have verse 34. Women should remain silent in churches. They are not allowed to speak, but they must be in submission as the law says. Excuse me, the law? Okay, what? If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. Well, I've been taught that the Holy Spirit wrote those words, and I've been taught that God doesn't want women taught speaking in churches. Now, interestingly enough, this actually goes in direct conflict with 1 Corinthians 11, verse 5, which talks all about women prophesying and women speaking in tongues and doing all the same things. Okay. So on one hand, Paul is encouraging women to do these things in 11, verse 5, or at least it's happening and he's not opposing it there. And then all of a sudden we have Paul only three chapters later, which they didn't even have chapters and verses back then. That's just another way to influence and manipulate you to be that it's one way that you you can be influenced and manipulated. All right, I'll put it that way. There's also order too, and it does help for studying things. But so on one hand, you had Paul, okay. Over here, you had Paul saying, Hey, women prophesy, they do all this stuff in church, right? That was 11.5. And then shortly right after that, then all of a sudden you have women should remain silent in churches. They're not allowed to speak, they must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it's disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. That was a marginal gloss. Did you guys know that during this time of about the 300s, there was kind of a movement within some of these scribes and churches to say some derogatory things against women? Did you know that Jesus completely broke the foundation of like the world when he had women being a part of his ministry? It's totally unheard of. It was an amazing thing. Did you know that women had prominent leadership and teaching and speaking roles, according to Paul, in the early church? Did you know this? People like Phoebe. Did you know this? Interesting. How come you don't know this? Or do you know this and you just keep it a secret? Why are you keeping a secret, man? Did you know that I'll t I'll I'll straight up say it, dude. Did you know that you are shutting the doors to heaven in my wife's face when you purport that stuff? When you know it's a lie, but you don't have the courage or the guts to stand up and actually say something about it. Did you know that you're lying to my wife and you're literally shutting heaven in her face because of this trash? Did you know that? This was a marginal gloss. Versus 34 and 35 were added around three to four hundred. And here's how it worked. I'm not gonna get into all this stuff, but here's what I want you guys to do go look up marginal glossing. Most uh, I guess you could say like most famous examples. Okay, most famous examples of marginal glossing. This one will pop up. It's a good one. Did you know that in this particular example, basically, the scribe who is filling this out, so the scribes had one rule, which is you never leave stuff out. Okay, the scribes had a number one rule: you never leave information. Like, if it's up for debate, you include it in the text because like the most egregious and worst things that a scribe could do is cutting out God's teachings. This is how they looked at things, okay. This is a situation in verses 34 and 35 where when the scribe was in, and by the way, guys, this particular example has actually been forensically identified all the way down to the chemical chemical components of the ink. This thing is a slam duck, it is not even up for debate at this point. But did you know that that was a marginal gloss? It was some guy's opinions, he put it into the margins. The scribe who was copying this put an asterisk, it was his equivalent of an asterisk, and said, uh, I've got a bunch of manuscripts I'm copying. They had different manuscripts that they worked off of, and there was some serious, serious errors. He knew the scribe marked this specific section saying, um, this stuff about women was added later. That's what happened, okay. Frickin' mind blowing, all right? But I've been taught personally, okay, by people who have the best intentions for me. All right. But I have been taught that the Holy Spirit says women should remain silent in the churches, they are not allowed to speak, they must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home. For it is disgraceful for a women, a woman to speak in church. I I was taught that God said that. Do you guys see how freaking egregious and disgusting that is? Honestly, it truly is egregious and disgusting. This is only one example. This doesn't even include how you literally have to freaking read the Greek of the New Testament if you truly want to get the context of most things, because you can change literally the influence of how a sentence reads, the connotation of how a sentence reads, by changing one word from like the to there. Okay, that's just one random example. But one word can change the entire connotation of how something is worded, you know, and this is where, dude, you'll get some funky stuff, man. And I I won't even get into these examples. I'll let you guys research this on your own, but you get into some freaking weird examples where like a sentence ends and now it's starting at like a preposition and some of this kind of stuff. You know, they put the period in a certain spot so that it would have a certain effect on certain things. Dude, it gets freaky. Okay. I'm only sharing this one example in 1 Corinthians 14 because it's just one example that the teachings of men have been conflated with the teachings of God, and people are suffering as a result. I want to share something with you, and this is so important. Okay, and you guys should read the Greek on this too. This is very, very good. Matthew 23, the greatest. Hey, you know what? In my opinion, I don't care. Greatest freaking chapter of all time. Absolutely, one of my freaking favorite chaps. I don't, it's the best of all, it's it's the greatest of all time. It just is what it is. Matthew chapter 23. I promise you guys, if you're digging, dude, if you're picking up what I'm putting down here, you go back and you read Matthew chapter 23, you're gonna get fired up. Promise you that. So here's what he says, though, in verses eight. Uh starting at verse eight, he says, but you are not to be called rabbi. He's talking to all of us, okay? You're not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. A rabbi was a religious teacher. And do not call anyone on earth father, for you have one father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called leaders, for you have one leader, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. Okay, and he goes on to say some of this kind of stuff. So let's break that down. But you are not to be called rabbi, religious teacher, for you have one teacher, and you are brothers. You are equal, none of this clergy, okay. None of this, like, hey, these are leaders and these are lay people, you know, these are the consumers sitting in the pews, and these are the people serving them. No way. You have one rabbi, one teacher, and you are all brothers. Who's that teacher? That's the Messiah, right? And do not call anyone on earth father. How many church fathers are the ones that came up with systematic theology, okay? And all this other stuff, church fathers, with all this stuff, right? Who are these church fathers? Jesus told us don't call anyone on earth our father, for you have one father, he's in heaven. Nor are you to be called leaders, for you have one leader, the Messiah. That's what the Greek says. Your version of the Bible probably says that you know, you're not to be called instructors. Okay, it repeats instructors and teachers twice kind of situation. Doesn't make any sense. The Greek actually says leaders. Go read it. So, anyhow, so here we go. And I also want to talk about when when Jesus handed Peter, this is one of the contextual, you guys, you have to understand things in context, but when Jesus handed Peter the keys to heaven, it was because Peter just out loud confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, and as a result. Peter was the first believer. He was the church. When Jesus says, I'm going to build my church on you, he's saying, I'm going to build my church on the believers. When he hands them the keys to heaven and he says to Peter, you're going to hold this. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound, and whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. We don't even understand what that means because we don't understand the concept of rabbis binding and loosing things in the day. Essentially, what Jesus was actually teaching us contextually is Jesus was saying, Hold the gate open. Do not shut the gate in people's faces. Okay? That's what he was telling Peter. And when I read Matthew chapter 23, just a little bit after what Jesus was teaching us in the rabbis and all this kind of stuff, this is what Jesus says: Woe to you, you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. And then we tell people that it was the Holy Spirit that excludes the women. What are we doing? What are we frickin' doing, you guys? Come on. If you are a Christ follower, if you claim to be all about the truth, if you claim to be all about loving people, if you claim to be a good steward of all this stuff, wouldn't you take some time to research this? Wouldn't you take some time to get this one right? Wouldn't you tell your congregation? Wouldn't you tell people about this? Wouldn't you talk about this? Come on, man. If you were telling the truth, wouldn't you frickin' tell people about this? If you love people, wouldn't you challenge your own thoughts? Wouldn't you get into the nitty-gritty of these things? And listen, this is literally, I haven't even freaking scratched the surface yet. I haven't even scratched it. This is one example, you guys. Go look up marginal glosses. Most famous examples. Go look it up in the New Testament. Dude, go look into systematic theology. Go look into the teachings of Jesus. What the heck are we doing out here? It's crazy. Now listen, I'm not bashing anybody from churches. I'm not bashing anybody for learning or believing what they believe or doing what they do. I'm not gonna bash anybody for that, man. I I get it. We all love Jesus. We're trying to get people to him. But when you're confronted with this information, you have a choice to make. Do you continue to purport the lie? Do you decide that you're going to start telling the truth more? All the truth. Okay, right? Tell all the truth. Let the truth defend itself. Or are you gonna just what are you gonna do, man? You got two choices. You can either continue to lie or you can start telling the truth. It's gonna cost you to start telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Jesus said, Blessed are you when people persecute you, say all kind of uh what is it? Blessed are you when people persecute you on my name's sake. Oh, fudge. Okay, I'm screwing it up. Blessed are you when people persecute you and say all sorts of false things about you on my name's sake. Yes, blessed are you and be uh exceedingly glad for your for great is your reward in heaven. All right, there we go. I'm not great at memorizing the Bible verses, all that kind of stuff, but um, dude, that's what Jesus taught us, okay? You might have to make a hard choice. You might have to make the same choice I'm making. You might have to choose the truth and to love people and to love your family and friends, and to love the lost sheep, and to get them the teachings of Jesus in their unedited, loving, most exalted form without the teachings of men. You're gonna have to make that choice and you're gonna lose a lot in the process, all right? You're gonna be persecuted, people are gonna say you're deconstructing, they're gonna say all sorts of false things about you for Jesus' name's sake. But guess what? Great is your reward in heaven, and I'm gonna say great is your reward in life. You know why? Because I don't have to defend all this crazy stuff no more. I get to live my life, man. I get to go with the teachings of Jesus. I feel more born again today than maybe ever. Honestly. Alright, you guys, I'm pretty much ranting at this point, but um that's where I'm at. Truth is truth. Jesus loves us all. If your guys' life sucks, dude. If you feel like your life is hard, and you feel like things aren't just working out, and maybe you feel like, hey, you know, this guy's actually making sense, this random freaking guy that I just found on Facebook here, dude. This guy's cooking. If you feel that way, man, come on, Jesus. Come to Jesus, he is the Prince of Life, you guys. He says, if you want to find him, all you gotta do is you gotta ask, seek, and knock. All right, what does that mean? Ask. God, I want to know who you are. How do you pray? Right? It's easy. Talk to God like He's your best friend. God, I want to know who you are. I want to know what this is all about. You ask. You seek. Start reading the Bible. Dude, get in touch with me. Send me a freaking message. I'd love to talk. You seek. God, who are you? And you knock. When you find him, you say, Lord, I want to participate in this thing. I believe you're the real deal. I want to participate with you. I want to be a part of this creation. I want to be a part of this process. And you know, uh something else I want to share with you. And this is uh, some people are gonna say this is the worst advice in the world. I don't really care. Couldn't care less, really. But I've had many friends who have come to Jesus because they started learning other religions. All right. If your asking part is asking, God, I want to know who you are, I want to know the truth of this, I want to know what this is about. First E fast, great. Well, now it's time to see. I have a lot of friends who got into Buddhism, they've gone, you know, all sorts of crazy paths to ultimately find themselves following Jesus because they followed the truth every step of the way. Personally, I wasn't ready to follow Jesus until I was like 35 years old. I thought it was too easy. I thought it was way too simple. I thought it was like, yeah, right, there's no way that it's that easy, you know. That's what they used to think. Well, eventually I got to the point where freaking all the other crap wasn't working out in life. And on July 27, 2023, that's the day that God swooped me up, spoke to my heart, gave me a vision. I became born again that day. It was the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. And that was the day that I was convinced that Jesus is the truth. And here I am telling people about it now, right? Guys, that same Jesus is available for you too. And uh, if you're not ready to go straight to him, that's fine. Ask God. I want to know who you are. Go through your path, that's all good. Research whatever you feel like you need to research. I promise you, if you're committed to the truth, he will come. You will have a relationship with him. The last part is you gotta knock. So the knocking part is basically, hey, now that I know who you are and I know what this is about, man, I want inside. Let me in. Let me in, man. That's basically it. So, all right, yo. This has been a freaking great day. I hope this resonates. I hope that it makes sense. Jesus loves you. You can have a direct relationship with him. He will speak with you. It's a spirit that lives inside of you. He will talk with you, it follows you where you go, and it's a wonderful, life-giving spirit. Okay, if you're looking for a change, I promise you Jesus is the answer. Have a wonderful day, y'all. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.