Ep22 In The Shadow Of The Mountain C.L.Knox stories

The speaker recalls an incident from their past where they became a Christian and were reading the Bible. They mention their struggle with understanding the King James English translation and how a Good News Bible helped them comprehend it better. They also mention their involvement with the Jesus People's Army and a man named Bill Waddell. The story takes a turn when the speaker's brother rips their Bible in half during an argument, leading to a physical fight. A man from Birmingham intervenes and stops the fight. The speaker reflects on the sinful nature of humans and the capacity for both hatred and love. They discuss the mob mentality witnessed during a Canucks hockey game and relate it to the inherent selfishness and sinful nature of mankind. The speaker emphasizes the importance of not succumbing to mob mentality and urges listeners to remember the difference between good and bad. They mention having dreams lately and their personal belief that dreams can be prophetic. They also Episode 22. I don't know if I've said this I've sort of committed myself to doing this for 10 months and seeing how it goes. I'm not gonna talk about Chuck I have still a couple of stories that you know I got more than a couple but there's a couple that I want to share about Chuck and I will get back to them but I wanted to talk about something. I just woke up thinking about this incident after a dream or whatever. So shortly after I became a Christian you know after being with the Jesus People's Army and getting home I believe it was after I had already gotten back into school and I was primarily reading a book the Bible in King James English which can be difficult especially for somebody that was somewhat illiterate you know I had started reading like I said when I was 12 I started reading the Chronicles of Narnia. Somebody had given me this translation of the Bible that was Good News Bible so it was a paraphrased version using the language of that era the 60s and the 70s. It made understanding quite a bit easier though it wasn't pure in its translation it helped me at my young age to to grasp it especially if I read it beside the King James Version if I read them both and when the person that gave me the book suggested that I do that so I did try to do that though there was times where I would just read the Good News Bible because it really is a labor or it was for me then to read that King James English. I was on my own mostly there was a fellow Bill Waddell that I would go see in Black Creek and he was part of the Jesus People's Army but had left before I left and started a movement in Courtney and he you know he was anyway that's he's interesting I can give you a really a lot of stories about him too and I recently reconnected with the time that I spent alone the time that it taught me a lot of things about pursuing God like digging in meditating on scripture looking at things that God made available to us through the Bible knowledge wisdom so I had to learn to do that I learned on my own pretty well I wasn't totally alone I did go to youth group at the high school that was in grade 9 or yeah grade 8 so that was a year after so for grade 8 and 9 I think or for grade 8 anyway I was part of the I think it was called Koinonia Club met some people there that are still friends and one of them knew that that Bill character Bill Waddell that I was talking about character he is a character we're all characters I don't know what precipitated it but at some point my brother Jonathan and I got into a fight an argument a disagreement I'm two years older than him so at that time I would have been significantly bigger than him probably I can't remember specifics but you can't explain these competitions between brothers and sisters I think it's it's part of human nature and whatever it was that we were disagreeing about it got physical we were we were cutting-edge examples of living existential life because of my mother's belief so we were living an existential type of being so our our morality was shifting our understanding as a family and the people we were with and as a culture too it was a beginning of a big shift is the world the culture the young people began to look to to Nietzsche start looking at Nietzsche and you start looking at existentialism and existentialism actually leads you to on a path to to nihilism but nihilism means nothing there is nothing worth anything there's nothing true or valuable the only thing that matters is you so this is something that's perverted our culture now but we were living we were we were initiates my family me and my siblings into that belief system and my mother gave us pretty much liberty to to to live that way because that's I guess that's what she was pursuing I don't know if she could have articulated it that way or would have articulated it that way at that time but as as the story goes the heat in the heat of our battle Jonathan grabbed that that Bible of mine and he ripped it in half it was a paperback so he ripped it in half and I saw red I was angry I was going to kill him so in the progress of this story I was in the middle of the kitchen floor with my hands wrapped around Jonathan's neck calling him every vulgar name I could think of and believe me I had a pretty large vocabulary when it came to vulgarities as did my siblings and my parents my stepfather anyway my I was gonna kill him I could feel the life draining out of him and interesting thing earlier that day a man had shown up he was a hippie type of a guy not quite fully immersed maybe and he'd been hitchhiking around and he was from Alabama and somebody had picked him up in his hitchhiking travels and told him that there was a family up on a commune in Little Qualicum that were from Birmingham Alabama and the guy was like you're kidding and so he looked this up and he came in and he was he had been we'd all been visiting with him briefly and then my mom and Bryce took him for a walk around the commune and so Jonathan and I and I don't know who I don't remember Vicki or Joe being around but Jonathan and I got into this squabble and they came in from their walk around they probably heard us screaming and yelling because we were and the guy grabbed me by the pants and the scruff of the neck and pulled me off of Jonathan and threw me outside this guy from Birmingham it was an embarrassment for me as I came to my senses and I went I climbed up into one of the one of the fruit trees I believe it was the pear tree which was quite tall and Jonathan went outside and was looking for me he picked up a shovel a spade and he was gonna kill me you know he's walking around the house yelling where are you I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna kill you I'm gonna kill you so I just in the tree I just started weeping because I recognized my sin for one and I recognized the the hatred we breed in our selfishness and it was it was a tough one to Jonathan's credit within a day or two he had taped my Bible back together and brought it to me and apologized and tried to make amends so in the same way that we have these intrinsic hatred anger selfishness we have the capacity intrinsically to love because we're created in God's image to care to have remorse Jonathan I or I wouldn't say we're estranged but over the years we've had more than a few incidents that could cause estrangement we don't speak often it's cordial when we do I think there's genuine love between us that's that there is one thing and this does relate to a dream another day I woke up and I was remembering like the Canucks are doing super good this year super good they've done this good for decades any decade in 2011 I guess was the loss of the Bruins and I woke up with that on my mind that final game like what the heck this is it's not I mean it I like hockey it's not my life you might think it was but it's not I enjoy watching it I enjoy following a team and believing in a team and watching them grow and succeed I enjoy it it's and it's it's cool but for those that would remember and if you if you don't remember check it out on YouTube when when the Canucks lost to the Bruins in game seven on home ice the city erupted the mob mentality kicked in and the fans began to destroy their city they broke windows stole stuff they weren't all fans because once it started people that were out on the street were like oh yeah I'm gonna get me a TV and you know breaking into London drugs and stealing TVs and computers whatever like people were walking down the street with stuff like what does that have to do with the Canucks nothing you know it's mob mentality and there's been studies on mob mentality so this is this this is another one of the intrinsic sinful nature things of man it comes from selfishness it comes from it comes from the Garden of Eden it comes from that the lie from the serpent that you can be God and and Adam and Eve going I can be God okay so I'm taking off and now I'm gonna have all the knowledge that comes from knowing good so once that happened humanity was too young for that information I believe God would have provided that information anyway eventually but we jumped the gun now how does that fit I can talk to you about that it's pretty amazing the thing is as I watch what's happening in the world right now in Germany in Spain in France and Canada in the US and all over all over to Poland all over the world it's easy for someone to fall into the mob mentality don't don't do it you know what's good and what's bad you know what's right what's wrong I just saw a thing with Dave Chappelle talking about good and bad he's speaking at a college or a university I think maybe maybe I don't know you can look it up and he talks about the difference and not to forget that there is such a thing as good such a thing as bad so in that instant when the mob is going crazy and they're killing people look inside and be strong and having a lot of dreams lately and they don't necessarily mean dreams don't necessarily mean anything and yet they could mean something on a personal level on a prophetic level as it talks in I think it's in Joel book of Joel that in the latter days that the young men will see visions and the old men will dream dream there's an insinuation that the dreams and the visions are prophetic I've been feeling a lot of separation there's times in your life or in my life where I feel like I'm close really close to God and then there's other times where I feel like there's a distance between me and God and you know so then personally when I talked about meditation I meditate on scripture on portions of scripture one of the scriptures of late for the last number of years that I keep returning to is Psalm 139 which is sort of a broad view from a poet's perspective of who God is what his attributes are what his characteristics are that's written by David King David who was a poet he wrote many of the songs which are songs and poems as I meditate on that I understand that I have a poetic bent that I consider myself a poet or a songwriter and I'm able to dissect it from that perspective but not only that from a perspective of understanding what the complete canon of scripture says about who God is and who we are and how those things work together at the very beginning of this Psalm 139 David says you oh Lord search me and know me you know when I sit down and when I rise up you discern my thoughts from afar you search my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways even before word is on my tongue behold oh Lord you know it altogether you him me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me such knowledge is too wonderful for me it's too great it's too high I can't attain it so I don't know how much is lost in translation but this is a recognition that God is okay so there's there's these these traits of God that we consider communicable communicable yeah we can communicate them where we're able to understand them because they relate to us like love and anger justice those are those are things we can personally relate to as individuals but there's these other attributes of God that are in communicable in communicable they are things that are peculiar to God to the true God to a one God and that is the the omniscience that the all-knowing aspect or perspective of this God the other is the omnipresence God is everywhere at the same time he's all places all times all he's omnipresent he lives outside of time he knows he exists outside of time he created time time is something that he is in but he's out of it he's he's in it in a different way he's not in a gaseous form like we are we're here and we dissipate he's in it permanently because he's omnipresent and he's omnipotent and he's omni omniscient so he's all-knowing all-powerful and all present so these incommunicable aspects or pieces of God's character they in this song they they rip David apart and put him back together again and this is where he says I don't I can't understand it and you hit me in you hit me and he's feeling claustrophobic see like he has no freedom and he feels you know he's sensing that there's more to to his life than he can ever know but God knows it all God sees from the beginning to the end because the guy's outside of time he's in time he's throughout time he's omnipowerful he can he can change things he can cause he has the ultimate cause and even the ultimate effect and he's omniscient he knows he knows everything it gets it gets really deep like you know you know again this is one of those things where I would say as a philosopher yeah you gotta look into this stuff as a theologian you gotta look into this stuff as a person you gotta look into this stuff I mean we we talk about each one of us being God and that's it that's a polluted truth it's it's not true it's polluted it's tainted there is some truth in there but it's not the truth the truth is God okay so I mean we can look at Eastern karmic beliefs we can look at beliefs that pantheistic basically all everything's God all things are God that's a pollution of of a truth if if there's only one God if there is a creator God and I you know when I talk about it I'm talking about a triune guy which is even more confusing but it's one three and one the pantheistic view is attractive to humanity and the karmic view is attractive it takes the pressure of the the one true God off of you to believe it it takes the the truth of your lack of freedom outside of God it takes it off the table and so when people say you know coexist or all religions are the same they're they're taking pressure off themselves you know they can say it's altruistic that they want peace but in in an in the inner man if you examine it if you look at it and this is the thing you have to question you have to question everything if you examine it you look at it you will see the truth of one God and the truth of the perversion of a pantheistic view the truth of a perversion of the karmic view while yes well yes as you so you will reap that's not the basis of God's relationship to me that's not that's that's not that's works again you know so Jesus came to do it do away with works sanctification works purification works justification he did a piece he died to do away with it now Christianity throughout the history of Christianity of the world has a tendency to want to bend to that works theology that works belief and I can work my way out of this you can't that's where Jesus comes in that's the ultimate sinless man man who didn't know dying and none of us again if you told one lie in your life if you've coveted one woman if you've coveted one possession of somebody else if you've committed anything that that's an impurity in to your relationship with God and that's a sin there you've got a sin and once you have one sin you're a sinner right so you want to try and gauge one is against the other and that's not really not our job that's the take that take the log out of your own eye before you take the sliver out out of your brother's eye anyway I I'm looking at the world and I'm looking at things and feeling like I'm getting angry I'm getting angry and I learned a long time ago as per my story my anger accomplishes very little but it's not wrong it's part of my characteristic because I'm created in the image of God anger is not wrong it's how you it's what you do with it it's what you present when I agree so anyway in that song if you want to read if you have any questions I'm here to help you navigate that song 139 and I was reading it in the English Standard Version it's also good in the New International Version and it's also good in the New American Standard Bible anyway when I do an old song again I'm still not singing well and hopefully next week I'm gonna be working on trying to record some stuff and I just can't get the vocals right but hopefully the music's gonna be a lot tighter okay see you next time I don't want to lose all my old friends but I can't stay out of the world I got a new family of loved ones to share this newfound joy and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord I don't need a lot of earthly goods my God takes care of me He teaches me to be happy where I am my God takes care of me and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord sweet Jesus and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord a change in me can't you see I try and pray each minute of every day that His spirit of love would abound and if I fall He's there to catch me where I am with a spirit of truth and love and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord sweet Jesus and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord sweet Jesus and there's been a change in me a change in me can't you see that I found my Lord can't you see that I found my Lord