The speaker talks about his direction for episode 29 and how it changed after reflecting on his previous statements about Christians and love. He discusses the criticism of the modern church and shares a personal story from his teenage years. He mentions a man named Samuel who visited him and gave him a book called "Living Prophecies," a paraphrased version of the Bible. He recalls reading the book during a trip to Tofino and being particularly drawn to the books of Joel, Daniel, and Revelation. He explains the significance of these books and mentions his current reading of Revelation. Finally, he briefly mentions the letters to the seven churches in Asia and the apostle John.
So, I'm going to do episode 29. It's been a while. I've been really busy. I've got a lot of things on my plate. After the last podcast, I sort of had a direction I wanted to go. This happens a lot. And that direction changed over the week. One of the things that I said last week that just jumped out at me when I rewatched the video was the... I made a statement about Christians and how it's by their love for each other that the world, the non-Christian, even the believer, the believing Christian, would know who is another Christian.
There's a love. That's what Jesus said, that it's by your love for one another that the world will know that you are my disciples. As I started thinking about that and realizing there's a lot of criticism to the modern church, the contemporary church, and it has produced what I call a post-Christian culture that we live in now. Some people say we're a Christian culture. We're more post-Christian. Then examining my own life and how I got to where I am today, I'm going to tell a story.
When I was 14, that was a year after I had become a Christian, and I had been at school for the better part of a year in grade 7. I skipped grade 6 altogether. I was out of school for two years previous, but since I skipped grade 6, I was a year older than my contemporaries at Qualicum Beach Elementary School, grade 7. We went through the school year, and it was a shock for me getting back to a place where I was having relationships with lots of people my own age, my own age group.
It took a lot of adjustment for me to do that, to get to that place. I don't think that adjustment was completed after one year. I think it took longer. I think it went into grade 8, and in grade 8 here, we went up to the high school. Junior and senior high were mixed in one building in Qualicum Beach at that time. That was another learning curve, another learning experience for me. After I left the Jesus People's Army, which later became the Children of God in Vancouver, I had a few people that I maintained contact with, and it was by their initiative.
It was by their energy, because I was 13. I didn't have the capacity to travel a lot myself. If somebody was with me, I would go, but I didn't just take off as a 13-year-old and go to Vancouver. Well, I did, but not common. It wasn't a common thing. I usually was with somebody older than me. There was a fellow from Hornby Island who had known our family, had been involved with our family to some degree.
Bryce's brother lived on Hornby Island. He got a piece of Crown land, so he was given, I don't know how much it was, five acres or whatever, of Crown land on Hornby Island in 1969 or something. He had a set period of time that he had to clear, whatever, one acre. I don't know the specifics, so I'm going to say he had five acres. He had to clear one acre in order to keep the land, for the land to be transferred to him, and it would be his.
So he had spent that 69-70 doing that, clearing that land and building a shack to live in, pretty basic stuff, very out-there hippie stuff for the 60s and 70s. It was kind of cool. It was cool going over there and experiencing that piece of land which had no electricity and a hand pump for water. So anyway, we spent time over there because he was Bryce's brother, so we would go over there and we got to know other people because we had a commune.
People would come and stay with us from Hornby Island. And this guy, I don't remember his name. I've tried to remember. I've tried to find other people that would know who he is. He was a normal height, maybe six feet, five foot nine, black wavy hair, darker complexion, a nice black mustache and beard. It wasn't a goatee, but it was fuller in here than it was up in here. That's my memory of him, and I call him Sam.
I don't remember his name. I call him Sam Samuel, Samuel. He came and visited me a number of times at the commune. He had left the Children of God as well. I don't know. I can't remember his story, how it was that he became converted to Christianity. He had been in the Jesus People's Army and he left as he saw the Children of God begin to infiltrate and take over. Now there was him and there was a girl.
They weren't together, the girl, but these are two people that kept in touch with me, for a year, year and a half anyway. The girl, I can't remember her name either. I think of her as Petunia or something. She was a bubbly teenager, early 20s, very personable, very much a young, hippie, flower child, hippie kind of a person. They both would come and visit me periodically. She stayed with the Children of God for a little while, and somehow they weren't granting liberty for people to leave.
Somehow she got away and came and saw me and said, it's horrible what's going on over there in Vancouver. It's not good. She told me that Woody had been assigned a husband and they were courting each other. So the leadership was assigning maids for people. So anyway, the guy, Samuel, he came to visit me a number of times. After the incident where Jonathan ripped my Bible in half, that was a Good News paraphrased Bible, so kind of modern day English.
This guy, Samuel, brought me a book called Paraphrased Minor Prophets Including Daniel and Revelation, something like that. So those are all books in the Bible. So the Minor Prophets and Daniel are Old Testament, and the Book of Revelation is New Testament. The Minor Prophets doesn't mean they have less weight or have less influence. It means that there were smaller books. And Daniel wasn't a big book, but he would definitely be considered a major prophet. He was a major influence in Israel and the New Church.
So this book he brought to me was a paraphrased version. It was called, oh, that's probably what it was, Living Prophecies. I think that's what it was called, Living Prophecies, because it was the Living Bible, which was another paraphrased version of the Bible, written into modern English, paraphrased, written into modern English, easier to read. When Jonathan ripped my Bible, I was pretty much stuck reading the King James, unless I wanted to read that book that was ripped in half, and it just made me angry.
So I can remember reading mostly the King James version, which was difficult at times. So that summer, after school, we, the family, Bryce and Mom and the kids, all of us, Joe went back to stay with his mom. I don't remember when, but I think it was early in the summer, after grade seven was finished, I think he went back. But we went to Tofino. We went to Long Beach and Wreck Bay, and it had been winding down.
So this would have been like 72, I guess. So I was 14, so 72. It wasn't the same as it was, had been, in like 69 and 70. The hippies began to disperse, and it is now a federal, a national park. It was being converted into a national park, and they were being discouraged from staying there, the hippies were. But we had friends over there, and we would spend a day on the beach. We went over there for, I think, a weekend.
I can't remember where we stayed. We may have camped out. But I took that book with me. I had been reading it, and it had been a labor for me to read it. As I went to over there, I ended up reading the whole book. So all of these minor prophets and the book of Daniel and Revelation. So this would have been my first experience reading Revelation. I had attempted to read it before, and maybe I did read it, but it was hard.
It was a hard book to read. It was hard to understand. There's so much symbolism and so much weird stuff goes on in it. But, you know, right at the beginning of the book of Revelation, it says, Blessed is the man who reads this book. I think it says, Blessed is the man who reads this book aloud. But Blessed is the man who reads this book. I knew I wanted to read it. So anyway, I read it.
I read Daniel and Revelation and all the minor prophets. And a number of them really stood out to me. Joel, the book of Joel. Short little book. My wife and I ended up naming our oldest son, Joel, after that character in the Bible. And Joel, the name Joel means Jehovah's God. His prophecies about the last times are just there. It's a short little book. I encourage you to just pick it up and read it. He talks about the plague of locusts and what destroyed all of Israel.
And then God relents. And then it talks about the last days, the end times. It relates that time and the end times. In the last days, God will pour out His Spirit on all men. And the hearts of the fathers will be turned back to the sons and the children. And the old men will dream dreams. And the young men will see visions. I was drawn to that. It was an encouragement. The book was an encouragement and a warning.
The other one was Daniel. The book of Daniel is another phenomenal book. And the book of Revelation. They're all end times prophetic books. Reading those books, I often, when I read them now, because right now I just finished reading Daniel. And I'm just starting to read Revelation again. I keep being drawn back. I think I said that before, to Revelation right now. I read in Revelation 2, the second chapter. So the first chapter of Revelation explains who's writing it.
Explains where the message comes from. Explains what it's for. And then the second and third chapter of Revelation are letters to seven churches in Asia. So this would have been called Asia Minor at the time. So it's like Ephesus. It's an area that's north and east of Greece. I can't remember exactly. I see it in the picture in my head. But it seems like it's north of Turkey. And maybe part of it was Turkey. So John, the apostle John, he was the apostle, the disciple who was called the friend of Jesus.
So Jesus had hundreds of disciples. They mentioned 144. So from the 144, then it went down to the 12. He picked a core group of 12 people to be his disciples. And then from the 12, there was three that became like his close confidants. And they were Peter. The Gospel of Mark is Peter's account written by Mark. But it's Peter's story. And then after that would be John, who was called the friend of Jesus. And James, who was John's brother.
Now James was the first of the disciples to be martyred. So he doesn't appear much in the post-Christ, walking the earth time. He was dead. He was killed early on. Peter ended up being, tradition says he was crucified upside down. And when he wrote his books, his letters, he mentioned that. He knew his time was short. But John, he was the last one to die. In fact, there is no record of his death, which is peculiar.
But the history of him is, apparently he was boiled in oil. He was tortured. And he didn't die. And the Romans ended up sending him out to the island of Patmos, which was like a prison island. You just go out there and you're on your own. So I don't know if they boiled him in oil, sent him out there, and he had to heal himself. But anyway, when he was on the island of Patmos, he had this vision.
And that's the book of Revelation. It was a revelation of Jesus Christ, that Christ came and revealed himself and the future, what would happen in the future. So the first part is, John was the bishop to these seven churches in Asia Minor. So he was like the leader. He traveled around and he ministered to all of these churches. And the churches were basically cities. So a gathering of Christian believers in the city. The first church that's mentioned is the church of Ephesus.
I was going to read it, but I didn't get my Bible out and get it ready. But in that first part, it's like Jesus is talking through John's writing. Jesus says to the church in Ephesus that you've done all these things. I know who you are. I know you love me. I know you care about me. And your fervor for the truth, like you want the truth. And you're doing good work. Except I have this one thing against you, and that is you left the things you did at the first.
So I'm thinking, well, what are those things? So there is a letter that Paul writes to the Ephesians. It's called the Book of Ephesians. So I read that letter and trying to get a glimpse and an understanding of who the church of Ephesus was. And I came to understand that it's from reading that in Revelation 2 about the message to Ephesus. They love Jesus, but they had stopped loving each other. They had begun to become more interested in the work and less interested in the people.
When Jesus walked the planet, I mentioned this before, like last week, that's sort of what kicked me off here. He said that it was by our love for each other that they would know that we are the true believers. We are the church of God. We are the church. So the church, like that word, it doesn't mean a building. It doesn't mean programs. It doesn't mean a denomination. The church is the true believer. And when the true believer meets with another true believer, that's church.
So when the believers come together and they have fellowship with each other, and they talk about Scripture and what the Spirit of God is doing in their life and teaching them, and when they help others in the community, that is church, not the building. So you can't go to the United Church or the Baptist Church or the Pentecostal Church, and that's not church. In our modern vernacular, that is a church. But that's not what the Bible means.
I mean, it may have church in the building. There may be church taking place there. That's just a clarity thing for me, and it's becoming more and more clear as I look over my life, and I look how, when I first became a Christian, and I see how many churches wanted nothing to do with these dirty hippies who were calling themselves Christians. It was kind of not a very good experience. There was one church I remember, I think I mentioned it before, Pastor Birch.
He was an Anglican church in Vancouver. Very accepting, and I think I mentioned him before. A lot of the churches wanted nothing to do with the hippies. It didn't fit their program. It didn't fit their view of what a Christian is. So they lacked love. That's all I can say. They lacked love when it was like that. And then when I ended up here on the island and I got involved with Bill, who I mentioned earlier too, and we were up in Black Creek, we were ostracized by numerous churches, church organizations.
You don't fit. You don't belong here. You don't fit. I don't know, only by the Spirit of God would that anything change. That people would actually care for other people. Because I'm not sure our capacity is there because we're created in the image of God. But truly to understand what it is and to be able to do it, I don't know. I don't know if people can do it because we're judgmental. As I think back on my life, the church abused me.
The church, like the buildings. And not just me. A lot of people I know were mistreated by churches. At one point it drove me into depression. Like pretty severe depression. I was clinically depressed. And during that time, I couldn't get out of it. I couldn't find a way out. But a young guy, younger than me, who had been going to church his whole life and thought he was a Christian. He had a born-again experience. So I talked about that last week or the week before too.
He had a born-again experience and he and his brother owned a business next door to mine. I got into good conversations with both of them. They were both Christians. But this born-again experience changed the younger guy. And he invited me to a men's group. So after I had been basically ostracized. And I wouldn't say excommunicated, but chased out of the Baptist church in Parksville. He invited me back there. And that was a difficult thing for me.
But I went. I took the chance and I went. Because I liked him. Back to that love thing. And when I got there, I met other men. Like sitting and talking about their lives. And talking about what they're learning in the Bible. And we taught each other. I ended up being like one of the older people there. I was in my 50s. And these guys were all in their 30s. Most of them are younger. There was a guy that was older than me.
And he was a deacon in the church. So he was like the overseer of this men's group. Like the official overseer. And he hadn't had a born-again experience up until recently either. And he had been a Baptist for most of his life. And then he had this born-again experience. And it changed the way that he viewed everything. Anyway, we had this church inside the church. We had this group of men. That were learning to love each other.
And learning to be the church. Now that all fell apart. Because the unbelieving church is threatened by that. They're threatened by the idea of men loving and being independently seeking Scripture. And I don't know why. I don't know if it was the leadership. There was a sense that there was people in the leadership of the church. So deacons and elders. There was that sense. But I got to know a number of those deacons and elders. And I would say it wasn't them.
But in other words, I would say it was them. I'm not going to name anybody or anything. But this was an interesting experience. But the experience that I came to. Was that these guys in this men's group. They became like brothers. They loved each other. They worked with each other. And there was a core group. But as the church organization began to clamp down. And say, no, this isn't good. You can't do this. You can't just read the Bible and implement it.
You have to be part of the program. Well, these guys left. They left the church. By the time I was 50, I had been through virtually every church in the Oceanside area. So that was a story. The Baptist Church. And that took place when I left. It was in the 90s. Early 90s. And then when I came back, it was in the early 2000s. During the 10, 12, 15 years, whatever it was, that I was not going there.
I went to other churches. There was one of the first experiences I had with organized religion. As an adult. It took place in Qualicum and Parksville. In a church plant, they would call it. The church is still here. It's grown. It's quite big. But in that church, my wife and I started going there when they were in Parksville. They used to rent from the Island Hall when they first started. And we went there for a few years and got established.
Became a worship leader in the church. And we were involved in prayer meetings and all kinds of stuff. This group began to gather young people seeking truth and trying to figure out how to navigate this life that we're in and be successful in our believing the Bible. So we decided to set a night aside. And all of us would come together. And we were the only ones with a house. So we would meet at our house and we would have a Bible study during the week.
The church itself, it had had a split where close to a third of the people left the congregation, including the pastor. In the period of time between when that first group of people left, about a third, I would say, close to a third, there was another small exodus like a year or so after that of, you know, not huge, but a small group of people that left. Here we were now probably three years after that main exodus.
And the leadership came and told us that you can't have a Bible study at your house anymore. And so that didn't go over well. We left. And at the same time we left, there was probably close to, again, a third of the congregation stopped going there. The reason I'm telling these stories is to say, like, we're human. We have these belief systems, but we're human. And we take our humanity with us into these relationships and into church, quote unquote.
The thing is, as I get back to that book, that letter from Paul to the Ephesians, it has pretty explicit instructions on what it takes to be a good follower of Jesus. They had forgotten how to be church, to love one another, to live a godly life, to be godly in your community. Back to the Revelation 2 part of the story, that's the reprimand. Get back to being Christ in the world and loving people and being kind.
Now, there are things in the Bible that we don't like. There are things about God that we don't like. And he's God. We're not. So when we choose our own personal axes to grind, then we're not God. We don't get to tell God what's right and what's wrong. We need to look to God to find out what's right and what's wrong. And that's addressed in Ephesians as well. So I would suggest you read the book of Ephesians and the first three chapters of Revelation for sure.
And in that group, we had some really bonded young people that loved Christ and loved each other. But again, the leadership, they were threatened by the fact that we were doing this outside of their purview. We weren't asking their permission. We weren't seeking their guidance. It was happening. And there's a threat to the organization when that happens. I was basically chased out of that church. And that's a story maybe I'll tell at some point. Forgiveness. I've totally forgiven.
But when I got into this men's group, I realized part of that became a weakness for me. I could give an excuse why I didn't belong there. I'm a hippie. I don't belong there. Whatever. I was a hippie. Whatever. I don't fit there. I was always told I had a problem with authority. Probably, I was a hippie. That was part of how I was raised. I did and do believe in the structure and authority and elders and deacons.
These are what are talked about. I just have a sense that teachers are teachers. They're going to teach. And prophets are prophets. They're going to prophesy. It doesn't need to be sanctioned by a group of men who are leaders of church buildings. There's a part in Hebrews where it says, Do not forsake the assembling together of the saints. And I have a tendency to do that. I will leave churches. And I purposed to stay at that church.
All of my friends left. And I purposed to stay at the Baptist church. And I stayed for a long time at that church. I bonded with a few people, but I never really had the depth of relationships. I had a few people that it was moving that way. But then COVID hit and the government shut down the church. And the church acquiesced and did what the government said. I'm sure they lost a large part of their congregation after that.
I don't feel like I'm part of the congregation as much anymore. And it's sad. You know, that's a sad thing. But my thoughts are that now we need to make a concerted effort to love one another. The believer needs to love the other believers. I think part of people being converted to Christianity, I don't really like those words, but that's what it is, being born again, is you need to be discipled. You need to have people to help you understand.
There's a proverb that says, As steel sharpens steel, one man sharpens another. So as you come up against other men, or women against women, and you fellowship with them, then you're sharpening each other. You're putting an edge, a good sharp edge, on your faith and on your belief system. Okay, that's probably all I need to do. I've probably got 30 minutes or more here already. So I'm going to edit this down and flip forward to number 30.
Okay, the song I'm going to play is a song that I wrote in the early 80s. And it's taken from Ephesians. My story, I was talking about lack of love, lack of caring in the body of believers. Jesus talked about wheat and tares and growing up together. Tares are weeds. He said you leave them together because if you pull the tares out, you destroy the wheat. You have the potential to destroy the roots of the wheat.
There's accounts in Paul's letters and in Acts of Christian believers who struggle with each other. So, I mean, this is not anything uncommon. It's how we treat each other that's at question, and that's what I was questioning, how we treat each other. In Philippians, the book that comes after Ephesians, from Paul, the author of both of those books, there's a call to focus on the things that are true, things that are honorable and just, and the things that are pure, whatever is lovely and whatever is commendable.
To look at the things that are excellent and all the things that are praiseworthy. To focus on those things and then to know that the peace of God will sustain you, that the peace of Christ will rest in you, on you. This can be difficult. We live in this world that's full of negativity and politics, like I talked before. It just drags me through the mud and I get caught up into it. The reality is, I have no beef with all these churches I've been involved with to some degree over the years.
Just be at peace and learn to love and enjoy this song. It was recorded in, I think, in the early 90s. Give us a unity in the Spirit, we pray, O Lord. Help us live a life worthy of the calling we have received, to be humble and gentle and patient in understanding and love. Give us a unity in the Spirit and bond it with peace. Teach us to walk in knowledge, in the knowledge of your ways.
Give us righteousness as a crown and patience to endure all things, for you're our God, our Savior, our Lord. We praise your name, yes, we praise you, your name in heaven above. We praise you, you are our love. You are the Alpha and Omega, my Lord and King. You are the Teacher and the teaching in the lesson of love. Our life is given, it's given by the grace of God. God the Creator, our Father and Spirit of love.
Jesus, I love you and I know your word is true. And God works in many mysterious ways. But my Lord, my God, I pray, give us a unity in the Spirit, that we'll all be as one in love, give us gifts of grace, O Lord. We praise your name as one body and spirit, one home and faith for us all. One Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all in all.
You are over all and through all in all. Give us a unity in the Spirit, we pray, O Lord. Help us live a life worthy of the calling we have received to be humble and gentle and patient and understanding in love. Give us a unity in the Spirit and bondage with peace.
