Friends: Seeker Christians will love this video series … if they are serious. Mature Christians will appreciate the series … if they want to help seekers. Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #923

July 23, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Starting Well

By Bob Walters

“Now there were many other things that Jesus did …” John 21:25

The Apostle John said it plainly: even the Bible couldn’t contain everything that Jesus did. And learning even the basics of Christianity, Christian life, Christian hope, scripture, history – i.e., developing a competent personal handle on the greatest story ever told – is a daunting task.

So, enter an especially competent story teller and video producer, his friend a pastoral authority (and also a great story teller), and the unexpected appearance of a Bethlehem-native Holy Land expert, and out comes a beautifully shot and wonderfully told eight-part video on Christian basics with Bible precision and vivid, on-location Holy Land cinematography.  What one needs to know about Jesus is available right here, with discussion guides and Bible references included.

Whether the edification is for yourself, your small group, your Sunday school class, or other Bible study gathering, it is at its base a primer not just for the beginning Bible student, but also a “how-to” course for the rest of us on explaining the Bible and the story of Jesus Christ.  

To see it, click this link: Basic Christianity Video Series (or biblestudyvideos.org).  The series is free, online only, and it is a modern day video trip to Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, Bethany, Nazareth, Bethlehem and other areas where Jesus was born, lived, talked, taught, performed miracles, died, and rose again nearly 2,000 years ago.

A seasoned Christian will know the stories and have heard of the places. The series focuses on the Bible as it happened around Jerusalem, heavily covering the landmarks of Jesus. The video is straight-ahead, careful, care-taking reporting of the greatest story ever told.

Let me tell you about my friends who produced it.

Storyteller: Ken Nelson, the series’ creator, producer, videographer, and master story teller, traveled to the Holy Land in 2017 with a church group led by our friend and retired minister John Samples and his son, John W. Samples, onetime executive director of the Christian HolyLand Foundation.  “Just a tourist” at that point, Ken shot some video with his phone and, upon adding some production and voiceovers, put together a “rough” Holy Land presentation he showed to various Indianapolis area church groups. 

Ken knew he was on to something.

Pastoral Expert: That nascent, impromptu video played so well that Ken enlisted minister and former Christian college professor and president Dave Faust (the former E91 senior minister who baptized me back in 2001) to answer both basic and difficult Bible questions in the new video series.

Ken was once a TV news field reporter for WRTV in Indianapolis, and then enjoyed success with both his own video production company and a corporate personnel communications consultancy based in Indianapolis.  In late 2017 he focused his considerable talents and life-long faith on his newly-awakened passion for shooting a Bible explanation series in the Holy Land, and began gathering resources for this professional and clearly taught eight part series, approximately 35 minutes per episode.

Bethlehem Native: Any serious video production in the Holy Land requires numerous permits, and Ken’s request to shoot Jesus’s birthplace in Bethlehem was initially met with a bureaucratic “no.” But Dr. Fadi Alzoughbi (ZOG-bee), who worked at the “Garden of Nativity” (birthplace of Jesus) permitting office, saw the request and contacted Ken, saying he would help work things out.  And he did.

Fadi, a Palestinian Christian and pastor at House of Bread Church, www.hobc.info, lives two blocks from the site of the Nativity. He coordinated permits for and tours of the Bible venues Christians know. Nelson made several more trips to Israel, finished the production, and essentially gifted his efforts and this superb Bible Basics Video Series to those seeking Jesus or those leading others to Jesus.

Since Covid, and now the Hamas war since last October, Israel, Palestine, and all these Christian landmarks are not open to visitors.  But this free and extremely well done video series is every Christian’s visa to see these holiest of places where Jesus joined humanity and brought to earth God’s promise of our redemption from sin and mankind’s restoration to divine relationship with the Father. 

It is a video trip to a land currently not taking visitors, but where Jesus once “did many things.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has worked with Nelson on various church communications projects for fund raisers and church celebrations, and admires the clarity of his Christian witness. Dave Faust’s new book, “Not Too Old, Turning Your Later Years into Greater Years,” on graciously aging in a Christian life, is available HERE CollegePress or HERE Amazon, or Sundays 10-Noon at the E91 Resource Room. And, interestingly, Bethlehem is in Palestine, not Israel. I didn’t know that.

Spirituality Column #804

April 12, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Infinite Possibilities

By Bob Walters

“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” – John 21:25, the final verse of the Fourth Gospel.

During Holy Week our Christian thoughts are focused on the singularly great work of Christ: His death on the Cross.

What did Jesus do?  He died for my sins; He paid the price for my salvation.

And then what happened?  Jesus was resurrected from the tomb – celebrated in Christianity as Easter or Resurrection Day – proving His promise that with faith in Him sins were forgiven, trespasses were covered, that a groaning universe could stop groaning, and that our life eternal in restored relationship with God in Heaven was set.

Jesus survived death for all eternity.  Now, so will we.  Hallelujah!

But … sadly, narrowly, and – let me suggest – joylessly, for far too many souls in the world, including many lightly confessing Christians, that’s where Sunday School adjourns until next year: “Jesus paid the price for my sins. I’m saved.  Now, let’s worry about something else.”  In other words, “I’ll do what I want; it’s paid for.”  Uh … no.

Yes, Jesus provided a Cosmic one-two punch to Satan’s reign of evil on Earth, and even those of the lightest faith in Christ can recite that story.  But that story, big as it is, is often missing true relationship with Jesus and appreciation for His infinite works.

Jesus is Lord of the seen and unseen; nothing was made without Him.  The “seen” we can sense, but the “unseen” is as big as the universe and as small as an atom; it is the unseen component of love, relationship, turmoil, peace, and works of Jesus.  That’s how far “beyond definition” Christ is.  The work of His love can never be contained in a cost equation of some finite “price being paid” for all He did.

John makes it sound like there is a whole lot more to it than that if “the whole world” could not contain the written record of Christ’s work.  Oh my … so much more.

Let’s not minimize the accomplishment of “death and resurrection.” But neither should we limit our Christian attentions to Holy Week’s miraculous but reportable story, nor should we imagine we can quantify anything about the infinite works of Christ.

Paul writes (Romans 5:15-20) that we can gauge and quantify our own trespasses, but we cannot quantify God’s grace or forgiveness (v15): “[God’s] gift is not like the trespass.”  The Bible throughout, in fact, assures that we really cannot fathom many things about God’s Kingdom and Christ, whether it is time (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8), money (Matthew 18:24-25), love (Ephesians 3:17-21, esp. v18), grace (Romans 5:15-20, 2 Cor. 12:9), mercy (Ephesian 2:4), patience (2 Peter 3:9), forgiveness (Matthew 7:22), kindness (Ephesians 2:7), or even God’s creativity (Genesis 22:17).

Yes, we can count on God’s love, but there is no way we can do the math.  We benefit when we spend more time searching our hearts and minds for faith and truth in Jesus and less time trying to work out the equation of what Jesus paid for my sins.

Jesus did more than we can imagine, and He did it with infinite love, not money. When our faith connects us to that relationship with Jesus, our possibilities are endless.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for the peace of God and faith in Christ to be your constant companion during this Holy Week … and always.

Spirituality Column #436
March 24, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

“Knowing God is not just analogous to knowing what infinity is, since we can have some idea of that. No, the infinite God must be infinitely unknowable.” – from a First Things article by Steven H. Webb, “Is God Really Infinite?”

Perhaps in honor of “Super Pi Day” a couple weeks ago on the math-nerd high holy day of March 14, 2015 (3-14-15, Get it?  No? How about 3.1415? No? OK, I’ll explain in a minute) my beloved theological and cultural journal First Things posted an online article about God, math and infinity.

I admit to being one of the worst math students ever, but I remember from high school geometry that the value of “pi” – 3.14, the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference – is advertised as an infinitely non-repeating number.  Get the exact distance around a circle, divide it by the exact distance across the circle, and the ratio is 3.141592653… non-repeating on out to infinity.  The most intense math nerds memorize “Pi” to hundreds of places, to show off, I guess.  Basic “pi” is a practical calculation despite being what math uber-nerds know to be an irrational number.

And, according to this article, there are numbers even weirder than “pi.” “Graham’s Number” is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “largest number” (something about points and hypercubes; feel free to look it up) and helps humanity understand divine infinity. 

Uh huh.

Anyway, author Webb discusses mathematicians and theologians cross-pollinating the notion of an unknowable God (refer back to the introductory quote above).  That made me laugh, and sparked the entire idea for this column.

Here is something every Christian knows: God absolutely is knowable.  That’s the whole point of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior and King who is entirely, perfectly God and entirely, perfectly human; who indwells us with the Holy Spirit making God not an exercise in infinity, unknowability, irrationality or “otherness,” but an exciting exercise in loving, real, infinitely intimate though splendidly mysterious relationship.

If the Bible is true – and I’m here to tell you it is – then the only real point of Christianity is God’s glorious relationship with His Creation, and that which He created in His own image, mankind.  No relationship would be possible with an infinitely unknowable God.  Thankfully, the article ended in a better place:

“It is not quite accurate to say that God is infinite, but it would make some sense to say that our potential knowledge of God most certainly is.”

John 21:25, the last verse of the last Gospel, bears that out.

You can look it up.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reminds all that Palm Sunday and Easter are mere days away.  Consider: How do you know God?

Spirituality Column #343
June 11, 2013
Current in Carmel–Westfield–Noblesville–Fishers–Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Faith in Christ may arrive in one’s heart suddenly and unexpectedly, and the impatience of addressing an immediate temporal human physical or spiritual need is often the hallmark of Christian action.

But considered patience, not unthinking rashness, is the key to Christian life, understanding and joy.

That’s because Christ is complete and we are not.

Christ offers us the lifelong continuum of an ever growing relationship that eclipses the inconveniences of the moment (see “light and momentary troubles,” 2 Corinthians 4:17) and stretches into the joyful, restful peace of eternity.  We can come upon our faith in a moment, spring into action the moment after that, and always know there is more Kingdom work to do and more about Christ to learn.  Anyone can “be a Christian” right now, but no one can live a Christian life all at once.  Would anyone ever say, “I’m a complete Christian”?  No.   We are, in this life, unfinished business.

The very end of the Gospel of John (21:25) says that if everything Jesus did was written down “the whole world would not have room for the books.”  That tells me not only that Jesus did a lot of stuff but that there is a lot more stuff – infinite and eternal stuff; stuff like loving God, loving others, and witnessing for Christ – for us to do as well.

So much to do and learn, in fact, that patience isn’t likely to be the first thing a Christian learns.

Lifelong Christians may or may not have the same frantic pacing as late-to-the-party believers like me, but they have the same sense of urgency of their faith.  It’s not the urgency of work for work’s sake, but the urgency of love for love’s sake.  And it is patience that ultimately provides the proper Christian perspective and witness of love.

The Bible plainly tells us that love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4) and that love is a fruit of the spirit, along with peace, patience, kindness, etc. (Galatians 5:22).  Jesus’ love is seen not only in his sacrifice but in his relentless patience: he keeps coming after us.  The best way to demonstrate our Christ-like love is to exhibit patience instead of frustrations with the people, circumstance and things around us.

This is one of those lessons that, as a Christian, I am constantly learning and constantly failing at (see Romans 7:16-20; re: “doing what we know we shouldn’t”).  But when I do occasionally get it right, peace, joy and understanding come into focus.

That’s something worth growing toward.

Even if we never completely succeed, we can trust that Christ already has.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has patience for, say, Christmas shopping but not for stop lights.  Go figure.