June 18, 2025 • 46 mins
Most people read the New Testament like it’s on shuffle—one verse here, a chapter there, and no clear storyline. But what if there was a bigger picture—and what if someone gave you the whole story?
In this episode, Chad sits down with one of his favorite authors, Frank Viola, to talk about the revised and expanded edition of The Untold Story of the New Testament Church. This book is unlike anything else—it reconstructs the Book of Acts and the New Testament letters in chronological order, backed by scholarship but written in a way that’s approachable, captivating, and deeply transformative.
Whether you’re a pastor, a young adult hungry for truth, or someone tired of reading the Bible without context—this episode is for you.
What You'll Learn:
Why context is everything when reading Scripture
How Acts and the epistles fit together as one powerful story
Why most of us read the Bible like a puzzle without the box
What the early church actually looked like—and why it matters today
How to rediscover the radical message of the kingdom of God
Key Quotes:
“If you don’t know the story, it’s like being in a forest with no flashlight.”
“This isn’t just a book—it’s a hack to understand the New Testament.”
“It’s a nail-biting narrative—and you’re part of it.”
Resources Mentioned:
📖 Buy the Book: The Untold Story of the New Testament Church – Revised & Expanded
🌐 Frank’s Website: frankviola.org
🎧 Listen to Frank’s Podcasts:
The Insurgence Podcast
📥 Free Articles + Resources: Weekly Blog Sign-Up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Rev RX
Podcast where we help you thrivein faith, family, and help.
My name is Chad Potts and I'm your host.
Today's episode is one I'm extremely excited about.
What if I told you the reason that you struggle to understand
your Bible, particularly the NewTestament, is because no one
ever gave you the full story? I've interviewed a ton of people
(00:32):
over the last year, but this one's different.
You see, Frank Viola is one of my favorite Christian authors of
all time. His understanding of the gospel,
the Kingdom of God, and the cohesiveness of Scripture is
unmatched. Matter of fact, I have an entire
section on my bookshelf of FrankViola books.
In this episode, we unpack his updated and expanded book called
(00:53):
The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.
Here's what's different about this book.
We're not trying to sell you a book in this episode, but we're
introducing to you a resource that has the potential to open
your eyes in ways that few resources ever had and help you
understand the story of the Bible and its completeness and
where you fit in that story as well.
(01:14):
You see, it reads like a novel, but it's built on solid
scholarship and it will change the writ.
It will change the way that you read your Bible.
If you've ever felt like the NewTestament was a was a scattered
puzzle, then this book gives youthe picture on the box.
It will unlock the Bible in a way that makes it truly come
alive. You're going to love how we
(01:35):
unpacked some of the truths about Christianity, about the
Bible, and about why we have such a hard time understanding
it today. You're going to love this
conversation with my new friend Frank Viola, affectionately
known as Frankie V Enjoy FrankieV Frank Volla, brother, what a
(01:56):
privilege it is to have you hereon the show.
Thanks for joining us today. It's my honor, Chad.
Appreciate it. I've told you before, I have
followed your work for years. I'm actually part of your your
network now. You have a way of explaining
Christian truth and biblical truth that is needed in our
world today. So I just want to say thank you
for what you're doing. You have a new book I can't wait
(02:18):
to unpack. But before we get into that, I'd
love to just give you a chance to introduce yourself to our
audience, share some of your work, including your books, your
podcast, and just help us to getto know you a little better.
Sure, sure. So I'm someone who writes books
and speaks for hungry and thirsty Christians who love
Jesus, but who know in their bones that there must be more.
(02:42):
More to the Christian faith, more to Jesus Christ, more to
the Bible, and more to church. And to date, I've written over
20 books, and they can be divided up into light and shade.
Light would be books containing the element of the sublime.
These are high revelatory books.And then there's shade.
(03:03):
And those are books that have a prophetic edge, that challenge
the status quo. And your listeners, if they're
interested to look at the entirebook catalog, can find it all at
Frank Viola, One word, frankviola.org.
Now, I would say the most important books in the catalog
that I have panned are the one we're going to discuss today
(03:23):
yet, which is The Untold Story of the New Testament Church,
revised and expanded. It's the white cover with the
brush strokes on the sides. Another one is insurgents
reclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom.
Yes, another one is 48 Laws of spiritual power.
Another one would be hang on, Let go from eternity to here and
(03:45):
then, God's favorite place on earth.
And in addition to the books, I write an article every Thursday
of people can sign up for free on my blog.
And I have two podcasts, The Christ is All Podcast, which
includes conference messages, interviews, monologues, and
creative sketches. And that thankfully has reached
(04:05):
over 2,000,000 downloads to date.
And then another one is the Insurgents podcast which
discusses the radical implications of the explosive
gospel of the Kingdom. I have 7 conversation partners
on that show, one of them being my late friend Michael Heizer,
and that one has over 750,000 downloads.
(04:27):
And right now on that show, we are currently discussing every
reference to the Kingdom of God in the New Testament in
chronological order. And so that's a very thrilling
project for us. Absolutely.
The message here is Frank is putting out good work and there
is no excuse not to find it. All right.
I appreciate. That the content that, that
(04:48):
you're getting into the world isneeded and, and it's prevalent.
And I'll tell you, Frank, I've, I've gotten most of your works
on my bookshelf. I told you I've got a whole,
you've got a shelf devoted to both you and Lynn Sweet.
I know you guys wrote three books together and it's
powerful. Some of the ways you view the
word and some of the ways you view the Kingdom.
(05:08):
Because you're exactly right. There are, there are a lot of
people that I talked to on a daily basis.
I'm a minister. I'm also a pharmacist,
especially in my role as a minister, I deal primarily with
young adults. So that's that coming of age,
right, The 18 to 30 year olds. And there's a hunger there,
there there's a deep thirst for the things of God.
(05:29):
And there just seems to be this sense of, OK, we're going
through the motions of Christianity in the church.
And then, you know, not a knock on any of that, but it's just
we're going through the motions.But there feels like there's
more. And you, you, you deal with that
in a lot of your work. And so that's what's drawn me to
you. I want to, I'm gonna put a plug
in real quick for, you know, forinsurgents, because I think that
(05:51):
message that you put out. And that's when I really, I
really started getting into thisKingdom concept because the
Kingdom of God is such an important thing.
And I'm convinced you don't really understand the New
Testament of the Scriptures until you can really understand
and embrace the concept of the Kingdom of God.
So, so thank you for that. And thank you for kind of
telling us a little bit about yourself and, and what you're
doing now. I want to get into your latest
(06:13):
book. This is one that has been
revelatory for me. And there have been people who
said things like there is no book like this one.
And before we jumped on, I said that too.
This is the book I've been looking for for a long time,
which puts things in perspectiveand helps me see the overall
narrative. There are no shortage of
Christian books, are there Frankie?
(06:34):
No way. You have entire stores and
volumes written with all of these Christian books.
So what I want you to kind of talk about is with this latest
book which is entitled again TheUntold Story of the New
Testament Church. It is the revised and expanded
version of the one that was recently re released.
What makes yours you? Well I will double click on what
(06:56):
you said, that there is no otherbook like this and that has been
echoed by some of the scholars who endorsed it.
Even though it's not a scholarlybook, it is backed by the best
New Testament scholarship. So I would say it this way.
It is the only non fiction book ever written that constructs the
(07:18):
story we find in the book of Acts with with the New Testament
epistles chronologically to tellone powerful narrative and it
has the most up to date scholarship available embedded
in the book. I write the book that I want to
(07:38):
read but doesn't exist. Yeah, right.
So I wish I had this when I was 21 years old.
And we have many, many 20s and 30s reading it that are being
blown away because it's very rare to find someone who puts
the whole thing together. When they preach or teach.
Many pastors, they know chaptersand verses and many of them know
(08:01):
the individual books of the Bible, but they don't know the
whole story and they don't know the whole background.
And without that, you are basically lost.
You are in a forest without a flashlight, and it's dark.
And So what this book is, and this is what makes it unique, it
is a sensational expedition through the New Testament the
(08:22):
likes of which most Christians cannot imagine.
And the great scholar FF Bruce famously said that reading the
New Testament letters is like hearing one end of a phone
conversation. And what my book does is it
reconstructs the other end so that the reader can understand
(08:43):
virtually every word in the epistles of Paul, Peter,
Hebrews, James, ETC. John, so forth.
So what the book does uniquely is it unlocks the New Testament
by seamlessly weaving together the narrative of Acts with the
epistles, providing a free flowing story from Matthew to
(09:05):
Revelation but in chronological order, and then filling in all
the details from our knowledge of the 1st century.
So I basically take you back to the 1st century and you get to
watch the whole story unfold. And again, although it's non
fiction, some readers have said it reads like a motion picture
on paper. Yes, and that was my goal.
(09:26):
I would have tested that. And Frank, I, one of the things
that I, one of the ways I would describe this book too, is it's
almost like 2 in one because there's the, there's the print
that just reads and it almost reads like fiction.
You're right. Like it, it's, it's captivating.
You have a gift with words. And, and so it, it really reads
like you're reading a story, which is what the Bible is.
That's what the word of God is. It's a, it's a story of, of God
(09:49):
and we find ourselves in that, right.
But then for the nerds like me, I love the footnotes.
And so there's all the scholarlyfootnotes underneath to where,
OK, you can do this a couple different ways.
You can read it as though you'rereading a story and just ignore
the footnotes and then go back to that for reference.
Or you can take a deep dive. And you know what?
I'll be honest with you, there'stimes where I do both.
(10:10):
Yep. And I love that option.
And so it has the feel of a really in depth scholarly book
because the research is there and it's all laid out for you.
You don't have to ask yourself, where did Frank get this?
Right, right. You tell us and, and I love
that, but then also there is there's this amazing story that
you put in the words and you're exactly right.
(10:31):
What you're doing is you're piercing together the two sides
of the phone call and you use some respect to scholarship in
order to do that. You get into it.
We don't have to talk about it, but mirror reading some of the
biblical texts. You know, what's the most likely
thing that he was addressing here?
What was it that caused Paul to write this letter and say these
things? And it feels like you're walking
(10:52):
through the birth of the church,the expansion of the church and
really just has a a unique feel to it.
So I would testify as one that has been through almost all of
this now. And I'm so excited.
I'm when I finish it, we're going to do a round two and then
I'm going to bring this to my young adults in my church.
So get ready for listening. Absolutely.
I appreciate, I appreciate that too, because many of my readers
(11:12):
who are subscribed to the blog and the podcasts are between the
ages of 21 and 39, many, many 20s and 30s.
So I'm glad you're ministering to that audience, brother.
And that's, that's when I reallystarted following the Lord
myself. Same in the early early 20s, so
even before that my teens but really caught fire in my 20s.
(11:33):
So anyway, I just wanted to insert that.
I'm very happy to hear it. Yeah.
And, you know, it is that age where we begin to make our faith
our own and we start questioning, you know, OK, do I
believe this because I've alwaysbeen taught this, or do I
believe this because it's real to me, Right?
And your work, this book brings that Bible story to life.
(11:53):
And so I love that. One of the things that you
attack, and I use that word kindof kind of on purpose here, but
is context. There are so many times that we
read the scriptures out of context.
Like you said, we pick a verse here, a verse there.
They're not talking about the same thing, but we try to make
them say something. It is true.
You can, you can make the Bible say anything you want.
If you take things out of context, context, not only is it
(12:15):
problematic when we try to provea point by taking things out of
context, but if we don't understand the context and
background of the Bible, if we don't understand the world that
the Bible was written in and what the original audience would
have heard and understood when they were reading some of these
letters, then we miss so much ofthat story.
So how important in your mind iscontext in reading the Bible?
(12:38):
And then how did you address this specifically in your book?
Yeah, well, it's hugely important.
Context is critical and necessary for understanding the
Bible, and that includes the NewTestament.
I'll give you some examples thatare easy to understand.
I can say my calves are hurting.That means one thing at the gym.
(13:00):
It means a totally different thing in a barn, right?
OK, you, Chad, could say to youraudience, man, I am hot.
Well, that could mean you're sitting out in the sweltering
heat in the Florida blazing sun.I'm in Georgia all.
Right, there you go. Or it could mean you're an
(13:22):
egotist about your good looks. Sure.
OK, so so context is hugely important.
And here's the thing, We can prove anything by taking verses
out of context from the Bible and pasting them together, which
is done sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.
(13:44):
So Christians, many, many Christians, even leaders and
teachers and pastors often approach the Bible with scissors
and glue. I'm speaking metaphorically and
they use what I call the cut andpaste method.
Taking one verse out of one bookof the Bible, finding a
metaphorical connection to another verse on a similar
(14:07):
topic, taking that out of context, pasting them together
to create a doctrine or support for a practice.
And I'll just give you an example of how this works.
I'm going to use outrageous examples, but it'll give people
an idea of how you can prove anything by taking verses out of
out of context and pacing them together.
(14:27):
I'm going to show you that God is an atheist right from the
Bible. OK, here it is, 2 verses.
There is no God. Psalm 14, one says the Lord and
I do not lie. Numbers 23, verse 19.
All right, yeah. So God is saying he's an
atheist, basically. Yeah.
(14:48):
I can also prove, and this is inthe book, this example, that
Jesus Christ supports suicide and Judas went out and hanged
himself. Matthew 27 five.
Now go and do likewise. Luke 1037.
All right, Yeah. So, so my book is designed to
solve the problem of taking verses out of context by putting
(15:11):
readers in the story, in the narrative chronologically,
watching it unfold sequentially in its original context.
And when you do that, it does two things.
One, it opens up the New Testament like you could not
believe. Yes, and #2 you're hemmed in
because now you can't take verses out of context because
(15:34):
you've seen the story. Yeah, you've looked at the
context and that changes everything.
That's powerful. I remember vividly, I was in my
late 20s and up to that point, Christianity for me was just
going to church. I didn't understand the
relationship. I didn't understand I, I read my
Bible at church. That was it.
My Bible reading was whatever the Bible, whatever the pastor
(15:56):
preached that week out of the Bible.
My prayer life was was scant, minimal.
And I remember listening to an evangelist and he was preaching
out of the Gospel of John. And he began to describe for me
and for all of us, the culture, the context in which John was
writing these words. And brother, the Bible came
(16:16):
alive to me more in that moment than it had in my previous 28
years. And it and it was all about the
context, the things that I had, the surface level things that I
had learned. And there's nothing wrong with
that. You got to start somewhere.
But the surface level things begin to just mean so much more.
And I'm and about context. And that's why I love your
(16:37):
answer to that question. That's why I love this book.
Now thinking about context, going along to reading the Bible
and, and understanding what we read, what are some of the
things in your opinion that hinder us from understanding the
New Testament and, and how does your new book remove those
hindrances? And, and here's something that
(16:58):
I've noticed. The chronological part makes so
much of a difference. And it maybe that can be a, a
starting point for us. But when we see things out of
order, you know, one of the things that you say in your book
is it's like listening to an audio book just on like random,
like it picks random chapters. That's right.
Yep. And so can you expand on that
and just kind of help us to see what are some other things that
(17:20):
hinder us from understanding theBible and how you combat that in
your book? Well, I'll give you several.
One of them is the Gospel and their arrangement.
Now we have the four gospels that tell the story of Jesus.
They are not arranged chronologically and even even
where they are placed, you know,Matthew coming first is
(17:42):
incorrect. Mark was the first Gospel.
Most evangelical scholars agree,but even the writers don't put
it all in chronological order. So that's that's one thing.
But a bigger problem is the bookof Acts.
This is the second problem. It's condensed and abridged.
Now, that was intentional. Luke wasn't trying to leave out
(18:02):
details. He was emphasizing certain
points and certain events, and therefore his leaving out of
details was not reckless. But it is highly condensed and
highly abridged, and so you're not getting all of it.
Now, if you go to Paul's epistles and the epistle of
James and Peter, then you get the rest of the detail that
(18:24):
Luke, Luke leaves out, right? Right.
Another one is the epistles. The epistles are set on shuffle.
All right. You use the example that I had
given that I was once listening to an audiobook on CD.
This is when automobiles had CD players and I was listening to
this audiobook and I was totallylost.
(18:46):
It wasn't making sense. And I realized that the shuffle
or random feature was set on. And so it was moving, you know,
from chapter 10 to chapter 3 to Chapter 2 to Chapter 9.
And, and that's how the New Testament is, though, because
all of Paul's letters are not arranged in the order in which
he wrote them. The same thing with the letters
(19:08):
of of the other writers. They're arranged by length, not
sequentially, right? So that's another issue.
Another problem is chapters and verses.
Now, chapters and verses are fantastic for locating certain
sentences in the Bible, OK, but they hinder us from really
(19:28):
understanding what was going on and they bleed into and they
have led to this cut and paste mentality where we read the
Scriptures in fragmented sentences, which are what verses
are, OK. And so the chapters and verses
came hundreds of, I would say thousands of years later from
(19:50):
the time then that the New Testament was written.
For example, chapters were addedin the year 1227 and verses did
not appear until 1551. That's 1500 years later, right?
So, but they have heard us because we are now conditioned
to read the Scripture in terms of these fragmented ways.
(20:11):
And then the fifth problem. Is the widespread ignorance of
1st century Mediterranean cultural context, social
structures and linguistic nuances, nuances.
And so in order to understand the New Testament and even the
Old Testament, you have to immerse yourself in the culture
(20:33):
because it was a totally different world.
Things operated differently. The way words were used was
completely different. And this ignorance has caused us
to unconsciously impose our own cultural frameworks back onto
the New Testament text or the biblical text.
And so those are really the mainproblems.
(20:54):
The way that my book solves it is it puts everything
chronologically in context and fills in all the details.
And so when you have the story told narratively, sequentially,
with all the details filled in and an explanation of the
culture, because that's often missing, yes, then you now
(21:14):
understand what in the world those authors were saying, what
was really happening when Paul wrote Galatians, when he wrote
First Thessalonians, when he wrote Colossians, You now
understand who those people wereto whom he was writing.
And you also understand where Paul was and what he had been
(21:35):
through and what he was feeling and thinking as he was writing
those those epistles, those letters.
And so the, the, the effect is that those letters open up and
now we can understand them. And brother, here's the thing,
the word of God, the written word of God, all points to the
living word of God, Christ, Amen, right.
That's that's the objective is to reveal Christ to us because
(21:58):
he's the one that changes us, delivers us, transforms us,
saves us, heals us, works in ourlives.
Yes, go does wonderful things inUS and to us and through us.
But the word of God, the writtenword of God can't help us really
if we don't understand it. And the worst problem is to take
it out of context and not only to misunderstand it, but to
(22:20):
misapply it. And that happens all the time.
And so again, I, I wish I had this book that I have written
took me many years to write. I wish I had it when I was 21.
Gosh, I wish I had it when I was16.
Likewise. Because it would have radically
altered my life back then, and it would have spared me so many
(22:42):
problems because we run into problems when we don't
understand what the New Testament is really saying to
us. So that would be my answer to
that question. Yeah.
And it's almost like we have this idea that when when we read
the scripture, we we read into it our culture, our society, our
doctrinal beliefs, our theology,our Western world, our
(23:05):
denominational beliefs, we read into it all of those things.
And when we approach it from that lens, we're tending to take
something that was meant in a totally different way and say,
oh, this means this because that's what it means today.
And therefore I'm going to applythat to my life in such a way.
And that can be dangerous. And, and so I love that.
And one of the things I want to say too is this, this book is
(23:29):
approachable. And what I mean by that is it,
Frankie, you pulled together so many resources that most people
will never read, and you put it together in a readable format
that helps us to understand the story of God in the end of birth
and spread of the New Testament church and our role in that in a
(23:50):
powerful way. And there's this sense of that
we need to have a seminary degree to fully understand the
Bible, at least down here in theBible Belt.
That's where you always got people for that, you know, where
the pastor understands it. And he can kind of give us
morsels. He can give us a little bits and
pieces. No, you know, the Bible is
(24:11):
available for all of us to read,and that's part of our
relationship. Our daily intimate walk with God
is reading his word. And you pull together dozens and
dozens of resources to where nowwe can sit here with this one
book and you've done the hard work for us.
And we can read it and we can understand it in that story can
come alive. And we can find ourselves in
(24:31):
that story. And we can allow to do, we can
allow God to do what only he cando in our lives because of it.
And so, yes, I just want to kindof give that synopsis of what
you just said in that, Yeah, it's it's a book, but it's more
than that. It's a resource, but it's more
than that. Well, I'll tell you what it is.
It's in addition, it's a hack oran app to to understand the New
(24:54):
Testament and and I want to add something to your statement
about seminary. Here's the thing about seminary.
Most seminaries do not teach thestory, the narrative.
Yeah, what they do is they teachchurch history in a church
history course and then they teach the New Testament epistles
(25:15):
in a New Testament studies course, and the two do not come
together. And so This is why many pastors
and many seminary trained pastors, I would say the vast
majority of them do not know thestory.
They don't know the background to all of the epistles together.
As you know, it's it's missing the forest for the trees.
(25:37):
And so then when they begin to teach a book of the Bible or
they begin to teach on a subject, they're using that cut
and paste mentality and method and they do not understand the
story, the narrative. And so they're taking things out
of context. And This is why we have 40,000
plus denominations in the in theProtestant world.
(25:59):
All right, when you have the story and you understand what
really happened and you see the whole forest as well as all the
individual trees and how they work together, it solves so many
problems. And, and that's exactly why I
wrote the book, because it was aheavy lift to produce, as you
could tell. But sure, by looking at it, it
(26:20):
took years to write, but it is agift to the body of Christ.
And again, I would just say every person listening to this,
I don't. I don't care what your age is,
but the younger the better. It's easy to read.
You don't have to get into footnotes, even though the
footnotes are there. If you're asking a question as
you're reading, like where on the earth is Frank getting this
from? Well, there it is, right?
(26:41):
So you could skip those if you want, but it will open up the
New Testament. It will unlock the New Testament
in ways that will astound you. And and by the way, that comment
about pastors that comes directly from pastors.
I work with pastors. I've been working with pastors
for years. Yes, many are seminary trained
(27:01):
and through their own lips, theyhave said I've never learned the
story. I took class after class.
I have a PhD and I did not know the story.
Yeah, I knew chapters and verses.
I knew books of the Bible, but not the story.
Yeah, yeah. And, and that is, you know,
that's a major issue we face in the American church today.
(27:21):
And, and Speaking of which, so you've mentioned before the
social world of the New Testament, yes, the culture,
what it looked like to live in that day.
And so many times we read our culture into it.
So things don't make sense. Yes.
But what are some of the common misconceptions that we have
today about that social world ofthe New Testament?
Well, there are many, many, and they're countless, A countless
(27:44):
number. And when you read the book,
readers will see what they are. But I'll, I'll just give you
some really basic ones. Most of the time is somebody who
is part of Christianity Today opens up the New Testament and
they read, say, the book of Actsand they read about the church
and they read about leaders. They immediately assume that the
(28:07):
Christians met in church buildings.
They immediately assumed that they had Sunday morning church
services. Sunday school before.
Sunday school before, Yes, everyone tithes.
You had a time where the offering plate was passed
around. Everyone assumes that they were
sitting there with Bibles in their laps.
(28:29):
Well, here's the fact. Most of the people in the 1st
century, and this would include the Christians, we're talking
90% of the Roman Empire, could not read, could not write.
Yeah, OK. That's number one.
Yeah, illiterate. Yeah, they didn't have Bibles
because the New Testament hadn'tbeen written yet, and the Old
Testament was extremely rare to get your hands on.
(28:50):
And when they did have Old Testament scrolls, they were
locked up in the synagogues, so nobody had a personal Bible in
their house. OK, the gospels when they were
penned, which came much later after Jesus life and Paul's
letters, they would circulate. But again, you had to have
someone who could read to actually read them, right?
(29:10):
So when Paul wrote a letter to achurch, say he wrote to the
Galatian churches or 4 churches in Galatia, somebody who was
part of those churches who couldread, probably one of the Jewish
brothers, would sit and read theletter to everyone else.
OK, that's how it worked. They did not have church
buildings. They met in homes.
Yeah. They did not have an order of
(29:32):
worship like we do today. It's very, very different the
way they met. Now, when you read the book, you
see how they met, and it was actually electrifying.
The way the early Christians metwas explosive.
But anyway, those are just some of the basic things.
We could take the next 4 hours going into more, but it gives
you an idea that we do paint ourcentury back into the New
Testament by def fault and that's that's that that is a
(29:56):
mistake to do because you're you're misunderstanding what was
really going on in the 1st century.
Sure, sure. And so just kind of re
emphasizing this, you've stated that understanding the cultural
background of the 1st century, specifically that Mediterranean
region where we find that the that the Bible was written in
New Testament was written, Rich is our interpretation.
(30:19):
And I wanted to give you a chance to elaborate on that.
And can you give us some examples of passages that gain a
whole new meaning whenever you view them within their proper
context? Yes, yes.
Well, again, the New Testament was written 2000 years ago.
All right, So I'll use an analogy.
It's kind of like trying to understand TikTok trends without
(30:40):
knowing anything about social media or Internet culture.
Yeah, that's what it's like to read a book that was written
2000 years ago without understanding the culture.
All right, so people in the 1st century had extremely different
ideas about honor, family, politics and social rules.
Consequently, when we read the New Testament with modern eyes,
(31:02):
we miss a lot of that, what the original readers would have
instantly understood. So here's some examples.
Jesus says go to the extra mile.If someone forces you to go one
mile, go 2 miles. That's Matthew 541.
Well, he was not giving advice about being nice.
In that day. Roman soldiers could legally
(31:24):
force Jewish people to carry their heavy equipment for
exactly 1 mile, no more, no less.
And that was super humiliating for a Jewish person living under
Roman rule. So where Jesus is suggesting
voluntarily carrying a second mile, he was teaching a clever
(31:45):
way to flip the situation. The soldier would be confused
and suddenly the Jewish person wasn't being forced anymore.
They were choosing voluntarily to help.
So. This, this was a peaceful way to
stand up to unfair mistreatment and injustice without fighting
(32:06):
and without giving up. All right, so it's the genius of
Jesus. That's right, yeah.
You have another example in First Corinthians about head
coverings. A woman ought to have authority
over her head because of the angels.
That's First Corinthians 1110. Now that sounds weird, all right
to us, right? But in ancient Corinth, what you
(32:28):
wore on your head sent importantmessages about who you were.
So for example, Roman women, if they had their heads uncovered
in public, it suggested they were sexually available.
For a Greek woman, covering her head showed that she was being
respectful and respectable. And freed slaves wore special
(32:51):
caps to show that they were not slaves anymore.
So Paul was not just giving random rules.
He was helping a community that had, you know, Greeks and Romans
and slaves and freed slaves to figure out how to respect each
other and their different backgrounds while they
worshipped together. And so the reference to angels
(33:13):
actually relates to the ancient Jewish belief that angels were
present during worship, which emphasizes that worship and
sharing the Lord and prayer and prophesying were all sacred.
And according to Acts, we know from Acts, or excuse me,
according to Genesis, we know from Genesis 6 that the first
(33:35):
celestial beings rebelled against God in the very
beginning. And so Paul was urging the women
in the churches not to engage inrebellion as a witness to the
godly angels who were observing their worship.
Another one is the holy kiss. In a lot of the epistles you
have Paul saying greet one another with a holy kiss.
(33:59):
For example Romans 16 verse 16 is just one of them.
He wasn't just saying tell each other hello.
And Roman society who could kisswhom followed strict rules.
People only kissed others of thesame social rank, so lower class
(34:20):
people had to kiss the hand or the cheek of a higher class
person. So when Paul told everyone in
the churches whether they're rich, poor, slaves, free men,
women, to kiss each other as equals, it was a revolutionary.
It was a physical way of showingthat in their community the
(34:43):
normal social divisions did not matter anymore, that we're all
one in Christ and equal in the Kingdom.
Another example of this would bewhen he said there isn't neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 328.
That was incredibly radical. In the 1st century, you had
(35:06):
three categories, ethnicity, freedom, status and gender, and
that defined who you were in ancient society and how you were
treated. Jewish men in that day, Chad had
a prayer thanking God that they were not born a gentile, they
were not born a slave, and they were not born a woman.
(35:27):
Yes. All right, That's in the Jewish
world. OK.
You told me that. All right, so Paul was basically
saying that in this divided culture, in Christ, you have a
brand new identity, you're part of a new civilization, you're
part of a new species, and all of the normal social rules were
now broken and obliterated because of Jesus Christ.
(35:50):
And that was shocking in the 1stcentury.
And so for him to say there's neither Jew nor Greek slave nor
female or female, I mean, we're talking about explosive,
countercultural, yes, revolutionary kind of
conversations. And so these are just some
examples. There are many, many more.
But it gives you an idea of how the world of the 1st century was
(36:15):
so different from ours. Honor and shame was huge in the
1st century. People lived or died to be
honored. And shame was like the death
knell to your life. And so there was a lot of
shaming. And if you were shamed, this was
incredibly an incredible obstacle to get over.
And Jesus broke all these rules.He talked to a woman in public,
(36:38):
the Samaritan woman. That was shameful.
Yes, yet he did. It right of the woman caught in
adultery. She was being shamed.
Look at how he treated her. Totally counterintuitive,
countercultural revolutionary. I mean, you, you see all of this
pronounced in the New Testament,in the letters, in the epistles,
in the book of Acts. And I bring all of this out as
(37:00):
the reader is going through it. So they understand this is
revolutionary. I, I, I didn't even notice this.
Again, it's like somebody tryingto understand TikTok culture
who's never used TikTok doesn't use the Internet and it's not on
social media, right? You'd be lost.
And that's how it is when we read the New Testament without
understanding the culture, the history, the times and the
(37:24):
context. So good.
And you know, it's one of those situations where when you're
reading through the Bible and this happened so many to happens
in the Old Testament too. Right now I'm teaching my young
adults on covenant and the fact that so many of the Old
Testament passages and even New Testament passages because of
the new covenant, they they, they look silly to us if we
(37:47):
don't understand covenant. And it's the same exact way in
the New Testament, these a lot of these passages, they either
look silly to us. So we dismissed them and we say
they're not important, or we just say it was another day.
And you know, that doesn't applyto us.
Or we hang on to some of these things like the head coverings,
right? We hang on to some of these
things in our churches and we say, well, the Bible says it.
(38:07):
And I believe at the end, and wedon't understand that story that
it's that is part of we don't understand that context.
And you're bringing this to light.
And really, in a lot of ways, you're, you're, you're removing
the veil from, from reading the New Testament.
You're showing us what it lookedlike for the church to be born.
And you're showing us what it looked like for the
(38:28):
revolutionary message of Jesus Christ to take shape in the
world of the 1st century. And therefore, by application,
what it looks like for the radical countercultural message
of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, to take root in our lives
here today. And we don't get that unless we
understand the context. Appreciate that, brother.
(38:51):
Amen. Let me kind of close with this.
I could talk to you for hours. What?
Let's summarize it this way. What's the biggest problem we
face in reading the New Testament today that you
addressed in the book? If you had to narrow it down to
one thing, what's the biggest, biggest problem we face in
reading the New Testament and how do you address that?
Yeah, it's it's really, it really comes down to not knowing
(39:15):
the story, the narrative, how the book of Acts, how the
Gospels and how the epistles allfit together to create this
explosive drama, this nail biting narrative and that is
missing and most of ChristianityToday.
That's why I wrote the book to resolve the problem.
(39:37):
I give an example of of what I mean by this by using a jigsaw
puzzle box analogy. Now my wife, she loves jigsaw
puzzles and she usually puts together these 1000 piece
puzzles. Well, she's able to do it and
she does a great job. I can't do it for nothing.
You can pay me big money. I'll quit after 10 minutes.
(40:00):
But she has a guide and that is the picture on the box.
Yeah. Now if she didn't have the
picture on the box, what would happen is.
As she's trying to assemble thispuzzle, she would inevitably
force pieces that don't fit together.
And the way that puzzles are made, some of the pieces almost
fit together all right. It's like a 90% fit.
(40:22):
Close, yeah. It's very close, it's razor thin
close, but there's that one partthat just will not go.
And unless you really have a careful eye, you'll see that
puzzle pieces don't don't work, that are not properly fitted
together. And so your guide is that
picture on the box. And so when we know the story,
(40:43):
which my book sets out to do to assemble the sort story, it's
like having the picture on the box.
And when you have the picture onthe box, now you know where the
pieces fit together. And the problem it solves is
this business of forcing pieces together that were not meant to
be assembled together. And this is, this is a good
(41:04):
analogy of what happens when people, teachers, pastors,
leaders, Bible study leaders, they don't know the story.
And so they try to make verses fit together that were never
meant to be put together becausethey're taken out of context.
And at the end of the day, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work. And, and again, that's why we
(41:24):
have so many divisions within Christianity, because you can
prove anything by cutting and pasting verses together, but you
can't do it exactly. But you can't do it when you
have the picture on the box. And so that's the major problem.
And that's why I wrote the book.It's one big solution to that
problem. And based on the feedback I'm
getting so far, like yourself, people like yourself, it's
(41:47):
really creating a revolution in God's people, their
understanding of the New Testament.
And that just makes me very joyful because again, it was
incredibly difficult to put thisbook together.
Well, and again, I want to kind of highlight and I think your
heart's this too. We're not, We're not.
We're not here today to sell youa book.
Right, right. We're here to share with you a
resource that will change the way you read the Bible, that
(42:09):
will grow you in your faith, andit will help you to become the
the disciple that you were created to be.
And that's what all this is about.
One of the things you said, Frankie, is that there's this
nail biting narrative. I wrote that down because I love
it. Nail biting narrative.
Oh man, for so much of my life, I miss that there was nothing
nail biting about the narrative.I was understanding about the
Bible. It was this, you know, it was
(42:31):
this ritual and it was, you know, it was boring and it there
was nothing exciting or nail biting about it.
But but when you see it for whatit is, it becomes extremely
exciting. It becomes something you get
excited to get up and read aboutbecause man, this can change my
life and it will if you let it. And what we see is that the
message of Jesus, this, this countercultural Kingdom of God
(42:53):
message is not just a message tomake you a slightly better
version of yourself. Right.
It's not a message to make you alittle bit nicer.
And unfortunately that's kind ofwhat we've, you know, that's
kind of what we've made it down to.
We've we've cut it down to just self help.
We've cut it down to, OK, if youwant a little, if you want to
get a little better, read your Bible.
(43:15):
That's. Right.
Grow in your faith. The message of Jesus Christ will
transform you from the inside out.
It will change everything about you and it becomes this story
that not only happened 2000 years ago, but it's still going
on today. And you have a part in it, my
friend, my listener, You have a part in that story.
(43:37):
And my question to you is, do you realize your part and are
you stepping up to the plate andthis book will help you get
there. Amen.
Frank, can you tell my leaders, my, my, my listeners where to
find your work? Where can they go to find out
more about you? There's a lot of different areas
and I'd love for you to kind of unpack that force.
Yeah, the one stop shop for everything is frankviola.org,
(44:00):
Frank Viola, alloneword.org org and they'll find everything, the
free articles, the free podcasts.
We also have the Untold Story ofthe New Testament Church
podcast. Now they can find that on there
as well. When they click on the book
cover of the book, we're talkingabout the Untold Story of the
New Testament Church. Revise and expand that.
(44:20):
It's on the front page, home page.
If they click on that, it'll take them right to the book
landing page. And there's lots of free
resources on there. Chad interviews I've done on
other podcasts. There's a message, a conference
message called Burn That Candle.Yes.
But I would encourage every Christian who is in ministry or
(44:43):
they feel called to ministry to listen to It has devastated,
decimated, altered many, many people who have heard it,
pastors included, because it presents the work of God in a
brand new way and a fresh way through a new lens.
It's the lens of the story, OK? And it tilts over many of our
(45:06):
modern day assumptions. So I really would encourage, and
that's free. They can listen to that for
free. I'll put a link show notes as
well. Yes, yes.
And the actual landing page thatpeople can go to
directlyistheuntoldstory.net, theuntoldstory.net, that's the
book landing page. That's where they can listen to
(45:27):
the interviews, listen to the message, burn that candle.
There's a there's a free samplerof the book, the 1st 44 pages.
It shows how, how they can order.
It's got endorsements, all sortsof things, and if they go to
theuntoldstory.net and wait for it to redirect, they will see
everything and there's lots and lots of gratis resources there,
(45:49):
as I say, that they can benefit from.
That's the thing that that I want you guys, the listeners
here to understand is that they're get into Frank's world.
You're going to grow in your faith.
You're going to grow closer to God.
There are so many entrance points that you have made
available for free, but this book is a game changer.
And so Frank, you're a gift to the Kingdom.
(46:09):
Brother, what an honor this has been to just sit talk with you,
discuss this book with you, but more importantly, discuss the
truth of the Kingdom because that's what sets us free.
Amen. Amen.
I thanks for the kind words, brother.
I'm encouraged and I appreciate it and I praise the Lord for it.
Yes, Sir. Well, thank you, my friend.
We'll be in touch. All right, great.
Thank you for listening to the Rev RX Podcast.
(46:31):
We hope you enjoyed what you heard today and if so, we'd love
it if you would hit that subscribe button so that you'll
never miss a new episode from us.
Also, feel free to leave us reviews and comments as we'd
love to hear from you. Be blessed and be the very best
you.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Rev RX
Podcast where we help you thrivein faith, family, and help.
My name is Chad Potts and I'm your host.
Today's episode is one I'm extremely excited about.
What if I told you the reason that you struggle to understand
your Bible, particularly the NewTestament, is because no one
ever gave you the full story? I've interviewed a ton of people
(00:32):
over the last year, but this one's different.
You see, Frank Viola is one of my favorite Christian authors of
all time. His understanding of the gospel,
the Kingdom of God, and the cohesiveness of Scripture is
unmatched. Matter of fact, I have an entire
section on my bookshelf of FrankViola books.
In this episode, we unpack his updated and expanded book called
(00:53):
The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.
Here's what's different about this book.
We're not trying to sell you a book in this episode, but we're
introducing to you a resource that has the potential to open
your eyes in ways that few resources ever had and help you
understand the story of the Bible and its completeness and
where you fit in that story as well.
(01:14):
You see, it reads like a novel, but it's built on solid
scholarship and it will change the writ.
It will change the way that you read your Bible.
If you've ever felt like the NewTestament was a was a scattered
puzzle, then this book gives youthe picture on the box.
It will unlock the Bible in a way that makes it truly come
alive. You're going to love how we
(01:35):
unpacked some of the truths about Christianity, about the
Bible, and about why we have such a hard time understanding
it today. You're going to love this
conversation with my new friend Frank Viola, affectionately
known as Frankie V Enjoy FrankieV Frank Volla, brother, what a
(01:56):
privilege it is to have you hereon the show.
Thanks for joining us today. It's my honor, Chad.
Appreciate it. I've told you before, I have
followed your work for years. I'm actually part of your your
network now. You have a way of explaining
Christian truth and biblical truth that is needed in our
world today. So I just want to say thank you
for what you're doing. You have a new book I can't wait
(02:18):
to unpack. But before we get into that, I'd
love to just give you a chance to introduce yourself to our
audience, share some of your work, including your books, your
podcast, and just help us to getto know you a little better.
Sure, sure. So I'm someone who writes books
and speaks for hungry and thirsty Christians who love
Jesus, but who know in their bones that there must be more.
(02:42):
More to the Christian faith, more to Jesus Christ, more to
the Bible, and more to church. And to date, I've written over
20 books, and they can be divided up into light and shade.
Light would be books containing the element of the sublime.
These are high revelatory books.And then there's shade.
(03:03):
And those are books that have a prophetic edge, that challenge
the status quo. And your listeners, if they're
interested to look at the entirebook catalog, can find it all at
Frank Viola, One word, frankviola.org.
Now, I would say the most important books in the catalog
that I have panned are the one we're going to discuss today
(03:23):
yet, which is The Untold Story of the New Testament Church,
revised and expanded. It's the white cover with the
brush strokes on the sides. Another one is insurgents
reclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom.
Yes, another one is 48 Laws of spiritual power.
Another one would be hang on, Let go from eternity to here and
(03:45):
then, God's favorite place on earth.
And in addition to the books, I write an article every Thursday
of people can sign up for free on my blog.
And I have two podcasts, The Christ is All Podcast, which
includes conference messages, interviews, monologues, and
creative sketches. And that thankfully has reached
(04:05):
over 2,000,000 downloads to date.
And then another one is the Insurgents podcast which
discusses the radical implications of the explosive
gospel of the Kingdom. I have 7 conversation partners
on that show, one of them being my late friend Michael Heizer,
and that one has over 750,000 downloads.
(04:27):
And right now on that show, we are currently discussing every
reference to the Kingdom of God in the New Testament in
chronological order. And so that's a very thrilling
project for us. Absolutely.
The message here is Frank is putting out good work and there
is no excuse not to find it. All right.
I appreciate. That the content that, that
(04:48):
you're getting into the world isneeded and, and it's prevalent.
And I'll tell you, Frank, I've, I've gotten most of your works
on my bookshelf. I told you I've got a whole,
you've got a shelf devoted to both you and Lynn Sweet.
I know you guys wrote three books together and it's
powerful. Some of the ways you view the
word and some of the ways you view the Kingdom.
(05:08):
Because you're exactly right. There are, there are a lot of
people that I talked to on a daily basis.
I'm a minister. I'm also a pharmacist,
especially in my role as a minister, I deal primarily with
young adults. So that's that coming of age,
right, The 18 to 30 year olds. And there's a hunger there,
there there's a deep thirst for the things of God.
(05:29):
And there just seems to be this sense of, OK, we're going
through the motions of Christianity in the church.
And then, you know, not a knock on any of that, but it's just
we're going through the motions.But there feels like there's
more. And you, you, you deal with that
in a lot of your work. And so that's what's drawn me to
you. I want to, I'm gonna put a plug
in real quick for, you know, forinsurgents, because I think that
(05:51):
message that you put out. And that's when I really, I
really started getting into thisKingdom concept because the
Kingdom of God is such an important thing.
And I'm convinced you don't really understand the New
Testament of the Scriptures until you can really understand
and embrace the concept of the Kingdom of God.
So, so thank you for that. And thank you for kind of
telling us a little bit about yourself and, and what you're
doing now. I want to get into your latest
(06:13):
book. This is one that has been
revelatory for me. And there have been people who
said things like there is no book like this one.
And before we jumped on, I said that too.
This is the book I've been looking for for a long time,
which puts things in perspectiveand helps me see the overall
narrative. There are no shortage of
Christian books, are there Frankie?
(06:34):
No way. You have entire stores and
volumes written with all of these Christian books.
So what I want you to kind of talk about is with this latest
book which is entitled again TheUntold Story of the New
Testament Church. It is the revised and expanded
version of the one that was recently re released.
What makes yours you? Well I will double click on what
(06:56):
you said, that there is no otherbook like this and that has been
echoed by some of the scholars who endorsed it.
Even though it's not a scholarlybook, it is backed by the best
New Testament scholarship. So I would say it this way.
It is the only non fiction book ever written that constructs the
(07:18):
story we find in the book of Acts with with the New Testament
epistles chronologically to tellone powerful narrative and it
has the most up to date scholarship available embedded
in the book. I write the book that I want to
(07:38):
read but doesn't exist. Yeah, right.
So I wish I had this when I was 21 years old.
And we have many, many 20s and 30s reading it that are being
blown away because it's very rare to find someone who puts
the whole thing together. When they preach or teach.
Many pastors, they know chaptersand verses and many of them know
(08:01):
the individual books of the Bible, but they don't know the
whole story and they don't know the whole background.
And without that, you are basically lost.
You are in a forest without a flashlight, and it's dark.
And So what this book is, and this is what makes it unique, it
is a sensational expedition through the New Testament the
(08:22):
likes of which most Christians cannot imagine.
And the great scholar FF Bruce famously said that reading the
New Testament letters is like hearing one end of a phone
conversation. And what my book does is it
reconstructs the other end so that the reader can understand
(08:43):
virtually every word in the epistles of Paul, Peter,
Hebrews, James, ETC. John, so forth.
So what the book does uniquely is it unlocks the New Testament
by seamlessly weaving together the narrative of Acts with the
epistles, providing a free flowing story from Matthew to
(09:05):
Revelation but in chronological order, and then filling in all
the details from our knowledge of the 1st century.
So I basically take you back to the 1st century and you get to
watch the whole story unfold. And again, although it's non
fiction, some readers have said it reads like a motion picture
on paper. Yes, and that was my goal.
(09:26):
I would have tested that. And Frank, I, one of the things
that I, one of the ways I would describe this book too, is it's
almost like 2 in one because there's the, there's the print
that just reads and it almost reads like fiction.
You're right. Like it, it's, it's captivating.
You have a gift with words. And, and so it, it really reads
like you're reading a story, which is what the Bible is.
That's what the word of God is. It's a, it's a story of, of God
(09:49):
and we find ourselves in that, right.
But then for the nerds like me, I love the footnotes.
And so there's all the scholarlyfootnotes underneath to where,
OK, you can do this a couple different ways.
You can read it as though you'rereading a story and just ignore
the footnotes and then go back to that for reference.
Or you can take a deep dive. And you know what?
I'll be honest with you, there'stimes where I do both.
(10:10):
Yep. And I love that option.
And so it has the feel of a really in depth scholarly book
because the research is there and it's all laid out for you.
You don't have to ask yourself, where did Frank get this?
Right, right. You tell us and, and I love
that, but then also there is there's this amazing story that
you put in the words and you're exactly right.
(10:31):
What you're doing is you're piercing together the two sides
of the phone call and you use some respect to scholarship in
order to do that. You get into it.
We don't have to talk about it, but mirror reading some of the
biblical texts. You know, what's the most likely
thing that he was addressing here?
What was it that caused Paul to write this letter and say these
things? And it feels like you're walking
(10:52):
through the birth of the church,the expansion of the church and
really just has a a unique feel to it.
So I would testify as one that has been through almost all of
this now. And I'm so excited.
I'm when I finish it, we're going to do a round two and then
I'm going to bring this to my young adults in my church.
So get ready for listening. Absolutely.
I appreciate, I appreciate that too, because many of my readers
(11:12):
who are subscribed to the blog and the podcasts are between the
ages of 21 and 39, many, many 20s and 30s.
So I'm glad you're ministering to that audience, brother.
And that's, that's when I reallystarted following the Lord
myself. Same in the early early 20s, so
even before that my teens but really caught fire in my 20s.
(11:33):
So anyway, I just wanted to insert that.
I'm very happy to hear it. Yeah.
And, you know, it is that age where we begin to make our faith
our own and we start questioning, you know, OK, do I
believe this because I've alwaysbeen taught this, or do I
believe this because it's real to me, Right?
And your work, this book brings that Bible story to life.
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And so I love that. One of the things that you
attack, and I use that word kindof kind of on purpose here, but
is context. There are so many times that we
read the scriptures out of context.
Like you said, we pick a verse here, a verse there.
They're not talking about the same thing, but we try to make
them say something. It is true.
You can, you can make the Bible say anything you want.
If you take things out of context, context, not only is it
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problematic when we try to provea point by taking things out of
context, but if we don't understand the context and
background of the Bible, if we don't understand the world that
the Bible was written in and what the original audience would
have heard and understood when they were reading some of these
letters, then we miss so much ofthat story.
So how important in your mind iscontext in reading the Bible?
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And then how did you address this specifically in your book?
Yeah, well, it's hugely important.
Context is critical and necessary for understanding the
Bible, and that includes the NewTestament.
I'll give you some examples thatare easy to understand.
I can say my calves are hurting.That means one thing at the gym.
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It means a totally different thing in a barn, right?
OK, you, Chad, could say to youraudience, man, I am hot.
Well, that could mean you're sitting out in the sweltering
heat in the Florida blazing sun.I'm in Georgia all.
Right, there you go. Or it could mean you're an
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egotist about your good looks. Sure.
OK, so so context is hugely important.
And here's the thing, We can prove anything by taking verses
out of context from the Bible and pasting them together, which
is done sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.
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So Christians, many, many Christians, even leaders and
teachers and pastors often approach the Bible with scissors
and glue. I'm speaking metaphorically and
they use what I call the cut andpaste method.
Taking one verse out of one bookof the Bible, finding a
metaphorical connection to another verse on a similar
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topic, taking that out of context, pasting them together
to create a doctrine or support for a practice.
And I'll just give you an example of how this works.
I'm going to use outrageous examples, but it'll give people
an idea of how you can prove anything by taking verses out of
out of context and pacing them together.
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I'm going to show you that God is an atheist right from the
Bible. OK, here it is, 2 verses.
There is no God. Psalm 14, one says the Lord and
I do not lie. Numbers 23, verse 19.
All right, yeah. So God is saying he's an
atheist, basically. Yeah.
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I can also prove, and this is inthe book, this example, that
Jesus Christ supports suicide and Judas went out and hanged
himself. Matthew 27 five.
Now go and do likewise. Luke 1037.
All right, Yeah. So, so my book is designed to
solve the problem of taking verses out of context by putting
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readers in the story, in the narrative chronologically,
watching it unfold sequentially in its original context.
And when you do that, it does two things.
One, it opens up the New Testament like you could not
believe. Yes, and #2 you're hemmed in
because now you can't take verses out of context because
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you've seen the story. Yeah, you've looked at the
context and that changes everything.
That's powerful. I remember vividly, I was in my
late 20s and up to that point, Christianity for me was just
going to church. I didn't understand the
relationship. I didn't understand I, I read my
Bible at church. That was it.
My Bible reading was whatever the Bible, whatever the pastor
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preached that week out of the Bible.
My prayer life was was scant, minimal.
And I remember listening to an evangelist and he was preaching
out of the Gospel of John. And he began to describe for me
and for all of us, the culture, the context in which John was
writing these words. And brother, the Bible came
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alive to me more in that moment than it had in my previous 28
years. And it and it was all about the
context, the things that I had, the surface level things that I
had learned. And there's nothing wrong with
that. You got to start somewhere.
But the surface level things begin to just mean so much more.
And I'm and about context. And that's why I love your
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answer to that question. That's why I love this book.
Now thinking about context, going along to reading the Bible
and, and understanding what we read, what are some of the
things in your opinion that hinder us from understanding the
New Testament and, and how does your new book remove those
hindrances? And, and here's something that
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I've noticed. The chronological part makes so
much of a difference. And it maybe that can be a, a
starting point for us. But when we see things out of
order, you know, one of the things that you say in your book
is it's like listening to an audio book just on like random,
like it picks random chapters. That's right.
Yep. And so can you expand on that
and just kind of help us to see what are some other things that
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hinder us from understanding theBible and how you combat that in
your book? Well, I'll give you several.
One of them is the Gospel and their arrangement.
Now we have the four gospels that tell the story of Jesus.
They are not arranged chronologically and even even
where they are placed, you know,Matthew coming first is
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incorrect. Mark was the first Gospel.
Most evangelical scholars agree,but even the writers don't put
it all in chronological order. So that's that's one thing.
But a bigger problem is the bookof Acts.
This is the second problem. It's condensed and abridged.
Now, that was intentional. Luke wasn't trying to leave out
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details. He was emphasizing certain
points and certain events, and therefore his leaving out of
details was not reckless. But it is highly condensed and
highly abridged, and so you're not getting all of it.
Now, if you go to Paul's epistles and the epistle of
James and Peter, then you get the rest of the detail that
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Luke, Luke leaves out, right? Right.
Another one is the epistles. The epistles are set on shuffle.
All right. You use the example that I had
given that I was once listening to an audiobook on CD.
This is when automobiles had CD players and I was listening to
this audiobook and I was totallylost.
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It wasn't making sense. And I realized that the shuffle
or random feature was set on. And so it was moving, you know,
from chapter 10 to chapter 3 to Chapter 2 to Chapter 9.
And, and that's how the New Testament is, though, because
all of Paul's letters are not arranged in the order in which
he wrote them. The same thing with the letters
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of of the other writers. They're arranged by length, not
sequentially, right? So that's another issue.
Another problem is chapters and verses.
Now, chapters and verses are fantastic for locating certain
sentences in the Bible, OK, but they hinder us from really
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understanding what was going on and they bleed into and they
have led to this cut and paste mentality where we read the
Scriptures in fragmented sentences, which are what verses
are, OK. And so the chapters and verses
came hundreds of, I would say thousands of years later from
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the time then that the New Testament was written.
For example, chapters were addedin the year 1227 and verses did
not appear until 1551. That's 1500 years later, right?
So, but they have heard us because we are now conditioned
to read the Scripture in terms of these fragmented ways.
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And then the fifth problem. Is the widespread ignorance of
1st century Mediterranean cultural context, social
structures and linguistic nuances, nuances.
And so in order to understand the New Testament and even the
Old Testament, you have to immerse yourself in the culture
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because it was a totally different world.
Things operated differently. The way words were used was
completely different. And this ignorance has caused us
to unconsciously impose our own cultural frameworks back onto
the New Testament text or the biblical text.
And so those are really the mainproblems.
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The way that my book solves it is it puts everything
chronologically in context and fills in all the details.
And so when you have the story told narratively, sequentially,
with all the details filled in and an explanation of the
culture, because that's often missing, yes, then you now
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understand what in the world those authors were saying, what
was really happening when Paul wrote Galatians, when he wrote
First Thessalonians, when he wrote Colossians, You now
understand who those people wereto whom he was writing.
And you also understand where Paul was and what he had been
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through and what he was feeling and thinking as he was writing
those those epistles, those letters.
And so the, the, the effect is that those letters open up and
now we can understand them. And brother, here's the thing,
the word of God, the written word of God, all points to the
living word of God, Christ, Amen, right.
That's that's the objective is to reveal Christ to us because
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he's the one that changes us, delivers us, transforms us,
saves us, heals us, works in ourlives.
Yes, go does wonderful things inUS and to us and through us.
But the word of God, the writtenword of God can't help us really
if we don't understand it. And the worst problem is to take
it out of context and not only to misunderstand it, but to
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misapply it. And that happens all the time.
And so again, I, I wish I had this book that I have written
took me many years to write. I wish I had it when I was 21.
Gosh, I wish I had it when I was16.
Likewise. Because it would have radically
altered my life back then, and it would have spared me so many
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problems because we run into problems when we don't
understand what the New Testament is really saying to
us. So that would be my answer to
that question. Yeah.
And it's almost like we have this idea that when when we read
the scripture, we we read into it our culture, our society, our
doctrinal beliefs, our theology,our Western world, our
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denominational beliefs, we read into it all of those things.
And when we approach it from that lens, we're tending to take
something that was meant in a totally different way and say,
oh, this means this because that's what it means today.
And therefore I'm going to applythat to my life in such a way.
And that can be dangerous. And, and so I love that.
And one of the things I want to say too is this, this book is
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approachable. And what I mean by that is it,
Frankie, you pulled together so many resources that most people
will never read, and you put it together in a readable format
that helps us to understand the story of God in the end of birth
and spread of the New Testament church and our role in that in a
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powerful way. And there's this sense of that
we need to have a seminary degree to fully understand the
Bible, at least down here in theBible Belt.
That's where you always got people for that, you know, where
the pastor understands it. And he can kind of give us
morsels. He can give us a little bits and
pieces. No, you know, the Bible is
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available for all of us to read,and that's part of our
relationship. Our daily intimate walk with God
is reading his word. And you pull together dozens and
dozens of resources to where nowwe can sit here with this one
book and you've done the hard work for us.
And we can read it and we can understand it in that story can
come alive. And we can find ourselves in
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that story. And we can allow to do, we can
allow God to do what only he cando in our lives because of it.
And so, yes, I just want to kindof give that synopsis of what
you just said in that, Yeah, it's it's a book, but it's more
than that. It's a resource, but it's more
than that. Well, I'll tell you what it is.
It's in addition, it's a hack oran app to to understand the New
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Testament and and I want to add something to your statement
about seminary. Here's the thing about seminary.
Most seminaries do not teach thestory, the narrative.
Yeah, what they do is they teachchurch history in a church
history course and then they teach the New Testament epistles
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in a New Testament studies course, and the two do not come
together. And so This is why many pastors
and many seminary trained pastors, I would say the vast
majority of them do not know thestory.
They don't know the background to all of the epistles together.
As you know, it's it's missing the forest for the trees.
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And so then when they begin to teach a book of the Bible or
they begin to teach on a subject, they're using that cut
and paste mentality and method and they do not understand the
story, the narrative. And so they're taking things out
of context. And This is why we have 40,000
plus denominations in the in theProtestant world.
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All right, when you have the story and you understand what
really happened and you see the whole forest as well as all the
individual trees and how they work together, it solves so many
problems. And, and that's exactly why I
wrote the book, because it was aheavy lift to produce, as you
could tell. But sure, by looking at it, it
(26:20):
took years to write, but it is agift to the body of Christ.
And again, I would just say every person listening to this,
I don't. I don't care what your age is,
but the younger the better. It's easy to read.
You don't have to get into footnotes, even though the
footnotes are there. If you're asking a question as
you're reading, like where on the earth is Frank getting this
from? Well, there it is, right?
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So you could skip those if you want, but it will open up the
New Testament. It will unlock the New Testament
in ways that will astound you. And and by the way, that comment
about pastors that comes directly from pastors.
I work with pastors. I've been working with pastors
for years. Yes, many are seminary trained
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and through their own lips, theyhave said I've never learned the
story. I took class after class.
I have a PhD and I did not know the story.
Yeah, I knew chapters and verses.
I knew books of the Bible, but not the story.
Yeah, yeah. And, and that is, you know,
that's a major issue we face in the American church today.
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And, and Speaking of which, so you've mentioned before the
social world of the New Testament, yes, the culture,
what it looked like to live in that day.
And so many times we read our culture into it.
So things don't make sense. Yes.
But what are some of the common misconceptions that we have
today about that social world ofthe New Testament?
Well, there are many, many, and they're countless, A countless
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number. And when you read the book,
readers will see what they are. But I'll, I'll just give you
some really basic ones. Most of the time is somebody who
is part of Christianity Today opens up the New Testament and
they read, say, the book of Actsand they read about the church
and they read about leaders. They immediately assume that the
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Christians met in church buildings.
They immediately assumed that they had Sunday morning church
services. Sunday school before.
Sunday school before, Yes, everyone tithes.
You had a time where the offering plate was passed
around. Everyone assumes that they were
sitting there with Bibles in their laps.
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Well, here's the fact. Most of the people in the 1st
century, and this would include the Christians, we're talking
90% of the Roman Empire, could not read, could not write.
Yeah, OK. That's number one.
Yeah, illiterate. Yeah, they didn't have Bibles
because the New Testament hadn'tbeen written yet, and the Old
Testament was extremely rare to get your hands on.
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And when they did have Old Testament scrolls, they were
locked up in the synagogues, so nobody had a personal Bible in
their house. OK, the gospels when they were
penned, which came much later after Jesus life and Paul's
letters, they would circulate. But again, you had to have
someone who could read to actually read them, right?
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So when Paul wrote a letter to achurch, say he wrote to the
Galatian churches or 4 churches in Galatia, somebody who was
part of those churches who couldread, probably one of the Jewish
brothers, would sit and read theletter to everyone else.
OK, that's how it worked. They did not have church
buildings. They met in homes.
Yeah. They did not have an order of
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worship like we do today. It's very, very different the
way they met. Now, when you read the book, you
see how they met, and it was actually electrifying.
The way the early Christians metwas explosive.
But anyway, those are just some of the basic things.
We could take the next 4 hours going into more, but it gives
you an idea that we do paint ourcentury back into the New
Testament by def fault and that's that's that that is a
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mistake to do because you're you're misunderstanding what was
really going on in the 1st century.
Sure, sure. And so just kind of re
emphasizing this, you've stated that understanding the cultural
background of the 1st century, specifically that Mediterranean
region where we find that the that the Bible was written in
New Testament was written, Rich is our interpretation.
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And I wanted to give you a chance to elaborate on that.
And can you give us some examples of passages that gain a
whole new meaning whenever you view them within their proper
context? Yes, yes.
Well, again, the New Testament was written 2000 years ago.
All right, So I'll use an analogy.
It's kind of like trying to understand TikTok trends without
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knowing anything about social media or Internet culture.
Yeah, that's what it's like to read a book that was written
2000 years ago without understanding the culture.
All right, so people in the 1st century had extremely different
ideas about honor, family, politics and social rules.
Consequently, when we read the New Testament with modern eyes,
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we miss a lot of that, what the original readers would have
instantly understood. So here's some examples.
Jesus says go to the extra mile.If someone forces you to go one
mile, go 2 miles. That's Matthew 541.
Well, he was not giving advice about being nice.
In that day. Roman soldiers could legally
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force Jewish people to carry their heavy equipment for
exactly 1 mile, no more, no less.
And that was super humiliating for a Jewish person living under
Roman rule. So where Jesus is suggesting
voluntarily carrying a second mile, he was teaching a clever
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way to flip the situation. The soldier would be confused
and suddenly the Jewish person wasn't being forced anymore.
They were choosing voluntarily to help.
So. This, this was a peaceful way to
stand up to unfair mistreatment and injustice without fighting
(32:06):
and without giving up. All right, so it's the genius of
Jesus. That's right, yeah.
You have another example in First Corinthians about head
coverings. A woman ought to have authority
over her head because of the angels.
That's First Corinthians 1110. Now that sounds weird, all right
to us, right? But in ancient Corinth, what you
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wore on your head sent importantmessages about who you were.
So for example, Roman women, if they had their heads uncovered
in public, it suggested they were sexually available.
For a Greek woman, covering her head showed that she was being
respectful and respectable. And freed slaves wore special
(32:51):
caps to show that they were not slaves anymore.
So Paul was not just giving random rules.
He was helping a community that had, you know, Greeks and Romans
and slaves and freed slaves to figure out how to respect each
other and their different backgrounds while they
worshipped together. And so the reference to angels
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actually relates to the ancient Jewish belief that angels were
present during worship, which emphasizes that worship and
sharing the Lord and prayer and prophesying were all sacred.
And according to Acts, we know from Acts, or excuse me,
according to Genesis, we know from Genesis 6 that the first
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celestial beings rebelled against God in the very
beginning. And so Paul was urging the women
in the churches not to engage inrebellion as a witness to the
godly angels who were observing their worship.
Another one is the holy kiss. In a lot of the epistles you
have Paul saying greet one another with a holy kiss.
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For example Romans 16 verse 16 is just one of them.
He wasn't just saying tell each other hello.
And Roman society who could kisswhom followed strict rules.
People only kissed others of thesame social rank, so lower class
(34:20):
people had to kiss the hand or the cheek of a higher class
person. So when Paul told everyone in
the churches whether they're rich, poor, slaves, free men,
women, to kiss each other as equals, it was a revolutionary.
It was a physical way of showingthat in their community the
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normal social divisions did not matter anymore, that we're all
one in Christ and equal in the Kingdom.
Another example of this would bewhen he said there isn't neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 328.
That was incredibly radical. In the 1st century, you had
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three categories, ethnicity, freedom, status and gender, and
that defined who you were in ancient society and how you were
treated. Jewish men in that day, Chad had
a prayer thanking God that they were not born a gentile, they
were not born a slave, and they were not born a woman.
(35:27):
Yes. All right, That's in the Jewish
world. OK.
You told me that. All right, so Paul was basically
saying that in this divided culture, in Christ, you have a
brand new identity, you're part of a new civilization, you're
part of a new species, and all of the normal social rules were
now broken and obliterated because of Jesus Christ.
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And that was shocking in the 1stcentury.
And so for him to say there's neither Jew nor Greek slave nor
female or female, I mean, we're talking about explosive,
countercultural, yes, revolutionary kind of
conversations. And so these are just some
examples. There are many, many more.
But it gives you an idea of how the world of the 1st century was
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so different from ours. Honor and shame was huge in the
1st century. People lived or died to be
honored. And shame was like the death
knell to your life. And so there was a lot of
shaming. And if you were shamed, this was
incredibly an incredible obstacle to get over.
And Jesus broke all these rules.He talked to a woman in public,
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the Samaritan woman. That was shameful.
Yes, yet he did. It right of the woman caught in
adultery. She was being shamed.
Look at how he treated her. Totally counterintuitive,
countercultural revolutionary. I mean, you, you see all of this
pronounced in the New Testament,in the letters, in the epistles,
in the book of Acts. And I bring all of this out as
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the reader is going through it. So they understand this is
revolutionary. I, I, I didn't even notice this.
Again, it's like somebody tryingto understand TikTok culture
who's never used TikTok doesn't use the Internet and it's not on
social media, right? You'd be lost.
And that's how it is when we read the New Testament without
understanding the culture, the history, the times and the
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context. So good.
And you know, it's one of those situations where when you're
reading through the Bible and this happened so many to happens
in the Old Testament too. Right now I'm teaching my young
adults on covenant and the fact that so many of the Old
Testament passages and even New Testament passages because of
the new covenant, they they, they look silly to us if we
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don't understand covenant. And it's the same exact way in
the New Testament, these a lot of these passages, they either
look silly to us. So we dismissed them and we say
they're not important, or we just say it was another day.
And you know, that doesn't applyto us.
Or we hang on to some of these things like the head coverings,
right? We hang on to some of these
things in our churches and we say, well, the Bible says it.
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And I believe at the end, and wedon't understand that story that
it's that is part of we don't understand that context.
And you're bringing this to light.
And really, in a lot of ways, you're, you're, you're removing
the veil from, from reading the New Testament.
You're showing us what it lookedlike for the church to be born.
And you're showing us what it looked like for the
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revolutionary message of Jesus Christ to take shape in the
world of the 1st century. And therefore, by application,
what it looks like for the radical countercultural message
of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God, to take root in our lives
here today. And we don't get that unless we
understand the context. Appreciate that, brother.
(38:51):
Amen. Let me kind of close with this.
I could talk to you for hours. What?
Let's summarize it this way. What's the biggest problem we
face in reading the New Testament today that you
addressed in the book? If you had to narrow it down to
one thing, what's the biggest, biggest problem we face in
reading the New Testament and how do you address that?
Yeah, it's it's really, it really comes down to not knowing
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the story, the narrative, how the book of Acts, how the
Gospels and how the epistles allfit together to create this
explosive drama, this nail biting narrative and that is
missing and most of ChristianityToday.
That's why I wrote the book to resolve the problem.
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I give an example of of what I mean by this by using a jigsaw
puzzle box analogy. Now my wife, she loves jigsaw
puzzles and she usually puts together these 1000 piece
puzzles. Well, she's able to do it and
she does a great job. I can't do it for nothing.
You can pay me big money. I'll quit after 10 minutes.
(40:00):
But she has a guide and that is the picture on the box.
Yeah. Now if she didn't have the
picture on the box, what would happen is.
As she's trying to assemble thispuzzle, she would inevitably
force pieces that don't fit together.
And the way that puzzles are made, some of the pieces almost
fit together all right. It's like a 90% fit.
(40:22):
Close, yeah. It's very close, it's razor thin
close, but there's that one partthat just will not go.
And unless you really have a careful eye, you'll see that
puzzle pieces don't don't work, that are not properly fitted
together. And so your guide is that
picture on the box. And so when we know the story,
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which my book sets out to do to assemble the sort story, it's
like having the picture on the box.
And when you have the picture onthe box, now you know where the
pieces fit together. And the problem it solves is
this business of forcing pieces together that were not meant to
be assembled together. And this is, this is a good
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analogy of what happens when people, teachers, pastors,
leaders, Bible study leaders, they don't know the story.
And so they try to make verses fit together that were never
meant to be put together becausethey're taken out of context.
And at the end of the day, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work. And, and again, that's why we
(41:24):
have so many divisions within Christianity, because you can
prove anything by cutting and pasting verses together, but you
can't do it exactly. But you can't do it when you
have the picture on the box. And so that's the major problem.
And that's why I wrote the book.It's one big solution to that
problem. And based on the feedback I'm
getting so far, like yourself, people like yourself, it's
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really creating a revolution in God's people, their
understanding of the New Testament.
And that just makes me very joyful because again, it was
incredibly difficult to put thisbook together.
Well, and again, I want to kind of highlight and I think your
heart's this too. We're not, We're not.
We're not here today to sell youa book.
Right, right. We're here to share with you a
resource that will change the way you read the Bible, that
(42:09):
will grow you in your faith, andit will help you to become the
the disciple that you were created to be.
And that's what all this is about.
One of the things you said, Frankie, is that there's this
nail biting narrative. I wrote that down because I love
it. Nail biting narrative.
Oh man, for so much of my life, I miss that there was nothing
nail biting about the narrative.I was understanding about the
Bible. It was this, you know, it was
(42:31):
this ritual and it was, you know, it was boring and it there
was nothing exciting or nail biting about it.
But but when you see it for whatit is, it becomes extremely
exciting. It becomes something you get
excited to get up and read aboutbecause man, this can change my
life and it will if you let it. And what we see is that the
message of Jesus, this, this countercultural Kingdom of God
(42:53):
message is not just a message tomake you a slightly better
version of yourself. Right.
It's not a message to make you alittle bit nicer.
And unfortunately that's kind ofwhat we've, you know, that's
kind of what we've made it down to.
We've we've cut it down to just self help.
We've cut it down to, OK, if youwant a little, if you want to
get a little better, read your Bible.
(43:15):
That's. Right.
Grow in your faith. The message of Jesus Christ will
transform you from the inside out.
It will change everything about you and it becomes this story
that not only happened 2000 years ago, but it's still going
on today. And you have a part in it, my
friend, my listener, You have a part in that story.
(43:37):
And my question to you is, do you realize your part and are
you stepping up to the plate andthis book will help you get
there. Amen.
Frank, can you tell my leaders, my, my, my listeners where to
find your work? Where can they go to find out
more about you? There's a lot of different areas
and I'd love for you to kind of unpack that force.
Yeah, the one stop shop for everything is frankviola.org,
(44:00):
Frank Viola, alloneword.org org and they'll find everything, the
free articles, the free podcasts.
We also have the Untold Story ofthe New Testament Church
podcast. Now they can find that on there
as well. When they click on the book
cover of the book, we're talkingabout the Untold Story of the
New Testament Church. Revise and expand that.
(44:20):
It's on the front page, home page.
If they click on that, it'll take them right to the book
landing page. And there's lots of free
resources on there. Chad interviews I've done on
other podcasts. There's a message, a conference
message called Burn That Candle.Yes.
But I would encourage every Christian who is in ministry or
(44:43):
they feel called to ministry to listen to It has devastated,
decimated, altered many, many people who have heard it,
pastors included, because it presents the work of God in a
brand new way and a fresh way through a new lens.
It's the lens of the story, OK? And it tilts over many of our
(45:06):
modern day assumptions. So I really would encourage, and
that's free. They can listen to that for
free. I'll put a link show notes as
well. Yes, yes.
And the actual landing page thatpeople can go to
directlyistheuntoldstory.net, theuntoldstory.net, that's the
book landing page. That's where they can listen to
(45:27):
the interviews, listen to the message, burn that candle.
There's a there's a free samplerof the book, the 1st 44 pages.
It shows how, how they can order.
It's got endorsements, all sortsof things, and if they go to
theuntoldstory.net and wait for it to redirect, they will see
everything and there's lots and lots of gratis resources there,
(45:49):
as I say, that they can benefit from.
That's the thing that that I want you guys, the listeners
here to understand is that they're get into Frank's world.
You're going to grow in your faith.
You're going to grow closer to God.
There are so many entrance points that you have made
available for free, but this book is a game changer.
And so Frank, you're a gift to the Kingdom.
(46:09):
Brother, what an honor this has been to just sit talk with you,
discuss this book with you, but more importantly, discuss the
truth of the Kingdom because that's what sets us free.
Amen. Amen.
I thanks for the kind words, brother.
I'm encouraged and I appreciate it and I praise the Lord for it.
Yes, Sir. Well, thank you, my friend.
We'll be in touch. All right, great.
Thank you for listening to the Rev RX Podcast.
(46:31):
We hope you enjoyed what you heard today and if so, we'd love
it if you would hit that subscribe button so that you'll
never miss a new episode from us.
Also, feel free to leave us reviews and comments as we'd
love to hear from you. Be blessed and be the very best
you.
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