Join us every week for a new posting.

Ron Way, Host

Video

In addition to interviewing authors of all religions and faiths (as we have been doing), our sites will expand exponentially into entirely new dimensions—including video interviews of some of our most well-known authors that will be posted every month. The planning and preparation is well on its way. Soon you will be able to see as well as hear many of our authors as I probe their minds and explore their writings. When the transition is completed, the videos will be posted each week right along with our audio. But, that’s not all!

Apostle Paul Series

As part of these changes, I will be launching three new weekly blog series (the first coming next week). One will take you into the world of the Apostle Paul; his travels, tribulations, his visions, his interactions with the Disciples, and more. Why Paul? Because he is arguably the most influential personality responsible for the Christianity that we have all inherited down through the millennia. If you don’t understand Paul, you really can’t understand the teachings of Jesus, or the Christian faith that began to morph during the first decades after Jesus’ death.

We will also be introducing you to fascinating interview clips of Biblical scholars and authors that were interviewed by Robert Orlando in preparation for writing his book (and used in the movie by the same name) called, Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe. Orlando and I will also create a series of interviews that delve into the research and background behind the groundbreaking film.

Historical Jesus (Life, Times, and Teachings) Series

The second series will explore the world-changing life and times of the Jesus of history, from both my memories and my 30 years of study with some of the top biblical scholars in the world. I hope that you enjoy the series and contribute with your feedback.

Spiritual Series

Lastly, I find that about one half of our audience closely follows our posts about Jesus and Christianity, and about half log-on to hear and explore the world of Eastern religion, meditation, reincarnation, Masters and the spiritual path. So, I will also be adding a spiritual series that runs concurrently with the others. I have been meditating since I was 12 years old. Over the past 60 years I have experienced much. I have met Masters and near-Masters alike. I am currently writing a book about this journey, so I will give you a peek behind the curtain as it progresses. Now you can follow me as I write the book.

Choose the series that interests you, or check out subjects that help you understand other peoples of other faiths that have their own vision and faith.

A Grant is Helping Us Grow

This huge transition is being made possible in part by a grant from one of our listeners. If you would like to join with us in this effort to reach our goal of helping bring religious and spiritual peoples of the world together in mutual respect and understanding, we would welcome your assistance in bringing it about. As you might imagine, it costs money to make these changes happen. If you think that you can aid in any way, your help would be greatly appreciated. We will be hiring videographers and sending them all over the country to interview our authors, while I will be filming in my office/studio. We will be expanding into new social media outlets, and much more. Today our sites generate roughly 8,000 to 10,000 visits each month. Our goal is to reach 50,000 listeners a month over the next year, and eventually circle the globe. In fact, I see that we are already reaching listeners each week in Australia and New Zealand.

I thank you for your continued interest and support. I welcome your suggestions and comments. We are building this site for our readers and listeners, and we want your input on what you want to hear.

Ron

The author wrote me the following:

“Familiarity dulls our awareness but we daily surrounded by miracles.  Human consciousness has no scientific explanation and no prospect of finding one. It is impossible in concept to explain something that exists as a mental construction outside time and space by applying the methods of physics that deal only with events in the natural world of time and space. The enormous successes of physics that depend on the use of mathematics are themselves another miracle.  Like human consciousness, the world of mathematics, as discovered by mathematicians, exists outside time and space.  A law of mathematics is an eternal concept with no natural origin or explanation.  Yet, as Plato argued in ancient Greece, and was confirmed by the development of the scientific method in the seventeenth century, mathematics miraculously controls the workings of the natural world – as the Princeton Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner famously pointed out in the 1960s.  God? Very Probably examines how the naturalistic understanding of the world as developed by atheists such as Richard Dawkins, and often unthinkingly accepted by far larger numbers of contemporary true believers in scientific materialism, is itself rationally untenable.  Besides the existence of human consciousness and the scientifically inexplicable effectiveness of mathematics, the book examines three additional ways in which rational argument undermines scientific materialism and opens the way to the conclusion that we must turn to supernatural explanations – resulting from the actions of a god – in order to understand basic features of our ordinary human existence.  Rational argument at its highest levels does not undermine religion; rather, it very probably requires it.”

If you haven’t listened to Part I, I highly recommend that you start there first, then follow on with us as I realize that the author wan’t quite through in our first interview, so I pick up our conversation mid-sentence. Join us at either http://www.crossingtheline.me/podcasts.html with Episode 38 and 39, or at AuthorTalk, http://www.authortalk.audio/wipf-and-stock.html. You can also download these episodes on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/authortalk/id1020785026.

Enjoy our scientific enlightenment.

“The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Later in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are commanded to recall and honor the Sabbath as a remembrance that God delivered them out of Egypt; and thus they are remanded to honor God’s commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy.

It is a different day from the 6 days that precede it. It is a day of rest, but what exactly does that mean? And, in this world that is in constant motion 24/7, is it even practical that we observe a Sabbath of no activity, no mobile phones or tablets, no sports, no TV? Why would we want to go back to those days of when I was a child where there were no retail stores open on Sunday. There were no activities, no sports, nothing at all except church and family.

To find out the answer to this and more, I will turn to our guest today, Rob Muthiah. I think that you might want to hear the why of slowing down, of meeting God again in the silence. Of course, you know me, I can’t just let it lie, being a meditator and finding silence every day of the week, I have to ask the author, why only on Sunday. I think that many of you will resonate with his answer.

Join us at CrossingTheLine with Episode 37: http://www.crossingtheline.me/podcasts.html, or AuthorTalk at: http://www.authortalk.audio/wipf-and-stock.html.

I flew to Atlanta to interview the renowned biblical scholar, author of The Misunderstood Jew, and general editor for The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine, to explore Jesus’ most popular teaching parables; asking her to expose their misinterpretations and probe their meaning. I asked her to share her wealth of knowledge about the first century world of Jesus.

In her new book, Short Stories by Jesus, she analyzes the “problems with parables,” taking readers back in time to understand how their original Jewish audience understood them. Levine reveals the parables’ connections to first-century economic and agricultural life, social customs and morality, Jewish scriptures and Roman culture. With this revitalized understanding, she interprets these moving stories for the contemporary reader, showing how the parables are not just about Jesus, but are also about us—and when read rightly, how they can still challenge and provoke us two thousand years later.

This is a really good book. I hope that you enjoy the interview as I once again try to fall back in time to understand the Master, Jeshua ben Joseph.

Go to either AuthorTalk at http://www.authortalk.audio/harperone.html, or listen to Episode 33 at CrossingTheLine http://www.crossingtheline.me/podcasts.html. You can also download all the interviews on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/authortalk/id1020785026.

If you are Christian of any stripe, you will enjoy hearing this interview and reading this book. I don’t care if you are a casual visitor to the bible, or a student of the text, you have surely heard of the Apostle Paul. Without Paul, we probably wouldn’t have Christianity—at least not the Christianity that we know today. The man was that important! His vision of the risen Christ has shaped Christian faith for over 2,000 years, and is still doing that today.

Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that he was dedicated to furthering his vision; not one that happens to always agree with my own understanding of the teacher from Galilee, but yet, because of this very unusual man it is the vision of Jesus that most Christians have had throughout history.

Now, with this new translation (and explanations to make them understandable), these oft hard to understand letters come alive for the occasional reader, and the ardent student alike.

Check it out on either one of my websites: http://www.authortalk.audio/polebridge-press.html or http://www.crossingtheline.me/podcasts.html.

Authentic Letters of Paul, Part 2

Chronicles of Tao

Right click to download part 2 audio file