Unlocking the Bible: A Casual Chat on Deep Faith with Andrew and Cassian

Welcome to The Rap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life. And in this episode, we are going to have someone on who I got to meet through podcasting.

And for those who are going, you know, you say you're about everything for biblical interpretations and applications for the

Christian life, but how could that play out in the life of someone who has attended church and not really gotten into deep study of the

Word of God? Well, if that's you, this podcast is for you.

Want to welcome Cassian from Biblical Speaking Podcast. Welcome to The Rap Report.

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here, Andrew. I was honored to be on your podcast not too long ago.

Well, depends. I shouldn't say it because by the time we're recording this, it'll probably be six weeks before people hear it.

So they'll have to go back a few. So they'll have to listen to past episodes to catch up, right? But introduce yourself to folks here listening.

Let them know a little bit about you, how and why you started the

Biblically Speaking Podcast. Oh gosh, where do I begin? But just to get to know me, my name is

Cassian Bellino. I am the host and the creator of the Biblically Speaking Podcast. And like, just to trip down,

I am curious and I am confused. I was a Christian my whole life. I mean, you could argue that I was like the good

Christian girl. And yet when I, you know, reached, I'm not even 30 yet. And yet I didn't know anything about my faith.

And for someone that's very logical, it didn't make sense to me why I gave my mind, soul, body, spirit, soul, soul again, to a creator that I didn't know anything about.

And, you know, I did all the things. I read my Bible obediently. I went to church every Sunday.

I even joined Bible studies. But it just didn't make sense to me. And I found that it didn't make sense to a lot of people

I was around. And God put it on my heart in 2018, exactly what I wanted.

I said, listen, God, I feel like it's the right thing to love you. I objectively don't know you well enough, but I wish

I did. So in order to do that, I just need someone smart and someone funny to just give me the straight facts about the

Bible. And what was that? Seven years ago? I guess it would have been six years because I started it last year.

Someone gently nudged me that, hey, Cass, you've still been wanting that. I think it's up to you. So why don't you start it?

And we'll probably get into this. But I gave God every excuse under the sun as to why I shouldn't. And here

I am now interviewing smart people and hopefully being the funny one. And it's just incredible. The like the deeper you get into the word of God, how much more meaningful it is and how you it's like spending time with your best friend.

And it's a practical application of like, wow, you have a lot of history, best friend. Tell me more.

Whoa, I didn't know you could love me that way, best friend. And so it feels like a real relationship now because I have so much more information on it.

And it is the joy of my life. It's the most important work I've ever done. It's truly blessed by God, because by no means does it make sense that I should have the success that I have and the guests that I have.

Even talking with you now and having you on my show, Andrew, like it's just it's truly under the hand of God.

And I'm just so grateful to be, you know, involved. You know, because your story is the story of many.

Most people go to church. I read my Bible in the morning before I go to work, and that's the last time they think about the

Bible for the rest of the day. 100 percent. And yet we say this is an important thing.

What you just expressed is something that every Christian should express and realize. The Bible is not just something we read to check off.

Okay, done. It's something we should be meditating upon all day long throughout the day.

As the way you described it, you know, this is how we learn about God. Okay, how are we going to know him?

I mean, for anyone in the audience who's married, how did you get to know your spouse? Well, let's see.

You spent a lot of time with them. You asked a lot of questions about the other person so you can learn more about them.

You studied their family. You studied their friends. You study everything about them to get to know them.

Unfortunately for most, you get married, and then you stop studying. Shameful. Don't do that.

I'm just throwing it. Because, well, that's what people do. And then they come to me for counseling and go, why is my marriage in the rocks?

Because you stopped trying to learn about one another? Yeah. But we say we love

God, and yet we don't, for many, don't spend the time to learn more about him.

So I really appreciate how you said it as, hey, this is my best friend. This is who I want to spend time with.

I want to, I learn about God through God's word. That's how I hear from him. I know there's plenty of people who think they hear from God.

You don't, unless it's in the Bible. You might have his providence and things like that, that he works, but you're not hearing his voice.

Sorry. But, and if anyone doubts that, you know, because I know there's some that are going, yeah, but what about the passage that talks about a still small voice?

Okay, I got some encouragement for you. Go get Jim Osmond's book, God Doesn't Whisper, where he puts every one of those verses that people use to say

God is speaking directly to them in their context. And okay. This is interesting because I feel like in my faith walk, like God was gently making, like gently softening my heart because it didn't start in 2018.

It started years before that. And in the midst of me about to make this big move to Hawaii, which is where it all began.

Now I live in Hawaii. Before I was living in Arizona and I was going through this breakup and it was with a man that I was unequally yoked to.

And as I was, you know, becoming a Christian, I began reading crazy love and began reading all of these

Christian books. So like my heart was now hungry for it in a way that it never has been. Long story short,

I'm going through this breakup. I'm praying about it. And just like, to me, it was a vision from God.

So what you just said is very interesting because I feel like that was the start of God being like him revealing himself to me.

And I was praying about what do I do? You know, I love this person so much, but it's just not working.

And it was a vision that was so on the nose, it couldn't have been from me. And it was almost like the way

I can best describe a vision from God, or at least what I experienced was like when you're about to fall asleep and you know, your thoughts start getting weird because you're like beginning to dream and then you don't fall asleep.

And you're like, well, that was such a weird thought. That's how it felt. And I ended up telling the guy my vision. And I was like, this to me explains exactly what's wrong with our relationship and that we essentially don't trust each other.

But like the vision was us in a train station. And it was just like the circumstance was just so clearly communicating.

Are you saying that perhaps I conjured that up? No, no.

I mean, especially if it's like in sleep. Well, first off, for the record, I was wide awake. Yeah.

Okay. For the record, I can't exegete someone's experience, right? I can't do it with scripture.

I can look at the words and exegete those. And I get that line from a friend of mine,

Justin Peters, who always says, I can't exegete experience. So when people give experience, I can't tell you what it is.

I could tell you that I've spoken to lots of Mormons and Catholics and Hindus that have experiences that they attribute to God.

And yet we know from the Bible that's not from God. I've even had people tell me that God spoke to them to divorce their spouse and go get married to someone that they wanted to marry, you know, that they were having an affair with.

So, you know, there's a lot of people that, for some, it's a thing of these are the things you're thinking.

Sometimes there's things that are in our subconscious that we attribute to God speaking to us.

Can God use that? And that's why I said in his providence, he does do things. You know, you're thinking of somebody, you know, just randomly all of a sudden, you know, someone that you know pops in your head and you start praying for that person.

You call them a couple of days later and find out they were just in a car accident at the exact time that you started praying. How do

I explain that? Well, I don't. I truck that up to God's providence. And God does work through it, but I don't put that in as, this is the distinction

I make. That I put up as God's providence rather than saying that this is something where God is speaking to me, right?

So God works through us in ways where he does line things up, but the ultimate way we hear from God is through his word.

Now, when we have something that's aligned with his word, like you're saying, you're unequally yoked, well, his word speaks about that, right?

I think when you say hear about it through his words, they're expecting to open the book in a voice to audibly come out of that.

And I think it's more of like you learn the characteristics of God. And again, like I cannot emphasize enough what an idiot

I was when I started this process. Obviously, I've learned a lot. I don't think I'm an idiot, but just like my level of knowledge was just like below ground, like on air, you can hear me go, wait, the gospels are the same story told four different ways.

I didn't know anything. And I was going to church every Sunday. And I think just sometimes you need it to be spelled out.

And when you open the word of God and you learn his characteristics and you hear that voice of God, it's really hard,

I think, because I wanted to obediently open it and hear the word of God. But I needed a scholar to say, like, this is what he's actually saying.

And this is why he's saying it. And this is happening in this timeline. And that's when I could literally grasp the characteristics of God that now

I can apply to my life and say, well, that sounds like the enemy, because God would never do that. That's not in his voice.

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Striving to make today an eternal day for the glory of God. Yeah, and see, the ultimate standard is his word.

Right? That's the thing. That's how we know whether it is something that God may be providentially working through us on.

Because I always think back to when

I was in college and a guy said he got a word from the Lord, and the word was that he was going to marry this girl, which he ended up doing, because she thought this was

God's word. This was what God's plan he supposedly prophesied. So she broke up with her fiancé and married this guy.

Oh, minor detail there. Yeah, and they are now divorced. So he would argue, yeah, but see, we did get married.

It was God's will. Yeah, because it was put in her head that you're supposed to.

I just saw a testimony of a young woman where she basically prophesied she would marry a guy, and the guy was physically abusing her, almost killed her, and she stayed in this relationship because she thought this is

God's... It was prophesied by this preacher that I would marry him, and so she thought this is what

God wants for her. And meanwhile, you look at the preacher and it's like, yeah, he gets his prophecies through this little device right here called a phone, and he would have prophecies about people as he looks people up on social media, right?

So I'm careful not to use the language God speaks to me just because of the way people mean, how people use it.

A lot of people think it means an audible voice or a dream. Things like that.

When God could use something we dream to bring to mind something in our subconscious, but I don't think it's direct revelation, if that makes sense.

I completely agree, and I'm by no means saying God spoke to me to start this podcast. I'm the first one to say

I didn't want to start this podcast. I did not want to be online like this. I did not know how to even start a podcast.

I didn't have any guests. When my sister gently nudged me, and she's like, well, I think maybe you should start this podcast because you're still looking for it.

Maybe God put it on your heart to do. And she always does do a good job of like, I don't know, I'm not saying this is

God's voice. She does do that. But as much as I fought against the Lord and was like, no, what is it?

I don't know how to work the technology. Let's say that that's the excuse that I came up with. I got on a call with someone and I'm like, okay, you podcast.

Give me the lowdown. And she's like, oh, it's so easy. Like every like you're so late to the game that everything's connected. You just need one login and it connects to Spotify and then it connects to the editor.

So it's all through this one thing. I was like, okay, well, I don't want to be on the Internet. Like, I don't want to because the

Internet's forever. And Lord knows I can't run for president. Like, I just like don't have the digital footprint that you're supposed to.

And like, I was crazy in college. And it's just like one of those, like, I'll be the first to admit, like, I should not be here.

This does not make sense. And yet God made it made sense. And I really fought against him for a long time of like,

I'm so scared. But then he put me on a plane next to a pastor who like poured into me. And he was like, listen, like, it sounds like you have to do this to be obedient.

Like, this is no longer whether you want to. Like, God is so clearly putting this on you. I was like, oh, crap.

Like now there's the pressure. Well, who am I going to interview? I don't know a single person that meets my criteria as a smart person.

Like it has to be a PhD. I do, you know, I have interviewed rabbis and pastors, but I don't want it to become a sermon because that didn't work for me my whole life.

And some people have been amazing on my show. But I was dating somebody at the time. And in Hawaii, you hike and you take tourists hiking.

So that was his job was he was taking people hiking, bragging about me as all boyfriends should do about their girlfriends.

And he's like, yeah, she started this podcast. She interviews theologians. And the guys he took hiking were like, oh, we're theologians.

We'd love to go on our show. And like that was my first guest. And then his colleague was my second guest. And here we were.

So it's like, OK, God, well, like you clearly are providing. I'm not one to like assume and I would love to assume that I can just stay in my tech job.

But now I've just added like 20 hours to my week working on this for free.

And now here we are one year into it. And then I got laid off and I was like, OK, well, like,

I don't know. Like God hasn't given me any dreams, but I guess I'm going to do it full time. And so now I'm doing all of this basically volunteer work, but like adding all my money and time to it.

And it's like every single day. OK, God, let me know if I can quit, you know, like, again, just waiting on the word from the

Lord, but also trying to stay obedient. Like that is a very tough line to walk. Yeah. And I think many people have had that experience.

It's trying to figure out, OK, Lord, what is your will? A lot of people think that God's got some secret will you can't find.

Who should I marry? And I remember a friend of mine, Greg Coco, he talks about someone that he went to a church and they had told him the story that the person, the guy who was leading the choir, a single guy, realized who he should marry because he read it in the

Bible. He opened his Bible and read, Grace be unto you. And there was a single girl in the choir named

Grace. That is not how we read the Bible. It was in the

Bible, so it counts. And that's, but that's, I literally had a guy come to me for counseling.

He had two jobs to choose from and he opened his

Bible. He was doing his daily reading and he read something about going north. One job was north, one job was south.

And he was like, see, that's, that's God speaking to me to say I should go take the job at the north. I said, well, let me ask you a question.

Every single person you've asked, did they all, that were Christians, didn't they all tell you to take the one in the south?

He goes, yeah. And every non -believer told you to take the one on the north? Yeah. Well, wise counsel kind of says which one you should probably be taking based on the information you've given to everybody that worldly people say go north and, sorry, it's not, that's not from the

Bible. But this is what so many people think. And you're identifying for so many people, what you're trying to do with your podcast is take people who are that pew -sitting

Christian who, and I'm going to upset people, whose devotional life is nothing more than reading

Our Daily Bread. And saying, how does this verse make me feel? Yes.

And it does not matter how you feel. I do not care how you feel. And that's where I struggled with Bible studies of like, how does this make me feel?

And I'm like, girlfriend, I don't, just why are we here in Babylon? Like, how did we even get here? Why is this the ruler?

Why does it matter that there was so much symbolism that just goes over our head? Because we don't live 2000 years ago.

And I just needed someone to break it down to me. I didn't need to know how I felt. I wanted God to say, this is who

I am. And then I will obey obediently. You know, I don't need someone to tell me. And it's just truly phenomenal how much people are, you know, willing to say that, like, willing to stand 10 toes down on God's word when they don't know it themselves.

I mean, my qualifications are you have to be a PhD. Like, yes, I've had a rabbi. Yes, I've had pastors. But like, you have to be an accredited professor, a

PhD, a theologian, a scholar to be on my show. And I trust what they say. Do they all agree?

No. But they are, I think they've earned the right to make their claims because they've spent decades studying it and teaching it and learning it and actually been in the ancient languages.

So for their claims, I take it with a grain of salt. I apply it. Some disagree. I've interviewed three different scholars on Genesis.

None of them agree. But they're all very insightful claims. I think it's worth listening to. And yet people are raised, do not go to seminary, just are very firmly in their own testimony, telling me

I'm wrong. And sure, you know, I could be. I'm not saying that I'm like 100 percent right. But we need to learn.

We need to have it explained to us. This is insane and wild that you are willing to be led so blindly. Like, God wants us to understand.

Ask for wisdom. He'll give it generously without fault. God wants us to ask. This doesn't make sense to me.

Can you explain it? Please explain why. And even today we're doing a live interview with a scholar and it's like, OK, so homosexuality is a detestable act.

It's not OK. Why? Why is it? I think we're OK to ask the creator of the universe.

Why? Because he wants us to understand and know him. And for the Genesis debate,

I'll just state for the record. I heard you had different people on your podcast,

Biblically speaking podcast. Ken Ham is the one that has the right view. I'm just saying you interviewed him. He's the one with the right view.

OK, so. Whoa, that's hot. Over Hugh Ross? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. Ken has the right view of Genesis.

Over John Walton, even? Yeah, I'm saying that Ken has the right view.

Because Ken's your best friend. Well, he's not my best friend, but so yeah, no, because he's got the view that's coming from Scripture, so not from trying to fit, and this is the problem

I have with Hugh Ross, trying to fit science and Scripture together. But to the point you were making, and it's an important point, is a lot of Christians believe that, well,

I need to have a seminary degree, or my pastor, he's the one that's supposed to know all this stuff.

Yeah, and this is what your podcast is about. Why do you think it's so important for people in the pews to study the

Word of God? Oh my gosh, so why do you study anything?

So you know it, so you can actually be good at it, and at the end of the day, I had a moment where I was living in Thailand, and I had this curiosity.

It's where in 2018 this happened. I was like, gosh, I just don't understand, and I'm going to this Thai church led by this Swedish couple.

It was the craziest thing, and it was half in Thai, and I go up because it was super close knit, and I was like, hey,

I love church, but before we get into the Scripture, this is a real conversation, word for word.

Before we get into Scripture, can you give a little bit of background on John? Because who is he?

I asked her to do this, and I, again, so entitled for me to think she'll change her entire church just for me, but I thought, you know, this is a small church.

She wants me to know. Shouldn't pastors know all of the Bible? They don't, but at that time,

I believed that, and she goes, I think you need to go to seminary, and it was this almost glass ceiling that I hit of, okay, so I'm either going to live in ignorance or spend thousands of dollars and years of my time to go to seminary, even though I have a full -time paying job, and I understand the reason people don't know it.

It makes sense. Kind of what you said at the beginning, you spend time with your spouse, and that's how you get to know them. You study their family.

Who's got time for that? That's not a rude or bad thing to say. You just simply don't have time to just study and Google and look it up and watch

YouTube videos. You just, I don't have time for that, so I'd rather just spend an hour interviewing people and getting the straight answers.

Explain it to me like I'm stupid, because for this, I don't know, and there are very specific questions that I think

I'm entitled to know if I kind of signed in blood that I gave my life to Jesus. This is the thing, though, that a lot of people don't think about.

They want the benefits of salvation without the hard work, and I think what you're trying to do with your podcast is help people to realize, guess what?

I mean, is it hard work to study the Word of God? Yes. But do we have to know everything?

No. And so by having people on, having different people come in who are experts in different areas, even like you said, where you have people who are disagreeing in the views, at least you're letting them communicate why they believe what they believe so that the different views and hear from people, because look, how often do we all study?

There's a ton of different topics that most people don't study and wouldn't think about. How many people are studying the different views of Genesis as you mentioned that one as an example?

We had three different people come on giving three different views. Ken has the right view because he believes in a literal six -day creation, but I'll just drop that in there.

So, but the thing is that, you know, there's some who believe,

Cassian, that we should have only people we agree with. We should only have one view.

That's putting yourself in an echo chamber. A hundred percent. And so I think we do, like you're saying, we should be able to ask

God why. Well, He tells us why in His Word, right? The culture is asking the question, why is homosexuality wrong?

Because God says so, but where does He say so? One of the things I struggled with early on as a

Christian was seeing these different cults, and I would see the

Mormons and the Jehovah Witnesses and others who prayed on ignorant

Christians. In this sense, I'm using Christian in a very broad term, whether it's Catholic, they evangelical, but they prayed on the ignorance.

I would talk to Jehovah Witnesses, and it was interesting how many of them were from a Catholic or quasi -evangelical background because they meet with the

Jehovah Witnesses and they go, I just believed the Trinity because I was taught it, and they showed me from the

Bible that it's not there. Here's the thing that I always noticed was missing. They believed the

Trinity because they were taught it, but they weren't taught why. Here you have

Jehovah Witnesses saying, well, we don't believe in the Trinity, and here's why, and people go, well, see, they have the answers.

Actually, we had the answers too, you just never listened to the why, and now as I try to explain the why, you go,

I don't want to hear it, right? That's sort of what you're, it seems to me, in listening to your podcast, you're trying to do is to get people to not just have this surface -level belief in Christianity, but to dig into the answers to say, well, why does the

Bible say this? Okay, the Bible says there's a Trinity. Where? Where do we see the Trinity? How do we make that argument?

Was that something that a man just created? Well, yeah, I mean, there is a person that created the word

Trinity because it didn't exist until he defined it that way. But do we see the principles that are in that definition in Scripture?

Yes, but the question is where? I'm thinking of tricky topics. I'm not the most educated on the

Trinity, but to an extent, you're correct, and I think that you're 100 % correct because when I came out the homosexual episode,

I was scared. I was so scared, and the reason I chose to do with that professor was because he's like,

I've already spoken on it, I'm going to do it lovingly, I'm going to do it gently, and I'm not going to say that you're wrong for being homosexual.

I'm going to say this is why the Bible says it's wrong. You do what you want. I'm going to love you no matter what, but I'm also going to agree with the

Bible no matter what, because that's the standard I hold myself to. And we had to, or I guess I had to, personally tread that line because when

I say I was the least qualified person, none of my friends are Christian. God put me in the heart of a bunch of agnostics, and then

I became, and my friends to this day still call me that, a super, like a Jesus lover, like a

Jesus girl, like I love Jesus. Someone said the other day, I'm going through my Jesus era, and it's like, you know what?

At least you know that you can talk to me about God, and I'll think it's cool, and maybe that's the closest you'll ever get.

I don't know. I'm just making this up in my head, but when it came to homosexuality, I had to, again, like operate with this topic around those types of people saying like, hey, my best friend, your brother is gay, like I'm going, like I'm 10 toes down in this topic, but if it offends you, let's have a conversation, because I'm not going to exclude you from this conversation.

I'm still going to believe what I said, but I want you to know I still love you, and I think that, again, there's a fork in the road for Christians of holier than thou, and again, it's like bring yourself back down to earth of like,

I'm a sinner, you're a sinner, we're just talking about topics. If you feel attacked, let's talk about that, because it seems like it's a you problem that I can love you through.

Like, if I'm trying to get on some sort of like soapbox here through, look how much I know about Jesus, like that's just like, what do

I gain there? Yeah, but it's also part of the issue is that a lot of Christians that will take, for example, the way you're bringing up the homosexuality, there are

Christians that want to try to accept homosexuality and marry it up with the Bible, just like people did with evolution and trying to marry that with the

Bible and try to argue that the Bible is okay with it. On my Apologetics Live podcast,

I've had a couple of times where people come in and try to make the case for what they would refer to as affirming

Christianity. Had one guy that actually tried to argue, he was in a homosexual relationship, and he tried to argue that God is okay with homosexuality, just not the abuse of homosexuality, which was really funny because I just got to the issue of lusting and asked him about lusting and whether that was wrong, and the reason

I did that was because once he agreed that by God's standard lusting is wrong, well, okay, and any lusting outside of marriage is wrong, well, guess what?

Now you've broken, you've sinned when you lusted after someone of the same sex, so it doesn't matter anymore, right?

Because God doesn't define marriage homosexually, and so he was all bent out of shape because I got to the root of the issue is the lust issue rather than deal with the homosexual issue because now

I just broadened it to include not just homosexuality but adultery. They're both wrong for a similar reason, so he struggled with that because he hadn't heard that argument.

He never thought of it that deeply, but yet he grew up in a Christian home, going to church with a, you know, as many of the people, they have, as you described, it's, hey,

I've been going to church all my life. I haven't really dug into the Bible to know it for myself, but I can repeat what others have said a lot, and this is the importance,

I mean, this is why we do this podcast, why you do your podcast is so that people would know the Word of God. Your podcast is more focused on people being, who are maybe not looking to be scholars, looking to dig in deep, but go,

I should learn a little more. I should know the Bible better, and you bring people in to answer specific topics in those areas.

Yeah, I don't think that God wants us to become theologians. Like, wow, that's great if you do, but that's not a requirement to get into heaven.

No, well, depends on how we define theologian, right? Because theology is the study of God, so in a sense, if we love

God, we would study. But as far as a scholar, no, we're not all going to be the scholarly type of theologians, but you know, it's kind of interesting.

When I first took my first pastorate, which was about, I think this was like 2005, and because they already had a retreat planned, we had, we went in and my wife and I said, well, you know, they had speakers for the retreat.

I said, well, I will teach, we'll teach the children, and so one of the deacons says, what are you going to teach the children?

I said, well, we're going to work with them on the Trinity, and parents were like, no, you can't do it.

We're talking eight -year -olds, eight to ten -year -olds. They can't understand the Trinity, and so for three days, my wife and I went through, you know,

I wrote the curriculum. We taught them from Scripture the Trinity, and so on the last day, all the parents, we'd have the parent come in to the classroom one at a time, and to get their kids,

I said, okay, if you want to pick up your kids, you just have to answer two questions, and your child can help you if you need.

Just ask for help. Uh, can you define the Trinity, and can you support it in Scripture?

And parents were like, ah, ah, ah. Hi, this is

Daniel Minnick from the Truthspresso podcast. Truthspresso is a member of the

Christian podcast community from Striving for Eternity Ministries, and I encourage you to check out all that the

Christian podcast community has to offer, and another great member of the community is

Aaron Brewster, who goes by the name A .M. Brewster. He actually hosts two separate podcasts.

One is Truth, Love, Parent. The other is The Celebration of God. I highly recommend you listen to them, and Aaron is also a speaker for Striving for Eternity, and unfortunately,

Aaron has experienced hardship from Hurricane Helene. He stayed at his house in North Carolina to take care of his dad, and tried to combat the flooding with powered water pumps.

Unfortunately, when the power went out, inevitably, the flooding continued.

While currently living on a meager ministry salary, Aaron has lost much of his livelihood in the flooding from Helene.

Let's be practical and give to those in need. Striving for Eternity has set up a

GiveSendGo fund to help out Aaron and his dad. As soon as I heard about the situation,

I donated, and I strongly urge you to give too. Just go to GiveSendGo .com

forward slash SFE. That's GiveSendGo .com forward slash

SFE. Please open your hand wide for those in need. Imagine losing your house and your car and pretty much everything you've worked for all your life.

It's far easier to give to those in dire need than to be someone in dire need.

Please do the easy thing and give generously and be a blessing as Jesus has told us to do.

It's the biblical and Christian thing to do. Once again, go to GiveSendGo .com

forward slash SFE to help out Aaron Brewster, who has lost virtually everything in the flooding from Hurricane Helene.

Striving for Eternity Ministries is a 501c3 non -profit, so your generous donations are tax deductible.

So please give generously to help out a wonderful Christian minister and podcaster and member of the

Christian podcast community. Once again, go to GiveSendGo .com

forward slash SFE and be a blessing to someone in need.

And then you see their eight -year -old going, it's the definition of it is three persons in one

Godhead. And then you could find it and they're just giving different, all of them giving different verses.

And parents were like, parents afterwards said to me like, I could not even answer a definition of the

Trinity, but my 10 -year -old could. That's good. It's not a matter of scholarly level things, it's really a lot of what you're trying to do is help people to realize, no, it's just a matter of let's dig into the scriptures.

What do the scriptures say? We need to know the why. And I think that's a thing that I sense from you, you really want to see with people that are

Christians sitting in pews to change in their life. Would that be a fair description of your podcast? 100%, but I think like to play devil's advocate, like the thing that kept me back in my faith was lack of available knowledge.

I mean, we do live in a world where we're inundated with too much and there's so much fake stuff and there's so many opinions. So it's like, well, who do

I trust if I'm going to go out and get on YouTube by myself? And so there's this lack of knowledge, lack of direction.

And then you're kind of navigating this by yourself. There's no support system to kind of say like you're still within the guardrails or are you just adding your own interpretation?

So for me, that's why I couldn't do it myself. And that's probably why a lot of other people don't. So like these podcasts where it's succinct and 60 minutes, still sometimes that's too long.

And so my full -time job right now is, okay, well, what if I give it to you in a 10 minute newsletter? What if I give it to you in like a 10 page document that you can download?

Like, what is the best way for these to be scholar -led, Bible -aligned insights on, well, what's the difference between the four gospels?

And like, I am continually fascinated with the Word of God. And it's because I have access to such smart people.

Some people don't get that privilege. And just so we're clear, like, A, a lot of verses that we think we know, we don't.

We've talked about Jeremiah 29, 11, a bunch. And also, like, we don't realize that our pastors aren't given the education we think they're given.

Just, it's not set up in seminary that they leave seminary experts in the Bible. They're taught a certain portion for a certain amount of time and how to be a pastor.

If that's the route they take. Some people that I've interviewed have gone Old Testament, New Testament, all the ancient languages.

And that's a rare jewel that you get to interview that can answer all the questions, all the overlapping.

And softwares like Logos, I mean, we're pending partners. So, this is a free shout out to them,

I guess. But they are able to connect that Old Testament to New Testament. And I think just some people aren't aware where to find these resources, even if there is goodwill in their heart to go on that endeavor.

Well, one of the things that may be a cause is people come to the Word of God, and they're just not alert enough.

And a good solution to that would be getting some good Squirrelly Joe's coffee. Because, you know, caffeine does have a certain advantage to help you wake up when you study the

Word of God. So, great. Start your morning with a nice cup of Squirrelly Joe's coffee and your

Bible. Both go hand in hand. You could, if you want, they're great flavors.

They have fun names. If you go to Squirrelly Joe's, you'll see there's names like Honesty, Integrity, Wisdom, Compassion.

You decide which one you need the most of. But I'm just saying the Honesty is decaf. I think that's dishonest to call it

Honest when it's not real coffee. Just saying. That's me. But, hey, go out to Squirrelly Joe's.

You can go there by going to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee. That's strivingforeternity .org

slash coffee. And use the promo code SFE. That code will get you, well,

I forget if it gets you a free bag on your first order or 20 % off. It's changed up.

But it'll get you something on your first order at least. But do go to strivingforeternity .org slash coffee whenever you reorder so that they know that you heard about them from us.

I love my cup of Squirrelly Joe's every morning. You know, Cassian mentioned

Lagos. And if you want to get Lagos Bible Software, we have an affiliate with them.

And you could go to Lagos .com. That's L -O -G -O -S .com slash

SFE. SFE stands for Striving for Eternity. And they used to, when you bought the program, they would give you five free books from Striving for Eternity.

But they've moved to a subscription base. So I don't know if you still get those five free books from us. But you do get the great discount.

And for folks who used to know of Lagos Bible Software as being super expensive, because it was, now they've gone to a subscription base.

And it's much cheaper and much more affordable for everyone. And they have different levels that you could choose that could fit with your budget.

So check out Lagos Bible Software. It will be very helpful for your Bible study as Cassian and I have been talking about studying the

Bible. These are things we need to have good tools. So go out to Lagos .com

slash SFE to get your discount from there. And they will know that we sent you.

So we thank you. So after we're fully alert, Cassian, we've got our cup of coffee.

We're ready to study the Bible. That was beautiful. A good transition works well.

But my audience here, and I know this because I get the emails, they crack up at how

I could take almost anything in transition. Well, I could transition to our sponsors, but it's the years of experience of evangelism that actually helped with it, because the hardest thing is to transition from the natural world to the spiritual world.

Most Christians argue, well, once we're talking about spiritual things, I'm okay with it. But how do you get there?

Well, I made it into a game of where I could take any object, any discussion, and try to transition to a gospel presentation.

And after doing that for 30 some years, I've actually gotten pretty decent at it. So any topic, any topic you want to try, go for it.

Yeah. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Like, I just tell you a story or ask you a question.

I could go with this. So I just went home to my sister's house. And every time I see her, you know, me and her have the same length hair.

We're both low maintenance girls that love a bargain. I go, Ellen, I need you to cut my hair. But if you take off any length,

I will kill you. She's like, do you know how haircuts work? I'm like, no, you can't cut off any length. Just trim off the dead ends.

And by the end of the haircut, like three inches were gone. And I was like, Ellen. And she's like, you got hair to spare, baby girl.

You're fine. Well, see, the thing is, what do you really want? You know you need the benefits of a haircut, but you don't want it to actually change.

So you want all the benefits without any work to have to do. And do you know that that's how most people think they're going to get into heaven?

They want to have all the benefits of heaven. They want to avoid hell and go to heaven, but they don't want to actually come to God the way

He declares through repentance. They don't want to have to change their life, keep everything the same.

God should just let me into heaven. And yet the reality is that's not the way things work.

We have to come to God and get right with God on His terms, which is through repentance, changing of thinking of our mindset of our pride, and turning and trusting what

Jesus Christ did on the cross for our salvation. How'd I do? I feel like I gave you an easy one.

God, let's do a harder one. I'm so upset with God right now, if I'm going to be honest.

I'm just going to start talking about spirituality. I hope you're okay with that, Andrew. But, you know, my sister wanted a husband her whole life.

She got married and six months in, he cheats on her and leaves her. And she's pregnant. What kind of God would do that?

Well, now you just made an easier one because you already started with God. But that one's really easy because the reality is what we see is that God created this world without sin present, but we ended up seeing the very first act of sin in the universe was when several angels decided to rebel against God thinking they could be

God. You then see in the garden that Adam and Eve were in the garden and they had no sin, but then what did they want?

Eve was tempted to be like God. You know, that's a struggle most of us have is we still want to be like God.

We want to set up the rules of how God should behave and say, if you don't do it the way I want, then you're not really

God. And the reality is it's us who has the problem because we're not God, He is. We need to come to God on His terms, not saying,

God, you got to do everything I want in life. We have to turn and say, God, we'll do anything you want in life.

And it starts with turning in our mind of thinking pridefully of thinking we can earn heaven, we could be a good person to turning and trusting what

Jesus did on the cross. So what do you say to my sister who's without man and with child?

Is that fair? Well, now we get into a question of what fairness is. So if we look at what is fair, what would be fair is that you and I spend eternity in a lake of fire forever because we broke

God's law. Do we really want fairness or would we rather have mercy?

We want grace and mercy. We don't want justice and fairness because justice tells us that we would spend eternity in a lake of fire.

Mercy says God paid that so we could be set free. You're pulling out these hard truths

Christians don't like to hear. I know, and so if people want, if they go to the

Striving for Eternity YouTube channel, I actually have a playlist that I've created of me transitioning from things that people give me to the gospel.

And so there's a whole playlist. And so do I make it look easy? Because I've been doing it for 30 -some years, that's all.

It's not that I'm really good, it's that I've practiced a real lot, right? But even for me,

I do not have that. I am one year in, and yet it is amazing when you do start inundating yourself with the word of God and like, yes, it's my full -time job, so I do it.

But even when it wasn't, I had a full -time job. I was in tech, I was in marketing, and I was doing this in my free time.

I was suddenly buying clothing that had Christian emblems and wordage and verses.

I was having these conversations with scholars that I would bring up with my friends who, again, are atheist agnostic. They'd be like, well, how was your day,

Cass? My day was amazing. I just learned the differences between the four gospels, and then I would talk about it.

So I think that while I'm not evangelizing, I mean, who knows? It could have been a mustard seed. It's so much easier when you have knowledge because it's just top of mind.

You can pull from it. And I think that you're a much better evangelizer. But for me, I've gotten to a point where I talk about the word of God like you talk about celebrity gossip.

It's just interesting, and it's eye -catching, and it's on your mind. And what I'm learning about God is that. So if you ask me how

I'm doing and why I'm in such good mood, that's what I'm going to talk about God. I'm going to talk about what I've learned. And I think that it plants seeds.

And I think that aside from the podcast, I do a lot of stuff on Instagram like lives or calls just so in the middle of the week on a

Wednesday, you might listen to me and somebody else talk about God for an hour, whereas you're not waiting until Sunday.

I just think the more we talk about God and don't make it a separate conversion from normal talk to God talk, like it's just part of our life that we mentioned

God, then we just get to celebrate Him more. There is no separation. So there's no the good version of me on Sunday and then the other days,

Monday through Saturday. It's just God is forever in my life like He should be interwoven. And when you make it weird to suddenly start talking about God or, you know, you feel weird about it, that's just a separation.

I think just stepping into that and bringing Him into every aspect of your life is how we get talked about, how we ask questions and realize that we both don't know.

Let's both go down this route of learning a little bit more. And what resources do we have to get there? It sounds for folks that are listening, the thing you're really highlighting is the more we study something, the more we know something, the more that's what comes out of us.

Charles Spurgeon said, we should be in the Word of God so much that if someone cuts us, we bleed

Bible. That is what we should be doing. Folks, this is the

Creator of the universe, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who came to earth and died on a cross as a payment for our sin, and we can only spare the first 20 minutes of a day with Him.

What? What is wrong with you people? To quote R .C. Sproul. But this is the reality.

How we say as Christians we love God, well, how much do we devote to Him in studying

Him? And that's really a lot of what you're trying to do with your podcast. So as we close out, how could folks find you?

How could people find your podcast and some of the things that you're doing and learn more about that?

Yeah, I appreciate you asking. The podcast itself is Everywhere Podcasts Are. We release every Tuesday a new episode with a scholar, and every

Friday it's a 20 -minute recap from me. So YouTube, Spotify, Apple, just search Biblically Speaking and you'll find any of that.

But that's where the meat is. That's the core. If you just want to integrate more of this into your life, I recommend you follow me on socials, typically

YouTube and Instagram. I'm on TikTok, but I care more about Instagram. That's where I'm the most active. So you can DM me. I make a bunch of fun content.

I love making content and simplifying this and making it relatable. But if you really want to step into this and you don't want to just listen or you don't just want to watch, but you want to actually take a step forward,

I invite you to join the Biblically Heard community, which is a community kind of like Twitch or Telegram, but it's called

Biblically Heard and it's free to join. And you essentially get into this community. I think we're at 300 now in just the last 30 days, which like, praise

God, I can't believe that happened off platform. But it's a way for you to get on calls with me, get on calls with scholars.

So maybe you listen to every single one of my episodes and you're like, Cass has never asked this question. I still don't know.

Or this question is why I'm not a strong. This question is why I'm not a strong Christian, because it makes

God seem horrible. And I can't believe in a God that does horrible things. Let's jump on a call. Literally today,

I'm hosting a call with a live scholar that you could be on and you can ask that question to the scholar and grow in your faith the same way

I've grown in my faith. Like, I know it works because it happened to me. I also have courses on there.

I have videos. I have digital guides. This is my full time job and it is the joy of my life. So I would say if you want to get involved, biblically speaking on the podcast, this is biblically speaking on Instagram or join

Biblically Heard, the community. All right. And what would be the website that they can go to find all that?

Cassandra They can go to bibspeak .com, B -I -B -S -P -E -A -K dot com.

Darrell Bock There you go. Well, thanks for coming on. I hope, folks, that you are encouraged. If you're someone who's just been like, you know,

I've sat in the pew. I go to church every week, but I don't feel like I really know the

Bible. Well, maybe this is for you. So check out the Biblically Speaking podcast. See the other things that Cassian has there to help you on your walk with Christ.