Hello and welcome
to "Books of the Book."
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My name is Deyvy Rodriguez
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and I'm glad that
you're able to join us
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in this bible study program.
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Today we begin a
series of programs
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focusing on the Books of Peter.
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So grab your bible,
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a piece of paper and
something to write with.
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And be blessed by today's study.
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With us is Dr. Tom Shepherd.
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He's currently a Professor
of New Testament interpretation
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at Andrews University.
Welcome, Dr. Shepherd.
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It's good to be with you.
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Welcome back
because you've been with us
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before in Books of the Book.
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You did the gospel of Mark
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with Kevin Hart, is that right?
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That is correct.
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And you're currently
studying or not studying,
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you're teaching at
Andrews University.
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How's that going?
It's going really well.
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I enjoy my work a great deal.
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I started
teaching there in 2008.
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And it's just a joy
to help the students
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learn the word of God.
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Well, I'm also very pleased
to be here studying with you.
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And in this
series we're studying
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the books of 1 and 2 Peter.
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Now why are we studying
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or why should we study
this book or these books?
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Well, when I
came to the seminary,
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Chairman of the New
Testament department wanted--
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he wants all these
teachers to be passionate
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about what they teach.
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And so he said,
we want to give you
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some leeway to choose
what you want to teach.
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And so, oh, gospel of
Mark was an obvious choice.
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But I would
branch out a little bit.
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I was interested in
the Book of James. Okay.
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But it turns out that
one of the other Professors
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was already teaching that.
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And so I kind of,
said, "okay, well.
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I guess I'll try 1 and 2 Peter."
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When I delved
into these two books,
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little did I realize how amazing
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and beautiful the
theology of these two books is.
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It just really
kind of overwhelmed me.
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I was really struck with
the power of these books.
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And so that lead me eventually
to work on a book for the--
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on these two books, the
theology of these two books.
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And lead also to
this-- this time with you.
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Wonderful. Well, why don't
we dive right into our study
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and why don't we begin
with my first question.
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Who wrote the Books of Peter?
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Okay, maybe the
best place to turn
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is to the very first
verse of the very first book,
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1 Peter 1:1. Could
you read that for us?
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"Peter, an
apostle of Jesus Christ,
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to the pilgrims of
the Dispersion in Pontus,
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Galatia,
Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia."
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All right, for most Christians
just seeing that name there,
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they say, "well
Peter, apostle Peter
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is obviously the
author of this book."
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And that's enough for them.
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Of course, what
happens is scholars are always
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studying these books,
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looking at them
carefully and everything.
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And they have
questions that they ask.
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And one of the-- a
number of the questions
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that they ask is well,
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"could Peter really
have written this book?"
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We have numerous
books of the time period
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that were use--
somebody used a pseudonym.
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You know, it wasn't the author.
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It was somebody else but
they wanted to give credit
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to their book so they put,
you know, Abraham, you know?
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Or they put
Enoch or somebody else.
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And so some people think
that this book was not written
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by the apostle himself
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but maybe by one of
his disciples or somebody--
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there are people who say that
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it was written even
in the second century AD
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and not--not the time
period of Peter at all.
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Well, for people like you and I
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who have a high
view of scripture
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and take it seriously,
we find that problematic.
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So we say, "okay, so
what are your objections?
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Why don't you believe,
you know, in this book?"
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And one of the
main things that point
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to is the Greek of
the book of 1 Peter.
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I've brought my Greek
bible with me. All right.
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I don't leave home
without it kind of a thing.
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Okay. I'm gonna
have you read it--
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Maybe sometime we
can read it out loud even
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but, you know, we want to
make it clear to everybody.
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The Greek of 1 Peter is really
just about the very best Greek
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that there is in
the New Testament.
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And people ask the question,
"well, how could an uneducated,"
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we know Peter was uneducated.
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"How could an
uneducated fisherman write
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such good Greek, you know?"
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It's clearly
Hellenistic kind of Greek.
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It's got
beautiful alliteration and,
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you know, complex
sentence structure.
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So that's one of the
issues that comes in.
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Because of his
education background
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some people
doubt that it was him
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who wrote such beautiful Greek.
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Right, right. Well,
and he is in Galilee.
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Does he even
speak Greek, you know?
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Is he just speaks
Aramaic, you know?
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So that's one
question that they have.
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So this is the same
Peter who followed Jesus
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or was with Jesus for more
than 3 years, who denied Him.
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So my question is how do we know
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it was the same
Peter who wrote 1 Peter?
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Yeah. All right.
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Well, there's
several other problems
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besides the
question of the Greek.
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There's little mention
of the teachings of Jesus,
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according to some
people, in this book.
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And a man who had
traveled with Jesus so much,
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wouldn't he have talked about
Jesus' teachings a lot more?
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Well, that's not discussed.
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Also there's no indication that
Peter was ever in Asia Minor.
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We have the sense that
this book is written from Rome.
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The very last, the
very end of chapter 5
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mentions the church that's in
Babylon in cipher IV for Rome.
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So it seems like
our author is writing
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from the city of
Rome to these people.
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But there's no indication that
Peter was ever in Asia Minor.
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And then the problems
that are raised in this book
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seem to be unlike problems
in other New Testament epistles
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like we think of Paul's epistles
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to Galatians and Corinthians
and Romans. All right.
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So there seems to
be a number of problems
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that we have to respond to,
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to support Petrine authorship
of this book that Peter wrote.
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So how do we answer them?
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Well, the first
thing I talk to people
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about on this is actually,
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well, you know Peter
was with Jesus for 3½ years.
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Now I have a PhD and we say
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that the PhD
changes the way you think.
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In fact, I tell the students
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if we don't
change the way you think
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then we've failed, you know.
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So when Peter was with Jesus,
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that was like the
greatest PhD you could have,
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so his whole
outlook on life was changed.
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Secondly, he went
through the day of Pentecost.
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And we know that
the gift of tongues,
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the gift of
languages was given to people.
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Peter could well
have received the gift
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to speak Greek
fluently from that time on.
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This book is also
written at the end of his life.
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So he seems to
be much more mature.
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30 years ago when
I started ministry,
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my sermons weren't
like they are today. Okay.
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So we expect
the same with Peter.
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And we expect the better now.
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Yeah, we expect
the better now. Yeah.
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And Peter's
actually words in 1 Peter
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have numerous linkages to his
speeches in the book of Acts.
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And they really are
quite a few parallels
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to the teachings of Jesus.
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Just to suggest
that this doesn't fit
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with Peter being the author.
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There's a certain bias
that sometimes people have.
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They don't want to
say anything supernatural
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that has
happened in Peter's life.
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But we can come--we can
argue for Petrine authorship.
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And we accept that Peter was
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the author of
both of these books.
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Okay. So Peter is writing
from Rome to a certain people.
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Right. Where do
these people live?
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All right.
Compare to his writing.
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Right, we have a
graphic that shows this,
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of the Mediterranean
world during the time of Peter
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and maybe a little bit later.
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But you see
here on this picture,
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all of the
Mediterranean area and it's over
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on the eastern side
of the Mediterranean.
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You'll see what is
today-- today's Turkey, okay?
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You can see if you can
recognize Turkey there.
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And you will notice
on our graphic it says
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Asia that was a
province of the Roman Empire.
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And then above it
there's Bithynia and Pontus,
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Cappadocia and Galatia.
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So really it's a lot of central,
what is today central Turkey.
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It's the area that
where these people lived.
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Now this particular area had
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about 8½ million
population, all right?
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There were about a million
Jews living in this area.
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But the number of
Christians was quite low,
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maybe 40 to 50 thousand.
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Some people estimate
up to 80,000 Christians.
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That would be like 1
out of every 100 people
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would be Christians.
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And remember, most
of this area is rural.
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So you have
small rural communities
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where these people live.
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And very few
questions, all right.
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And so they are a group that
is surrounded mainly by pagans.
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Not, you know, today in
rural areas of our country--
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our country has a
Christian background
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and has all of it's time.
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And so Christian
principles and concepts
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fill our whole thinking
and pattern of way of life.
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That's not the way
it was in Peter's day.
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There paganism
and the polytheism
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and beliefs in the
pagan gods was what was
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all about the
concepts of their time.
00:09:32.53\00:09:35.17
Now the
recipients of Peter's letter,
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are they Jews or
were they Gentiles?
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Well, that's a
wonderful question.
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And it's a little
hard to verify, you know.
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You're kind of
when you open this book,
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you are hearing one half
of a telephone conversation.
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You're only hearing
Peter's words. Right.
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And so you don't
hear these other people.
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So from what Peter
writes we can gather
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certain kind of
ideas about these people.
00:10:02.66\00:10:06.67
Peter uses the
Old Testament a lot
00:10:06.70\00:10:09.90
and the ideas of the
Old Testament a great deal.
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He quotes from it.
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He never says to them,
00:10:14.64\00:10:16.01
"oh, yes, and that's a
book you haven't heard of before
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or let me explain
to you about Isaiah."
00:10:18.15\00:10:21.65
He never goes into
an explanation of those.
00:10:21.68\00:10:23.82
He just assumes his reader
understand all those things.
00:10:23.85\00:10:26.99
So they had to people who were
well aware of the Old Testament.
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Actually much more than
a lot of people are today.
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And so he uses the
promises, the concepts,
00:10:34.73\00:10:38.53
the texts of the Old Testament.
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That leads us to think that,
00:10:40.54\00:10:42.34
"wow, there must have been
00:10:42.37\00:10:44.41
at least some kind
of Jewish linkage here,
00:10:44.44\00:10:49.24
some kind of
pattern of Jews or people
00:10:49.28\00:10:52.75
who knew a lot about Jews
00:10:52.78\00:10:54.15
that were part of
this congregation."
00:10:54.18\00:10:56.69
But it's in a Gentile area.
00:10:56.72\00:10:59.12
And so we think,
00:10:59.15\00:11:01.79
"well, maybe it's Jews
and Gentiles together."
00:11:01.82\00:11:05.19
Now we have lots
of the New Testament
00:11:05.23\00:11:07.46
where we have that
kind of experience.
00:11:07.50\00:11:09.80
And typically we have
problems where these people are,
00:11:09.83\00:11:13.13
you know, kind of
there's a tension between them.
00:11:13.17\00:11:16.50
1 Peter, 2 Peter
show none of that tension
00:11:16.54\00:11:20.58
between Jew and Gentile.
00:11:20.61\00:11:22.41
Now we said that the
problems are different.
00:11:22.44\00:11:24.11
It doesn't seem to be
quite the same problems set
00:11:24.15\00:11:28.12
that they were, you know,
that they were dealing with.
00:11:28.15\00:11:31.15
And so is it Jew? Is it Gentile?
00:11:31.19\00:11:34.92
The answer is probably yes.
00:11:34.96\00:11:37.26
Okay, now you've
got me interested
00:11:37.29\00:11:39.39
in the kinds of
problems that they were facing.
00:11:39.43\00:11:41.40
Maybe you can help us on that.
00:11:41.43\00:11:43.16
What kind of problems were these
people having at that time?
00:11:43.20\00:11:48.70
Well, you can imagine
that if you're living in a--
00:11:48.74\00:11:53.17
in an area
where you have mostly,
00:11:53.21\00:11:57.81
most of the people around
you are different than you.
00:11:57.85\00:12:01.62
I'll tell you a little story.
00:12:01.65\00:12:04.79
For 5 years I-- when
I worked in Nebraska,
00:12:04.82\00:12:07.62
I lived in a very small
town, about 2,500 people.
00:12:07.66\00:12:11.46
I think my family was the only
Seventh-day Adventist family
00:12:11.49\00:12:13.66
in the whole town, okay?
00:12:13.70\00:12:16.03
Small communities have--
are close knit, you know.
00:12:16.06\00:12:20.50
They are very tight together.
They're linked together.
00:12:20.54\00:12:23.77
And the problem is that
people who come from the outside
00:12:23.81\00:12:28.34
are considered as outsiders
and not accepted very well.
00:12:28.38\00:12:32.68
And, so that
kind of an experience
00:12:32.71\00:12:36.02
I went through
personally in that small town.
00:12:36.05\00:12:40.09
And I imagined
that that's exactly
00:12:40.12\00:12:42.19
what the
Christians were going through
00:12:42.22\00:12:43.93
because they were in
these small communities
00:12:43.96\00:12:47.20
and people around them
were quite different from them.
00:12:47.23\00:12:50.40
And so they didn't link
into them too well at all.
00:12:50.43\00:12:54.10
So that kind of perspective
gives you an idea of--
00:12:54.14\00:12:58.21
some of it suggests
some of the problems
00:12:58.24\00:13:01.28
that these
people may have faced,
00:13:01.31\00:13:03.41
the kind of situation that
they may have gone through.
00:13:03.45\00:13:06.65
So exactly what were
those kinds of situations?
00:13:06.68\00:13:10.32
Well, first
maybe we can describe
00:13:10.35\00:13:13.32
what these people were like.
00:13:13.36\00:13:15.06
And they were of, it
seems, lower social status.
00:13:15.09\00:13:20.90
We get that picture
from looking at the book
00:13:20.93\00:13:24.77
and how it describes
the different participants
00:13:24.80\00:13:26.94
that are in the book.
00:13:26.97\00:13:28.87
Some of them were slaves.
00:13:28.90\00:13:31.11
Some of them were free people.
00:13:31.14\00:13:34.38
They were
families that were broken,
00:13:34.41\00:13:37.05
sometimes one
member a Christian,
00:13:37.08\00:13:39.88
the other member not.
00:13:39.91\00:13:41.28
We'll be looking at some of
that as we go through the book.
00:13:41.32\00:13:43.55
Well, why don't we pause there?
00:13:43.59\00:13:44.95
We will continue talking of
this description on the problems
00:13:44.99\00:13:48.22
that they were facing.
00:13:48.26\00:13:49.62
Friends, I invite you
to continue joining us
00:13:49.66\00:13:51.36
in this very interesting
and fascinating bible study
00:13:51.39\00:13:53.76
of the books of 1 and 2
Peter after this short break.
00:13:53.80\00:13:57.53