Hello everyone.

Tim Winders here.

Welcome to episode two of the season that I'm calling, why The

Bible Doesn't Make Sense yet.

And just so you know, I've kind of titled these internally.

I don't know if it's the full title this is going to be, but this is called

Choosing the Red Pill, stepping Outside the Matrix to really understand.

The Bible.

So yeah, we'll be using some matrix references here and just wanna remind

you, if you haven't, circle back to episode one, circle back there,

and you'll kind of understand kind of how things are flowing here.

The theme of this episode is, we're gonna use this word deconstructing.

But don't let that bother you.

It's really just asking questions.

It's figuring things out.

It's learning more, it's going deeper.

It's seeking, which is all about, what we do here at Seek GoCreate, we'll use the

word deconstructing decades of doctrine to kind of use some alliteration there.

Letting go of what I was taught so I could really discover.

What was true?

And yes, that involves some deconstruction, some thinking

differently, thinking outside the box, stepping outside the matrix so that

you can really see what's going on.

And so that's why we're going to use that analogy here as we talk about the

journey that I've been on, that I've been trying to figure out how to share.

And, just trying to do it in this five episodes that

we're gonna be talking about.

you know, when we think we understand the Bible, but we really don't and

when it doesn't make sense, but you won't admit it, and things like that.

So anyway, if you listen to episode one, you know, we're

starting with a big vision.

I really wanted to start with.

The end in mind with episode one with the vision, peace instead of pressure.

But there was a process that I had to go through to kind of get to that

understanding I had to, had to go through a lot of getting rid of what

I thought I knew to get to a place where I could understand what was true.

And let me just tell you, there's a real cloudiness that goes

on with that, with a lot of.

Our religion and what we're taught and our paradigms and stuff like that.

And I'm not pretending that I've arrived there yet, but I feel confident that

I'm in a better place than I was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago.

Definitely 10 years ago.

So.

the big question is what if, what you know about the Bible is what's keeping

you from truly understanding it?

You know, many of us have been through years and years of preaching, teaching,

and listening to people and things like that, and that's not a bad thing.

But it starts getting into our heads here and it starts creating some

thoughts that may or may not be true.

And then we add that with the way we were raised or the PA part

of the world that we live in.

I'm in America and very westernized and we've had ways of.

Thinking about things that aren't always bad, but they can be.

They can keep us from understanding what's outside of that matrix

that we might have been living in.

so one of the things that we often have to do is to recognize what it is.

That we think air quotes here, we know and maybe step back from that so that we

could really understand the, the truth.

Now, I've given my background before, but I want to just quickly walk

through a few things to kind of get an understanding of where, where I was.

I really didn't grow up in church.

I didn't go to church every week or anything like that.

We kind of popped in on holidays.

But I grew up in the deep south, in the Atlanta area, the Bible Belt.

And so bible thinking religion was all around it.

You could not get away from it if you, grew up in that part of the country.

and then I believed that I had a salvation experience.

I know I had a salvation experience back in the early nineties, 90, late 90, 91.

And so for that period of time now going on, is that 35 years losing count?

I've been asking questions.

I mean, I've been trying to study, I've been wrestling with scripture,

I've been reading through this book.

That is the Bible.

That is the word of God.

For some time went to, some churches, some would've been considered word of faith.

You know, where you speak it, you name it, claim it.

Some would've been considered prosperity Gospel, where they

believe that this Bible is a ticket to getting what it is you want.

all the good stuff in life.

I'm not very accurate.

You could probably tell by the way I'm saying that also, just spent a

lot of time reading it, but I don't know that I read it in proper context.

We'll get to that shortly I would listen to preaching teaching and things

like that, but I don't know that I.

Totally put it in the perspective that I needed to.

Maybe I was just trying to take it and add it to my layer of what I thought success

was so that I could continue building upon what I, and how I define success.

I'm not sure I'm the only one that's ever done that, but,

that's kind of the way I did.

But it ended up in Bible school in 2015 and my wife and I were thinking, this is

going to be so incredible 'cause we're gonna be hanging out with Christians

and people that are studying the Bible and they're gonna be powerhouse

people and it is gonna be incredible.

I actually earned what's called a master's in biblical studies from there,

and let me just tell you what I found out that most of the teaching there

were just what I would call canned.

Answers, just quick snippets, pulling scripture out of context to just

fit what we're doing in our modern life, or in some situations it's

actually just to fit into the system or structure that they believed in.

This was a non-denominational school, but there was a man, a person that had started

it, and so everything sort of had to.

Fit into that man's belief system and his doctrine and they, there

was some good things about it.

I enjoyed being around the people and all of that, but, I can tell you that they

had some baked in thoughts and ideas that, that were not necessarily healthy either.

So all of that.

All of that to say that during my time in Bible school, this would've been like

2016 or 17, going on seven years later, from the time that I'm recording this,

I started doing a deep study on the.

Kingdom of God in Matthew 6 33.

Jesus says, seek ye first the kingdom of God.

I was wanting to do some studying on my own outside of what was going

on and what was being fed to us in that Bible school environment.

And so I started studying that thing that Jesus said to seek first, and it really

opened my eyes to the bigger picture.

I went through every scripture that mentioned the kingdom of God.

I went through and dug into and hand wrote them out and, you know, studied

the Greek words and meditated on them.

Just really allowing, I believe the Holy Spirit to lead and

guide me through revealing.

What the kingdom of God was.

This thing that Jesus said he brought, he brought the

kingdom of God into this earth.

And so, that was a big stepping point for me, a big I. I guess a big

part of the journey was me learning more about the Kingdom of God.

I don't fully grasp it totally.

If anyone says they do, I can guarantee you they don't know

what they're talking about.

But, I understood it more than I did before.

Later I went through and my wife Gloria, was doing this, but I

actually went through reading the Bible over the course of a year.

In chronological order.

Now, I had read the Bible through, but I had never read it in order.

I will tell you that reading the Bible in chronological order of the timeframe

that the events happened or that they were believed to have happened will

impact your perspective definitely in the Old Testament in a tremendous way.

Because, I mean, I just had a lot of stuff jumbled up and did not understand

timelines and how things fit together.

I had been reading the Bible okay.

It wasn't as if I was just a casual Christian.

I had been reading it and I had gone through Bible school, but I did

not understand how those pieces fit together of how the prophets and how

the kings and the nation of Israel and.

All of that fit.

I did not understand that until I read it chronologically.

To fast forward over the last few years, what I've done is I've immersed

myself in first century history and culture to really understand

who wrote the New Testament.

What they were going through and who they wrote it to.

You know, we throw these words around like, oh, you need to read it in context.

And I've done that myself, and I've seen other people do that.

But then when I listen to what I used to say and also what other people say.

I still don't think we fully get the context of what was going on.

We really, I believe, have to dig in more to what was going on in that

New Testament timeframe, which I'll talk about more in the next episode.

But it's really this timeframe between a 30, about the time that Jesus.

Finished his earthly ministry and went to the cross and was resurrected

up to 80 70, which a significant event occurred there, which was the

destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

We'll talk more about that later, but that timeframe, we really, as Christians

need to understand it so that we could maybe step out of the matrix that we live

in, in currently recording this in 2025.

To kind of understand a bigger picture that, went on historically.

Okay, so here's a few problems with some of the theologies or the

programming or the dogmas that we have.

We've got these doctrines, we've got these dogmas, we've got these paradigms.

That cause us to read scripture and try to make the scripture work with

what we think instead of allowing the scripture to lead and guide.

We've got these filters, we've got these ways that we look at it.

I'll tell you one way we really see it in our current world again, this 2025.

And that is where people will take scripture and try to make their

political beliefs, their political system work with scripture.

And I'm just gonna go ahead and bust up something right here.

And I've got definite political, I lean certain ways politically, but we've got to

disconnect that from the way we look at.

Things in the Bible because I can guarantee you, especially for those

in the United States where we've got two political basically sides.

We've got a Republican and a Democratic party, we've got what we call a left.

We call it a right.

I don't think that's really a good example, but, I can guarantee you

that I could take this Bible, this holy scripture, and I could find,

I could pluck out scriptures.

That could justify political.

Hot buttons, political ideas, political ideologies that

would back up both systems.

The left, right Republican or Democrat.

And some of you're saying, no, no, no, the Bible is this way or is that way.

No, I could guarantee you that.

I could find examples like that.

So we have to be really careful about.

Making the Bible fit our political beliefs.

That's a whole nother topic I don't wanna get into, but it could

be part of something that was bothering me along this journey.

What we were seeing going on politically, I. We are taught what to believe

before learning how to read in context.

In other words, we go to churches, we listen to people, we go online and we hear

things, and then we will go to the Bible to try to find things that back up what we

believe instead of the other way around.

The other way around is take the time.

To really be still and quiet and get into this scripture, get into this Bible so

that the Bible, the word of God, really spills over into who we are instead of

who we are trying to justify what it is.

plucking out some scriptures and so what we do, it ends up.

we accept certain things.

We skip over certain things.

We twist things.

I mean, I've got an example right now on a Facebook post that I did where

someone I went to bible school took a scripture and put it in the comment

as if it fit that post that I did, but it was not in context at all.

They're taking something that was written to an audience 2000 years ago

and trying to say it applies today.

Now it may.

Apply.

It may have an impact, but we also have to understand who it

was written to 2000 years ago.

And if you do that and really think about that and understand the history

and what was going on then, then you probably wouldn't add it as a comment for

something that was made that, in 2025.

So anyway, here's a few examples of some of these that might.

Be where we've invented things, we've come up with things we've

tried to do, things to explain things we don't understand, and what it

will often do is lead to confusion.

There's some of them, these are some highly controversial, but the.

Theory of rapture is one.

The way we cite the sinner's prayer is another altar call.

Some of the systems that we see out there, dispensationalism, millennialism,

pre Millennialism, these were not really scriptural or in the Bible.

A lot of teachings that we see in most.

Of our, denominations, the Catholic church has been really good at just

coming up with layers and layers and layers of things that they've added in.

but that's happened in a lot of 'em, not just picking on the Catholic church.

That's happened in a lot of denominations in churches and things like that.

We just add to, and some of that's not bad.

I'm just saying that when we add to it is.

We need to understand where it came from and understand that it

may not be a foundational truth.

It may be something that we have just come up with to address something

or maybe deal with something.

Or it could be something that we've been deceived and we've just made up

because we think it's what we understand.

But, it's why it's important for us to.

Almost unlearn.

And, that's why that word deconstruction has become so controversial because you

almost have to undo some things to get to a place where you could take a fresh look

at it So one of the things that I did and.

This is an important step for me.

I think it's important for most people in the world we're in today.

We are a very distracted society.

We've just got a lot of stuff going on.

My phone right now is my camera up, so I can't hold it up, but I would

hold my phone up as a prime example.

Of what distracts us.

We can scroll, we can look through things, we can get access to news, we

can get all of this information, and we think we are getting wisdom or knowledge.

And what we're really doing is getting distracted.

And so the thing that I had to do was slow down.

Pause, rest and just be able to think and just stop long enough.

And what I found is that started clearing my head up.

And allowing me to just see things in a different light so that when I

would go to scripture and read things, I saw them in a different way, and

I believe the Lord was doing that.

I believe the Holy Spirit was prompting that the Holy Spirit was moving me because

I wasn't coming in with my clouded view.

I was stepping outside of that matrix so that I could really step.

Into the biblical narrative, the biblical story, and be clearer.

I'm not gonna say I've totally got it figured out, but I can

be clearer than I was before.

I could remove some of that growing up in the Deep South dogma that I had with.

You know, the Baptist and the denominations, and I could remove some

of that that I had heard in Bible school and just kind of have a fresh eye.

I could remove some of the teaching from the word of faith and the prosperity

gospels so that I could see the scripture and the way it was originally intended.

Not in the way.

I wanted it to fit my life and my world to make things work out better for me.

It really is a process.

We talked about this a little bit in episode one of this

season, a process of surrender.

This word that some of us have struggled with humility, just I.

Admitting that we don't know everything.

there's a lot of us in Christian circles and followers of Jesus.

I noticed it a lot in Bible school that people that have, they may have

spent some time with the Bible and they really do believe, They know it all.

And I can tell you from just reading this scripture over and over again,

spending time with the Lord, the more I think I know, really the less I know.

So when you're around people, and I hope I don't even come across this

way around, people that say this is the way it is, thus sayeth the Lord.

I'm not saying you need to run, but maybe just ask yourself, you know?

Can we boldly say that we understand topics like the resurrection?

Can we boldly say that we understand eternity?

Can we boldly say that we understand eternal life?

Can we boldly say we understand what it means to be a son

of God or a daughter of God?

And I, I would say the answer is we might grasp it somewhat, but

we don't really understand it.

This side of actually being part of that.

So this just allows a. Fresh reading if you read things over and over again.

And one of the things I've read often in the last, say, 12

months, is the Book of Revelation.

And one of the things I'll talk about in the final episode of this

season is just a fresh understanding of what I've seen in relation to

those things that were in that book.

So it just helps us see it fresher.

And one of the things that really helps when you see things in a

fresh way is to read them in order.

You know, if you were to take any novel or any story and read it out of order, it's

probably gonna be hard to understand it.

Well.

The tough thing about the way the Bible has been written, or we'll call it

compiled, that really is the correct term.

It's been compiled out of order and you know, I've already mentioned that in

the Old Testament in the next episode.

We'll talk about that in the New Testament, but it really does help.

It does me, I'm kind of an order guy.

Systems and process and flow.

It really helps to read it.

In the historical flow or the real flow or the chronological flow

that it was actually written in.

And it does change a tremendous amount of just the way you understand it.

It did for me, I saw connections and timeline clarity that I had.

Missed in the story and I believe you will too, and I'm gonna talk more

about it, so we'll get into that.

But just understand how important it is to read things in order and in the historical

context that it was actually written in.

And again, I've brought this analogy up.

It really is like the matrix, I believe when we're in some of these doctrines.

Bible schools when we're sitting and taking what people tell us

and we're not questioning it, we're not asking questions.

And I'm not saying to be a jerk about it.

Maybe some people maybe would say that my personality was that way.

I know I had some run-ins in Bible school and truthfully,

they ask me not to come back.

But that's a whole nother story.

We won't get into it here.

But, it, it is like stepping out of the matrix.

the matrix movies are a really good analogy here because once you step

out, you see things in a different way.

That doesn't mean that the matrix doesn't still exist, but you see that the matrix

is just a portion of the bigger picture.

You could see the framework, you could see things, you could, you know,

it's it's like Morpheus saying, you know, you've got two choices here.

You've got the blue pill and everything just stays the same and you're just

nice and comfortable and relaxed.

Or there's the red pill and you can never.

Go back.

Well, what I did was I took that red pill and, and things have not been the same.

I've enjoyed the ride.

I will tell you that it has been uncomfortable and my wife and I, a

little over a year ago, there was a time that she says, boy, when you

really start seeing some of this.

She says it is really shaking some things that I thought they were

my core, but they really weren't.

And again, she was raised in the deep south like me and had some baked in

beliefs that she had to overcome.

And so that is what we're talking about here.

We're talking about getting to a place.

Where you choose, and if you've listened this far, you're probably

not looking at the blue pill, you're probably looking at that red pill, and

you want to continue uncovering what might help you see that bigger picture.

And what's cool is once you start doing that, things that never made sense

start making sense to you I love that because I don't want to be deceived.

I mean, part of my makeup is I just don't wanna be fooled.

I mean, one of my foundational statements has always been

thou shall not fool thyself.

I don't know that those exact words are in the Bible.

I believe that if they're not, they should be.

It sounds like a proverb, doesn't it?

but once you see it, you can't.

Unsee it and you can't go back.

That's where I'm at, that's where I've been for the last few years, and

that's what I'm attempting to share just a little bit of in this season,

in this episode and specifically the other episodes that, we're looking at.

I've said before, I don't like plucking out scriptures, but there

are a few scriptures that will back up this, This concept of

not allowing yourself to be full.

Proverbs three, five, lean, not own your own understanding.

And again, what many of us will try to do is take our understanding, our

smarts, our knowledge and wisdom, and pull from the Bible to make it fit.

That instead of the other way around.

You know, a great example that we see in Acts 1711 is that of the Bereans, and this

was a group of people that it said that they, during this timeframe that we're

gonna talk more about later of around the 80 fifties is when this they, they

were, we saw that in acts they examined.

The scriptures daily.

They were studying, they were seeking the truth in the scriptures.

And that's the way we want to be.

We don't want things to cloud our heads and we don't wanna

take what people tell us.

I don't want you to take what I'm saying or just, uh, maybe even

preacher, teacher, and some people might disagree with that, but.

I believe that you need to take personal responsibility and dig into

the scriptures and the word and make sure that you are clear on what the

context is so that it means something for you and how your life is being trans.

Formed and, Matthew 15, nine sort of addresses that, where Jesus

said they worship me in vain.

Their teachings are merely human rules.

Of course, in this situation, he's talking about the Pharisees We

could probably use that example for a lot of preacher teachers today.

there's just human rules that are being put up.

He goes, they do not worship me.

And that was Matthew 15, nine.

I've already referenced one of my favorite scriptures because it

launched me into my study of the kingdom of God, which is Matthew 6 33.

Seek.

First the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Then all these things will be added unto you.

what I realized, my life up to that point, I had been seeking those things first.

I. Not God's kingdom.

And I just had that switched around and many people do in our first world culture.

John 5 39 through 40 says You study the scriptures, there's more to it than

that, yet you refuse to come to me.

What we are attempting to do here.

This is what I'm attempting to do, and this goes back to episode

one, is I want to be that new man.

That new man that CS Lewis brought up, that new man that I referenced, bono,

that I said, you know, it seems like.

He is just at peace and rest and not anxious for anything.

Well, often we have studied scriptures, yet we have refused to become transformed

and come to him, come to Jesus as Jesus was talking about here in John five,

and my desire is to be that new man that is at peace, that is transformed.

And in Christ as Jesus taught.

So hope that's helpful for you.

Listen, unlearning this stuff and maybe having to pluck out some junk that

we've been living with, it is scary.

I, I know.

I remember sitting on the sofa in our RV and Glory was just almost shaking with.

I don't know what's true anymore.

This is really shaking me at my core and I'm my personality.

I sort of love being in that position.

I have to be careful not to just put myself in an unlearning and change

situation just because I enjoy change.

But, but, one of the things you'll find it is extremely freeing.

When you realize that you're stepping more into truth, that you're understanding it,

that you're unplugging from the matrix so that you can see things in a clearer way.

You can read this Bible in a different way when you truly understand who wrote it.

When they wrote it and who it was written to, the context.

Sometimes the greatest act of faith is to let go of our answers, man's

answers so that we can hear God and sometimes we're clouded and can't hear

because we've got our answers and what we want in our head instead of what God

wants us to hear in the next episode.

We are going to go into something that has really been transformational

for me, and that is why the when and how you read the Bible, especially in

the New Testament, can unlock a story that you have never truly seen before.

I don't know why most of us.

Have never learned the history of what was going on in the first century.

It was such an important time, but as I have studied it, it has just exploded

the Bible in my mind and my soul truthfully, and it has really been that.

Big burst that has gotten me outta the matrix to really see truth.

So we're gonna talk about what happens when you stop flipping through

random verses and start reading like the original audience read it and

heard it as a story that leads up to the biggest shift that you'll.

Ever experience in your faith journey?

Thanks for listening in.

I'm excited you're going along this journey with me as I share it.

Uh, step back, step back here with me next week.

We're gonna keep going, so let's keep going along this path.

See you next week here at Seek.

Go create.