Foreign.

Hey there, my friend.

Welcome to the podcast.

This is Jesus Smart.

X.

We're glad you're here.

I'm Brian Del Turco.

You're one of about 618 unique listeners in the last 28 days.

We're really glad you're listening to the.

Podcast, wherever you're picking it up at.

This is episode 355, and episode 353.

We kicked off a dynamic conversation, I feel, with Frank Viola, prolific author, Christian leader, about his book, the Untold Story of the New Testament.

What it is is a fresh lens on the early church, the book of Acts, and then the succeeding letters throughout the New Testament.

Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and so on.

The letters of the apostles.

So you can.

If you missed part one, you can listen to this one first.

Go right ahead.

Part two, it just flows.

It's one big flow.

If you want to catch part one, which I recommend, that's episode 353.

Also in the preceding episode 350, we took a creative turn with an episode called Life in the Groove, Improvising with the Holy Spirit.

It's a look at jazz, how the improvisation of jazz, the.

I just drew a lot of parallels there with Walking in the Holy Spirit.

Now today, in part two with Frank Viola, we go even deeper.

You'll hear insights that may reframe.

I think I predict it will reframe how you read the New Testament.

It'll make it come alive.

It'll give you a storyline, context, a framework, and how it really helps us practically to live out that kingdom life right now.

Before we dive in, can I just mention the newsletter, the Smart edit?

You can go to jesussmart.com there's an opportunity right there at the top of the homepage to sign up for it.

It's all about elevating our faith, living smart, you know, making an impact in our.

In our circles of influence, our personal world.

It's free, it's weekly, it's five minutes to grow.

You can unsubscribe anytime.

But go ahead and sign up.

Think you'll stay with it?

Okay, we appreciate you.

And let's get right to part two of this conversation with Frank Viola.

Without the story, without the narrative, how it all fits together, we are open game for misapplying and misinterpreting.

All right, so there are many, many things, but you're specifically asking about the early church story.

The early church and.

Or the primitive church, more accurately.

There are so many things.

I mean, we tend to paint our century into what we read in the New Testament, you know, so we see things that we practice today and we read them back into the book of Acts and that's a cardinal mistake.

And it happens all the time and all denominations do it.

So I would just say without spending the next three hours giving you a list, one of the things that we see completely different when we put the whole story together is that the Christian life was lived very differently than most Christians today try to live the Christian life.

Okay, all right, that's number one.

Number two, the way that assemblies, churches, Ecclesiastes, the Greek word, were planted and how they functioned was completely different than the way that the typical church today operates and how it's raised up and how it's founded.

Completely different.

And then the third thing is how ministers of the Gospel, how workers, Christian workers, how people who planted churches were raised up and trained in the first century, completely different than the way it's done today.

Now people can say, oh well, they were archaic, you know, they weren't as developed as we are today.

Well, I challenge that because if you look at how Jesus trained the 12, there are some timeless principles there that I believe are superior to the way that ministers are trained today on every level.

Yeah.

What would be just of that?

What would be an example of like leadership development or.

Well, it wasn't, it was, it was, it was.

They lived with Jesus for three years.

They watched him.

Yeah, they watched him.

They saw him interact with his father, they saw him deal with problems and questions.

It was a hands on training.

It wasn't, you know, Jesus is going to give you information from his frontal lobe to your frontal lobe.

And now you put it in your notebook and now you, now you have the magic formula.

It wasn't that at all.

It was hands on, experiential.

And then he would actually give them assignments and missions for them to do and they would come back and report to them.

But here's the fascinating thing.

When you put the story together, Paul of Tarsus did the exact same thing.

Jesus trained 12 men in Galilee for about three years.

Paul of Tarsus trained eight men with a ninth added in Ephesus for three years.

And he did it exactly the same way.

Now that is profound.

And when you put the story together, you see it come alive and you see it very clearly.

So that's another example of, you know, things that we read back into the New Testament of ways that we do things.

Right, right.

That were totally foreign to them.

Now, my book does not make application.

All right.

I don't say, okay, like What I just said here, I think it's superior.

I don't say that in the book.

So, you know, you could read the book and you can read the book and be a Catholic who believes in bishops and priests and all sorts of things that Catholic people do and still benefit from it.

Because I'm not applying it.

I'm not saying, hey, look, they did it this way.

We have to do it this way.

That's not what the book does.

What the book does is it transports you into the first century and you watch the whole story unfold because you're there.

I write it in the present tense, and then you make your own application.

Okay.

So I hope that's clear.

So I'm not trying to tell people what to do.

Yeah.

I'm telling them what happened.

And then you make your own application in your own individual life, in your church life, etc.

Yeah.

So the.

The story is untold.

It is what it is.

Right.

The untold story of the New Testament Church.

It is.

And I say.

I say it's untold because this presentation of putting the Book of Acts together with the epistles to create this one seamless narrative filling in all the details from history, that has been untold.

Right.

Okay, good.

So, yeah, that.

That.

That truly has been untold.

Now, the New Testament has.

Has obviously been told, but in the way that I have presented it, by putting it all together, by putting the 400 pieces of Luke's dinosaur set box together with the 200 pieces of the epistles in their box together.

That's never been done before.

This is what we need, a renaissance of the Jurassic age.

Frank.

With the dinosaurs.

Oh, man.

So the book is really.

I see it as then maybe seminal or like DNA, like.

And you need to read into it and contextualize in your own life.

Ask the Holy Spirit.

Right.

Ask the Lord, how can I apply this?

How do we apply this in our church?

What do we need to maybe change or start doing that we're not doing?

I like that.

Sort of not really prescriptive as to how to apply.

That's right.

That's right.

But leaving it open to the Lord's workings in different contexts.

I like that.

It's really not a history book, is it?

Some people may think this is a history book.

No, it's not.

No, no such.

No.

No, it's not.

And, you know, I mean, I can see how if someone doesn't read the sampler.

We have a free sampler.

It's 44 pages.

Okay.

What's the URL for that you have a URL.

Yeah, it's.

It's the untold story.net if they go to the untoldstory.net and they wait for it to redirect.

There's all sorts of free resources.

Yeah.

Related to the book, including Interview.

There's a free sampler.

But let's say someone's never read the free sampler and all they're doing is looking at the title.

They may incorrectly think, oh, this is a history book.

And I think that 1 out of 10 Christians are interested in history books.

Okay.

Okay.

Not many.

Yeah.

This is not a history book.

It's a book that unlocks the New Testament, especially the letters, the epistles, in a fresh and powerful way.

And probably nine out of ten Christians are interested in that.

Now, there's certainly history involved.

There's no question.

But the goal is not to give readers a history lesson on the primitive church.

The goal is to give readers a fresh lens through which to understand and read the New Testament.

It's to open up the New Testament in a new way.

And the truth is, we've missed much of what the New Testament letters are saying because we don't know the narrative that preceded each one.

We instead mostly know chapters and verses.

So, yeah, it's not a history book.

It's.

It's a key that unlocks the entire New Testament.

That's probably the best way I would describe it.

And when I started doing this work, Brian, I was gob smacked by all of the insights I received, things I didn't know about the New Testament, passages I didn't understand in Paul's letters, etc, that just completely opened up it.

The.

The fog was cleared.

The fog was cleared.

And so I've had the same testimony from early readers saying the same thing is happening to them.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to continue reading this.

And again, I just think it's vital for every believer to cycle through the New Testament throughout their lifetime and, and maybe use corollary resources like this to help in that.

So if there was, like, one major insight that you would want me to have as I read this.

Okay, what.

What do you hope it will be?

You can think of this book as spiritual windshield.

Spiritual windshield wipers for your spiritual life that will make the New Testament when you read it.

And by the way, all the letters are there in the book.

You don't have to put the book down and go read your New Testament, you know?

Okay.

Without the book.

They're right there.

And the way I've presented them is You've read the entire story that preceded the letter, right?

So Paul writes Galatians, Paul writes 1st Thessalonians, Paul writes 1st Corinthians.

You've already read the background, the story, because it's one continual narrative.

And now I, I, I point out, now Paul writes First Thessalonians, and then you have First Thessalonians right there.

And you just read the background.

You know where Paul is, you know what he's feeling, you know who the Thessalonians are.

You've already met them.

You've met some of the believers in that assembly because Paul mentions them.

You know what's going on, you know why he wrote the letter.

And now you read the letter, and it opens it up and it makes it as clear as a mountain stream.

Wow.

That's what the book is.

Spiritual windshield wipers.

I got some mud on my windshield, man.

Understand their New Testament.

I think my windshield's even cracked.

I got some windshield issues.

Oh, man, that's true for all of us.

But this book is one remedy, and it's a big one, I tell you, based on the feedback I've gotten so far.

And I, I thank the Lord for it because this was, this was a lot of work, man.

Three years out of my life, virtually every day.

I missed events that I wanted to go to.

I just had to finish this book.

And I think it, it was worth it, just based on, you know, the comments I'm getting, the remarks I'm getting and so forth.

It really is, it really is encouraging.

Absolutely.

And then each one of those readers, maybe they become Christian leaders, but even just every believer has a sphere of influence that, that will be transformed and it even reaches others in that way.

They may not read the book, but they, they, they are affected by the, you know, hopefully the transformation.

Well, yeah, in their.

Amen.

Well, amen.

Well, pastors are reading it.

Lots of pastors are reading it.

Some are buying, some are buying the book in bulk.

We have a bulk option on that page, the Untold story Dot net.

So if you're meeting a group of some sort, or a church.

Oh, yeah.

If you have a church, a congregation, a fellowship, a B, we have pastors who are buying it in bulk for their congregations going through it.

I mean, it's, it is a major unlock.

And the beautiful thing is it doesn't take any particular theological position.

So you could be a charismatic leader, you can be a reformed reader, you can be someone in a Baptist church, you can be someone who's part of, you know, the Presbyterians or the Christian Missionary alliance, you know, or the Wesleyans.

And you will still benefit from it because it's the same story.

We have the same New Testament.

You know, there's not a reformed New Testament and an Armenian New Testament.

It's one New Testament, and this is the story that's in it.

And I quote scholars who come from all different theological backgrounds.

Right.

So, you know, it traverses denominations and camps and various tribal perspectives and gives you the narrative, you know, as best we can do.

So, yes, it transcends these factions or denominations.

It goes back further.

It's further back and upstream.

Right.

It's seminar.

It's radical in a sense.

It's to the root.

And so now there's an opportunity for the present reader to be.

I like the word unlock.

I've been hearing secularist and.

And people in the.

In the society use this word unlock.

And this is something that really needs to be unlocked.

You know, they may be talking about unlocking some agenda about something or, you know, an understanding and even technology.

It was an unlock, you know, but this is a.

This is a vital unlock in our lives.

The New Testament, the New Covenant, the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, man.

So I, you know, I've noticed in.

I've read.

I got.

I don't know, I may have five or six of your books on my shelves.

I've noticed that.

And even in your, like, article writing as well, that.

That one of your edges that you're gifted in and called to is to challenge believers to the depths of what it means to follow Christ.

You know, rediscover that.

And so where I really interested in this question for you.

Where do you see this Holy Spirit leading the body of Christ right now?

This, in this generation?

What is he breathing on?

What is he pushing on?

What does he want to see happen?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you're going to get many different answers depending on who you ask.

Right.

So you're asking me.

So I'll tell you how the terrain looks from my hill.

Yeah.

Okay.

I believe that this started in 2017.

Okay.

All right.

I believe that what is on the heart of the Holy Spirit is the recovery and reclaiming of the explosive gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached, that Paul preached, that all the apostles preach.

And it's the.

It is the dominating theme of the New Testament.

Now.

I wrote a book in 2018.

Yes.

Entitled Insurgents Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom.

I've read it.

Yes.

And.

And that book encapsulates what I believe the Spirit is saying to the church.

The Body of Christ.

The church is a term that.

It's another clay word.

What church are we talking about but the body of Christ?

All Christians today in our time, right now, I want to say a word about that book because some people ask me about this.

I intentionally wrote that book with super short chapters.

And the inspiration.

I'm talking about Insurgents, the reclaiming of the gospel digestible that has the black cover and the, the red and the white accents, you know, the colors of revolution.

Anyway, okay, I wrote that book in such a way that I wanted people to really digest it and I wanted a high school student to be able to understand it.

And that has happened.

I've heard from, from people in that, in that genre.

Anyways, so.

So I wrote it in the style of the War of Art by Pressfield.

I read that book probably in a couple days because every chapter was like one or two pages and I thought, this is brilliant.

I love it.

I hate long chapters because I feel like I'm never gonna finish.

So I wanted to pay it forward and so I wrote it.

Insurgents, with short chapters broken up into six different sections that do different things, but it's all about the same message.

The recovery, the reclaiming, the restoration of the gospel of the kingdom.

Now that's where this book comes in.

The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Revised and Expanded, traces the theme of the kingdom and the gospel of the kingdom from eternity past all the way to eternity future and through the whole New Testament story from Matthew to Revelation.

All right?

In chronological order.

That's the governing theme.

So I believe, based on everything we've talked about so far, that what the Spirit is seeking to do is to give us a revolution in our understanding of the New Testament.

And that's what this book seeks to do.

It seeks to open up, unlock the word you like so much.

I like it too.

I've used it many times when referring to this book to unlock the New Testament in a fresh way.

Again, we cannot benefit from the written word of God if we don't understand it.

And so this book seeks to give people a fresh, eye opening, jaw dropping understanding of the New Testament, the likes of which most of us have never had.

And I say that based on my own experience because that's why I wrote the book.

That's what it did for me.

Now I want to add this little footnote here.

There is a renowned scholar from Australia named Paul Barnett, and he has written a plethora of books on the first century, the first century church, on Jesus, on the New Testament On Paul of Tarsus.

He wrote this two volume work called Paul Missionary of Jesus, which is outstanding and I cite him in the book.

Well, I've gotten to know him and he just wrote me an email yesterday and I just want to read it to you.

Okay.

He also endorsed the book, by the way, so people can.

I mentioned him earlier in this interview, but this is what he said.

And I don't think I'm speaking out of school in reading this, but you know, it's kind of funny.

You get a personal email from someone you really admire.

A towering figure like this in the world of scholarship.

And, and it's just so good not to, it's too good not to share it.

Like, it's nice that I get it, but like I want to share it with other people.

Right.

Good news.

It's good news.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he says, thank you for sending your amazing book.

Now he already read the manuscript because he endorsed it, but I actually had a copy sent to him in Australia.

You know the copy you're holding in your hands, right?

Yeah.

He says, thank you for sending your amazing book.

The testimonials read like a who's who in the world of New Testament academia.

He's Talking about the 20 scholars who endorsed it.

The Forward Forward by Craig Gaynor.

He says, I am honored to have contributed.

Contributed in some small ways to this game changing text.

May our Lord bless you in your onward journey regarding your book.

I don't know how you did.

Is an astonishing achievement that will bring the Lord's blessing to many.

Your book deserves to be widely used.

I will, I will certainly be promoting wherever I can.

Now, coming from a guy like this.

Yeah.

That's like stunning, you know, because I look up to this man.

You know, he's, he's elderly, you know, he's meaning he's much older than I am.

And he has a backlog of books that are incredible works of scholarship on the first century, the New Testament, Jesus, all, etc, and to get a letter like that from him is just an honor.

Okay.

And so I just, I just wanted to read that.

But I got something else for baseball fans.

Anybody listening to this?

Who's a baseball fan?

Okay.

There is a New York Yankee player named Aaron Judge.

Yeah.

Who is an incredible player.

Yeah.

I predict he's going to break a number of records in baseball because he's still young.

Well, I got a handwritten letter from his mother, really.

Saying that Aaron has got my book and he, he thanks me for it.

And then she said, I asked him if I could read it first and he agreed.

So she's reading my book now and he's going to read it next.

Isn't that amazing?

How about that?

I didn't even know he was a Christian.

Yeah, he is strong Christian.

How about that?

See?

Yeah.

So it's not only like penetrating the world of academia, but the world of sports.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see.

So, I mean, it shows its accessibility.

Right?

It's, it's enough, it's substantive enough to, you know, hold the attention of an academic, but accessible enough to, you know.

That's a good point.

Yeah, that's a good point.

And that's, that's very challenging to achieve, I'm sure, as you're writing.

But that's a credit to that, you know, reach like that, that, you know, that kind of reach.

I'm looking at page 151 right now, you know, and I'm looking at a subtitle.

I think this is the section on Galatians, but a kingdom community.

Community at Iconium.

You know, the city of Iconium.

This is just amazing.

Yeah, Kingdom doesn't now.

So your 400 piece box, the book of Acts.

Right.

Acts is bracketed by the kingdom.

Doesn't it say at the beginning that Jesus taught about the kingdom or spoke with the kingdom for 40 days before?

Absolutely, absolutely.

The Book of Acts begins with the kingdom and it ends with the kingdom.

Sure.

Yep.

And how does it end?

With Paul.

Right.

And what does he say?

Paul preaching the kingdom under Caesar's nose at his doorstep in Rome.

Yep.

It begins and ends with the kingdom.

He's in Rome.

So is he.

And he's teaching the kingdom under Caesar's nose.

Yeah.

That Jesus is Lord.

I can get excited about that phrase.

Where can we get a copy of this book?

I mean, we bought it at Amazon.

Where can listeners get a copy of the book?

And, and then I got another question for you too, about that.

Well, if you live in the United States, the two places to get it, Amazon.com It's a great place to get it.

And also in it's sold on Christianbook.com CBD.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, they don't call it CBD anymore.

Just called Christian Book.

Yeah.

Christianbook.com but if they go to the website, theuntoldstory.net okay, all one word.

The untold story.net Wait for it to redirect and you're going to see the places to order it.

And also if you live outside the US there's a, there's an faq page.

Excuse me, there's an FAQ section on that page and that's addressed too, like, oh, I don't live in the United States, where can I get it?

So that's addressed and many other questions that readers have asked me about the book and asked my team about the book.

There's also interviews and then there is a message, a spoken message entitled.

You're going to like the title, by the way, especially the subtitle.

It's called Burn that Candle.

And the subtitle is Unlocking the New Testament Story.

And it is a message that I delivered not too long ago.

It is not a summary of the book, it's a supplement.

It takes a few threads that I follow in the book and it pulls them out and blows them up large and traces them and sort of an.

An ongoing flowing narrative.

And I tell the story in a message.

It's a message form.

So yeah, I would encourage people to listen to that, especially if they are in ministry or they feel called to ministry.

That's really who I delivered that message to.

Tell you friend, if you're listening.

One of the things about Frank and his book projects, when he rolls them out, is that there are.

There is an awesome amount of additional resourcing when he says go to these websites, you know, videos, audios, links to other things and just.

I've never.

I personally, I don't know that.

I mean, you got to be like in the top one percentile and that with authors, you know, that provide that supplementary resourcing.

Yeah, that's amazing.

So do you have any upcoming projects or resources that will further explore.

I guess these websites do the, you know, the resourcing you're making available.

I guess that's what you're alluding to, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, this I don't really have.

I mean, I do have a queue of projects that I will be putting my hand to, but not anytime soon because right now I'm completely focused on this book.

The launch of this book.

We're still in the middle of the launch because it just came out a few weeks ago.

And providing resources around the book.

So for example, on theuntoldstory.net there are interviews.

Every time I do an interview like I'm doing this one, we posted on the.

The site, we just do some editing so it's not repeating, you know, the same points in other interviews so people can listen.

And, and they don't just promote the book.

They.

They add to it by giving education insights, answering some tough questions like you've Asked.

And so it's a great supplement to the book, the interviews, and we keep adding them to that page.

I also plan to roll out a resource that I'm going to create for people who want to use the book in groups.

Because I've gotten that question, hey, we have a group of believers.

We want to go through the book.

What's your advice on how we do that?

So I'm going to be doing that.

I have a.

A blog that I send out an article by email to everyone who subscribes to it every Thursday.

It's called Viola Unfiltered.

And the blog is frank viola.org.

Right.

And they can sign up for free.

There's no charge.

And they'll hear from me every Thursday.

And in May of this year, 2025, I'm going to roll out how to use it in groups.

You know, how to contact me, and I'll give that resource away to, to people who want to use it in groups.

There's also a YouTube channel on that page.

I have two podcasts.

The Christ is all podcast in, the Insurgents podcast, all accessible on that page.

Over a thousand articles on that page.

And then I have my books catalog on that page.

So, yeah, it's a, it's a one page resource that has a bounty of other resources, most of which are free.

Wow, Frank, you need to become more prolific.

I just want to challenge you.

I want to challenge you.

I. I receive it.

I think I repent and I receive.

I think you can be more.

I think you can do more.

I think the Lord asking for more.

Lord's asking for more.

The Lord's asking.

All right, all right.

I appreciate you, I appreciate your time and coming on this humble podcast.

And we're going to, we're going to, man, we are going to mainstream this book and I'm going to get my wife to read it.

And it's revolutionary.

It can be revolutionary.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I mean, we hear disjointed sermons.

We.

We watch disjointed YouTube videos.

You know, we.

Social media is incredibly disjointed, even if it's Christian social media.

You know, we hear songs and they're all disjointed.

And you know, but that's a good word.

That's a good word because our New Testament, the way it's presently presented to us and arranged is disjoint.

Disjointed.

Yeah.

And.

And what verses are.

They're disjointed sentences.

Yeah.

And what we end up doing is.

And we're taught to do this.

We're conditioned to do this by precept and example is when we try to find out what God's word, God's written word is saying.

We lift these disjointed sentences from different books of the Bible, we paste them together, and we come up with a doctrine or a practice.

And that is where the hazard is.

That is where the hazard is.

Because we will inevitably misunderstand and misapply because we don't know the story, we don't know the drama, we don't know the narrative, the context in which those disjointed sentences were written.

And that's what this book tries to solve.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, so like your other book on, you know, the insurgents, and you said that you felt the Holy Spirit, the major theme, theme he was pushing on is the kingdom, the kingdom of God.

A recovery of that understanding and that reality.

Right.

And that practice, the kingdom.

So, you know.

You know, Frank, some years ago, I don't know, three, four, five years ago, I just felt a little soft impression that I think was from the Lord.

I'm pretty sure about the power of themes, how we need to become thematic in our own renewal of our mind.

You know, we need to have where we.

We can't.

You know, fragmented thinking is not good thinking.

You know, it's not integrated, it's not holistic, it's not thematic.

And I just felt challenged on that.

Like, for example, what are the top two or three?

I mean, for me personally, I would be thinking like this.

What are the top two or three themes that I need to be praying about right now?

You know, instead of just going in with my fragmented list, maybe the Lord has some themes in mind that are bigger and higher that will fix a lot of that stuff, you know?

Yeah.

You know, just like that.

I like it.

So I appreciate this.

Well, Frank, thank you, thank you, thank you.

And encourage everybody to avail themselves of his resourcing online and in book form.

Appreciate you, Frank.

Appreciate you too, Brian.

Thanks so much for having me, brother.

Hey, thanks for joining us for episode 355 of Jesus Smart X. I hope this second part, this conversation with Frank Biola, helped you to see the New Testament story and your place in it with fresh clarity.

I know.

Encourage you to go to the enhanced show notes page.

You can Simply go to jesussmart.com 355.

There are some links there that you can chase to learn more about Frank's ministry, the work that he does.

There's an opportunity to learn more about this epic book that he's put out recently.

If you missed part one, that's episode 353.

You can go back and catch the full flow of the conversation.

And again, episode 354 Life in the Groove man.

Improvising with the the Holy Spirit.

So a little creative break there that complements really everything that we're talking about.

You can grab the newsletter, the Smart edit@jesuss smart.com Elevating our faith, Living smart, Making an impact in our personal world, our sphere of influence.

It's free, it's weekly.

Five minutes to grow.

Hey, thanks for listening, and I look forward to talking with you next time.