Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog whose author’s new book sold out faster than toilet paper during the early days of the pandemic.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this week (or perhaps IN a rock, like some trendy minimalist apartment), you know that my new breakthrough book – The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded – released on Tuesday.
Yes, the literary world trembled, baristas ran out of espresso beans from the overnight reading frenzies, and my mother finally stopped asking when I’d get a “real job.” (All untrue, but it sounds funny.)
I’ve been asking you to wait to order it until release week because I’m giving way 7 – count them, seven – exclusive bonuses to all who order a copy during release week.
A Major Problem Solved
Well, someone actually (and finally) listened to me, a mere 30 minutes after I sent that email on Tuesday, the print copies of the book vanished from online book shelves like free food at an office party.
The resulting chaos rivaled Black Friday at an electronics store—our inbox exploded with hundreds of messages ranging from desperate pleas to creative threats involving paper cuts.
Who knew literary enthusiasm could cause such delightful pandemonium?
I won’t tell you the whole sad saga, but in short, the publisher didn’t expect to get so many orders so fast. Despite this, because of your help, the book hit #291 out of all 33+ million books sold on Amazon.
This helps build awareness, so a big THANK YOU to all who ordered it. However, if it had not gone out of stock, it probably would have hit the top 10.
GOOD NEWS
Be that as it may, the publisher informed me that the print edition of the book is back in stock! AT LEAST ON AMAZON (USA). And it’s supposed to be back in stock in Amazon in other countries. Either now, or if not now, soon (so they say).
Consequently, we extended the bonus window to make up for the lost time.
However, I wouldn’t wait to order it because it could go out of stock again. The demand for this new book is very strong.
So if you go to the book landing page here, you’ll see an UPDATED FAQ section that will answer any questions you have about the book.
You will also see where to order it and how to get the bonuses.
What follows is the first PRINT interview I did on the book, followed by the first AUDIO interview I did on it.
These interviews aren’t simply “promotional,” they are educational and informative about the New Testament story.
Writing this book almost killed me, so you’ll get a direct peek into why I expended so much time and energy in producing it.
Next week, I’ll be sharing with you a condensed version of “the Story” that I delivered in one blistering message – a spoken talk, that is.
Those who heard it were deeply impacted. I trust you will be also.
THE FIRST PRINT INTERVIEW
Mike Donio kindly interviewed me over on this Substack page. Here’s the interview. This will be followed by a different audio interview.
Enjoy!
1) Introduce yourself to my audience: You’ve written many books since 2008. Tell us about your most important ones.
Thanks Mike. I’m someone who adores Jesus and writes books specifically for hungry and thirsty Christians who love Jesus also, but who know in their bones that “there must be more” to the Christian faith, to Jesus Christ, to the Bible, and to church.
Therefore, my books are NOT for non-Christians. Neither are they for people who are NOT interested in the deeper things of God. I say this because some authors think their books are for everyone.
That’s not the case with my work. I write for a very specific audience. Namely, Christians who are actively following Christ, but they want more. They want to know the Lord better and love Him more.
That said, my books can be divided up into Light and Shade.
“Light” are books containing the element of the sublime.
“Shade” are books containing a prophetic edge that challenges the status quo.
Readers can check out my entire book catalog on my blog.
I’ve written over 20, but the most important are:
The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded – this volume just released and we will be talking about it throughout this interview. Early readers who know my work have called it my masterpiece.
This book combines elements of Light and Shade.
Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom – this book is the climax and culmination of all of my works that came before it. It’s been called my signature book and a landmark on the kingdom of God. It belongs to the Shade category.
From Eternity to Here – this has been called my magnum opus. It belongs to the Light category.
God’s Favorite Place on Earth – this is my favorite book out of them all. It belongs to the Light category.
Other important books are 48 Laws of Spiritual Power, Jesus Manifesto, and Hang On, Let Go.
Here is my discography that contains all the titles along with free sample chapters.
2) Tell us about your two podcasts.
The Christ is All podcast includes conference messages on the deeper life in Christ, interviews, monologues and creative sketches. Thankfully, it has reached 2 million downloads.
The Insurgence Podcast discusses the radical implications of the explosive gospel of the kingdom. I have 7 conversation partners on the show, one of them was Michael Heiser.
The podcast has over 650,000 downloads to date. We are currently discussing every reference to the kingdom of God in the New Testament in chronological order—a thrilling project.
Both podcasts are for hungry Christians who want to go deeper in their walk with the Lord.
3) Your new book is called The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded. Give us a quick elevator pitch on what the book is about.
The acclaimed scholar F.F. Bruce famously said that reading the New Testament letters is like hearing one end of a phone conversation. My book reconstructs the other end so readers can understand virtually every word.
The book does this by seamlessly weaving the narrative of Acts with the Epistles, providing a free flowing story from Matthew to Revelation, but in chronological order and filling in all the details from our knowledge of first-century history.
While the book is a non fiction, some early readers said it reads like a motion picture on paper. And that was my goal.
4) The book has been endorsed and recommended by many esteemed scholars. Who are some of them and what have they said about the book?
I’m profoundly grateful that 20 high-voltage scholars have endorsed the book.
Craig Keener, the greatest New Testament scholar ever to breathe oxygen in my view, wrote the Foreword. Others are Darrell Bock, Joel B. Green, Michael Licona, Mark Strauss, Richard Horsley, David deSilva, Amy Chase, Constantine Campbell, Paul Barnett, Clinton Arnold, Eckhard Schnabel, Rita Finger, Jeffrey A. D. Weima and many others.
All the endorsements are on the book landing page (linked at the bottom).
5) Many Christians, leaders, pastors, teachers, and students of the Bible are interested in theology. How does your book relate to theology?
There are two kinds of theology that dominate the Christian world. Systematic theology, which is the most common, and narrative theology.
Systematic theology attempts to organize religious beliefs into a coherent, logical system of doctrines.
It arranges theological concepts by topic and categories like God, humanity, sin, salvation, and the church.
By contrast, narrative theology focuses on understanding God and His kingdom primarily through story.
It seeks to understand God’s person, His work, and His ways through the overarching narrative of Scripture.
It focuses on the story of the Bible rather than emphasizing doctrinal statements and propositions.
Given its topical nature, systematic theology relies on reading the Bible through the lens of chapters and verses while narrative theology looks at the whole story chronologically.
My book is a work of narrative theology.
Let me give you and your readers an example of why I think this distinction is critical.
My sainted wife loves puzzles. She buys 500 piece puzzles and even 1,000 piece puzzles. And she always completes them.
But her major guide for completing the puzzle is the picture displayed on the box of the completed puzzle.
Now if you try assembling a puzzle without the image on the box, you’ll inevitably force pieces that don’t fit with one another.
And this is precisely why Reformed systematic theology, Arminian systematic theology, Anglican systematic theology, Baptist systematic theology, and Charismatic systematic theology all differ from one another.
In my view, a systematic theology should only be created after a narrative reading of Scripture in chronological order is secured. Else it’s guilty of the cut and paste approach to Bible study, which dominates the Christian world today.
That is, cutting and pasting verses from the Bible together to build doctrines.
When we learn “The Story” in chronological order, it hems us in and tethers us to the truth.
6) Give us some “aha” moments that you had while researching for the book.
There are so many that I’ve lost count. But here are a few:
*Paul’s thorn in the flesh. I make a strong case that Paul’s thorn was the ringleader of the Judaizers who dogged Paul’s steps everywhere he traveled to plant a church.
So Paul’s thorn was a “religious” man motivated by God’s enemy. This becomes clear in The Story. I cite a number of first-rate scholars in the book who agree with this conclusion after I presented it to them.
*Another is Paul’s message in Athens. The background is remarkable, yet little-known today.
My book opens the narrative up historically, unfolding where the altar of “the Unknown God” came from. The saga is riveting. And it’s a lesson on how to recontextualize the gospel to our current culture.
*Another is that Paul trained workers in Ephesus just as Jesus trained workers in Galilee. (“Worker” is the term the New Testament uses for those who have traveling, itinerant ministries.)
The way Paul trained ministers of the gospel was essentially the same and for the same amount of time as that of Jesus.
The story behind it is captivating, and it holds valuable lessons on how Christian workers can be trained today for their ministries.
*Another is that in Matthew 9, Jesus exhorted His twelve apostles to pray that God would send out more workers for the harvest.
When you read the New Testament story chronologically, you see the answer to this prayer in bold relief.
Workers begin to emerge in Acts and the Epistles: Stephen, whose life was cut short. Paul of Tarsus. Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and Titus, all of whom are pretty well known.
But the workers who aren’t so well known play a major part of The Story also.
For example, the workers that Paul trained like Aristarchus, Tychicus, and Epaphras were giants in the land. They come alive in The Story, and readers will fall in love with them just as I have.
*Another is how women dominate The Story. Jesus and Paul relied on women in their ministries. And the New Testament names them.
*Another is articulated in one of the final chapters. After the entire story of the first-century church is told chronologically, I make this statement.
“THE STORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH is a glorious paradox. It’s a combination of unmatched wonder alongside a persistent train wreck. The saga is both exuberant and harrowing. It depicts the sublime within the malign.”
All throughout The Story, you find the sublime — the numinous activity of the Holy Spirit that is beyond wonder.
But right alongside it, you have a constant train wreck.
The churches are in a constant state of falling apart. There is unrelenting opposition to the apostles, including Paul of Tarsus.
And virtually all the letters in the NT were written by apostolic workers to churches that were in a first-class crisis.
It’s the sublime within the malign.
This same principle holds true for all authentic churches today. It’s true for our own Christian lives. We find the Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, within the mess.
So “The Story” not only unlocks each of the 27 books of the New Testament, it also presents a fresh vision of church, of church planting, and of the Christian life that is about as rare today as hens’ teeth.
7) How does understanding “The Story” of the New Testament church help us to understand the epistles? That is, the letters of Paul, Peter, John, James, etc.
The book gives you the historical background behind each letter, so you understand where Paul, Peter, James, etc. are located when they write their epistles, what they were feeling, what they had just been through, and what they were specifically addressing and why.
For instance, Paul tells the Corinthians that when he came to Corinth, he was in fear and trembling. Why? The Story gives the answer.
And when you read the New Testament as a chronological narrative, three gospels begin to emerge:
There is the gospel of legalism that Paul combats in Galatians.
Then there is the gospel of libertinism that he combats in 1 Corinthians. James also addresses it in his letter.
And then there’s the true gospel, which is the gospel of the kingdom also called the gospel of grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The two counterfeit gospels – legalism and libertinism – were prevalent in the New Testament era, and they are still with us today.
The gospel of libertinism says, “We are under grace, so we can do whatever we want. God’s cool with it because God is love.”
The gospel of legalism says, “You have to work hard to make God happy and earn His favor.”
Legalists also believe that their personal convictions reflect God’s opinions, so if it’s wrong for them, it’s wrong for you.
Consequently, the libertine acts as if there is no God.
And the legalist acts as if she/he is God to everyone else.
As I argued in my book Insurgence, most legalists don’t realize they are legalistic, and most libertines don’t realize they have perverted God’s grace into license (to quote the book of Jude).
These two counterfeit gospels – legalism and libertinism – are at the root of most of the crises that Paul and the other apostles addressed in their epistles. Those distortions created all sorts of problems in the believing communities.
You see this clearly when you read the New Testament as a chronological narrative. The pattern keep repeating.
8) How did you manage to write the book so it’s easy to read yet at the same time it’s a work that is beneficial for scholars?
That wasn’t an easy mark to hit.
Essentially, I wrote the main narrative so a high school student could grasp it. The prose is simple and minimally adorned.
The footnotes are for those who are curious and will have questions while reading the narrative. They are also for the academically inclined, including scholars.
One of the endorsers described the book this way: “It will captivate ordinary readers and engage scholars without losing the average high school or college student. It is a gift.”
If that ends up being the experience of most readers, then I thank God for the ability.
9) Some of the endorsers said there is no book like your book. Is that really true? No one has reconstructed the entire New Testament story chronologically the way you have?
During my research, I only discovered two books that attempted the same thing that were written by scholars.
The first I found was Donald Guthrie’s book The Apostles, which sought to put together the entire story of the first-century church chronologically from Pentecost to Patmos.
Guthrie’s book was published in 1975 and has been out of print for many years. It’s a pioneering work, but it’s not detailed, there are no sources in it except for a short bibliography at the end, some of the scholarship is outdated, and the formatting isn’t the best.
The other book that sets out to do the same thing is Paul Barnett’s Bethlehem to Patmos. It was published in Australia in 1989, and in the USA in 1990 under the title Behind the Scenes of the New Testament.. The book was republished in 2013, but the content is virtually the same as the 1989 version.
As far as I know, these are the only two books written by scholars that seek to reconstruct the entire story of the early church similar to the way that I’ve done in this work.
I write the book I want to read myself but that doesn’t exist. If it already exists, the time, energy, effort and agony of writing a book just isn’t worth it.
So I stand on the shoulders of people like Barnett and Guthrie.
Interestingly, Barnett was one of my historical advisors on The Untold Story. He’s an amazing scholar, and he wrote a beautiful endorsement for the book.
He also said “there is no book like this.” Paul wrote me twice saying “I don’t know how you wrote this book!,” which was enormously humbling to me coming from him.
Barnett’s scholarly catalog on the first century church and Paul is massive.
Anyways, that was the reason why I decided to take on the mammoth task of reconstructing the entire saga of the first-century church afresh with full documentation.
10) What’s the best place for people to learn more about the book and get a copy?
The best place is TheUntoldStory.net. People just need to wait for it to redirect.
Everything related to the book is on that page, including a Sneak Preview Sampler, interviews, etc.
THE FIRST AUDIO INTERVIEW
Again, this interview is NOT a repeat of the print interview. It’s quite different. Go HERE to listen to it.
Next Thursday, I’ll be sharing a spoken message I delivered on “the Story.” It’s called “BURN THAT CANDLE: Unlocking the New Testament Story.”
Until then,
Your weary brother,
fv
7 Reasons to Get My New Book Now
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