Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

Oct. 22, 2024 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole

01:50:20

Psalm 121: William Philip

James is joined by Rev. William Philip of the Tron church in Glasgow to discuss Psalm 121.https://www.tron.church/people/↓ ↓ ↓ Buy James a Coffee at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jamesdelingpole The official website of James Delingpole:https://jamesdelingpole.co.uk x

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Psalm 121.
	This is the Miles Coverdale translation for the Book of Common Prayer.
	I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
	From whence cometh my help?
	My help cometh even from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth.
	He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.
	He that keepeth thee will not sleep.
	Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
	The Lord himself is thy keeper.
	The Lord is thy defence at thy right hand, so that the sun shall not burn thee by day, neither the moon by night.
	The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.
	Yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
	The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth evermore.
	Welcome to the Psalms with me, James Dellingpole, and I'm very excited about my special Psalms guest, William Philip.
	Is that what people call you, William?
	I get called various things, yes, but that's quite acceptable.
	Okay, okay.
	And tell me about the Tron Church.
	Because it's an odd word, Tron.
	I mean, there was a movie in the 80s, I think, called Tron.
	What is it?
	It's amazing how often I get asked that question.
	Yeah, it's an old name, it's an old Scots name, and it means a weighing beam.
	So the Trongate in the city of Glasgow or wherever else it was, was the place where people came to to have their grain weighed and to be paid for it.
	So the Trong was the weighing beam, and it was very important to have a To have a true Tron, so you've got true weights and not people diddling you for your grain.
	So the Tron church, originally the name came from that.
	It was the second church in Glasgow after the cathedral.
	But it moved around at various times and then joined up with other ones and had various different additions to the name.
	And we were for a long time called St.
	George's Trong because the Trong Congregation originally moved into a new building called St.
	George's right in the city of, in the centre of Glasgow.
	And we were there for a long time until about 12 years ago we were forced to leave our building.
	We had to part company with the Church of Scotland because Well, as it's been happening with the Church of England and many other denominations, well, I suppose now we would call it just wokery, wouldn't we?
	Yeah.
	Just imbibing the LGBT agenda, all of that sort of stuff just came to a head, and really we...
	It came to the point where to maintain being a Christian church, we had to leave the National Church.
	That's really what it boiled down to.
	I'm glad you make that distinction.
	Because, I mean, obviously I was aware of what's been happening in the Church of England.
	And I suppose maybe I naively assume that somehow that Scotland, being a kind of Yes, it's probably further down the road to disaster.
	About 12 years ago.
	I think in about the last 15 years, they've lost half their entire membership.
	And churches are closing down right, left and centre.
	It's quite sad.
	There was an article in the Times recently saying that the Church of Scotland was now the biggest property agency in Scotland.
	They had so many properties that were selling.
	Not sure if that's absolutely true, but if you go, you'll certainly see that that's what's happening.
	So it's been a sad case of a very great decline.
	And all the lockdown business even just accelerated that and made it worse.
	So, one of the few things I know about Glasgow is Rangers v Celtic.
	And that it's famous for its sectarianism.
	Is this still the case?
	It is.
	Yes, it is.
	I mean, I would say that that is the religion of Glasgow, but it's nothing really to do with religion.
	It's a football-based sectarianism, and it's a kind of...
	Yeah, it's nothing to do really with Protestants and Catholics.
	I mean, that's very, very much in the background.
	But yeah, it's a pretty...
	It goes back to the connections with Ulster and with Ireland and all the immigration back and forward and so on.
	So it can be quite ugly at times, unfortunately, yeah.
	So, I mean, for example, if you were out on a Saturday night at pub closing time, would it still be a kind of scary question if they asked you if you're a Catholic or a Protestant?
	Would that come up?
	Yes, if that came up, you wouldn't want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, I think.
	I mean, it's a sad fact that whenever there's an old firm game, that's the Ranger Celtic derbies, no matter what the result is, the rate of domestic abuse goes up enormously on those days because people just take it so, so seriously.
	And, of course, there's a lot of heavy drinking involved and all the rest of it.
	So, yeah, it's an unfortunate...
	It's an unfortunate aspect of our city, I'm afraid.
	You know, it's not all bad.
	I don't want to paint it too black.
	And certainly it's a tiny, tiny minority, really, of the fans of each side that would be causing real trouble.
	And there's been very little in the way of major sort of hoo-hahs of late.
	But, yeah, it's...
	Yeah, I'm curious, not so much on a kind of what...
	What's sectarian violence in Glasgow like?
	But more on the level of...
	It greatly puzzles me.
	That given that Christianity is about sort of following Jesus and given that Jesus was about stuff like turning the other cheek, I mean, nothing in his life, nothing at all in his life at any moment, except maybe the moment where he gets angry with the fig tree, suggests that he would ever have wanted violence being carried out in the name of religion.
	Absolutely.
	Well, I mean, that's just, it's the great reminder, isn't it, that you don't draw your conclusions about Christ from looking at those who use or particularly misuse his name.
	I mean, the church is full of faults.
	Christian believers, even genuine Christian believers, are full of faults.
	But, you know, I'm glad that, as you say, nothing that Christ ever said, nothing he ever did, causes us embarrassment.
	That's not true, is it, of necessarily other religious leaders or founders?
	But it is true of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we should be thankful for that.
	Well, definitely.
	And one of my missions in life is getting back to the pure message.
	And I think you share my view.
	I mean, you're a fellow Psalms junkie, if I may.
	Yes.
	You've just written a book about them, which I very much enjoy.
	Is that the Psalms seem to be a very good way of staying honest.
	And you give loads of really good...
	I was reading your introduction.
	And it's extraordinary how, from the very earliest days of Christianity, the Psalms have been a key part of all sorts of names.
	And I'm inviting you to mention them in a moment.
	But all the heavy hitters in the history of Christianity have said, yeah, the Psalms are the thing.
	So tell me a bit more about that.
	Yeah, it is extraordinary really.
	And I guess, you know, the Psalms in some ways give something of a history of the spiritual life of the church.
	One of the famous commentators on the Psalms, Kirkpatrick, put it like that.
	If the history of the use of Psalms could be written, it would be a history of the church.
	Great ones like Augustine, Athanasius, Basil, all of these have poured praise on the Psalms, talking about it being a sort of compendium of all theology.
	I think Luther called it a little Bible.
	And they're all expressing the fact that, in a sense, the whole of Christian theology, the whole of the revelation of God in every aspect, is there in the Psalms.
	The Psalms are full of They're full of creation.
	They're full of God's providence.
	They're full of his great redemption.
	They're full of the promise of the Christ to come and so on.
	So there is a whole theology in the Psalms, but not just a sort of dry, it's not like a dry theological tome.
	All of it is very visceral.
	It's engaging, isn't it, with human life.
	It's one-to-one engaging with God in the realism of life.
	There's no sort of escapism, no let's pretend fairytale type of thing in the Psalms.
	Oh, there's troubles all around, so let's hide away and pretend everything's nice and rosy.
	It's absolutely, somebody described it as theology in the raw.
	I mean, you just have to read through even the first 10 or 20 Psalms and you realize that, you know, there's no hiding the harsh realities of life.
	And yet in the midst of that, There is the wonderful revelation of the hope, the promise, the joy that there is because of that presence of the Lord and that real relationship with the Lord.
	So it gets immediately to the heart of the Christian faith, which is Which is not really about religion.
	Religion really is a man-made thing.
	Religion is man thinking of ways to reach up to heaven.
	You know, the Tower of Babel is the great example, I suppose, of what it looks like on a societal scale.
	Man seeking God.
	But the Christian faith is the opposite of that.
	It's revelation.
	It's God coming down to man and calling man to respond to him.
	And the Psalms A revealing God, but also giving us the tools whereby we can respond to God, to know rightly how to do it.
	It gives us the very words, the concepts, the ideas, but actually the very words to verbalize, which is why the Psalms have been so much of the part of the worship of the church right from the very beginning, because it transcends.
	They're for all time and for all believers, really, and that's an extraordinary thing, but it's a very wonderful one.
	Yes.
	One of the many things I like about them is that they are pure and untainted and totally trustworthy.
	The reason I mentioned sectarianism earlier on is because I've done Psalms podcasts with people from various denominations.
	And I find it troubling sometimes to hear people from a particular denomination essentially writing off all the others.
	You must have seen this.
	And I'm not going to mention specifics, but I'm thinking that regardless of whether you're a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a woolly C of E, They've all got the Psalms in common, and they are, okay, give or take an odd word of translation, they are the same thing.
	So they've got that in common.
	And that is, I like that about the Psalms.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and it's, well, interestingly, in the modern contemporary church, in many branches, the Psalms have fallen into disuse in many places, and I think that is a...
	That is a real problem.
	Sometimes it's a reaction against a particular type of quite dreary psalm singing, and you get that in different traditions.
	I mean, some people love the plain song of some of the Anglican chant, but a lot of people are put off by that.
	It's the same in Scotland.
	There's a great history of psalm singing, but some people's experience of it has been a bit dull and dreary and a few old people in an empty church.
	But it needn't be like that.
	And it's a terrible tragedy to lose the Psalms out of both of our personal devotion but also particularly congregational singing because there's something very wonderful about the gathered people of God using the very words that God himself has given us in order to praise him.
	Now, you can go too far on that.
	In some places, and this has been true historically in some parts of Scotland, there would be people who, Only the psalms can be part of Christian worship.
	So there is a tradition of exclusive psalmody, which I think is mistaken.
	It's kind of cool, though, you've got to admit.
	I mean, it's a fellow psalm lover.
	It is.
	I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to jettison them.
	So we would sing psalms pretty much...
	Pretty much every week in our services.
	I wouldn't feel absolutely duty-bound to it, but we would certainly do it a lot.
	And it is, you're right, it's something that whatever your background, whatever your Christian tradition, nobody can say the Psalms belong to us.
	The Psalms belong to the people of God, and they've been given for that purpose, and that is a wonderful thing.
	We had to sing Psalms at my boarding school, and certainly there would have been, I mean, in a sort of Sunday morning service.
	It probably would have been two psalms.
	And as a schoolboy, I would look up at the board.
	What's it called?
	The board where they put up the hymns.
	Does it have a special name?
	Hymn board, I think.
	It's the hymn board.
	And you'd look at the...
	And you'd say, oh, we're doing Jerusalem.
	Great.
	And I like that one, you know, for those in peril on the sea or whatever.
	And then you'd look at the psalms, you know...
	That one.
	And you...
	I'm not one of those people that...
	Even now, actually, I listen to the Anglican Psalms and I don't...
	My heart doesn't really fill with joy.
	I don't think the tunes are that great.
	I'd almost rather the kind of...
	I like...
	Like when you watch movies and you watch the monks singing medieval...
	When they're doing playing chant.
	I quite like that.
	But my heart doesn't sing when I... Well, it never did.
	So I see the point you're making, that a lot of people have put off themselves.
	And it's funny, it's only recently when I've suddenly got into them again, that I'm grateful for all those hours I put in as a reluctant schoolboy singing these things, because I remember The fowls of the air and the fishes of the sea and whatsoever walker through the paths of the seas.
	These memorable phrases come back to you and it's like a sort of Proustian Madeleine moment that you get sort of flashbacks and they stick in the mind.
	It's one of the downsides of modern translations or updated translations of hymns and psalms, and also Bible versions, is that when there was only one, like everybody was reading the authorised version, or everybody was reading a particular version of things, it was much more easy to remember these and memorise them, but if you've grown up with Going from one version of the Bible to another to another, you get terribly confused.
	It can become very difficult to remember these things.
	It's a bit like that with hymns as well.
	I mean, there's something good about updating words of things so people can understand them and sing them.
	Language can become confusing to people if it is very archaic.
	But on the other hand, things that are very well known stick in your mind.
	You know, these days where very many people perhaps have very little experience of singing in church, the one thing they do know is Christmas carols.
	And I find it very annoying when you have the words of Christmas carols updated and changed because it's probably the very only things that people might actually know and recognize and know very well.
	So there is something about...
	About the marked, slightly unusual language of some of the older forms, which does stick in your mind.
	And you can remember them, you know, decades later.
	That's for sure.
	I'm very old school on this one.
	I don't think...
	I don't believe in language updates.
	I think if they don't get it, stuff them.
	You know, they can work it out.
	They can...
	Look, if I was a...
	Okay, I mean, obviously I was super bright, but even so, if I as an eight-year-old could pretty much guess what the Psalms are saying, I don't think that I want the church making itself more relevant by doing all the things, you know, having guitar, strumming, That awful period in the 1970s where all these trendy worship songs came in.
	I think that was the work of the devil.
	I probably wouldn't want to go quite as far as that, but I would be tending towards your conservatism on that, I would think.
	I mean, my tradition is Scottish Presbyterian, but some people would call us conservative evangelicals.
	The trouble is that to some people the word evangelical just conjures up guitars and kumbaya and happy clapping and all of that.
	So I kind of shy away a little from that.
	What it really just means is we take the Bible seriously and we put it centrally.
	So I'm quite happy with genuine Orthodox Christianity.
	But yeah, I think you're right.
	You can dumb things down in a way that's pretty unhelpful.
	And the Psalms are serious.
	You just can't mess around and dumb them down with silly tunes and things that really just don't fit.
	There's a dignity and a majesty that they deserve.
	Totally.
	I was very interested in what you said earlier about that the Psalms, I think you implied this if you didn't actually say this, that the Psalms are The word of God.
	I mean, do you think we could...
	I mean, obviously, the Muslims believe that the Quran was dictated directly by God.
	Do you think that we can sort of say that more or less with the Psalms, that David...
	was a prophet that God spoke to David and not dictated it quite but David had a hotline to God so we can take it on trust that this is what God is saying.
	Yeah, I think that's true of all scripture.
	I mean, I think we don't have that view of a sort of divine dictation, as though you're in a trance and don't know what you're doing, and you wake up and you've written a psalm.
	I don't think the New Testament speaks that way.
	It certainly tells us that no prophet was in a road of his own volition, but was driven along by the Holy Spirit.
	So the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of the writer, is very important.
	It doesn't obliterate his personality, it doesn't obliterate his own abilities, his own experiences, any of these things.
	But these things are wholly taken up and used by the Spirit of God, so that what is written is exactly what God wants to be written.
	I mean, if God is God, then he can express himself in a way that he chooses, and he can choose the instruments by which he does it.
	So I take it that God is big enough to do that without obliterating the human personality, but the human personality is doing what it can do.
	But fully and utterly under the inspiration and under the control of God.
	So yes, these words are the very words of God.
	Although, of course, you've got to be careful how you use that in context because, for example, If the psalmist is speaking back to God, he is using his own words of response, but they're the words that God has given him.
	So sometimes the psalmist is arguing with God and having a tussle with him.
	Yes, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
	Yes, exactly.
	Now, you know, those words, obviously, quoted and spoken by the Lord Jesus on the cross, It imprints very clearly that these are the words of God himself.
	God in human flesh took these words upon his lips and prayed them in such a way it was reverent and without sin.
	Not by twisting them, but because even in its original form when the psalmist is asking these questions, he's doing it in a way that God is helping him to do.
	There's ways of arguing with God That are right and reverent and there's ways of arguing with God that are deeply rebellious and sinful.
	And the beauty of the Psalms is it leads us and teaches us and helps us to respond out of whatever situation we're in in life, whatever anguish and questioning and doubts and fears and all of these things, but to do so in a way that God Himself has given us a template for us.
	So that's one of the really helpful things because we all find ourselves in all the different situations at times that the psalmist may be expressing.
	But left to ourselves, we can respond in a very wrong way.
	We can ask God the wrong kind of questions.
	We can do it with the wrong kind of attitudes.
	And all of these things, by nature, we will get it wrong.
	But what the psalms do is, through God himself inspiring the psalmist to use words that he wants him to use, it helps us to see how we are to respond to these things.
	People have called the Psalms an anatomy of all parts of the soul because it exposes every aspect of life, but it exposes our way of responding and it channels us so that we can do that in the way that God wants us to.
	So that's the great uniqueness of the Psalms.
	It's not just the very Word of God, but it's the very Word of God to help us use the right words back to God in response to His words.
	Yes, and the people who wrote the liturgy through the ages seem to have taken the hint, as indeed a lot of the hymn writers.
	When you're familiar with the Psalms, you realise that whole chunks of, well, certainly the Church of England church service, I'm sure it's the same elsewhere, are basically rip-offs.
	Yeah.
	That's not rude.
	Of the Psalms.
	And the same with the hymns as well.
	But that's good.
	I mean, that's how it ought to be because, you know, you're simply taking parts of something that is truly inspired and weaving that into a new expression of it.
	And that means that it's far, far better that than something that's, you know, entirely novel.
	And of course, lots of the great hymn writers, Isaac Watts and others, vast numbers of their hymns really are paraphrases of Psalms.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Well, which brings me back to the point you made.
	There are some branches of the church which have kind of jettisoned the Psalms, which seems to me like a major...
	Look, if you are part of this...
	I hate to use the word religion because I don't believe in religions really, like you.
	If you consider yourself a Christian and...
	You should probably be reading the Bible daily, the New Testament and the Old Testament.
	And when you read the New Testament, you cannot but be very, very interested in what Jesus has to say, because he's kind of our role model, isn't he?
	I mean, he's perfection that we seek.
	Absolutely.
	And if Jesus is quoting the Psalms, as he does more than any other bit of scripture, then what are you doing not...
	Not taking them seriously, because he did.
	Yeah.
	Yes, the Psalms are the most quoted book of the Old Testament in the New.
	And that is obviously very significant.
	Interesting, there's four...
	I mean, obviously, the New Testament alludes to the Old Testament all the time in different ways, but there are four big, big ones that fill it.
	Genesis.
	Because it's the book of beginnings, the book of the whole telling us where everything came from, where it's going.
	Deuteronomy, because that's the book where the whole law of God, the instruction of God for life is laid out in its most full form.
	Isaiah, because it's the great prophet of the new creation.
	But above all is the Psalms, and that's because the Psalms contain everything, but particularly I think because Of, you know, the very, very close connection with the Psalms with David, with the anointed King of Israel.
	He is the Messiah, the anointed one of Israel, and therefore he is, he himself is prophetic as well as speaking prophetically.
	Everything about him and his life points forward to great David's greatest son.
	And what you have in the Psalms in a very unique way then is you have an expression, you have a window into The inner life of the Messiah.
	Now, we have to think of David in two ways.
	On the one hand, he was a sinful human being, just like the rest of us.
	He was a man.
	But he was also a unique man because he embodied the kingship of Israel and he embodied, therefore, the prophetic hope of the Christ to come.
	And his whole experience, therefore, It's shaped by the experience of the one who's to come because the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ is reflected in all of his people because his people, whether from the very beginning in the old covenant times or after his coming, his people are We are saved through being united with him.
	And so that means that his life becomes ours and our life is found in him.
	And therefore we're experiencing in a shadowy way, but in a small way, we're experiencing the reality of the experience of the Lord Jesus.
	And that explains why Christians instinctively have sung the Psalms.
	You read a Psalm and you instinctively know, this is my song, this is reflecting my life somehow.
	And how can that be?
	Well, it's because we're united to the same Lord and Saviour that the original writer of the Psalm is united to, and his experience of suffering for the sake of the covenant faith and so on.
	It's the same experience as Christ's people have everywhere.
	Yes, that's a really interesting point you make, because I really miss an opportunity in my Psalms podcast to have a go at C.S. Lewis.
	Not generally, but I really can't stand his book on the Psalms.
	I think it's just extraable.
	It's not his best one, I think, yeah.
	It really isn't.
	It's like he really does think that...
	The Psalms are this kind of Old Testament thing that the Jews, whoever he means by the Jews, had.
	I think he means the children of Israel.
	It was their thing and that somehow updated Christianity.
	Doesn't need that or it's not so relevant.
	Whereas when I'm reading the Psalms, I think I don't feel that this is other people's stuff.
	I think this is very much mine.
	I think this is...
	I can identify totally with the people who use the Psalms originally.
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	I think there are some useful things, by the way, in C.S. Lewis' reflections on the Psalms.
	But yeah, I think there are quite a few things there you put your finger on.
	But John Calvin, I think if I remember I had a little quote from him in the preface to my book.
	Where he talks about the psalmist in his own person representing both Christ and the Christian and the whole church because we're all united to him.
	And that's what explains that, you see.
	And that, I think, is a very helpful way for us to read the Psalms.
	Because when we read...
	About the tribulations of the psalmist.
	Why is he undergoing these tribulations?
	Why is everybody against the king of Israel?
	Well, it's because of what he represents.
	He represents the gospel of God.
	He represents the salvation of God on earth.
	And all the forces of hell are gathered against him.
	Just as all the forces of hell were gathered against Christ himself when he walked the earth.
	You know, it's no accident, is it?
	You only get a few pages into reading the gospels.
	When something that you hardly come across throughout the Old Testament, sometimes, but very rarely, suddenly sort of bursts into the open everywhere.
	There's demons everywhere.
	There's evil spirits popping out of everywhere, confronting Jesus.
	And, you know, there's no secret in that.
	It's because when God himself is in the flesh, walking this earth, all the powers of hell are absolutely focused there and on him.
	And therefore, but that's...
	That's the heart of something that is also true for all of those who are united with him.
	And that's why David was such a focus for that, because he represented the promised seed in his generation on the earth.
	That's what explains the whole of the story.
	If you go right back to the patriarchs, why does Why does all the opposition come to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, to the children of Israel and so on?
	Because in every generation, those who represent the seed of salvation are being attacked at every point by the seed of the serpent.
	It comes to its climax in Christ, but of course, That's the story that goes on still.
	That's why Christians are suffering today all over the world.
	That's why in many places Christians are terribly, terribly persecuted.
	That's why in our culture, although we're not being physically persecuted, there are many, many forces arrayed against those who would stand for the truth of God, who would oppose some of the, what I would call, very evil and even demonic ideologies that are attacking us today.
	And our experience is as it is.
	Because in small part we are reflecting the experience of the Lord Jesus himself and the Psalms help us so much in that because It's utterly realistic about these things, and yet it reminds us constantly, the Psalms remind us constantly that, you know, we don't lose hope because although we're set upon on every side, the Lord is our helper.
	He will never leave us or forsake us.
	Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
	And so I think that's why the Psalms are Have always been such a vital source of strength and encouragement and joy, even in the midst of great, great darkness and difficult times for the Lord's people, because we feel closest to our Lord and Saviour in these moments when we are sharing in the very experience that he shared in his life on this earth.
	Yes, you mentioned demons several times.
	Where are you on demons?
	Well, I'm not with them, that's for sure.
	Well, that's a relief.
	It would have been a bit worrying if I'd sort of picked a Satanist to do the...
	I mean, demons are an undeniable reality.
	The spirit world is an undeniable reality.
	The Bible is clear on that from beginning to end.
	Satan and his legions of angels are the enemies of God's people and always have been and will be right until the very end.
	Yes, but you try and get a C of E vicar to admit that.
	He's not going to go there.
	He's going to think that's a bit too...
	Yeah, we've got to be careful that it is possible to become sort of slightly overcooked from all of that and find demons under every bed in the sense that some Christians, I think, can resort to blaming demons to sort of exculpate themselves from their own responsibility for sin.
	So we've got to be careful about that.
	If we take the Bible seriously, you know, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the powers, the principalities, the powers in the unseen world.
	And so, you know, that is the reality behind all human evil and human wickedness.
	We've got to hold these things in tension.
	We can't absolve ourselves of responsibility.
	Jesus says, out of the heart of man.
	It comes all manner of evil.
	So we are responsible.
	But equally, the Lord Jesus and his apostles teach us very, very clearly that we have an enemy, the devil, who prowls like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
	He stirs up the things that lie deep within our hearts.
	And so, yeah, you can't understand this world Without recourse to the spiritual realm.
	And actually, one of the things I've found, and I'm sure you've perhaps found this, James, may even be your own experience, but in the last few years, when, you know, thinking people have looked around and seen some of the calamitous things that have been going on in the world, the whole COVID era was full of, you know, extraordinary deceit and wickedness and evil.
	I know numbers of people who Who have said to me, you know, I got to the point where I could not explain these things without having to use the word evil and without having to think that there is something behind merely the human side of these things.
	And for a number of people I've known, that's been the first step towards actually Christian faith because that's a very frightening thing to have to come to terms with that reality.
	And then you're thinking, well, Is there hope beyond this?
	Is there something greater than this?
	Is there something to save me from this dark world?
	And of course the answer is, yes there is.
	There is the one who is King and Lord over earth and sky and sea and everything above the earth and under, including the entire demonic world, and Christ has conquered.
	So, the ultimate You know, you read the Bible and after the first two chapters of Genesis, who do we meet?
	We meet the serpent.
	And his imprints, although he doesn't appear, you know, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, he's named clearly right at the very end of the Bible in Revelation 12, Revelation 20.
	So the Bible begins with God's glorious Creation, crowned with humans.
	Very quickly you have the evil one, the serpent, messing it all up, destroying it, causing calamity.
	And the whole of the story of the rest of the Bible is the story of that spiritual battle.
	Now he was defeated ultimately forever on the cross.
	Satan was cast down.
	But his final judgment, when he's cast forever into the lake of fire, when all who are his join him there, that's the story of the end of human history.
	So this is the story of the Christian faith.
	It's the story of the triumph of Christ, the seed of the woman, over the seed of the serpent, the serpent and all who belong to him.
	Without that supernatural reality, there is no coherent Christian faith.
	Certainly not one that has anything to do with the Bible.
	I'm glad you said that.
	Because that was what got me interested in this stuff.
	There's no point if it's just a kind of do-gooding social club about being nice to people.
	Because if it were just that, you could join all sorts of similar organisations already doing that job.
	Once you strip away the supernatural level, it's just another thing.
	Yeah.
	Christianity without the supernatural is nothing.
	It is not Christianity.
	And it's an answer to nothing.
	I mean, that's the reality.
	The answer to the problems within this world cannot be found within this world.
	I mean, that's obvious.
	Nor can it be fine trying to go to Mars with Elon Musk or wherever else humans think they might find the answers.
	The answer is only in the one who is the maker of heaven and earth, who's beyond this world and in whose hands all these things lie.
	That's the glory of the Christian gospel.
	And because we know that, there is an extraordinary hope.
	This world can seem like it's going to hell, but The fact is that God so loved the world that he sent his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish.
	So there is a great perishing, but there is a great salvation, and that's the gospel.
	So you've known this stuff for years.
	Have you always been a Christian?
	Yeah, I was very fortunate.
	I was brought up in a Christian home.
	Actually, my father was a preacher and pastor, and so I was taught all these things from earliest years, for which I thank God.
	I, like many, had a bit of a rebellion as a teenager, and the time came when I had to decide, do I stand with the God of my fathers, or do I not?
	And through various things, the Lord jolted me into reality.
	Was it clutch and go at one point?
	I don't believe it was ever touch and go, I think.
	But, you know, there's a certain coming of age, isn't it?
	There's a time when you have to, in a definitive way, say, no, this is mine.
	It's not just my family heritage.
	This is for me personally.
	I couldn't tell you.
	If you ask me when did I become a Christian, I couldn't tell you exactly when.
	In some ways, I feel I've never not known the Lord.
	There have been certain times where I could look and say, well, that was a significant moment.
	That was a real thing for me.
	I don't think it matters.
	I think much more important is, do you know you are a Christian?
	Then you can tell the exact time.
	I mean, when did the disciples become true Christians?
	Was it when Jesus Called them from the nets and said, follow me.
	Well, they made a lot of mistakes after that.
	Was it when Peter confessed, you're the Christ?
	Well, what about what happened after that?
	And he deserted him and denied him.
	Was it when Jesus breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit?
	It's very hard to tell, isn't it?
	But they were all Christians, that's for sure, by the end.
	But have you noticed an increased...
	An uptake in your congregation since the craziness of COVID and all that nonsense?
	Yes, I definitely have.
	We had numbers of people came to us during that time and partly that was because, you know, we as a church did kind of stand up to some of the government restrictions and so on and were,
	you know, Quite outspoken about some of the damaging things going on and we didn't want to close the church down and in fact we took the Scottish Government to court to judicial review because in the second lockdown you might remember everywhere in the UK places of worship were still allowed to be open but not up here in the free country of Scotland.
	So we had a number of people and Because of that people knew about us and a number of people came seeking us because interestingly they thought well these people must actually believe in what they're talking about because they're willing to do something about it.
	They were looking around and thinking well why are these churches closed?
	They can't really have much of a message there.
	It was a real own goal by the church in general I'm afraid.
	And you know when the When Simon Heffer was writing articles about the Archbishop of Canterbury and saying, you know, where is the church in a time of crisis?
	The answer, well, there must be a fairly pathetic lot.
	So we had people coming seeking because they thought, well, these people must at least believe what they are talking about.
	And we've seen quite a number of people coming to faith.
	And in my circle of friends, certainly I've seen that a lot.
	So people are...
	People are waking up to a lot of things which is eroding their confidence and trust in a lot of what they've previously believed or taken for granted, a lot of the institutions that they've had trust in.
	If you begin to think I'm not sure I can trust anybody or anything anymore.
	That's a terribly unnerving situation and so people I think are and have been seeking for that truth.
	So yeah, we've seen a lot of people coming to faith and I think one of the things for Christians and for churches to learn from that is that When you're not ashamed of your message, when you don't hide away, when you're willing to stand up and say, I'm sorry, society, you've got it wrong.
	You're talking lies.
	This is deceitful.
	What you're saying is not just wrong, it's wicked.
	We've got a better story to tell here.
	We've got the truth here.
	When we're unashamed of it, People will actually start to listen because they're looking for authenticity.
	They're looking for not trite little, you know, five-minute homilies that tell everybody you're nice and offer a prayer and go away.
	I mean, no thinking person is taken in by that.
	So we've had people coming and saying, oh, we've tried a number of different churches.
	We want to find out what the Bible really says.
	But we've been to several churches and nobody's really talking about it.
	But they're willing to come and listen to a serious...
	The problem is not that non-Christian people are not really interested in that.
	I find a lot of them really are.
	It's a lot of Christian people who think they won't be interested and therefore aren't very confident to get it out there.
	Whereas, in fact, when you start, I have a phrase, I say, look, we need to give people the full meat.
	Throw them out a really decent hunk of serious meat to chew on, and they will chew on it, and then they will begin to get an appetite and actually look for more.
	I'm glad you said meat rather than, say, a banana or a peanut.
	Yes, the solid meat.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, did you get any hassle from the police?
	You kept your churches open?
	Well, after a bit, we didn't.
	No, we didn't.
	We didn't.
	We got a bit of hassle sometimes from other Christians in churches who thought we were giving them a bad name and that kind of thing.
	Did you?
	Yeah, we did a bit.
	How did that manifest itself?
	Oh, just in lots of different ways, really.
	But people...
	Which is hard.
	It was sometimes hard for folks in our congregation because friends that they had in other places would tut-tut at them.
	What, for spreading the deadly virus through the medium of attending church, that kind of thing?
	That kind of thing, or you shouldn't be singing when it's all so dangerous.
	That was just made up.
	That was just a made up kind of...
	Yeah, everything was made up.
	So much of it was made up.
	And I think Christians want to do the right thing, and I sort of understand, and people want to be good citizens, and we should be good citizens, want to obey the government, and we should do that, but...
	There are times we have to obey God rather than men, and I think people are a little bit woolly sometimes on what that means.
	You know, the apostles and the Lord Jesus himself, they were all put to death by the state.
	The state didn't like them, and they considered that they were disobeying the state by doing things that God commanded them to do, like not stopping preaching the gospel.
	I think we have to be a little bit more clear on what it means when we have to obey God.
	I mean, God does command us not to bear false witness to our neighbours.
	Well, I was not prepared to bear false witness to my neighbours by wearing a piece of cloth on my face as if to pretend to them and encourage them to think that this was somehow a way of being safe.
	When it manifests that it's not a way of being safe, it's actually going to do anything, it's going to probably make you more likely to become ill.
	Staying away from corporate worship when That is the one thing that we're commanded not to do.
	I mean, when Hebrews tells them not to give up meeting together, why didn't they want to give up?
	Why didn't they want to meet together?
	Well, because it was risky to get together.
	They might have been imprisoned or they might have been persecuted.
	They might have been killed.
	But he said, don't give up because you need this.
	It's so important.
	So it was important, I think, for Christian leaders Not to bear false witness by going along with things which were deceitful and which were full of lies, which were actually harmful to people.
	So I understand why a lot of it were confused and nervous, but...
	They were propagandised by the government into being nervous.
	Yeah, well, I mean, propaganda is very powerful, isn't it?
	And, you know, the Lord Jesus in Matthew 24, when he's talking about The times after his resurrection, the last days as he calls it.
	There will be deceivers.
	And if it were even possible, some of the elect will be deceived.
	And I think a lot of Christians have been deceived.
	Propaganda is very, very powerful.
	I think we don't realize just how much under its power we are.
	But that is why we constantly need the correction and the drawing back to the truth of Scripture.
	You know, the joy of The Christian pattern of meeting together week by week as the church is and certainly ought to be that a week cannot go by Without our minds being brought back to the plumb line of divine truth, being brought back to thinking clearly.
	I mean, the Bible and the Christian gospel is in a very real sense the ultimate cognitive therapy.
	Cognitive therapy is about drawing you back into thinking in line with reality, not with something that is spurious and is leading you off into a completely wrong kind of thinking and anxiety and so on.
	But coming back to the Bible week by week, More than week by week, but especially week by week as the gathered people of God, is the Lord's antidote to the lies and the deceit and the leading away of the evil one.
	And that's why the Word of God and serious engagement with the Bible, serious teaching from the Bible on all aspects of life Must be at the very, very heart of what the Christian church is doing.
	If it's not doing that, it's failing in its mission.
	And that's why, very often, sadly, so many churches across the land, that's why nobody's going.
	They're empty, because there's nothing to go for.
	Who wants to go for a bowl of thin gruel?
	You want to go for a full-on meal and solid meat.
	Yeah.
	It's like...
	Serving the hundreds and thousands, but without the cake to go underneath it, I wouldn't work.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But God has given us this.
	Peter, in his second letter, is talking about what the people are to do when he dies, because he's one of the last of the apostles.
	And what he says is, God has given you everything you need for life and godliness in his great and precious promises.
	And he goes on to talk about the words of the prophets made more sure.
	And the testament of the apostles who saw him in the flesh.
	The eyewitness account of the New Testament, the prophetic accounts of the Old.
	He's given us the scriptures, and that is everything we need for life and godliness.
	But we need to have it open.
	We need to be reading it.
	We need to be taking it in, and we need to be aligning our lives with it.
	We don't have to wait for Him to give us the gift that we need to navigate life in a world full of evil.
	He's given it to us.
	It's in our hands.
	It's in our language.
	And that's the blessing of Scripture.
	We are, don't worry, we are actually going to do Psalm 121 in a moment.
	But I just quite like the chat beforehand.
	This is an endlessly fascinating subject and I'm curious about things like, you've stated what seems to me to be Duh.
	Obvious.
	And given that we're supposed to be wiser serpents, we're supposed to have this quality called discernment, why did so many churches fail to do their job?
	Well, you know, it's not like the various ministers, presumably, it's not as if they hadn't read these Bible stories.
	They must have had a degree of familiarity with them.
	Do they think they're not relevant anymore, or what?
	I think there's a whole host of different reasons.
	I mean, I think if you look at the sort of mainline churches by and large, I think, yes, a lot of people think they're not really relevant anymore.
	They're embarrassed about it.
	I think those who do take the Bible seriously, some have been misguided because they feel, well, we don't want to put people off.
	We don't want to be seen as renegades.
	We don't want to be seen as, you know, Going against the government and the population, so sort of softly, softly, as it were.
	As I said, I think that's a great mistake, because I think people just take from that, well, it obviously isn't that important.
	If the message we have is more important than anything else in the world, then even if...
	We were facing a deadly killer that was killing swathes and swathes of people, as some of the plagues in history have done.
	Even if that were true, then the place of the Christian Church is to be in the midst of that, talking about life and death and eternity and heaven and hell and the things of utmost importance.
	Not the things that will kill the body, but the things that can destroy the soul.
	And that's what's happened in the past.
	I think the bottom line is...
	We've had a long, long time of peace and prosperity and ease, and we've grown very soft, I'm afraid, and I think that's just a big part of it.
	I go to, I won't say where it is, another part of the world every year to meet with and to teach pastors in a country where Christianity is being very, very increasingly persecuted.
	You know, that faces me with the reality of what Christian life has been like throughout most of history and is actually still like in most of the world today.
	I think the problem is that in our country we've lived through an anomaly.
	We've lived through the aftermath of a great Christianization of our culture.
	And certainly in the last two or three hundred years, you know, we've reaped enormous benefits from that.
	I mean, everybody recognizes that.
	Tom Holland recognizes that.
	But I think the Christian church has fallen asleep because of that, and we haven't realized.
	I mean, in our church, On Wednesday evening we had a partner from the northeast of India with us and he was telling us some horrific things.
	He was showing us terrible pictures of extraordinary persecution of Christians.
	Coffins and coffins, rows and rows, churches burnt down, people dispossessed, lost their houses because of their faith.
	That's the reality, but we've been sanitized and screened from that and therefore we've just become very earthbound in our thinking.
	Perhaps the way things are going in society and with the ratcheting up of some of the ideological battles, the censuring, the censorship, all of these things, it's going to be A testing time, I think, for the Church, and maybe that is what we need in the West, not what we want, and we certainly shouldn't be, you know, in a kind of odd way, longing for persecution.
	I'm certainly not longing for that, but...
	I'm afraid history would probably tell you that it's these sorts of times that really draw out the faith of God's people and also sifts the reality of those who truly are followers of Christ, those who are just followers of an idea or a kind of emasculated Christ.
	Biblical faith is not a It's not an easy thing.
	If you read the Bible seriously, you understand that very quickly, don't you?
	But I think that's why people don't read the Bible much and preachers don't deal with these difficult things because people don't want to hear them.
	Paul said people will gather around them, preachers who will preach what their itching ears want to hear.
	And what people's itching ears want to hear is all sorts of things that everybody will applaud them for.
	I mean, no preacher, no church leader is going to get pilloried in the press if he stands up and makes speeches about climate change, or Black Lives Matter, or, you know, whatever the latest thing is that everybody's going on about.
	But if he dares to stand up and say, I'm sorry, this LGBT transgender ideology is wicked and sinful, and it's...
	Yes, Baphomet worship.
	It is devil worship.
	Or if he was to say, you know, abortion is one of the worst crimes in human society today, and it is an abomination to God that nearly 40% of all deaths in the world today are deliberately caused in the womb, then he will be pilloried not just by the public, but very likely by his own church authorities.
	And we've seen cases, haven't we?
	We've seen cases where a Church of England clergyman says a perfectly reasonable thing in a Church of England school, in a religious Church of England assembly, and then is not only sacked by the school, but is prosecuted by his church for outrageous offences and even accused of terrorism.
	So you can understand why people and Christian leaders will say, oh my goodness, I don't want that to happen to me.
	You know, that is to just go along with worshipping the beast, isn't it?
	It's to bow down to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar.
	It's the same battle right through the history of the faith and we'll be right to the end.
	But that's what we're called to.
	We're called to follow.
	This is a tricky one.
	do you think that we get an extra special place in heaven if we are martyred?
	I wouldn't want to put it that way because the danger of speaking about something sort of extra special introduces the idea of some sort of merit is that we sort of There's the thing about sitting on the right hand of God.
	We know that heaven is hierarchical.
	Yeah, I think you've got to be careful just how we talk about it.
	I think those who have shed their blood for the sake of Christ and the Gospel are undoubtedly There's a sense in which we're all called to be martyrs.
	The word martyreo is the word to witness.
	And it's an interesting one because Christians today often talk about zealous Christians who have a genuine heart desire to share the gospel of Christ with people.
	We'll often say things like, we must have a good witness.
	We must be winsome.
	We don't want to put people off the gospel.
	And of course that's true.
	But to have a good witness, what does that mean?
	Well, when you read the New Testament, you find that having a good witness Usually meant you got stoned or you got killed.
	Not in a fun way either.
	No, definitely not.
	Stephen was a great witness, you know, but he was Martin.
	So there is a cost to real witness.
	And so, in a sense, all real witness has the character of martyrdom because there will be those who hate you.
	Jesus said the gospel, you can't get away from it being a double-edged sword.
	It will be the fragrance of life unto life for some, but it will be the sense of death to others.
	You can't just have the one side of the sword.
	You can't only have a gospel that is a fragrance of life to everybody.
	If you've got everybody speaking well of you, Jesus said, woe to you.
	But when they persecute you and when they heap insults on you, when they slander you for my sake, blessed are you.
	So, in that sense, all true Christians are called to be martyrs.
	Now, whether that goes to the extent of actually losing your physical life for the sake of the gospel or not, we're called to be martyrs and we're called to be those who Who take the slings and the arrows of those who are opposing Christ.
	And we're not to be afraid of that.
	And I think if you look at it in that sense, running the race, keeping the faith, looking for the crown of righteousness, it's a right thing.
	It's not that we earn it.
	As Jesus says in that parable, when we've done all of that, all we can say is, well, I've done only my duty.
	The Lord doesn't owe me anything to have stood faithful to Him, but such is His grace and mercy and extraordinary generosity.
	He does reward gratuitously our faithfulness, and that's a wonderful thing.
	So we don't earn it, but God gives it.
	Yes, that's definitely the impression I've been getting.
	And in a sense, let me redeem C.S. Lewis here because he talks very, very helpfully, can't remember where it is, but very, very helpfully about this whole idea of reward and how some people feel uncomfortable about it because they say, well, you know, it seems a bit arbitrary.
	You do these things and God rewards you.
	And he says, no, no, no, it's not like that at all.
	It's a completely different kind of reward.
	It's not the sort of reward that says to a child, if you practice your piano every day, We'll buy a nice bicycle for Christmas.
	That's a totally arbitrary reward.
	It's unconnected with the activity itself.
	The real reward is to say to the child, no, practice the piano every day and one day you will be able to play the wonderful music of Brahms and Beethoven and Bach and all of these things.
	So the reward is the full fruition and the culmination and the flowering of the thing itself.
	And if we think about our Christian life and witness like that, I think it's much, much more helpful because that's what Jesus is saying in these parables about the talents and so on, where he says, you know, it gives the different talents and the one man comes back and he's had two and he's earned two more and the other one five more and ten more.
	And he says, well done, good and faithful servant.
	You've been faithful with small things.
	Now I will put you over many things.
	And what he's saying there is, yes, the reward of eternity is more of what You have made the most significant part of your life here.
	And if you have devoted your life to laying up treasures in heaven by living this life for eternity, living it for the glory of Christ, sharing the gospel of Christ, then what reward could the Lord give you that would be more wonderful than to do even more of that forever and ever and ever?
	Because that's the thing that's thrilled your heart.
	So if the thing that dominates your life is to bring glory to Jesus, The only reward you're going to want is to have a capacity to bring glory to Jesus forever and ever in ways beyond even your earthly imagining.
	So I think in that sense, if you were to say, well, you're somebody who has martyred for the gospel because they've lived for Christ, they've given everything, they've laid down their life, as it were, perhaps in reality, for the glory of the Lord Jesus, and you just say, well, how can I reward you?
	Let me do even more of this.
	Let this be something that goes on forever and ever.
	I think if you see it that way, it's a more helpful and more biblical understanding of what it means to be rewarded.
	Yes.
	I suppose we're rather sort of bound by our kind of fleshly view of the world.
	I think if I were being toasted on a gridiron, I would be kind of disappointed if I went to heaven and discovered that there was more of that going on.
	Yes, but the thing is that you see the kind of person that you have become to rejoice in laying down your life for Christ Is reward in itself because you have become like the Lord Jesus.
	See, that's the great promise of the Gospel.
	It's not just that one day we shall see Him, but John says we shall also be like Him.
	And you see, you might say to somebody, well, isn't that a wonderful thing that you could be like Jesus?
	And they might say, well, it's sort of alright, but, you know, I'd rather have billions of pounds and fancy aeroplanes.
	Well, there's a person that you know that has not understood the first thing about the Gospel.
	But to say to a real Christian, wouldn't it be a wonderful thing that you, one day, forever and ever, you will be like, in every way, the Lord Jesus Christ?
	A real Christian will say, well, you know, actually when I think about it, I cannot think of anything that I would want more and anything that would be more wonderful and rewarding.
	And that is the reward, I think, that we're promising.
	And that is a great motivation, isn't it, for life in this Veil of Tears, is to know that Whatever is happening to us, whatever path the Lord is leading us on, all the way my Saviour leads me, as the hymn goes, He is shaping and fashioning us into His likeness.
	And there is no greater thing.
	There's no greater reward.
	And if you can understand that, then you know you have begun to understand what it really means to be a Christian and what it means to understand the glory of the Gospel.
	Well, thank you for that digression.
	I suppose we ought to get back to the...
	Let's talk about Psalm 121.
	Now, reading your...
	Psalm 121 is one of the Psalms that you talk about in your book, Heart Songs for Every Saint.
	And I read...
	Obviously, I read that chapter before this.
	And I realised...
	That I've been misinterpreting the opening lines of the psalm all my life.
	Because, well, the version I know is, I will lift up my lines unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
	My help cometh even from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth.
	And, like a lot of people, I think, I assumed that the help was coming from the hills.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yes, I think certainly in the Coverdale version, I think, that you are quoting, and in the authorised version, that's how it reads, from whence cometh my help.
	But in fact, it really ought to be, as other versions have, a question mark.
	Where does my help come from?
	From whence doth come my help?
	And that means that the first line about the hills is, it is...
	Possibly ambiguous.
	I think it is that the hills are the source of danger.
	Now, people disagree, and a good friend of mine who's just written a very big commentary on the Psalms takes a different view.
	Some think that the Psalmist is lifting up his eyes to the hills, and those hills are Jerusalem.
	And that's where the help comes from.
	And that could be, and there's arguments either way, part of the reason for that is that this group of psalms, beginning at Psalm 120 to Psalm 134, often called the psalm, well, they say at the top of the psalm, a psalm of ascents, or The old authorised version of Song of Degrees.
	They're thought to be part of the pilgrim praise.
	So three times a year, all the men of Israel had to go up to Jerusalem for the great feasts, Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles.
	And they would go up in a pilgrim band.
	It's thought, anyway, we can't be certain, but it's thought that these Psalms were part of that sort of praise.
	And you can imagine people travelling up these roads and so on and singing these things.
	But I think, therefore, you see, when you read through the Psalm, it is full of troubles and sources of danger and uncertainties and anxieties, and the Lord is the helper.
	In the face of all of these things and I think that that is what the hills represent.
	I mean if you think about Well, a good one to just think about is the story that Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan.
	Remember, he's traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho.
	These hills that they're walking through were dangerous places.
	That's where he gets set upon by bandits.
	So I think, yeah, the hills, it's not a look of longing.
	One of the old versions of the Metrical Psalm says, I lift my eyes to the hills.
	No, how is it?
	Unto the hills around do I lift up my longing eyes.
	But I think it isn't that.
	I do think it's...
	I left my eyes and I see all these hills and all the dangers and all the bandits and all the possibilities and I'm actually quite afraid.
	Where am I going to find help?
	Yes.
	You mentioned that a lot of your Scottish readers, including yourself, have this hill bias.
	And you cannot look at mountains and hills without feeling a sense of liberation.
	Except I wouldn't so much now in Scotland because of all the bloody wind farms everywhere.
	Well, yes, that's true.
	Chopping up the eagles.
	But I went to boarding school in Malvern.
	Which is dominated by its hills, which sort of rise up out of this fairly flat plain.
	And my life for 10 years was dominated by the vision of the hills.
	The hills on which Langland wrote Piers Plum and then later on inspired Elgar.
	So they're a beautiful thing, although a bit depressing.
	Because the closer I got to those hills meant the closer I was to my boarding school after my weekend or my school holidays.
	And I remember, I used to call them the Black Hills of Death.
	Well, that's what the psalmist is thinking about, I think, the Black Hills of Death.
	Black Hills of Death.
	Have you ever been to Malvern?
	No, no.
	As you drive into Malvern on the road that comes from Worcester, just before you get to Malvern Link railway station, you see this fantastic mural and the Latin inscription, Levavi Oculos Maos.
	Ah.
	Which is the beginning of the Vulgate translation.
	I lift up my eyes.
	Interesting.
	So, yeah, you do...
	But can I just pick you up on one point you made?
	I mean, we're obviously not going to solve in the course of this conversation whether the hills are good or bad in this.
	But I think you were being slightly unfair on Coverdale in that it's not his words that are the issue here.
	It's the punctuation.
	Because I will lift up my eyes into the hills Point.
	If you have a pause there and go, from whence cometh my help?
	That's the question.
	It's when you allied the two, I will lift up my knives unto the hills from whence cometh my help.
	That's where the problem is.
	Yeah, no, that's right, yeah.
	And in more recent versions of the Coverdale Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer, there is a question mark, but it notes that previously there wasn't.
	So it's just trying to bring a bit of clarity for the sake of, perhaps for the sake of those who are not quite so good on their punctuation, yeah.
	But it is a question.
	On that point, though, Is there not a case that when it all kicks off, when the really bad stuff starts happening, the people on the high ground are going to be the ones who are saved?
	Isn't that right?
	Isn't there a bit in the Bible about that?
	Oh, well, no, that's, you know, you're talking there about the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, where Jesus says when you see all these things, you know, run to the hills.
	But no, there he's talking very specifically about what is coming in AD 70.
	He's prophesying an immediate judgment on the land of Israel when the Romans came and sacked Jerusalem.
	And he's saying, look, Be serious about this.
	This is going to happen.
	Don't think that God is going to save his city anymore.
	So run for the hills.
	And actually, those who listened, many Christians did save themselves by seeing that.
	So, no, I mean, I think when the...
	When the last judgment comes, and when the great throne is set, I think whether you're on the hills or in the valleys, it's not going to make any difference.
	He's going to judge the living and the dead, and there'll be no earthly place to hide from any of that, no.
	Oh, okay, okay.
	So I will lift up my eyes to the hills from what's coming.
	My help cometh even from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth.
	So that's an affirmation of...
	Basically, that's where we are, isn't it?
	Yeah, but it's very important that the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, is a frequent thing that's said of God.
	It's quite common in the Psalms.
	It's often a confession of faith in the presence of great distress or difficulty or threats or enemies, because there is enormous comfort in how Even though the whole earth should, as one of the other psalms says, quake, the mountains quake, fall into the sea.
	You know, if the whole earth and the whole world seems to have gone completely to pot, then our helper is beyond all of that.
	He made the heavens and the earth.
	He holds it all in his hands and therefore he's the one who can, and the only one who can help in any earthly troubles.
	I mean, again, this just brings us back to the difference between Between the real Christian faith and any other human religion or any other ideology, anything that's man reaching up.
	The help that we need in this world, if it's to be real, cannot come from within this world.
	It can only come from beyond.
	This statement of the Lord who made heaven and earth is such a decisive thing because it's saying, look, nothing can be beyond the God who made everything, even the hills he made, even the greatest threats and terrors that you might find in this world, they're all in his hand.
	You know, he has got the whole world in his hands and therefore You need not fear.
	So it's an extraordinary affirmation of faith and of trust.
	I mean, that's really why the book of Genesis was written.
	It's interesting.
	I was chatting with somebody the other day, and they just said, because I've been writing a book on Genesis, and they just said, oh, give me in a couple of sentences what Genesis is about.
	I said, well, Genesis was written by Moses for his people, the Israelites, who knew God, who knew Yahweh, the Lord.
	Jehovah, you know, the name of God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
	They knew him.
	They had his laws.
	They had his help through the wilderness and all the rest of it.
	But what Genesis, particularly the early chapters of Genesis, does is tells them with great clarity that your God, the God you know, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is in fact the God who created the universe.
	He's so much bigger, even than perhaps you'd ever realise.
	You know he's a great saviour, you know he's fought the Egyptians, you know he's done all these wonderful things, but get it into your head There is nothing in the entire universe that was not made at His hands.
	And that's a very powerful thing because it just tells us that the God we're speaking about in Scripture is not just one of many, is not just a part of the pantheon, is not just a local tribal thing.
	He genuinely is the creator, the ultimate of all things.
	And therefore, if your help is in Him, you have a sure and certain help.
	I wonder if you did a poll of ministers from the various denominations, what percentage of them would be creationists, for want of a better word, and what percentage would go, yeah, well, it was kind of evolution and there was this Big Bang, but probably the Big Bang couldn't have happened without God.
	Well, it would depend where you are and which...
	You know, which culture and countries and all the rest of it.
	But I think, and it also depends how you define these things, but, you know, at its most basic, you cannot be a Christian and not be a creationist in the sense that...
	God is the maker of heaven and earth.
	You can have different views, perhaps, about exactly how he did it.
	You can have different understandings of certain things.
	But, you know, that God made the world and not chance is an axiom of biblical faith.
	We cannot just be the result of an accidental collocation of atoms, as Bertrand Russell put it.
	But you're still, William, you're sounding dangerously liberal to me there.
	You realise that Big Bang Theory was invented by the Jesuit?
	Yes, yeah.
	It's well dodgy, all that stuff.
	I think there's all kinds of questions and I would have major questions about Darwinian evolution and all kinds of things.
	I don't think that means that Christians ignore all science.
	I think Christians actually have been, throughout history, been the true scientists.
	I distinguish that.
	It's become very confusing these days because of the science.
	Is anything but scientific.
	The science, in the way the science is settled, the science tells us this.
	We've got to have an open mind as Christians on interpreting evidence and formulating scientific theories about things and all the rest of it.
	But no, God made the world.
	He made it out of nothing.
	He made human beings as a unique creation, not just as a sort of the next step of A random evolution.
	I mean, these things are utterly basic to Christian faith.
	Yes.
	What happened before he made everything?
	What was it like?
	What was the void like?
	Well, the Bible doesn't...
	I don't think we're told enough to know.
	I think we're given hints of certain things.
	I mean...
	For example, we were not told the prehistory of the devil.
	We're not told of what happened there, but to some degree, logic tells us that there must have been some kind of spiritual revolt in the heavenly realms.
	You know, there are hints of that, I think, in places in the scriptures where You know, Ezekiel and Isaiah in certain places in some of the prophecies talking about the King of Tyre and the King of Babylon.
	Look behind that and I think are reflecting something bigger.
	But I think we've got to be a little cautious.
	I want to be careful not to go beyond What scripture reveals to us.
	I think there is a danger of getting too speculative, and if we find ourselves more interested in speculation about things that aren't clear, I think you can run into problems and difficulties.
	So I want to be cautious about that.
	I want to go as far as scripture goes.
	And be emphatic about that, but beyond that, there's a great verse in Deuteronomy 29, verse 29, which says, The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we might do all the words of this law.
	I think that's a reminder that God...
	God is God and we're not, and there are things He has chosen to reveal to us and things He hasn't.
	What He's chosen to reveal to us are the things we should really be taking ourselves seriously about and focusing on.
	I don't think it's wrong to speculate to a degree, because if God made the world in the beginning, then there is a before, and we're told.
	Paul, for example, talks about Things that are hard for us to understand when he says that before the creation, before the foundation of the world.
	God purposed to save in Christ those who are his predestined.
	Now, people get very tied up sometimes with that language, but, I mean, it's there, and what it's talking about is that before creation, God had a purpose for creation, but also for his people, and also for those who can be saved.
	And the purpose, ultimately, he says, is that the church, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God, should be manifest in the heavenly realms, not just on earth, but in the heavenly realms.
	So what he's saying is that From eternity, before creation, God had a purpose to display to the heavenly realms his majestic wisdom and glory and to do it through his church.
	Now, that's a mind-blowing thing.
	It does your head in, doesn't it?
	All that that means is beyond me, certainly, and I think it's beyond all of us, but we are given that.
	So, at the very least, what that tells us is The beginning of everything was not Genesis chapter 1, and the end of everything is not Revelation chapter 22.
	It's part of a story that is forevermore.
	And that's the word that's at the end of this psalm.
	So right through, all the way through the Bible, we're being told there's more, there's a beyond, there's a forever.
	And that's really what it's about.
	And the spiritual realm seems to be very much to the fore in all of that.
	And that takes us back to what we were saying earlier about demons and angels and And all of these things.
	The supernatural transcends the place of the natural, the eternal, utterly dwarfs the earthly in terms of the biblical worldview.
	Our problem is it's difficult for us to rise to that because we are of the earth, earthly, but that's That's why we need God's revelation from outside to bring this in.
	So he is the maker of heaven and earth in which we reside.
	But that very line reminds us that there's something vastly beyond all of that, something far more wonderful.
	Basically, we're straying into Psalm 90 territory now.
	I guess we are, yeah.
	So, okay, the next line.
	Going back to Psalm 121.
	By the way, do you spell them out?
	Do you say them as numbers?
	Or do you say, do you have a cheat by going 121?
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I'm not sure.
	121.
	Now I've flummoxed you.
	You have.
	He will not suffer as I foot to be moved.
	He that keepeth thee will not sleep.
	Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
	There's an example of that archaic phraseology, which is difficult.
	But I think, you know, you can get it.
	He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.
	People think, what's suffering got to do with...
	But obviously it means he will not permit, allow thy foot to be moved.
	I think it's quite a good line there.
	It is.
	The ESV, which is the English Standard Version, which I tend to use mostly in Irish, is much more prosaic.
	You will not let your foot be moved.
	But, yeah.
	No, I like that the word sufferer sticks in your mind.
	You will not suffer your foot to be moved.
	It's a wonderful comfort, that, isn't it?
	I mean...
	The beginning of verse 3 there, in the Hebrew, I think, some people suggest that it should be either a question or else an entreaty.
	So, will he let your foot be moved?
	And the answer in the second line, you know, he will not, he will not sleep.
	Or it may be an entreaty, let not my foot be moved.
	Let not.
	But either way, it's giving an emphatic answer, and the answer is no, he will not.
	He will not let your foot.
	He will not suffer it to be moved.
	And why is that?
	Well, because he's watching over you all the time.
	He keeps you.
	That word keepeth occurs, I think, five or six times, I think, isn't it, in the psalm.
	It's a great word, shamar.
	It means to guard or to keep or to watch over.
	Interestingly, it's the word that's used in Genesis 2.15 where God puts Adam in the garden to work it and to keep it.
	Some of the modern translations do it very feebly and weakly to tend it, but the word is to guard it.
	God puts man in his garden to keep it.
	And the image there is of a soldier guarding.
	And it's very interesting because Adam's job was to guard the garden.
	From anything outside it that might taint it or bring evil into it.
	And of course, in chapter 3, it's the very thing he fails to do.
	He doesn't guard it.
	And the serpent comes right in and messes it all up.
	And then, at the end of Genesis 3, we're told there's a fiery seraphim put at the gate of the garden to guard the way, to keep the way to the tree of life.
	So that tells you that it's a...
	It's a strong word.
	And God here is guarding, keeping, watching over, protecting, so that your foot will not be moved.
	And he's doing it unstintingly.
	He will not slumber.
	He will not sleep.
	And again, it's a very powerful image.
	It's definite.
	Well, hopefully you won't, but you will not, because God is awake and guarding.
	And that's a great comfort.
	Keep would be the...
	So there's a game, I think I may have invented it, although somebody else I'm sure has done it before me, but this is quite a good game.
	You...
	Can you sum up a psalm in one word?
	So for example, can you pick the word that is representative of a psalm and guess it?
	So if I were to say to you the word excellent, which psalm would that be?
	Probably Psalm 8 perhaps, would it?
	You're there, you see?
	So it does actually work.
	No, it's good.
	Every psalm has a special word, which is the clue word.
	Certainly keep is, if not the word, it's only one of the big words here.
	He keeps you.
	So we've got...
	I love the idea that the moon might be able to burn you.
	Yes.
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	Yeah, the authorised version has smite, which I think probably is a closer translation of the word.
	He's used burn because of the way the sun smites you is by burning you, obviously.
	I mean, again, this is where we have to read the scripture, not woodenly.
	Some people read the Bible in a very wooden way, and they can't They can't see where he's talking beyond just the literal.
	He's talking here about all the dangers that might afflict you by day or by night.
	There may be shades here of the sun and the moon gods.
	I mean, the sun and the moon were worshipped by many of the pagan peoples around Israel.
	Abraham was a moon worshipper before he was called.
	So there may be reflections there of, you know, none of these scary gods can touch you.
	But I think probably it's more talking about the natural world, not even the sun or the moon, because God made all of these things.
	And he made the world for man.
	He didn't make you to be subservient to the creation.
	And again, that's such an important thing, isn't it?
	Because we're living through an age where It's just so obvious.
	Well, to use Paul's words in Romans 1, the very essence of sin and rebellion is turning things upside down, inverting biblical reality, worshipping not the creator but the created thing.
	And of course, certainly in our society today, we're doing that with knobs on, aren't we?
	The green religion is a worship of the created thing and not the creator.
	It's a totally turning on its head of all of this.
	It's a worshipping of the sun and the moon and thinking, oh, the sun and the moon are going to harm us.
	They're going to kill us.
	The world's all going to burn up and we're all going to die.
	And this psalm says, don't be so ridiculous.
	God made the sun and the moon.
	He made them for you.
	In fact, in Genesis chapter 1, the words sun and moon is not used deliberately.
	He just calls them the great light and the lesser light.
	I think that's probably a polemic against people who thought the sun was a god or the moon is a god.
	He's just saying, no, there's a big light and a little light.
	And God put a big light in for your daytime and a little light for night.
	And the reason he gives is they're there to rule the calendar.
	So God put two lights in the sky, one in the day, one in the night, and the whole purpose of him is to serve mankind, to rule your calendar, and in particular, to serve the calendar in terms of, you know, the ritual life of Israel, the Sabbath by Sabbath and the month and the new moons and the feasts and so on.
	So the creation is here, not to...
	Not to harm humans, but to serve humans.
	And God will not let it harm you.
	And nothing in the natural world, therefore, can ever ultimately harm God's people.
	He's not meaning if you lie out in the sun all day just because you trust Jesus, you won't get sunburned.
	It would be a facile reading to look at that, but what he's saying is nothing in this natural world can ever truly and ultimately harm God's people because they're for you, not to rule you.
	Although, on a digressive note, William, I have recently discovered, fairly recently, that you tan so much better without sun cream.
	That sun cream is...
	I used to be an absolute obsessive junkie of sun cream.
	Yeah.
	Well, all you do then is get yourself vitamin D depleted.
	Yeah, what you do is, as is obvious, you limit your sun exposure to those periods of the day when the sun's rays are not at their most fierce.
	You gradually build up this protection.
	Well, that's just another great one of the deceptions, isn't it?
	The great dermatology deception.
	I mean, you know, I used to think...
	I was a doctor, as you know, perhaps before I was in ministry, and...
	Yeah, the number of things that I believed because I was propagandized with then, which actually, when you start to look into it, is a lot of nonsense.
	It's quite extraordinary.
	I bet you believed in vaccines.
	I did.
	I did.
	In a way which I do not anymore.
	Certainly not to that extent.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	The levels of corruption in the world should not surprise a Christian, but they do constantly surprise us, don't they?
	Yeah, out of the heart of man comes all manner of wickedness.
	But yes, just to get back to the real point here, he's saying that...
	You know, you will have as a believer in the one true God, through Jesus Christ, you will have real protection throughout all the trials of life.
	He's not saying the trials of life will not come to you.
	He's not saying you'll be automatically immune from all troubles in life.
	How could that be true?
	The whole Bible everywhere tells you that's not true.
	The Psalms constantly bear witness to that's not true.
	But what it does is you will have protection.
	Look at what it says.
	The Lord is your defense upon your right hand.
	It means he's really, really close to you.
	He's nearer to you than all these threats.
	He's right at your right hand.
	And so when you face the natural troubles of life that every human being will face, because we live in a fallen world, because we live in a world under the curse, Christians are not exempt from illness.
	They're not exempt from cancer.
	We're not exempt from all the things that are common to humanity.
	We will have the protection of God in the midst of it.
	He will be there.
	He will be our keeper right in the midst of it.
	And that's a powerful thing because what it means is that we can walk even the valley of the shadow of death.
	But we will not fear, as Psalm 23 says, because you are with me.
	Your rod and staff comfort me, strengthen me.
	His defence is upon your right hand.
	Yes.
	Well, that's the next one, isn't it?
	The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.
	Yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
	The Lord shall preserve thy go after my coming in from this time forth forevermore.
	That's a sort of reiteration, isn't it, of his?
	Yes, and I think that, again, that is what shows us that this is not just talking about an earthly journey to Jerusalem.
	The pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as with any pilgrimage, it's a microcosm.
	It's an enactment of the pilgrimage of life.
	And the psalm is obviously talking about the whole of life because it's talking about from this time forth and forevermore.
	It's not talking about a never-ending journey to Jerusalem.
	That was going to come to an end in a matter of days or weeks.
	But it is talking about going out and coming in forevermore.
	And what he's saying is that death itself cannot harm you if your life is in the hands of the eternal God now and forevermore.
	A lot of people, a lot of Christians even, I'm very reluctant to see anything in the Old Testament that really speaks of eternal life, that speaks of life from the dead, that speaks of resurrection.
	But I'm astonished because I just think, well, what are you reading?
	How far are you reading in the Old Testament?
	The resurrection is everywhere.
	Hebrews 11 tells us explicitly that Abraham knew that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
	That's why he was willing to put him on the altar.
	Abraham was looking for a better country, a heavenly one.
	They were looking to the reward.
	I mean, right through the scriptures.
	And the psalmist is constantly talking about forevermore.
	And the way they looked at life was as a walk with the Lord which never ended.
	You know the story of Enoch way back in the early chapters of Genesis.
	Enoch walked with God and was not.
	And it's a wonderful picture.
	He walked with God and just kept on walking with God.
	And his walk transcended death.
	And that is what the psalmist is talking about here.
	What else can it mean?
	You're going out and you're coming in from this time forth forevermore.
	Walking with the Lord, and he will preserve it, he'll preserve your life, and that life will go on forevermore in his presence.
	That's the heart of the promise of the Bible.
	When the Apostle Paul was defending himself in the ends of the Acts of the Apostles against the different authorities and so on, and the Jews, he said, I'm not saying anything other than the historic hope of Israel.
	Why should any of you think it's a strange thing that we should be speaking about rising from the dead?
	He says, this is what God's people have believed right from the very beginning.
	Now, of course, We have more detail and complete clarity and understanding now because we've seen the life and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.
	But he's the firstfruits and we're all part of that.
	How it all happens and how it was all going to be fulfilled is now wonderfully clear in a way which it was less clear before.
	But that psalmist there is pretty clear, isn't he?
	The Lord is going to keep you from henceforth and forevermore.
	Well, you say in your introduction that all human emotions are in the Psalms and that they cover everything, which is true.
	But I would say that if you had to sum up the dominant message of the Psalm, okay, well, thou shalt not be afraid would be one of them.
	I mean, that's the most common message throughout the Bible.
	But I would say...
	That it is, if you put your trust in God, then he will take care of you.
	Just have faith and everything's going to be okay.
	That seems to, and this psalm is a classic example of that.
	It's like, that's why I think they're such a good source of comfort.
	Because if you can believe that, he's got your back.
	God's got your back.
	It is, but I would want to add to that, agree with that, but add to it just the detail of saying that it's not just God, G-O-D. Look at how repeatedly he is referred to in this psalm.
	Verse 2, my help comes from the Lord.
	He's the God who made heaven and earth.
	Verse 5, the Lord is your keeper.
	The Lord is your defense.
	The Lord preserves you from evil.
	The Lord preserves you going out and coming in.
	So that is the name of the Lord.
	It's the covenant God, Yahweh, Jehovah.
	Very specific.
	You're not saying any old God or A vague understanding of God.
	What he's saying is that this is the Lord.
	This is the God of Israel.
	This is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel.
	This is the God of the Bible.
	This is the God who reveals himself from the earliest days to the fathers, who reveals himself all the way through the scripture, but who now in these last days As Hebrews 1 says, in these last days he has spoken to us in his Son.
	So in many ways in the past through the prophets and the poets he spoke to our fathers, but in these last days he has spoken in his Son, who is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact image of his person.
	So the wonderful thing that we have from this psalm It's that we know the name.
	This God has a name.
	It's not just that if only we could find this God, we might be able to have all these things.
	It's that this God has a name, and he can be found, and he has made himself known, and he has made himself known in his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
	And in fact, the wonderful thing is that in a sense this psalm, the Lord Jesus is on both sides of this psalm.
	He is He is the one who trusts fully in the Lord.
	He is the one who the Lord kept.
	He is the one who the Lord preserved from all evil.
	He is the one who the Lord brought out of death to life.
	But he is also the one who is speaking and promising all these things to his own, because all who are his can pray this psalm in him.
	So we're praying to him.
	He's the one who keeps us.
	And that's really what makes us relevant, because if this was all about If we have a theory or a distant theology, we can say, well, how do I get into this?
	How does it happen to me?
	But the answer is, well, Jesus has come and said, well, come to me and I'll give you all of these things.
	I will give you this rest.
	I will give you this protection.
	My rod and staff will be yours.
	And so it's not that he can't be found.
	He's made himself known.
	And that is just the promise of the gospel, whether it's here in the In the psalm, or whether it's Jesus speaking in Matthew's Gospel, or whether it's the apostles proclaiming his name.
	He's the God who says, and still says, well, come to me and all of this will be yours.
	You can have that ceaseless guidance all through life.
	You can have that protection in all the trials of life.
	You can have that absolute certainty of promise, of unending life.
	But as Peter says, you know, it's in his name and his name.
	There's no other name under heaven by which we can have these things.
	And so there is a real challenge here.
	It's an offer from God, but that offer has to be received.
	And yes, he has done it.
	He will do it.
	Throw your trust on him.
	That's what the psalmist is proclaiming to us, really.
	I'm not going to keep you anymore except to ask you to tell that very moving, impressive Christian behaviour story about the minister in your church, about what happened to him, the one who had the bone marrow Yeah, yeah.
	No, he was an elder in the church of a friend of mine.
	Yeah, this was some years, some decades ago, but he had a, I forget exactly, but he had a kind of hematological, a blood cancer.
	And it was the kind of thing whereby it's treated by what's called bone marrow rescues.
	So they take some of your bone marrow...
	They take it out of your body and they store it and then they blast you with toxic chemotherapy to kill off all the marrow cancer cells and all the blood cancer cells and so on.
	And then you are rescued.
	They infuse your own healthy bone marrow back into you and the hope is that it will regrow and so on.
	And the tragedy in this case was that the freezer in which this man's marrow was being stored, somehow there was a power cut or something and anyway the freezer failed and it had all defrosted.
	When they came to do the rescue it was all ruined and so there was no rescue for him.
	And, I mean, you would think that in a situation like that, all hell would break loose.
	There would be lawsuits and outrage and anger and all these things, in a sense.
	So should there be.
	But, yeah, my friend told me about this man.
	He said, well, he just said to the doctors at the hospital...
	This is very disappointing, of course, but I am a Christian.
	My life is in the hands of the Lord.
	I don't fear death.
	I know where I'm going.
	I'm not going to sue you or any of these things.
	But my trust is in the Lord.
	My life is in his hands.
	And he was able to face death with a...
	With a steady eye, because he could say the words of these psalms.
	He knew the Lord is my keeper.
	The Lord is my keeper.
	He will preserve my going out, my coming in forevermore.
	And in the end, you know, we're all going to, unless the Lord Jesus comes, we are all going to see the grave.
	We're all going to walk the valley of the shadow of death.
	The question is, Are we going to walk through it with him being our shade at our right hand, our protector, our life's protector and keeper, or not?
	And the Lord Jesus repeatedly says, don't say no, come to me.
	And the wonderful thing is, whoever comes to me, he says, I will never cast out.
	What could be more simple?
	Why would anybody...
	Especially as you get older, especially as you face the realities of the sun by day and the moon by night and the terrors and the valley of the shadow.
	Why would anybody not want to have the Lord as their keeper?
	It's astonishing to think that you would.
	I'm with you, William.
	So thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	Now, here is your book, Heart Songs for Every Saint.
	Available on the dreaded Amazon.
	Is it?
	Yeah.
	I make no money from it, so I can quite happily promote it.
	I hope it might be helpful to some.
	My aim really, James, is to give people a taster of the Psalms, a little bit of half a dozen different kinds to wet the appetite for more.
	I mean, your appetite is already wetted.
	It probably is.
	Yeah, I think this will be a good sort of taster book for...
	Until I can write my epic Psalms book, which you'll be bored to death.
	James Dellenpott bores you to death with everything he knows about the Psalms.
	A friend of mine has just written a commentary on the Psalms, which runs to four huge volumes, and it costs a great deal of money.
	I mean, it'll be absolutely excellent, but yeah, that's a bit beyond me.
	A small paperback with a taster is sort of about my limit at the moment.
	No, I've very much enjoyed reading it.
	And where can people find you and find your services and stuff like that?
	Yeah, just tron.church is our church website.
	You'll find it there, you'll find all our talks, you'll find some of our other resources.
	You'll even find some of the psalms and hymns that I've written.
	There's a few psalms that I've put to musical tunes.
	Oh yes you have, haven't you?
	You've done Psalm 91.
	Psalm 91 is printed in the book there, yeah.
	And that goes to the tune of the Ashokan Farewell, which is rather lovely.
	But if you go to our website, in fact, there's a recent recording of some of these, really nicely done, some solos and some choir and that sort of thing.
	They did it for my 20th anniversary at the church as a little gift for me, which was really lovely.
	And it's there on the website.
	So people can enjoy that.
	There's lots of resources.
	And one of the most important resources is actually written by my father, who wrote Bible notes on the whole Bible.
	And you can sign up to getting a daily Bible reading note, if you like, which gives you in your email box every morning just a short little reading from the scriptures every day.
	Lots of people all over the place use those and find them very useful.
	So there's various things like that and we just love to share them with folk.
	None of it costs anything.
	It's just part of our ministry.
	So www.tron.church and you should find all of that there and you'd be very welcome.
	And come along and find us in Glasgow.
	Well, great.
	Well, thank you, Frank.
	I've really enjoyed talking to you.
	It's been fantastic.
	If you've...
	Dear viewers and listeners, don't forget to support me at the usual places if you want to, if you want to get early access and stuff.
	But more importantly, maybe spread the word.
	I mean, I imagine if you're watching this, you're probably a Christian or you're probably kind of tempted.
	And I enjoy these psalm podcasts and I hope you do too.
	So I'd like to see them go around the world.
	Um...
	Just because it'd be nice, wouldn't it, William?
	It would.
	It would be lovely.
	And I certainly enjoy them too.
	And I know lots of people who do.
	So, yeah.
	Do listen to more.
	Great.
	Thanks very much.

▲