CCC23, S1: Bryan Wolfmueller - ”How It All Started”

The Christianity & Culture Conference of Spencer, IA

July 7-8, 2023

"Competing Stories: God's v. the World's"

Speaker: The Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller

Session 1: How It All Started

Are we all bits of cosmic shrapnel, the results of an ancient explosion? Or, are we the result of the Lord’s peaceful speaking, “Let there be...” The World and the Lord are telling two very different stories about how things got started, and, as Mary Poppins taught us, “well begun is half done.” 

 

Feedback for Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller: bwolfmueller@gmail.com

Podcast Feedback (Broken links, suggestions, etc): CCConferenceSpencer@gmail.com

 

Summary

• What is a Story & the 4 Chapters (Start, Problem, Solution, Conclusion) - Everyone living in a story with these chapters
• Understanding this part of evangelistic and apologetics tasks
• Part 1: The beginning - how things got started
• Contrasting the Creation from Scripture v. The Enuma Elish
• How what we believe about the beginning shapes us
• The importance of words and names. Parable: What if we couldn’t read? - The elite and the world’s answer to how all this got started: Evolution (materialism)
  • Pagan way of thinking: Survival of the Fittest & Nihilism
• The Three Distinctions that God makes in the Genesis Story being assaulted by Evolution and Culture: Creator/Creation, Man/Beast, Man/Woman - Denigration to wordlessness
• Next: Simply ask who am I? If Genesis 1 is true? If Evolution is true?

 

References

• Breakpoint: Colson Center Podcast with John Stonestreet: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breakpoint/id324173353
• Stonestreet Quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9808817-every- story-has-four-parts-the-beginning-the-middle-the
• Sparkle Creed: https://youtu.be/SpIvek8ZU58?si=6b99aHWeHS8zbb1W
• Enuma Elish
  • What it is and the text: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/225/enuma- elish---the-babylonian-epic-of-creation---fu/
  • Rev. Wolfmueller reads from the fourth tablet
• Genesis 1-2, Creation: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1-2&version=ESV
• Worldwide (Online) Bible Study, Wednesdays at 9:00am, Zoom Link Here: https://wolfmueller.co/bible/
• Genesis 30, Rachel, Leah, and the Mandrakes: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+30&version=ESV
• Psalm 23: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+23&version=KJV
• Preface of “Alien Power: The Pure Theory of Ideology” by Kenneth Minogue: https://www.amazon.com/Alien-Powers-Pure-Theory-Ideology- ebook/dp/B076M72M1G/ref=sr_1_4?qid=1695158968&refinements=p_27%3AK enneth+Minogue&s=digital-text&sr=1-4&text=Kenneth+Minogue
• Ray Comfort: https://www.youtube.com/@raycomfortjustwitnessing/videos

Clarification

15:30: “Split her in half and that (or she) became the sky and the sea

23:12 (first comment): Isn’t that (the Babylonian story) similar to the theory of evolution (meaning, creation by death and destruction)

24:20: “Even parents are at war with their children”

35:10: “The darkness he called night”

1:04:27: (first question): Is there another distinction - God’s providing and abundance v. survival and scarcity

1:05:03 (follow up to the to first question): The role we are called into those two different stories - caring for the world we’re a part of v. Consumed/Consuming

1:08:20 (second question): Is the appeal of the pagan side the search for truth? Accuses the other side of hopefulness, not the truth of reality?

1:11:13 (third question): Parable of the wordless world - it’s worse than wordless; the serpent misnames and lies

1:12:45 (fourth question): One of the problems with materialist view (if it can’t be measured, it can’t exist) is that it denies love.

1:14:26 (follow up to fourth question): Many materialists deny the pure idea of love; is an unexplainable illusion

1:15:57 (fifth question): Could you expand on the idea (???)

1:20:27 (sixth question): In the last 20-30 years, being introduced amongst Evolution and materialism, is a hyper-spirituality has developed and emerged detached from the Bible; which has more momentum in our culture since they are contradictory to each other? Even though people try to latch onto both.

 

Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller is pastor of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Churches in Austin, TX. He is the author of Take They Our Life: Martin Luther’s Theology of Martyrdom (2019), A Martyr’s Faith for a Faithless World (CPH, 2019), Has American Christianity Failed? (CPH, 2016) and Final Victory: Contemplating the Death and Funeral of a Christian (CPH, 2010). He is host of What-Not The Podcast, posts videos on YouTube at wolfmueller1, and has a number of other theological projects that all end up on his blog, www.wolfmueller.co. Bryan is a member of the Doxology Collegium. He and his wife Keri live with their four children in Round Rock, TX.

https://wolfmueller.co/

 

Conference Partners:

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Spencer, IA - Rev. Michael McGinley - www.ctkspencer.com

Immanuel Lutheran Church, Spirit Lake, IA - Rev. Paul Dare - www.lcmslakes.org

First English Lutheran Church, Spencer, IA - Rev. Paul Kaldahl - www.spencer-church.com

Immanuel Lutheran Church, Terril, IA - Rev. Tom Marth - https://lcmsterril.weebly.com

Spencer Circuit of the Iowa District West (LCMS)