Hello everyone, welcome back after a few weeks off and in between the world has been shaken.

I think a lot of us are probably reeling from what's happened recently and awaiting the effects of this earthquake in full force.

So we've been told by our recent president-elect

that we need to come together and bind the wounds of the nation.

And I'm kind of behind that 90%,

but it's hard not to hear the words of the prophets in the background

that warn of those who say peace, peace when there is no peace.

So there's a kind of coming together that's actually smoothing over deeper problems so that we

can pretend they're not there.

Interestingly in Jeremiah when he refers to that phrase, peace, peace when there is no peace,

he says, they dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.

So the people were putting a band-aid on this gangrenous foot. And then in Ezekiel uses the same

phrase, so this phrase, peace, peace, when there is no peace, occurs three times in the prophets.

And Ezekiel sounds even more relevant. he says, and when anyone tries to build

a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash. So, or have we heard of building a wall

recently? So tell those who plaster it over with whitewash that it will fall. And then the prophet

goes on to describe how God is going to consume this wall in his wrath.

Okay, I had that rant. On that positive note, let's turn toward our episode today. Folks, we have

a legend today, Mark S. Smith of Princeton Theological Seminary. I got to know Mark when I was a junior

research fellow at the

Albright Institute, Jerusalem, doing my doctoral studies at Emory. Mark and his wife Liz were both there,

and they are just great. They joke around a ton, but together they're like an unstoppable

...