🎧 05:15 - 06:57 (01:42)

Tim Mackie: holy cow. Wow. So that's a vivid memory. Another memory I have is after, I don't know, a month or two, my parents brought me to church. My dad would just like carry me around. And our family was part of a house church at that time. And so I remember everybody coming around me to pray for me at this one gathering. And somebody had a little bowl of oil. And they like dipped their finger in the oil and made the cross on my forehead and they prayed for me and what's really astounding is that my pediatrician at least as my mom i don't remember a lot of these details my mom tells a story that uh the pediatrician said it could be like a year if things go well before i'm able to have full use of my legs again. And I think by within month four, I was able to start walking again. Wow. And it was maybe a month or so after that prayer meeting. And then by month six, I was, it's like it never happened. Wow. And the pediatrician was just astounded by it. So anyway. So that was your experience with oil? That was my first, yeah. Anointing. You were anointed. I haven't thought about that for a really time. But somehow when you just said that, that's an early memory I have. And it involves getting anointed and then prayed for that the healing power of God would heal my spinal cord. And I had a remarkably rapid healing that surprised all the doctors involved. Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

Jon Collins: Yeah. Is anointing with oil also a Catholic church thing? Yes.

Tim Mackie: I mean,

🎧 09:48 - 12:29 (02:41)

The insight of this snip is that the Greek word for anoint or smear with oil is krio, which gives rise to the title Christos, or Christ, in describing a person who has had oil poured on them. Similarly, the Hebrew word for this practice is mashach, from which the word messiah is derived. Both Christ and messiah convey the meaning of being anointed with oil. This anointing involves pouring oil, specifically on the head, and carries a significant symbolic purpose.

Jon Collins: Where did the practice come from?

Tim Mackie: Yep. So that's one way into this question. And what you find, if you go from here in James and start going backwards, you'll find that all the trails lead you back to a particular word for anoint or smear with oil. It's a Greek word, krio, which when you talk about a person who has been poured or smeared with oil, the title of that figure is Christos, which is the name Christ. Or excuse me, the title, Christ. And that is a Jewish Greek way of describing an ancient Israelite practice of pouring oil on certain people and places. And the Hebrew word for that is mashach. And what you call someone who's had oil smeared or poured over them is mashach, from which we get the word Messiah. Okay.

Jon Collins: Yeah, yeah. So, to say back yeah there's a word in greek well let's start with hebrew oh

Tim Mackie: okay i was going

Jon Collins: backwards yeah you're going backwards okay let's go backwards yeah so james would have been using the word to anoint creo he actually uses a synonym of it alepho but

Tim Mackie: it means the same it means to put a thick, dense oil liquid on someone. Okay. So to put oil on someone, there's a word in Greek.

Jon Collins: There's actually a couple words. There's a couple words in Greek. One is krio. Yeah. And then if you are someone who has had this done to you, you're a kristos.

Tim Mackie: Yeah.

Jon Collins: Kristos. And that's where we get the word Christ. So to call Jesus the Christ is say Jesus, the one who's been anointed with oil. Correct. Jesus, the anointed one. Jesus, the anointed one. And anointed one, I don't have a lot of categories for, but when you say Messiah, that's another very familiar term. Yeah. And you're saying that in Hebrew, the same idea has the Hebrew word Mashiach, which we get the word Messiah. Yep. So to be the anointed one in Hebrew is to be the Mashiach. To be the anointed one in Greek is to be the Christos. Either way, it's the same idea. Same

Tim Mackie: idea, different vocabulary. Different vocabulary. Yeah. The one anointed. Yep. And to be anointed or to be the anointed one means I'm someone who had oil poured on me.

Jon Collins: Specifically my head. Right.

Tim Mackie: But I'm imagining

Jon Collins: for a very specific purpose.

Tim Mackie: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's fully. You wouldn't be like. Loaded with tons of symbolism. Yeah. Which we'll talk about.

Jon Collins: Yeah. Would you, I mean, like if you were like walking down the street and someone spilled some oil on you on accident, you'd be like, oh, I'm Shiok.

🎧 35:17 - 37:28 (02:11)

Tim Mackie: But it's a person bridging together, the divine and the human. And the human. Or another way to say that is they are bridges between heaven and earth. Or a gate. A gate between heaven and earth. And where this really began to take on significance for me, or I feel like my light bulb moment happened a number of years ago, when I paid attention to the handful of places that get anointed with oil in the Bible. Because typically when you think of the anointed one, it refers to a person. But to really get the meaning of what anointing means, you have to look at these places. The first practice of anointing in the Bible happens not to a person, but to a pile of rocks. Or actually to one big rock, you know, among some other rocks. And this is the story of Jacob, who was fleeing from his brother and his father in the book of Genesis, chapter 28. It's a fascinating, fascinating story. Should we read it? Yeah. Genesis 28, verse 10. And Yaakov, sorry, my translation, I try and spell the names the way they're pronounced in Hebrew. So Yaakov, Jacob, went out from Be'er Sheva, and he went to Haran. And he encountered the place. The place. And he stayed the night there because the sun had gone down. And so he took some stones of the place. And he set his headrest and he laid down in that place.

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