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We spend this episode with the female prophets of the New Testament — Anna in the temple, the daughters of Philip, and others — and find a picture of prophecy that looks quite different from the confrontational Old Testament model. Anna’s story is told in three verses: she prayed, fasted, turned up at the right moment, and couldn’t stop talking about what she’d seen. But the episode keeps circling a broader question: what counts as a prophetic message? The congregation who fed a family in crisis for three months said something that couldn’t have been said any other way. God has many things he wants to say — and apparently, many ways of saying them.

What distinguishes a true prophet from a false one? The lesson this week offers several criteria, but we find ourselves drawn into the story of Micaiah and Ahab in 1 Kings 22, which we think might be one of the most searching explorations of that question in Scripture. The 400 court prophets tell Ahab what he wants to hear; Micaiah alone refuses. We explore what’s really going on: the false prophets mirror Ahab back to himself, confirming his own vision of reality. The true prophet does something far less comfortable — he insists that God has his own agenda, his own priorities, his own independent existence. We also sit with the humanity of the prophets: their discouragement may be less evidence of weakness than we assume — and along the way, Jonah raises the uncomfortable question of whether a prophet can deliver a true message from a false heart.

What is a prophet, and what does a prophetic call look like?  In this episode we discuss the call of several prophetic and prophetic-adjacent figures from the Bible and discover very little in common. God seems fully capable of speaking to different people in different ways to equip them for different messages to different audiences. One thing becomes clear, however, as we look back on the history of prophetic revelation in the light of the New Testament: no expression of the gift of prophecy even approximates the clarity and significance of the revelation we have received in the person of Jesus.  In the past God spoke to us in various ways through the prophets, but now he has revealed himself to us clearly in Jesus.

We open a new season on the theme of prophecy by going back to the beginning — literally. The lesson frames prophecy as God's response to the breakdown of communication in Eden: God comes looking for the humans who are hiding, and keeps looking ever since. We find that a compelling framing, but want to add something the lesson doesn't quite say: prophets are rarer, stranger, and harder to deal with than we sometimes acknowledge. Reading them as though they were teachers is probably a mistake. The obscurity and imagery may not be incidental to their message; it may be part of it. The parts we can't understand are worth being honest about — but so is what comes through on every page with unmistakable clarity.

Thirteen weeks on 1 and 2 Corinthians, and we attempt a summary. The thread that keeps returning is Paul's pastoral instinct — not the rigid doctrinearian of some people's Sabbath School memories, but a writer who knows his congregation well and keeps refusing to answer many of the questions they're actually asking. Who's better, Paul or Apollos? Married or single? He sidesteps them, or answers them sideways. What he won't sidestep is what's temporary and what's permanent, what's worth devoting energy to and what isn't. We find ourselves more fond of Paul than we expected — and more aware that the damage done to his reputation says more about how he's been taught than about what he actually wrote.

"False teacher" is an accusation easy to throw around, but who gets to decide? The receiver of a teaching is not always the best judge of whether it was false — or even whether it was worthwhile. Paul's concern in 2 Corinthians 11 is real (charlatans do exist), but surely there are many people earnestly sharing "the gospel" as they believe it to be true, while being labeled "false" by others? Even within Adventism, many cherished theological ideas began as thoughts considered false by the communities the pioneers came out of. The episode ends with a challenge of introspection: usually we look out there for false prophets, but Paul in chapter 13 is willing to consider the possibility that he himself might have failed the test.

Paul tells the Corinthians that since they excel in so many things — faith, knowledge, enthusiasm, love — they should excel also in giving. It's an interesting framing: giving as something you can be genuinely good at. We sit with why generosity can feel uncomfortable to discuss in church, and explore a real tension in the passage between giving proportionally — sustainable, allows you to keep giving — and giving with reckless generosity, which seems more in the spirit of self-sacrificial love. Which kind of giving does Paul actually have in mind?

Paul opens 2 Corinthians 3 with a small piece of wordplay that turns out to carry a large idea: the Corinthian believers themselves are his letter of recommendation — written not in ink but by the Spirit, not on stone but on human hearts. That observation seems almost to launch Paul's thinking toward the old and new covenants, and the contrast between letter and Spirit. We trace that thread through to chapters 4 and 5, where the same contrast keeps returning in a different form: temporary versus permanent, troubles that won't last long versus a glory that lasts forever. We also pause on the word reconciliation — one of Paul's great themes, and a word that carries particular weight in an Australian context — and find that it may be less a once-and-done event than an ongoing commitment, which is perhaps exactly what "forever" implies.

Almost every New Testament epistle opens with "grace and peace" — and it turns out to be a phrase worth pausing on. It captures something essential, and makes an excellent email sign-off. Paul's opening to 2 Corinthians also includes an apology for changed travel plans, which the lesson uses as a springboard for discussing flexibility in ministry. But changing travel plans is a fairly trivial kind of flexibility — we develop some richer models, from play-dough to rubber to non-Newtonian fluid, to explore what flexibility actually looks like in Christian life. Paul's own flexibility goes much deeper than logistics, as his approach in Athens demonstrates. And Jonah reminds us that the hardest flexibility of all is being willing to change your own mind about a people God has changed his mind about.

1 Corinthians 15 centres on the idea of resurrection. We explore what the chapter has to say to Adventists specifically, for whom the state of the dead and the mechanics of resurrection are dear doctrinal territory. But the discussion finds its heart in the mystery of what the resurrection body actually is — and what continuity might exist between who we are now and who we will be. George MacDonald's fairy tale The Day Boy and the Night Girl turns out to be the best companion text we could find: a story about two people for whom the fulfillment of everything they know turns out to be something at once recognisable and incomparably greater.

1 Corinthians 13 is possibly the most well-known chapter in the Bible, and for good reason — it speaks for itself. Love is preeminent. The heart of our discussion is the second half, where Paul's argument is harder to follow: what does it mean that prophecy, tongues, and special knowledge are, in some sense, the milk of infancy? Growing in the Christian life may mean being consumed by fewer things, not more. The overriding principle Paul appeals to is one every child already knows.

1 Corinthians 14 opens in a way that might feel familiar to Adventists — an emphasis on prophecy over tongues. But Paul's description of prophecy diverges quickly from how we typically think of it. His critique of tongues is that it doesn't build up the community; but that same standard has to be applied to prophecy too. And his picture of the congregation is striking — widespread prophetic gifts distributed among many, not concentrated in one important figure. We sit with what that means for us, and land on a question more than an answer: what would it actually mean to take contemporary prophecy seriously today?

Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 8 is elegant: food sacrificed to idols is fine to eat, since idols are meaningless — but avoid it if eating would lead a fellow believer astray. Context matters, and so does audience. We explore the analogy of modest dressing, where modesty is always partly defined by who you expect to be seen by. But the nuance emerges quickly: almost anything could offend somebody, so taken to its logical extreme the principle seems to paralyse rather than liberate. We ask — more than answer — what this looks like in a world where things are shared instantly with everyone, everywhere. Paul returns to the food question in 1 Corinthians 10 with a sharper point: as well as context or audience, we need to be alert about who you are ultimately serving (God or demons).

Paul is not afraid to talk about sex — but his approach is more nuanced than the church's reputation suggests. In 1 Corinthians 5 he tells the church to get involved when something has gone badly wrong; by chapter 7 he is describing singleness and marriage as different gifts, resisting the idea that one way of living is spiritually superior. We explore what shifts when the question changes from "what sex is allowed?" to "what kind of sex is good?" — and find Paul's answer in 1 Corinthians 6 surprisingly rich: more than skin on skin, a spiritual mystery, and a warning against the kind of intimacy that leaves you lonelier than before. The boundaries may matter less than what our relationships actually produce.

What would Paul make of denominational pride? We can sincerely reject division within our own tradition while quietly celebrating everything that makes us distinct from other Christians — and not notice the tension. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul cuts through it: "Isn't everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God? So what's the point of all this comparing and competing?" In this (again belated) episode we sit with the possibility that the need to protect a distinct identity is driven, at least partly, by fear. And we ask the more unsettling question underneath it all — what if Jesus really is enough?