The Blue Collar Scholar

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first major protagonist of the 1960s, and his tragic death set the tone for one of America's most tumultuous decades. This episode is a brief survey of his career, with a significant detour to discuss Fidel Castro, arguably his nemesis. NOTE: The JFK assassination is the focus of next week's episode.

The Spring 2025 class is about the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. In order to understand most of the major events and themes of the 1960s, it is necessary to recognize the Cold War, and how it touched nearly all aspects of life and society in the United States and around the world. In fact, the Cold War shrank the world dramatically, as the USSR & the USA stuck their foot in nearly every corner o...

In the final episode of our not-consistently-recorded Sunday School series on the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, we engage Jesus' teaching, actions, and attitudes regarding race & racism, and His multi-cultural interactions with those who weren't part of Jesus' Jewish race and culture. The Sunday School audio was recorded on 6-26-2022.

There are many issues of human sexuality, and Jesus does not address all of them. But he does directly address some issues, such as marriage, divorce, sexual immorality, and healing & restoration for those who have sinned. In this episode, we join in our not-consistently-recorded Sunday School series on the Philosophy of Jesus. This lesson was recorded on 6/19/2022.

Suffering is terrible, and no one should seek it out. But it happens. It happens to all of us. And Jesus promises us that it will happen to us. This Sunday School lesson dives into Jesus' teachings on suffering. This is audio from a Sunday School lesson on 5-29-2022.

This Sunday School lesson examines the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels to determine His philosophy of human free will. This Sunday School lesson was recorded on 5-22-2022.

Christians ought to treat Jesus Christ not only as God the Son, but also as our greatest teacher and philosopher. This Sunday School series delves into Jesus' teaching from the Gospels to discern what is His philosophy of various topics. This episode digs into Jesus' philosophy of the nature of reality. Recorded Audio from a Sunday School lesson - 4/17/2022

Evangelicals are wonderful when it comes to believing in Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The death, burial, and resurrection of God the Son? Yeah, we got that down! ... But what about Jesus as our Lord, our teacher, or our philosopher? Do we do what He says? This episode of the podcast is not only a sermon delivered sans notes (the pastor got sick at the last...

This simple, quick lecture brings our Fall 2024 class on the Book of Revelation to a close.

In this episode, when I am not chasing bunny trails (which is often), we go deep into the Biblical concept of Heaven. We look at both Old Testament and New Testament passages relevant to the concept of Heaven, and we spend quite a bit of time in the final chapters of Revelation, looking at the Millennial Kingdom and New Heavens & New Earth.

The Book of Revelation makes a poor chronology. It does some jumping about. And several chapters are enigmatic, far more enigmatic than the book as a whole, which is one of the most enigmatic books in the Bible. There are messages that are concealed, symbols that have no consensus regarding their meaning, and even a main character - the Great Prostitute - who remains a great mystery. In this episo...

This episode picks up our survey of the Judgments of God in the Book of Revelation. There are 21 judgments, which come in three sets of seven: 7 Seals, 7 Trumpets, and 7 Bowls/Vials. This episode picks up with the 5th Trumpet Judgment and continues to the end. We also examine the Battle of Armageddon, the final defeat of Satan, and the Great White Throne Judgment.

As the Fall 2024 Revelation class continues, we are proceeding using the interpretation of Revelation as primarily a futurist document. There definitely are other interpretations, and I would encourage you to seek out scholars who provide those other perspectives. Nevertheless, if we proceed as if Revelation is primarily a futurist document, then the heart of the End Times timeline is 3 sets of 7...

This episode digs into the Scriptural data for Satan a.k.a. the devil a.k.a. Beelzebub a.k.a. the ancient serpent a.k.a. the Dragon of the Book of Revelation. We also do a bit of corrective analysis to make sure that we aren't letting the popular conception of Satan drive our understanding of the figure that is taught in Scripture. Furthermore, the character known as Satan makes very few appearanc...

Besides the Devil himself, there is no scarier character in the Bible than the person that the Book of Revelation calls the Beast, and 2nd Thessalonians calls the Man of Lawlessness (or Man of Sin; Man of Perdition), and the Book of Daniel calls the Little Horn. The term that we commonly use for this character is the Antichrist. Ironically, Scripture does use the term Antichrist five times, but ne...

This is a combination of 2 lectures into one. First, we dig into the Olivet Discourse found in Matthew 24-25 (see also Mark 13 & Luke 21). In this, one of the final longform teachings of Jesus Christ prior to His death, burial, & resurrection, Jesus accurately predicts the destruction of the Temple, which would happen in the year 70AD. He goes on to talk about false teachers, war, rumors of war, n...

Well, any discussion of the End Times requires one to cover the Rapture, which is the least-agreed-upon topic in all of Christian theology. In this episode, we examine the passages of Scripture from which John Nelson Darby and Dispensationalists draw out the teaching of a Rapture event. Then, assuming the truth of the Rapture event, we examine the implications of such an event. Finally, we look at...

In this episode, I give ample air time to the other Schools of Thought when it comes to Christian Eschatology. I, as the professor, freely admit that I am a premillennialist. Furthermore, I am a premillennial dispensationalist, though I am the least dogmatic premillennial dispensationalist that I know of. But I want to give a fair hearing to those who disagree with me wholeheartedly about the End...

This episode opens up the second section of our Revelation class, as we take a hard turn into eschatology, which is the study of the end times. In this introductory lecture, we take a look at the major themes of the End Times. The heavy emphasis of this lecture is that many end times gurus can be dangerous.

Well, I hope you like history podcasts, because this episode is a deep dive into the history of ancient Rome, from its legendary beginnings to the reigns of the first 11 emperors who reigned during the events of the New Testament. Because we cover over a thousand years of history, this lecture skips over much. This is only the highlights of Roman history as we try to firmly establish the setting,...

Our class collectively decided to do a half class this night, as we are 95% KC Chiefs fans and wanted to get home to watch them beat the Baltimore Ravens (which they did, 27-20, coming down to the last second of the game and a Ravens would-be-touchdown that was out-of-bounds by less than an inch. But I digress). In this episode, we make a case for John the Apostle as the author of the Book of Reve...

As part of the class I am taking ("Modern America Since 1968") for the History Master's Degree program at Pittsburg State University, I reviewed the classic American movie The Graduate. I gave the movie an A-, and recommend that all American adults see the movie at least once. It is perhaps the quintessential Sixties film without any over-the-top '60s tropes.

When John wrote the Book of Revelation, it was obvious that he was heavily influenced by large swaths of the Old Testament. There are obvious parallels between the plagues in Exodus 7-12 and the judgments in Revelation. But the parallels are even greater when comparing Revelation to the Books of the Prophets (Isaiah through Malachi). In many ways, Revelation has much more in common with these book...

Greetings! It is time for our Fall 2024 class: The Book of Revelation! We are glad to have you join us in this first lecture of the Fall, where we are introduced the the concept of "revelation" as a means by which we know things and how we know God. We take a brief journey through the Scriptures and conclude with the Bible Project videos about the Book of Revelation. Please note: the audio of thes...

When our church went into lockdown in early March 2020, we were all expecting the Quarantine to last a few weeks. Well, in the early Fall, we finally started live worship services again, roughly 6 months after our lockdown began. A surge in COVID-19 would lead us to do a second, shorter lockdown a few months later, but our first foray into pandemic quarantine came to an end with this Facebook Live...