Welcome back to The Extraordinary Story, a podcast about the life of Christ. Season Four will guide us through the final week of Jesus’ life as he approaches the ‘hour’ for which he came: death on a cross. But Tom Hoopes has done some thinking during the break, and returns with a fresh perspective to share with us about why all of this even matters in the first place.

Why does Jesus need to die at all? Is God just so angry at humanity that he needs to kill his Son to calm down? (Spoiler: He’s not.) We’ll learn about Tom Vander Woude’s heroic death and how it reveals a deep truth about Jesus’s sacrifice. In addition, we’ll get a glimpse at the big picture of salvation history, how Christianity changed (and changes) everything, and why the “Our Father” is God’s game plan to bring back Eden, forever.

• 0:00 - Introduction
• 2:55 - The death of Tom Vander Woude
• 6:32 - Tom Vander Woude’s life and death models Christ’s sacrifice
• 9:22 - What does Jesus’ death really accomplish?
• 10:14 - Is God the Father thirsty for blood?
• 11:30 - Jesus took our place in the sewage to push us out of it
• 13:49 - Christ experienced every type of suffering for us
• 15:49 - The “Our Father” prayer is a blueprint
• 18:35 - “Thy Kingdom Come” and the covenants in Scripture
• 18:58 - God plans to restore Eden
• 20:26 - The Gospel, revisited
• 21:54 - What is “The Sign of Jonah”?
• 24:05 - The explosive growth of early Christianity
• 25:27 - How Christianity radically reshaped the whole world
• 27:05 - The irony of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy
• 28:53 - Summary and conclusion

Tom Vander Woude’s Legacy: https://media.benedictine.edu/you-pull-ill-push-tom-vander-woudes-legacy

A Father’s Sacrifice (Focus on the Family): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im9_iAQhd5E