The Kaleidoscope Cross: Why the Crucifixion Has More Than One Meaning w/ Pastor Brian Zahnd

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody back to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova of the Sound of Heaven Church, and today we have a very special guest, Pastor Brian Zahnd. Thank you, Pastor Zahnd, for joining us. We're going to have a really fun discussion today.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Johnny, great to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.

Johnny Ova: Of course, and thank you for the time. Let's jump right in. I want to start with a phrase you use in the book The Wood Between the Worlds: the kaleidoscope cross. What do you mean by that? Can you explain that to our audience?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Well, let's start with The Wood Between the Worlds. That's the book. We'll get to the kaleidoscope, but all great titles are in one way or another stolen. You should know this. My title is adapted, if you want to say it in a nicer way, from the Chronicles of Narnia. In The Magician's Nephew there is a place called the wood between the worlds, a wood with various pools that connect to various worlds. But I thought, wait a minute, I'm going to take that and apply it in a different way. The cross is the wood between the worlds. There is the world that was and the world that is and the world to come. But between those worlds is the cross that is ultimately healing all things.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: So the kaleidoscope. I talk about being kaleidoscopic. I even wonder, do people know what kaleidoscopes are anymore? Maybe they don't. It's like a telescope you look through, and as you point it toward the light you see a geometric design of various colors, refracted in various ways. Then you turn the kaleidoscope, and even though it's the same source of light, you get a different geometric pattern and different colors. You get a different image, but you're still looking at the same source of light. So it's different refractions.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: What I'm trying to do here is this. I am a little bit frustrated with the idea that the cross has a singular meaning. Someone asks, what is the meaning of the cross of Christ, and somebody gives a dogmatic statement of a sentence or two, and it's like, all right, next question, please. I don't think you can do that with the cross. I don't think there is one single meaning. I think there are many meanings. So in the book I'm looking at the cross in about 19 different ways. There are 19 chapters and then a long poem at the end. By the way, I'm not saying the cross has 19 meanings. I'm saying here are 19 different things I see when I look at the cross through my theological kaleidoscope. In fact, in the book I posit, somewhat dramatically, that in one sense it's quite possible the meanings of the cross are infinite, because God himself is infinite. I don't think we ever exhaust the meaning of the cross. To say we know all that the cross means now would be verging on territory that doesn't sound right. So that's what's going on there.

Johnny Ova: What are some chapters in the book that really stick out to you?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: I have my copy here. Let's see what the chapters are, shall we, Johnny? My favorite chapter is the last one, The Center That Holds, where I start with a William Butler Yeats poem and work with that. I also like the One Ring to Rule Them All chapter, because I get to work with Tolkien on that one. God on the Gallows. That's a tough one, but I think it's a good one. Those are some of the chapters that stand out. The Harrowing of Hell, I like that. The surprising one was chapter 15, The Sword-Pierced Soul of Mary. I had never really considered the cross from the perspective of Mary, the mother of Jesus. But then I had a dream that I was writing a chapter on that. Having had that dream, I thought, well, maybe that's a prompt. So I do a chapter where I consider the unique sorrow of Mary.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Typically, if you read a book on what we call atonement theories, they'll either have one, and that's their whole point, or they'll say there are three primary ones, Christus Victor and penal substitution and so on, and present them in a cold, clinical way: take your choice. I did not want to approach it like that. I wanted it to be more artistic. The subtitle of the book, which the publisher came up with, is A Poetic Theology of the Cross. That does not imply it's a poetry book. It's not, although there is poetry in it. What I'm really saying is that I am not limiting myself to academic prose in talking about the cross. I can write academic, theological prose, and I do, but I'm drawing on more artistic genres to talk about the cross: poetry, literature, film, song, paintings.

Johnny Ova: It's fascinating to me the way you broke this down. The reason it hit me so hard is, I didn't grow up in the church. I got saved later in life, late teens, early 20s. I wasn't a kid in Sunday school. But there is, like you said, this one predominant, flat understanding of the cross and what it means, and we've seen the cross used to weaponize people, guilt people, convict people. One of the things I find fascinating is that only the blood of Christ could take a symbol that at the time was a Roman torture device, cover it with his blood, and now it's the symbol of hope, joy, peace and love.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: It's a miracle. Exactly. Look, I have one right here. This is a Russian Orthodox cross icon. It tells the story of the passion of Jesus, from carrying his cross, and at the bottom is the resurrection. I got this in Bethlehem many years ago. I hold this up and people say, that's beautiful, and it is. But hold on. How strange that we are depicting the violent torture and execution of a human being. That's ugly, but that isn't all the cross is about. When the Romans were crucifying people, let's just put it this way, they were not trying to create art. They were terrorizing. They were using psychological terror weapons on an occupied populace. They were saying, if you resist the empire, this is what's going to happen to you. And it was ugly.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: I would even say that if we had a journalistic photograph of the actual event of Good Friday at Golgotha, we might look at it once, regret that we had, and never look at it again, because in journalism you're just trying to present the facts. But then artists come along and depict it not in terms of brutality, horror and ugliness, but in terms of beauty. Some might ask, are the artists doing what they should? Yes, they are. The role of the journalist is to present the raw data. The role of the artist is to alert us to what we may have overlooked. At the cross there is the raw data of the Roman Empire executing a Galilean Jew, but there's a whole lot more going on. Then we begin to have the discussion, in terms of Christian theology, of what the cross of Christ means.

Johnny Ova: How has your view of the cross changed over the years?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Well, I just inherited what everybody seems to inherit in the Western world, and that is a version of what began with Anselm a thousand years ago. Anselm was working on a theological project asking why God became human. You see how a person's own times affect how they view things. He's living in a medieval feudal society, which is an honor-shame culture, and he says human sin has infinitely offended the honor of God. So how does God recover his honor? In those kinds of societies, if a peasant offends someone of the nobility, the noble cannot regain his honor by punishing a peasant, because they're not social equals. So he has to find someone, maybe another prince or noble the peasant is connected to, and challenge him to a duel, take off his glove and say, give me satisfaction, sir. For Anselm it's about God recovering his honor. Who is his equal? His own Son. That's a strange starting point.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Then 500 years later it's taken up by the Reformers, Luther a little bit, and notably Calvin, who really sees it as satisfying God's anger. This is where we get penal, meaning punishment, substitutionary atonement theory. The idea is that God has to punish, or in Calvin's case it's really wrath, that God's wrath must be poured out on his Son. I have problems with that because it does violence to the Trinity. It also exonerates the principalities and powers standing behind the crucifixion. Paul talks about the cross shaming the principalities and powers, but that never shows up if all you have is penal substitutionary atonement theory. We can talk about that or not. But even if I did subscribe to it, which I don't, it is uniquely Western. It never took off in the East. Eastern Christians have never thought that way, and in that regard they're better at their theology than we are.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Even if I thought penal substitutionary atonement theory was valid, I would see it as problematic in that it takes over and becomes the sole meaning of the cross. I think of it as an invasive species within theology that has just taken over. If you subscribe to it, you end up saying the sole purpose of the cross was to satisfy the wrath of God, which ends up with Jesus essentially saving us from God. I think that's problematic, but let's leave that aside. There's then no discussion of how the cross informs us about war or the death penalty or the principalities and powers and all the various things I do in this book. That to me is a clue that there might be something wrong with that particular atonement theory, because it tends to exclude every other interpretation. I don't even remember what you asked me. That was a little rant. But yes, I simply inherited penal substitutionary atonement theory. That's what was given to me, and that's how I thought about it until midlife, when I finally got serious about theology and began to see there are problems with this. The church hasn't always believed this, and the Eastern church has never believed it. So like almost everyone in the Protestant Western world, it was the PSA thing, but as I got serious about theology I realized there were problems and other ways of talking about the cross.

Johnny Ova: The issue I have with penal substitution, or any of the transactional frameworks, is that it puts us in a cycle. It's like when your computer gets stuck loading, this loop of hope and destruction over and over. Jesus dies on a cross, he resurrects three days later, he bridges the gap between us and God. We preach that we're saved by grace and not by works. Then we get saved and we're told, now that you were saved by grace and not by works, make sure your works match what you believe, or else you get erased from the Lamb's Book of Life. Now you're wondering, are my works good enough? Am I shaming the cross? It's a cycle of frustration in your walk, and never a true love story between the bride and the groom.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Well said, Johnny. Well said. I should have another chapter.

Johnny Ova: I'm honored. All right, let's go further into the book. In The Wood Between the Worlds you draw from art, music, literature and theology. Why is the poetic lens essential for interpreting the cross?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: The poetic and the prophetic are related. We live in a time where prose is entirely dominant. Post-Enlightenment, we think of the poetic as somehow lesser. And yet if you just pick up your Bible, for crying out loud, you'll realize that, of course, most people recognize the Psalms are poetry, but most of the prophets are too. Most of Isaiah is poetry. And the New Testament is far more poetic than we've sometimes been led to believe. If we're attempting to speak of the ineffable, poetry opens new avenues when prose has come to a dead-end cul-de-sac and can't go any further. There's nothing wrong with theological prose. I use it, but I wouldn't want to be limited to it. Song, sculpture, image, painting, poetry, literature and film are all valid ways of communicating what we are receiving from the Holy Spirit about the truths of God revealed in Christ at the cross.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: I know that may be unusual, but it's totally non-controversial to me. That's what we should do. If the book has been well received, I think in part it's because people find it refreshing that I'm drawing on these other mediums to talk about the cross. Look, we are a society that loves film and music, and we're less and less a society of people who will sit down and read a 300-page book. I still advocate for that, but let's be honest. If we can employ other mediums to communicate the gospel, let's do that.

Johnny Ova: It's amazing what gets controversial, as if you can't paint and have that effect. So many movies impact people, and music obviously. When you look at art, at people's vision with the Holy Spirit showing them things, sometimes something catches my eye and it just blows me away.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: I might mention this, since I tell it early in the book. Here's the genesis of the book. Nine years ago my wife Peri and I began our first Camino de Santiago. If people don't know what that is, it's an ancient Christian pilgrimage path. The traditional route today begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, and you walk all the way to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. That's 500 miles. We've done it four times, but this was the first. By happy coincidence we began on September 14, 2016, almost exactly nine years ago, and in the church calendar September 14 is Holy Cross Day. The first day is probably the hardest of the whole thing. You cross the Pyrenees. It's about a 15-mile day going up over mountains. It's beautiful and gorgeous, but it's not easy.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Then you arrive in Roncesvalles, Spain, and all the pilgrims stay in the same place, because there's only one place to stay, a big monastery with dormitories. We checked in, and while we were waiting for dinner I went into the chapel at the monastery. I don't know that I went in to pray. I just went in to sit. I noticed the crucifix, and I'm careful not to overstate this, but let me say it this way: I felt like the Spirit gave me instructions. At the time we didn't know how long it would take us. How long does it take to walk 500 miles? I'd never done it. It turned out to be 40 days for us, which is a nice biblical number. I felt like the Holy Spirit said: enter every church you can, pay attention to the crucifix, ask what does this mean, and don't be too quick to give an answer.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: So I did that, and because we were on the move, we weren't seeing the same crucifix every day. There are a lot of churches along the way, so two or three times a day we're popping into a church and I'm looking at a crucifix I've never seen before. They're all different. I'm seeing different images of Christ. Sometimes he looks regal. I remember one where he's wearing not a crown of thorns but a kingly crown. They're making a statement there. In some you see the anguish of Christ. In some he's serene and peaceful. In some he's definitely the man of sorrows. And I'm really trying to do what I feel the Spirit said, not to say, oh, this means that. By that time I'd been a pastor for 35 years. Presumably I have some idea what the cross means, but I set that aside. I'm just looking at it and asking what it means, and not trying to come up with an answer, just letting it sit.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Of course, walking the Camino de Santiago, you have a lot of time to walk and think, and that's part of what makes it so precious. So that first Camino really was a 40-day walking meditation on the cross, 500 miles of crucifixes, and I didn't start writing about it for another seven years. I just sat with it. Eventually I thought, okay, I don't have the definitive word. I don't have the last word. But I have a word on the cross, and that's what becomes The Wood Between the Worlds.

Johnny Ova: Amazing. I had no idea about that backstory. What role have theologians, church fathers, even the novelists you mention, played in shaping your cruciform vision?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: I think it's good to draw widely. I'm very ecumenical. Truly I am. I love the whole body of Christ. If someone out there is looking for the One True Church, God bless you, good luck, have fun. I have found the One True Church. The One True Church is the Church. The way I look at the Church, and I'm not saying this is a scholarly analysis, is basically as a seven-branch menorah: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, the Anglican Communion, Protestantism in its thousands of iterations, the Anabaptists or radical Reformation, Evangelical, and then Pentecostal Charismatic. I think they're all beautiful. They can all be ugly too, they all have their ugly sides, but I'm not looking for ugliness. I'm looking for beauty. I want to read through the diversity of the body of Christ. What do the Eastern Orthodox say? What do the Anglicans say? What do the Pentecostals say? How do the Anabaptists read the cross?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: So I've been very intentional about reading theologians from a wide spectrum. If you find the best in those various traditions, they're all custodians of various treasures. That's what I did, and it's been helpful. I have to say, since I've already alluded to it, I was really helped by reading some Eastern Orthodox approaches. We often think, okay, you have the Orthodox and Catholics, and they're kind of alike, and then the Protestants are different. There's some truth to that. But it's also very true that Protestants and Catholics are both Western and Orthodoxy is Eastern. I'm not saying one is superior to the other. Really, I'm not. I'm saying they are custodians of various treasures. They have strains of theological culture we have not necessarily been exposed to, and you can get some fresh perspective by drawing on that.

Johnny Ova: So good. We live in a bubble, and when you go outside of it, it's amazing what blows people's minds, when you start looking at different denominations, different practices of Christianity, and the dogmas they inherited: this is God and this is the way it is. I have these conversations sometimes and people say, they believe what? I've had guests on here who say people believe this about the Bible and it's not abnormal, and everybody's like, are you serious? So let's pull that lens back and find out why.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Especially in chapter 17, but really scattered throughout the book, I draw a lot on the patristic tradition, the church fathers, and especially the Cappadocians. I love them. That's Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus, who is sometimes called Gregory the Theologian. What a title, Gregory the Theologian. Those cats are some of the very best theologians I think we've produced. They're all from the fourth century, from about the same area, the center of what we'd call Turkey today, Cappadocia. Those guys have really helped me. And I want to throw this in. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa are brothers, and Gregory of Nazianzus is their friend. But it was the sister of Gregory and Basil, Macrina the Younger, who was their primary teacher. That's what Gregory of Nyssa says: we were really taught by our older sister, who confusingly has the name Macrina the Younger, because her grandmother is Macrina the Elder. So some of the very greatest theologians we've ever had in the history of the church were actually taught by their sister.

Johnny Ova: That's amazing. We've had a rough week here, these last seven, ten, fourteen days, and I feel like this is a great conversation for it, because of how beautifully you paint the cross and the challenging perspectives, and the kaleidoscope image is so awesome. I know you've spoken about rejecting Christian nationalism and violence in the name of Jesus. How has your theology of the cross fueled that perspective?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Well, something went wrong in the early fourth century. This is when we end up with a Christian emperor. As the legend goes, Constantine, on the eve of the battle of the Milvian Bridge during a civil war in the Roman Empire, saw a vision of the cross in the sky with the words, in this sign you shall conquer. Of course, conquer means kill. Conquer is a euphemism for kill. So the cross was applied as a kind of talisman on their instruments of war, and lo and behold, Constantine is victorious, and in short order Christianity becomes a state religion of the Roman Empire. I think that was a mistake, but probably an inevitable one. They probably could not have avoided it in the fourth century. But then the cross becomes distorted. If you're saying, in this image you shall kill, and the image is a cross, the cross is reverting to what it was under Rome. It's a symbol of violence and intimidation instead of a symbol of co-suffering love.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: So Christian nationalism, look, it's just nationalism. What is the center of Christian faith? Of course it's the cross: Christ on the cross, arms outstretched in proffered embrace, not holding a sword. We have to decide if we're going to advance by the sword or by the cross, by coercion and force and violence or, I'll say it this way, the kingdom of God is without coercion. We persuade by love, witness, spirit, reason, rhetoric, and if need be martyrdom, but never by force. Christian nationalism is comfortable trying to use the power of the state, the sword, to advance Christianity, and I don't think you can do it. What you end up with is a bastardized state religion that borrows Christian language and image, but its actual spirit is simply the world. It's just the kingdoms of this world, and it loses its actual ethos of being a kingdom of co-suffering love.

Johnny Ova: Amen. I couldn't agree more. And to take it even further, beyond the nationalism part, our ethnic backgrounds, our economic statuses, all of this stems from us defending people who look like us and talk like us, and to do this in the name of Jesus.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Christian nationalism is sometimes a euphemism for Christian racism. It sounds a little more palatable.

Johnny Ova: You're right. What does it mean to say the cross is not just what saves us, but also forms us?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: At the very center of the call to discipleship is Jesus saying, if anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. One of the bad habits we have with atonement theories is that we say the cross is what Jesus does for us, and we stand on the sidelines and applaud him. You go, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Here you are saving my soul. I love it. But then Jesus turns around and says, no, do what I do. Take up your cross and follow me. In the Christian world we're so used to that phrase, but imagine the first hearers of it, when the cross had no religious or spiritual meaning. It was merely a means of Roman execution, and Jesus says if you're going to follow me, you're going to have to be willing to die. This is where we get Dietrich Bonhoeffer's famous line: when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. I'm laughing because you wonder how in the world a religion based on the invitation to come and die actually took over the world, but it did.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: The cross in that sense is voluntary self-denial for the sake of allegiance to Christ. I talk about that in the fifth chapter, The Road of Discipleship, and I draw quite a bit on Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, the story of Franz Jägerstätter.

Johnny Ova: So it's a good chapter? That's great.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Yeah, I think it's good. I was pleased with it. If people haven't seen A Hidden Life, it's the great film director Terrence Malick telling the story of Franz Jägerstätter. I know the Catholic priest who was the consultant for that film, who knew his widow and continues to know his daughters who are still alive, Father John Dear, and he told me that Terrence Malick got it just right. It's filmed on location, and it really captures the remarkable story of this 20th-century martyr. Word of Mouth does a Lenten retreat every year, and last year we showed that film. If you haven't seen it, it's one of the greatest Christian films ever made. In terms of cinematography alone, it's one of the most beautiful films you'll ever see, and it tells the story of this 20th-century Austrian martyr.

Johnny Ova: I've never seen it. I'm about to check that out. I have a few more questions, because I think this is so important, especially with the timing of this week. In your book you say the crucifixion resists final interpretation. Why is mystery so important to the Christian faith, and why is it so often missing?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Well, we're dealing with God. Up until very late in modernity, we were comfortable with mystery, because that's how we knew we were broaching the truly divine. If I can explain God in totality, that's either a pretty small God, or I have not done anything.

Johnny Ova: You must be the man, then.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: So think about this. Probably the peak of contempt for mystery would have been the late 19th and early 20th century. We were so enthralled by our technological advances, the industrial age and all that. What passed for mystery? They talk about Sherlock Holmes mysteries, except with Sherlock Holmes there's no mystery. It's just a riddle to figure out. Old daft Dr. Watson could never figure it out, but Sherlock could, and he'd say, it's elementary, my dear Watson. Then things began to change. I'm talking about pop culture. By the end of the 20th century you start having things like The X-Files and Lost, where there is an acceptance of mystery, and I think that's good for theology and Christian faith.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: What we end up doing is turning faith into cheap certitude, where we have all the answers. Certitude is not only a cheap knockoff of faith, in some ways it's the opposite of faith. It's actually fear-based, and you'll see it in these Bible Answer Man programs, these so-called Christian apologists who want to be able to answer every question. I think Christianity flourishes in a much healthier way when we allow room for mystery and understand that I'm catching glimpses, I'm seeing things, I'm genuinely encountering the living God, but I can never explain all of God. I think that's especially true at the cross.

Johnny Ova: Everybody's so certain that we have 20,000 denominations. The Bible is so clear that nobody can agree on the same five things.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: That's why "I'm a Bible-believing Christian" is an empty signifier. It doesn't mean anything. You just say it and you're in the club. But the Bible is not a source of unity, because it has to be interpreted. I can get ten people who say, I believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture, I'm a Bible-believing Christian, put them in a room, and in ten minutes I'll have them in a fistfight. They're all saying the same things about the Bible, but you run up against the problem that Christian Smith has a term for. I can't think of it right now. It's in his book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture.

Johnny Ova: All good. I understand the point, and you're right. It's amazing how you get all these people reading the same thing and you end up with people killing in the name of it, loving in the name of it, healing in the name of it, interpreting it in different ways. It's a wild thing.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Pervasive interpretive pluralism. That's the term. Pervasive interpretive pluralism, where there isn't a set interpretation. We're not going to agree on all the interpretations, so we have to leave room for mystery.

Johnny Ova: There you go. How can people begin to turn the kaleidoscope, so to say, in their own spiritual lives and broaden their horizons a little bit?

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Exactly that. Get out of the echo chamber. Don't be afraid to read beyond your own maybe narrow dogmatic tradition. I'm not saying it's invalid. I'm saying don't be afraid to read something Catholic or Orthodox or Anglican or Anabaptist. Intentionally find something new to you, and look for the best. You can find the worst, but who are the best Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican theologians out there? Begin to read some of their stuff, or read some more ancient stuff. Reading the church fathers directly can be difficult for some, so maybe find a secondary source. There's a book called The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Wilken. Those sorts of things. Open yourself to the entire body of Christ, in both its historical length and its ecumenical width. And don't feel like you have to fight for a single interpretation or the one you've inherited. You can hold on to that, but there are other things to be said and other voices to be heard.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: If I were to say something about my book that would help with that, it's that I draw on these voices. If you say, I don't even know where to start, read The Wood Between the Worlds and notice all the quotations. Then maybe you notice he keeps quoting this Sergius Bulgakov a lot. Go read one of his books, or whoever it is I quote several times that you like. Go to the original source.

Johnny Ova: Good point. What's one image or angle of the cross that has wrecked you, in the best of ways? It doesn't have to be recent. Maybe a monumental time in your life when you were just blown away.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: When I saw the cross as a public lynching of an innocent man, because it's that too. You have James Cone's very famous, influential book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I'm in St. Joseph, Missouri, 50 miles north of Kansas City, and in the book I talk about a lynching that took place in my city in the 1930s. I went to the place where it happened and prayed and tried to confess the sins of my city. Of course I wasn't alive then, but still, I came to understand that Christ died in solidarity with so many people throughout history who were subjected to unjust deaths, accused of being a witch, falsely accused of something else, the whole community turning against them. Christ died in solidarity with them, and in the end he will redeem them and restore their dignity. That was a new way of looking at the cross that had a profound effect on me.

Johnny Ova: Wow. Awesome. Pastor Zahnd, I can't thank you enough for your time today. How can people get hold of you? Do you have anything coming up you want to promote? Tell us about your home church, if people want to come and visit.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: If you want to find me, you can. My name is unique enough. I don't think there are any other Brian Zahnds out there. Google me and you'll find my Substack. I'm somewhat active on Instagram and a few other places. You'll find all of our sermons on YouTube. You'll also find the cranks who don't like me and say things about me, but it's a rough and tumble world out there. I've got a new book that releases in May. That's a ways off. It's called Unseen Existences: Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things. It's all written and done. We're just going through the publishing process, and it comes out May 19th. It's more or less a book on heaven, on the pilgrimage of the soul toward our true home in the heavenly. I think people will find that interesting.

Johnny Ova: I'm going to look forward to reading that. It sounds great. Again, Pastor Zahnd, thank you for your time. We love, respect and appreciate you and your work so very much here at Sound of Heaven on Long Island, and I can't thank you enough for your time today. God bless.

Pastor Brian Zahnd: Thank you. God bless.