CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
Believe It Or Not, The Bible Is The Most “Borrowed” Book
Stepping past pharaohs, Assyrian gatekeepers and Roman emperors, we trace a living thread that runs from ancient corridors to the questions right in front of us: what really lasts, and how do we keep going when life gets hard? A noisy afternoon at the British Museum becomes a prompt to see Christian faith not as detached myth but as a story rooted in time, language and real people, with hope breaking into ordinary days like a light in midwinter.
We share ten quick “believe it or not” facts that reframe familiar ground: the Bible as the most stolen and most translated book, the shortest verse that shows Christ’s tears, the fish that marked secret meeting places before the cross took centre stage, and why Greek manuscripts carried Aramaic words to the world. We also unpack how the quest to date Easter reshaped the calendar and how monks preserved science and art through the Middle Ages. Along the way we remember that early churches were homes before they were cathedrals, that a cathedral is simply where the bishop’s chair sits, and that scripture is best seen as a portable library written across fifteen centuries.
Then we turn to people who make us say wow and show us what perseverance looks like. Helen Keller learns language by touch and becomes a global voice. Joni Mitchell loses speech after a brain aneurysm and returns to sing. Malala Yousafzai survives a bullet and wins the Nobel Prize while still studying. Viktor Frankl finds meaning in a concentration camp and offers a map for suffering. Bethany Hamilton surfs again months after losing an arm. Nelson Mandela walks from prison to presidency and invites his guards to witness it. Aron Ralston frees himself beneath a boulder and keeps climbing. Their stories converge with Hebrews 12: throw off what weighs you down, run the race with endurance, and fix your eyes on a hope that does not fail. As Advent draws near, we hold history in one hand and courage in the other, grateful for a baby who turns empires on their heads.
Enjoy the journey? Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review telling us which wow story stayed with you.
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Coffee Pods, a podcast of the Acorn Christian Healing Foundation, exploring what's happening in the world through the lens of Christian Healing.
SPEAKER_01:It is so good to be back in front of the camera again with you.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it is in December.
SPEAKER_01:If you're having a good uh a good December, well, it's only December 3rd or what whatever it is when we're recording. You might be listening to this, and it's almost Christmas time, but um we're rapidly bouncing our way through December.
SPEAKER_00:We are, and we've got some things to bounce through together, haven't we?
SPEAKER_01:We are, we're bouncing. I I spent the uh the afternoon yesterday at the British Museum. Talk about a place to really encounter um crazy facts and ancient things, and the the objects there are mind-boggling. You're walking down uh you know in the midst of all these statues of pharaohs and the sarcophagus of the uh of the pharaoh's family, and then you turn the corner and you're in ancient Greece. That's cool. Statues of philosophers, and then I I bumped into a couple of tablets and a case yesterday that I hadn't seen before, which had uh King Nebuchadnezzar's name on them. So you think the Babylonians in the Babylonian captivity, and here's a case with all these things with Nebuchadnezzar, and right next to it was a statue of the Emperor Tiberius. They even had a reliquary, which is a fancy word for basically a little uh object that carries something famous or a saint's bone, um things like that. They have a reliquary there, which probably should be in a church instead of at the British Museum, that has an original thorn from the Crown of Thorns of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00:Really?
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people don't know that. That's in this far corner room in the British Museum. There's actually this amazing little miniature carved wooden box that is so ornate, and inside it there is an original thorn of the crown of thorns in the British Museum. Who would have guessed it?
SPEAKER_00:You wouldn't guess it, would you?
SPEAKER_01:No, but it's fun. I mean, it it also reminds me that the story of Jesus is is actually really embedded in history. So here you are walking down a corridor where you can literally see something from King Cyrus or Ezra or Nehemiah, uh, you know, or there's a thing from Nineveh there. Is that all of these old testament things, and then you kind of roll into um the nearer history, Moses and the pharaohs and things like that. And then suddenly you go, Oh wow. So when Jesus came along, there was all of this history. And then Jesus comes in the middle of it and flips it upside down and gives us the greatest gift we could possibly have for Christmas. So it was a it was nice for me to go there. It's it wasn't quiet though. I don't know if you've ever been to a museum. A museum in London at this time of year is filled with school kids.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, all the end-of-term visit.
SPEAKER_01:It was so loud, but it's wonderful because you have young children really engaging with these objects, yeah. Teachers teaching them, and and I felt like I became the personal photographer of the British Museum because I was by myself. And every time I saw a teacher taking pictures of their students, I was like, Let me take one.
SPEAKER_00:And oh, that's nice.
SPEAKER_01:And so I always said, Okay, we're gonna do a serious one for for your teacher, and then we're gonna do a crazy one, and and the kids will be like, Bah. And so so there'll be all sorts of weird pictures from the British Museum that I that I took yesterday. But it's it's wonderful to see children get excited about seeing an Assyrian uh gate, you know, from ancient Mesopotamia, and you see these statues that that were either side of the walkway to this gate that dates, you know, to 1500 years before Jesus. And I I don't know, I get excited about old stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00:But it's it's there and it's in front of you, and you can it's not on a screen, or you know, you're not being told about it in a classroom.
SPEAKER_01:You're actually Oh, it's so and they have hands-on uh people during the day. Sometimes you have experts, sort of retired historians who have hands-on objects. Yeah, and so the school kids get to touch things and they get to see coins, and they're told about these aren't just ordinary coins, these are really old, and and they get them excited. And some of the children had their little drawing pads, and they were sketching pictures of of some of the uh like the floor mosaics that I mean, you have these mosaics from a thousand years uh before Christ, and they're hanging on the wall, these tile mosaics, and you think this is how the ancients used to put, you know, they didn't have carpet, they put these mosaics down to show that they were wealthy people, and uh, and it's wonderful to see the animals and to see the various um, you know, the ways that they wanted to decorate and show their prominence in their community and and the violence. I mean, there was lots of greed and violence back then, just like today. So, so in some ways, human beings haven't changed a whole lot.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, that sounds like a really good day.
SPEAKER_01:It was. I I think museums are so important. Um, they're just places to remind yourself of who we were, but also who you are. And the National Gallery, you can't beat the National Gallery. The Science Museum is great, and London's filled with these great museums, and they're all free.
SPEAKER_00:It is, man.
SPEAKER_01:And so you just if you need a reset, you know, some people go to church, some people go to museums, and some people like me go to both. Yeah, I go to the museum to pray, and and uh yeah, to the church to kind of think about history. But no, I thought something that would be fun this time of year, fun is always good. Um someone said, What is there? Something like uh Ripley's believe it or not for Christians. I don't know if there is such a thing, but I thought, well, why don't I make a list of 10 things that are like believe it or not? I love that about Christianity. And I put them on our little list. So why don't we alternate and yeah, I love that the believe it or not facts for for the listeners. And my guess is you'll you who are listening, you may know about half of these already, but we'll share them anyway because I'm not that clever to find completely random facts. Maybe maybe next year I'll do do a better. But um, what is the most stolen book in the world? Most stolen book in the world, most stolen book in the world from hotels and bookstores and libraries. It is reported that the Bible is the most stolen book that has ever been published. Can you believe that? I wonder why I should say believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, believe it or not. I like that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, don't steal the Bible, but if you have a Bible and you want to give it to someone, do that. That's it's I always hate that I have like multiple Bibles in my house, and I feel like I should always be getting giving them away. You know, you no one should have tons of Bibles sitting on a shelf.
SPEAKER_00:Good point. Maybe this Christmas you'll give one away.
SPEAKER_01:I I'm gonna do that actually. My god, I have a new godson. I think maybe I'll give him one of my Bibles. That's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, okay. So the second, believe it or not. Um, what do you think the shortest verse in the Bible is? It's just two words. Oh, it simply says, I reckon you all know this, Chris. Jesus wept.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus wept, John 11.
SPEAKER_00:The shortest verse uh in the Bible, and it shows his humanity.
SPEAKER_01:That's a fantastic one. What believe it or not? There you go. What is the largest religion on earth with over 2.4 billion people who identify with this religious faith on the earth? A third of the population of the planet earth call themselves Christians. Believe it or not. Isn't it great? I find that really encouraging that you can go anywhere on the planet and that you're likely to find other Christians because the I mean, that's amazing that one man walking in Galilee now is trusted as Lord by a third of the planet.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. It's amazing. Wow, that yeah, when you think of it like that, okay. So believe it or not, yeah, the cross wasn't always the main Christian symbol. So we see it everywhere, don't we? When we think of Christian symbols, it was actually often a fish, which also has um ixies.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And um that was a secret sign back in the day.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. You could get you could get killed for for following Jesus, so people would just put a fish on their doorpost or beside their people. It was like a secret code that Christians met here if you saw a fish. Yeah, so that's cool. Yeah, what what about this? Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the earliest manuscripts are in Greek.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:So the Bible wasn't first written in Hebrew, it was written in Greek first. Oh believe it or not. Believe it or not. That's right. A lot of people don't realize that, but and that's why ancient Greek is was such an important language, and still when you go to seminary, you you most seminaries still teach Greek, biblical Greek.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, all right. So believe it or not, with this one, Chris. Okay Gregorian calendar that we use today was created to fix Easter.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. So Pope Gregory is still broken because there's still two different dates. Eastern Church and the Western Church still have Easter in different times.
SPEAKER_00:That's so interesting. So it came so so when you say that it's still not fixed.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, explain that a little bit about So Pope Gregory introduced in the 16th century, you know, how to correct the date of Easter. The important thing was when will we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus? And so it was all a mathematical formula. But the problem was the Eastern Church didn't agree with the same formula as the Western Church, which is why if you go to an Orthodox church, you'll often get Easter several weeks beyond when Easter celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Church. So it's not settled, but the truth is the whole calendar of the earth was influenced by the fixing of the Easter Day because the rest of the history is, you know, what is December 1st and December 12th, and and it's the ordering of the calendars, and then you have leap years and things like that. It all has its roots in the search for the correct date of Easter. Believe it or not. The most translated book in history, um, nearly accessible in every tongue on the planet earth, over 3,000 languages. The Bible has been translated, it's the most translated book in history, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that's really impressive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I had I knew somebody who was involved in the recording project. They had like these little digital um digital Bibles that they would take to Africa, yeah, and people could play the Bible um out of this little audio player, and it was like a big thing to have the different languages to make the Bible accessible to people everywhere in the world. I think it's great.
SPEAKER_00:It is great, it is okay. So the earliest gatherings, Christian gatherings, weren't in homes. So uh sorry, they were in homes, not cathedrals.
SPEAKER_01:And I find that interesting because so they didn't have big giant churches and synagogues.
SPEAKER_00:No, I mean when you think of cathet when I think of a cathedral, it makes me think of Christian history straight away. But the but the first Christian church was in a house. I find that amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Believe it or not, it was a house church. Cathedrals just come from the fancy name cathedral, which means chair. And so a cathedral is where the chair of the bishop is. So whenever you see a cathedral, you should always say, Well, where's the chair? And the chair represents the seat of a bishop, and so that's why in cathedrals is like a higher structure that grew from the early churches which had houses. Yeah, suddenly you had these structures, and then the structures had all these symbols and altars and chairs and fancy things. All right, here's another one. Um the Bible is a library, not a single book. It contains 66 books written over by over 40 different authors across 1,500 years. So when people talk about the Bible, they're really actually talking about having a library between two pieces of cardboard. Believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna be saying that in my sleep now.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, all right. The last one of our top ten.
SPEAKER_00:Last one. Um, Christianity helped preserve science and art in the Middle Ages, and this is because monks copied manuscripts, saving the ancient knowledge that might have been lost. So isn't it amazing that the the monasteries kept civilized civilization alive?
SPEAKER_01:Isn't that amazing? That because uh I mean you think of all the things that would be lost, because you have them the writing of scripture, but then they were also writing other things about health and well-being and medicine and uh the early, early ideas of how to fix things and um what happens uh you know when you get sick. And and in the early days it was life and death.
SPEAKER_00:It was, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay, so what about um because someone also said what would make for a fun, lighter um podcast, because we've done some heavy stuff recently, would be to tell you um a few stories about some people that will make you go, wow, and maybe we don't even know who these people are. So I thought it would be fun to kind of tell you about the person and see if if you kind of guess who the person is, yeah. And then hopefully it'll it's I I jokingly wrote things to make you go, wow. And so um, or or you'll be driving down the road, listening to this podcast, and and you'll go, Oh, I didn't know that, or I didn't know they did that. So let's let's let's have a go at that.
SPEAKER_00:You do the first one, make me go wow. I am gonna make you go wow. Here we go. She was born blind and deaf. She learned to communicate through touch and became a world-renowned author and activist. She even wrote 12 books. I mean, just hearing it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Helen Keller.
SPEAKER_00:Helen Keller.
SPEAKER_01:Great Helen Keller.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01:My son was in uh the miracle worker uh in a repertory theater company a few years ago. It's a beautiful stage production of the relationship between Helen and Annie Sullivan, who basically taught her Annie herself had visual problems. And Annie taught Helen how to communicate. I think a lot of people remember the great scene where she says water for the first time. It is a moment on stage where you kind of tear up realizing she's gonna she's gonna break out and she's gonna be able to communicate. So all right, here's my wow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, go on then.
SPEAKER_01:She had a brain aneurysm uh in 2015. It left her unable to walk or talk, and she relearned both. And she was a great singer, songwriter. Um, and she re returned in 2022 again after a brain aneurysm. She had returned to the Newport Folk Festival where she was able to perform. Um, she had to learn how to use her voice again. She had lost her voice after the brain aneurysm. A lot of people don't know that she went through all this, but it was the great Joni Mitchell.
SPEAKER_00:Joni Mitchell.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, she was uh what is it, one of the most influential singer-songwriters of this century. You know, she's written so many cool things, and um gosh, I think maybe on my my Spotify playlist. Um, I didn't do my age that my kids keep saying their age is like 85.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's what mine came out as 85.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, their song taste are like my mother's generation. So she listens to 50s music. Yes, but uh, I think I'm gonna listen to Joni Mitchell today because that she actually writes really cool, deep stuff.
SPEAKER_00:She does.
SPEAKER_01:Now that I know that she survived a brain aneurysm and came back to sing, it makes me like her even more.
SPEAKER_00:Does make you go wow, doesn't it? I do remember growing up when I would go through my mum and dad's CD collection. Um, and I remember a couple of Joni Mitchell albums being in there, and I always liked putting them on, they were good ones.
SPEAKER_01:I think my my kids' generation discovered Joni Mitchell when they watched Love Actually. Oh suddenly the Joni Mitchell song with uh you know, with the betrayal scene where the guy cheats, you know, Alan Rickman cheats on his wife. And poor Emma Thompson. He's like, Oh, come on, dude. And of course, he gives her the Christmas present, is the Joni Mitchell album, and you're like, No, he gave the heart to the lady at work, and you're I'm just so angry. I've always been mad at Alan Rickman. I know he's in heaven now, so but I always was mad at him for betraying his wife, you know, and horrible. It's it was a it's one of those deep vignettes within that uh within that movie.
SPEAKER_00:So um, okay, next one. This is quite a hard one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is this one's deep, and a lot of people probably remember that you know, this this girl, she's yeah, she's a woman, a young woman now.
SPEAKER_00:So she was amazing. Shot in the head by the Taliban at age 15. Yeah, girls' education.
SPEAKER_01:Um, she not only think that would be the end of the story, don't she? Somebody that gets shot shot in the head and then survives, and then those amazing things.
SPEAKER_00:Went on to win the Nobel Priest Prize at 17. She was the youngest noble, how do you say the word? Is it laureate?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and that is Malala Yousafzi. So she's a Pakistani activist for girls' education. I think that's just insanely.
SPEAKER_01:She went to Oxford, she actually studied PPE, philosophy, politics, and ec. At Oxford, I mean she won the Nobel Prize at the age of 17. That's that's kind of unheard of. And I think it's the youngest ever. Um, certainly a fact to make me go, wow. And uh she she wrote a book called I Am Malala and Finding My Way, which uh you know, if you're looking for a Christmas present for somebody, evidently they're I've never read them, but I heard they're extremely profound testimonies.
SPEAKER_00:There's also um a recent podcast with Louis Thoreau and Rolala. Um it's it's a very good listen.
SPEAKER_01:I love Louis. Yeah. Oh, I'll I'll listen to that.
SPEAKER_00:That's yeah, it's a very good listen. Okay, take us a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Here's my wow. My wow, there's a psychiatrist who I've I read some of his work before I knew his story. Um, he actually survived a Nazi concentration camp, and he did it by finding meaning in his suffering, which again is how I bumped into him uh reading about the origins of uh evil in the world. Theodicy is the fancy word for it, but um his book, Man's Search for Meaning, sold over 16 million copies. Wow, and it's one of the most influential psychology books that has ever been written. But I had no idea that the great Victor Frankel found his hope in Auschwitz.
SPEAKER_00:Pretty incredible. That is a wow, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:That is a wow. I'm grateful for he and and Ellie Wiesel is another uh great light who shines from the heart of concentration camps to bless the world. Uh his book, his small book called Night is another inspirational book that you can read to really find hope and meaning and purpose.
SPEAKER_00:Um this next one's a favorite of mine because I remember reading her book when I was a teenager. Um but this young lady she lost her arm in a shark attack at 13 years old.
SPEAKER_01:And she returned never to go to the water again.
SPEAKER_00:I know that put you off, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_01:You would think, wouldn't you? I wouldn't want to be near.
SPEAKER_00:She returned to professional surfing within months, not years, but months, and she won national titles with one arm.
SPEAKER_01:That's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00:Just unbelievable.
SPEAKER_01:That is a huge wow.
SPEAKER_00:It is, and her name is Bethany Hamilton.
SPEAKER_01:Unbelievable. She lost her arm to a shark, yeah, and still how does she surf without being able to put her arms out? Don't you have to have your arms out?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you do. I mean, it's all to do with balance, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01:And um, I read she had to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I remember her writing that she had to figure it out and obviously then learning a new way of getting up and standing with balance, and yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that's cool. That is a wow. That is actually really wow. Um, we've got a couple more. Let's do um oh, here's a good one. Here's a guy who spent 27 years in prison, 27 years, and when he came out of prison, he began preaching reconciliation instead of revenge. He led his country into democracy, and and this is perhaps the biggest wow part of the story. He actually invited his prison guards 27 years, he invited his prison guards to attend his inauguration in South Africa. Now you know who it is because I kind of gave it away, but the great, amazing Nelson Mandela, who I think is just wonderful, and there's a there's a big statue of him in Parliament Square in London, and I I can't help but walk by when I'm heading toward the Winston Churchill statue. His statue is is right there, and it's always kind of a neat thing to walk past it. There's all there's all sorts of Mandela bits around in in London where people honor him. I think on the South Bank there's another Mandela thing. Um but what a what an amazing wow human being uh was Mandela. He he really challenges so many of us at so many levels, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Give us the give us the last one.
SPEAKER_00:The last one. Okay, so this person, it was a man, was trapped by a boulder in a canyon, which sounds just terrifying. Um he then went on to amputate his own arm to be able to survive.
SPEAKER_01:They made this into a movie, didn't they?
SPEAKER_00:They did. Is it I think it was a movie 27 hours, something hours?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Horrible. Yeah, it's it's watching it is worse than reading it, actually. But um, it says that he later climbed mountains and wrote between a rock and a hard place. So he kept adventuring after cutting off his own arm. And so his his real name, I don't know what he's called in the movie, is Aaron Ralston.
SPEAKER_01:That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:Amazing.
SPEAKER_01:There's a common there's a common thread here, I think, in in today's podcast. And and uh and as we draw to a close, I think it would be to say, persevere. Uh there's a story of perseverance and having vision and focus and kind of getting on with it and not wallowing in your misery, but kind of getting up and and finding your way. Uh, there's a verse of scripture that I've always, it's always been a blessing to me in difficult times, and it comes from Hebrews 12. Um, the letter to Hebrews in the 12th chapter at the beginning of the first verse, it says, Therefore, since you're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses who make you go, wow, and who make you say, believe it or not, um, we should throw off the things which easily weigh us down and run with perseverance the race set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. It's a wonderful verse of scripture that just serves as a reminder to look for the wow, to look for the amazing, to have faith in the unbelievable, and to move forward through life with hope and hopefulness, because life is so short. So we started today, me talking about wandering around the British Museum, and I'm thinking my lifetime is just a tiny little, a tiny little speck in all that tat at the British Museum. And uh, what am I gonna do with today? And what am I gonna do with this month and this week and this year? And um, as you and I um try to become imaginative with acorn and the future, um, where does God want acorn to go in the coming months and years? I mean, it's something that we're praying for and we're hoping for lots of surprises and and also lots of predictability.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Oh, I love that. What a great thought, and I appreciate you putting together all these wows, and believe it or not, so I think they're quite a fun thing to do.
SPEAKER_01:I think we should do this quarterly, maybe. Yeah, because it's it's fun, and we'll get back into talking theology and stuff, but yeah, I think sometimes you just, you know, we're heading toward Christmas and the lights are twinkling, and it's kind of fun to think about playing board games with the people you love and and and laughing a little bit and having a few drinks and and celebrating the success and the things that that went right. Yeah, and giving thanks or even out of bad circumstances that good things happen. You know, I have a friend who's I think he's got a grandbaby on the way, and and he wrote and said how excited he was that here just before Christmas, they're getting excited that he's gonna have a son, a grandson.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, he's not another man.
SPEAKER_01:And I think back a few years of some of the hardships that that that family had gone through, and to think how they can now rejoice that um that a baby's about to be born in their family. And then I think, wait a minute, that's the Christian story. Yeah, here we are in Advent, and we're getting excited because a baby's about to be born into the life of the Christian church, and and for all of us. So um, so we give thanks, and and maybe, maybe when we think about the birth of Jesus, we ought to go, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. I love it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so don't forget, as always, to like and please subscribe. Merry Christmas, happy happy.
