Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

So, today I want to answer the question, why the early Christians believed that the Virgin Mary was the new Eve?

What does that mean, first of all, and why did they think this was an important thing to stress?

Now, if this is your first time hearing of this doctrine, I want to lay out some of the early Christian evidence.

One of the earliest witnesses to this is a man by the name of Irenaeus, St. Irenaeus of Lyon.

And now, he was a really important figure for a lot of reasons in the early church.

Amongst other things, in his work against heresies in about the year 180, he's the first to tell us that the four gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Irenaeus is also well-positioned to speak to what early Christians believe.

He is a student of the bishop named Polycarp, who is in turn the student of the apostle John.

So, he is close to the apostles in this way.

You know, he learned from somebody who learned from the apostles.

Well, in against heresies, in the same work in which he tells us for the first time what the four gospels are, he also tells us that there's this comparison between Jesus and Adam, but also between Mary and Eve.

Now, many non-Catholic Christians will readily affirm Christ is the new Adam.

It's right there in the New Testament.

But according to Irenaeus, and as we're going to see others, there's an important connection as well between Mary and Eve.

So, he puts it like this, in against heresies, book three, chapter 22. He says, in accordance with this design, that design being this connection between Jesus and Adam, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord bid unto me according to your word, but Eve was disobedient, for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin.

In other words, you've got a point of similarity, you've got two virgins, and both of them are going to have these encounters, one with the angel Gabriel and one with a fallen angel Satan.

And it leads one of them in the direction of obedience, Mary, and it leads the other in the direction of disobedience with Eve.

So that's an important kind of similarity and then divergence.

And so, Irenaeus says, even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin, having been disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race.

So that is, you've got Eve, who is a virgin who is nevertheless married, because we don't see in Genesis 3 when the fall happens, they haven't had any kids yet.

So she's a married virgin, which is an unusual kind of note.

She becomes both personally disobedient and the cause of death through original sin to move herself into the entire human race.

Well, Irenaeus says, so also did Mary, having a man betrothed and being nevertheless a virgin by yielding obedience become the cause of salvation, both to herself and to the whole human race.

Now, I've done another episode before on the marital status of the Virgin Mary, that legally under Jewish law at the time, she was considered to actually be married.

But this is an important detail because she is a married virgin, just like Eve was a married virgin, and she encounters this angel.

And Irenaeus's point seems to be, this is not a coincidence.

We're supposed to see this major comparison, but also this really significant divergence, that one married virgin chooses God, the other married virgin chooses the devil.

And the result of the choice for the devil is the introduction of sin in the world.

The result of Mary's obedience is the introduction of Christ in the world, that the incarnation happens.

And so Mary becomes, in his words, the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.

Now, this is really important, because think about it.

This is as far back as the evidence of the four Gospels.

You have Christians, in fact, the very same Christians, saying that Mary's the cause of our salvation, which to many Protestant ears sounds heretical.

But if you understand what's being said here, it's completely biblical.

Now, this would be remarkable that, oh, look, evidence of Mary as the new Eve and this important role in salvation is as far back as our knowledge of the four Gospels, but that's not exactly true.

It's actually much older.

St. Justin Martyr, 30 years earlier, in a work called The Dialogue with Trifo, and this is about 150 now, puts it like this.

He says, for Eve, who is a virgin and undefiled, so notice, she's not just a virgin, but a sinless virgin, Eve, this sinless virgin, conceives the word of the serpent, bringing forth disobedience and death.

But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her, the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her.

Now, notice, for this comparison to make sense that he's set up here, if his point is that Eve is a sinless virgin in the garden, what is he saying about Mary, that she's also a sinless virgin?

And then he says, oh, excuse me, then Tertullian, about 40 years later, in about 200, in his work On the Flesh of Christ, says, as Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel, the delinquency, which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced.

In other words, both of them make sort of acts of trust, acts of belief, but one of them believes the devil's lies and brings sin into the world, the other one believes the promises of God and brings in the remedy for that sin.

So that's kind of simplified, kind of writ large, the 20,000 foot view of what it means to say that Mary is the new Eve in one way, shape, or form.

But to unpack that, I want to do a couple things.

First, I want to say, what is this whole new Adam, new Eve thing really all about?

And look at the biblical evidence about Christ as the new Adam.

And then I want to see, well, is it really biblically sound to say that Mary is the new Eve, or are they stretching the biblical evidence too far?

So first, what does it mean to say that Jesus is the new Adam?

We'll start there and kind of build from there by analogy, because this is pretty clear in the New Testament.

First Corinthians 15, St. Paul writes that Christ has indeed been risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who've fallen asleep.

That notion of firstfruits is going to be really important because he's the beginning of a new creation.

That's just one way he's like Adam.

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

So you can see here, there's this comparison between Adam and Christ, and we can talk about it in two ways, that they're like each other in one way, the firstfruits of a new creation.

Both Adam and Christ are that, but they're unlike each other in another way, that in Adam all died because of sin, so in Christ all will be made alive.

And so, St. Paul says, so it is written, the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit.

So the comparison between Adam and Christ is made really explicit.

In calling Jesus the last Adam, he's calling him the new Adam.

That's what that means.

So what does it mean then to call him the new Adam?

Well, we've already seen both of the kind of meanings of that.

First, that in one way, Jesus is, if you will, the anti-Adam.

He doesn't use that language.

I'm adding this language to kind of unpack the meaning of the last Adam.

What does it mean to say Jesus is the anti-Adam?

Well, St. Paul says elsewhere in Romans 5 that because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man.

Much more, will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

So you see how they're opposites.

Adam is a father in death because of the choice to sin.

Christ is a father in life.

They both are bringing something forth, but it's opposite things.

And he says, then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal in life for all men.

See the juxtaposition Paul is making between Jesus and Adam?

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.

Well, who's the one man?

Of course, it's in the one case Adam, in the other case Christ.

So Jesus is being presented as the antidote to Adam in a way, but he's also being presented as, if you will, Adam 2.0. And we see this in 1 Corinthians 15, which we've already looked at.

The context here is on the resurrection of the dead, and Paul is making the point that what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable, meaning our bodies will be transformed and will become new creations.

It doesn't mean that our old bodies are going to be annihilated.

It means they're going to be transformed.

And he says, if there's a physical body, there's also a spiritual body.

Thus it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being.

And then he says, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

That's what we saw already.

But it is not the spiritual which is first, but the physical and then the spiritual.

The first man, that is, Adam, was from the earth, a man of dust.

The second man is from heaven.

So when I say Adam 2.0, it's that first man, second man kind of language, and man here is what the word Adam literally means.

So he's saying first Adam, second Adam, or if you will, Adam 1.0, Adam 2.0. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Let's unpack what that means.

That we already biologically share in the family of Adam.

All human beings share this, and it gives us a certain sense of dignity, but it also means we're part of this family that struggles with original sin.

There's woundedness, and there's corruption, and there's all this stuff.

And in response to those problems, Jesus comes into the world, and he remedies the evils of sin.

He also heals us in our woundedness, and he promises us that we will one day bear the image of the man of heaven, that just as we are now very much in one way in the image of Adam, if you want to put it that way, we will someday share more fully in the image of Christ.

We'll be made like him, just as we are right now made like Adam in some important ways.

So Jesus really is both the remedy to Adam and the Adam of the new creation.

So that's Jesus and Adam.

Let's then see if we can legitimately connect that to Eve and Mary, the way the early Christians seem to want to do that.

To get there, I think we have to dive deep in the biblical story.

So let's start with the story of the fall.

So the first thing to notice, going just Genesis 1 through 3, how does it begin?

It begins in the beginning.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then you have the spelling out of the seven days of creation.

That's the first day, the second day.

And then there's actually six days of creation, even though we say seven days of creation.

It's on day six that God makes man, and we're told, God says, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

And so Genesis 1 verse 27, so God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them.

So you have not just a creation of human beings, but you have the creation of man and woman specifically on the sixth day.

And then we're told that God saw everything that he made, and behold, it was very good.

Before it just said it was good.

Now it says very good.

And then it's declared the sixth day.

So yeah, that's the first kind of Bible trivia thing when people say the seven days of creation.

There's actually six days on the seventh day God rests.

The second thing is, okay, well, so who are the man and woman made on the sixth day?

And it's like, well, easy, it's Adam and Eve.

No, not so fast.

Because in the garden, the woman's name isn't actually Eve.

Rather, her name is woman.

And we see this explicitly in Genesis 2 verse 23. When she's created, Adam looks at her and says, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

We shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

So as you kind of unpack the events of day six of creation with the creation of man and woman, the original name isn't Eve, which means mother, as we're going to see.

It's just woman.

Later on in Genesis 3.20, after the fall, before they're completely expelled from the garden, Adam turns and changes his wife's name from woman to mother.

Now, this is a really bizarre moment for a couple of reasons.

So we're told the man changed his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living.

Why is this bizarre?

Because she's the mother of no one yet, because the first time a child is introduced to the scene is Genesis 4. Also because they're in the middle of being punished.

So you have, obviously, the creation of Adam and Eve or Adam and woman in the garden, and then the serpent tempts them, and they fall, and God curses the man, the woman, and the serpent.

And then in the middle of this, Adam turns to his wife and tells her she's going to have a new name, meaning mother, when she's not a mother yet.

And then God gives them the garments and kicks them out of the garden.

So you have something really fascinating in terms of the timing of it, where we should be saying, why is it right here, in this very odd place, that Eve should go from being called woman to mother?

We'll answer that.

But first, let's just highlight eight literary features.

First, you've got in the beginning, then you've got the six days.

You have two sinless virgins, man and woman, Adam and woman, Adam and Eve.

You also have, of course, the serpent, the one tempting them in the garden.

You have the garden itself.

You have the fruit they take from the tree, the knowledge of good and evil that leads to the introduction of sin in this equation.

And then, of course, you have the tree.

And then finally, you have this weird detail.

The man changes the woman's name from woman to mother.

What does all of this have to do with the story of redemption?

Let's go there next.

So in seeing the connections between Adam and Christ, between Adam and Eve, and Jesus and Mary, a good place to start is John chapter one.

Why?

Because it makes the connection to Genesis really blatant.

And you see this from the first words, in the beginning was the word.

It's not a coincidence that John's gospel starts in the same way Genesis starts.

This is even more obvious, I think, to a Jewish audience, because the word we call Genesis, it's called Bereshit in Hebrew, which just means in the beginning, like the book just means in the beginning.

Now, that's basically what Genesis means, beginnings.

But it's more explicit, like because the Old Testament books are often just named with the first words of the book, well, here, John is beginning at Genesis one, there's the word.

He's making it that explicit that he's doing a callback to Genesis.

What's less obvious is that he then proceeds to tell a story of six days.

So you have in the beginning, then you have a man sent from God, John the Baptist.

So that's day one.

Then in verse 29, we're told the next day, John sees Jesus coming.

That's day two.

Then in verse 35, the next day again, now we're at day three, that's where he says, behold, the Lamb of God.

Then verse 43, the next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee.

Now we're up to day four.

Then turn the page to John chapter two, and it says, on the third day, there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee.

Now we miss this because we number days differently, but on the third day means two days later.

Like when we say Jesus died on Good Friday, and then on the third day, rose again from the dead.

Well, by the way, we count days that would actually be two days later, but they describe it as three days later.

So on the third day means two days later by our counting.

So if we were at day four, we're now at day six.

Now in day six, from in the beginning, what happens on day six?

You have man and woman.

What happens on day six in the new creation John's describing in his gospel?

You have the wedding feast of Cana, and what happens at the wedding feast of Cana?

Jesus, the new Adam, turns to his mother of all people, and he says, woman, what have you to do with me?

So on day six in Genesis, you get the creation of Adam and Eve, Adam names his wife woman.

Here you've got the creation, a new, which is signified also in the wedding feast of Cana by the turning of the water into wine, it's new creation, transformation, elevation, all of that.

And in the midst of it, there's this fascinating dynamic in the Genesis 2 account of wedding feast of Cana about the relationship of Jesus and Mary.

And so even it is very strange the way it's set up.

There's a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the marriage with his disciples.

That's a strange, like it starts with telling you there's a wedding that Mary went to, and Jesus was also there.

It's unlike the way other accounts, you know, usually we're following Jesus in the gospel of John.

But here for a brief moment, we're following Mary, and Jesus is also there.

And then when they leave, in verse 12, it says, after this, he, Jesus, went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brethren and his disciples.

So they seem to show up separately at the wedding feast of Cana and leave together.

Now without making this weird, that's all marital imagery.

That's what happens with the bride and the bridegroom at a wedding.

We don't actually see the bride and bridegroom at all in the wedding feast of Cana.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this detail.

We can kind of guess who they might have been based on, you know, if they're in Cana, they weren't that far away.

It's probably people they knew.

We're never told their names.

We're never told anything about them.

We never hear from them.

Instead, the man and woman who are featured are Jesus and Mary.

And it's in this context, the new Adam says to his mother, woman.

Now that's often interpreted as some kind of like insult.

Oh, woman, what have you to do with me?

Like he's insulting her?

Like, no, no, don't read it through the eyes and ears of modern American English.

Read it in the eyes and ears of Genesis.

And this declaration that this is woman seems a lot more significant.

And so, we can identify the same first three literary characteristics.

So, remember, the eighth that we identified before starts off in the beginning.

Well, John 1 starts off that way.

Then you have the six days.

Well, John 1 has those as well, leading into John 2. You have two sinless virgins, the man, Jesus, and the woman, Mary.

Now some of you are going to dispute the idea that Mary is a sinless virgin.

But on this, it certainly points to at least that's where the text is naturally headed, right?

So, if it matters that the woman is a sinless virgin in Genesis, as the early Christians seemed to think was very important, well, that seems to be implicit in the text here as well.

Now, there are still a bunch of features that we don't see in the text.

There are these other connections to Genesis that John hasn't showed us yet.

You've got the serpent.

We haven't explicitly seen the serpent yet.

You've got the garden.

You've got the fruit.

You've got the tree.

And you've got the name change.

So, let's unpack those.

Where do we see the serpent in the New Testament story?

Well, it's clearly the devil.

This becomes very clear in Revelation chapter 12, where John just tells us that.

You have the garden.

It's not the Garden of Eden here, it's the Garden of Gethsemane, that the new Adam goes into the garden.

And unlike the fruit from the tree, where it's something that Eve gives to Adam, the fruit here is Christ himself, the new Adam.

He's described as the fruit of her womb in Luke chapter 1. And this is something we pray in every Hail Mary, blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

That's the notion.

The fruit here is Christ himself.

And he goes to what?

He goes to the tree of the cross.

Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, curse is everyone who's hung on a tree.

Now, Paul doesn't tell us what that tree is, but it's very clear from context, he's referring here to the cross.

So he's taking that kind of Genesis imagery seemingly for granted.

That's not literally a tree in the same way the tree in Genesis was literally a tree.

It's a tree that's been chopped down and turned into a cross.

But that's the idea.

Now, I kind of glossed over the eighth and final of those literary features, which is that the man changes the woman's name from woman to mother.

Now, that happens in that strange moment in Genesis 3, verse 20. But where do we see that in the New Testament?

Well, John tells us.

On Good Friday at the cross, John 19, verse 26 to 27, Mary's at the foot of the cross, and he sees her and he says, woman, behold your son.

And then he turns to the apostle John and says, behold your mother.

So you have that same woman-to-mother transition that you have in Genesis 3, verse 20. That's what you...

So all that's to say, the early Christians weren't just pulling this out of a hat.

They were reading Scripture and getting these Genesis connections and realizing that if we take these Genesis connections seriously, Mary seems to have a pretty important, pretty significant role to play.

I want to add one more piece there to the puzzle, and I'm going to actually unpack this piece more next week.

In Genesis 3, verse 15, there's the curse put.

Remember, there's the curse on the man, the woman, and the serpent.

The curse on the serpent is to have enmity, like strife or conflict, between him and the woman, between her seed and his.

Now, what makes that weird is that seed, zera in Hebrew, is semen.

It's measured by the man.

But here it's the seed of the woman.

Why is it the seed of the woman?

Because the seed of the woman will be the virgin-born Jesus Christ, who will crush the head of the devil.

And so understood in that way, it makes sense that the seed of the woman is a reference to the virgin birth.

And this is something the early Christians got right away.

Genesis is sometimes called the proto-evangelium, meaning the first gospel, because it's here that as soon as Adam and Eve rebel from God and sin enters the world, the remedy for sin is also foretold, that the virgin will bear a child, and this child will destroy the power of the devil.

So if that's true, if Genesis 3.15 is a prophecy of Jesus Christ and the virgin birth, that means that Genesis 3.15 is also a prophecy about Mary, that the woman there isn't or isn't only Eve.

The woman there is Mary.

And that seems to be the natural reading of this from a Christian perspective, that if you read Genesis 3.15 to be about Jesus, you're also reading it as about Mary.

So that interpretation, that reading, means that there's something we actually have to learn from in all of this.

So what does it mean, then, to say that Mary is the new Eve?

Like, if the early Christians were emphatic about this being true, what should we draw from it?

Well, let's take the lessons we learned from the idea of Jesus as the new Adam.

Jesus as the new Adam means that he's both the anti-Adam and Adam 2.0. So first, what does it mean to say that Mary is the anti-Eve?

Well, this part we already saw, Irenaeus says that Eve was disobedient, right?

She had the choice to obey and chose not to.

She decided to listen to the devil rather than God.

And as a result of that, becomes the cause of death, both to herself and the whole human race.

In contrast, Mary has the choice to obey and chooses to obey.

She yields obedience and becomes the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.

Now, some people are going to be very uncomfortable by that kind of claim.

And I think I'd point out here that if you're okay with saying that Eve is responsible for Adam's sin in some way, obviously not getting rid of his responsibility, Adam is responsible for Adam's sin, but Eve helps bring it about by tempting Adam.

Well, likewise, Mary in her yes brings about Christ's coming into the world.

But not only that, Mary also helps to bring about Jesus's public ministry.

Go back to the wedding feast of Cana.

What does he say to her?

He says, oh, my hour has not yet come.

Why?

Because his hour is the hour of the passions, the hour of his death on the cross.

And that becomes very clear when he describes his hours having come upon his rest.

And so when Jesus says to his mother that his hour hasn't come, he's letting her know if he performs this miracle and begins his public ministry, that he's going to be taken on a separate path for a while from her, because he will no longer just be able to be with her, kind of hang out in this more domestic sort of sphere.

He's going to be in a public ministry, in a public ministry that will lead him to the cross.

And Mary says yes, not just to the incarnation.

She says yes to Jesus's public ministry here.

In John 2, we get the last recorded words of Mary.

Do whatever he tells you.

She tells the servants to listen to Jesus.

And so even though he seemed to be giving her a chance to not move forward, not perform this miracle yet, she clearly is saying, yeah, go for it, do the miracle.

She assumes that he's going to perform the miracle, right, like in her response, do whatever he tells you.

She's presupposing Jesus is going to work some kind of public miracle here.

She understands, to some extent, what this means, that his public ministry will begin.

And so she's a cause of salvation, both in saying yes to the incarnation, but also in saying yes to the public ministry that leads to the cross.

So that's Mary as the anti-Eve.

You also have Mary as Eve 2.0. Well, what does that mean?

Well, remember why Adam changes Eve's name to Eve.

Because she was the mother of all the living.

Now, remember, she wasn't actually yet, but she became the mother of all the living.

So all of those of us who are biologically alive can trace our inheritance to Eve, and she has a certain motherhood over the whole human race.

Well, likewise, Revelation 12, you have this depiction of the mother of God.

And we see her enthroned in heaven, and she gives birth to the one destined to rule the nations, and she's at war with the dragon, who we're told explicitly is a serpent, it's tame one from Genesis 3. And at the end of the chapter, Revelation 12, verse 17, we're told the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus.

So the Eve 2.0 is that Mary has a motherhood just as Eve had a motherhood.

Eve's motherhood is biological.

Mary's motherhood is spiritual.

And we see that in a clear way in John 19, behold, your mother, the beloved disciple is being given Mary as his mother.

Now, that is a fascinating kind of passage to unpack for a lot of reasons.

I'm going to say just a couple words on that in closing, and then we're going to actually get back to Revelation 12, verse 17 next week and go with a different kind of angle with it.

Like, what is this deal about the spiritual warfare between Mary and the devil?

But right now, just focus on her motherhood, that if you keep the commandments of God and you hold the testimony of Jesus Christ, and I hope you do, then Mary is your mom.

Whether you've ever gone to her as your mom or not, she is your mom.

And to make that reality true in your life, to live that reality, however you want to put that, go back to John 19. When John is told that Mary is his mother now, his own biological mother is also there observing the crucifixion.

His mother appears to be a faithful devotee of Jesus Christ.

And so oftentimes when we talk about woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother, we talk about how Jesus is taking care of Mary.

Mary clearly doesn't have other biological kids because they would be taking care of her.

She's a widow.

She is left childless now, and so Jesus is seen after her care by entrusting her to the beloved disciple.

And all of that is true.

It's one of the clearest evidences of Mary's perpetual virginity.

But there's also here this other detail.

You can tell someone, take care of my mom when I'm gone, without saying, my mom is now your mom.

But Jesus takes that extra step and does something where he's not just saying, take care of Mary.

He's saying, Mary is your mother now, even though your mother is here also.

That there is a spiritual motherhood that John receives here at the cross.

And how does he respond to it?

He takes Mary into his home.

And so if you've never taken Mary into your home, if Mary doesn't have a place in your home, if you don't have a household where Mary would be welcome or is welcome or is present, then you haven't lived this part of your birthright to the fullness, that you're a child of her.

If you keep the commandments of God, you bear testimony to Jesus, and so you should take her into your home because you've been given her.

Even if you have great living parents, this is not a threat to the biological parents you may have.

There is a spiritual motherhood being offered to you here.

So that's what it means to say Mary's the new Eve.

She has something in common with Eve in this motherhood.

She has something that's quite distinct from Eve in that she's radically obedient where Eve wasn't. And so hopefully this is a helpful way of thinking about Christianity.

This is, again, as old as you're going to find it in terms of the Christian understanding of the gospel.

This is older than our knowledge of the four gospels.

This is baked in from the very earliest days.

This is how Christians understood these things.

Now, I'm going to leave it there for this week.

But next week, I want to explore another question.

We could put it this way, like, why do we make such a big deal about Mary as Catholics?

And the answer is going to be simply this, that Genesis 3 to Revelation 12 and various points in between depict the spiritual life as a battle between the serpent and the woman.

And this is explicit in Revelation 12, 17, which we just saw, as well as in Genesis 3, verse 15, that there's a war between the devil, not between the devil and God, but more strangely, the biblical evidence says between the devil and the woman.

And so what does that war look like and how do we make sure we're on the woman's team and not on the devil's team?

But all that you're going to have to wait for for next week.

For now, for Shadroth Philipper, I'm Joe Heshmire.

God bless you.