Episode 4
Who Was the Bible Written To: Understanding the Audience of the New Testament
Have you ever wondered if the Bible was actually written to you—or just for you? In this episode of Seek Go Create, host Tim Winders unpacks why understanding the original audience and first-century context of the New Testament is crucial for truly grasping its message. Dive into the cultural backdrop, real-life tensions, and urgent challenges faced by early believers, and discover how this perspective can transform your faith and bring scripture to life in powerful new ways. If you’ve ever felt confused or disconnected from what you read in the Bible, this eye-opening episode is one you don’t want to miss.
"If we ignore who the Bible was originally written to, we risk twisting what it actually means." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Reasons To Listen:
- Unlock the Bible’s Original Context: Discover why understanding who the Bible was originally written to in the first century completely changes its meaning—and how misreading this can lead to distorted theology.
- Expose Common Misinterpretations: Learn how applying ancient scriptures directly to modern life—especially politics and culture—can result in confusion, fear, and even push people away from the message of Jesus.
- Rediscover the Kingdom of God: Find out why the “Kingdom of God”—mentioned over a hundred times in the New Testament—is not a side topic, but the central theme often missed in Christian teaching today.
Key Lessons:
- Understanding Biblical Context Is Essential - The Bible was written for us, but not to us. It’s crucial to recognize that the original audience lived in a different time, place, and culture. When we ignore that, we risk misinterpreting or misapplying Scripture.
- Audience Matters More Than You Think - Every book, letter, and passage had a specific audience facing real issues of their day. Learning who these people were and what they were experiencing helps us better understand the true message behind the text.
- Most New Testament Writings Happened Within a Narrow Timeline - The bulk of the New Testament was written between AD 45 and AD 70, a period of massive change and tension for the early followers of Jesus—especially as the Old Covenant faded and the New Covenant took hold.
- Misapplying Scripture Causes Confusion and Harm - Trying to directly apply first-century issues or warnings to modern politics or culture leads to shallow, sometimes damaging theology. Instead, we should seek to understand principles that transcend time, not force-fit ancient texts into today’s headlines.
- The Kingdom of God Is the Core Message - The Kingdom isn’t a side topic—it’s central to Jesus’ teachings and to the mission of the early church. Recognizing this helps us connect all the threads of the New Testament in a powerful, life-giving way.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction: Rethinking the Bible's Audience
00:59 The Problem with Modern Bible Interpretation
02:13 Understanding the First Century Context
03:12 My Journey with Biblical Context
07:30 The Importance of Audience in Interpretation
09:10 Misapplications and Their Consequences
13:53 The Timeline of the New Testament
17:47 The Significance of AD 70
25:08 The Kingdom of God: The Core Message
Resources for Leaders from Tim Winders & SGC:
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Transcript
What if the Bible wasn't written to you but it was written for you?
Speaker:That one question changed everything for me.
Speaker:You see, I always thought the Bible was written to me, and in some areas it is.
Speaker:But it really was written to a specific audience in the first century, and if we
Speaker:ignore who it was originally written to, we risk twisting what it actually means.
Speaker:Hello there.
Speaker:This is Tim Winders.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek Go Create.
Speaker:This is episode four of the series that I've been calling.
Speaker:Why the Bible doesn't make sense yet.
Speaker:And in the other episodes we've been building up to some of the things we're
Speaker:gonna discuss in this episode and in the final episode, which is episode five.
Speaker:And let's go ahead right up front here in state what the problem is.
Speaker:We read the Bible, we, those of us living here, this is recorded in the year 2025.
Speaker:We read the Bible like it was written in 21st Century America.
Speaker:And I emphasize the word America, not just in the Middle East, in the 21st
Speaker:century, or not just in the world, but we actually like to narrow it down as.
Speaker:If it was written to us here in America, and I know some people
Speaker:listen to this episode, these podcasts that go create outside of the United
Speaker:States, but I'm pretty sure you'll probably know what I mean by that.
Speaker:We assume it was written to our culture, our worldview, and our assumptions.
Speaker:And that leads to misunderstanding, misuse, and truthfully, a very shallow
Speaker:and sometimes jaded and warped theology.
Speaker:We kind of have a skewed view of God.
Speaker:We have a skewed view of Jesus Christ.
Speaker:We have a skewed view of religion and it enters into a lot of areas such as our
Speaker:politics and culture and other things.
Speaker:But here's the reality.
Speaker:there's no question about this.
Speaker:The New Testament was written to real people in the first century.
Speaker:Does that make it any less important to us?
Speaker:No, it doesn't, but if we don't understand that, then we can apply it to ourselves.
Speaker:There were different authors, there were different churches,
Speaker:different groups, different regions.
Speaker:All dealing with specific issues and it's very helpful.
Speaker:In fact, it's imperative that we understand as much of those things as we
Speaker:possibly can, especially the issues and the things that they were dealing with
Speaker:if we don't understand them than we can't fully understand what was said to them.
Speaker:I'm gonna repeat that sentence.
Speaker:If we don't truly understand them, we can't fully understand what was said
Speaker:to them, which are these scriptures that we look at in the Bible.
Speaker:Let me kind of go back as we've been doing on these episodes
Speaker:and talk about my journey.
Speaker:I, early on in my study of the Bible, I knew there was some
Speaker:context, but truthfully, I don't know if I ignored it intentionally.
Speaker:I don't know if the people I wa I was listening to or the preachers
Speaker:and teachers that I was around didn't really apply it, but.
Speaker:I never really considered much the context.
Speaker:And I know people throw statements around, like, context is everything
Speaker:and you've gotta have the context.
Speaker:But yet the more you talk to some of those people, they really
Speaker:don't fully grasp the context.
Speaker:And so after years of devotion and study and pulling out scriptures and reading
Speaker:the Bible and maybe reading one book of the Bible and trying to study that.
Speaker:I think I still missed so much like many people do.
Speaker:And I shared before I went, I even went to Bible school for a few years.
Speaker:We spent four hours a day and more outside of our classes studying the
Speaker:Bible, I don't recall ever having a conversation in Bible school about the
Speaker:group of people that certain scriptures, certain books, certain letters, certain
Speaker:epistles, certain gospels were written to.
Speaker:We sort of defined it a little bit, but we didn't really
Speaker:dive deep into understanding.
Speaker:What was going on with that group, with that Ecclesia, with that church
Speaker:group, with that body at the time that letter arrived, at the time
Speaker:that that epistle arrived, so that we knew what was going on with them.
Speaker:When I started studying the first century world, and this has only been
Speaker:in the about the last 12 to 24 months.
Speaker:I started studying things like Josephus, who was a historian.
Speaker:He actually has a Jewish background that spent some time with the Romans
Speaker:and was with them at the time that they destroyed Jerusalem in 80 70.
Speaker:When you start studying some of that and then applying it and laying it over
Speaker:what you've been reading in scripture, things become not really 2D, where you
Speaker:start looking at how it applies to us, but it becomes 3D, four D and beyond
Speaker:multidimensional because you start understanding really what was going on
Speaker:at the time it was written, and what was going on with the audience that
Speaker:it was written to, and that all of a sudden makes things really powerful.
Speaker:And really in my opinion, it gives me much more clarity because you understand
Speaker:the culture, the politics, the religion.
Speaker:it opened my eyes to seeing what all was going on then, and also
Speaker:how we were twisting scriptures if we tried to take a scripture or a
Speaker:group of scriptures and make it fit.
Speaker:Just as an example, our political belief system in 20 20, 25, et cetera.
Speaker:So I saw the tension.
Speaker:I felt the tension that was going on between the Jews and the
Speaker:Gentiles, between Rome and Israel.
Speaker:Between the temple and the kingdom of God.
Speaker:I saw that friction and all of that was what was happening.
Speaker:When Paul would write one of his epistles or John wrote the book of Revelation, or
Speaker:the gospels were written to explain what was going on at the time that Jesus walked
Speaker:and teach, and Jesus walked and talked and shared, during the time of the gospels
Speaker:and the time that he walked the earth.
Speaker:I began to understand why Paul said what he said, why James emphasized action
Speaker:and why Revelation sounded so urgent.
Speaker:And some of the other books of the Bible, especially the New Testament,
Speaker:there was an urgency when they mentioned something about the day of the Lord or
Speaker:the end, or when Christ was coming back.
Speaker:It was much more urgent.
Speaker:During their time than I ever understood or could grasp.
Speaker:And so that's I think why it's so important.
Speaker:Let's look at some key concepts so that we can, understand it.
Speaker:These are some things that it took me a few years to grasp, but
Speaker:it really began helping me when I was reading Audience Matters.
Speaker:It matters who something was written to.
Speaker:All you have to do is consider what if you go out to your neighbor's mailbox
Speaker:and pull their mail out and bring it into your house and start reading it
Speaker:and try to apply it exactly to yourself.
Speaker:Yes, they have certain habits and things like that, but there's thing,
Speaker:there are things that are specific to them that if you understand it better
Speaker:and understand their situation, then it'll help you understand that mail.
Speaker:If you try to read something that was written to someone else, there's a
Speaker:good chance you may misinterpret it.
Speaker:you just have to ask things like, who wrote it?
Speaker:Who were they writing to?
Speaker:What was going on?
Speaker:And if you begin asking those questions, much of it is available.
Speaker:There's historical accounts, there are biblical accounts.
Speaker:You start putting pieces together that are in the Bible that you go, huh.
Speaker:Paul wrote this before.
Speaker:He wrote this, he wrote this after he visited.
Speaker:There were multiple letters that he wrote to this group.
Speaker:What did the first letter say?
Speaker:What did the second letter say?
Speaker:Those things are important and they matter, and they help us when we start
Speaker:attempting to interpret and then pull forward what was written during those
Speaker:times to then see how it applies to us.
Speaker:Misapplications happen whenever you don't have the context.
Speaker:We cannot treat letters written to the church in the first century
Speaker:as national policy in some of our countries and our nations today.
Speaker:Can we use some of the principles to guide us?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Can we take them as something that we must do in our world today?
Speaker:Probably not.
Speaker:I actually believe we're driving people away from the gospel of
Speaker:Jesus Christ by doing that, and I think it is causing some damage.
Speaker:Some people might argue with that, but I really do believe we're
Speaker:causing damage by pulling some of these things out of context when
Speaker:we apply Jewish ceremonial law.
Speaker:To the freedom that we have as Christians.
Speaker:You know, one of the things that most people don't grasp is that that timeframe
Speaker:between let's say 30 ad, when I believe roughly that timeframe, was when Jesus
Speaker:Christ Ministry on Earth was completed.
Speaker:He went to the cross.
Speaker:He died on the cross.
Speaker:He was resurrected.
Speaker:And then shortly after that, the Holy Spirit came as the helper, the completer,
Speaker:and what we know as the Ecclesia or the or the early church began forming at
Speaker:that time, That timeframe up 40 years later that Jesus prophesied about in
Speaker:Matthew 24, the 40 years when Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was destroyed.
Speaker:That period of time is when I believe some people believe, at least a
Speaker:majority of it, all of the New Testament was written during that timeframe.
Speaker:When there was essentially two covenants.
Speaker:The old covenant still existed.
Speaker:It had not ended, but the new covenant.
Speaker:The Messiah Covenant had been put in place because of what happened
Speaker:at the cross and the resurrection, that tension people coming out of the
Speaker:Jewish Church and becoming Christians.
Speaker:That tension existed during that time, and we have to understand that that
Speaker:was a big part of what the audience of the New Testament of the letters.
Speaker:Of the gospels of, of, that's a, a big part of who that was written to.
Speaker:We have to be careful of using prophetic warnings written during that time as
Speaker:personal promises for what's going on in our world today, 2000 plus years, and in
Speaker:fact, I would venture to say that that is a huge, huge mistake that is going
Speaker:on right now where we're attempting to take news stories or headlines from
Speaker:our world today to take things that were being said to the audiences of
Speaker:the first century about events that were about to occur to them, trying to
Speaker:apply them to today is an incredible misuse of scripture and, and there's a
Speaker:lot more that I could say about that.
Speaker:We'll talk more about it in episode five, but I think that's one of
Speaker:the negatives or the drawbacks to taking the scripture out of context
Speaker:and not understanding the audience.
Speaker:Why does this matter?
Speaker:It helps us avoid confusion.
Speaker:Contradiction and fear-based interpretations.
Speaker:I actually kinda went back and forth with someone recently and they were
Speaker:basically saying that this is my words, not exactly theirs, that we have to
Speaker:use some of these items to scare people into the Gospel of Christ, and I don't.
Speaker:Believe that that is not my belief system, not from reading the scriptures.
Speaker:I don't believe we scare people with the world is about to end.
Speaker:You better get your act together now.
Speaker:I. Do believe people need to get their hat together?
Speaker:I think we need to be in right standing with our Heavenly Father.
Speaker:I do believe we need to believe in Christ, but I don't believe we need
Speaker:to scare people necessarily into doing that, and especially scare them by
Speaker:twisting scripture and making them think that some event is about to happen.
Speaker:That already happened 2000 years ago.
Speaker:And when we do that, it honors the original message and it also
Speaker:allows us to use that wisdom and apply it in our world today.
Speaker:It lets the spirit apply it correctly to our lives today instead of
Speaker:twisting something around trying to make something happen and trying to
Speaker:either use fear or something that's incorrect to get something to go on.
Speaker:Let's look at, these are some of the timeline items.
Speaker:That really helped me understand.
Speaker:Now I gotta remind everybody, some of you already know this,
Speaker:but I am an engineer by training.
Speaker:I'm an industrial engineer, so process and order are very important to me.
Speaker:I like looking at A, B, C, D, how things go in order, 1, 2, 3, 4.
Speaker:I do love at times when stories are told where there's flashbacks or,
Speaker:um, this kind of funny, the ultimate.
Speaker:Storytelling device, which is time travel.
Speaker:but I really wanted to begin understanding, we talked about it in
Speaker:a previous episode, the chronology.
Speaker:what was the timing of some of the things that I was reading about?
Speaker:In these scriptures because I think that matters.
Speaker:I think that helps us understand what's going on, and many, I would
Speaker:dare say most don't realize that the New Testament books were not written
Speaker:in the order that we find them in.
Speaker:The earliest letters are towards the end.
Speaker:James was written roughly, we don't know the exact dates, but roughly around
Speaker:80 45, about 15 years after the cross.
Speaker:Galatians was shortly after that.
Speaker:That was 80 49 ish.
Speaker:And then first Thessalonians, another letter of Paul's was around 80, 50 or 51.
Speaker:All of those.
Speaker:Came before any of the gospels were written.
Speaker:The gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke, in all likelihood were not written
Speaker:until the mid to mid fifties to even into the sixties, still before
Speaker:the destruction of the temple and destruction of Jerusalem in 80 70.
Speaker:Which would've been such a significant event, I can almost guarantee you
Speaker:that had that a D 70 event, that destruction occurred, we would've
Speaker:read about it in some of the either the letters or the gospels.
Speaker:I believe that most of the New Testament was.
Speaker:A leading up to that event of 80, 70, it would be similar to some of us reading
Speaker:things today and there being no mention at all about what happened in our country,
Speaker:the United States, around September 11th.
Speaker:Or you know, and these things pale in comparison to what went on in 80 70,
Speaker:but you know, the downfall of 2008 or if you were reading something right
Speaker:now, this is being recorded in 2025 and no one says anything about the.
Speaker:Two to four years event.
Speaker:That was a worldwide pandemic of COVID.
Speaker:It would, it, it would be like, that wouldn't make sense if someone
Speaker:ignored that in writing to certain groups and telling them things.
Speaker:So, that's one of the reasons, in my opinion, we can, we can look at most
Speaker:of these things and say, you know what?
Speaker:They were written prior to that 'cause they would've mentioned it if
Speaker:it would've been written after that.
Speaker:Revelation in John's Gospel.
Speaker:Those things are questionable for many, but in my opinion, and from
Speaker:the studies I've done and from the research done, I believe that those
Speaker:were also written prior to 80 70.
Speaker:Some like to date them later into the nineties of the first century.
Speaker:And truthfully, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker:It doesn't make sense based on what I just said.
Speaker:It doesn't make sense based on some of the historical evidence.
Speaker:And, there's really only one thing that people use to try
Speaker:to say it was written in.
Speaker:And that actually is, is pretty easy looked at in some different ways.
Speaker:So let's just say for example's sake.
Speaker:That all of the New Testament was written between AD 45, which is the
Speaker:book of James, the first one that we believe when that was written and the
Speaker:Gospel of John and also the revelation of John was written prior to 80 70.
Speaker:So everything was written within about a 20 to 23 year period right in there.
Speaker:So all of these items were written in then.
Speaker:So wouldn't it make sense?
Speaker:That if most or all were written during that timeframe, that I, and you would
Speaker:want to learn as much as we could about that so that we understood the audience,
Speaker:we understood what was going on, we understood the mindset and the hopes
Speaker:and the fears and the conflicts and the challenges that they were going through.
Speaker:And that is what I've been doing for the last year or so is attempting
Speaker:to learn as much as I can.
Speaker:That means, like I said before, everything was written during that timeframe,
Speaker:before the destruction of the temple and what we know was now the end of the
Speaker:old covenant because we can say that and, and there's a lot more to this.
Speaker:I'll discuss this more later, but.
Speaker:We know that the old Covenant ended during that timeframe.
Speaker:Jesus prophesied that that's what he did in Matthew 24, and he did say that it
Speaker:would happen within a generation, which a generation typically biblically speaking,
Speaker:and even today is right at 40 years.
Speaker:So it was almost exactly 40 years.
Speaker:If there is no temple, the temple was destroyed in 80 70.
Speaker:That that means there is no sacrifice.
Speaker:And the sacrifice was the foundation of the old covenant.
Speaker:If there's no sacrifice, then that means there's no covenant.
Speaker:The old covenant ended at that time in 80, 70, and fortunately the new
Speaker:covenant had already been in place at the after the resurrection.
Speaker:And so we went from a time of having two covenants, which is when most of
Speaker:the New Testament was written to a time after that where we're now living in it.
Speaker:That is a time of the Messiah Covenant or the New Covenant.
Speaker:That was a pivotal moment, that 80, 70 moment that shaped so much of the New
Speaker:Testament's urgency and its message
Speaker:These books weren't written with hindsight.
Speaker:They were written with foresight, with prophecy warning believers
Speaker:about coming judgment and urging them to live faithfully in a season.
Speaker:Of massive transition specifically many of the believers in Jesus Christ, the Messiah
Speaker:that had come out of the Jewish faith, the Jewish system, the Old Covenant, they
Speaker:were being threatened and much of what was written in the New Testament was an
Speaker:urging to them not to go back, not to go back to the law, to stay faithful.
Speaker:And to stay true because Christ was coming and that judgment would occur.
Speaker:And the Old Testament, the old covenant would end in just a few
Speaker:years, depending on when the, when that scripture was written.
Speaker:If you've ever felt like the Bible was random or out of
Speaker:sequence, this may be why.
Speaker:If you didn't understand that, you're reading it through a structure that hides
Speaker:the real time tension, the urgency, and the transformation that the early church.
Speaker:Really experienced, all you have to do to kind of put this in the proper
Speaker:context is just go to some of the epistles, the ones that Paul wrote.
Speaker:First Corinthians starts.
Speaker:To the Church of God in Corinth.
Speaker:Now, first Corinthians may possibly have been the second letter.
Speaker:This word gets a little bit complicated.
Speaker:First Corinthians may actually have been the second letter that Paul wrote.
Speaker:We don't have the first letter and then we believe that Paul May have written
Speaker:another one after what we call First Corinthians, which was actually a second
Speaker:letter that we do not have record of.
Speaker:But our second Corinthians, which was actually Paul's fourth letter.
Speaker:It's our second Corinthians, so don't get confused by that.
Speaker:We could still, learn a great deal of the message that Paul had to
Speaker:the Church of God in Corinth in Galatians to the churches in Galatia.
Speaker:We know that Romans was specifically written.
Speaker:To a group that Paul had helped reestablish.
Speaker:After the Jews were banned from Rome, they were allowed back in.
Speaker:Paul saw that happening and he sent a group of Christians into Rome to be
Speaker:prepared for when the Jews would be.
Speaker:He believed coming back into the city, which they did.
Speaker:One of the things that's stated in two Timothy two 15 is that we are to
Speaker:correctly handle the word of truth.
Speaker:I believe that what we're talking about here is a foundation for
Speaker:correctly handling the word of truth.
Speaker:This Bible, this scripture, this 66 books that we have that aren't.
Speaker:Written in order, but we need to take them and put them in the order so
Speaker:that we can understand them better.
Speaker:I needed that.
Speaker:Some of you may not.
Speaker:You may be so bright and so educated and so good with scripture.
Speaker:You can take it and it doesn't matter if it's in order for you or not.
Speaker:I needed to put it in proper context to understand that story.
Speaker:Understanding the original audience doesn't make the Bible less relevant.
Speaker:It doesn't take anything away from what it does for us today in our
Speaker:world to understand more who the Bible was written to 2000 years ago.
Speaker:In fact, it makes it more powerful to understand what's been
Speaker:happening the last 2000 years.
Speaker:That's one thing we're gonna talk about in the final episode
Speaker:of this series, is what's been going on for the last 2000 years.
Speaker:It becomes more powerful to us.
Speaker:It becomes more personal to us, and it shows us more of the nature of
Speaker:God and what he's doing to integrate.
Speaker:He is drawing all of us to him so that his kingdom and his family can be.
Speaker:Finalized, fulfilled, created.
Speaker:When you see what it meant to them, to those people, to receive a letter
Speaker:from Paul to receive instructions from John, when you really understand
Speaker:what it was like, to receive that scroll that arrived and it was opened
Speaker:up and it was read to them, then the Bible will come alive to you.
Speaker:It's come alive to me.
Speaker:It'll come alive to you in ways then it never.
Speaker:Has before.
Speaker:That's what's been happening to me lately.
Speaker:That's the journey that I've been on, and if it hasn't been your journey, I'm
Speaker:just hopeful that these messages and these episodes in this season is helping.
Speaker:I've got a project or two I'm working on that may be helpful, that I'll talk
Speaker:possibly about in the next episode, but that's what's been going on with me
Speaker:We are going to explore what ties all of this together, and
Speaker:that is the Kingdom of God.
Speaker:It's not an aside, it's not a side topic, it's not an, oh by the way,
Speaker:that Jesus happened to mention, and it happened to come up in the, in the New
Speaker:Testament a hundred and something times.
Speaker:By the way, I've studied it.
Speaker:I've looked at every scripture.
Speaker:It is not a side topic in many ways.
Speaker:It is the core of Jesus' message and that is the kingdom of God that arrived
Speaker:with him and continued to spread, and it continues to spread today.
Speaker:That was their mission.
Speaker:That was the message of the New Testament, and if you've missed the kingdom, there's
Speaker:a good chance you've probably missed the point next week, episode five.
Speaker:Let's fix that together.
Speaker:See you next week on Seek.
Speaker:Go create.
