Weird Stuff in the Bible

Jesus tells us to love our enemies. To do good for those who hate you. To pray for those who persecute you. Now, He said all this before they invented the Walmart parking lot, but I think it probably still applies for today.However, when it comes to evil spirits, the Bible has a different game plan: we give them no quarter. When it comes to the devil, we don’t take any half measures. Zero tolerance.They don’t get a redemption arc in the Bible’s story, and we aren’t supposed...

Thor has his hammer. Indiana Jones has his whip. Robin Hood has his bow. Iron Man has…laser hands. I don’t really know what you call them.Anyway- in Matthew 16, Jesus gave us an incredible weapon that we can use to fight our enemies as well. He saidMatthew 16:19“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”And wouldn’t you know, Chri...

Enoch is one of the most mysterious people in the Bible. He appears in Genesis 5 for about 10 seconds, at which point we’re told that he basically disappeared. He was there one minute, gone the next. Like my wife when the pastor tells us to turn and greet the person next to us. Just “poof,” gone. And I’ve spoken about this on the podcast before. Not my wife being an introvert, but about Enoch’s sudden evacuation from this planet. Genesis 5:24Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him...

One of the great honors and treasures of my life is that I actually got to speak with Dr. Michael Heiser in 2015, and I’m going to share that conversation with you today.Not only did I speak with him- this was also the first time I’d ever even heard of the guy. He was not really a big name yet. His epic work The Unseen Realm released that year; that was the book that put him on the map. And at that time, I hosted a radio program at that time where I inter...

Brian Godawa- author of the new release Daniel: Exile in Babylon- comes back to the podcast today to discuss geopolitical spiritual warfare and the infighting within the Divine Council. Brian has a vision of how the spiritual realm operates and brings it to life in his Chronicles of the Watchers series. Check out all the books he’s written at his website: www.godawa.comYou can WATCH this interview here: https://youtu.be/M388kMAG2aUQuestions I ask in this interview:- Tell us about the Chronicles of the Wat...

Well, next week is April 15, which means your taxes are coming due. So if you woke up today and said, “Man, it sure would be great if God consumed the whole world in a fiery destruction that wiped away all life and memory of mankind and the IRS from the earth…” then I have some good news. That’s actually in the works. Now, it probably won’t be next week, but it is gonna happen. And how do I know? Because Peter told me about it. II Peter 3:10 saysBut the day of t...

One of the most famous parables Jesus shared was the one about the sheep and the goats. This refers to a future time, judgment day, the second coming of Christ, when Jesus will separate the righteous from the unrighteous. Those who had served Christ will receive salvation, the rest will have a dark fate. And you’ll probably recognize this quote that Jesus says to that second groupIn Matthew 25:41:Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil...

Explore Enoch 10 and Leviticus 16 with me. The internet was set on fire this week by the tragic passing of Chuck Norris. And it included a revival of Chuck Norris jokes. One said, “When Chuck Norris arrived in heaven, he was the one who had to tell the angels, ‘Fear not.’” Another said, “Chuck Norris didn’t die. Death has had a near-Chuck experience.”Another one: “When Chuck Norris goes into a room, he doesn’t turn the lights on. He turns the dark off.”And I found this great one that said, “...

Do you ever get an answer that just leads to more questions? I think a lot of us have had that experience. Sometimes we’re searching for the answer to some weird thing in the Bible, and when we finally find it, we find ourselves saying, “Well wait, what about this?” Or “this challenges the view I had of spiritual reality or what God is like.”Honestly, our preconceptions of how God operates are probably our biggest hindrance to understanding some parts of the Bible. And if that’s you, don’t feel bad; it was Habakkuk’s...

One of the most head-scratching verses to me in the entire Bible is Ephesians 4:8. In this verse, Paul quotes Psalm 68. And Paul is known to quote various passages from the Old Testament; that’s not weird. What’s weird is that Paul quotes it wrong. As in, he quotes one line saying the exact opposite of what the David originally wrote in this Psalm. Psalm 68 saysYou ascended on high,    leading a host of captives in your train    and receiving gifts among men,But in Ephe...

I’ve mentioned this a few times before: I’m a newspaper guy. Or, I was. I got degrees in journalism and in mass communication when I was in college. And I briefly worked for a few area papers around that time. And then I got into radio so I haven’t really done the reporter thing much since then. But I have taken those newspaper guy skills and applied them to how I study the Bible. You see, when you need to break a story, you have to establish the who, the what, the when, the where...

When Noah stepped off the Ark, one of the first things God said…was weird. God told Noah things are gonna be different in this new world. First of all, you can eat animals now. However, you gotta do it right.Genesis 9:4But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.In other words, drain out all the blood before you consume the animal. And in the previous episode, we talked about why this command was probably given: because the giants of the pre-flood world we...

You get to the Book of Acts, chapter 15, and the church is already having some major problems getting along. You have the Jewish sect of the church; they think it would be appropriate to keep following the Law of Moses from the Old Testament, even though we are now officially in the New Testament era by this point.Then you’ve got the Gentile portion of the church; they think that the Mosaic Law was obsolete by that point, that new believers- especially those from outside the Jewish traditions- were under no obligation to follow it...

We’ve been studying Enoch, and a couple weeks ago we started into the juiciest chapter: Enoch 6.This chapter is about when the Sons of God came down to earth, a story we’ve revisited countless times on the podcast.And Enoch 6:6 contained this detail: “And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon”We actually read about this guy Jared in Genesis 5. He was actually Enoch’s daddy.Genesis 5:18When Jared had lived 162 y...

I watched a lot of School House Rock growing up, which means I learned that knowledge is power.But that doesn’t mean that all knowledge is good. In fact, too much knowledge can be a very very bad thing. The Bible shows us that some knowledge is forbidden.In Romans 16:19 (NKJV), Paul writesFor your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil.What does it me...

And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.You’ve probably heard those words before and thought, “Oh yeah, Genesis 6, the story of the Watchers- AKA the Sons of God- who came down and created the giants with human women.” If you’ve been listening to this...

The Bible has a thing for name changes.Abram gets an upgrade where he becomes Abraham. Simon gets a glow-up, too; Jesus changes his name to Peter, "the Rock." And Jacob goes medieval on an angel and he gets himself rebranded as Israel. And they aren’t the only ones. You get into the book of Revelation and Jesus says this:(Revelation 2:17)To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the...

Forever is a long time. It’s especially a long time if you’re in hell.And so we need to make sure we’ve got this doctrine right.Revelation 14:11 says of the people in hellthe smoke of their torment goes up forever and everJude 7 says Sodom and Gomorrah serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fireOne of the traditional Christian teachings is that hell is (1) eternal, (2) conscious, and (3) torment. This is...

Why should you study the book of Enoch? Does it hold any value to our faith walk? Is it ill-advised to read any collection of prophetic writings when it’s not part of the biblical canon?Well, let’s answer that question with an observation: the book of Jude directly quotes from the book of Enoch.Jude 14-15 say14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all th...

I have studied a fair amount of literature on the world before the flood, but none of it has made that world come alive to me like Brian Godawa’s theological works. He graciously joined me for an interview today to discuss some of his theological foundations; some of the topics discussed include:- Did “gods” walk among men?- The Sons of God and the Divine Council- Michael Heiser’s influence on theology- The Book of Enoch’s credibilityAnd a whole lot more! Welcome to a weird ne...