Weird Stuff in the Bible

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.com You can WATCH this intervi...

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?...

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 group In Matthew 25:4...

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...

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 p...

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 says You ascended on high,     leadin...

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 y...

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 9:4 But 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...

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...

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 Ge...

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 writes For your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise i...

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 t...

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 m...

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 hell the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever Jude 7 says Sodom and Gomorrah  serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire One of the traditional Christian teachings is that hell is (1) eternal, (2) co...

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 say 14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Beho...

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...

Is it possible that dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible itself? Well that idea is a little too far out there for most people to even consider.  Even those who believe in a young earth tend to believe that the dinosaurs died out either before or during the worldwide flood in Genesis, and that’s why all we have left of them today are fossils buried under layers of earth. And if you believe in an ol...

So I’ve been studying the book of Enoch for a series of episodes I’d like to begin next year, and I found something that just can’t wait until 2026. It’s too cool. The Book of Enoch- which is a controversial book- which is not part of the biblical canon- which has a lot of legitimate questions about its authenticity- which was written before Jesus was born- predicts the timing of when the Messiah...

What I like about Matthew’s Gospel is that he connects the Old Testament to the New. He’ll include a verse from the Old Testament and say something like, “As the prophet Jeremiah said…” or “As the prophet Isaiah said…” I appreciate that he cites his sources.  Except for that time that, well, he didn’t. And we have no idea where it came from. It’s in the Christmas story, Matthew chapter 2, where it...

Coming up on today’s edition of Weird Stuff in the Bible, we have an interview with Remnant Radio’s Michael Miller. He’s going to help us answer the question: Can Christians be Possessed by Demons?  Remnant Radio is a podcast with three pastors who teach on spiritual gifts and how to operate in them within the church. What I like about Remnant Radio is that they (1) have first-hand experience in t...

Normally on these episodes I start by introducing a Bible passage that’s bizarre, perplexing, or just plain weird. But we are reaching a milestone of 100 episodes, and I thought I would just take a step back this time and tell you the story of why I’m such a weirdo. Why I like digging into the weird stuff in the Bible. Why I think the weird stuff in the Bible matters. And it all starts with a craz...

I had three listeners send me the same video in a 24-hour span. Which means you have my attention. And they all thought this would be right in line with the podcast here, which means it’s gonna get weird. And what was the video? I’ll play it for you later, but this video claims that in the end times- as Jesus describes them in Luke 21- there will be great signs in the heavens. And that the Greek t...

I was not able to put together a new episode for today, so I am re-sharing a popular episode from the past. Look for a new episode next week that dives into Luke 21 and Jesus' prophecy of the "sky monsters." In today's episode: Something really strange happened when Jesus was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.  This is the night that Jesus was put on trial, and the next day He was nailed...

I have a special episode for you all today, it’s a conversation with an experienced deliverance expert, Beatty Carmichael. He is a Bible teacher and has served as a deliverance minister, and he specializes in exposing the spiritual roots behind conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, addiction and chronic pain. He’s got a simple, step-by-step path to breakthrough from these th...

King Solomon had to be crazy. 300 wives. That’s 300 anniversaries to keep track of, 600 in-laws, and being told to pick your underwear up off the floor 900 times every day. I’ve never met anyone who thought that 300 wives sounded like a good idea. Doesn’t seem very wise. If any of us wanted advice for anything, we probably aren’t asking the guy who got married 300 times.  And yet, we do, because t...