Weird Stuff in the Bible

It was a dark and moonless night when King Saul, cloaked in fear and despair, wandered the desolate wilderness of Mount Gilboa. His once-mighty heart had grown heavy, for the Lord had turned silent—no dreams, no prophets, no answers. His enemies, the Philistines, loomed at his doorstep, and without divine guidance, Saul felt utterly forsaken. Desperation drove the king to a forbidden path, one he...

I’ve been doing this podcast for about a year now and I can’t believe I haven’t done an episode about this yet.  Today, we’re going to be talking about territorial spirits. And that phrase refers to the fact that spirits are assigned to certain sectors of the earth.  Many Bible-readers aren’t aware of this little tidbit about how the spiritual realm works, and you may question whether this is in t...

We’re going to continue our foray into demonology today, and we’ll wrap up this story of Jesus and the demoniac of Mark 5.  If you’re not familiar with this story, it’s the guy who lived among the tombs and could break chains with his bare hands.  This is the guy who said “I am Legion, for we are many.” There were potentially thousands of demons within this man. And this is the story that ends wit...

It was the week before Halloween in the fall of 1988 when Bill Scott picked up the phone at his job at a Christian radio station and his life was never the same.  What follows is a story of demonic possession, deliverance, and a long list of what to do and what NOT to do when standing up to the powers of darkness.  I’ve been doing a series on the abilities of demons here on this podcast. Bill join...

Welcome back to Demonology class.  I didn’t have this class in the school of ministry that I attended for three years.  I’ve never heard of a Bible college offering a class in exorcism.  I’ve never heard of a seminary giving a degree in demonology.  And yet, when Jesus gave His disciples a job to do, He said to preach the Kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons....

I remember being a younger Christian and sharing a meal with a couple of older pastors, who got to talking about a Bible story of demon possession. It may have been the one we’re in today, actually.  And one of them just mentioned, quite offhandedly, that of course, demon-possessed people in the Bible were actually just dealing with sickness and mental issues. And the other quickly agreed.  And I...

I said it on the first episode of this podcast: if you’re a modern Christian living in a westernized country, you’re weird. You’re living in a very weird time and weird place in human history.  Because we are taught to accept rational, scientific explanations for things. We’re told that if you can’t find it in a test tube or with a telescope or see it with your own two eyes, then it probably doesn...

The Bible has some hard commandments in it. “Do everything without worrying or complaining.” “Forgive 70x7 times.” “Be content in all circumstances.” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wifi.” “Thou shalt not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who struggles with these.  OK, maybe that last one was kind of a joke. That actually is in the Bible, and...

The raising of Lazarus. The 10 Plagues in Egypt. Walking on Water. Feeding the 5,000.  There are lots of miracle in the stories that are pretty well-known, even by non-Christians. Most of them are done by Jesus, but Moses and Elijah have their fair share as well.  But there’s a miracle in II Kings 6 that’s just a bit harder to categorize. It’s not nearly as dramatic as other miracles; it doesn’t s...

Most of us would agree that God and Satan are about as different as you can get. That they are such polar opposites that it would be virtually impossible to confuse one with the other. That it would be tantamount to heresy to try to compare the two.  And yet, there’s a mystery to the identity of the figure called the “God of this World” in II Corinthians chapter 4.  Verse 4 of that chapter says In...

Last week I was discussing a weird story about Moses in Exodus 4, I came across another pretty odd verse that generates some confusion among Christians: Exodus 4:21. Now, I didn’t want to stop and analyze that verse because it would have taken me on a rabbit trail, and I was already trying to talk about a different weird thing, and I would have had to go down a weird-ception of weird-within-a-weir...

So, a funny thing happened on the way to Egypt after Moses spoke to the burning bush.  Something you have probably never heard about. Even if you have read it before, this is such a bizarre paragraph of Scripture that you probably just read right on through without stopping to dwell on it.  When most of us tell the story of Moses, we start with his origins in the Nile River, how he was born an Isr...

When I first got into ministry, I didn’t know what to do with I Kings 13. I knew God must be trying to communicate something from this story, but I couldn’t figure out what. So many things didn’t line up with my preconceptions.  You have a couple of prophets in this story. Now, in almost every Old Testament story with a prophet of God, they are the good guy. What they do is usually the heroic or b...

I few weeks ago I received one of the strangest questions I had ever had sent to me: could the Apostle John still be alive?  Now, I probably would have shrugged it off except within an hour, I had a second person ask me the same question. Now, I have never heard this question posed before. I had never had this thought cross my mind before. And yet to be asked this question completely out of the bl...

So, 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 to the cross. So there’s a lot going on. it’s a very heavy section of scripture. And there’s one detail that’s only recorded in one of the four Gospels.  Mark 14:51 and 52 say 51 And a young man followed him, with nothing bu...

John 5 has one of the most bizarre verses in the Bible. I’m talking about verse 4 of that chapter. This verse is so bizarre, it doesn’t even appear in a lot of versions of the Bible. Go open up your Bible and check right now; it might just say verse 1, verse 2, verse 3, verse 5. It’s like your Bible forgot to count. But actually, some versions just take verse 4 right out and pretend it isn’t there...

What happened when you got in the water at your baptism? Guess what? You didn’t just get wet.  You made a proclamation of faith- not just to any humans who witnessed your baptism- but a proclamation of faith that reverberated throughout the entire spiritual realm.  And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re in the right place, because this episode today is going to explain the signific...

Jonah chapter 2 is one of the weirdest chapters in the entire Bible.  I mean, think about it: at the end of Jonah 1, he gets swallowed by a giant fish in the Mediterranean Sea. At the beginning of Jonah 3, he’s spat back out on dry land. In between those events, Jonah lifts up this prayer or lament about his situation to heaven, and that’s what chapter 2 consists of. But Jonah 2 has to be the only...

Night of the Living Dead. World War Z. Resident Evil. The Walking Dead. And… Matthew chapter 27.  What do all of these have in common? They all contain zombies.  Now, if you don’t believe me that the Bible has some zombies in it, then explain this verse to me. Matthew 27 is about the crucifixion. Now, don’t worry, I’m not about to claim that Jesus was a zombie when He rose from the dead.  Jesus ha...

Entire books have been written about the thorny theological issue I want to talk about today. James chapter 2. At face value, James 2 seems hard to reconcile with the rest of the New Testament.  That’s because the rest of the New Testament pretty clearly teaches this doctrine of salvation by grace through faith not of works. That’s a direct quote, actually. Ephesians 2:8-9 says For by grace you ha...

Let’s tackle one of the questions today that no Sunday School teacher wants to get: are Christian women supposed to wear “head coverings” according to I Corinthians 11?  Because when you read it very simply and plainly, it certainly feels like they should.  I Corinthians 11:5 says But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head Yikes! We don’t follow that one the...

What if someone came to a pastor and said, “How do I go to heaven?” Should the pastor tell him how to go to heaven? What kind of pastor wouldn’t tell someone who came to him and asked how to go to heaven how to go to heaven? That’s a pastor’s dream: for people to come to him and ask him how to go to heaven. That’s why we go to Bible schools and Bible colleges and spend years interning and preparin...

So I’ve done 25 episodes now about Weird Stuff in the Bible, but I haven’t talked about Jesus too much yet.  And I really need to, for two reasons. One, because everything in the Bible centers around Jesus.  And two, because Jesus is weird.  Now, I don’t mean that to be disrespectful. I just mean that He was odd.  If you don’t think Jesus is weird, I don’t think you know Jesus very well. He’s comp...

The Day of Pentecost had a lot going on; it probably had more going on than you even realized. This is one of the most significant stories in the Bible; it’s the birth of the church, recorded in Acts 2. And it says this in verses 1-4 of that chapter When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing m...

When I was in the book of Enoch a couple episodes ago, something caught my attention. I was reading something from the book of Enoch’s chapter 15. I didn’t read the entire chapter on that episode, but I did read through it as I was doing my research, and there was a very interesting passage there about the spirits of the Nephilim.  Enoch chapter 15 basically makes the claim that when a Nephilim di...