Weird Stuff in the Bible

One of the most mysterious statements Jesus ever said was this claim that He made in three of the Gospels: (Matthew 16:28) “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” He says this in Matthew 16:28, Luke 9:27 and Mark 9:1. And it’s caused a lot of Christians to wonder: what could Jesus have meant by this when 2,00...

There is a parable which I believe is not technically a parable- I believe it’s a true story- called The Rich Man and Lazarus. Jesus tells this story in Luke 16. And there’s a lot of strange things you could point out about this story, but what always sticks out to me is where Lazarus goes when he dies in this story. Luke 16:22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abrah...

Last week, we talked about where demons come from. This week, I want to talk about why they’re still here.  So demons are the spirits of the giants in the Old Testament. Most of them probably lived prior to the flood. But they all died, and when they did, their spirits didn’t leave this planet. God left them right here on the earth to act as spirits of affliction against mankind.  These are demons...

Virtually all the theology books out there tell us: demons are fallen angels. This is the prevailing theory offered by most scholars, pastors and theologians today. In GotQuestions.org 's article titled “What Does the Bible Say about Demons?” The first four words are these: “Demons are fallen angels…”  And I love that website, but this is an area where I would disagree with them. But I bring that...

I Corinthians 11 is one of those really weird passages of Scripture that I would say 90% of Christians just kind of try to ignore.  It’s probably the most out-of-place chapter in the entire New Testament. It feels very counter-cultural, extremely outdated, and not super relevant to anything in modern church practice.  It’s a section that even the most conservative, Biblically faithful modern churc...

We have covered Psalm 82 on the podcast before. It’s the chapter where God holds His Divine Council to account. These are a group of higher-up spiritual beings.  He has placed these principalities in charge of certain sectors of the world, yet they haven’t influenced humanity rightly.  So for those of us who like studying the weird stuff in the Bible, Psalm 82 is familiar territory.  And yet, it h...

If you thought the Book of Enoch’s account of the Watchers who descended to earth was kinda spooky- or if you thought the stories of their bloodthirsty cannibalistic giant children were scary- or if you thought the description of their gloomy dark underworld prison sounded terrifying- just wait until what comes next.  Because Enoch is about to see something that shocks him more than zombie fallen...

I know in these episodes I often talk about wacky spiritual things going on in the unseen realm. Angels and demons and spiritual legal rights and all that kinda stuff. And, of course, the Bible is our best source of information about all that. Today, I want to talk about how we study our Bible . I hope you read your bible. I hope you pay attention to what you’re reading as you’re reading it. And i...

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 tolera...

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 said Matthew 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...

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 s...

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 t...

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...