Weird Stuff in the Bible

Who outranks who: angels or humans? I mean, angels get to go to heaven and can turn invisible and beat up demons- and FLY- so it sounds like they’re better than people. Like angels are superior to humans. And yet, Hebrews paints a different picture. Chapter 1, verse 14 says Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?  Those who inherit...

Why did Satan tempt Adam and Eve into sin in the Garden of Eden? You’ve probably wondered that before. You’ve probably wondered why Satan felt it was so important to bring sin into this world and to corrupt mankind.  And you’ve probably heard answers like this: because Satan hates God, and humans are made in the image of God, so therefore Satan hates man. And that answer’s fine, I guess, but it do...

Genesis 3:1-2 say Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, Well wait, let’s stop right there. Why wasn’t Eve just running the other way at this point Why was Eve talking to a snake? Did animals used to have the abilit...

We’ve heard a million sermons, bible studies, Sunday school lessons, and more on Genesis 3. And for good reason. This is the chapter that depicts the first sin, the fall of man, the reason we needed Jesus to come and die for our sins.  Genesis 3 is where Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, bring sin into the world, and get kicked out of the paradise of Eden. So for good reason, there are countle...

Let’s begin with where we left off last week. We started with Goliath and traced his origins and ancestral line backwards, all the way back to Genesis 6. In those verses in Genesis 6, we read about how spiritual beings called the Sons of God came down to earth and mated with human women. As I said last time, this is probably the weirdest thing I believe. And if you like hearing about Weird Stuff i...

I am on a bit of a David-and-Goliath kick right now, for three reasons.  One, because I just got back from vacation where I saw an incredible production of David’s life at Sight and Sound theater.  Two, there’s an amazing new show on Amazon called House of David that I just finished watching.  And three, because the story of David and Goliath is a picture of the spiritual battle we all find oursel...

We often talk about HOW to do spiritual warfare.  But we don’t often talk about WHY we do it. WHY do we have to have these struggles with spiritual beings? WHY does God have us fighting on this spiritual battlefield against enemies we can’t even see? WHY does God allow us to be afflicted and tormented by demons or unclean spirits that we are so defenseless against in the physical? Well this week,...

Ephesians is famous for a line in chapter 6 about who we wrestle with in spiritual warfare. We’ve even quoted it several times on this podcast. Verse 12 says For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And man, there’s a lot to unpac...

Does God ever overreact? I think a lot of us would say no, that God always responds to each action in an appropriate and measured way. But what about poor Uzzah here? Uzzah is a guy who is transporting the Ark of the Covenant, it’s being carried by an ox on a cart, and the Ark almost slides off the trailer. Uzzah puts out a hand to stop it from falling, and he gets fried for touching the Ark. II S...

One of our listeners, Alana, always sends in fantastic questions. Recently she sent an email with this, and I can’t believe I haven’t already covered this on the podcast before. She asked about the passage in Judges where Jephthah vowed to sacrifice the first thing that came through his door to meet him after victory in battle. And if you know the story, you know that it actually ends up being his...

We have a website, guys! We have a website. Now I won’t say that I’ve really “made it” in this world until I have a whole subreddit dedicated to my destruction. But in the meantime, we can at least say: we have a website. www.weirdstuffinthebible.com Now maybe you say: why does the podcast need a website? How does a website help a podcast? And that’s what I want to tell you all about today. Becaus...

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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...

Back in January, I received this interesting question from a listener:  “So how is Jesus Jewish but Jewish people do not believe he is the messiah?? This is something I’ve been trying to wrap my head around… Nyssa from Houston Texas” That’s a good question. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. He had all of these prophecies about Himself throughout the OT, which He then fulfilled. He worked all kinds of...

When Balaam was asked to curse Israel, God gave a pretty clear NOPE If you don’t remember the story, King Balak of the Moabites comes to Balaam and says, “I want you to climb up on this mountain above the camp of the Israelites and curse them for me so that they aren’t a threat to my people.” And he offers Balaam a lot of money to do this. And Balaam prays about it repeatedly and begs God for perm...

In case you haven’t noticed as you’re reading your Bible, Jesus could be a bit of a trouble-maker. He was constantly riling up the Pharisees and ultra-religious Jews, He was making the Roman authorities uncomfortable, He was known to flip tables and push buttons and run off His own followers. And He’s been known to step on my toes a few times as well. Jesus also had this tendency to outsmart the s...

You’ve been in those boring staff meetings before, right? The excruciatingly long staff meetings. Staff meetings that make you want to go read some Leviticus, just to live a little. Yes, we’re all familiar with a staff meeting. Did you know that Heaven has staff meetings? In fact, Heaven’s staff meetings are where the affairs of earth are dictated. They involve various spiritual beings who are ass...

Christianity is a monotheistic religion. In fact, if you go to Wikipedia’s page on Christianity, the very first line says, “ Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion.” If you google it, Google will tell you that “Christianity is the largest monotheistic religion in the world.” So obviously, if we know anything about Christianity, we have to know it’s monotheistic. Mono is a prefix that m...

Are you ever reading through your bible and then you come across a word that your mama used to tell you not to say? That might happen especially if you’re reading the King James Version. It has quite a few verses that can have you doing a double-take. But every version of the Bible has some shockingly crude or maybe even vulgar statements that don’t sound like they should be coming out of the Holy...

Some decisions are just too big to be left to chance. There are some decisions in life that are so huge, you wouldn’t dare flip a coin on them. What career you want to have. Who to marry. Which house to buy. Whether to challenge your 6-year-old to a Fortnite rematch after how he destroyed you the last time.  These are weighty matters to consider. And yet, you would actually see people in the Bible...

How they Prove the Past and Foretell Our Future.  Probably my favorite movie of all time is Inception, the 2010 Leonard DiCaprio film with the dreams within dreams within dreams.  The plot of that movie is a tangled web if there ever was one. You have to take it nice and slow, understand things one piece at a time, and once you understand all the smaller parts, you can put it all together and fina...

In Matthew 16, Jesus told us that those who believe in Him become part of the church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against us.  But what exactly are the gates of hell? Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing the idea of spiritual gateways in the Bible. The modern word for these gates or gateways would be “portals,” but that’s not a term that was used back when King Jimmy wrote h...

There was an incredible comment left on my last episode: “God is the biggest sci-fi nerd ever” And I loved it because yeah, I know lately I’ve been talking about portals and gateways and UFOs and someone might wonder if I’ve been watching too much Star Wars instead of reading my Bible. But these concepts didn’t start with science fiction; we’re seeing that they go all the way back to ancient times...

This episode is going to pick up on some threads we left hanging last week in regard to portals into the spiritual realm. To briefly recap, I submitted the idea last week that spiritual beings, such as angels and demons, cannot enter our world or our physical realm wherever and whenever they want to. I believe there are particular locations on planet earth- which we might call “portals” in modern...

This might be an episode you have to listen to twice. Something really caught my eye as I was reading through my Bible a few months ago, and digging into it has revealed a few things to me about the spiritual realm and how spiritual beings such as angels and demons can have access to our lives here on earth. So I was reading about Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28, and how this location where he had his...