Weird Stuff in the Bible

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...

So on this podcast, we’ve tackled the mysterious subject of Genesis 6 a few times when “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” That’s actually a direct quotation from that chapter. And it’s come up a lot on this podcast because it’s a podcast about weird stuff in the Bible, and this is probably the weirdest thing. If you don’t u...

There is a lot of controversy around this Book of Enoch: Should Christians read it or not? Some get confused about whether it should be considered scripture- and if it isn’t, whether Christians are allowed to read it. So on the past few episodes, I’ve established that even though it’s not canonical scripture, the authors of the Bible did indeed read it and believe it. Peter did. Jude did. John did...

In Jude 14-16, he quotes from a prophecy of Enoch: It says 14 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 the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have...

I’ll have this debate with people about the rapture of the church, and I will hear this response all the time: the rapture isn’t biblical. I’ll even see it in the comments from today’s episode: the rapture isn’t biblical.  And these days, my response when I hear it is always the same thing. If you want to tell me that the rapture is not biblical, then what happened to Enoch?  Because here’s what G...

Genesis 5 is one of those chapters people tend to read through pretty quickly. It’s a genealogy chapter. It’s a list of names: so and so the son of so and so, so and so begat so and so.  Not only that, it’s a list of names of people from Adam to Noah. Why do we need a genealogy of people from Adam to Noah? The genealogy is gonna reset at Noah anyway. This seems extra.  And yet, if you stop and sme...

We are pressing forward in the book of Jude today. As I’ve said before, Jude is kind of like the Bible’s junk drawer. Everyone has a junk drawer at their house; it’s full of random objects that you just aren’t sure where else to put them, so you throw them all into one drawer and you call it your junk drawer.  That’s how Jude is. It’s like a collection of things that you just aren’t so sure what t...

If you don’t know Balaam’s story, you are behind the 8-ball. Most Christians don’t really know who Balaam is, which is a shame, because he is one of the most-referenced characters in the Bible. Balaam’s name comes up 59 times in Scripture. In comparison, Mary is only mentioned 14 times. And yet, every Christian knows who Mary is. But not many know about Balaam. Balaam is mentioned in the Bible mor...

“I just wanted to look.” That’s probably what Balaam was saying when he went with the princes of Moab. They kept offering him money to go up on this mountain and curse the Israelites.  They wanted him because Balaam was a prophet for hire. Now, he was a real prophet in the sense that he could genuinely hear from God and speak God’s messages. But he was also a very greedy individual in that he woul...

God is not schizophrenic. OK? I just wanna put that out there first. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God does not contradict Himself. And if He looks like He is, the problem is on our end, not His. Amen? OK.  I just feel like I have to establish that because Numbers 22 starts the story of Balaam, and God in this story, Balaam does exactly what God says, and yet God decides to kill hi...

The opening chapters of Genesis contain the first baseball game: In the big inning, Eve stole first, Adam stole second. Cain struck out Abel. Enoch was walked. The Giants and the Angels were rained out. Now, as I hear that joke, it makes me realize: there’s a lot of oddities and weird stuff in the opening chapters of the Bible. And we’re going to be honing in on one of those weird stories today. G...

So guys, I’ve been terrible about responding to my mailbag! My comments and questions and all that kind stuff that you guys have been sending in! So I’m like: before I go any further in the Bible study, I would like to take a week and just respond to your questions.  So we’re going to talk today about UFOs, demons, Iceland, naked Noah, the end of the world, and snakes with legs. Which, being a sna...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to Thee. Jude 9 is one of the strangest commands in the entire Bible to me. Well, let me start with  Jude 8. In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. So it’s telling us that we need to be really careful in how we talk about spiritual things because...

Jude 8 says something really weird:  “Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.” This is one of Jude’s triplets. It’s talking about apostates: people who once said they are Christians, but fell away. And it gives three details about them: They defile the flesh. They reject authority. And they blaspheme the gl...