Weird Stuff in the Bible

I hope you enjoy your bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, your gummy bears, your Hawaiian Pizza, your Shrimp Tacos, your Crab Rangoons, and your Sausage Egg McMuffins. Because all of these foods are forbidden under the Old Testament law.

Thankfully, we don’t live under the Old Testament law!

Although I do still think we should forbid ham and pineapple pizza. I probably would be willing to go back under the Old Testament law to st...

OK so my brother Ben sent me this comment over the summer:

Why did God have a problem with the Tower of Babel but not us going to the moon?

That’s because we never went. That’s Biblical. Put that in your library and smoke it.

Now that’s actually a really smart question Ben. I don’t really know what the library part meant but you got my gears turning with the first part. A lot of us hear the story of the Tower ...

Paul’s thorn in the flesh. This is a mysterious phrase Paul uses that has stumped commentators for centuries. 

In II Corinthians 12:7, Paul writes

7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

Paul experienced some kind of hardship in his life- and what exa...

Paul uses a phrase that I don’t quite know how to interpret, because it’s the only place in the whole Bible that uses this phrase.

II Corinthians 12:2 reads

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven

Wait, who was this guy?

What is the third heaven?

And what happened to the first two?

I mean, some of us know about the Seventh Heaven, if we spent a little too much time watching...

If you'd like to listen to "God and His Prophets: A verse-by-verse study through the Bible’s major and minor prophets," you can find it wherever you find this podcast.

You can also visit this link: https://godandhisprophets.transistor.fm/

God and His Prophets is a verse-by-verse Bible study podcast exploring the mysterious prophets and prophetic texts of the Bible.

Each episode unpacks Scripture, helping you understand the c...

You can WATCH this week's loooooong episode right here: https://youtube.com/live/AFtXdS1qvlg?feature=share

If you’re a Christian who has been saved and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, why do you still struggle against the devil?
Why do we have destructive patterns, addictions and sins in our lives that we just can’t get free of?
What are some of the ways we give the devil legal access to our life without us even re...

Besides this podcast, where else could you go for talks of aliens, spiritual warfare, resurrection, raptures, portals into the spirit realm, and how to cook with poop? 

I’ll tell you where else you could go: the Bible. Because the Bible has all those subjects in it. And we’re going to talk about all of them today.

To start: there is a dark and disturbing story in II Kings 3 where the Israelites are engaged in a battle agains...

Back in the first episode of this show, I laid out several mysteries of the Bible that have always puzzled me. Things like talking donkeys, six-fingered giants, that time Michael got into a fistfight with the devil over the body of Moses… And I’ve done episodes on all these things.

But there’s one mysterious verse for which I never got around to finding an explanation, and that will finally change today.

In I Corinthians 6:3...

Is sin a verb or a noun?

Is it an act you choose, or a power that chooses you?

Is sin something you do, or does it do something to you?

And the answer to all of those questions…is yes. 

Today I’m going to talk about what happens in the spiritual realm when we sin. 

We often focus on sin in the physical realm as something we choose. What we don’t realize is our sins actually create legal rights in the spiritual realm for evil sp...

Ever since the Garden of Eden, we have been in a battle for dominion.

The devil seeks dominion over your eternity, but that’s not all. He wants dominion over your personal life, and he wants dominion over physical space on planet earth.

I don’t think most Christians realize that the devil is out to conquer territory. We often talk about the spiritual battle that we’re all in, and that can cause us to think that the physical ...

Most Christians don’t realize this: not every thought you have is your own thought. Some of them are the thoughts of the Pneumatikos. What are the Pneumatikos? They’re those things Paul warned us about in Ephesians 6:12.

Once of the most famous New Testament verses. You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it.

Ephesians 6:12 says (in the ESV)

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers...

We’re going to be in the book of Ephesians for the next couple of weeks, really centering around this famous verse at the end of the book:

Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Next week, we’ll be looking at what these rulers, au...

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 salvation are ...

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 doesn’t really check all the bo...

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 ability to ...

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 countless books and teachings and e...

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 in the Bible, you’re in the ...

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 ourselves in every day.

Now...

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, I’m on vacation with my family...