🔥 BRIAN GODAWA: DANIEL, BIBLICAL PROPHECY & THE SUPERNATURAL WORLD OF SCRIPTURE 🔥

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What if the gods of ancient Babylon were not myths
but fallen angels. You know the Bible story of Daniel
of faith Empires cannot break, but you've never experienced it
like this. The Daniel Trilogy by best selling author Brian Goadawa,

(00:21):
part of the Chronicles of the Watchers, a series of
supernatural Biblical novels charting the influence of spiritual warfare on
human history. Jessebel Moses, Judah Maccabee, and now the Daniel Trilogy.
The first novel, Daniel Exile in Babylon, available in ebook,

(00:46):
paperback and audiobook at Amazon dot com. Chronicles of the
Watchers by Brian Goadowa at Amazon dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hi, welcome to the Crossfils Podcast. I've got my partner
crime here, Michael Bashim.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hello, Hi it.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
We're blessed to have not only Michael, but we've got
our awesome, special talented author guest here, Brian Godawa, who
we hadn't spoken to since twenty twenty two, four years.
Goes by very fast. Thank you and welcome. Welcome Brian,
Thank you for having me on.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's great to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So blessed to have you on board. If you don't know.
Brian Goadawa is a best selling author of Bible novels,
Chronicles of the Nephelim, and Provocative Theology. He's an award
winning Hollywood screenwriter, a controversial movie and culture blogger, and
an internationally known teacher on faith, worldviews and storytelling in
Hollywood worldviews. His obsession with God, movies and worldviews results

(01:44):
in theological storytelling that blows your mind while inspiring your soul.
And that's not fiction. So he definitely is an accomplished
screenwriter and author and now podcast. So, Brian, we are
blessed that you have amplified creatively another book in the Bible,
which is the Book of Daniel. And it's funny because

(02:06):
there's Christians out there that don't read the Old Testament
at all, which is really sad. But I think that
through your books it will peauk their interest. I think
these Old Testament books of the Bible need to be
creatively amplified, like The Chosen where you've taken creative license
to really hit home for people.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
So thank you so much for doing that. Mine. It
fleshes out the characters. It's not adding to the Word
of God, it's just just like when people read Look
Get You. There's obviously there's some strong characterization in the Bible,
but by showing the stuff, like getting the fiction in
between that we don't know, but making it work with
what we do know, and like you said, amplifying showing

(02:44):
the rest of their life and how they're human beings
like us. They're not just they're not these perfect characters.
There's only one Jesus, right, the other ones are sinners.
And but just as it's trying to capture what we
all struggle with by showing these heroes of the faith
and seeing how they were human beings like us and
they have weaknesses like us, and in a way by

(03:06):
showing the sort of the the mundane, but the connecting
points between what we do know in the Bible, it
just it fleshes them out just a little bit richer,
and you can give a better idea of them as characters.
So then you go back to the Bible and you
see it with fresh eyes. And that's what a lot
of people have been saying to me, is that it's

(03:27):
actually inspired them to go back to the Word because
they would it would be dry to them, or they
were having a hard time following it when I understand
how that can be. But my goal is, yeah, is
to make it come alive. Not we all know the
Bible is already alive. But you know what I'm saying
is it's like bringing alive this spiritual element, the supernatural element,

(03:50):
and bringing alive the rest of the lives of these
people just gives you more of an inspiration to understand
them and to go back to the tech. And that's
what it's about. It It's not about substituting for the
Bible and not writing scripture. It's about inspiring you to
go back to the Bible. And a lot of people
have Honestly, I'm saying this, I didn't know this would happen.

(04:12):
It surprised me, but a lot of people have written
and just saying yeah, I've gotten excited to go back
and read the Bible more.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Man, that's awesome. So there's a trilogy coming. He's published
part one in audiobook as well as regular book, and
so if you're like me and you're busy and you
want to drive while listening, he's got an amazing audible
audiobook with his voice, which is different from some other
books where you've had a reader. So it is it

(04:40):
wonderful to hear your voice talking through it. And it
really also brings the word of God to life as well.
So yeah, that is an amazing promo. It really elucidates
what the characters and also the spiritual and invisible realm
of the fallen Watchers and the demons and everything.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, like that, if I can say something to you,
those characters on there are accurate, because the benefits of
AI now is you can really get what you want.
And if you go to my website Cadowa dot com
and you find any one of my novels actually, but
if you want to check out Daniel specifically, you go
to the Daniel book and then there's a little red
bar underneath the book that says cast of characters. I

(05:22):
have that for every novel, and I actually cast all
my novels because I just I come from a movie background,
so I gotta do it. And with the benefit of AI,
I'm able to get what I really want in terms
of characters. And if you're a kind of person who
really would like a little bit of help of seeing
those characters in your mind's eye with some actual visuals,

(05:43):
it's a very helpful tool. Some people don't. They just
want to imagine it for themselves. But for those who
really appreciate that kind of a thing, you might want
to check that out.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
And I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
What's the name of the podcast that you're involved with?

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Its called Iron and Myth, and that's four of us,
Judd Burton, Derek Gilbert, Doug Van Dorn and me, and
we talk about we talk about these fringe things and
specifically related to this stuff we're interested in. And in fact,
we know there's a lot of stuff out there, a
lot of podcasts out there talking about this stuff. And
that's fair and it's kind of good because for so
long Christians couldn't talk about the wild stuff in scripture,

(06:19):
the fringe stuff. And even though I think yeah, and
even though I think it goes a little bit too
far with many Christians, I still and I love this
interesting supernatural component in the Bible that we don't necessarily
understand because we don't have the ancient context. But the latest,
for example, we're trying something different, like the latest few

(06:39):
episodes over the last and it's only like once a month,
but we're doing movies. We're talking about usually famous movies,
but movies that have issues like vampires in them or
werewolves or Frankenstein. Right, and but we talk about how
it's related to the Bible, because of course there is
a Frankenstein motif in the Bible. That kind of a thing.

(07:01):
If we've been having a fun time doing that, awesome, amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
I'm just on goda dot com looking at all the
bios for the Book of Daniel, and beautiful ai art
is getting it's definitely you're definitely right on this, or
you're getting it to do what you want it to do.
And when I see technology promoting the word like this
and enticing greater.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
I want my Bible now.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
I'm very happy, very excited to share your work with
the next generation, my children, my niece's nephews, myself as well.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
The Bible is so alive.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
And when we're looking at the story of Daniel, the
history of Daniel really the prophetic Nebu Kidnezzer you wrote here,
He's what happens when Heaven starts writing back. I just
love that, see that writing. I can't wait to see
this play out in a we always say movie, but
it almost looks like the artwork here could just be

(07:57):
a movie. Just animate it and we're almost there too,
so anyway, bravo sir, it's really exciting.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Thanks vision here, yeah, absite, I've written oh thanks. In fact,
I think this is probably my best yet of all
my books. And I've written like eighteen novels now, and
I really a lot of my fans have actually told
me that, but I'm telling you right now. I'm already
working on the part too, and it should be out
before the end of the year. But I even think

(08:24):
it's better than the first one. So I don't know, man,
it's just it's going well but the first one. But
here's the question, why Daniel and why three novels? Right?
I think there's a movie being made on Daniel right now.
And of course he's one of the most beloved characters
right next to David. He's been done a million times.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
Right.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
The way I do him is like you've never seen before,
and yet it's all rooted and of course biblical and
mythological research and history. Yes, And what happened was, like
I said, I've written already eighteen novels or seventeen novels,
and I realized that. So the premise of my series,
Roles of the Watchers is what Daniel is a part of,

(09:03):
and it's a series of novels that's actually integrated with
my first series, Chronicles of the Nepheling. And when I'm
what the whole what these series do is they're kind
of interwoven and they're basically retelling Bible stories that have
some connection to the Watchers, or the Nepheline, or the

(09:25):
refe giants, some of these really wild supernatural components that
I used to think were just anomalies. Yeah, Goliath was
a giant, Okay, fair enough, But to discover them, No,
There's many giants in the Bible that I talked about.
There's three Anachem giants that become very famous during the

(09:45):
days of Joshua. There's five giants that hunt David during
his wars with the Philistines. A lot of people don't
know about that, right, I didn't know about that. Yeah,
And so these are the kind of things that I
found so fascinating. And when I first discovered Michael Heiser,
basically I got to give the credit for opening my

(10:05):
eyes to the unseen realm and particularly as it is
in scripture. And when I saw that, I realized I
saw a theological thread. I thought, I saw a narrative
thread through the Bible that I hadn't seen before. And
this isn't I don't mean this in an esoteric gnostic thing.
It's more, Oh, there's a whole world behind content, world

(10:30):
of context in the ancient mindset that we don't have,
so we don't even recognize some of the references that
are going on in there in the Bible. The more
I studied that, the more I realized there's some really
interesting stories to tell. And now, like I said, I'm
up the eighteen novels already and it's just amazing, and
so I'm retelling stories where that's relevant. It starts out
with Noah Primeval and Enoch Primordial. These are different novels.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
And then I read that one.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, it was one of the very first books, one
of the first books I wrote, and those of the characters.
And now in the new series Watchers, I'm filling out
the stories that I missed in the first series so
you can read them all in chronological order and stuff.
And Daniel is basically the almost the climactic. It's not
quite the end of this Watchers series. But but when
I realize that I've written this whole series, and yet

(11:20):
I had yet to tell the story of the one
where we have one of the most explicit descriptions of
what I call the Watcher paradigm, or what can also
be called the Deuteronomy thirty two worldview. This notion that

(11:41):
at the Tower of Babel Deuronomic thirty two eight through ten,
that talks about how at the Tower Babbel, when God
split the languages, he placed the gentile nations under the
authority of these sons of God, these heavenly beings. And
I think they're fallen, but or they may have been
fallen quickly after that. But the point is God gave

(12:01):
because sinful gentile nations continue to rebel against him at Babel, right,
he placed them under their authority. He said, okay, you
want to worship these beings, that you'll be under their authority,
and Israel will be my I will be the authority
of Israel. And he gave them the territories of the nations.
That's the paradigm. And then idea is that all the
ancient world thought this way, that over the earthly powers

(12:25):
and authorities of kings, nations, peoples, there were spiritual or
territorial powers and if there was a war on earth,
there was a war in heaven, right and so, and
there might be an They conceived of it mostly as
individual authorities, but they could have been could have been
more than one, but they at least had the one right.

(12:47):
And to hear this through the implied passages of the
Bible can make it difficult for some Christians. But in
Daniel ten it's the most explicit of all that you
really can't deny it anymore. And that is he talks
about how Gabriel's talking to Daniel, and he's saying, the prince,

(13:08):
I think it is something like I wrestled with or
I helped Michael helped me wrestle against the Prince of Persia.
And then but then he says, but then soon the
Prince of Greece will come. And most Bible conversation scholars
will tell you the princes are spiritual. That's not the
earthly kings, it's the spiritual princes. But once you understand

(13:31):
what are they doing? So he's Michael, and Michael's the
Prince of Israel, right, so he's considered the sort of
the you know, the watcher over Israel in that sense,
And so what is this describing what is this going on?
If the earthly powers are linked to the heavenly powers,
then the heavenly story line, which we don't get much

(13:52):
of at all, so it's very speculative, but we get
these hints of how and in Daniel ten, where there's
this battle going on Daniel, you know, the whole context
of the entire book is Daniel is in exile and
Israel is going to be put in exile for seventy
years because she rebelled, continued over and over to be

(14:16):
an adulterous wife to Yahweh, She continued to be unfaithful
in her spiritual it's described as a sexual prostitution. God
is really angry. And so he says, because of that,
and there's other things that you didn't keep my Sabbaths
and the jubilees and stuff. But it's a combination of
just this rebelliousness of Israel. He says, finally I've had it.

(14:36):
He's gone back and forth through judges, through kings, right,
and now he just goes, look, you're going to go
to exile for seventy years, and I'm going to destroy
the Temple and the Jerusalem, the Holy City. Just to
I don't know, for you to learn a lesson maybe,
And so that's the and then the idea there is
that when when you start to read Daniel and you

(14:57):
hear the dreams of Nebukanezer and you see this repeat
imagery of these four basic kingdoms, and there are monsters
and beasts coming out, seeing what's the point. The point
is the basic theme, or so I say, one of
the overriding messages of Daniel is that Israel is under
exile now and though they will return after seventy years,

(15:18):
they still Israel will still be unrepentant, will still not
be obedient, and so God is going to place them
under the thumb of four gentile kingdoms and then he
will finally bring Messiah. And those four gentile kingdoms are Babylon,
which is what they were under Nebucannezzer. After Babylon would
come the Medo Persians, and then would come the Greek

(15:42):
Kingdom and then finally the ancient Roman Kingdom. And of
course we know this in history that's exactly what happened,
but imagine this has written six hundred BC, so it's
like this is really fascinating. But the point is that's
what it is, God is saying, Look, you're going to
be the under the depression of gentile kingdoms, but I

(16:02):
will bring the redemption I've always talked about. But it
will come through Messiah. And that's what that is. So
when we get to that Daniel ten, we already know
these kingdoms, right, and he started with Prince of Persia,
Prince of Greece. Oh guess what happened in the days
of Daniel And he lived a long time. He was
there the whole exile, and he was under Cyrus as well.
Cyrus was the one who freed Israel from Babylon and

(16:25):
sent them back and let them build, rebuild the city
and temple. But he's under that and he's seeing these battles.
It just so happens that the Prince of Persia is
that spiritual Prince of Persia is Corlai with Persia who
was over them at the time. And there was a
particular historical incident that the the sort of one of

(16:48):
the one of the one of the rulers under Cyrus
in his kingdom was I think his name was Kem
Bices and he hated the Jews, and so he caused
problems over Israel with them trying to rebuild. It took
him an extra long time to rebuild because of that.
And I think that's what he's referring to, that the
Prince of Persia has come and struggle with Michael, because

(17:10):
Michael's over in Jerusalem. He's the prince over Israel, and
they're reflecting that struggle. But then he says, but then
the Prince of Persia will come, Prince of Greece will come.
In history, we know that after Persia conquered the world,
then in around three hundred or three thirty eight BC,
Alexander the Great, the Greek Macedonian, Greek world conqueror, conquers

(17:34):
the world and overthrows Persia. And that's why he's saying, shortly,
the Prince of Greece will come and he will struggle
with Persia. So this is that that narrative that I'm
referring to that shows whatever as above so below. The
ancient or as Jesus said, as it on earth as

(17:55):
it is in heaven. They had this belief that there's
this linkage between the spiritual pot and the earthly powers
that are reflected. Now, it doesn't have to be exactly
the same but there's a reflection of the same struggles
going on. So that's the that's that potent image and Daniel.
You know, I done all these other novels and I
hadn't done that yet. But there were other reason why

(18:17):
it took me a while, because I struggled with how
to actually tell that story. And that's why I think
it's great. It's great that it's at the end of
my series. I think because we all know there's a
lot of prophecy in Daniel, and there's a lot of
strong opinions, a lot of disagreements about Daniel. And I thought, well,
you know what, I'm ready to do it, and I
think I know how to do it, and I'm really

(18:39):
excited about even the third novel. I haven't written it yet,
but I've outlined it and I've had to put this together.
And but here's the thing. Here's the thing that made
me pause. I thought, Okay, I know there's already going
to be controversy with that, and they'll be fun and
people will love my story even if you don't agree
with all the interpretations. But the thing is, before I
even started, there an elephant in the room. One of

(19:02):
them was the prophecy, because it's like, how am I
gonna make that interesting? Because if you read Daniel, it
is interesting, but like, how do you depict that other
than just reciting what you've already read in the Bible?

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Right?

Speaker 3 (19:11):
And how do I depict my interpretations of that? I
wanted to be entertaining, but yeah, I also want to
be theologically sound and all that stuff. So, like I said,
I got I dealt with that elephant. But the second
elephant in the room was Daniel won when we read
about it. There's the there's Daniel has been attacked by liberals.

(19:32):
He's one of the most attacked books by liberal scholarship
because they actually have this whole argument worked out that
there's no and I kid you not, this is literally
the chain of reasoning. Daniel is so accurate in his
prophecies about what actually happened in history that we do

(19:52):
know of that there's no way that could be real prophecy,
because if it was, then we would have to believe
the God of the Bible. This is how scholars actually think.
So they came up with the idea that and it's
not entirely false because there are some of this in history.
There are examples of this. It's called that acinium x eventu,

(20:13):
which is basically prophecy after the fact. So they claim
that Daniel was not written in the five hundred's BC.
It was written in the one hundreds BC during the
time of the Maccabees. They were lying, they said it
was by Daniel, but they wanted to show pretend that
it was prophecy fulfilled because they already knew the facts, right,
And that's about been the liberal even to this day.

(20:35):
And a lot of conservatives even have bought that conservative scholarship.
I have not, but I also acknowledge that they make
some There are some good there are some valuable things
that some of the scholarship brings up that sometimes conservatives
are unwilling to deal with. And so I had to
wrestle with that myself and find some answers. It's my
books are not about trying to be a pologetics or

(20:57):
anything like that, but I have to have understanding and
a handle on what I'm telling the story about, right,
So that was fun, but that I want to get
through that elephant. So the elephant was if you read
Daniel one, you see he's he's captured in six o.
Five BC in the first deportation, and there's three of
them or four fully through history, so it took time.

(21:19):
But where he was taken by with nobles and rich people,
and we don't know how many, it might have been
just a few dozen, but they were brought in to
be trained to be in a Nebukanezer's council in wise men, right,
and that wise men. The word wise men is an accurate,
pretty accurate translation of what that was. He had a

(21:41):
school of wise men, and so what he did was
he trained them in this school of wise men, which
means he says, you will learn the language and literature
of the Kaldeans. The language and literature of the Kaldeans
is full of Mesopotamian mythology, pagan mythology. This whole wise men,

(22:01):
that school of wise men, that Daniel would ultimately become
the chief of. It's all divination. It's astrology, liver divination,
or exticipacy, which is reading the entrails of animals. There's
all these as well as scribal things. But my struggle

(22:21):
was like, how could Daniel, who we know Daniel is
being devoted in obedience to Torah, he would face death
rather than violate God's law. So how was it that
he could go and become the chief of these diviners
and not engage in that or getting engaged in some
many He just grew and became more holy later. That's

(22:44):
the question you have to ask yourself. And I realized
that's a big issue. That's an issue that will take
a whole story to tell, because out of that he
becomes the young man that we now know that stood
in the lines dead and all that. Right. But the
other factor was I realize I can't just run over it,
just summarize it in a few chapters. It's like this,

(23:04):
I had to go in depth. And I realized, this
is Harry Potter meets God. Because he's going to school
of magic, right, but they call him magicians and stuff, right,
And he's going to school and he's learning and he's
becoming the best. He's like a Harry Potter, right. And
so I thought, okay, that's my way in. That's what
made me interested in telling the story in a way
that people could relate to, because this is just another

(23:27):
Harry Potter meets God. Now I don't try to mimic
Harry Potter, but I'm just saying the scenario feels very familiar.
He gets there, he's young. He's ha him start out
at fifteen years old because they don't know when he
how hold he was, but he's probably that young. Yeah,
I have him grow up in that story. But so
then you've got him with his friends Shadragmishek and Bendigo,

(23:50):
who's actual Jewish names were Hannah and i Azariah and Miche.
We don't know anything about those guys. They just pop
in here and there. So I kind of like the
chosen this movie. I filled out those characters. So he's
got his comradeship and his buddies, and they're dealing with
school bullies. Look, humans have not changed, right, so there's

(24:11):
gonna be bullies back. Then there's gonna be all the
classic stuff of that, that coming of age sort of
school story. Right, And but I also but then the
other there's a few elephants in that room. Because the
other thing was if you read Daniel like, there's no
there's not many women talked about at all, and the
whole book, and there's different theological reasons for that or

(24:33):
cultural reasons negative or positive. It doesn't matter. I wanted
to tell a story and I love telling love stories,
and I'm like, how can I tell a love story
because the other elephant, there's a lot of elephants here,
they're bumping up against each other, and that is that
there is a there's a good argument that Daniel may
have been a eunuch. Yes, if he was a eunuch,

(24:55):
then that doesn't provide for very much of a love story.
And besides, how can I worked it in without really
doing damage to all the stuff we know about him? Right?
I did my research and I actually all look, as
a fiction writer, I just have to find out, hey,
is there a twenty percent chance that he may not
have been? And if they're scholars that can make an argument,

(25:16):
it's like, Okay, that's enough. But I didn't even I
got more than that. I got ninety percent. I'm like,
after I did the research, I realized, oh, and I
know all the arguments for Daniel. The chief eunuch was
the guy who picked them.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
It's very well known that Babylon and other ancient cultures,
when they took the slaves and the servants and put
them in the palace and such, they made them unichs
because they didn't want them their blood to be intermingling,
right and all this, So it's very logical, very very widespread,
and if you can assume it's reasonable, why you would
assume that. But when I looked into it, no, there's

(25:50):
no way. And here's why, because there's a couple of
reasons why. But one of the reasons is the chief
unit guy. That name is actually it just meant chief administrator.
It was one of those names that in the ancient
world it started out as being the head of eunuchs,
but by the time of Daniel, even in the time
of Joseph Potiphar was called the chief eunuch, but he

(26:11):
had a wife, so it's like it was just a term.
And that's the same term that's used of Ashpinaz in Daniel.
So some Bible translations are actually better. They won't say
chief Eunich. They'll say the chief administrator or something like that,
because in truth that's what it was. Now he could
have been a unich for sure, But what I'm saying
is that's a bias that you get when you're reading

(26:33):
the text in the bad English translations. Right, okay, okay, helpful,
And look, there are other components, but let me tell
you the most exciting thing to me. That just sold
me and said, okay, this not only not only am
I on good ground, but I'm confident he probably wasn't
a eunuch was And look there are there's a Bible
passage in Isaiah. It says, some of your sons of

(26:55):
Judah will be brought into the king Nebukanez's court, that
the sons of or whatever and become and become unichs.
So it's like, right there the Bible's prophecy. Yeah, it
said some of it, didn't say all of right, so
it's like it's true that some of them that might
go to the palace would be made unix because they're
close to the king's harem. But here's the thing, Daniel,

(27:16):
in the school of the House of the Tablet or
the Wiseman school that's outside the palace, all those scribes
lived outside the palace, and all the scholars did. And
then I looked and I actually found literal letters. This
is the great thing about modern day internet access. I
literally found letters by Assyrian and Neo Babylonian wise men

(27:38):
who you find out they've they're in a long history
of like I am, I'm sinelicky unini, scribe of son
of such and such scribe, son of such and subscribe.
And so they have long histories of intergenerational scribes. So
they had families, right they lived outside the palace. And lastly,
I literally found an actual text written by uh I think,

(28:01):
a Neo Babylonian wise man, describing the rules some of
the rules of becoming a wise man or scribe in
the school. And it says, and it says, and you
they shall have they shall they'll they shall be like
pure of body, they shall have no leprosy, they shall

(28:23):
have they shall have no what's the word to describe
where it's like, their bodies are without what's the word.
I'm looking for blemish, without blemish, without blemish, thank you.
And so what does that mean. It's like with that
they must have they must not have one testicle or
one arm. And then it says, and they must not
be a eunuch. So it's like, alrighty, right there You've
got the text it says, and it makes sense now

(28:45):
because I always wonder like, why does the king say,
get choose the best noble youths who are without blemish?
And I'm like, why is he asking that? And here
I found it in an actual Babylonian text where they
just describing why because they don't want their wise men
to have blemish. It wouldn't make sense for him to
get someone without blemish and then emasculate them cut off

(29:08):
their private parts. It wouldn't make sense. But not that.
But it's a requirement. So that's all cool stuff. That
was some of the scholarly background that I studied, and
that sets up the the sort of the context of
me writing the novel and the the what I chose
to focus on. Right, So I've got a love story.
But here's the cool thing. He's falling in love with

(29:29):
a young girl back in Jerusalem before he's deported. He's
deported and she's still in Jerusalem, so it's a long distance.
It's like what was that one with Tom Hanks and
Sleepless in Seattle, Like they're a part the whole movie
and they're just trying to get right the other right, Okay,
but Sleepless and Jerusalem and she's trying to get out

(29:52):
of Jerusalem to get to Babylon. He's trying to get
back to her, but of course they can't because everything
restricts them. So that's why you don't hear or see
a about a woman around Daniel at the time, right,
But it's just a It's like I said, it was
probably one of my favorite stories I've ever written. It
really was. I loved it, think people it.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Absolutely and it is definitely one of the best you've written.
And I know that this latest book is your crowding achievement,
and I love it. But then I also love the
books that I've read from you prior, so it's hard
to interment which is my favorite. But I would say
this is definitely one of my favorites of yours. And
I loved that you interwoe a love story in Daniel's

(30:33):
life with the thirteen year old servant girl to his
aristocratic Jewish family, and I just believe I think that
will appeal to a lot of women. I think that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
And by the way, I'm not woke, but honestly, I
think women are going to love it because Ariella ends
up having crucial influence on Jeremiah the Prophet, and I
did it just came about in the course of me
writing this. She's stuck in Jerusalem. She becomes a sort
of a secret helper between the rich guys who support
Jeremiah because everyone hates Jeremiah, right, but they kind of

(31:10):
support them secretly, and she's the go between. She gives
messages and that's how we learn about what's going on
in Jeremiah's story. So I bring Jeremiah the prophet in
this as well, and she ends up becoming an encouragement
to several different people in a very excite, in a
very I wouldn't say empowering way, because it's not feminists
and it's not woke. But my point is that if

(31:31):
you're worried about the how there's all just men in
some of these Bible stories, I am showing how valuable
it is for the women in these men's lives, how
influential they are. Without It doesn't mean you're they're feminists
or anything like that. It just means that's how we
are as humans.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
I also have to make another comment is I did
find it fascinating that you delve into the conversations that
they might have had once Chad direct Meshad Bendigo and
Belta Shazar, who was Daniels. A lot of people just
remember the names that were assigned to them in Babylon

(32:10):
A Shadravy, Shaka, Bendigo, and Belta Shazar, but they don't
remember their Hebrew names. And I thought that was interesting
in that I also thought it was quite interesting that
Daniel and the other three Hebrew boys that they maintained
their solidarity and faithfulness towards Yahweh Jehovah even though they
learned cognitively these different occult type of divining magic secrets

(32:37):
and what have you, And yet they weren't defiled by that.
Where As I think that if a Christian were to
dell headlong into these practices, I think that it probably
would influence them. If I started reading all these different
magic and occult books, I think that there would be
something even though I wouldn't accept it, I think there

(32:58):
would be something spiritual going on me. So it really
shows how untainted they are by the world of Babylon
or the culture of Babylon.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Sure, and it is also.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Interesting that you said you that we would have to
arrive at the conclusion. Does that mean that Daniel became
godly later on or was he godly throughout or and
just happened to do these divindiory things. I think of Joseph,
I remember that Joseph when he was faking out his brothers,
and he says, and they were all looking at each other,

(33:29):
that this master has put us by the order of
our birth. And then Joseph says he was still giving
the persona of an Egyptian. I defined it by my
magic cups, and I wonder if maybe that was something
similar that they did not, even though they were surrounded
by the Babylonians and Egyptians. If these Hebrew boys and

(33:50):
Joseph just it was a cognitive understanding, but not something
that they practiced or that they fully believed in.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
What do you think, right, Yeah, Yeah, That's what I
tried to to to struggle with and conclude, is how
can they be engaged or how can they learn this
stuff without letting get Now, keep in mind, they are
by the will of God. They've been made captives, so
they're forced into this right and God wants them there.

(34:17):
So there's probably a different an extra measure of grace
and empowerment that they probably had, I would suggest, But
even more importantly, like you mentioned today, Yeah, in a way,
Christian apologists do this. Right. Look at Paul Act seventeen.
He's you can tell he's studied the Stoics because he's
quoting Stoic godless Pagan Stoics too. Back to them. You think,

(34:41):
you say, God Zeus lives in every human being, and
you're right. It's like, what what do you mean? God?
Yahweh is the God you think you're seeking in Zeus
and all this right, So there's an ability to Paul
also studied the pagan world that he was in so
that he can bring the Gospel to it. I think
that's what Christian apologists due to. But you're right, you
do have to be careful because different sensibilities could have

(35:03):
more trouble with it, so for sure. But yeah, so
one of the gray areas though, and I won't go
into too much detail because but one of the gray
areas of that was also something I wanted to deal
with because it's connected to something else I'm interested, which
is the astrology. And while the Bible clearly condemns astrology,
we have a different understanding in that astronomy is not

(35:24):
the same as astrology. In the ancient world, there wasn't
that much of a clear distinction. I think there was
with the Hebrews though, because the Hebrews did bring a
lot of distinction between God and creation that was not
in the pagan realms, and you can get that out
of Genesis one. How very different, how very similar it
is to some of their ancient myths, paganists, but how
very different they are. That's the difference is that there's

(35:46):
more of a mystification of nature, right, and God is
the one who's in control of it all type of thing,
not these gods of the sound way. Astrology is one
of the things that, of course, when we say astrology,
people automericaly think of the silly horoscopes that we know
of today, and that's really not what the ancient Babylonian
astrology was about. That came later in the Hellenistic period.

(36:06):
At the time, they did believe that the stars exerted
the stars were divine, and they did exert influence, but
wasn't absolute. It was more like influence, and so they
could if you knew, oh, the moon is an eclipse,
so the king is in danger. But if you engage
in these various rituals you can forestall it. That kind
of thing. But there is something about the natural order

(36:27):
that even the Bible talks about. The heavens are telling
the glory of God, right, and so we see it
as nature shows God as the creator. But yes, there
may have been something more to that. And there's been
Christian researchers and scholars who have done some research into
the astronomy and have made arguments, and this is all
connected to the magi of Jesus' birth. But they've made

(36:51):
several arguments, one being that if you follow, if you
go back into ancient history, that a lot of the
astrological horoscope signs they did change over time. But of
course they're not magical. When you hear the word a horoscope, again,
it's not what we think it is. All that means
is they gave names to various constellations to help remember them,

(37:14):
and so the horoscope was just the various twelve constellations. Specifically,
there's many more than that, but the twelve that follow
the path of the sun right the eclipse around the
earth and stuff. And so ancient men had noticed that regularity.
They and even the Babylonians for a thousand years had

(37:34):
taken their records of it. So they saw the patterns
and they saw the regularity. Now they had an additional
supernatural component that they believed in that the Bible doesn't
agree with. But the Bible does seem to hint at
the notion that God has does the stars in such

(37:57):
a way as to be signs and seasons, And the
word signs isn't just a generic thing of signs for seasons.
The word signs in Genesis is the same word used
of Moses miracles. And then in Romans ten and Paul
talks about how the Gospel right, and there's this belief
that the Gospel is special revelation, but nature is creation

(38:20):
is natural revelation. So there's two different things that speak
of God's glory, but they're not necessarily the same. But
in Romans ten, Paul actually correlates the Gospel with the stars.
He literally quotes Psalm what is it nineteen? I think
it is the heavens are telling the glory of God right,
the stars to tell his handiwork and stuff. And so

(38:42):
some of these Christians have argued that the horoscope constellations
actually are a visual story of the Gospel that God
placed in the heavens at creation before we had even
written language, right, So in other words, it's the visual.
So Paul's talking about where he's like, they have words.

(39:02):
Don't they know there aren't words because they're pictures. And
Virgo is the virgin who has the child, and Leo
the lion is the line of Judah, right, and you
can go around the whole thing, and these guys will
explain how, Yeah, it's a picture of the God. Look,
I'm not saying this is absolute truth. It's interesting speculation.
I bring it into the story because the other component

(39:23):
is Daniel's a lot, talks a lot about the Messiah,
and by the time of the first century, the magi
we're looking for specific king in Israel and they're following
a star. Why would they The magi of that day
were astrologers and is the same word that was used

(39:45):
of the magi in David's day under the Persians. So
what that means is is this man Daniel, who had
massive influence because he became the head of it all
for seventy or more years. His influence lasted for five
hundred years until the first century. Now we don't know,
We don't know specifically other than his messianic prophecies, but

(40:08):
there's nothing about stars and the Messiah. So there must
have been something that he incorporated that these magi were
following because it was it led to Jesus the Messiah, right,
And so this is something that I wanted to wrestle
with him, say how could this have come out without
being astrology but being God's astronomical message in the stars. Right.

(40:31):
And so yes, I have Daniel's friends. One of them again,
they're like high school students. So Daniel is like the achiever,
the type a achiever, and he's a little he's a
little proud about it too. And then he got Michelle,
and I made Michelle a jack, so he went he's
the military guy. He's a scribe, but he really is
better at the physical things. And then I've got the

(40:53):
nerd as Ariah and then his brother Hannah and Ayah
is autistic and this is the ring that was before
they understood it. But the point is that allows him
to be able to see these astronomical connections and remember these,
because that's what a lot of times the people on
the spectrum can see connections between things that we don't see.

(41:15):
And so that's what enables him to start to get
into this understanding of astronomy. And again it's not the astrology,
but that's where I that's the storyline that I have
of those three of those three young men's oh so exciting.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Wow, this is really looping a lot of I guess
in our case, decades for those of us that have
been exposed to the French Christian movement, but the whole
They called it the Cult of Daniel. But who were
the wise man that found Jesus and knew all this stuff?
Most people haven't. You might if you haven't watched it yet.
I'm sure the audience would like it. There's a movie

(41:49):
called The Nativity Story and it came out right after
Lord of the Rings and early two thousands, and it's
so good. You cry every time you watch it, and
it's all the heck chaos leading up to Jesus' birth.
But then it perfectly portrays the magi coming in and
you're like, word, they learned all this It was the
Cult of Daniel. Not that it was a cult, but

(42:11):
they had this information as you're describing in your novel.
It's so good, and it's not astrology. It was literally
it must have been somehow transferred to the East. We
don't know all those details. That could be maybe another book,
or maybe you won't add that to some further installment.
But Leick to ask you about the Chronicles of the
Watchers series and kind of the spiritual warfare aspect, because

(42:35):
I know that a lot of people listening are interested
in spiritual warfare these days. Demons and they're learning about
casting stuff off of them. So how does that come
to play in the novel regarding the as you're describing
Daniel ten, the Prince of Persia and Greece, please, sir,
and thank.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
You so much. Yeah, that's a yeah, that's a big topic. Now.
I too read the Frank novels and I love them.
In the in its day, I enjoyed them and stuff,
But to be honest, I'm not as much in the case.
I believe that demons exist and possession is real and
all that, but I don't tend to think in terms

(43:13):
of there's a demon of lust and a demon of
greed and all this kind of stuff. I believe there's there,
there could be demonic influence and oppression and all that
kind of stuff, but I also think that there's a
bigger there's a bigger story going on in the Bible
than just the demons. And the bigger story is this

(43:35):
thing that I said, which is I call it the
watcher paradigm. And the idea is that if you read
Psalmity two very clearly that God has given authority to
supernatural beings. He calls them gods. The Bible says this, folks, sorry,
this isn't polytheism, and it's not Mormonism, but it is

(43:55):
in the Bible. And so you have a council odds
around them. The word elohem is means God's and it's
not We've added meaning to it that isn't there in
the Bible. And it's basically means beings in the spiritual realm.
It's more about the realm in which they exist than
their essence. Because angels are called elohem, gods, God is

(44:17):
called eloheem of Elohem. Right, there's a humans dead, Samuel's
called an eloheim, and these watchers can be called eloheim.
So it's a very there's a whole lot to talk
about that.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
But p.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Sow maybe two talks about how God hands over the authority.
They're supposed to rule over the nations, the gentiles, but
they don't. They're godless. They they don't rule according to
God's law, right obviously, and and so then he says,
I will punish you, and I will. You will. Even
though you're immortal, you will die. Have I not said
you are gods? You never less? You will die like men.

(44:51):
So you're going to You're going to be judged. And
so that's the spiritual warfare component. That is much bigger
than just demons the possession, and that's on a higher level.
And so that was that's the storyline. I tend to
focus and I do have demonic stuff, but the thing
about demons is and that's a whole nother that's a

(45:13):
whole storyline. I'm not charismatic. I'm not involved in that
deliverance ministries or anything like that, So I'm not the
one to talk to about how you think it applies
to the day. But I do believe in the Enochian
paradigm that demons are the spirits of the dead nepheline.

(45:33):
Now that speculation. The Bible doesn't say where evil spirits
come from. However, Paul does talk about things like he says, like,
when you're sacrificing to idolsies, they're sacrificing to demons. Right,
It's like, yes, sir, these gods that they're sacrificing to
are demons. In DUDINEMI thirty two, it says the gods

(45:55):
that of Canaan that the Israelites worshiped were demons. Now
it's a messy term, and there's a lot of differentiation
that needs to take place. But I say they're demonic,
because the word demon can be generic. But the watcher
beings are these authorities, and they're the evil authorities, and

(46:16):
they're the ones who go throughout the whole bittle, and
they're the lords over the nations. And then when Messiah
comes Jesus, they inherit the territory and generomy through two.
God says, I'm allotting these gentile nations to you as
your territories, but I will keep Israel and Canaan as
my territory, and that kind of thing. But then it says,
and even some many two. And when Messiah comes and
resurrecs for the dead, he will what does he do?

(46:39):
He inherits the nations. He disinherits all the nations from
those watcher gods, and he inherits them as Messiah. And
that's why these God, that's why people from every tribe
and nation can now come into the King of God,
because they've been freed from that bondage. And so that's
why I personally don't think there's an application of watchers

(47:03):
now because if they were, I know so people believe that,
and there's a debate there. But I believe that Jesus
is the king of all the nations, and there's no
other there's no other rulers over nations but Jesus. That
doesn't mean there are demons, and we still have to
wrestle with them. But the demon thing is really interesting
because that's not just arbitrary evil spirits. If you understand,

(47:23):
if you take the Enochian paradigm, which the Book of Enoch,
it's not scripture, but the Bible respects it and quotes
from it. So I respect it. If it's true, then
that they are I believe they are. It makes sense
of why they're there, because otherwise you just like there's
there's maybe one demon possession in the Old Testament with Saul,

(47:43):
and there's there's demonic reality, but there's no demon possession.
All of a sudden Messiah comes and there's all this possession.
What's going on? Right? Look, if their spirits of the
dead nephylene, you go all the way back to the flood.
The Nephelene were killed in the flood. They are the paradigm,
and then they come back in the Promised Land. Right
numbers thirteen. We saw the Anakem who come from the Nephelein,

(48:04):
and God says, wipe those out. Joshua has to wipe
out all the Anakeem who are Nepheline. And then there's
all these giant tribes Refueme, Nepheline, Zam Zumim. They're all
come back to the Nepheline. So they are a reflection.
They're connected to those evil beings before the flood. And
that's why God purges the Holy land of the Anakin

(48:27):
in Joshua, that's literally the Holy Wars. He didn't say
to wipe out every person, just of these specific tribes
that were tainted with these Nepheline beings in them. Right, Okay,
So but here's the thing. At the end of Joshua,
I think it's Joshua eleven or something like that, it
says Joshua wiped out all the Anakeem, but he left

(48:48):
some in Philistia, Gaza, Gath and Eshtahle Wow, and guess
where Goliath comes from. Gath and so by the time
of David. Now the Messiah King, David rises up. He
finishes the job because he has all these battles with

(49:09):
refeem and he wipes them out. He kills Goliath, that's symbolically,
but then they hands up wiping out all the refaem.
So you never after David, you never hear about giants
in the Bible anymore. That's not to say they don't exist,
it's that they're no longer a theological issue because why
because the Messiah King cleansed the land for him to reign,

(49:30):
But of course he doesn't obey God, the kings and
judges and all that, and so Israel falls away and
the demons and the principle. The concept here is that
if Enophelm is truly a hybrid between a human and
an angel, if it was a human, it would go
to Hades when it died. If it was an angel,

(49:50):
it wouldn't go there, and it would just Angels exist
in the heavens or in the air according to the Bible, right,
or you could just say heaven. Right. But because they're
fallen beings and they're part angel, part human, they can't
go to Hades because of the angel part. They can't
go to heavens because of the sinful human part, and
so that's why they're left to roam the earth. That's

(50:13):
the concept here. But they're also unclean, right, and that's
the uncleanest. So when Jesus comes, Jesus, what happens. All
of a sudden, there's alls demonic activity. What's going on.
He's the son of David, come to finish and complete
what David did physically with the giants. But now there's
the spirits of the nepheline. They're still in the land.

(50:35):
Jesus is casting them out to cleanse the land for Messiah.
And then of course he actually says it goes there
goes more to it than that, but hopefully it just
gives it at least an idea of the theology of
what's going on. It's not just this arbitrary demons and
watchers and all this kind of stuff. It's all connected
to the plan of the war against the seed of Messiah.

(50:57):
And I tell that's what all my novels are about.
They're telling that storyline in each new generation with each
new Bible hero character, whether it's Abraham or David or Jesus.
And where I have the Jesus story where I bring
all this out as well, Jesus triumphant. But yeah, so
that spiritual warfare motif is very strong in the Bible.

(51:20):
The question comes is how does it apply to today?
And to be honest, it's not an issue I stay
focused on the ancient world. I don't. I'm not, like
I said, I'm not in the spiritual warfare camp of
the modern day world. So I have different views how
I think it applies to today. I still there demons, right,
But what I do agree is that motif is sure.

(51:43):
The question is this is what did Messiah actually accomplish? Right,
I mean did Jesus. We all agree Jesus had victory
over the powers, principalities and powers, right, we all agree
with that, and he disinherited the nations from the sons
of God. We all believe that, and we believe that's

(52:04):
why people can come into through the Gospel, into the King,
because they're freed from that. The only question is, but
were they were they killed like Psalm eighty two says,
were they killed in that first century? Or are they
still around with some kind of power left? And that's
where the debate comes and Like I said, I'm not
here to debate that, but yeah, there's a lot to debate.

(52:25):
A lot of it. Not even debate, it's I think
of it as to wrestle with theologically as we seek
to understand God better and what's the truth and how
does this all work together? So this is why I'm
on shows with guys that we have slightly different views,
but we have a lot of commonality. And that's what
we tend to focus on, is that we've got off
topic here from Daniels, but it really isn't because it

(52:46):
is also the paradigm of the Daniel trilogy as well.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yes, absolutely, I'm just.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
I'm writing down notes and all these scriptures and just
loving this and me too. I'm a big band boy
for those old days of Frankie Peretti. So I want
to transfer the torch you are doing so, sir, bravo.
I applaud you bringing really highlighting the living Word to
the next generation and everyone, all of us. We need you, brother,

(53:16):
This is it's so exciting. You've been going gung ho
for these years, and we're so excited to see your
work get even more highlighted for people to then follow suit.
We need more, not less of Brian Goadawa. We need
more people to be writing about and having this higher scope,

(53:37):
not just the drama. It's great to have some romance,
and it's great to have some of that. But introducing
I'm seeing how you're in the sample chapter with how
Uriel is muttering on every high hill, on every green tree.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
You bowed down like a whore.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
And then as if you heard the angel Jeremiah, stop
walking instid with a painful breaking voice. Oh Judo, you
adulterous voy your doltorous wife. There's that inner change, not
like who hats on? Wow, some spiritual things. It's a word,
it's the spear realm, and it's so alive, it's so good.
I'm so it's an honor to interview you, sir.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
It's definitely an honor to interview you, Brian. And I
think that when people think of the Book of Daniel,
that they have read through it once or twice or
every year, what have you, they always remember Daniel in
the lions Den, Shad drug Mishak, and Bendigo in the
Fiery Furnace, and then they also might remember about the

(54:35):
Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece, and I
know there was a video game based on the Prince
of Persia, and a lot of people speculate on that
is it was the Prince of Persia a demon or
a fallen angel. And I do think it is interesting, Brian,
that you had explained that, according to the Divine Council

(54:56):
worldview by doctor Michael Heiser, that that God, that Yahweh Jehovah,
that the word God or Ilohim is not just something
relegated to him. Yes, it's not. We don't believe in
many gods and goddesses or whatever. We're not polytheistic.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
We believe that.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
God, Jehovah, Jovah, Jesus is one God. But then that
he also had appointed angels. But he did appoint angels
to be rulers over these different areas of the world.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
And he called them gods. If the Bible didn't say it,
I wouldn't be saying it. And you know, believe me,
when I first looked at this and discovered it, it
was really hard. I come from a typical evangelical background.
It took me a long time to be able to
start to say the word gods. Me too, in the
way that the Bible uses it when we realize there's

(55:50):
a lot of our Christian assumptions that we don't realize
are not as biblical as we thought. And this is
not to say it's all wrong or evil. It's just
to say that every culture in our history gets affected
by the way, gets affected by the cultural needs of
the moment. And I think that the Middle Ages, it
was very it was a very big issue of polytheism

(56:12):
and the Middle the academics of the Middle Ages created
the term monotheism. It's not in the Bible, but that's
created an unfair bias in the mindset thinking there's only
one God. No, there's not. There's many gods in the Bible,
but there's only one creator, eternal God. There's only one

(56:32):
God of gods. And again this isn't Mormonism. I also
went through hoo thing is this Mormonism? And it's I
get it. I get it. And that's one of the
reasons why I, along with my novels, I often write
companion books of the research behind the novels because I
know Christians might be wondering, or a lot of them
just I want to know what where you're getting this

(56:53):
stuff from. And I love doing Bible studies, so every
book I will have something like my Nephel novels have
appendix in Then I took the appendixes out of each
of the novels and put it into one book. For
those who wanted just Bible research, it's a bestseller called
When Giants Were Upon the Earth that will give you
a lot of this stuff I'm talking about. It'll give
you the Biblical foundation of it, and in terms of

(57:16):
research and such, because it's not everyone likes fiction, and
I get it, but a lot of people love fiction
like me also liked to but what's the research behind it?
I'd like to learn, And so that's why I did
it because I used to love when Michael Crichton did that,
the sci fi writer. He would write yeah, and he
would write an appendix of the real science behind the
fiction he was writing, and Meg really liked it. So

(57:37):
I started doing the same thing.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
That's amazing. I think it's great to have references and
footnotes and so people can research where you're coming up
with these ideas. It's definitely not just from the air.
And I do like how you are so you give
an X ray vision of the spiritual unseen world of
these fallen angels who set themselves up as gods and

(58:00):
are actually even called gods because you had said that
God's king, King's lord, the lords and actually appointed them
to be gods over different regions. And so, like you said,
that's a difficult thing to wrap our heads around because
we're like, Okay, there's only one God and the rest
are demons or fallen angels. But that was something that
I had a hard time with. But I do believe

(58:21):
what the Bible says, if they would just read Psalm
eighty two and really just read a word for word.
I thought that it was interesting that you create a
dialogue between the fallen angels, and there's even rivalry among
the fallen angels. And then also there is a literal,
spiritual warfare between the holy angels like Michael and Gabriel

(58:42):
and with the fallen angels. And even though we can't
see them or feel them for the most part, maybe
little kids can. But even though we can't see them
or feel them or human necessarily, that doesn't mean that
the warfare is any less pronounced and prominent. And considering
that it was a Michael or Gabriel that had warfare

(59:05):
with the Prince of Persia, and so that's a very
real thing, and that when you had when you're discussing
the unseen realm, it's just a really amazing how you
do it.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
One of the things I try to do with that
realm is, like I said, they're supposed to be linked biblically,
so there's a there should be a reflection. So yes,
the story, the spiritual story on Vanceen realm is speculative.
But I tried I do two things. One is I
try to tell a story because these are bad guys, right,
and they're like mafia. Yeah, they're bad guys, and they're

(59:36):
unified and hatred against God. But they're jocking for power
amongst themselves and they're betraying one another because that's what
they're not automatons or robots. They're evil persons, and evil
persons have betraying motives, right, So I have the angels
betraying one another. But I tried to tell a story
that reflects, not exactly, but reflects conceptually what's going on

(59:59):
in the historical realm of the story that we're reading, right,
And how I do that is I incorporate the ancient
pagan mythology into that spiritual realm, and this is what
enables me to do things like, for instance, there's if
you look at the gates of Ishtar and Babylon, you
see these Mushushu dragons and they're they're like little dragons,

(01:00:19):
and they have lion body or dragon bodies, lion paws,
a venomous snake for a tale. Right, they're these hybrid monsters,
and they're symbols of Marduk's dragon Marduks for the king
of the gods. There. Right, that's just one creature. There's
many other creatures like that. But I have those creatures
in my story, but I don't bring them in like

(01:00:41):
Lord of the Rings type of thing, where they're just
necessarily in our world, but they're in the spiritual realm.
Because of course, if the spiritual realm has Cherubim and Seraphim,
these wild godly creatures, why couldn't there be those spiritual
creatures as well that represent the demonic forces. Right, And
then I bring all that in. It's all based on

(01:01:04):
actual Babylonian mythology, and I even bring some of the
storylines of their myths. So when you read my books
and you read the story of what's going on with
the gods and versus the archangels. You're gonna get, You're
gonna be getting an understanding, a little bit understanding of
the mythology structure of that pagan world that you're yea

(01:01:26):
that Israel is in conflict with. We can put it
that way.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yes, Winds, you had mentioned that Mushushu is the hybrid
half lion half dragon creature that's supposed to serve.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Mardach.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
That's right, Thank you for a fresh planet to ring.
I thought, believe it or not, I think you probably
know this. And the Disney film bolan Her Little Pets
Dragon his name is Mushu, So I do think it's quite.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Interesting that that's where they got it from.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
True spiritual things are in some of these movies. Yeah,
a lot of times we think, okay, it's for children.
They just grab this name out of the air, and no,
absolutely not this and IOO.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
I see a lot of that in a lot of
modern movies. That writers do a lot of research. They
don't want to just make things up. They like to
base it on ancient mythologies and stuff because it's fun
to play with these these narratives of history. You know
what I mean. And so I see a lot of
that you may not know as you're watching movies, and
it doesn't make it wrong. But take for instance, Leviathan.
Leviathan's in the Bible. Levithan is not just a dinosaur

(01:02:42):
or something like that. It's just a symbol of power. No,
it's actually a symbol of this. It's a sea dragon
with many heads, and it's a symbol of chaos. And
so God speaks symbolically when he's creating his order out
of chaos. He describes it like he's crushing the head
as the Leviathan. He actually says that, and like, I

(01:03:02):
think it's Psalms seventy three I think, or seventy eight.
I can't remember. But so Leviathan and she shows up
at various times in the Bible because they're using the
same imagery that the ancient world used. It was it's
a symbol, right, And so I have Leviathan show up
in all of my novels because it represents chaos, but

(01:03:24):
in the different nations they call him something differently. And
so in my Daniels story in the ancient world of Babylon,
I had to do some research because there's a lot
of dragons in their mythology, and I wanted to find
one that had seven heads, because that's the common one,
like Hydra, It's like the Leviathan in Canaan. And like
I mentioned, I do have to find that some people

(01:03:46):
would be shocked to discover. And I think it's some
seventy eight or no, it's some seventy four. God is described,
I'm sorry, God is.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
Describing, and beneath angels.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
God is describing through the Psalmist, he's describing the Red
Sea deliverance, right, how he brings his people through lant Right,
and you difided the sea, and it says you broke
and this is Psalm seventy four. You broke Yahweh broke
the heads when he part of the sea. He broke
the heads of the sea monsters on the water. You

(01:04:27):
crushed heads of Leviathan. That's heads plural, Leviathan singular. So
even in the Bible, Leviathan had multiple heads. Now the
tradition is seven or others. So I looked into Babylon
and I found out there was one dragon that there
is some examples in the art that he They have

(01:04:47):
different they have contradicting pictures because this mythology, they make
stuff up, but there's a lot of stuff that is interrelated.
And there are some images of a dragon called mush Mahu,
not mush Sushu, mush Mahu, and he is the large
seven headed, so I call him that in the Daniel story.
But then we realized, oh, the Hebrews call him Leviathan, right,

(01:05:10):
So yeah, that's one of those. Leviathan is probably one
of my favorite dominant images in the Bible because when
I studied that, I ended up writing a whole book
on it, Leviathan and Behemoth, because I studied it and
I realized this isn't about some literal dinosaur or just
a general metaphor for power. It was a symbolic being

(01:05:31):
that is used in poetic passages in the Bible to
describe the chaos that God has power over and that
he crushes. Just like every if every ancient Near Eastern
religion has the motif of their storm God who conquers
the sea or the river and gets crowned. In the Bible,

(01:05:54):
we see conquering the Red Sea right then they conquer
the Jordan's Sea before they cross over into the Promise line,
and in what does Jesus do? He conquers the sea
when it's storming, he calms it. So this is God.
These are gods and deities calming the storm. It's a
sign of their power. And while I don't think, and
while I believe that the Jesus story is historical, when

(01:06:17):
you look at the poetry of like Psalm seventy four,
it's very clearly poetic, and so it it's describing the
historical event, but it's using some of this poetic language
to describe God is bringing his people through the chaos
of Egypt, out through the Red Sea into Sinai. Where
what does he do? He gives them their his he

(01:06:39):
establishes his order. The law of God is established on Sinai.
That's his orderly system of covenant. So that's Those are
some of the things that I actually incorporate into my
novels because I just, you know what, I just love
that stuff. I love the theology, and I write it
into there. But I prioritize entertainment so that people you

(01:07:00):
can get any level you want from these novels. You
can go deep and read the theology, or you can
just appreciate the wild adventure. There it's epic adventures, spiritual
supernatural adventures. But you can go deeper if you want,
and you and I've got I've had people telling me
there they've been reading my series two and three times.
Some people change four times, and I'm thinking they must

(01:07:22):
get it because I put so much in there. I
thought most people aren't even going to see this, but
it's okay because I want it to be a good
story and I put it in there for me. But
lo and behold, people are realizing, oh, there's a lot
more to this, and they're drawing. It's kind of here's
here's what it is, you guys. I don't want to
get too intellectual here, academic, because I'm a Hollywood screenwriter,

(01:07:44):
so I gotta have a I gotta tell a great
story number one. But it's great, but it is great.
I write narrative theology. So many people think theology is
about systematic theology, and you know, you study all that
and then that's good stuff, but it's all logical and
all this SYSTEMATIP. I'm doing theology through narrative, which is
what the Bible does, right, And you communicate these theological

(01:08:08):
truths through the choices and the characters and what they're
doing and what happens, and that's pretty much what I'm
doing with my stories, and so that's what I've been
doing for the last fifteen years.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
You do it well, sir. Thank you so much, Brian
for sharing your latest series. And I am really blessed
by your talent, skills, abilities and gifts to be able
to really bring the Bible to life. Obviously, the Bible
has life, but you amplify it. I really appreciate your time,

(01:08:42):
and Michael and I are very blessed to have you
on board. And so they can purchase your novels either
on Amazon dot com or to your website, which is.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
My website is dot com and you can find out
a lot of cool I have a cool website there
for information stuff, but everything's exclusively so through Amazon. So
the links on my website are going to take at
Amazon because they're all in kindle, paperback, large print, and audio,
and that's all exclusively at Amazon. That's what I have.
I've downloaded audible.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
I'm just enjoying these these quotes from Brian Goodawa dot com.
Standing in the shadows of the close Crings, the Phoenician
died purple wool. Gabriel the Archangel watched the young Jewish
servant girl follow Daniel's order. He was exactly as he
presented himself to Daniel in his dreams. Over six feet tall,
with Ethiopian dark skin, clothes, crucked beard and hair. He

(01:09:38):
wore black armor that was useful in both combat and
stealth operations. Just so it just every next narrator sentence
grabs you. I might do some YouTube shorts with this
because you carry, sir, the Michael Heiser, the legacy and
part of this. We've interviewed Derek Gilbert. I met Derek

(01:09:59):
Albert in San die Go recently, and it's so precious
what you're presenting to the whole. I guess the culture,
but also as someone that we've had deliverance services in this.
We're in a little outreach base here in North Carolina
in the mountains. I'd like people to take a break
from the charismatic like laying hands on people and getting

(01:10:20):
demons cast out, and just take a little rest, take
a little breather, read some narrative that takes you through
the whole Bible. By the way, I have tons of
scriptures from just today. Yeah, and get get acquainted with
the larger picture. Here we've got war and Iran. This
is all happening with the Prince of Persia. It's all
going back to these days. It's helpful for us as intercessors,

(01:10:42):
as spiritual warriors. It's so good and art is so needed.
We have very little like little and littler less and
less art, good art, good stories. And don't forget what
CS Loosen Tokien said, which Tokien fans are gonna love
Goodahwa's work that in their time, the reason they wrote
Lord of the Rings and others was because there were

(01:11:03):
no more good stories anymore. And I feel like that's
what you're doing, sir. You're just taking it upon yourself
for these years. And I hope and I know you're
inspiring many others. You've inspired me. Get out there, write
some good stories. It's time and read good stories so
you'll be able to write good stories.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Yeah, thank you, sir. You remind me of something that
I wanted to also throughout their little pieces here. But
the so the first novel only covers the first chapter
of Daniel, so it's you know, the actual prophecy stuff
doesn't come in until the second novel, and then the
third one's going to be major prophecy, So you just

(01:11:41):
so people are aware of what they're jumping into. It
takes time to get in there into that stuff. You know,
be aware that it's going to take time. But a
lot of people always I want to read for the prophecy,
and that's not in the first novel, but I guarantee
it will be very interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
I'm halfway through Bride and Folks, I would highly recommend
this book.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
One of his vast and all of the series is great,
and not that I've read all of them, but I've
read books of Brian, starting with Hollywood world Views if
you want to start there, folks. That's a really great
book as well. And that was actually a book that
Liberty University was recommending for one of their classes. I

(01:12:27):
think it might have been Christian Christianity and Cinema. That's
where I stumbled under books in twenty twelve or twenty thirteen,
one or the other. So wonderful. Thank you so much,
Brian and Michael, and I really appreciate your time, and
thank you so much for watching it or listening to
the cross Files podcast to have a great evening.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
Bye Vida.

Speaker 4 (01:13:13):
Convidad.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
Divide the dividing

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