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 unpack in that single verse alone. It talks about the various hierarchies of fallen angels and demons and...
May 28, 2025•28 min•Ep. 76
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 Samuel 6 even calls it an “irreverent” act in the NIV translation. It says in verses 6-7 (NIV) 6 When...
May 21, 2025•17 min•Ep. 75
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 daughter. Alana said, “Clearly that was a sacrifice to God. Why would God allow him to sacrifice hi...
May 14, 2025•26 min•Ep. 74
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. Because I believe this website has potential to reach a lot more people than even the podcast does. So I w...
May 07, 2025•19 min
Sign up for the weekly newsletter! Get additional insights and Bible study tips for unpacking strange things in scripture. Enter your email here: https://weirdstuffinthebible.beehiiv.com/ You can also find a list of past newsletters at that same link so you never have to miss one. I was challenged about a past episode over whether I’d properly done my homework in my research of binding and loosing. This was in regard to episode 52, simply called Prayers of Binding and Loosing. In that episode fr...
Apr 30, 2025•27 min•Ep. 73
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 had a resurrection body. He was a special situation. But something else happened when Jesus died on the c...
Apr 23, 2025•24 min
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 miracles. He even died and rose again, and some of them still didn’t get it. So, that’s kind of weird...
Apr 16, 2025•30 min•Ep. 72
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 permission to do this. And like I said, God shot it down. At least at first. When He actually allowed Ba...
Apr 09, 2025•28 min•Ep. 71
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 smart people. And smart people really don’t like that. That’s what they tell me, anyway. And on one o...
Apr 02, 2025•20 min•Ep. 70
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 assigned authority over various territories. And they all get together and hash out their plans. And un...
Mar 26, 2025•22 min•Ep. 69
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 means “one.” Theistic refers to deity. Christianity has one deity: God. This differentiates us from t...
Mar 19, 2025•20 min•Ep. 68
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 Scriptures. So I hate to put a content restriction on today’s episode and I’m not going to say any ...
Mar 12, 2025•28 min•Ep. 67
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 casting lots to make some of these types of big decisions. Decisions of going into battle, figuring ...
Mar 05, 2025•27 min•Ep. 66
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 finally understand what’s going on. You might need to watch it a few times to get it all, but trust me, it...
Feb 26, 2025•26 min•Ep. 65
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 his translation, so the biblical vocabulary for these would be gates. I’ve been digging into this conc...
Feb 19, 2025•28 min•Ep. 64
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, written in Scripture itself, and will have a profound impact on how we understand spiritual warfar...
Feb 12, 2025•31 min•Ep. 63
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 times, but the biblical term for these are “gates”- which spiritual beings use to access our reality...
Feb 05, 2025•27 min•Ep. 62
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 dream had the name changed from Luz to Bethel. If you have read Genesis or studied Jacob’s life, yo...
Jan 29, 2025•18 min•Ep. 61
Was Peter the First Pope? What I’m going to talk about today is perhaps THE MOST misunderstood verse in the entire world today. And I say that because there are about 1.4 billion Catholics in the world. If we were to consider Catholics a denomination of Christianity, then we Protestant denominations are far outnumbered. We who are Methodists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Free Will Baptists, Independent Fundamental Baptists, whatever those guys in Skillet are- all of us. If you adde...
Jan 22, 2025•20 min•Ep. 60
We all know we have a soul. That our bodies may die, but we all have an eternal soul that will live on forever and ever. All human beings have a soul. This is something that sets us apart from plants, animals and people who skip the theme song when they’re watching The Office. And then the Bible also speaks sometimes of each of us having a spirit, and we think of that similarly to the soul. It’s that ghostly, non-physical part of us that only exists in the spiritual realm. We use the terms “soul...
Jan 15, 2025•22 min•Ep. 59
One of the most puzzling verses in the whole Bible is Malachi 1:3, where God says “Jacob I have loved;But Esau I have hated” If that doesn’t make you do a double-take while you’re reading your Bible, I’m not sure what will. Again, that’s God speaking. It’s written by Malachi, but it’s a quote from God. The same God who will be telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us just a handful of pages later. The same God who says feed and clothe your enemies. The same God who gave...
Jan 08, 2025•28 min•Ep. 58
Imagine sitting on a hill, wondering about your life, when suddenly the heavens open, and you see creatures so otherworldly they defy description. Four faces on each of their heads, gleaming metal, fire, and a throne surrounded by lightning. That’s where Ezekiel’s story begins—and where we’re headed today. The prophet Ezekiel sees something that very very few people in the Bible ever saw: a vision of God on His throne. In the very first chapter of the book, God appears before Ezekiel, attended t...
Jan 01, 2025•28 min•Ep. 57
This is a re-airing of a popular interview I did earlier this year with a man who has an amazing story of deliverance. He shares some of the story here, and gives some helpful advice for if you would come up in a similar situation in your own life. Find Bill's book right here: https://www.amazon.com/Day-Satan-Called-Encounter-Possession/dp/0892968982/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= The Day Satan Called: A True Encounter with Demon Possession and Exorcism. Available in paperb...
Dec 27, 2024•49 min
Most Christians are regularly outwitted by Satan, and most Christians have no idea about his schemes- his devices- his designs. We like to blame Satan for a lot of problems in life. The degradation of society, the strife in our families, the flat tire I got last Tuesday, whatever happened to Marvel after Endgame… And I think it’s a fair question to ask: what the heck is this guy’s problem? What’s his deal? How does he expect to possibly defeat God? What’s his master plan? I find Satan to be weir...
Dec 18, 2024•29 min•Ep. 56
I received a thought-provoking message from one of our listeners this week: Alana writes in: I find it interesting in Acts 14 when the crowd claim that Paul and Barnabas are Zeus and Hermes that Paul and Barnabas do not deny that Zeus and Hermes exist. That Paul and Barnabas simply point out that they are only mortal men. Now, there’s a couple ways you could read Paul’s deflection in this story, which we’ll study through in a moment. This took place in Lystra, where there was a temple of Zeus wo...
Dec 11, 2024•24 min•Ep. 55
Where do demons like to hang out? You know, other than the DMV, the Grammy Awards, or in that sauce they put in Chipotle wraps. Where would you go- or perhaps a better way to say it, where should you avoid - if you want to stay away from demons? Well if you asked the writers of the Bible, they had an idea about where demons liked to congregate. I mean, certainly you can find a demon just about anywhere. But what locations of the earth were considered the domain of demons? Jesus made a strange (a...
Dec 04, 2024•23 min•Ep. 54
Naaman the Syrian had it going on. A great job, a great reputation, all the money he needed- oh, and he had leprosy. In those days, this was a death sentence. In those days, a great job, a powerful position, favor with kings, all the money in the world, none of it meant anything if you had leprosy- because if you had leprosy, you were gonna die. Desperate for an answer, Naaman travels to the land of Israel to meet with a certain miracle-worker named the prophet Elisha. But then, in one of the mo...
Nov 27, 2024•20 min•Ep. 53
Today’s lesson is too important to wait. And I almost didn’t do it. Because these verses that we’re studying today are going to come up again in the book of Enoch, and I’m planning on starting a book of Enoch series here on the podcast early next year. And so you might hear some of this information repeated again in a few months, and I almost didn’t create today’s lesson so that I wouldn’t be repetitive. But it’s just way too important not to tell you this today, because it has the potential to ...
Nov 20, 2024•24 min•Ep. 52
There is a parable which I believe is not technically a parable- I believe it’s a true story- called The Rich Man and Lazarus. Jesus tells this story in Luke 16. And there’s a lot of strange things you could point out about this story, but what always sticks out to me is where Lazarus goes when he dies in this story. Luke 16:22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. And as you read the story, you find that a rich man died and went to a fiery place of to...
Nov 13, 2024•20 min•Ep. 51
The devil really really doesn’t want you to listen to today’s episode. Because this is going to blow the door wide open on one of Satan’s schemes that he uses to try and make us ineffective as Christians. But, I’ll also tell you how to overcome it. Last year, one of my pastor friends who was preaching through the book of Daniel and came across the strange story in chapter 10. And he commented that he didn’t know how he was going to teach it. And I was like, “what you do mean, how you’re going to...
Nov 06, 2024•17 min•Ep. 50
