It was a dark and moonless night when King Saul, cloaked in fear and despair, wandered the desolate wilderness of Mount Gilboa. His once-mighty heart had grown heavy, for the Lord had turned silent—no dreams, no prophets, no answers. His enemies, the Philistines, loomed at his doorstep, and without divine guidance, Saul felt utterly forsaken. Desperation drove the king to a forbidden path, one he had condemned in years past. He had ordered all the mediums and spiritists to be cast out of Israel,...
Oct 30, 2024•25 min•Ep. 49
I’ve been doing this podcast for about a year now and I can’t believe I haven’t done an episode about this yet. Today, we’re going to be talking about territorial spirits. And that phrase refers to the fact that spirits are assigned to certain sectors of the earth. Many Bible-readers aren’t aware of this little tidbit about how the spiritual realm works, and you may question whether this is in the Bible. In fact, it’s ALL THROUGH the Bible. We just encountered one place last week when we were st...
Oct 23, 2024•25 min•Ep. 48
We’re going to continue our foray into demonology today, and we’ll wrap up this story of Jesus and the demoniac of Mark 5. If you’re not familiar with this story, it’s the guy who lived among the tombs and could break chains with his bare hands. This is the guy who said “I am Legion, for we are many.” There were potentially thousands of demons within this man. And this is the story that ends with Jesus sending those demons out of the man and into a herd of pigs. Who then promptly run off a cliff...
Oct 16, 2024•29 min•Ep. 47
It was the week before Halloween in the fall of 1988 when Bill Scott picked up the phone at his job at a Christian radio station and his life was never the same. What follows is a story of demonic possession, deliverance, and a long list of what to do and what NOT to do when standing up to the powers of darkness. I’ve been doing a series on the abilities of demons here on this podcast. Bill joins me today to share his story with my listeners here. It’s going to add some insight and depth to your...
Oct 09, 2024•48 min•Ep. 46
Welcome back to Demonology class. I didn’t have this class in the school of ministry that I attended for three years. I’ve never heard of a Bible college offering a class in exorcism. I’ve never heard of a seminary giving a degree in demonology. And yet, when Jesus gave His disciples a job to do, He said to preach the Kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. Now, I don’t know about you, but most of those things are not a part of my weekly walk with God. I lear...
Oct 02, 2024•30 min•Ep. 45
I remember being a younger Christian and sharing a meal with a couple of older pastors, who got to talking about a Bible story of demon possession. It may have been the one we’re in today, actually. And one of them just mentioned, quite offhandedly, that of course, demon-possessed people in the Bible were actually just dealing with sickness and mental issues. And the other quickly agreed. And I was like, a teenager at the time, and these were two longtime pastors, older men- I think they were Lu...
Sep 25, 2024•26 min•Ep. 44
I said it on the first episode of this podcast: if you’re a modern Christian living in a westernized country, you’re weird. You’re living in a very weird time and weird place in human history. Because we are taught to accept rational, scientific explanations for things. We’re told that if you can’t find it in a test tube or with a telescope or see it with your own two eyes, then it probably doesn’t exist. Most people, and perhaps even most western Christians, have absolutely no concept of a spir...
Sep 18, 2024•29 min•Ep. 43
The Bible has some hard commandments in it. “Do everything without worrying or complaining.” “Forgive 70x7 times.” “Be content in all circumstances.” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wifi.” “Thou shalt not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.” I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who struggles with these. OK, maybe that last one was kind of a joke. That actually is in the Bible, and it’s a weird thing in the Bible, but that’s not the weird thing I want to focus on today. Maybe we’ll...
Sep 11, 2024•28 min•Ep. 42
The raising of Lazarus. The 10 Plagues in Egypt. Walking on Water. Feeding the 5,000. There are lots of miracle in the stories that are pretty well-known, even by non-Christians. Most of them are done by Jesus, but Moses and Elijah have their fair share as well. But there’s a miracle in II Kings 6 that’s just a bit harder to categorize. It’s not nearly as dramatic as other miracles; it doesn’t solve a problem that seems nearly as dire as something like parting the Red Sea to save all the Israeli...
Sep 04, 2024•22 min•Ep. 41
Most of us would agree that God and Satan are about as different as you can get. That they are such polar opposites that it would be virtually impossible to confuse one with the other. That it would be tantamount to heresy to try to compare the two. And yet, there’s a mystery to the identity of the figure called the “God of this World” in II Corinthians chapter 4. Verse 4 of that chapter says In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing t...
Aug 28, 2024•28 min•Ep. 40
Last week I was discussing a weird story about Moses in Exodus 4, I came across another pretty odd verse that generates some confusion among Christians: Exodus 4:21. Now, I didn’t want to stop and analyze that verse because it would have taken me on a rabbit trail, and I was already trying to talk about a different weird thing, and I would have had to go down a weird-ception of weird-within-a-weird. So I decided to come back to it this week. And what does Exodus 4:21 say? Well, it’s as Moses is ...
Aug 21, 2024•20 min•Ep. 39
So, a funny thing happened on the way to Egypt after Moses spoke to the burning bush. Something you have probably never heard about. Even if you have read it before, this is such a bizarre paragraph of Scripture that you probably just read right on through without stopping to dwell on it. When most of us tell the story of Moses, we start with his origins in the Nile River, how he was born an Israelite slave and how he came to be raised in Pharaoh’s palace, how he killed a man and ran away into t...
Aug 14, 2024•23 min•Ep. 38
When I first got into ministry, I didn’t know what to do with I Kings 13. I knew God must be trying to communicate something from this story, but I couldn’t figure out what. So many things didn’t line up with my preconceptions. You have a couple of prophets in this story. Now, in almost every Old Testament story with a prophet of God, they are the good guy. What they do is usually the heroic or brave thing. They’re usually the one setting the example for us. In this story, the prophets are not t...
Aug 07, 2024•30 min•Ep. 37
I few weeks ago I received one of the strangest questions I had ever had sent to me: could the Apostle John still be alive? Now, I probably would have shrugged it off except within an hour, I had a second person ask me the same question. Now, I have never heard this question posed before. I had never had this thought cross my mind before. And yet to be asked this question completely out of the blue twice in the same hour made me think: perhaps God just wants me to look into this a little bit. Bu...
Jul 31, 2024•26 min•Ep. 36
So, something really strange happened when Jesus was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is the night that Jesus was put on trial, and the next day He was nailed to the cross. So there’s a lot going on. it’s a very heavy section of scripture. And there’s one detail that’s only recorded in one of the four Gospels. Mark 14:51 and 52 say 51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked...
Jul 24, 2024•28 min•Ep. 35
John 5 has one of the most bizarre verses in the Bible. I’m talking about verse 4 of that chapter. This verse is so bizarre, it doesn’t even appear in a lot of versions of the Bible. Go open up your Bible and check right now; it might just say verse 1, verse 2, verse 3, verse 5. It’s like your Bible forgot to count. But actually, some versions just take verse 4 right out and pretend it isn’t there. What is so bizarre about John 5, verse 4? Well, this is the story about the man who had been lame ...
Jul 17, 2024•24 min•Ep. 34
What happened when you got in the water at your baptism? Guess what? You didn’t just get wet. You made a proclamation of faith- not just to any humans who witnessed your baptism- but a proclamation of faith that reverberated throughout the entire spiritual realm. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re in the right place, because this episode today is going to explain the significance of baptism in the demonic realm. And along the way, we’ll also explain one of the most puzzling p...
Jul 10, 2024•29 min•Ep. 33
Jonah chapter 2 is one of the weirdest chapters in the entire Bible. I mean, think about it: at the end of Jonah 1, he gets swallowed by a giant fish in the Mediterranean Sea. At the beginning of Jonah 3, he’s spat back out on dry land. In between those events, Jonah lifts up this prayer or lament about his situation to heaven, and that’s what chapter 2 consists of. But Jonah 2 has to be the only chapter in the whole Bible that takes place entirely inside of animal. That’s pretty unique. And kin...
Jul 03, 2024•23 min•Ep. 32
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...
Jun 26, 2024•24 min•Ep. 31
Entire books have been written about the thorny theological issue I want to talk about today. James chapter 2. At face value, James 2 seems hard to reconcile with the rest of the New Testament. That’s because the rest of the New Testament pretty clearly teaches this doctrine of salvation by grace through faith not of works. That’s a direct quote, actually. Ephesians 2:8-9 says For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of...
Jun 19, 2024•27 min•Ep. 30
Let’s tackle one of the questions today that no Sunday School teacher wants to get: are Christian women supposed to wear “head coverings” according to I Corinthians 11? Because when you read it very simply and plainly, it certainly feels like they should. I Corinthians 11:5 says But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head Yikes! We don’t follow that one these days. Christians have all kinds of reasons to disregard some of the bizarre commandments and custom...
Jun 12, 2024•28 min•Ep. 29
What if someone came to a pastor and said, “How do I go to heaven?” Should the pastor tell him how to go to heaven? What kind of pastor wouldn’t tell someone who came to him and asked how to go to heaven how to go to heaven? That’s a pastor’s dream: for people to come to him and ask him how to go to heaven. That’s why we go to Bible schools and Bible colleges and spend years interning and preparing to lead churches: so we can tell people how to go to heaven. And yet when a man came and asked Jes...
Jun 05, 2024•23 min•Ep. 28
So I’ve done 25 episodes now about Weird Stuff in the Bible, but I haven’t talked about Jesus too much yet. And I really need to, for two reasons. One, because everything in the Bible centers around Jesus. And two, because Jesus is weird. Now, I don’t mean that to be disrespectful. I just mean that He was odd. If you don’t think Jesus is weird, I don’t think you know Jesus very well. He’s completely bizarre. His actions and emotions seem random. He seems to get set off by things that don’t bothe...
May 29, 2024•20 min•Ep. 27
The Day of Pentecost had a lot going on; it probably had more going on than you even realized. This is one of the most significant stories in the Bible; it’s the birth of the church, recorded in Acts 2. And it says this in verses 1-4 of that chapter When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 Then there appeared to them div...
May 22, 2024•25 min•Ep. 26
When I was in the book of Enoch a couple episodes ago, something caught my attention. I was reading something from the book of Enoch’s chapter 15. I didn’t read the entire chapter on that episode, but I did read through it as I was doing my research, and there was a very interesting passage there about the spirits of the Nephilim. Enoch chapter 15 basically makes the claim that when a Nephilim dies, its spirit roams the earth, afflicts humans, and will do so until the world ends. In other words,...
May 15, 2024•29 min•Ep. 25
So on this podcast, we’ve tackled the mysterious subject of Genesis 6 a few times when “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” That’s actually a direct quotation from that chapter. And it’s come up a lot on this podcast because it’s a podcast about weird stuff in the Bible, and this is probably the weirdest thing. If you don’t understand why it’s so weird, it’s because of who the Sons of God are: they are spiritual or angelic ...
May 08, 2024•28 min•Ep. 24
There is a lot of controversy around this Book of Enoch: Should Christians read it or not? Some get confused about whether it should be considered scripture- and if it isn’t, whether Christians are allowed to read it. So on the past few episodes, I’ve established that even though it’s not canonical scripture, the authors of the Bible did indeed read it and believe it. Peter did. Jude did. John did. There’s actually a few places in Scripture where Jesus also might actually quote from Enoch as wel...
May 01, 2024•26 min•Ep. 23
In Jude 14-16, he quotes from a prophecy of Enoch: It says 14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are ...
Apr 24, 2024•26 min•Ep. 22
I’ll have this debate with people about the rapture of the church, and I will hear this response all the time: the rapture isn’t biblical. I’ll even see it in the comments from today’s episode: the rapture isn’t biblical. And these days, my response when I hear it is always the same thing. If you want to tell me that the rapture is not biblical, then what happened to Enoch? Because here’s what Genesis 5 says about Enoch: Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. On the previous ep...
Apr 10, 2024•23 min•Ep. 21
Genesis 5 is one of those chapters people tend to read through pretty quickly. It’s a genealogy chapter. It’s a list of names: so and so the son of so and so, so and so begat so and so. Not only that, it’s a list of names of people from Adam to Noah. Why do we need a genealogy of people from Adam to Noah? The genealogy is gonna reset at Noah anyway. This seems extra. And yet, if you stop and smell the roses, you’re going to read about one guy in Genesis 5 who stands out above the rest. Genesis 5...
Apr 03, 2024•20 min•Ep. 20
