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 spiritual battle taking place around them at all times. No awareness of angels and demons.

Most Christians might be aware that yeah, there are spiritual forces that exist; but they never really think about them outside of church. Once Monday morning hits, most Christians often give no more thought to the spiritual realm than your average atheist.

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore what the Bible has to say about spiritual reality.

Turn to II Kings 6, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

1:30 - Behind-the-Scenes Code

4:00 - Elisha and Gehazi

8:15 - Your Eyes Can Deceive You

13:00 - Gehazi’s Eyes Opened

20:30 - Next Time

22:45 - All Around Elisha

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 circle back to it in a future episode.

No, the thing I want to focus on today, and perhaps a harder instruction than all those others, is a command found in

I Timothy 2:1-2

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

Wait a minute, what? We’re supposed to pray for our leaders? That wouldn’t include presidents I don’t like, would it?

Well, it says “for kings and all who are in high positions.”

So perhaps presidents, then. But not the bad presidents, right? Not the evil and wicked rulers who sometimes get into power over us? God surely couldn’t be telling us to pray for THEM, right?

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to II Kings 6, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

2:00 - Ben-Hadad and Elisha

5:55 - Who Was Jehoram?

7:55 - Supplications and Prayers for Leaders

12:15 - Intercessions

16:25 - Thanksgiving

20:20 - Mailbag

22:45 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 Israelites. And it can leave us scratching our heads wondering what it’s even doing in the Bible.

II kings 6:5-7 has this story of some men chopping down trees by a river

5 But as one was felling a log, his axe head fell into the water, and he cried out, “Alas, my master! It was borrowed.” 6 Then the man of God said, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float. 7 And he said, “Take it up.” So he reached out his hand and took it.

So a man is distressed that he broke an ax, so Elisha throws a stick in the water, which makes the iron ax head float back up to the surface. A miracle, sure…but kind of mundane compared to the rest.

In fact, another element of this story I’d like to study today is that Elisha is only given a limited amount of miracles to do, and this is how he chooses to use one of them.

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to II Kings 6, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

2:00 - A Double Anointing

5:25 - A Wasted Anointing?

7:25 - The Context

12:20 - So What Does it Mean?

14:45 - Next Time

16:45 - The God of Everything

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So, the conventional wisdom or assumption that most Christians make is that the “god of this world” must be Satan. The reason being, this figure is said right here to be blinding the minds of unbelievers to prevent them from hearing the Gospel. Sounds like a not-good thing to do, right?

However- that raises the question: if unbelievers have had their minds blinded by Satan, then how is it their fault that the don’t obey the Gospel? How can God hold it against them that they don’t believe if it’s not their fault?

And is it really true that Satan would have the power to blind people to God’s truth?

But then if it’s not Satan, if it’s actually God, then that raises another question: why would God blind people to the truth about Himself?

It’s not clear-cut any way you look at it. And it’s strange that this one mysterious figure could potentially either be God or Satan.

That kind of mistake isn’t like mixing up the ranch dressing with the caesar dressing. This is like mixing up the ranch dressing with boiling hot lava that melts your face off. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out…yet it kinda is.

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to II Corinthians 4, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

2:30 - The Context

5:15 - Is it Satan?

10:40 - is it God?

16:45 - Hardenings and Delusions

20:20 - The Abandonment Wrath of God

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 on his way back to Egypt, and God says

(Exodus 4:21)

“When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

So that’s strange because it raises the question of whether Pharaoh even had a choice about how everything was going to play out. Because if you know the story, Pharaoh doesn’t want to let the people go, and he pays a pretty steep price for it.

And yet Pharaoh never relents. All throughout the story, his heart is harder than your grandma’s fruit cake at Christmas.

But this claim that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart makes it seem like Pharaoh wasn’t even really able to let the people go if he wanted to. So what gives? Did Pharaoh have free will?

And perhaps more importantly to us: do you and I have free will?

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to Exodus 4, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

1:40 - What is a Hard Heart?

5:20 - God vs Pharaoh

8:40 - Is Anyone at Fault?

12:40 - Next Time

14:25 - Would God Harden our Hearts?

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 the wilderness, how he got married to Zipporah, the daughter of Jethro. How one day he talked to a Burning Bush who said He was God and told Moses to go back to Egypt and “Let My People Go.” And as we tell the story, he went back to Egypt and started doing the 10 Plagues and you know the rest.

Or do you? Because there was another really odd moment that happened in the midst of that that nobody ever talks about. It’s right after Moses has just been talking to the burning bush, and he’s returning to Egypt.

Exodus 4:24

24 At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death.

Woah, what? The Lord wanted to kill Moses? Moses hasn’t even done anything yet. Like, God sent him back to Egypt, Moses seems to be doing what God said, Moses has been in ministry for like 5 minutes, and yet already he has blown it so bad that God wants Moses killed.

And then what happens next seems like a complete non-sequitur.

Verses 25

25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!”

This is perhaps one of the strangest turns of events throughout the entire Bible.

And after this little event, there’s not really any explanation given. Moses goes to meet Aaron and they go to meet Pharaoh and the story takes off from there. And this little interlude on the way back to Egypt from Jethro’s place often gets forgotten about in the grand and epic story of Moses.

This didn’t come up in the Charlton Heston 10 Commandments movie.

This wasn’t a scene in The Prince of Egypt.

This didn’t even end up in the Veggie Tales version of the story.

(And I’m sure Junior Asparagus was extremely grateful about that).

So why did God want to literally kill Moses 5 minutes into his ministry before he even got into Egypt? And why did his wife follow that up with circumcising her son and calling Moses a bridegroom of blood?

I find this to be awkward…and kinda gross…and weird…and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to Exodus 4, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

3:00 - Reviewing the Context

8:15 - A Tale of Three Sons

16:55 - Families Need Spiritual Leadership

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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 too brilliant. They’re great at hearing God. Not so great at the follow-through. And this story can leave us scratching our heads, wondering what the lesson was in all this.

But as I said, it confused me when I first got into ministry and serious Bible study, because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. After a while, I think I figured out what God is saying here and what He’s saying to us today.

So I couldn’t have been happier to get this email from Alana at my church. It said: I’d love to learn more about 1 Kings 13. It’s such an odd story.

Totally agree. I find this story to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to I Kings 13, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

1:30 - Roscoe the Young Prophet

8:00 - Cletus the Old Prophet

17:15 - The Young Prophet’s Fate

20:30 - Next Time

22:00 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor

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.

But could it be true? Is the Apostle John as immortal as Chuck Norris or Rickroll Memes or reruns of Friends?

Well, I’ll tell you upfront: I don’t think it’s likely that the Apostle John is still alive. But I want to give it a fair hearing today on this podcast and take a look at why there’s a theory going around right now that he is.

And even if this isn’t one of the burning questions on your heart, I think if you bear with me for today’s lesson, you’ll learn a few things and make sense of a few verses with me that never made a whole lot of sense before.

For example, the verse that says: there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.

That was something that Jesus said about his disciples. Now, obviously, those men were alive a couple thousand years ago, and we have still not entered the millennial Kingdom of Christ. So what did Jesus mean by saying that?

I find it to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.

Turn to John 21, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

3:30 - What Happened to John?

7:00 - Questions

8:00 - Answers

23:00 - Closing Thoughts

Special thanks to the Two Witnesses Live podcast for inviting me on their show recently! Here is a link if you’d like to see/hear it: https://www.youtube.com/live/Mh0bTZhUKwk?si=vqVdx6KZx9tQIZSo

If you want to get in touch, my email is weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com

Hosted by Luke Taylor