Blurry Creatures - EP: 320 The Samson Super Soldier with Abe Hepler

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

In this episode, we're joined by theologian and storyteller Abe Hepler for a deep dive into one of the Bible’s most enigmatic figures: Samson. But this isn't your typical Sunday school take. Abe explores the parallels between Samson and the modern myth of the super soldier — from Captain America to sci-fi cyborgs — unpacking themes of strength, control, sacrifice, and divine purpose. What happens when divine power meets human impulse? And how does Samson’s story resonate in a world obsessed with power and performance?  - 👕 Merch from "Blurry Creatures" https://www.blurrycreatures.com/store Become a member! https://blurrycreatures.supercast.com Get our Book of Enoch! https://amzn.to/4gpV4yZ Listen to Blurry Creatures: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blurry-creatures/id1526885135 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5uPilMKgeZRAJ2AVwSdFRL?si=f42b58855ac7417e Website: blurrycreatures.com Blurry Creatures Socials https://www.tiktok.com/@blurrycreatures https://www.instagram.com/blurrycreatures https://www.facebook.com/blurrycreatures/ https://www.twitter.com/blurrycreatures/ Special Thanks for Platinum Members! Joshua Drummond Maureen Munoz Amber Freeman Nicolle Benz Zach Mills Adam Dougherty Desiree Nichols Kate Logan Kimberly Lee Fayola Shakes Suzanna Wenzel Kent Denmark Michelle Watkins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Luke so often, people email us and they have this story. They're out in their woods and they're looking in the bushes. What's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens.

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Just cover the shipping. Go to roughgreens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFF Greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. So, Samson, how do you beat a nation that's full of half-free giant? who are holding God's people captive in slavery. When you create a super soldier, that's what you do. And if prophecy is patterned, then Samson's life becomes the most prophetic text we have

about the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Look, if you want to get blurry, at the beginning of this thing, an angel shows up and tells Samson's mom, your son has to live by this formulaic right set of regulation. And Samson does that, okay? And that turns into superhuman strength for him. The history of our Earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian, that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it.

I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the phone chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermann event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. We're going to try to hop into this one quick. Those out there are listening.

Welcome back to Blurie Creatures. We've got Ava Hebbler on the show today. Fresh author, working on a second book. You tell us, Supernatural Soldiers. connection between Jesus and Samson. We're going to get into this one. If you are a member, you've heard this on Accidental Exorcist episode that we released with you. So we have you back. Give us the juice. We have a quick window here. Let's go. Man, thanks, guys. I appreciate the chance to come back. Yeah, you're right. We dropped a book. It's called Light and the Darkness. It's available

wherever you get books. And what we're going to spend some time talking about today is the topic of the second book that I'm working on. It's exactly kind of what you've set up. We're going to jump into the story of Samson from the Old Testament. This is a story that I actually love. I've been really passionate about this story most of my life. I remember being a kid. My mom would be like, hey, you want me to read you a Bible story?

And it was always this one. I'm always picking Samson. The story of Samson's really familiar. It's a very familiar story, right? this guy, you usually see him depicted as like this comic book character with giant muscles. He's Thor. He's got long hair and a giant beard. And over the course of this story, he ends up cutting his skin, his beard cut off, and then he loses all of his strength.

That's the piece of this story that most of us have heard for most of our life. But the story of Samson comes out of the book of judges. The book of judges is actually 21 chapters long. It tells the story of 12 different judges. But the story of Samson is four chapters. It's a huge chunk of this book. There's so much more to this story than just, hey, strong guy shaved his head and stopped being strong. And, man, that's what I'm super excited to kind of talk about.

Spence about it's talking about today. I think that's the cool part about our podcast is that we can go back into some of these stories and get into more of the weirdness of them or the supernatural parts of them or, yeah, this guy has magical hair. We don't talk about that a lot. We talk about the moral implications of the story. I like to talk about that a lot. I mean, you do. Luke loves. Give me that good lettuce.

But that is what we want. Forget all the other stuff of the story. Give us the weird. Give us the magic, the magical hair story. What have you discovered in this story that perhaps with blurry goggles on, you didn't read the first day? And I would also say, like this is probably,

as you said, familiar, right? Like all of us, well, especially kids of the 80s. Dude, it was like the power team, bro. Like, remember there there's these huge dudes ripping phone books. and yeah he had a you had a you had a donkey jawbone you were just swinging at the power team dude I was I was trying to take him all out I figured this there's something biblical here yeah yeah no but Luke wanted to be Samson this is one of those stories like you color the color the picture of Samson in Sunday school right he's this dude who's like knocking down your pillars and he's that generation's Hulk Hogan you know what I mean oh man oh for sure well done so what happens what are you what do you yeah where do we start what have you seen well so one of the things that I'd love for us to just kind of set the background a little bit. The idea of prophecy in the Old Testament, we all are very familiar with the idea of prophecy being someone foretelling the future. That's how we think about prophecy. But prophecy actually had multiple kind of uses in the Old Testament. And one of them was

these prophets were the guys who were essentially acting as the prosecuting attorneys for God. Like if the people are screwing something up, the prophet's the one who's going, hey, Here's all of the places that you're breaking the law and you're messing this thing up. So they're acting as these prosecuting attorneys. They're also trying to be very persuasive. Tell the people the things they're doing wrong and get them to do it right. But one of the things that we don't think about a lot with prophecy is the prophecy is also pattern. It's not just me telling you, hey, there's something that's going to happen someday in the future.

It's this retelling of the story over and over again in a way that starts to make sense as you look at like the, entire big picture story across time. And that's exactly what we're going to start to discover when we jump back into the story of Samson. So let me let me kind of jump in. I started studying the story of Samson 20 years ago probably as a seminary student for the first time. And I opened this seminary textbook and I flipped it to the story of Samson. And they start by saying that Samson is the story of a self-centered fight against Philistines and women. And when I read that line, I was like, man, that's terrible. That's a terrible decision. Bad summary. That's not selling a lot of books, Abe. That is not a lot of books.

Who must be that guy? So, but the thing that bothered me about that the most is Samson actually shows up in the book of Hebrews. And Hebrews chapter 11, the author of Hebrews is telling people, here's the life you want to live. And he points to Samson as a great example of faith. And that didn't really gel with me when I started thinking about, oh, his entire life is about how selfish he was. And we're supposed to live with this, you know, kind of this guy as a model.

So that really made me dig into this story in a way I'd never really kind of paid attention to before. And what you find is over the course of the story of Samson, there are elements from the most famous Bible character stories all laced into this one story. And it's really interesting because most Bible characters have like one big moment. And Samson has the moment you kind of referred to where he knocks this temple down. And that's the thing we remember. Except over these four chapters, there are elements of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Elijah,

David, Jesus, there's connections to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Micah, and they're all woven into this one guy's story. And we don't see that almost anywhere else in the text. Wow. But we'll kind of jump into some of those things. It's incredibly unique. God begins. Our story of Samson begins with God sending an angel to Samson's mom. So Samson's mom, angel shows up. and says, hey, a couple things. Number one, you can't have babies and you don't have any kids, but you're going to conceive and have a son. Now, it's Christmas time right now, right? This is a story we've all heard over and over again about Christmas. This angel shows up to Mary

and tells Mary, hey, I'm going to, you know, you're going to conceive and you're going to give birth to a son. But one of the things that's really interesting about that idea is it only happened, five times in the entire Bible. An angel only shows up to announce the birth of a child five times in the entire Bible. The first two times it happens, it happens in the story of a guy named Abraham. Abraham is actually the founding father of the Jewish faith. He's the guy who God shows up and says, leave your household and your nation and leave these other gods and follow me. and Abraham literally becomes the guy who starts the entire nation of Israel.

So Abraham's two, he has two sons, and both of his sons are announced by an angel. An angel shows up to, man, a slave lady that he had essentially had a relationship with and says, you're going to have a son. Man, your son's going to be important. I'm going to take care of you. God's going to oversee you in this kid's life. But then God and a couple other angels show up to tell Abraham that he and his wife are getting ready to have a son. So it happens twice in the story of Abraham.

Two birth announcements by an angel at the founding of the nation of Israel. Then you jump forward a few thousand years. And a few thousand years later, an angel shows up again to announce the birth of a child. This time, it's a guy named John the Baptist. So when Angel shows up and they tell John the Baptist's parents, you're getting ready to have a child and he's going to be the guy who shows up on the planet before God sends the Messiah. And then it's the Christmas story, right? Man, angel shows up and tells Mary, hey, you're getting ready to have a son. So there's these four birth announcements, two at the beginning of the nation of Israel, and then two at the beginning of the Christian faith.

and then right in the middle of these four birth announcements, there's one more in the entire Bible. And it's the story of Samson. And that's really interesting. That should clue us into something crazy. This is special. Yeah, this is important. Like pay attention.

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The new attorney everyday value slam. Heart of Denny's slam and meal deals. And see the new Masters of the Universe movie, only in theaters June 5th. Catch what's happening. God then shows up, but he doesn't just show up and tell this lady, hey, you're going to have a baby. The angel of the Lord shows up and he tells Samson's mom, hey, listen, you're going to have a child,

but you have to follow a really specific set of commands before you do. And so the angel tells Samson's mom that she has to take what the Old Testament calls a Nazarite vow. I don't know how much you guys are familiar with this. It's actually... We grew up in the... Yeah, come on. teenagers in the 90s, dude, when people were like,

I'm growing my hair out there in Nazright Vow. Oh, yeah. Dan still, our producer Dan's still taking the Nazaride Vow. Yeah. That's awesome. You can't wear a crox or something, right? When the Nasrii Vow. You shouldn't wear them anyway.

You shouldn't wear the-dust. But if you take the Nazright Val, you can't wear the crox. Unless they're croc, cowboy boots like John Christ says, yeah. Only hey dudes. Only hay dudes. No leather, no alligator skin boots. That's no that. So, man, this,

this, uh, this Nazarian Vow is actually outlined in the Old Testament book of numbers. It's in chapter six. And there are essentially four main points to the Nazarite vow. We've already joked about a couple of them, right? The first one is you can't cut your hair, the second one or your beard. You got to have long hair and a long beard. The entire time you take this value, you can't cut your hair, your beard. You can't eat anything grown by the grapevine. So you can't have grapes, raisins, no grape seeds, no grape juice, Nothing break-free. No wine.

But then the third piece is bigger than wine because it's no alcohol. You can have nothing fermented. And then the fourth piece of this vow is you can't be around a dead body. So they map all this stuff out in the book of numbers. Well, one of the things that's interesting about that is there are only like three references to the Nazarite vow in the entire rest of the Old Testament. There's not a bunch of places that tell us, man, people are taking this vow. There's not a bunch of places to talk about how people are living after they've taken this vow. It just sort of gets mapped out in Numbers Chapter 6.

And then it gets, I mean, it almost disappears into the text. There's a place where they kind of reference a guy named Samuel. He was a prophet, Neil Testament, dude who anointed King David. There's a really maybe reference to Samuel, you know, having a Nazarite vow. there's this one passage in one of the prophet amos literally just says man the people of god who have taken a vow and then he keeps going on and so lots of times scholars think that's a reference to the nazarite but the only place in the entire old testament where we're told someone takes a nazirite vow is here in the story of samson there are a couple other things about that that are really interesting

at least I think are really interesting. The first one is the Nazarite vow was designed for people to take for a specific period of time. So, Luke, if you're going to grow your hair and your beard out and you're going to take this Nazarite vow, you would say, I'm going to do this thing for, I don't know, 30 days. So you take this vow and then you follow these procedures that are laid out in numbers. Well, Samson didn't have a choice. Angel shows up and tells Samson's mom, you're going to live according to this. code and your son is going to take a lifelong vow to be a Nazarite. That never happens anywhere else in the text.

Like it is only Samson. So Angel shows up. Burr says there's going to be this child born. That's crazy unusual. Then they give the mom these specific rules she's got to follow and this kid has to follow, which is also really unusual. And I'm going to take a real quick detour. I'm going to try to make it fast, but it's one of the fascinating things about this story to me. There's a passage in the book of Matthew where they're talking about Jesus right after he was born. And they say that Jesus, after his birth, is taken to the town of Nazareth. Okay. And in the book of Matthew, Matthew actually writes in Matthew chapter 2.

He says, this was to fulfill what the prophets said. The boy will be called a Nazarene. Yeah. Now, that's just, you know, like whatever, a kid from a town. One of the prophets must have said that. The thing that's weird about that is if you check footnotes, if you check commentaries, no one knows where the Old Testament says the boy will be called a Nazarene. In fact, it doesn't exist. It's not in there. So Matthew says, this prophet, he quotes this prophet and no one can find where this prophecy is. That's weird. Except in the Greek language, The word that they translated into Nazarene is the Greek word Nazarite. Okay. So by the time you get to Jesus in the New Testament, they're using this one word to do two things, to refer to people who are from Nazareth or to refer to people who have taken this vow.

I won't go into crazy detail, but if you look outside of the Bible, we can find some other references where people are using this exact same word to talk about people who have taken the Nazarite. are right about that was the first question I was going to ask you if there was a connection between those two because you know there is grow up in the church yeah you know these two words sound the same right so man so it happens the the connection in the Greek language actually is made for us in the book of maccabees and where they say they use this exact same word that Matthew uses in this prophecy to refer to people who have taken this dazarai about right now the reason that's interesting is because in the entire Bible there's only two places where we're told someone takes a Nazarite vow.

It's Matthew quoting a passage from the Old Testament that scholars say doesn't exist if they're talking about a Nazareth or Samson. But if Matthew was quoting the book of judges, both of these things make sense. Now you have a guy who took a Nazarite vow as a boy, and then it shows up again in Matthew. Now look, I'm not saying you should throw out your gospel of Matthew and Jesus didn't live in Nazareth.

that's not my point. It's just crazy coincidental that this only happens twice. And it's Samson and Jesus. And so the angel commands, you know, Samson's mom to follow this vow. He says the boy will be a Nazarite. And the mom lives this way and then Samson lives this way. Okay. Once he's born. But as the story of Samson's birth continues, there's another really kind of unique feature that happens. Samson's mom, she's never named in the same. the text. She goes to Samson's dad and says, hey, an angel just showed up and told me I'm going to have a baby. Samson's dad then prays, God, if this is true, please send the angel back and tell us this a second time. Tell me what's going on. And then God does. Okay, so the angel comes back second time.

Tell Samson's dad, hey, your wife is getting ready to have a baby. He has to live. This baby has to live by this code I'm laying out free. And, man, Samson's dad is, of course, pretty excited. They can't have any kids. He's, you know, fired up about this thing. And so Samson's dad says to this angel, hey, stay with me. Hang out with me. Let me make you a meal.

And the angel says, no, no, no, don't cook for me. Just offer a sacrifice to God. So Samson's dad gets this animal. He sacrifices it on this rock. And then the text says, an amazing thing happens. while they watched. What happens is this angel steps, literally steps onto the rock

with the sacrifice, and then ascends to heaven in fire. I don't remember this part of the story. You don't get this one in Sunday school. Well, yeah, I mean, you get a lot of these things. Yeah. I was ascending.

I mean, I know where you're going. Continue. Yeah. Well, yeah. So, man, so number one, there's only two other places in the entire Bible where you can watch someone ascend to heaven. The first one happens for a prophet named Elijah, who is one of the most famous Old Testament prophets, right? This dude ascends to heaven and a chariot of fire and his,

you know, his right hand man watches it happen. But the other time it happens is in the book of Acts chapter one, verse nine, where Jesus ascends into heaven and the disciples are all standing around and they watch this thing happen. Yeah. Man, I obviously, I've followed the show for a long time, I've listened to lots of episodes. One of the things that several people have talked about is the idea that the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, most scholars believe this was a pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Before Jesus came to Earth as a human, he functioned in the Old Testament as this angel of the Lord. If that's true, the angel of the Lord, Jesus ascends to heaven once in the story of Samson. and then Jesus incarnate ascends to heaven again once in the story after his resurrection.

Again, just another crazy element that's tucked into this Old Testament story. Wow. Yeah. It's legitimately wild. And as I started kind of tracing these connections, the more I started to see these things happening in the text, the more of them I saw, right? If that makes sense. Like as it started happening, it started unwinding faster and faster. And so in the first chapter of this story, there's all of these crazy connections to not only other famous Bible characters, but also to Jesus himself. Now, as the story keeps going, one of the things that we talked about at the beginning was I had a problem with all these scholars who are saying, man, Samson's just a super selfish guy.

What a jerk. He loves women and he wants to fight Philistines and it's all super selfish. Yeah, sounds like a Viking, right? He just wants to. It's exactly right. This wants to pillage. Yeah. Pillaging. Yeah.

Also, as you get to the second chapter of the story of Samson, we find out that Samson's been born. He's growing up that the text tells us the spirit of the Lord is showing up for him. Samson goes to a town of a few miles away from his hometown, and he sees this girl, who's a Philistine girl, okay? She's not in the nation of Israel. And in the book of judges, this is the beginning. beginning point for everything bad.

And all the rest of these stories of the judges, you find a character who starts worshipping another God or the people get turned to the heart of another God. And that happens over and over again in the Old Testament by a guy falling in love with a girl who convinces him to worship some other God. So this is how we got a kiss dating goodbye back in the 90s, right? It was like, oh man. This is a story oldest time. That guy then recanted his book, so this is a whole other podcast.

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Samson goes to this town, sees this girl, she's a Philistine, she's, you know, not an Israelite. He goes back to his parents and says, hey, listen, I want to marry that girl. You have to go, like, convince this girl's dad to let me marry her. And so, so Samson's dad pushes back. He's like, oh, man, you can't do that. Like, this is the beginning of everything bad in the old, you know, in every old testament story. You can't go marry this girl.

But the text tells us explicitly that. that Samson's desire to marry this girl was from God. God places this desire in his heart to fall in love with this girl, which immediately starts to undermine from my perspective, oh, what a selfish guy. Like, well, I mean, the Bible says God made you have feelings for this lady. How selfish can you be? Right.

So, so Samson's dad, Samson ends up talking his dad into this thing. Samson's dad goes down to the city of Timna, He talks to this girl's dad and they arrange this marriage. That's also interesting. The fact that Samson wants to marry a girl from outside the nation of Israel, he wants to grab a bride from outside the nation, that only happens a couple of times in the entire Old Testament text.

And one of them is in the prophet Josea's life where God commands Josea to marry this woman. But if you flash forward, a couple thousand years, what do we what do we find out that Jesus does well the text in the New Testament tells us over and over that Jesus came to create a bride out of the nations that were not Israel another really interesting connection right so and so Sanson ends up going down and he's heading down to this wedding feast a lion jumps out to attack he and his parents and the text tells us he bare-handed kills this lion. That's crazy, right?

That's a crazy story on the sound. But there are a couple of places where lions show up in the Old Testament, right? One of them is in the story of Daniel. He gets thrown into this den with these creatures. Another one happens in the story of King David. We're told that one of his guys goes into a pit with a lion on a snowy day, kills this thing, right? it snowed last night in Tennessee a couple nights ago yeah

we did not go I can confirm we didn't go in any pits we didn't go any pits we didn't go in any pits yeah thought about it maybe maybe she was just maybe she was just bench pressing some logs on the woods and he saw her and he was just like

who is this she was like original crossfit yeah he's like we're going to have some first round draft picks this has got to happen Lord Oh, yeah, for sure. So, man, so Sanson goes down. They set up this wedding feast, meets this girl, convinces her family, kills this lion,

sets up the wedding feast. A little while later. Yeah, I took care of a line on the way down. Let's get married. That's just like every dude's dream. Like, I just killed this lion bare hand. Let's get married. He's like a real deal.

Lots of testosterone and the Nazarites. broken two heaters at once, dude. So a little while later, Samson and his parents end up going back down to Timna for this wedding, for the wedding that they've set up. And, man, as they get down to Timnaw, what we're essentially told in the text is that they start this wedding feast, but on their way,

Samson goes back to this place just to see the dead carcass of this lion that he's killed. And inside the lion, there a bunch of bees have made a nest. And the body of this dead lion has honey in it. So Samson takes some of this honey. He eats it. He gives it to his parents. I'm probably out on dead lion honey, but whatever. It's a rare vintage.

That's exactly right. Give some to his parents. They eat it. Gets down to this wedding. He gets a couple days into this celebration. You know, it's a seven-day wedding feast. He gets a couple days into this celebration. And he says to these, what we assume to be Philistine guys who are hanging out at this wedding,

he says, hey, guys, look, I'm going to tell you a riddle. And if you can guess the answer to my riddle, each one of you 30 guys has to give me, you know, a new outfit, essentially is what's happening. Some Jordans and, you know, some, you know, Nike pullover or something about it. So every one of you guys has to give me new outfit. If you can't guess my riddle, I'll give all of you some new clothes. So they said, yeah, we're in. Well, a few days goes by, the riddle is essentially, I took some honey out of a lion.

Like, that's the riddle. So these guys can't guess it. No one ever could. It would be impossible to figure this thing out. But the girl that Samson's marrying ends up kind of betraying him, she gets the information about this riddle, tells it to these people that she knows. They guess the riddle. And now Samson owes these guys, these 30 guys an outfit.

And that sets up for us the first real fight between Samson and the Philistines. Because instead of, you know, forking over some cash and, you know, pulling out some clothes, Samson goes to a different city, the city of Gaza. And he kills 30 people. 30 Philistine men. You done messed up, A.A. Ron. Yeah. Hey,

he's like, I'm not getting you clothes. We're just going to do it. We're going to do it my way. So he kills these 30 people, takes all their clothes back to this, you know, where the wedding feast was and gives the clothes to all these guys.

Okay. Samson's pretty upset at his new wife for, you know, diamond him out on the, on the riddle. He was probably talking to sleep and she was like, oh, I know that,

I know this. I know the riddle. I know the answer. So, So, man, so she dives him out. He's pretty upset by this whole thing. He goes back home with his parents, leaves her in Timna with her family. Well, a little while goes by, Samson decides that he's, maybe he's not mad at her anymore, whatever, goes back down to the city of Timnaa to claim his bride. And when he gets there, the girl's dad is like, oh, man, I didn't think you wanted her anymore because of all that stuff that happened to. at the wedding, I gave her to some other guy. Now, uh,

bad, bad move, okay? Cause Samson essentially goes crazy. Okay. And man, he, from that point forward,

he, uh, starts attacking the Philistines. And from there on, it's just, man, it's just battle after battle. Okay.

So he's solo. He's solo. He's solo attacking, right, Abe, isn't he going by himself? Solo attacking. He's like William Wallace is on his own. He's like, I'm just taking out all the English.

Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that's really unique about this story is there are only a couple places in the entire Old Testament where you find guys fighting the enemy alone. Samson and David. Like these huge characters in the Old Testament have components of their story all wrapped in here. So Samson's fighting these guys alone. Well, Samson ends up through a series of events. he finds himself upset at the Philistines, as he is. And he walks into a battle with a thousand Philistine troops.

And laying on the ground is the jawbone of a donkey. Right. So he literally picks up this jawbone of the donkey. And the text tells us that he kills a thousand Philistine troops with the jawbone of this donkey. Yeah. wild. I mean like it's like the matrix.

It's like the matrix. You know, when they all, all the agents turn on them and he's just going crazy and he's just beating him up one by one by one. What are we to make of what's happening here though?

Like I mean, because you've got, I mean, of course there's all these amazing David Slays Goliath. That's a one-on-one comment with a giant. You have the conquest of Joshua, which are armies.

But this is a different kind of, of the story. This is like a lone wolf dude that has all these crazy things. You've already talked about like an announced to birth and Nazarite vow and then of course like any great story has this sort of conflict that arises right which is

his... Well, don't steal a man's woman. Right, don't do that. And also if you gotta get 30 guys pairs of clothes, you go kill 30 dudes. Yeah, I mean... These clothes all bloody. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I'm fulfilling my debt. So he's taking all these guys out. Yeah. What's happening? I mean,

I mean, because I'm sure you're going to get to. I don't want to jump ahead, but it's just like these are some of the stories that get skipped over because they seem fantastic. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. You know, you hear from all biblical authors, they just use the number of thousand to mean a lot, right? And people start to downplay maybe what's meant, you know, meant not to be downplayed in the scripture, right? Well, now we have blurry goggles on. You can say there's something, there's got to be something with it being.

a donkey and it being a bone, jawbone of a donkey, right? And it's like a story within a story. It's like the meta story and then the micro story. And what we've heard a lot on our show is like there's a bigger story being told in this smaller story. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them, that's bulls bend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand.

when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, Terms of Conditions Apply. Yeah, for sure.

All right. So, okay, so job owner of a donkey. I'm going to jump right back in there, Nate, because Samson takes this piece of a donkey. kills a thousand men. Well, we're about two chapters into the story of Samson. And to date, this is his greatest victory. In fact, you could probably argue that it's one of his two greatest victories of his entire life.

So he takes this job on a donkey, kills a thousand guys. Well, when he's done, he's exhausted, as you probably would be killing a thousand guys with this jawbone. So he's praying and he says to the Lord, I'm so thirsty. I'm going to die. And if I die here of thirst, these uncircised Philistines are going to be able to kill them, like are going to get my body. God, is that really what you want? And then the text tells us that in response to that,

God gives Samson water out of the rocks on the mountain that he's on. Now, if you're familiar with the Old Testament, this water from a rock thing is not new. But it only happens one other time. And it happens in the story of Moses, right? God tells Moses, the nation's thirsty. Moses speak to this rock and command water to come out. Moses doesn't listen and he hits the rock with the staff,

but water comes out and the people drink. Same thing happens in the story of Samson. That's an interesting connection. But one of the things that I think is really fascinating about this is Samson takes Jabon of a donkey, kills a thousand guys, has his greatest victory, and then says to God, do I have to die at the hands of the uncircumcised? Well, if you flash forward a couple thousand years, you find Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.

And in the life of Christ, that moment, arguably, was his greatest victory up to that point. Right? The people are cheering for him and they're laying their coats on the ground and this donkey is walking across. Hosanna, yeah, yeah, they are. It's a recognition. Jesus is being literally hailed as the king of Israel, greatest human victory of his life. And a couple days later,

he's going to get killed at the hands of the uncircumcised. That's just interesting. It's an interesting thing to note. Circumcision, yes, it's always a fun topic that pops up in and out of scripture as well. It's always hanging around. You can see. Oh, man.

There's a lot of places we can go there. Go ahead. There is another famous. There's another famous Old Testament story about a donkey. This guy named Balam, who's a prophet. He's riding this donkey. This donkey ends up talking to him. Look, I don't know how to make some fancy connection between a talking donkey and the story

of Balim and Samson using a donkey's jaw. I don't have a magical connection there. interesting, right? The angel of the Lord shows up in this story of Baelan and the donkey talks to him. And there's this one other story where a donkey has a super prevalent role and it's Samson takes the jaw of this thing and kills a thousand men. Samson, I'm going to kind of flash forward a little bit in the story, fast forward a little bit in the story. Because again, it's two more chapters. We could do this over and over and over again through every point in these two chapters. But we eventually, at the beginning of chapter 16, we eventually get to the point where the story turns into

the thing that all of us know. Okay, Samson goes down to the city of Gaza. He sees this, he goes into this house to hire a lady. I'll keep it family friendly, right? Goes to this house to hire a lady. And this lady's name is Delilah. Yeah. And well, Samson falls head over heels in love with this lady. So he's hanging out at this place quite a bit. And so the leaders of the Philistine, the rulers of the Philistines, now have recognized that this guy who killed 30 people, by the way, in the same town of Gaza, he killed 30 men and stole their clothes. He defeated an entire group of the Philistine soldiers. The text says they sent an army of several thousand to get him, and he kills a thousand of them with the jawbone of this donkey.

Man, so these guys, they all know who he is. He's got a reputation. He's pretty famous, and they want him dead. But he's got this crazy strength. Nobody can figure out how to defeat him. So these rulers go to Delilah, and they say, look, if you'll get Samson to tell you the secret of his strength, we're going to give you. a whole bunch of silver. We could get some other time,

getting all the specifics of the numbers and the silver and whatever. But it is interesting to notice that someone Samson loves is getting ready to betray him for some silver. Same thing happens. A thousand years later in the story of Jesus, right?

Someone that he's invested and poured his life into betrays him for some silver. But as we get back into the story of Samson, Delilah goes up to him and she says, hey, tell me what makes you so strong. And he makes up some crazy lie. And she tries that does the thing that he lies to her about. And it doesn't have any impact on how strong. And they go through this cycle a few times.

She asks why he's so strong. He lies. I got this ukulele, baby. And every time I play it. It's not the ukulele. And you're a terrible singer. This is not it. And they do crazy stuff.

They weave his hair into this loom with a, that's just crazy, tells her crazy thing. But in the end, she's just badgering him, right? In fact, the text says something like he was nagged to deck in one of these stories, which I just think is really interesting language. But so Delilah, man, she's pressing him. We're really just building that female audience on this one, right? That's exactly what that. I mean they're just happy with this one.

A bunch of dudes. So, Delilah's pressing him. He lies. The Philistines try to attack him. He breaks himself free. This thing happened several times in the story. It's the story we heard growing up. Until we get to the point where she finally convinces him.

She says, dude, you keep making a fool with me. If you really loved me, you would tell me the truth. And so he says, yep, it's the setup, right? He says, look, the secret is the hair. It's the beautiful golden locks, right? Like, if my head was shaved, I would become as weak as any other man. That's what he tells her. So that night, she shaves his head.

And the text tells us that as she does, the spirit of the Lord left him. Look, if you want to get blurry... We do, actually, yeah. I know. And I'm so interested in getting blurry, too. You have to. There's no other way. At the beginning of this thing, an angel shows up and tells Samson's mom,

your son has to live by this formulaic set of regulation. And Samson does that. And that turns into superhuman strength for him. He's a super tough guy. Now, when I was in my early 20s, I did the thing that everybody else did in the 90s. And I took a Nazarite bow. It did not make me super strong. No, me neither.

Tell me that right now. But it did for Samson. But the thing I think is interesting is Samson doesn't tell Delilah, well, if I drink wine, I'm going to get weak. Yeah. He doesn't tell Delilah, like, oh, man, if I touch a dead body, all my strength. Like, he knows what the supernatural source of his strength is. It's in his hair. Okay.

So she shaves his head. He loses all the strength. The Philistines attack him. He thinks he wakes up in the morning and thinks, oh, man, I'm just going to go beat up these guys. Like I have my entire life. He walks outside and, man, his strength is gone. And they capture him. Man, there's so much tucked into just this one little chunk of the story.

But a couple of those things are, however it worked in his mind that he understood where his supernatural power came from. He connected it to his hair directly, right? It was this Nazarite vow that gave him this super strength. And so when he tells Delilah that and she breaks that vow, all of his strength goes away. Now, the Philistine captured this guy and they hate him. He's done all kinds of terrible stuff to their people. They can't stand him. And so they do some pretty mean stuff, man.

They gouge out his eyes. That's a bad day. Not a good one. Right? Yeah. But Samson. ends up blind. Well, there's another story in the Bible where a very famous Bible character ends up blind. The story of Saul, who turns into Paul in the book of Acts, right?

These things just keep showing up over and over again. So they gouge out Samson's eyes. They imprison him. They put him in shackles. And that should be the end of Samson's story, right? except one day they're having this huge party and it's a worship service essentially they're all at this great Philistine temple worshiping their gods and having this party and somebody has this brilliant idea and they say you know what would be an awesome way to spend today you should drag samson out here and make him stand in front of us now that he's weak and his eyes are gouged out and he can't do anything like let's all let's all make fun of it so they go to this prison they get this guy, they drag him out and they stick him in this temple. The text says that however this temple was

set up, there's a roof where people can spectate from. And there are 3,000 people on top of this roof and then a bunch of people in the temple at the ground level two. And so, so Samson, who's, you know, blind, he's there, he's doing whatever it is, that they're making fun of him. The text says they're mocking him and he turns to the guy who's kind of leading him around and says man you know I can't see could you just position me so I can feel the pillars of the building so and you can think of it like I don't know where I am you know just put me somewhere where I can know where I am and so as this is happening two things happen in the text the first one tells the first one is the text tells us that Samson's hair had started to grow back okay a little

precursor like guess what this dude's going to be strong again coming back baby and then this guy positioned samson and it's really interesting because the text tells us that samson is positioned with his right hand on one pillar and his left hand on another so he's got his arms stretched out between these two pillars okay and then samson prays he just says god if you would just let me have my strength back I will, I'll knock this temple down and get my greatest revenge on the Philistine army or whatever, right? That's exactly what happens. God gives Samson his strength back. Samson pushes against these two pillars. The entire building collapses.

We're told 3,000 Philistines along with all of the leaders of the Philistine people die in this last event. But so does Samson. He gets crushed by the temple. The whole thing collapses. the Bible ends the story of Samson by telling us his brothers came, and they get his body, and they take it back to his family too. And we kind of sweeping, those are sort of the big, you know, picture moments in this story.

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or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. But where I think this starts to get really interesting and maybe extra blurry is if you just lay the story of Samson against the story of Jesus. We've done it a bunch of times so far, right? But if you just lay these two things side by side, both men have their birth announced by an angel. And in both of these stories,

an angel visibly ascends into heaven. In both of these stories, the text tells us that the spirit of the Lord comes upon these men. Now, this point is actually also really interesting, because the text tells us that there is a person that the spirit of the Lord comes upon. It uses that idea for 10 people throughout the entire Bible. Only happens for 10 people. But two of them are Samson and Jesus.

And by the way, it happens for Jesus a couple of times. We're told the story a couple of times. But for Samson, it happens four specific times. The text says the spirit of the Lord comes upon him in power. Man, also interesting. But Samson, the first words out of Samson's mouth are a riddle. He walks up to this group of people and he tells them this riddle that they and asks them to solve. And this actually happens several times.

Over the course of Samson's story, he's going to speak in very figurative language. Well, we're told over and over again in the New Testament that Jesus is teaching in parables. He's using language people can't understand. Samson does the exact same thing in the text. there's this crazy donkey connection that we've talked about right like samson kills a thousand and greatest victory of his career happens with the jawbone of this donkey and then he says do I have to die at the hands of these uncircumcised Jesus has the greatest victory of his life up to that point by riding into jerusalem on a donkey and then is killed at the hands of the uncircumcised

both of these men get betrayed for a sum of silver by someone they love both of them this is I think this is interesting, but both of them die with their arms outstretched. Well, that's kind of interesting, right? Man, they crucified Jesus. You know, his arms are nailed outstretched. Sampson, the text specifically tells us Sanson outstretched his right arm

and outstretched his left arm as he's... Yeah, and the temple, you know. Yeah, and the temple... Crazy. We'll think about the temple analogy, too, the temple crashing and then, you know... Yeah. What happens inside the temple right after Christ is down.

when he stretches his arms out. Dude, that's a great one that I hadn't thought about. Yeah, and the spirit. The curtain is torn in two inside this temple. And Jesus is giving up his body, you know, the spirit, you know, why have you forsaken me? Maybe he's, at that moment of crucifixion, he's not feeling the spirit of God upon him so he can go do his mission.

Maybe the spirit leaves him the same way that is if his hair was cut. Maybe there's a connection there too as well. Yeah, that's a really, really interesting idea. And what about the temple? I mean, 70 AD, right? Christ says this temple be torn. And every stone unturned. And then that's the judgment of God upon.

Yeah. Upon Israel by the Romans. Throw it in there. I mean, we'll write the forward to the book. Yeah. You don't want us to do that. We can all write this book together. You don't need us to do that.

Yeah. One of the things that I think is really interesting about kind of the way these two stories wrap up is for Samson, his death destroys the power of the enemy. Okay, now, man, so he collapses this temple. The rulers of these Philistines die, and so do these 3,000 Philistine, you know, people like his death destroys the power of this people group. But we're told in the New Testament that the death of Christ destroys the power of death and hell, specifically how it's written in death in Hades is how it's written in Revelation. Right?

So their death destroys the power of the enemy. Man, for Samson, his ultimate victory is in his death. He kills the most Philistines in one shot he's ever killed happens when he dies. Well, it's not hard to argue that the ultimate victory for Christ was in his death, right? His death and resurrection. So, man, there's just point after point. And then his family and friends come and get the body, right? Family and friends come and get the body.

Take it to a tomb. There's just, there's point after point in these two stories where I would argue that the story of Samson is the clearest picture of what the life of Christ is going to look like someday in the future. And there's about a thousand years. I think I've thrown out some weird numbers. But there's about, you know, roughly a thousand years between these two guys' lives. And even if you were trying, Jesus couldn't have forced most of these elements from the story of Samson into his own life. There's no way to kind of make this happen. But we talked at the beginning just very briefly about the idea of prophecy is patterned.

And if prophecy is patterned, then Samson's life becomes the most prophetic text we have about the life of Jesus in the New Testament. It's crazy how it works. And I've just found it fascinating. Right. But man, the question I think that's left for us to try to wrestle through together is after all of this kind of background work, we're told in the text that God builds this guy who has superhuman strength. We joked, God creates this super soldier.

Right. Right. Well, and he does it through this life. lifelong vow that's made prior to Samson's birth. He creates this guy with superhuman physical abilities to fight the Philistine. He creates a character whose life story has all of the most powerful elements of the most influential spiritual men in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. All these crazy things tucked in here. So why would God need to create a character? that literally has super strength.

Why would God need to create one of the greatest warriors in the Old Testament? Like, look, in the book of judges, there are other judges who go up against the Philistines in, you know, pockets of time and they, you know, get their people free from slavery. Like, why now? Why did God take this guy and say, man, of all of the stories, I'm going to make you this super strong dude? Okay. So the couple of things that I think are interesting about that, like as we keep kind of processing that, is why does God then lead Samson into all these specific situations?

We're told that God made Samson fall in love with this girl that starts this entire war between Samson and the Philistine. It all comes out of this one broken love story. Right. And then, man. And why would God need to give one? person, this very specific set of skills and this super human strength.

So the thing that's interesting for me is... He's like Liam Mason. He's like Liam Mason. A very specific set of skills. A very specific set of skills. If you, man, think for me, about a hundred years after Samson's death, another guy is going to

be asked to defeat a giant. King David shows up. We already talked about David defeating Goliath is kind of one-on-one, like Samson is one-on-one. Well, there's some really interesting information in the text when you get to this story about David fighting a giant. And the thing about it is, we're told directly that this giant was a Philistine. And we're told that this giant came from the city of Gath. Now, without trying to make this super boring, the Philistines were led by five different rulers, each who led from a different city. One of the primary cities of the Philistine Empire was the city of Gah. Okay. And so, man, so

this giant is probably not that unusual. In fact, we're told in the story of, of David, that Goliath had five brothers, okay? Or four brothers. That's why David took five smooth stones. There's total of five of them. And I think we would agree kind of from the way that all of us together have looked at blurry history, like that moment where David defeats this giant is probably about the end of the giants in the story, the way we think of giants, David kind of wipes these guys out.

But 100 years before David, there's probably more than just a couple giants in the Philistine army. In fact, according to the text, it's in their DNA, right? The Philistines have giant hybrid DNA in their nation. It exists in their nation. These guys are living as a part of the Philistines. And so God says...

Correct me from wrong, though. And isn't they like the one of... Gosh, them and the Canaanites are the only ones that's spared, really, in the conquest of Joshua? Because Joshua's conquest of the Holy Land is to rid... If you were to read it, like we have come to read it, is to rid the promised land of these giant hybrids, these abominations to God that are ruling. There's spies come back and say there's giant. people here, we can't win. And Joshua's like, yeah, sure we can.

I mean, Caleb, we can handle this. And they go out and they do that, but they make the mistake, right? They make a mistake of letting a couple people groups hang around. It goes to Canaanites, and I want to say the Philistines are allowed to live, right? Which means that this is the way. You are exactly right. This is the way. This is the way the giants survive that and live in this, in the peripheral of God's people. And so yeah, I'll continue, but I think that's, that's, And I think when you were talking, I'm drawing this line saying, well, yeah, of course, there was a diaspora of giants.

We talked about and hypothesize that perhaps Philistine and Phoenicia, this is the way in which some of these giants ended up in North America, right? Because we have a lot of evidence. The giants were here. We talked to Fitz Zimmerman, Nate, about that and also the Lovelock Cave.

There's Native American stories, a yellow hair, which did earlier on the show this point. If you've listened, it's all over. Right, right, but they left except for the ones that were allowed, right? to continue. Wasn't Agabashan. His bed was in a museum.

But yeah, so I mean there's giants, right? Yeah, go ahead. Continue on this. So at this point in the story, we're told that God is going to begin the eradication of the Philistine nation and that God is going to begin setting his people permanently free from these Philistines. Like that's part of the setup in the story of Samson. And then what we find is God creates this superhuman hero because that's exactly what the nation of Israel was going to need to be able to stand up against it.

Look, Samson goes into a fight against the army of the Philistine and he kills a thousand of them by himself. There's no chance that he walks into that fight against a bunch of five, seven guys if they've got giants in their army. Right now. some of this is just conjecture, right? You have to kind of piece it together. But why would God this one time, why would God make this super soldier if he just was going to go beat up some regular dudes? There are plenty of other judges that. There are plenty of other guys. Like by the time you get to the story of David, we already kind of referenced. David's soldiers are doing crazy, cool stuff. Man, they're, you know, fighting a hundred people by themselves and they're killing lions and

snowy pits and you know all this crazy stuff but so why does god mean the super soldier no i think and that's interesting i want to but the juxtaposition right i just is interject i want you continue on this between a super soldier and then a shepherd boy right it's like it's it's it's really fascinating right god creates this this this herculean figure that that just dominates right and then when the giants show up again with david they laugh right they who's coming out and it's this little shepherd boy. And I feel it's just like God being, God being like, okay, I did this once this way. Here's how we're going to do this time.

And this is going to be even crazier because we're going to pull a young boy and some sling and some stones. And we're going to do it all over again. You can't really understand prophecy, though, until you look back on some of these things too. Because like you have to think about the Nazarite vow even just what we know, what grapes and wine symbolize. now, what we know what like a dead body symbolizes now, what we know what the body, you know, symbolizes now. And so you have these foreshadowing, but you don't know that at the time. Shadows and dust. You know, you don't know that Jesus is going to give his blood and there's this whole metaphor of the take this cup, right? We don't know that's coming, but we're supposed to

that's not, it's not the time to have the cup yet, right? Right. Well, yeah, you're getting This is like this is a counter, this is a counter part to the Refine, right? Because this is not Nephilim times. These are these are the post-flood giants, but God creates this would appear, right? If we're sort of just going to hypothesize on this because of the feats. He creates this counterpoint part. Exactly. Yeah.

I love it, dude. He needs, he needs this superhuman soldier who has the ability to stand against what the enemy created. Right. Now, before I keep going, I do want to pause here, just kind of throw in another aside real fast because it's fascinating. You talked about, you know, David, this small dude, shepherd boy, goes out to fight this giant.

We imagine Samson the way he was drawn as a cartoon character when I was in. Right? Lord's Jam, dude. The Lord's Jam. He's pushing the pillars. He's got the cross. Yeah. Look, there is nothing in the text.

that indicates Samson looked any different than the people around him. And that's a really fascinating idea for me, right? Like what if Samson wasn't seven foot tall, 400 pounds of muscle. What if he's also a 5-7 160-pound guy who can do the craziest stuff you could imagine? Because the reason I think that's an interesting idea is that seems very much like the character. of God. Yeah. Right?

Just divine lettuce. Just divine. The best lettuce ever. Well, literally like it gives you all your pets. Dude, just divine. I mean, from what we've heard on our show that. That's an interesting point. If I like that.

Well, I mean, if the spirit of God comes on you, you have superhuman strength. A lot of people say when they have spirit of demons come on them, they have superhuman strength. So it's like, this would be magnified beyond. Yeah. And so like these human beings have discharging. displayed this for good and bad. We've heard when his spirit comes on to people. I like thinking like he's like a little, just a little dude. Like he's like, he's little Mac from

Mike Tyson's punchout. Yeah. He's like, he's like, he spud webb showing up and he's just dominating. You guys just touched on something that I think is, is really powerful, right? Like when when you talk about these stories of exorcists who these demons, one of one of the primary indicators of demon possession is superhuman strength. Yeah. Right. But it seems like in this story of Samson, God has done his version of all of these wicked things that we've watched across history. Right. Like, man, these angelic watchers come down and they create this hybrid creature. Well, God's like, yeah, you can have hybrids. Look what I can do with this guy, Samson. He's going to take a vow. And I'm not saying God cast a spell. But it's kind of interesting if you think about it like that.

you know, like, oh, well, you did these specific things, and now you have this, you know, this superhuman ability. If we think about, you know, these, if you think about it in terms of like the idea of demon possession and people have this superhuman strength, and God's like, you know what? When my spirit comes on people, I'll show you superhuman strength. He's not throwing people across the room. He's killing a thousand guys.

And we're taking out hybrids. We're taking out hybrids. Yeah, we're reading the world of actual physical. manifested on planet. Hey, why do you think hair? I mean, I keep coming back to it. It's like, I mean, God could do it every once. This is the obvious, but it's just, it's fascinating that it's his hair.

And I, man, I, I sincerely don't have a good explanation for why it's the amazing hair and beard. Yeah. Right, I don't know. Other than it's so noticeable when you're walking around. Like, and that would make, maybe make more sense if he looks like a normal guy. Right. Bobby O'Flo. How are they distinguishing who this is?

Well, it's got six feet of hair, you know, trailing behind him and, you know, and a beard down to his belly button. It's like Rapunzel on steroids. I feel like a lot of the times in these biblical stories, it's not really the thing. It's the thing that it's the symbol of the thing. Right.

So there's some symbol, there's some connection to the physical, maybe that is like a very human trait that we grow hair, you know, that, might not be a part of other maybe created beings or something like that. Yeah. And that's a great.

Who knows? A great thing to wonder. Yeah, we cut our, we cut our hair. Unlike the rest of the. Right. Yeah, we do. Yeah.

Or we don't. The normal thing to do is to kind of. Or we don't. If we don't do it. Well, I'll try to get to the point like, like kind of give you the punchline. Yeah. Let's go.

Kind of wrap this thing. So through this pre-birth, lifetime spiritual vow, God created a human being who was powerful enough to take on hybrid creatures. And he did it in order to set his people free. So, Samson, how do you beat a nation that's full of half-free giants who are holding God's people captive in slavery? When you create a super soldier, that's what you do. What's interesting about that is, is if we flash forward to the life of Christ,

how do you defeat? I'm going to use some language here that I know you guys will track with, but I'll explain it in a second. How do you defeat the strongest members of the elder race who have rebelled against the Lord? Death and hell. These guys, man, these guys show up over and over again in the Old Testament story. They get banished. They show up over and over again in the New Testament story and the writings of Paul, right? How if God's going to continue to, man, to put down this rebellion that was, was created at the clear back in Genesis 6. How do you, you know, defeat the strongest members of the elder race who rebelled against the Lord and then are holding the souls of humanity captive? Well, you create a super soldier.

Yeah. And you do it in Christ. Right. Now, this next actual, like the actual hybrid being of Jesus who is half God and half human or all God and all human. I don't know how you take them out of work, right? But he shows up and ultimately defeats the enemy that we can't defeat on our own. How does God set the people free? He creates another super soldier.

And once again, you have this perfect prophetic picture between Samson and the life of Jesus. Yeah. The brilliance of it is that, I mean, the brilliance of God is that, you know, the captain of the armies of heaven, who is Christ, right? is the angel of the Lord, he comes, but he doesn't come as a super soldier, right? I mean, maybe undercover, if you will, right? But he comes and he does it exactly the opposite, right? Yeah.

And that's, I mean, it's the brilliance of like the 40 chest that God is playing. He won't be stopped from doing what he has decreed and what he does. And yet he does it in ways that are, you know, I imagine the darkness is like, that's the whole temptation Christ. They don't know if they can kill him, right? Maybe they're like, is this like Samson? Like,

can we just kill him? Is this like David or all these sort of shadows of the Messiah, right? These sort of like these prophetically markers of what the Messiah will do, but obviously is fulfilled perfectly in Christ, but there's all these sort of shadows of it in the Old Testament, right? Right. And the darkness has this idea, but they don't have, they don't know. But it's almost like when he's human and then he can be killed, right? When he's fully becomes human, then he has this moment. And maybe the hair represents an unblemished. There's some, there's some perfect, you know, we have this perfect sacrifice, this, you know, and then once, you know, if Jesus takes on the sin of the world, he becomes the thing, the blemished part. And then that's when he's able to be killed.

It seems as though he's protected before all that, because I'm sure they were trying to be trying to take them out. I'm sure. Multiple times, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there's this whole, this whole macro story

going on. And I think that when we, when we zoom out of a lot of these stories, there's so many, there's stories within stories. And I think that's the most

amazing thing about the Bible is you can continue to find another story hidden inside. It kind of reminds me of staring at one of those old school crossword puzzles when you see the words inside of it all. And then, you know,

you're kind of this other message within these stories. And I think at first glance, we can read the story of Samson and just see the moral failures and go, oh, this is about a man. This is your youth pastor. You'll take this story like,

this is why you need to stay away from the ladies, you know, and you miss everything. But also cut your hair, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, yeah, I agree. We can take these things with the Bible, especially and just make them moral stories. And that's well and fine.

There are lessons there, but I do, I love this, Dave, because I know you're a pastor and an author here, and these are things that you ruminate on because you went to seminary and you studied, and we have four years of this, but it is amazing just the layered, onion-like layers of the scripture. Because I think once you, there are stories,

like stories of the stories, it'd be Genesis 6 or Deutorma 32, or we look at the story of Jesus and sort of the cosmic geography we talked about the show, that things he does intention. where he goes intentionally because it has spiritual cosmic ramifications. And there is, it's just the inerrancy of the word is incredible.

There's no way you could take 66 books, more of your Catholic, you talk about Maccabees. But you take these books and there's a coherent thread that runs all the way through. And the prophecy is all fulfilled. And it all works in harmony and you go, it can't be anything. And preserved in a story. Right. In a way that, you know, you wouldn't think an original writer thinking, oh, this guy's going to stretch out his arms and touch both pillars, right? You wouldn't think that at some point, and you don't even know if you make the connection later on. I mean, sometimes it takes hundreds of years to go, oh, both of these guys are spreading their arms out. Oh, okay. I get it now. I think that just takes time. it's we have so this is not my and my idea of stealing it from somebody else but we have in the Bible what is the first hyperlinked text right there's just it's just connected over and over

and over again in all these little places and you click on the right two words in samson and you find yourself right back in the story of jesus right you click on the right two words in genesis six and you find yourself in the book of revelation right there's yeah oh yeah or saw maybe We saw me too and you connect to Dutormee 32 and you start to find all these interweave connections that are like, oh, this unlocks so much more. And we still on the show a lot of time. It's a different type of truth. It is. It is something that continues to prove itself more valid over time.

And I think that it speaks to all the skeptics because some people, people who are writers, people who are creative, people often have the hardest time believing some of these stories can go, man, how did. How did all these stories tell one story? That is, you know, there's no way these writers could have known that this story is the same as this one, and this one is this one. Unless it's inspired. Yeah, unless it is inspired. And I guess we know now, Luke,

if we want to know the truth, someone's just got to shave Bigfoot's head and then. Shaves Bigfoot's head. It loses all of his power. And we can bring him in. That's right. He'll stop evaporating. Man, you know, I think if I,

that's where he gets all his power, Bigfoot. It's all, it's all of his power. the hair. I think if I was going to wrap up this conversation from my perspective, I would just come right back to the thing we just talked about. In this story of judges, God creates this being who's going to physically assert himself over everyone else to set the people free. But by the time we get to Jesus, we see the story repeat. Only this time, it's spiritual. God's not sending in some, you know, big strong guy to beat up the Romans. God's going, no, no, no.

This little snapshot that happened in the story of Samson, I'm getting ready to do on a universal scale through my son. And this time when he does it, everyone can be free. Yeah. Yeah, dude, it's a mic. It's a mic drop. And I just think like that's the brilliance of God, right? And also the holdup for the Jews at the time.

And even moving forward is they wanted this. conquering king. They wanted to come in and throw off the yoke of the Romans and set the people free and he did it. He just didn't in a way

that people would have envisioned or perhaps hoped at the time. Well I'm sure the unseen realms and all the other, you know, all the things that we talked about on our show knew. They could see it. They could probably see a

sort of a lightning flash. Yeah. I mean at the tomb, they're like, spread the world. Why are you here before our time? So they knew. They knew. They knew.

But yeah, I mean, so much of the human story is we are in the dark because, and I think the dark helps us sometimes to go about our lives and live our lives. If we could see, you know, all the things happening behind the veil, we probably would be very distracted. And there are some people who say they can. And it seems like they have a burden it they carry. But I think so much of what Jesus does is behind the veil and obviously they know what's happening and and these stories kind of pinpoint to what's going to happen and what comes and I think

it's great that uh in a way um when we zoom into these these stories we can miss we can miss the bigger picture we can miss the overall narrative and I think we can we can we can wildly interpret these stories I think in ways that aren't that aren't really helpful because I think it's cool to resurrect this story no pun intended um give it new life and and make you think about maybe this is why the hair, maybe this is why the temple, maybe this is why the supernatural strength. And I think that it takes a lot of listening

to shows like ours and ideas like this to actually see, oh, this story has a lot more meaning to it. I think that's what's cool about the podcast. It's allowed us to breathe some, a different lens, a different perspective into make things a little less blurry. I guess you can say. Well, and have a space to do it.

Yeah, I mean, go ahead. I didn't make this connection. until Luke was talking a few minutes ago, but he said, man, we've been doing this podcast for four years. Like, you guys have a bachelor's degree in blurry. Bachelors and blurry. For all the things that brings, Abe, exactly. I mean, it, but I mean, it might get you a discount at the 7-Eleven on an icy. That's it. But to that point, though, I'm like, I'm grateful for this space, though, right? Like, we can have, you know, folks like, you, Abe, write in this book, your pastor, you went to seminary. And you're looking, and we can,

we have a space to talk about these things, right? Like because, because, I mean, taking a re-look at, you know, at the story of Samson or whatever you want to, whatever we fill in the blank, right, when it comes to the Bible and then processing that and saying, what if this? And perhaps we can make enough connections. It's not just all blind conjecture. We're drawing, but this space to do this and to consider these ideas, I think, is, is special in a way, right?

Because we can unpack this. It doesn't become a five-point sermon on the morality. of Samson. Don't fall. Don't give up your vow or you'll lose that thing that God has given you. It's a very, very easy and applicable lesson to the story of Samson. But it just misses the prophetic underpinnings. It misses a lot of these things that in context, right, of who were the Philistines? Yeah, instead of a life of example, he becomes an example of what not to do instead of, oh, this is something else going on entirely. It is, you step out of the story and the story becomes a deeper truth,

something that you can admire and appreciate. Not like a listen of, don't do this. You touched on an idea that I think is really powerful. And the idea is like you can take this story and say, gosh, you know what? You should not sin because, you know, if you sin, if you do some wrong things, then it's bad. Right. Well, actually, what the point of the big picture text is to tell you that if you make these decisions that are outside the way God has designed you to live, you don't just do something kind of bad. You actually become a weapon for the darkness. Now the darkness gets to use you in the world as darkness. Instead of, man, I'm following this way to live because this way to live brings God to the earth. It brings light to the world around me. It is how I actually fight the battle. Like, I'm not, you know, you joked about, you know, youth pastors, you know, telling their kids, stay away from the

ladies, right? Like, I'm not staying away from the ladies because, you know, oh, man, this, this, this, this, this, this one choice I could make is sinful. Like, I'm not making that decision because it makes my life a weapon in the hands of the enemy. But if I choose something holy and righteous, it makes my life a weapon in the hands of God. Yeah. That's the thing they're after. Even still, though, even still, God will use all those things. Because a lot of us, we, you know, there's people who intentionally just live a debauched life and do whatever they want. But there's people who've made serious decisions and made mistakes.

But even then, you know, God weaves all those things back to. For sure. And it doesn't matter how many times they try to pollute the earth, human beings have somehow managed to flourish and fight back against literal. giants, literal super soldiers, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, the the guy with the flowing hair is going to save us at the end, you know, you know, it's just like Jeff Buckley said, right? She's tidy to her kitchen chair. Oh, yeah. You broke her throne and she cut her hair. Oh, yeah. One of the best, I mean, one of the greatest son, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard, but Jeff. You know what's funny. I named my youngest son, Cohen, and he will not cut his hair. It's so,

He's got the blowing locks From your lips, you do. Hallelujah. And guys, I don't want to end by, you know, bandboying for a lot. But thank you so much for a chance to come on and share again. Yeah.

I sincerely have appreciated it. We're going to send all the weird people to you, though. That sounds great. Send them my way. They're going to fill your inbox. We've got an accidental exorcist on speed dial. You need him to come clean your house. Going on blurry is a little bit of a burden now.

It's like, wait till you get the emails. No, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to talk about these ideas and a place for other people to come and share these ideas and let all of us kind of shoot through them and live in it as well. We appreciate it. I think it's amazing to kind of see what God is doing humbly with this space. And like, you know, you're a member. You support the show. You're a pastor. And it just, it's crazy to see the community sort of just propagate, if you will.

not maybe the right term, but just sort of create these, these conversations from, you know, from essentially started 10 episodes about Bigfoot and trying to figure that. Like, we're in the space now. I love this. I love getting back to the scripture dissecting and seeing, you know, through a supernatural lens, what's happening, right? This is really just. Yeah, it's like interesting again.

I think it's easy for us as, you know, you've been to sermons a thousand times and sometimes we can fall asleep. But it's like when you resurrect the whole craziness of the story. It's like, you just did a Bible story on our podcast about Bigfootball of all things. And it's interesting again because it's like there's these supernatural elements that we hear in all these stories that peak our interest. That's when we get on the edge of our chair and go, oh, tell me that story. Right. But it pulls the pieces, right?

We've got giants and we've got, you know. Somehow we've taught the Bible and it bores people. It's a, uh, and I just go back to Mike. Yeah. Just dare you to born with the Bible. Yeah. You know, and I, and I, why do we do that? Yeah, we don't.

We shouldn't. I mean, we need Abe. Oh, yeah, we need. Thanks, Sam. All honesty. Man, heck yeah. Thanks, Abe. Thanks for coming on our show.

Thanks for coming on blurry. And when the book comes out, let us know. We'll tell our listeners when they can get it and good work. If you need someone to write that intro, let us know. It won't be good. Oh, man. It won't be good. But it will be an intro.

I'll take you up on a terrible intro. That's, dude. We'll set the bar very low. Absolutely. Thanks, brother. Thanks, thank you. I appreciate you, man. Great to see you.