Blurry Creatures - EP: 468 The Church is Afraid of the Supernatural with Jon Moffitt

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Jon Moffitt is a Reformed pastor, and in his world, you do not talk about this. Demons, principalities, the divine council, the unseen war Paul describes in Ephesians. It is not that the Reformed church calls it heresy. It is that the Reformed church is so afraid of looking charismatic that it simply goes quiet. Jon lives in that silence for years, until he sits down to preach the Lord's Prayer and gets stuck on one line. Deliver us from the evil one. He realizes he has never heard a single sermon on it, and pulling that thread unravels everything he thought he was allowed to say. What follows is a conversation about the half of the Bible the modern church keeps skipping. Jon tells Luke and Nate what happens when he starts talking openly: the church members who finally admit the things they have seen, the eight-year-old with a possession story, and the businessman who hides a UFO encounter for twenty years because he is too ashamed to say it out loud. He also brings the discipline his tradition is known for, drawing a hard line between experience and Scripture and refusing the lazy answer that everything is a demon. This is the supernatural handled by a man who is not looking for a monster under every rock. Get Jon's book here: The Bible According to Jesus Want more Blurry? A Blurry Creatures membership unlocks a vault of 100+ members-only episodes you can't hear anywhere else, plus every single main feed episode completely ad-free. You also get access to a vibrant community of fellow seekers, exclusive drops, and perks built for people who can't stop digging. Come see what happens when we keep the mics rolling. Check it out at https://blurrycreatures.com/pages/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're like us, you're out there looking for that story, that true story. You're down that rabbit hole. You want something that's authentic, one of a kind, and you don't want to be fooled with things that are just knockoffs. No, you want the real deal, and you want the best you can get. You want a cashmere sweater that's like the chest hair on Bert Reynolds. That's right. Where can you find that, Nate? Quinn's. It focuses on high-quality, wardrobe staples and premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, or merino wool.

The styles are timeless, versatile, just like back in the 80s when everything was iconic. And the weather's changing, right? A lot of us you start thinking about, hey, we've been wearing shorts and teas all summer. It's time to get into the fall wardrobe. A lot of us are looking and saying, hey, I don't want to wear that same thing I wore all last fall. I want some 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters to start at $60. That's right. I want premium pants, fitted teas and polos.

All these things we found at Quinn's. That's right. Everything at Queens is 50 to 80% off from other similar brands. And they worked regularly with ethical factories and they cut out the middleman. So you're paying for high quality, no brand markup. It's like you're in a time machine going back to the days when they made things really good. You know, I love what I've gotten. They've got some amazing staples, some really good 100% cotton teas I wear all the time.

And there's a Marino sweater that I'm about to break out here for the fall weather. So find your next fall favorites at Quinn's. Download the Quinn's app for app exclusive offers or go to quins.com slash blurry. You get free shipping on your order in 365-day returns, Nate. It's now available in Canada. So if you live in America's hat, you can get it as well. And the UK. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com.

com slash blurry. You know, Luke, they say dogs can see things that humans can see. Like what, Nathan? Like they can see into the spiritual realm, like all the blurry stuff. Maybe it's good to have our four-legged friends around for a longer time then. If you got Mothman or you've maybe got a Civil War ghost running through the house. Dogs can alert you to all the blurry stuff out there, but your dog can't alert you that his health is declining.

And every dog instinctively knows that those healthy years are passing really quick because dogs live quicker than humans. You know, and if you've had a dog like, you know, like I have and like, like we have. You always wish for more time, more walks, more time in general with your, you know, with your little guy or a little gal. But you don't really start thinking about this until they start slowing down a little bit. You start to notice their age, notice that they their hips hurt. It's not the 80s anymore for the dogs. It's not the 80s anymore. But the good news is, you know what to change your dog food? You just add rough greens. Rough greens delivers over 20 live

vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, plus probiotics, enzymes, and omega oils that your dog needs to stay healthy. Yeah, this is a passion project. of naturopathic doctor Dennis Black. And he's going to tell you straight, they're not getting what they need right now. And that's why he created Rough Greens. 90-day challenge. Get 50% off your first 90 days

backed by a full 90-day money-back guarantee. Don't wait until you wish you had started sooner. We didn't, and our dogs were better for it. Go to roughgreens.com. That's R-U-F-F-F-G-R-E-N-S dot com. Rough Greens. They make any dog food better. I know for a fact that a lot of people have experiences.

is, they're too embarrassed and ashamed to tell people. There's a buddy of mine. This guy is a businessman, very high up in the corporate world. I was telling him about one of my church members who's, like, convinced that his uncle, he was abducted and has a chip in his arm. I'm testing the waters, right? Like, he's going to make fun of me. And he's just looking at me like dead straight.

He goes, I have a crazier one than that. It was his story. He and his buddies are out dirt biking. And on the other side of this mountain, it's just three of them. There's this bright light. So they're like, whoa, I know there's a military base. So let's go see what they're doing. So they crawl up there.

Long story short, he's like, I can't describe to what we saw. It's this see-through orb. It's like massive in the sky. And it just started moving towards us. No noise, no nothing. And then just shot out. He goes, I've never told anybody but my wife. He's held on to that for, I think, almost 20 years.

He's like, I don't know what to think about that. In light of all this stuff you've been talking about, like, you know, the Nephilim and the government, like, whatever. He goes, what do you think about that? What happens when you grew up in the church and you read things like the divine counsel, spiritual powers, principalities, the angels, the angels, that sin and you don't have any answers and you go looking for him. Today our friend John Moffat, reformed pastor, joins us on blurry creatures to talk about how taking a supernatural view of scripture has changed his faith and also embroiled him in controversy in the reformed church. And why is this so controversial? We read supernatural stories in the Bible all the time. But when

you start preaching it from the pulpit or you start believing them and writing them in your books, it becomes a problem. And we're going to talk about reading the Old Testament. John argues we should read the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. Go to Blurrycreatures.com. slash members to become a member of the podcast and get access to so much more. Yeah, do you want early episodes, unreleased members only episodes, exclusive discounts on merch, early access to tickets for live events, all that and so much more, including your own private blurry creatures communities. blurry creatures.com slash members. Check it out. Keeps the lights on.

The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. It's a Smithsonian. 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 to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen 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 Herman event.

And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. We had faces for radio. now we're on video. Welcome back to the blurry basement. We got John Moffathe in the house. You're a pastor, theologian, and you're a podcaster as well. There's probably a lot of things you do, but we'll leave it at that. We'll let you tell us more about yourself. But your brand new book is out today, the Bible according to Jesus, how Jesus teaches us to read the scriptures. And you've been in the news lately, like a lot of things have been in the news lately. But, you know, like a lot of the topics we

talk about here. We bring up stuff that sort of kicks the bees nest. Every episode does. And we we joked offstage back last year, last year, yesterday. When did we do that? Backstage or off camera is what I was trying to say. But like, you don't like our show, just wait a week because we have another episode coming. You know what I mean? I like the line. Yeah, but you got people turning on you because of talking about blurry stuff. And obviously there's certain sections of the Christianity in the Christian world who don't like the blurry verse and they don't like

and you were talking pre-roll about re-enchanting the scriptures in the Bible and welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks man. Thanks for coming on. You have your own podcast. You know how this goes. You know what we do here.

What do you thought is on Bigfoot? I'm welcome. Yeah, well, I got there from my kids, so I got to represent. Bigfoot, he likes to stay hydrated. Yeah. I watch a book right there. So it's funny, I could care less about Bigfoot

until I start listening to Blur creatures. and then... Tell Kirk Cameron. So then it became... So I listened to you guys and I thought it was funny so then became a joke in my house where I was trying to convince my kids

that I believed in Bigfoot. Well, what I didn't know was I convinced my 14-year-old daughter who started convincing her Christian friends of Bigfoot and she came home in tears one day because everybody was making fun of her and I was like, oh, what have I done?

But over time, listening to a lot of stories and yeah, I don't know. I'm telling you it's like that I'm at a point now. I've seen enough stuff over the last two years. And I've heard, there's some people of some stories in my church, not related to Bigfoot, but just like alien stuff. Yeah.

Where I go, I don't know. There's enough people who've seen stuff. And what's the phrase? If 1% of them are right, that's enough for me to know that, okay, there's probably something there. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's kind of how I'm, so yeah, I think, yeah, I'll tell you what, if someone says, I know where a Bigfoot has, you want to go see them, I'm going to say no.

Yeah. because it's probably true. Who told it? Was it, Dave Brian told us that he would take us to the top mount, we go with him to Mount Shast and you need a big foot? I'm not going. He never went. Was that the guy that does the recess peanut?

Who's the guy that does like the Reese's Pinotubs? No, what? What? No. Who? There's some story about this guy feeding, like they love Rees and Reesis. I remember which one that is.

They claim a lot of stuff, like apples and people leave out, what was the gun guy lived out bottles, the little bottles of booze for the little people. I can't even remember. But there's a lot, there's a lot of, we got fuzzy memories. But I have a theological answer for you. Yeah. What?

So the Bible, the way it works, the way it's written, is that it gives you, it assumes knowledge, right? So it never tells you what a donkey is. It never tells you, like, it doesn't, it just, like, it just describes things. So in my opinion, I think the Bible describes about 5% of the spiritual realm, just enough for you to know, like, here's how you got to work, and here's what you need to be aware of. Yeah. So if you think about that, if it's telling you five percent of what the world probably has to tell you, then I can think in a realm of 95% of what I don't understand. Yeah.

The Bigfoot could exist. Well, it's funny because we ask everybody this question. And every once in a while, there'll be a new thing that pops into my mind that we haven't heard about Bigfoot. And yesterday, interviewing Ryan Peterson, there was a little bit of that happening in my mind. Oh, this is a new, this is a little nugget maybe towards the Bigfoot, you know, paradigm, trying to figure that whole thing out. But he has the same thing.

I'm always up for a documentary, though. Well, I, yeah. To our yesterday's conversation. that was the main thing is just between verse one and two in the Bible. There's this gap theory and there's all this, like you said, 95% of stuff going on that. We don't know. We don't know what happened between that. And so, yeah, it's loaded.

You just got done preaching on Genesis 6, which we were talking about at lunch. And that's the same paradigm. It's the same story. All of the knowledge there and this backstory is all implied. Like when Moses is writing then, he goes, you know the story. You know how this all went? You know, I don't have to explain, you know, all of. of this and the angelic rebellion and all the stuff we get in the Anacian tale.

We don't have to explain all that because you know it. It's like, you know, the old analogy. Like we don't, we'd say the Super Bowl, you know what that is. You know that all the teams play. If you're an American, you know that all the teams play a full year and then they play a playoffs and you get there and they wait a week and all these things. And then they play the big game for the big trophy. But all that's implied cultural knowledge.

And we've gone through that with Dr. Michael Heiser and all this. But this is fun. I mean, we didn't plan to do this on the day your book came out, which is really, No. We had to reschedule because of the snow. Yeah, because of the snow. I was kind of one of the flies here in Nashville for a while. What's that? It was Lord of the Flies here in Nashville for a while.

Especially if you wanted to get anything in the grocery store, it was gone. We ran out of, so we've only had an up, so I have a generator and the power went out. Yeah. And we only run it during the summer because it's the tornado season, right? Yeah. It blew through our gas faster because of the heaters. So I live on a massive hill, like taller in this building. So I had to slide in my truck all the way down to the bottom so I could get more gas.

Yeah. Let's just say there was a lot of the last. of praying going on the way down that hill. But yeah, it was a scary, that was a scary moment. John, this is,

yeah, I would say, we're not here because your book is out. We've been wanting to do this for a while. Yeah. And, uh, we want to get into the drama.

Well, I mean, so you're, people that don't know you. Yeah. You are great friends and also partner with, you know, one of our great friends,

Doug Van Dorn. And, you know, he's been a staple on the show since the beginning. We just did an episode, two episodes with him in the last, in the last week or so. Yeah.

But you're a foreign pastor. You are, we always say Doug is a unicorn in a sense, but also you are of the unicornian race in the reform spaces. Is that your new church brand, the unicorn reformers? Yeah. I don't know how many people are going to show for that. Yeah, it's like a whole new offshoot. Yeah. Denomination.

Yeah. The reformed unicorns. Let's talk a little bit about this. This is something I wanted to bring. Because there's a bigger conversation here just than sort of what you went through. But you are, I'll let you speak for you. but I know that based on the book and our conversations offline, that you are a, you know, a divine counsel,

um, enchanted worldview, if you will, which is kind of what Michael Heiser talk about. There's a chapter in the book here where you talk about how you can't, you can't separate that. The Bible's not a moral code. It's not written as a list of rules or just try harder. There's a whole realm is what blurry creatures exist that, that interacts with. And sometimes governs the things that happen here.

And God governs all of them. I'm just saying that that realm influences ours. Yeah. It came against you. Yeah. So you've got a podcast. Sure. You did perform friends with Doug.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess the short story is so, you know, I grew up super strict fundamental of Baptist, so very legalistic. And then just kind of got burned out by that. My dad died when I was 21. So I had like a crisis of faith right before I became a pastor. And I stopped praying. Like just didn't, like I prayed so hard for him to be here.

it didn't get healed. So that kind of wrecked my faith for a while. And so I got to a point where I was kind of rebuilding everything. Like I need to rebuild my faith because whatever I was raised on feels off. You heard about Upwork. I haven't heard about Upwork. Yeah. Upwork gives businesses like Blurry fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise. You can fill critical skill gaps. You can launch projects faster. And you can scale support up or down. Upwork is the place to find it. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. We've got AI powered short. And you can scale support up or down. Upwork is the place to find it. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. We've got AI powered short. You've got AI powered short. shortlisting, and you can create a curated shortlist of top freelancers matching our goals. Thousands of growing businesses, Nate, are using Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. And there's over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings you can hire with confidence right now on Upwork. That's right. So if you have a project, you have a business, if you have a company, and you're trying to find somebody that can help you. Upwork is the place to go. And it's free to sign up. That's right. And posting a job is easy.

So visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect to top talent, ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork, UP-W-R-K.com. Nate, they're sending kids back to school earlier and earlier every year. Back when we were kids, we were free. We rode our bikes down to the store. There were no cell phones. Mom and dad just had to believe you were where you were, and you were out there just tearing it up on those BMXs.

We were locked into contracts back then, Luke. And nowadays, it feels like you're... stuck in some contract, but if you want freedom, have wireless. Well, summer still means freedom. I'm sort of at the end of summer here. And Mint Mobile's got a summer sale. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 a month, even unlimited. So free yourself from big wireless and switch to Mint Mobile for high speed data and

coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with big wireless and they made it right. 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high-speed data, unlimited talk and text. Delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number, Zach Morris. that on down here. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. So let's ditch overpriced wireless with MintMobile. It's easy to sign up. That's right. And our friends use it.

Dr. Judd's out there. Loud and clear on MintMobile. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's mintmobile.com slash blurry. Got your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash blurry. Up front payment of $45 for three months, 90 for six months, and 180 for 12 months, plans required 15 bucks per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy, includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspot, capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage varies. Seamintmobile.

And yeah, so the more and more I studied the Bible, the more and more I saw that, like, the creeds of confessions made a lot of sense to me. So kind of dove into that for the next, you know, I got a seminary degree, became a pastor. But just continued to see things that just didn't make sense to me. Like I saw people blow up their life. I saw like just things I couldn't explain, like stories. And then there was like this darkness that just, I was like, how do you explain? The theology I'm being taught doesn't fully explain the darkness.

Like, yeah, everybody's born in a sinner. I get that. But there's a darkness here that I don't understand. So I was in a pretty dark place in my, this was probably about five years ago. in my, in my just pastor, the church was tiny. We were barely surviving. The man I had been mentored under blew up his life. And I was preaching the Lord's Prayer.

And I get to the, you know, prepping for my sermon. And I keep looking at the last phrase. And it keeps saying, deliver us from the evil one. I thought to myself, who in the reform world preaches a sermon on that? Like, I need to find somebody who's, who preach the sermon. That is an interesting thing for Jesus to end. a prayer. Like, I don't know about you guys. I was taught, this is the daily prayer. Is that really controversial in the reform world? It's not controversial. It's just not talked about. You know what I'm

saying? It's like, if I say that, no one's going to just be like, I can't believe you believe that, but no one talks about it. That's the difference. You see what I'm saying? Why? Why do you think they don't talk about it? I, my, well, I think there's a, I could do a whole episode on that, but I think that the reform world is so afraid of the charismatic world. They don't want to sound anything like it. And so we tend to avoid topics that could be like, oh, that sounds charismatic. So it's like a knee jerk to be like, we got to stay away from that. Yeah, you fall off. We can't even have like a sense of or a hint of anything that could be associated with a charismatic movement. Yeah, or I don't know about you guys, but I always like, well, be careful if you focus on that

demon, Satan stuff, you know, it could it could lead you astray. That was kind of the warning I got all the time. Really? Oh, yeah. So they're afraid of it. Yeah, oh yeah. So it delivers from the evil one. So I started going down a rabbit hole of like trying to find anybody and everybody that I could to, like I need to know who's wrote on this that is a serious theologian. And I found a guy by the name of Donald Greg Barnhouse who wrote a book called The Invisible War. And it was the first time I had heard of the gap theory and of divine counsel. And I was like, what? I couldn't put the book down. I think I read it in like 24 hours.

I just, it was mind-blowing. So I started sharing it with all my friends. And one of my friends, his name is Caleb, he's like, dude, you should listen to this podcast. It's called Boyer Creatures. Because there's this guy by the name with Doug Van Dorn, who is reformed, and he's talking about the same stuff you're talking about. And I was like, no way. So I found Doug started like, you know, reading, listening to all of his stuff. And then I just sent him a Facebook message.

And he and I became friends immediately. And but this, well, back up a little bit, I had Michael Heiser's, book on my shelf that I was like, I'm not reading that book. That guy's a cook. So then I was like, well, that's not fair. I, you know, I would never be at the place where I am today. So I read it. I didn't like it at all. And then I read Donald Gray Barnhouse. And I was like, Barnhouse is saying the exact same thing as Michael Heiser. So Barnhouse wrote it in 1960. Now, he wasn't not as explicit as Michael, Michael was. Michael was like very, very explicit. it. Anyway, so at that point, I was already primed and ready to, like, okay, now that I've read

Barnhouse, Michael Heiser's makes a lot more sense to me. So I was deeply impacted by this, because it helped me make sense looking at the spiritual realm, what's going on with Ephesion 6. Like, everybody reads Ephesion 6 is like, oh, yeah, Principality's power is like, yeah, you got to be careful of that. And we just kind of move on, but I'm like, no, I think this, Paul's like, stand in the strength of the Lord. And Jesus is telling us. telling me to deliver us from the evil one. Peter's telling me to watch out for the roaring lion, and we're over here acting like there's not a problem.

Yeah. That's not okay with me in my faith. So, yeah, this is when I started building a friendship with Doug, and he and I were just having phone call after phone call, like almost every day of the week. And I finally said, what if we, as reformed dudes, did a podcast on this from our perspective? Like, there's a bunch of reform people out there

that needs to know, like, there's another way of thinking about your Bible, and we don't have to ignore these passages. At the same time, you know, we don't have to become wackos. Like, we could be serious Christians and take all of us. So we did. We started this podcast called Kingdoms Unveiled, and eventually we turned it to Reform Fringe. And we were just walking through, like, hey, what's the divine counsel? What are our thoughts on Michael Heiser? What are our thoughts on Neflem? And so we were just kind of walking through our faith from our perspective and introducing seeing what we would say is, so like if you look at the creeds of confessions, which, you know, I think Michael Heiser gets a bad rap, and he also gets misquoted a lot.

Yeah. Michael didn't say he didn't like or didn't use the creeds and confessions. That's not what he was saying, which is important because you go back and read his book, because that's what I was hearing. It's like, oh, he is a denier of the creed of confessions. No, he's not. All he's saying is that those creeds and confessions don't tell us everything we need to know about the Bible.

and they're not the only grid in which you can understand scripture, which I completely agree with them on. So what I was introducing to my church through preaching and through this podcast that we were doing was just helping, I would say, reenchant people's faith. Like, there's a lot more going on in our world than what we're being told in the media and what we're being told in Christianity. Because like most of the people in my church probably wouldn't heard of blurry creatures. They're not really thinking about Bigfoot. They're not thinking, you know, all this stuff. They're just not. Yeah.

And so we ended up having this thing called blurry nights where I would have guys that would hear me preaching and they're like, hey, I've got some questions. You've heard this podcast called blurry creatures? And I would just kind of chuckle. I'm like, why don't you come to my house tonight? Well, it got out, blurry that was called blurry nights. And people in the church thought we were getting drunk. I'm like, no, no, not blur.

In the spirit, bro. In the spirit. Oh, like blurry, like blurry animals, blue creatures. Like, oh, okay. So it was really impacting our church. I started having church members come to me and really opening up about, like, horrible experiences they had and they didn't know how to, like, they were thankful that a pastor was willing to talk about them about supernatural things, experiences that their had,

their child having a demon possession moment at the age of eight. Like just, you know, how do I process this? So I started to see a lot of really great progress here. Well, I thought, man, this has been so beneficial to me in my faith. It makes a lot more sense this war worth part of, like, what's going on in the government and all this deception and you start thinking about how, you know, these fallen angels are manipulating government. And it just makes a whole lot more sense.

And the preaching of the gospel is the only way in which you're going to ultimately fight back and win. Because every time Paul, like, sets you up to be afraid, he goes, now here's your weapon. It's Christ. It's preaching Christ. Like, this is how you fight back. So I just, you know, I thought this is, this is really important. I think we need to go more public on this.

So that's when I started the Reform Fringe or King's Unveil. It got more popular than I realized it would. And a lot of the world, so I have Theocast. Well, I'm about to expose a lot of stuff on here, so here we go. So Theocast is a pretty good-sized podcast in the Reform world. We're one of the, as far as like a Reform Baptist. And there's a lot of people who support what we do in the Royal Lake out of what we're doing, but I am in the no-no zone now. And so I started getting warnings of like,

hey, you need to stop this. You're causing problems. You're causing division. You're causing confusion. So there's a lot of like private conversations that were happening. And a lot of it was, in my opinion, confusion on things I wasn't saying. In other words, you know how this happens where you'll talk about a topic so they just assume you mean this? Yeah. It's like, no, that's not what I'm doing. Welcome to blurry. Yeah. There's a lot of assumptions on our end and I'm like, well, you believe this, you believe that. And I'm like, no, we had a talk, we had a discussion about it. Exactly.

I actually rarely talk about what we believe or think about things. But we say, well, this is all about the gospel, ultimately. Yep. And getting people to have an encounter with Jesus. And if they could do that by exploring some things that happened to them or some of the things they can't explain or their pastors, unlike you, John, don't have answers for them, then this is a place to have those discussions. And we've said millions, hundreds of times that, like, you know, we don't believe or

agree with everything on here, but we believe these discussions are worth having. Yeah. because most churches and places in Christendom aren't having them. And so I don't completely understand it. Because they'll say, Blurie believes this and Blurrie says that. I'm like, we had a guest. Exactly. Who we interviewed.

And, you know, it's okay to like chew the meat and spit out the bones. It's okay to actually question your own paradise. What, you mean being an adult? Yeah, 100%. I mean, in the beginning. I bring it back to like free speech is my best example, which is like in the economy of ideas, the way free speech is supposed to work is that you talk about everything

and the best ideas come to the top. Right? It's like, it's like the great, well, the great philosopher of our age, the macho man, Randy Savage said the cream rises to the, the cream rises to the top. Yeah. There it is. There you go. You know, the first time he's done that.

There you go. Okay. What? You heard about Upwork. I haven't heard about Upwork. Yeah. Upwork gives businesses, like Blurry, fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise. You can fill critical skill gaps.

You can launch projects fast. And you can scale support up. or down. Upwork is the place to find it. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. We've got AI powered shortlisting, and you can create a curated shortlist of top freelancers matching our goals. Thousands of growing businesses, Nate, are using Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. And there's over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings you can hire with confidence right now on Upwork. That's right. So if you have a project, you have a business, if you have a

company and you're trying to find somebody that can help you. Upwork is the place to go. And it's free to sign up. That's right. And posting a job is easy. So visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect to top talent, ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork. U-W-R-K.com. U-P-W-R-K-R-K-R-K- . Nate, they're sending kids back to school earlier and earlier every year. Back when we were kids, we were free. We rode our bikes down to the store. There were no cell phones. Mom and dad just had to believe you were, where you were. And you're out there just tearing it up on those BMXs. We were locked into contracts back then, Luke.

And nowadays, it feels like you're stuck in some contract. But if you want freedom, have wireless. Well, summer still means freedom. I'm sort of at the end of summer here. And Mint Mobile's got a summer sale. Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 a month, even unlimited. So free yourself from big wireless and switch to Mint Mobile for high speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with big wireless and they made it right. 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high-speed data, unlimited talk, and text. Delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number, Zach Morris.

Bring that on down here. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. So let's ditch overpriced wireless with MintMobile. It's easy to sign up. That's right. And our friends use it. Dr. Judd's out there. Loud and clear on MintMobile.

To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's MintMobile.com slash blurry. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at MintMobile. dot com slash blurry upfront payment and $45 for three months 90 for six months and 180 for 12 months plans required 15 bucks per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspot capable device required availability speed and coverage varies cementmobile.com yeah and i feel like oftentimes um it it seems like these principalities and powers want to stay hidden and so anything exposing that

or anything, kind of gets them off in the weeds. It sort of kicks the bees' nest and they come out and they get mad. And they come out in the form of most of the time other Christians. That's right. It's not like random people outside of the Christian circle that most of those people don't even know what's going on in our cell circles. Like, what are you guys talking about over there? Yeah. But, you know, it's other Christians turning on the people trying to awaken, re-enchant the scripture.

I think at times, and they don't even know they're doing it, a perfect example from scripture is when Jesus looks at Peter and was like, get behind me, Satan. Like, Peter didn't even know he was getting used. Because Peter had a, because what Peter's thinking, like, oh, let's go get the sword, let's bring Jesus and his king. He's like, you're not paying attention, man. I'm talking about a heavenly spiritual kingdom.

Wow. Say that again. That's good. But I have a lot of sympathy for some of the Christians that came after me, because I literally look at this and I go, I think they're being duped. Yeah. Like they don't, they don't. I don't, I've heard a lot of your guys story and through the, through the past, but I think sometimes you have to have, I hate to say it this way, but you have to have like an experience that causes you to go, wait, I think there's more happening. There's more going on. And now you're willing. If you don't have something that caused you to go, I need to question reality or my, my understanding of reality. So what they were hearing me, it basically,

basically introduces, you know, oh, John, you're, you're, well, the accusation was you're trying to make money, you're trying to get popular. And I was like, trust me, dude, this is not making me popular. I can tell you this right now. It's like the opposite. Yeah. And so a lot of Christians, they feel, they feel threatened because you are, this is the reality, because I had this conversation with my own wife. She's like, this is the reality I grew up with and you're challenging everything that I've ever believed. I said, but wouldn't you rather want the truth? And this is where, And you guys do this all the time where you could go back into scripture

and say, yeah, but this isn't like some ancient teaching or this, I'm not going to give you my experience. This is what the Bible says. This is literally from scripture. So there's a difference between, like experience is extremely powerful. We get that.

And then eyewitness accounts is, but when it's scripture, it's at that point, everything kind of gets washed away. Do you think it's unlearning? It's like that there's this like when you begin to challenge the things that you've created

your own personal dogma around that, the, obviously the knee jerk is to throw it out because then you have to unwind and unlearn. And to your point, I think that's something you should, it takes humility, but you should embrace because we're not talking, as you said, it's not experiential. We're talking about what's in the scripture and not, you're not ignoring things for the sake of their uncomfortable. Yeah. I mean, and I think that's, that's, and you were kicking the hornet's nest in some ways, but you were kicking with scripture, which is I think people need to hear that like that's, that's what we should be

doing. Right. So as, you know, like my calling is a pastor. I'm here to shepherd people. That's my job. Yep. And I specifically started a second podcast entitled it and instructed it saying, hey, this is a side gig where we're going to discuss these things and kind of flesh them out. And that's exactly what it was. And that's the thing where, in my opinion, like, everybody made it sound like, well, that's all John's ever doing now. He's only talking about blurry stuff all the time. But if you go back and listen to my sermons, or you go back to what I'm writing, or what I'm doing on Theocast, I'm not. And so it just got really weird. And there was a lot of interesting accusations. Long story short, Doug and I had done a series on The Angel of the Lord, which is

so good. So great. Like, his book's phenomenal. Like, we've done it with Doug. It's amazing. it. Well, there were, there's a debate in the reform world on how you should understand the nature of the angel of the word. And I started a church planning network about four or five years ago, and so I'm the vice president of it, and there's like 22 something churches in it. And there were several guys in that church that basically just, I didn't know this, they had beef with Doug in this particular topic. And basically came to me and says, you need to disown Doug and you basically need to say that everything. you guys have been talking about is extremely dangerous. And if you don't do that, then we're going to boot you out of the network. You're no longer going to be in the, you're no longer a BVP. And I'm just like, whoa, maybe I missed something with Doug. Like, this is wild. I'm not sure what

happened. So anyway, I did a bunch of research, took it to the leadership team on my church. Like, do you guys see anything wrong here? Like, do we need to call Doug out? Like, maybe Doug's a heretic, you know, who knows? And we read it and we're like, no, man, there's nothing wrong here. And so I just went back to I'm like, look, I think this is a witch hunt. I think people don't like what Doug's doing, what he's, what he's for. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to throw him under the bus. I don't have a problem with it. So that kind of started the train of basically I got, I got blackballed by the reform world as being.

The way they described it was that I was denying basically who Jesus was in his person. And so called a heretic. Yeah. So that was rough. heart of my family, heart of my church. So that was back in November. But during all this, I had just finished this sermon series. And I thought to myself, probably right now is the best time to write this book because, like, I need, one, I need to focus in on Christ.

Number two, this is really, really fresh in my mind. And so I need to be, I'm going ahead and just, so instead of going online and reading all the dumb comments that were out there, I just started writing. Yeah. And one of the chapters I put in there is this chapter five, which is a really, really important chapter to me. It's called the cosmic view. So what I'm trying to do is help people read their Bibles from Jesus' perspective. Like if you were to sit down and be like, Jesus, help me understand the Bible.

I think the Bible does this. Jesus gives you all of these tools and says, here's how to understand the law. Here's how to understand like all the coven. It's like mosaic, Noahic, all that. Here's how to understand that. Here's how to understand context. Like, you know, Satan is brilliant at quoting scripture exactly. Like he quotes it exactly the way it should be.

It's kind of like every single ecosystem kind of has its rules and it's like faux pause, don't do this, don't do that. You know, if you're professional wrestler, you got all these little insight rules. Let's go. You know what I'm saying? But if you are, even in our space where the first 10 episodes of our podcast, we brought on New Age guy, we brought on a Native American who was Nat. Christian brought on an ancient aliens guy.

Then we brought on a couple theologians, right? And then we never, ever, ever wanted to be in a space where you couldn't have a conversation with somebody because we thought each of those dudes have a piece of this puzzle. And the rest of maybe what they've come to, the conclusions they've come to isn't right. But we need to understand this from 50 different perspectives. Sure. And sometimes I think Christians, they want to go to the soda. fountain and they just want to get Mountain Dew.

Well, they want to get Dr. Pepper. And Luke's like, get the suicide. Just do all the flavors. If Baja blast is out, don't skip it. And it's like every, every like denominator has a piece. Yeah. And it's like humans have a hard time putting them all together. Yeah. No, I think you're right. Well, just I think this is before we started recording, but I tell this to people all the time. Like, you, you don't go to the Bible to do health issues. Like if you got a health issue, you don't go to the Bible. go, you go to a doctor. The doctor needed to get that information. You go to Dr. Josh Hacks. Well, we did go and ruin the biblical diet and healing leaves. They went to the Bible.

If you got a car issue, you go to a mechanic. Sure. Right. So what's interesting about the spiritual realm is that Peter says it this way. Everything you need for life and godliness has been given to you in scripture. So think about it for a moment. So what we need to do to love God and obey him, that's what the Bible is given to us. What it doesn't say is everything you need to know about the spiritual realm is in the Bible. Or reality or everything. Right. Or science or nature. To your point, though, is like you're bringing in all these people and they're adding in perspective and it's okay to do that because as far as what I need to do for God and what I need to know about to obey him, that I have. But as far as how this world works, some of that is observable. Like,

you're going to have to observe that and make your conclusions, which is why, you know, when I always laugh when Timothy Alvarino is on here and people are always like, oh, it's a demon. He gets really upset about that. But I think he's got a point, though, because if like if you, if your conclusion is, well, the demons are the ones who are causing all the problems in the Bible, so it must be a demon. Well, it's like, well, it might be a cold. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, fair, right? It might be a flat tire, or it might be an alien. Like, so my point being, Paul doesn't say, you know, we struggle against demons, end of the verse. That's not what he, that's not what he writes. He goes on, he categorizes many things. And he doesn't even narrow down those categories. And this is the conversation we had

over lunch, John, which is like, I feel like the longer that I am in church and the longer that we've done the show, the more I've come to the conclusion that everybody wants a zero-sum game. It needs to be a zero-sum game. It has to be, the government is lying all the time, every time they lie. It has to be, everything is demonic. It's a demon. Everything's a demon. Everything's a demon. Case closed. That's the way that I have to rationalize my reality. And what we were talking about is it like reality is way more nuanced than that. And nothing is really a zero-sum game except for the gospel, right? That's the thing that's like, this is the thing.

This is it. That's right. But the rest of our experience with reality, with the supernatural realm. And I think that maybe what you run into too is that people really pearl clutch these things and these paradigms and these boxes that make them feel very comfortable. And they want it to all be a zero-sum game. game, but, but, and when it's not or they get challenged in that, in that reality, then there's, there's, it's unleashing of, of oftentimes in the church's vitrile and it's like, and it's

accusations, ad hominem. It's like, which is, which is what's been so, I mean, so sad the older I get to see the things that Christians fight about, the hills they die on, the tertiary things that they decide are primary. Um, and I, and I, you know, I got to watch what was at what happened from the outside and it was, it's hard because knowing Doug Van Dorn and knowing you somewhat, but knowing Doug like a friend and be like, there's not a better person that I know that also isn't completely in love with the scripture and teaching the scripture and humble and, you know, and to see that, the him get dragged is like, was like, well, wow, I mean. Yeah, our friends get blasted. You know, they, they, you know, we get blasted. I mean,

we're used to it because every, every episode is like its own, it invites, its own set of trolls to come out. Well, I asked the other day, I was like, how's that episode going? Well, you know what's funny is when you describe, like, introducing a supernatural element to the story and people turn on you, you can replace the words with something like Bigfoot. The Bigfoot community instead of the Reformed Church will turn on people in the Bigfoot community if you say Bigfoot is supernatural. Yeah.

It happens. You can just replace the words and the same exact behaviors go on. And as Christians, we go, well, we're above all that. It's like, now you're acting just like every community. That's right. You heard about Upwork. I haven't heard about Upwork. Yeah, Upwork gives businesses, like Blurry, fast access to highly skilled specialists

with deep expertise. You can fill critical skill gaps. You can launch projects fast. And you can scale support up or down. Upwork is the place to find it. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. We've got AI-powered shortlisting. And you can create a curated shortlist of top freelancer.

matching our goals. Thousands of growing businesses, Nate, are using Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. And there's over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings you can hire with confidence right now on Upwork. That's right. So if you have a project, you have a business, if you have a company and you're trying to find somebody that can help you, Upwork is the place to go.

And it's free to sign up. That's right. And posting a job is easy. So visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect to talk. talent, ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork, U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Upwork.com.

I think what you're getting at, though, is that people, like, all right, in the Bigfoot community, they have done all their thinking and they've done all their research. And so they feel safe with that knowledge. And you're going, there's another paradigm possibly. And they're like, you can't do that. Can't. And for Christianity in the United States, I mean, this is why I remember when Heiser

wrote that in his book, he was like, I'm probably going to lose all my friends in my career and I was like, whatever. And now I was like, whoa, he's right. Like, people don't want to hear this. And I think it's changing. There's a lot more people who are definitely open to it, which is why I think your guys' podcast is doing so well. I mean, you guys are good looking.

That's, there's not too, but whatever. That's a tertiary. That was definitely not on the marketing spreadsheet. But hey, if that's what people think out there. Sure. But this is what I will say, and I appreciate what you guys do. And you, at the end of the day, like when things are wild and crazy, you do pull it back to Christ. Like, okay, look, as crazy in a while as it might be, the one foundation that we

know does not shift and the one truth that will not change is Christ and Him crucified. Like, we can trust the fact that Christ is going to not only save us, but sustain us. There's no greater power than Him. There's no other God. There's no Anachia. That part, as wild as things might get, that's where I do appreciate. And this is what I'm trying to bring to my church. Like, I think things are getting wild. We were talking about this at lunch. And I want the people in my church to go, man, I do not know what's going on and it is terrifying. But the one thing I do know that I'm safe in Christ. God's on the throne.

That's right. Well, I think it's because a lot of people want Christianity to be a movie trailer. They wanted to be two minutes of the highlights and it's done. And I think the blurry creatures is the extended cut in three movies. It's like, no, just get all of the information in there. And then there's some parts of the film, be like, ah, it's not as an interesting to me. It should have an extended edition of Waterworld. It would have been like, it would have won all the Academy Awards.

But it's like, we just said there is just more to the story. There is more characters. And then you understand, oh, Christ is, is a bigger, it's a bigger story. That's right. Okay. Yeah, I'm getting it. Well, one of the things I pointed out in the book, and this is, all right, I'm going to like not go into preacher mode here, but one of the things that irritates me about what we ignore in scripture, Genesis 3, you know how like when you're watching a movie? or a fantasy, whatever.

And it sets the world's tone of like, here's how this world works, right? Genesis 3 says, this world from day, whatever day that Adam and Eve fell is now under a curse. And the curse brings death. Well, that is a really important aspect to it.

Like, even when Jesus was on the earth and he's breaking the curse a little bit here and there, meaning like he brings health back to people, they all still die. Everybody that was blind or deaf or dumb, poor Lazarus is like, are you kidding me? I got to die again.

Yeah. That sucks. You know, like, I don't want to do that. So for me, like, when you realize, not only is the world, like, the world itself is cursed, like Paul says in Romans, like, the earth is groaning and we're all groaning. We're waiting to get out of here. Well, that helps me go, I don't, you can't fix the world. Only Jesus can, he's the one who breaks the curse.

So the curse remains until he comes back. So then what do we do? Well, we set people free from lies. Like, that's what we're, because, like, what's interesting about blurry creatures, when I listen to you guys, is that you're challenging the paradigm of what is true. That's what you're doing. And when you do that,

people don't like this. Because I'll tell you this right now, the greatest fantasy that Satan ever convinced the world of is that our world and its current cursed state can be okay. And you go talk to parents. I have a fool in my church, parents who have lost children to cancer, who are,

I mean, I'm not going down the list, but everybody has this, where it's like, you know, I'm thinking of Tony Merkel. Yeah. You know, there are people who have, it's just really hard and painful things. And for me, when I look at it and go, okay, the cursed world is part of that narrative. And yet times God does in his mercy bring healing.

And it's powerful. And it's encouraging. It's like, hey, God does heal. And that is a part of the story. But at the end of the day, it's not the final thing. Because the final thing is not until he comes back. Right. Right.

And it's not the conversation with Mike Heiser. Yeah. Last episode we did with Mike before his last podcast, the episode did, like the episode he did anywhere. We asked him about that. I don't know if it was on the show or not, I was asking him like, if you kind of prayed for it,

he's like, everyone's prayed for me. He's like, I have friends that have had the same thing I had and they've gotten healed and I just haven't. I don't know why, but I trust God in his plan and his sovereignty. And you go, that's a heck of a perspective. It is.

How do you make that make sense? That's right. God heals this one. And you have this really theological giant for a lot of people in spaces and a guy who really like shifted things for folks bringing people to the kingdom, right? And God's like, he's just not, didn't decide not to heal Mike.

And I don't know how you do. Well, see, I faced that reality almost 30 years ago when my dad died. Yeah. So I was 21. He was my best friend. He was a pastor, faithful man, like very faithful man. And so I had to come to that question. But then I'd seen people like crazy miraculously healed.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Because it wasn't like, oh, I don't believe in healing. That's not, I saw stuff. I'm like, that's God. I just don't understand why him. And, you know, I think I called you a while back, Luke, and I was like, because you guys had, we were an episode on healing, I think, not long ago.

And I started thinking about this. And the way I thought about it is, all right, so Paul says you're in a war and you're wrestling against, you're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but principalities. Well, those, those principalities, they want to do one thing. They want to corrupt truth at the end of the day. Right? Because if you don't trust Jesus and you don't trust his truth. So that's why, that's why Paul says.

says we tear down strongholds. Yeah. So I think this is just my conclusion, that it's right and healthy to go before God. I mean, let's imagine the three of us are in the trenches, and Nate, unfortunately, gets shot. And we cry out, hey, Lord, we need Nate. He's in the fight with us.

We need this guy here. Where you're protecting, when you heal him. And if you don't, we understand that you have a plan, we cannot see. But we really believe you can and we really want you to. And when he doesn't, We we weep because that's why Paul says we weep those who weep, but we don't lose faith because we understand that we can't see the big picture.

You know, Mike passing away, it was almost like, I mean, he's passing on the mantle. Like we, like I know in my life, you know, this is, what is it, 25 years later now, 26 years later, then my dad had passed away. I don't think I'd be sitting right here with you guys if my dad was still alive because it wouldn't have shook me enough to change. Like, I need to think about changing. So that has been healthy for me when I see different people suffer. Like, you think about Paul, I don't know about you guys.

He's probably the greatest Christian to ever live. And the dude got the beat, he got beat up. Yeah. How many times? And I think to myself, I'm like, if Paul was such a prayer warrior, why? Why is he even getting beat up? He's hanging out in the wrong places. Right.

And all the disciples die. Yeah. And it's all brutal except for John. And our trench analogy, of course, the ginger dies first. This is the way things work in the movies. Yeah, but the ref I am resurrected. Exactly. Exactly. Well, John, I mean, so in chapter five,

we said, the cosmic view, right? So if we're talking about the Bible according to Jesus, where do you go with with Jesus talking about the enchantment, the reenchantment of, or the cosmic realities of our supernatural dimension, whatever you kind of want to, whatever semantics you want to do that. Yeah. And you make it really, you open the chapter by asking youth group students of the Bible's magical. That's how you start it. And they look at you like you're crazy. Yeah. But there's a big. picture there that like a lot of Christendom church

has lost sort of a lost into a supernatural or spiritual dimensional understanding of not only our faith but our reality, right? I mean, we don't have the tools to do it. We don't have the tools to see it. We often need to be a Swiss Army life.

But we're just a one-trick pony in terms of how we read things. That's right. Yeah, so I put the, so there's basically six tools in the book and I really wrote this for like a high school level. Like I did, it's not a theological deep book at all. Oh, they can read that.

Maybe. Maybe. My guy. So there's six tools and the reason why I put the cosmic one on number five is that like the other tools really kind of set you up. It's, I do it this way in purpose so that when you get to the supernatural section, you can't deny that it's there. So like the first, the first tool is like, and no one ever really argues with this, but the Bible, this is why the cover is like all the arrows are pointing to Jesus. what is the point of the Bible? It's Jesus.

Like, flat out. That's what, I mean, he is, he created the world, and he's the one who tells the gospel in chapter three to Adam and Eve. Like, hey, the seeds coming, and it's me, but they don't know that. Right. So I go and show, you know, Jesus dies, who rise from the grave. This is the road to Emmaus. And he's cloaked. Like, they don't know it's Jesus.

And there's two disciples and they're distraught. Like, I can't believe he died. And so Jesus, it says, he goes through all the old text. and points out the passages that are about him. And so he's basically revealing to them, you misunderstood the Old Testament. The Old Testament is about me. Have you not heard?

Have you not heard? Have you not heard? That's right. But not specifically like, oh, there's a man coming. It's everything that Jesus became. He's the prophet, priest, and king. There's an aspect of the gospel that I think is often lost, where it says that he transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness,

put them to open shame, and transferred us into the kingdom of light. So Jesus's salvation message, like his perspective of the world is that he's freeing you from your sin and he's freeing you from Satan. And this is really important to understand if you're going to read the Bible. Because what do we emphasize all the time? Forgiveness to sin. Like forgiveness of sins. That's what we emphasize. And Paul's like, no, he not only delivered you from Satan, he made fun of them and he mocked them and he made him.

You don't want to convince me in Genesis 6 of the Giants was I was preaching first and second Peter. and it literally says that Jesus goes down into Hades and proclaims victory to the angels who are chained up there because of what they did in Genesis 6. Yes, yes. So all of this is Jesus' perspective. So when he goes and he starts talking to you about his worldview and the Bible,

if you start paying attention, he's explaining to you your physical problem and your spiritual problem. So here's like John 10-10. He's talking about like, I'm the way, the truth in the life, right? And then he says, but there's an opposition to me and it's not, it's not your body only. He goes, but the thief has come to steal and to kill.

And destroy. That's right. Yeah, I would tend to. There you go. So you have, then later on, this is Luke 22 versus 31 and following. He's looking at Peter and Peter is doing the same thing we do. He's stuck in the physical. And he looks straight at Peter and he says, Simon, Satan is going to sift you.

Like he's got you twisted up in your head. because you're thinking about a physical kingdom only. What's fascinating to me is that Jesus says, but I prayed for you. And you're like, what did you pray? He goes, that you wouldn't lose faith. Fascinating. Not that he would be freed from Satan.

Not that Satan would leave. He was like, I prayed that your faith would be stronger than his deception. Which is super fascinating. That was really interesting. Which then goes back to what we were talking about earlier when he's talking about the Lord's Prayer. Yeah. He starts spiritual, our Father who are,

in heaven. That's how he starts. And he ends with the spiritual realm on earth. And he's like, and deliver us from the evil one. So in my mind, I'm thinking, just logically, every day Jesus wants me to pray that. And if I don't pray it, what does that mean? I just toss it out there to anyone who loves their Bible and you're a theologian. If you don't pray it and deliver us from the evil one and Jesus is the one who tells you to pray it, what does that mean? Ultimately, if he's saying he's a thief, he's a liar, he's a manipulator, that means according to Jesus, there's a supernatural protection that comes upon you as you pray this prayer. I don't know if you interpret that. I'm either going to trust Jesus to protect me from the manipulation or I'm going to trust

myself. And we all know that's not going to work out. Yeah. Right. So all of these are examples that I give in the chapter of how Jesus is giving you his worldview of how he thinks. And then he'll pull passages from the Old Testament and start interpreting him this way. But even like, Like John 844, it says he's dealing. So he's dealing with false teachers. Right. Right. Yeah.

I so want to be there for this moment. And he looks at him and he's so angry. He goes, your father's the devil. Yeah. Which is just a, but what is he saying? What's coming out of your mouth has been given to you by the one that he's controlling you. That's Jesus's perspective. Paul has that same perspective.

What is it, Ephesians 2? It says, you were dead inter trespass. and sins, you're following the course of the world. In other words, Satan creates a course, and you're following it. It's the same kind of language where, you know, Jesus talks about throwing out seed and Satan comes behind and picks it up, like the seeds of the gospel. So the whole chapter is designed to kind of, one, Jesus setting up his worldview, there's a physical reality, your sin, there's a spiritual reality, your imprisonment. There's a, the physical things that you need to do, there's the spiritual things that you need to rely on. Yeah. So I always love this question.

So Jesus dies and he raises from the dead and he spends 40 days. This is Acts 1. He spends 40 days on the earth. And it says he spends those 40 days with the disciples teaching them one thing. Do you guys know what it is? To a trick question. What does he spend 40 days talking to them about? Nothing. No, he does. It could be, you could say evangelism, holiness. You could say, you know, whatever you want. It says he spent 40 days teaching them about the kingdom. And what does he say? My kingdom's not of this world. It's a spiritual reality. He spent the last 40 days of making sure they understood how to live in a spiritual conception of the kingdom before he left. That's what he focused on. Yeah. So that's what this chapter is about. I do go into like Genesis 6 and some of the

stuff that's in there. But the idea of it is, is that, you know, I always say the Old Testament is really confusing. There's a lot that's going on there. The best commentator on the Old Testament is the New Testament. What does the New Testament have to say about it? And if Jesus is telling us how we should think about it, I'm going to go with that. Yeah, because we just literally, this rhymes it yesterday. Yeah. We just said, yeah, I would, the best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament. That's right. And understanding what's happening in the... I can understand why the reformed church kind of gets more into a fear of prophets or, because, you know, Jesus is saying there are false prophets.

That's right. But there are also prophets that are telling you the truth. Yeah. And like, let's think about that. Minor prophets. Nobody's going to like, major impact. Nobody likes a prophet, whether he's telling you the truth or he's telling you a lie. Nobody likes them.

So if somebody comes along and says, hey, there's this weird thing we got to pay attention to. Everyone's like, ah, no, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, because there's a fear of someone's going to tell us a lie. And then we'll build this kind of non-relational version of Christianity. Yeah. And we'll forget that it's all about a relationship. relationship, but relationships are messy. That's right.

So how do you operate? Yeah, I mean, to your point, though, it's like if that person's prophecy goes against what scripture says, we know, we know what to do. It's like, yeah, the reaction is the same, you know. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Because it's like, oh, oh, no. There's going to be a famine.

Either telling the truth or it's a lot, you know, it's like, we don't like that. We don't like knowing what's going to happen tomorrow before it comes. That's right. Right. And so I think a lot of people that have come on this show do that internally for people. Yeah. And they listen, they go, oh, this, this is, this is hitting my paradigm. I can't, I don't like them. I don't like that. And I understand that sometimes it's not, I mean, you can't do a show like this and not make an error. You're going to make an error. You're going to put stuff out that doesn't like everybody. You're trying to report the news. You're trying to create a channel. You're trying to have, you know, but what? when you intentionally try to do it, I think that's what a lot of these swings into a very rigid view of scriptures comes from. Because we've seen what happens when we swing over here. So let's swing all the way back and protect.

So no deception can get in, right? Yeah. I, man, our American culture has seen this so much, right? You've got dead orthodoxy and then you have revivalism. And then some of the stuff that happened in revivalism, it's like, oh, drinking and smoking is of the devil. And so you're going to go to hell. I mean, it's like,

There's always this extreme. We got prohibition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I still can't believe there's dry counties in this. It's wild. Well, you know what's weird about that is when you go back and actually watch like the

Prohibition Doc that a homeboy did Ken Burns. Yeah. People were drinking 200 plus. The average American was drinking 200 bottles of whiskey a year. I mean, it was it was so bad. It was bad. It was insane. So you can understand why they swung all the way the other way.

It was an extreme. That's like Michael Jordan drinking. You got it? All the time. Exactly. That's crazy. Right, which is like, well, I always say, I don't think they were wrong. Everyone was an MJ.

Yeah. You were like, wow. We're all goats around here. Yeah. It's just like booze and booze hounds. So they had to do something. Well, there's always the extreme, right? You've got the same thing in this world.

It's like, oh, well, there's a lot of, you know, bad things that can happen in the charismatic slash, you know, woo-woo world. Yeah. And so, oh, we're going to come over here and we have nothing. Like, neither one of those is appropriate. And I think that's what's so hard about trying to, I hate saying a balance because it's like, you don't want to balance yourselves on the extreme. You want to find out what the truth is.

Right. And that's what I think has been so refreshing for me as at the end of the day, no matter what the criticism is, I can point back to the text and say, like, this is what the Bible says. And I feel safe there. And I'm going to be okay. And one of the things I did kind of going back to this whole reform thing is that this isn't actually new to the reform world. I wrote a whole document that shows 500 years of the Divine Council World View.

and the supernatural worldview through reformed authors. And I put it up on my website. So if you're a reform person, you're listening to this, just go to my website, joboffa.com, you'll see it. It's there. And when I did that research, I had a lot of people that stepped back and was like, if they're still with us, I'm impressed.

I'm going to say that. This is true. Maybe they're jumping in now. Yeah, you're still here. Welcome. Welcome to the weirdo. Yeah. So you're looking at something that's like this, again, right,

this is the conversation we were having John just offline is like, people treat things like a supernatural worldview of the Bible or Kirk Cameron on recently. Kirk's just questions about hell, whether it's conscious eternal torment or annihilation. They take the idea of annihilationism as a new idea, but you look at it and you go, that's not, church fathers talked about this. And you go, 500 years of reformed authors are talking about this idea, this theological truth, I would say. I've had this point.

And, but I think people treat these things like they're new to, new to the block and you're like, these are not new ideas. Yeah. Genesis 6. This is a, this is the one. This is, the new idea is it's sons of Seth and there are no giants, right? And this is all. 500 years before that came out.

I mean, yeah. That, that, the new, the old idea, the original idea, the implied story has to do with an angelic incursion and angels physically procreating with women. That's right. right? And it's not a new idea. But I think that that's, it's weird how we're prisoners of, of the moment often. Yeah. And that moment can be the last 50 years, the last 40 years, depending where you land theologically. But I mean, I love that you wouldn't do the time because what do people do? I mean, how do they refute any of that? They're like, oh, wow, okay. So John isn't

crazy. Well, that's what that's what Bigfoot did to me. Like, no, I know you're being serious. What did Bigfoot do to you, Nate? That's what it did to me. That's a Bigfoot. What did Bigfoot do to? Look what Bigfoot did to you. Look what you did, you little church. I was a blonde before I met.

No, but people don't understand a lot of why we talk about this creature. Like, we're not out looking for them. We're not out in the woods. We're not obsessed with the creature. We use that as a thing to say, we don't understand how to believe things. We have a belief problem. Not that we don't believe in stuff,

but we don't really know how to believe in something. And like Jesus says, you know, I love that what you said about, I was praying you wouldn't lose faith. Faith is a constant struggle. That's right. So none of us are gonna figure it out. That's right.

But I think we want a theology that says, I don't have to have any faith. I'm gonna put faith on the shelf. I have these creeds and this doctrine. Stick to that. and every day that it gets hard, nope, can't do that. I see a ghost, I see a Sasknote, angel encounter, no, you don't have those. No one has a, I don't want to have to actually struggle in faith.

That's, that's a temptation for a lot of us. I don't know what your guys' experience is, but listening to you say this, I think there's a lot of, well, I know for a fact that a lot of people have experiences, they're too embarrassed and ashamed to tell people. Yep. Yeah. Because they don't want to be mocked like, oh, he's woo-woo now. He's lost his rocker, whatever. Yeah. Because now that people know that, hey, I'm, whatever you want to tell me, come, I won't

laugh. Let's talk about it. Yeah. Bro, I have had, I'm trying to figure out how to tell you guys this story without, like, exposing my friend. But there's a buddy of mine that I've known for, like, like, in high school. Like, my first year in college is what I met him. And this guy is, I got to say this.

So that like, anyways, this guy is a businessman. Yeah. He is extremely smart, very high up in the corporate world. And I was telling him about one of my church members who's like convinced that his uncle had a, he was abducted and has a chip in his arm. And I've heard the story. And I'm like, dude, that is a crazy story. And I think he's right. So I'm telling him this story thinking like he's going to make, I'm testing the waters, right?

Like he's going to make fun of me. And he's just looking at me like dead straight. He goes, I have a crazier one than that. And I thought he was going to tell me about his friend. It was his story. Long story short, he and his buddies are out dirt biking in the desert in the dry lake beds in California. And on the other side of this mountain, it's just three of them. There's just bright light.

And so they're like, whoa, I know there's a military base. So let's go see what they're doing. So they crawl up there. And long story short, he's like, I can't describe to what we saw. It's this see-through orb. It's like massive in the sky. And it just started moving towards us. No noise, no nothing.

and then just shot out. Like we never like out of sight, couldn't see it anymore. And all three of us look at each other like, you saw that right. Like we didn't hear it. He goes, I've never told anybody but my wife. Well, dude, that's the kind of thing that's starting to happen where I'm like, he's held on to that for, I think, almost 20 years. Yeah.

And it's those kind of things where he's like, I don't know what to think about that. He goes, how do, in light of all this stuff you've been talking about like, you know, the Nephilim and the government, like, like, whatever. He goes, what do you think about that? And I was like, I don't know. The Bible doesn't talk about that. Interesting. Interesting. You know, not to make it about us at all, but, you know, when I started hearing about Bigfoot, it was like 2012. The podcast didn't get even created until 2019, like at the beginning of it. But wasn't a twinkle in your eye? Yeah. Well, it's like, during that time, right? I don't know if partial brain damage or retarded or something, but I,

I felt like people just, I didn't care. At a certain point, it was like, I don't care. I don't care. Yeah. And one by one, my friends were like, dude, this guy's going to talk about Bigfoot, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just was like, no, I'm, whoa, okay, you guys are wired a little different than I am. Like, I, at this point in my life, I just don't care.

Yeah. And to Luke's credit, when I called him, I had been so down this rabiddle for so long. I was like, dude, you want to do this podcast? And I felt like in my mind, in my gut, I was like, he's going to go, no. I got too much to lose, bro. Being associated with the big guy. I got some friends. You know, people kind of maybe know me.

And no, I'm not going to be associated with this. And he's like, I'm in. And I was like, okay, we were, we either both very dumb. Or there's a part of us that just doesn't care ultimately. Right. What people think about us, even though we do care. Right. Like, we care about people.

people were higher on the empathy side, I would say. But we also are like, I'm going to do what I want to do. And if I want to talk about this creature, I'm going to. But most people don't want to be looked at in their community as the wacky guy. That's right. Or the weird guy or the off guy. And Luke's in. And I was like, this is this is going to happen because you can't often get two people who kind of have that same people are going to say we're nuts yeah but we're going to do it anyway but you guys talking about it we'd put before is that like no there was a there was a joke i've told this from the show before but not to you but there's a there's like a running joke in my family because we were watching um finding bigfoot and they never find them

which is part of the joke right my mom i loved that show because it was just fascinating i'm from northern california yeah i lived in the pacific northwest as a kid and i just thought the idea was interesting and fun. So my mom would like buy me like a big foot shirt or socks or something every year and it was kind of this running joke. But, you know, it's more of a nuanced story for me. Like I've talked about it on the show as well. Like just the idea that maybe you didn't know how weird it was going to get. No, but I mean, I grew up in our church when it was fairly charismatic. So I saw I exposed to a lot of things. And a lot of it made me very skeptical. And I rejected a lot of it. I thought like these people were going to fall in down and it didn't happen to me. Yeah. And then I

watch people in ministry that were adjacent or close to the church fall, like abuse kid, like crazy stuff. And you're like, never like shook me of faith at all. Because I ended having this whole crazy experience going to WIWAM and going out to the, out to the nations, if you will, like out to Southeast Asia and seeing people get healed and demons cast out. And I was like, man, I know this is all real. I was there. I stood there. I watched someone get a paralytic stand up and walk. There's no, there's nothing. Right. You know, we weren't at a, at a, at a mega church where someone was plant. This was somebody who was laying in a hut and was maxed healed by God. I saw maybe both sides of the spiritual, sort of the spiritual gifts. The good and the bad,

right? You know, the sort of like the fake, like the pursuing the gifts and then also like when God does what he wants to do, he does it, right? But this is like people who can't even tell their best friend. This is people who can't tell their wife for 30 years. This is people who can't even even they even block it out emotionally and mentally. Yeah. Like, they don't even know that they had the experience until, like, later it comes out. That's the amount of pushing back against the blurry verse that people are willing to do. So is that like your motivation?

Like when you started, like, you said you didn't want to, you weren't starting a Christian podcast. It was a motivator. I think, you know, there's two different types of people. There's people that'll give up if someone says you suck. And then there's people who will go, I'm going to show you. I don't suck, right? And I'm going to go harder into the paint, right? And I'm kind of motivated.

I started putting content on my own on the internet in 2004 music and stuff. And immediately the haters come. I'm going to work harder. It's like it's a motivator. So people tell me all the time everywhere, I go, Bigfoot is stupid. I'm like, you're stupid. I want to go into this. Whoa.

Like this is an exploder. This explodes people. A creature in the woods is like, you're offended by this? Come on, come on. But I didn't know I'd pay the price for like, you know, my marriage blew up. A lot of friends don't talk to me. And I think doing this was a big part of that. Like, you're going to lose a lot if you go this route.

And I'm not saying it was all because of this. But it definitely didn't help. No. Definitely doesn't help your PR campaign. It doesn't make you look a little bit wacky. And just this and like getting people like NT rights. and Kirk Cameron, all these people coming on the show and big theologians from our path. Dude, we had, we thought all these people would be like, reject this.

Yeah. It's weird. It's like when you step out and just go, hmm, I'll be the village idiot. Sure. I'll be the fool for Christ, I guess. I don't know what else you could do. Let's talk about Bigfoot and try to connect it to your faith. That sounds pretty foolish.

Well, I mean, as the proverb says, right, like we make our plans, but God directs our paths. I just laugh at your guys' podcast because it's like you started. at Bigfoot podcast. Yeah. And do you talk about it? Sure. Like what, what every 15 episodes?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not even that. Yeah. Right. Not anymore. But my point being is that there,

you never know what God's going to do. And I think that's where I get excited going, all right, I don't know what God's doing with all of this. The two things I do know is that I'm in Christ. Yeah. And that the gospel is his power. Yeah. And that gives me comfort.

Because I do, again, I keep circling back to this. I do think things are getting dark. Yeah. And I don't think most people aren't questioning that anymore. Yeah. What I get nervous about is the solutions that are being offered. Yeah. And I just go, that's not going to work.

I think what I'm trying to say is, you know, we've had a lot of unsuccessful that we didn't think would happen in this space. Sure. It's definitely not as big as a lot of these spaces that podcasts blow up. but everybody out there, you're having a, you have a blurry podcast. You know, you have a conversation with a friend or five dudes that come over your house or somebody out there listening has a cousin or uncle or somebody in their life that they can't share a story. So we're all having it.

It's just degrees of how many people are listening in on that conversation. There's a few more listening to this one. But you're having the same, you have that same experience in your church. Well, you're like, okay, I'm going to introduce something weird and strange here. I don't know how this is going to go down. I guess we just created a podcast around that whole phenomena. Yeah. Of like no one's going to,

no one likes having these conversations. But if we flip it, maybe everyone will come to it. So I guess if that helps. Yeah. You know, what I'm saying is like you, you started a Bigfoot podcast, had no idea that it was going to turn into,

like the fact that you have all these theologians to come on your podcast, which is wild. And I just laugh because I'm like, neither do you guys have theological. degrees and these guys are excited to be on your podcast. I'm like, that's like, that's God. But at the end of the day, though, is that like, again, what I get excited about when I listen to you guys' episode is that you do keep pulling it back to Christ. Because as things get weirder and weirder and wilder, you need something, some kind of foundation that goes, I'm okay, right?

Like, I'm going to be okay. I've been abducted. I'm going to be okay, right? Yeah. Like, I've had this experience that no one believes me about like seeing Bigfoot. I'm going to okay, right? Yeah, God puts a Christian in the euphology space. He puts a Christian in all these different, these rabbit holes and parents, and you're kind of bringing some of the Bigfoot flavor into the reformed world.

Yeah. And of course people are going to be mad at you about that. What are you doing, bro? Don't do that here. Well, my church, thankfully, they're great. They love, they love me, they love the message, and they know at the end of the day, all I care about is Christ. Yeah. Well, you wrote this book, so I want to, there's a couple of things I want to ask you about this. I mean, one of the things is that if we are reading the Bible according to Jesus and, you know, like we, we know the end.

Sure. Like, I mean, how does that change how we read everything that proceeds up to? Because this reminds me of, I think you used an example of the book. It's the same with my wife. She always will either Google or want to watch the last episode in a series. So she doesn't have to worry about having anxiety of what's happening. That's how Amy operates. That's right.

And what does that, how does that change how we look at, at the way that the scripture is unfolding. Sure. And to our point, when we said earlier, like when Jesus says, I'm going to pray for your faith, like, how does that play into this story? Yeah. Yeah. In the Old Testament, they were looking for Zion, right?

And then eventually, Hebrews says they were looking for a city beyond the city, a city without walls. And, you know, Christ says things like this all the time where it's like, lay up your treasures in heaven. Or Paul, when he's talking about, he said, set your mind on things above and not on things on the earth. So we know that Christ wins. Like I don't care what denomination you are.

I don't care. Like you talk to any Christian. Every Christian will say, Jesus wins and he's coming back. That's really good. The problem is Satan doesn't want you to focus on that. Because if you have a hope beyond the world, then you're like,

eh, like I'm not going to let the world bother me because this is not the end of the story. Because if it's the end of the story, guys, what does Paul say? Drink and be merry for we die. And that's it. like there's no resurrection.

Right. So for me, what has been, what health, helpful is that I don't need to get so entangled in what's going on in this world. And I'm not, I'm not an escapist and I'm not like a doomsday. That's not what I'm saying. But like my fulfillment and the protection and the safety that I long for, like I know that this world's crushed. I'm going to die. I'm going to die from something. It's probably not going to be pretty.

That's what about Bob? Exactly. You are going to die. I am going to die. That's right. Is there to be afraid of? Oh, there's Tourette syndrome. Yeah, that's right.

So when you start, okay, so this is, so this is where everything has been going for me. When I'm sitting across the table from a parent and their child just died from cancer, and that child now is with the Lord. Yeah. Right. Helping them have a supernatural worldview actually allows them to cope for the rest of their life because they know they're going to see their child, that Christ has them, and that Christ didn't make a mistake.

Like, Jesus didn't make an oopsie. This is Romans 8. He works all things together. You can't see it now. It's the jumbled mess down here. But from above, he knows what's going on. When you don't have a supernatural worldview, all you can do is look at what you can see in front of you. And that's the conclusion that you make.

So what I'm trying to do in this particular chapter when you're talking about like the worldview when going to the end, we need to talk about the end a whole lot more because Christ wins. And he restores. It's like, in my opinion, I think we're going to play golf in the new heavens and the new earth and drink bourbon and laugh. Hopefully I'll play a little better than doing this one, this side of it. But there is everything that, like, if you look around this world, it feels, at points it feels right. Like, it's beautiful. Yeah. And we have relationships.

And then there are points you're like, that person just died and that person was abused and that person was trafficked. That's wrong. So that's the end of the story part where like, you've got to go to the end of the story. He wins. He's coming back. what does he tell us to do before now and then? Love others and set him free with the truth. And that's, I don't know how else you serve.

Like for me personally, I don't know how else I survive. How does that, let me have one thing. How does that change your, as a pastor? How is adopting that worldview and a worldview of re-enchanting the Bible? How does that change how you preach, right? Because one of the things we beat our drum about is that a lot of Christianity is, is reduced to moral, moral code, moralistic teachings. Like, you know, we all, we all have our Goliaths and giants that we need to, we need to

tackle in this life or, you know, that's right. You know, just waiting on your, was it Ruth and Boas or whatever, just waiting on your, on your sweetheart to show. It becomes this sort of like, here's a book of like some fun stories that are all about you. Yep. And they're all moralistic. Moralistic, therapeutic. Oh, yeah.

And it becomes, and it really does become like, self-help instead of, and I don't think that, I know that's not what Jesus was about. It wasn't. Nope. So in our church, what I tell people is that, so in the reformed faith, we use this concept called a means of grace. And what we mean by that is that when you sit down there on Sunday and we all stop and say, okay, we are now gathered underneath God's word. Well, we believe that God's word is supernatural. We believe that. So prayer, singing, all of this is we are now engaging in a spiritual act that brings to us the presence of Christ and that brings to us healing and comfort. And so Paul says that the gospel is the power of God, not only for salvation, but also for life and hope and joy and changing.

So every Sunday when I step up, I know I'm entering into a supernatural act. Like I know this. And so when I stand up there and I preach, and in my opinion, if you're not preaching Jesus from all of scripture, then you're probably not giving them any power. You're giving them moralism. Here's how to be better. So what you need is. to hear is Christ wins over your sin. Christ wins over your flesh. Christ wins over the principalities. Christ wins in creation. Christ wins everywhere. I just preached the arc where he sends out the dove. Dude, it's epic. So Genesis in creation, verse number two, says the spirit hovers over the water in chaos. And then the dove goes out in the chaos and doesn't find anything and then eventually

brings back a knowledge branch, which is a sign of peace. And then what does it say at Jesus is baptism, the hut that came down like a dove and rested on Jesus. Like the chaos is over. The waiting is over. The spirit says, this is the man. So I believe that every time, and we take communion every Sunday, in the reformed tradition, we believe that the presence of Christ is there. And Paul says it this way. When you take the table, the blessings of Jesus supernaturally are transferred to you. Guys, you show up on Sunday and it's like, all right, I preach. you know, give me something good today. That's a different experience than I'm about to be spiritually encountered.

Like this is about to be, I don't, I'm going to stay in bed for this one because Jesus is about to come and spiritually encounter me and give me hope. Like I might be dying of cancer, but I have hope. My soul has rest, right? Like when Paul says, I cried out three times, Lord, help me. And Jesus' response was, my grace is sufficient. That grace, he says, is power. So in my opinion, when you re-enchant your faith,

and re-enchant the Bible, when the, like right now, in my opinion, what's happening here is a supernatural thing. Like, I have the spirit in me, you have the spirit in you, and we're talking about Jesus. You don't tell me that we all three aren't gonna be encouraged by this and that there's something special. Because you know how it is when you meet a stranger and then you find out they're a Christian,

you're like, oh, this is, like we have something in common. Like, this is encouraging. Brother. Brother. But for me, every Sunday is a spiritual encounter. And that's what's changed for me in the last five years. When I stand up on Sunday and I open up that book, I'm not thinking I need to be winsome.

I need to be clever. I need to be convincing. I think to myself, Jesus promised in his book that if I tell them the gospel, his power will come and encourage them. And those who aren't saved will save them. That's a different way of thinking about Christianity. It's way different.

I mean, do you think that the flip side of that coin, like what happens sometimes in a lot of our Western churches is harmful then? like the like like to just give a moralistic message. Dude, do be better doesn't ever help anybody. Yeah, because that's right on your own power.

It's like just be, just try harder. Yeah. You know, be better. Send less. Good, good luck.

Yeah. Do you feel like John, like some of the, the reactions you've had over the last year is that people are mad that they're not told everything? Oh man. The amount of people have come to me

and probably told you guys the same thing. How come no one's ever told me this before? I've heard that a lot. I know we're also saying, though, but yeah, there are a lot of people who are kind of like, hey, dude, the system works, don't mess with it. Is that what you're meaning? Just like the Bible is not,

doesn't go into detail enough to where we can't put debate aside. We have to still debate no matter what. Life is a mystery. The Bible is still, it's clues. It's a lot, but it's not, it's not Encyclopedia Britannica it's not 16 volumes

where we got every answer to every question ever. No, that part I agree with you. You know what I'm saying? So it's like don't remind me that I don't know everything. Please. And that's more of the reaction than you said something they don't agree with? Oh yeah. Yeah, I think so yeah, there is a, you know,

reform theology in the United States is pretty, it's grained in the American culture. Yeah. And so when you start challenging the norm, I mean, you guys get this too. I mean, who cares of reformed faith? Dude, Christians. Christians.

You guys are messing with Christianity. They don't like it on either side. Well, just Genesis 6, you know, it's like. She just preached on when you were talking about that. Three part series. Do you got a trilogy on the? The amount of mental gymnastics to turn it into like the sons of Seth is a great way of describing it. It's like, dude, you.

are like you are like introducing characters or introducing colors that aren't even in the painting you know what do the so my there's a third chapter in there it's called context yeah do you know i i mention this really do you know so satan perfectly quotes scripture you know when he was out in the desert interesting yeah yeah and he quotes verbatim the old testament and jesus looks at him and he he quotes to him the context he goes you just took that out of context. Doesn't the Bible say that you could just cast yourself down a clip? It does say that. And then Jesus quotes the context of how he got it wrong. So context is so important. And so this is why, like, I think in the context of Genesis 6, you talk about gymnastics, it's insanity. Like, the

Sethi-v, like, listen, all my brothers and sisters sold to Sethi-view, I love you. And we can totally disagree on that. And I'm okay. But you need to, like, just ask yourself, why did the first 500 years after Jesus, the church only held that it was the supernatural view. That was it. Right? Yeah. Like, not some, but the majority of them. Right. And it's because the context really forces you to do that. So, like, there's, for me, I think that I get, I get really frustrated when I listen to a lot of people online and they'll, they'll read passages or, and they just, they just pull it out, they just pull it out of, like, they don't know what they're, I hate to say it this way, but they don't know what they're doing, and they don't have any tools. And, man, you put a,

you put a hatchet in a kid's hand, and he caused a lot of damage. Yeah. But you put a hatchet in a kid's hand, and he knows how to chop down a land, he can do a lot of help, right? Yeah. So to your point is that I think people have been programmed to see their Bibles, in my opinion, with no supernatural lens. Like, it's gone. Yeah. You know what they can accept? For whatever reason, they can accept creation, Jesus walking on the water and Jonah in the whale. Like that, they have a category. for because those aren't threatening to them. Like Jesus walking on the water and joining the well is not threatening to them. But Genesis 6 and fallen angels and principalities and powers, that's right.

Conquest of Joshua? I mean, there's a lot of things that become vastly uncomfortable without a cosmic or reenchanted worldview, right? Because you just are like, we've got this conversation a few times with just, you know, a genocidal God. How could we do? You know, and you go, well, there's so much context there that we're just missing. I don't know how you read it.

I don't know how you read it. Okay, so like when I was a kid, I was just texting with Michael W. Smith about how when I started thinking about angels and demons was because of him and there was this play and he did it. Really? There was a song he wrote called Ashton and everyone said, oh, it's about it's an angel battle between, but it's actually a song about his son. And I was like six, seven, six year old kid.

And I'm thinking about angels fighting, you know. And my sister's in this play. And I'm like, and then when you read the Bible, you're like, oh, okay, I get this story. I don't know how people just omit the characters. It has to, it's a certain type of stubbornness. Yeah. There's certain people who just, they're okay in the gray space. Yeah.

They hang out in the gray space. Sure. I'm in the gray space, whatever I'm saying, you know, but people, I don't know, there's certain temperaments, wiring. I don't know. Yes, I agree. Angels and gen. No. Humans ain't they're just non-compatible.

And I will go to my death fighting just this point. Yeah. So, well, I mean, the whole, for me, I remember the first time I read that story with opened eyes about Daniel and the messenger comes in his 21-day battle. Yeah. And I read that. And I read it again. And I was like, I've been reading the Bible for 20-something years.

Why have I never seen this story? Like, and I think we have blind reading. Like, in my opinion, I never, I was a college pastor for 10 years. up in Nashville. And the students every year, they would always ask me about two things, homosexuality and Genesis 6. And I was like,

oh, we can do with the one, that matters. Like, Genesis 6, I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't really, for 10 years, I blew it off.

And that's when I was reading, Donald Gray Barnhouse's book, and he has this whole section on it. I was like, well, if Barnhouse thinks it's important, maybe I should, maybe I should pay attention here. But that's how I was trained.

Like, these parts of the Bible don't matter. Like, just, you don't have a case. Like, you guys said, all the time. Preachers weren't trained to preach on it. I went to seminary to a very, actually, you guys know who John MacArthur is? Yeah. So I went to John MacArthur's seminary, which is pretty decent seminary. I was not trained at all to think about the supernatural

or like demons and angels. Like when he said you get a class. Yeah. That's, I didn't even get a class. So to your point though, I think I tend to be a little bit more patient with people. I think one, they need to tip their toe in it or they need an extreme. experience or like I need to rethink my life here. Then they're willing to talk to you about it. It's wild. I mean, you know, growing up in various pockets of Christianity, you know, we all kind of adopted sort of the culture of that time. And I think, you know, we said this a lot on the show. It's just I think maybe blurry kind of started from being exposed to all different types of Christian circles. And there was never like a cohesive. We've got it all figured.

over here. And so for me, it was just, I don't want to, I don't want the topic of Bigfoot to force me to lose my faith. I think it fits in there. There needs to be some kind of devoted lane to these things because, I mean, what a sad situation where someone could be a Christian gray's in the church. They have a satch swatch encounter and then they go, I don't believe in God anymore. It's exactly right. And it happens. It does. I don't believe in God anyway. This whole thing I've been told, it's all fake. And it's like, whoa, whoa, wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Go back and read that book again. Again, like, think there's many glurry encounters in that book.

There's a lot of deconstructing into the, like, New Age right now. Yes. Big time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but the cool thing about the podcast, it's brought about a lot of those people back into, back into their, the Kingdom of Heaven. Yeah, you guys probably get a lot of emails like that. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the New Age becomes, becomes enticing for people that are deconstructing because it doesn't require anything of you. There's no responsibility. It's spirituality without... But it scratches the blur. But it's still spirituality. At the end of the day, it's occultism because it really is just do what thou wilt.

Like, do whatever you want to have a spiritual experience. And you go, that's exactly what Crowley said. That's interesting. And I think that's, again, like the Ecclesiastes paradigm. There's nothing new under the sun. We're just, you know, we're looking at the repackaging of paganism and occultism. Well, we tried the no-god thing in America. And it didn't work.

And so, unfortunately, I don't think people are going back to Christianity. They're going to, they're going to other gods. A lot of things. Yeah. The low-ggy gods. It seems like Satan's the way he works is neuter Christianity and then gender confused the spiritual realm. And it's like, okay, we're a created man and woman. We have a sexuality.

We have, there's a way this works. Let's figure that out. Like, it's biological for us to ponder, to question, to want relationship and to search and seek. and we can't just cut them off and be like, we're not that, we're not made that way. It's hard. I mean, it is, it's more work. It's, it's grinding through it.

It's tension. Everyone who has a relationship with someone they love, it's, it's not, it's a grind often, you know, so. Well, I do have one thank for you guys. Yeah. I got a family in my church who is at my church because you're a podcast. Let's go. I told that Luke,

I said, you guys are turning people reform. Reform reform people. And I guess maybe that would be like one of my last questions for you, John, would be like, do you know, I think a lot of people think that like the confessional reform theology and robust supernatural worldview that are not compatible. No, they're not conflicting actually. Yeah. So that's what, so like if you think about it, reform confessionism and creeds, they're dealing with the person, the nature of God. And then like sin, salvation and the church. it doesn't really handle the supernatural stuff that we're talking about.

And it's not designed to. It's like, hey, if the three of us, let's say we're all three from different denominations, but we all need to partner together, the creeds help us do that. Like, well, you believe in the Trinity. You believe that Jesus died and rose again. And you believe that he's eternal. Great, we can all work together. Because if you don't believe one of those, we're in trouble.

Right. So what ends up happening is that people say, well, that's the only thing you should talk about. And I'm like, well, that's not the only thing the Bible talks about. Yeah. A lot of weird in there. So what I have tried to trumpet in my tradition is that let's leave the confessions and creates what they're designed for, unity and structure. Like, protect us. This is good.

But they're not, and they say it at this, like the confession says it itself. It's just not cover everything that's in the Bible. So that's all I've been trumpeting is that I think the reformers did us a favor of like, hey, we probably don't want to run off the cliff here. We've already made those mistakes in the past. You know, like we want to believe in the Trinity, guys. and we want to believe that Jesus died and rose again and that he was a real man because otherwise you're a heretic.

Like, I'm thankful for that, but they didn't tell us everything that's in the Bible. So that's where the fight has started. And thankfully, through Doug and I, a lot of people are like coming out of the woodwork and they're seeing it and they're loving it. They're being helped by it. Yeah.

And then what about writing this book? And what was maybe the most profound aha thing was you're reviewing the Bible and through a lens of Christ? Like, I know you've, talked about the Lord's Prayer, I think it's super profound. Yeah,

for me personally, I am floored about, like, I can't go a chapter without their, it's like Jesus being exposed to me in ways that I'm just floored. Like, if you go back and just listen to my sermon I did on Sunday,

where no, I don't know how many people connect, Noah coming off the ark. Yeah. Like, oh, he just came off the ark and then he made a sacrifice, whatever. that whole encounter is preparing you for Jesus' baptism.

Like the whole Old Testament is just one big, like glorious illustration so that you can just see how loving, kind, gracious, powerful, and amazing Jesus is. Once you learn that, reading the Old Testament is a blast. You could have the worst day of your life. You could be like, I think I'm going to die from cancer tomorrow and open up your Bible and be like, but Christ is awesome. He is with me. He has never, like, he has cast my sins as far as the East of the United States.

from the West, he hears my prayers. When I don't pray correctly, he prays for me. Like, all of this comes to me from the Bible. And, but most of us have been trained to read it like, well, I'm going to go in there and read, read out what I need to do. And then there's like this weird thing about all these genocides. I'll just throw this in there. You guys have had this before, but no, that is, that is God cleaning out these hybrids that are messing up creation to keep the Messiah from coming. You read that part and you're like, that's why Jesus goes down into prison was like, you failed. He pumps the fist. So when I read that, my day might be the worst I've ever had,

but I can go into scripture and go, you know, a lot of people suffered and a lot of people died and a lot of people felt discomforted, but the one thing they all had was hope. Yeah. And the hope was Christ. So that's what changed my mind over the last five years. Like when I dive into preaching or when I dive into podcasting

or when I read the Bible myself, I'm always, like, he's the hero of the story. Yeah. And why not learn about how he did that? It's really encouraging. Because my circumstance may not change. And he told me why. He goes, yeah, you're in a cursed world,

but I'm not going to leave you without comfort or purpose. You have purpose, you have comfort. I'll pray you have more faith. This might be the most cheesiest joke I've ever made. But behind you is a board game called Crossfire. And I think the Bible is a lot of that. It's like caught up in the crossfire between the two wars. And the stories are explanations.

there. The cross. Oh, got it. Dad joke. I got that for Christmas one year, and I remember getting that game for Christmas. But to your point, people don't read the Bible that way. It's not, they don't read it that way. Genesis 3 introduces the two, the fight. Two seeds, right? The seed war.

Right from the beginning. Chapter 3. Heaven and hell's going back and forth. I mean, we see this in the skies. People send us weird blurry videos. Seems like it's going on today. You got creatures coming out of the deep. You got the underworld. You got heaven. and earth colliding.

You got angels showing up on the scene. You got fights, battles, wars, killing. You got resurrection. It's just, it's... You got the gods of old returning. Just bananas. Which is wild. I mean, this is the total side,

but like if you even have somewhat paid attention to some of the Epstein file drops, you're realizing that, like, you know, he has a bank account named bail. You know, these things, these things don't ever go away. They haven't gone away. I think about it from this perspective,

if it gets, like, super wild, like fantasy world wild. You know why that's good for us as Christians? Because God says, like, when the gospel is proclaimed, I work. Well, that's good for us because the gospel is a supernatural. It's not physical. Like Pete Yorne says, it already is. You're on a roll.

You're on a roll. It's all this guy. His mic is smoking right now. That's right. And thank you for coming on. There's not many dudes in your space. It would probably want to come on blurry creatures. Yeah, I was honored.

being a friend and yeah we'll pay your attorney fees my speaker fee yeah but john the book is out today where can they where can they find it i know john moffat dot com is yeah theelcast dot org okay yeah that'll be the place to get it or amazon and you've got the podcast going so yeah if you uh want more of like i don't i don't dive into the stuff that they do right but if you want a a supernatural perspective of christianity and how does that work out in your everyday life that's what theokass is about love it dude get the book and you're and you're local here here which makes it fun. Yeah, unless you don't like it.

We can hang outside the studio, which is, which is cool, man. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for being kind to us for foreign people. Doug and I appreciate it. Hey. Oh, you're helping. The best.

Yeah. You're helping. Yeah. They didn't like us from the beginning, but some, they're still with us. There's more and more listening. Let's go. Yeah.

Bring them back. I think there's like an underground, like just an underground reform world that like secretly. Like back to prohibition. They're like, we're all going to get to get to listen to blurry together. Totally. Or whatever. Whatever.

non-reformed thing totally you got to sing out the crossfire themes no crossfire oh wow i remember that commercial dude that little boys do we're gonna win it in a crossfire