Allegiant Faith Network | Resources for Doubting Christians

Cities of the Plain

Scholars still like to debate the location of Sodom and Gomorrah. But it’s mostly opinionated bickering over minor details.

The chief candidate for Sodom is Tall el-Hammam, east of the Jordan River, directly north of the Dead Sea within the Kikkar Valley.

The site matches the biblical description and experienced an extraordinary cataclysmic event. Almost the entire plain was super-heated to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for a matter of seconds, decimating everything.

Scientists know because pottery shards found there fused into green glass on one side. Trinitite. The same glass discovered in the Mojave Desert after the Oppenheimer nuclear tests during World War II.

Tall el-Hammam went uninhabited for over 700 years after the catastrophe, while surrounding societies continued to flourish and grow. And Ancient Near Eastern sources describe the place as cursed, a wasteland of mourning.

No better explanation has been offered for the catastrophe besides divine conflagration.

The only dent in Tall el-Hammam is dating. Recent archaeological discoveries place the Israelites in Egypt prior to 1400 B.C., posing a problem for conventional timelines.

Scholars date the destruction of Tall el-Hammam to around 1700 B.C., but if the Israelites were truly in Egypt for 400 years after Joseph, that timeline collapses. The real timeline for the catastrophe in the plain would be sometime prior to 1800 B.C., likely around or before 2000 B.C.

The dating itself is what must be wrong, though, because the weight of the other evidence discovered there suggests it IS the site of ancient Sodom. Without question.

The cities are real, were destroyed as described, and their significance goes beyond archaeology…

Three Men, One Lord

The first two of the six threads found in Genesis 18-19…the identity of the three men and God’s revelation to Abraham…are intertwined.

Contrary to common critiques of Genesis 18, the men who visit Abraham aren’t separate figures from the Lord. They’re one and the same.

The opening verse functions as a blanket statement, the same literary move made in Genesis 1, where God creates the heavens and the earth without a timeframe or method.

All we’re provided is the general “what.”
Details come after.

In 18:1, “the Lord appears to Abraham” sets the scene. God, three-in-one, comes to Abraham in human form, familiar and accessible. Tangible.

The Trinitarian reading finds confirmation later in the chapter when two of the party leave toward Sodom while the Lord (the Father) continues speaking face to face with Abraham.

Genesis gives no number when they depart Abraham, but chapter 19 opens with only two men approaching Sodom, where Lot meets them at the gate. The narrative flows without interruption from the previous chapter, making plain that these two belong to the original group.

God grants Abraham a full vision of his unity. Why?

The visit occurs immediately after the formalization of the covenant and the granting of the covenant sign of blood: circumcision (Genesis 15-17).

Up to this point, God had revealed nothing of his plans to Abraham beyond the promise of a great nation and a blessing on all peoples. The covenant now sealed in flesh becomes the reason God grants Abraham deeper knowledge of the future. Abraham is God’s official elected lower-case messiah.

There’s also a dimension of witness in Genesis 18. When God pronounces judgment, he does so openly, with Abraham watching.

So, the question of the three men and the subsequent revelation is really about what kind of God shows up in human form, eats a meal at a stranger’s table, and then destroys two cities. Genesis doesn’t provide a comfortable answer…

Big Crimes Court

God’s phrasing in Genesis 18:20-21 confuses readers who move too quickly. Or without proper context.

Then the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”

Atheists think God speaks as though going down to see whether the reports match reality because he’s uncertain of their crimes…or reality…or both.

Wrong.

God knows full well the Sodomites’ crimes (and reality) and sets up a trial for their benefit. Because it’s his desire that none should perish.

God performs a similar operation in Job. There, the satan, a title meaning “accuser,” moves back and forth across the earth and reports on human affairs to the heavenly council. This figure witnesses and accuses, receiving limited power to enact tests where God permits. Despite God’s oversight and full knowledge.

In other words, God is communal. He seeks participation in his affairs from his creation. Especially its sentient members.

In Genesis 18, outcry against Sodom reaches God. A report rises from the heavenly council, an accusation lodged by an accuser(s).

God’s descent is the opening of formal proceedings. A chance at fair hearing.

God gives Sodom and Gomorrah one last opportunity before destruction, as he gave humanity time before the Flood. The Nephilim and their violent human counterparts pushed the world to a breaking point before God resorted to annihilation.

Sodom takes the same trajectory at smaller scale.

Involving Abraham in the last act of patience shows God’s communal desire stretches to the earth. Abraham enters the trial as the covenant elect. Lower-case messiah appointed by God. A position not earned. Witness and mediator.

Having dealt with Sodom before during the kings’ wars in chapter 14, Abraham also knows firsthand how bad Sodom is. Got a taste of their depravity. And is in a position to know the truth.

As messiah, Abraham must provide their defense…

Ten is the Lowliest Number

Atheists also read the bargaining between Abraham and God as evidence of divine uncertainty. But God is no more undecided here than he is unknowing of Job’s innocence or Sodom’s crimes.

The back-and-forth between Abraham and God is the courtroom proceeding itself. Abraham as advocate, God as presiding judge.

Abraham builds his case based upon the nature of God. He appeals to divine mercy and to God’s desire to uplift the righteous and destroy the wicked and successfully whittles the number down to 10 righteous men. The threshold that would prevent Godly destruction. Then stops there.

Genesis 18 offers no explicit reason. The implication is Abraham reached a threshold below which no argument for mercy holds. If ten righteous people are not found in Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities are consumed by demonic evil and will receive a just judgment.

Think about how vile and corrupt they must’ve been that they couldn’t even meet that requirement.

Yet the limitation set by Abraham isn’t as far as God will go.

What Abraham doesn’t know is God already accounted for the only righteous household in Sodom. Lot and his family were never going to be swept into the judgment (except Lot’s wife, who chooses to look back in disobedience and becomes a pillar of salt).

God protects his own.

Understood as courtroom proceedings, the bargain makes much more sense. It serves to contrast God’s own goodness and generosity against a kingdom so wicked not even ten righteous men compose its ranks.

Genesis 19 then solidifies their depravity and condemnation…

Sexual Perversion and Violence: A Pre-Flood Reversion

Lot is sitting at the gate of Sodom when the two men arrive. In the Ancient Near East, the gate was the seat of civic authority, the place where elders judged disputes and held influence.

A righteous man had standing in the most corrupt city of the Trans-Jordan, where decisions were made, and still the city was beyond saving. How deep the rot had to run for a righteous elder at the gate to change nothing.

He prevents the strangers from going to an inn at the town square because knows how grotesque and depraved the men of Sodom are. And like it or not, the number one sin highlighted is same-sex relations.

Not lack of hospitality. Not mere violence.
Same-sex relations. Specifically same-sex rape.
The men of Sodom demand to have sex with the two visitors. By force.

Other passages of Scripture verify that there were many sins the Sodomites committed, but only one is called “abomination” and/or “strange flesh” (see Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jude 7; and 2 Peter 2:6-8). God’s Law also names same-sex acts an “abomination,” the same category of language used for the sexual perversion and violence of the Nephilim before the Flood.

The connection is deliberate. Jesus himself, the ultimate Messiah, notes it in the Gospel of Luke:

For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left (17:24-35).

Careless frivolity.

Sodom’s condemnation (and soon the world’s) goes beyond a single instance of wickedness. Like the pre-Flood world, they were consumed with twisted sexual perversions, chief of which was same-sex rape, and violence…all…the…time. Every second of every day.

An endless “party” in which the weak and innocent were the “plaything” of the strong and most brutal. Until they too became perverted by the same twisted desires.

The whole crowd of men comes to Lot’s door demanding the visitors be released to them. For forced defilement. Lot calls the act despicable, understanding the grotesqueness of what they are demanding. He offers his daughters instead, a disturbing move (a failure from fear he shares with Abraham and Isaac).

But nowhere near as debased as the Sodomites’ demands.

The men of Sodom want to use members of the Godhead as objects of sexual violence and degradation, a deliberate contempt for both God and his creation. “Demonic” is too small a word.

When the mob refuses to relent, the angelic visitors strike them blind. The sentence the city earned becomes visible in a single instant. And leads to an astonishing connection you never saw coming…

Bread Baked for a Fast Break

Lot makes bread for the two men when they arrive. No yeast. The text treats this as a practical detail: quick bread for unexpected guests. But it opens into something much larger.

Around 800 years earlier, Lot and his household are rushed from Sodom for the same reason Israel is rushed from Egypt. To escape slavery and live.

In Exodus, God commands the Israelites to bake unleavened bread on the night of the final plague, the death of Egypt’s firstborn. They eat in haste because they are about to be rushed from the land. Bread without yeast becomes the bread of urgency.

The Pharaohs, in their cruelty, enslaved God’s people and killed their children, threatening to obliterate them into oblivion until they ceased to exist as a people. Ruining God’s plans for creation.

Sodom and Gomorrah enact the same hatred on a more concentrated scale. A regime given over to crushing what God built and violating those God called his own.

The Passover carries the echo of Lot’s bread, baked without yeast, on the night the fire came down, and unites it with God’s later deliverance of his people through the death of the firstborn.

Both stories end with what comes after the fire. God’s patience and God’s severity work toward the same end. His glory and the rescue of the righteous.

From the world. And from themselves.

First with grace, then with power.

God protects his own.

The Paradox of Deliverance

In the smoldering ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, where pottery fused into nuclear glass and an entire plain was scorched by heaven’s fury, we encounter the breathtaking complexity of a God who is terrifyingly just and relentlessly merciful.

The story is far more than a cautionary tale about sexual sin.

You saw real cities reduced to ash; you saw God step into history, sit down with his elect, speak face to face, then judge without error; you watched a courtroom unfold where nothing was hidden, where mercy stretched further than anyone expected, and where even ten righteous men could not be found; you followed the thread of corruption from private vice to a public system that fed on the weak and celebrated violence; and you traced the quiet detail of bread baked in haste, the quiet, unleavened bread linking Sodom’s daybreak destruction to Israel’s deliverance and the greater Passover to come.

Archaeology confirms the cities of the plain were real. The Bible reveals why they fell. And the living God shows us how he governs with both mercy and judgment in perfect wisdom. Never guessing, never uncertain, but always longing that none should perish.

Yet even as the fire falls and Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt, the story refuses to end in ashes.

The ruins of Sodom still speak.

They warn us. They humble us. They invite us to examine our own cities, our own hearts, our own desperate need for the God who saves the righteous while refusing to leave evil unchecked.

Perhaps most powerful of all, Sodom’s story leaves us hungry for the rest of the story.

It points forward. To a greater Messiah who would one day stand in the place of the guilty. A greater Deliverer who would break the bread of urgency with His own broken body. A final Day when the Son of Man is revealed like lightning across the sky, judges the wicked once and for all, and restores fallen creation.

God’s justice is real. His mercy astonishing.

And the best chapters of his dealings with humanity are yet to unfold.

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Real Sister Wives of Ancient Canaan

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:25:15 GMT

A cowardly husband calls his wife “sister” and hands her over to a foreign king to save his own skin.

Sounds like a soap opera. Or some ridiculous Bravo TV show.

Yet it happens in the Bible. Twice with Abraham, once with Isaac.

Feminists carry Genesis 12:10-20 and chapters 20 and 26 around in their Gucci bags as fodder to beat down men, destroy the family, and castrate God’s church.

Bible defenders squirm. Critics sharpen their pens. And the whole fiasco gets filed under “proof the patriarchs were horrible men God should have fired.”

But such a reading misses about 90% of what is happening. Buried inside three of the most uncomfortable passages in Genesis is a prophetic architecture so precise it should stop you cold.

These stories aren’t just about human failure. They’re about which nations would spend centuries trying to destroy Israel, why they failed, and how God embedded the entire trajectory of that conflict into a series of domestic scandals before the nation of Israel even existed.

To prove that where humans fail, God redeems.

Abraham lies. Isaac repeats the lie. God protects both of them anyway because the promises he made required it. And the foreign kings caught in the middle? They walk away from each encounter knowing something unsettling: There’s a force at work in this family the world can’t outmaneuver.

What follows is a close look at all three episodes, what they share, where they diverge, and why the details most readers skim over paint the picture of a God who cares, fights for, and defends his own…including you.

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The Doom Cycle of Fear

It’s easy to fixate on what Abraham and Isaac did to their wives in Egypt and with Abimelech. Calling them sisters and handing them over as if they were property to be traded.

It was wrong. No one’s defending it.

As noted, skeptics, especially those of a feminist persuasion, love to use these passages to portray men as patriarchal oppressors and blame God for not stopping Abraham and Isaac. Before they betrayed their wives and almost caused international meltdowns.

Their criticism is understandable on the surface. But it requires ignoring context entirely.

We know their behavior was despicable because we live post-Christ, in a world revolutionized by Christian morals. Abraham and Isaac lived in a radically different time.

It wasn’t uncommon for humans to participate in acts God would later reveal as sins.

Ancient kings had a tendency to kill foreign men and take their wives and children as slaves. Violence everywhere, all the time, a continuance of pre-flood bloodshed. It was enough to instill fear in even the most courageous of men.

So, the fear of the forefathers was understandable. The choices made? Not so much.

Abraham and Isaac had God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth on their side. That intimate connection with the eternal Maker should’ve butched them up.

Instead, they folded like unwrapped Slim Jims. And nowhere does God endorse their deceptions. He doesn’t applaud Abraham for his cunning or reward Isaac for following his father’s playbook.

What he does instead is intervene at the precise moment the lies threaten to dismantle his holy mission through total loss of his elected children.

God bestows grace.

Human fear, left to its own devices, drifts toward self-preservation at someone else’s expense. And God moves to protect Abraham, Isaac, and the nations from the fallout of one man’s fear.

The Allegiance of God Most High

There’s a theological current running through all three stories, and once you see it, the individual episodes feel less like embarrassing footnotes and instead reveal a deliberate pattern.

What They Don't Want You to Know About the Resurrection

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:15:15 GMT

You’re told to treat the resurrection like a comforting story.

Because skeptics want to keep their own comforting illusion of meaningless existence alive and well.

But a dead man walking out of his grave is a claim that breaks history open and challenges everything built upon it.

Nothing comforting about that.

If Christ remains buried, then Christians are most to be pitied. We’ve either been duped by a lie or participate in the most scandalous event the world has ever known.

So what really happened three days after the cross?

Below are 7 reasons you can and should trust your Savior lives.

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1. Brand New World

Christianity did not spread through comfort or power. It moved through pressure, loss, and resistance.

Where it took root, things radically changed.

A God who loves. A moral law grounded in something higher than preference. The idea that every person has value. Systems of thought that led to freedom, scientific pursuit, and the abundance of art and beauty.

These grew out of a worldview centered on Christ. Remove his root and the fruit withers.

Bad ideas decay. Good ones produce order and life. And the Christian vision has shaped societies in great ways no competing system has matched.

Throughout history, societies built on it’s foundation saw the development of institutions that cared for the vulnerable, hospitals that treated the sick regardless of status, and legal frameworks that emphasized justice rooted in the dignity of every individual.
The emphasis on a personal relationship with a loving God encouraged exploration of the natural world as something orderly and discoverable rather than chaotic or arbitrary. Such perspectives contributed to environments where inquiry could flourish and creative expression could reflect both human struggle and divine order.

The lasting impact of Christ remains visible in social stability, charitable work, and intellectual advancement emerging where the Christian message took hold and endured.

Because he rose again.

2. The Savior’s Roadmap

Jesus told his followers what would happen.

He spoke of suffering.
He spoke of death.
He spoke of rising again.

When he was crucified, every expectation should have collapsed. It did for other Messianic movements in the Second Temple period. Their leaders died, and they disbanded.

The same started to happen with the disciples. Every one of them, except John, disappeared when the Pharisees’ guards arrested Jesus and put him on trial, for fear they would be next.

Their teacher was executed in the most shameful way known to the Roman world. A cursed man nailed to a tree. Movements built on men like that do not survive.

Yet this one did.

Not slowly, not through careful rebuilding, but through sudden conviction. The same men who fled in fear began speaking with certainty that their leader had risen from the grave.

They believed he kept his word.

The pattern of prediction followed by fulfillment stands out because the events unfolded exactly as described. Even when contradicting every cultural expectation of victory or earthly power.

Rapid change in the behavior of those closest to Jesus points to an experience that overturned their despair and replaced it with bold proclamation.

The promised outcome emerged as foretold.

3. Master of Life and Death

Before his own death, Jesus raised others. Lazarus is the most notorious example. Dead for well over a day, and then walked out of the grave upon hearing the Savior’s voice.

These resurrections weren’t secret acts. They happened in front of witnesses, in public settings where doubt would spread fast if anything felt staged.

The disciples saw it. Others saw it. Jesus demonstrated his everlasting power over death.

So when he later died, the idea of him rising again didn’t come as a surprise. Overwhelming and incomprehensible, but not a surprise. They’d already seen what he could do.

Public demonstrations of authority over death created a foundation of observed reality instead of abstract hope. Witnesses from different backgrounds could easily challenge any exaggeration. The consistency of the reports and the continued presence of those who experienced them firsthand reinforced the credibility of the later claim.

The disciples noted not only the restoration of life but the immediate return of Jesus’s body to normal functions, removing any suggestion of temporary revival or illusion.

Imagine he walked in on them still torn apart, bleeding all over the floor. Clinging to life by a thread.
They would’ve thought him insane and sent to get him medical attention. Which would’ve tipped off the priests’ guards and then the Romans. And the latter would’ve finished the job, since they’d receive the death penalty themselves if word got out someone had survived the cross.

But they saw him fully revived and returned to his pre-cross state, minus the scars from the nails.

The prior resurrections and his glorious appearing (healed and whole) made the resurrection claim a logical extension of what had been displayed openly and defies reduction to invention.

4. No Reason to Lie

If the resurrection was invented, the question becomes simple.

What did they gain?

The disciples followed a man the world cursed. They preached a message many found offensive or foolish. They refused to back down. For that, they were mocked, beaten, imprisoned, and slaughtered.

People lie for power, wealth, and/or to protect themselves. Christ’s first followers achieved none of those.

Yet they retained the Gospel message. Preached his resurrection wherever they found the opportunity.

Instead of recanting under threat, they maintained their testimony even when it led to loss of social standing, physical harm, or execution.

Fabricated stories designed for personal advantage collapse when real costs arrive. Here the opposite occurred. Commitment only strengthened under pressure, suggesting the claim rested on something actually experienced, not invented for gain.

The absence of any material benefit or protection, combined with the willingness to endure hardship, stands as strong evidence that their persistence came from genuine conviction.

Hallucination theories are the only alternative, but each of them begs the question: How does a large group of people experience the same hallucination in detail and insist in its truth under pressure?

Eventually, someone will fold and recant. Play it off as mistaken identity or delusion.

But no one among the earliest followers of Christ (the ones who were in a position to know the truth, have it verified or torn apart by other witnesses) recanted. They chose to die instead.

Because Christ had risen from the dead restored and revealed himself to them.

5. Attached to Real Life

The accounts of Jesus and the resurrection appear early. Not generations later after legends had time to grow.

Within reach of the events themselves.

Some creeds describing Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection trace back close to the time of the crucifixion. Scholars think one creed Paul cites in 1 Corinthians dates back to a few weeks or months after April 5th, 33 AD, the date the resurrection of Christ is thought to have occurred.

The timing of the written records places them close enough to the original events that many who lived through them or knew those who did could still verify or challenge the reports.

Extra-biblical sources also align with key details.

Jewish customs required burial before the Sabbath. The timeline in the Gospels reflects that urgency.

A member of the Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, takes responsibility for the body and places it in a new tomb.

We know it was new because it was a single chamber, likely the beginning of a tomb Joseph was carving for his family. Wealthier Jews would fashion such tombs into the rocky hills with multiple chambers to fit the dead for their whole families, and Joseph was wealthy enough for such a project.

He forsook his family’s grave to honor Christ.

And the involvement of a known public figure of Joseph’s statue adds a layer of specificity that would’ve been easy to disprove if inaccurate.

The women returned early the next morning to complete mourning the practices, under known customs. Which is why they were the first witnesses. Aside from the priests’ guards who fainted when the stole rolled away on its own.

Any fabricators would’ve known to remove the women as the first witnesses because their testimony wouldn’t be credible in the eyes of the Roman world. So, the only reason the writers would keep them in the story is if it were true.

The empty tomb and the repeated insistence on personal encounters with the risen Christ form the unchanging core of resurrection testimony from the beginning.

6. Men Who Thought for Themselves

The disciples may not have been elites, but they were still men with brains. And highly intelligent, even if allegedly illiterate.

Practical men accustomed to evaluating evidence in everyday matters of business, family, and community life.

They lived in a world full of competing ideas. They worked, traded, and made life or death decisions daily. And as Jews, they were required to attend synagogue (where readings of the Old Testament were performed and discussed on the regular) and make periodic trips to the Temple Mount for festivals and sacrifices.

As fishermen, they also had to know the common languages of the Roman world for trade.

In their Jewish and Greco-Roman environments, resurrection wasn’t the easiest answer available. It was the hardest one to accept.

Yet they embraced it.

Then there’s Paul. A trained Pharisee. Educated. Influential. A man who opposed the new Way movement with bloody zeal.

Are we to suppose he just drifted into belief in Christ?

No. He turned after an encounter he could not dismiss. A sharp and overwhelming experience of the risen Christ that permanently altered his reality forever.

In a diverse intellectual environment filled with many philosophies and religious options, the apostles chose a path that brought them in conflict with prevailing expectations. Their decision required them to rethink long-held assumptions about power, victory, and the nature of God’s work in the cosmos.

None of the above could happen unless Christ Jesus really beat the grave.

7. Our Only Hope Against Suffering

Every person faces the same end as the disciples and Paul. Has craved for immortality since the earliest eras of history.

We know something is wrong but are powerless to overcome.

No one succeeded in eating from the Tree of Life. We were banished from it for our rebellion. Cursed with the plague of evil and entropy.

Suffering. Death. Loss that no human effort can reverse.

Human failure brought sin and death into the world, and no system built by human hands has resolved that destruction.

The resurrection, however, does.

It says death is defeated. Not symbolically, but in reality. Tangible. It offers a future where what was broken is restored.

That’s either coincidence beyond reason or a truth worth facing head on.

Your Savior Lives

Don’t let doubt shaped by culture or pressure wear you down. Your Savior walked out of the tomb.

It’s empty.

If he were still inside it, you are most to be pitied. Because your faith is false. But the evidence resounds with affirmation that Christ Jesus left the grave.

You were not placed here by accident. You were not called to blend in with a world crushed beneath its own iniquities.

In Christ Jesus, you are made new. Sin no longer controls you, and death has lost its sting.

When you follow the Savior, you join a movement that has revolutionized everything for the better. The kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

And while the powers of darkness still rage and war, you can rest assured that your victory is sealed. Because the cross and resurrection solidified their fate.

They are destined for eternal hell. You for eternal life.

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The Power and Brutality of the Rugged Cross

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 13:14:49 GMT

Jesus’s death doesn’t let you off the hook so easily. It was a death so thorough and so carefully verified that so-called “swoon theory” becomes a ragged fable.

Skeptics want you to think he was scourged, nailed, speared, declared dead, yet fainted and later revived?

Insane.

The Romans perfected crucifixion as a public art. Slow. Certain. No survivors.

Once you look closely at what actually happened on Good Friday outside Jerusalem, comfortable alternate theories collapse.

The cross is no tragic mistake or clever escape. It’s the place where death itself bled and died.

Get ready to journey through the brutality your Savior suffered to save your soul.

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Never Cross Rome

Crucifixion stood at the top of Rome’s list of punishments. Not only for what it did to the body, but for what it said to everyone watching.

Everyone who knew of it abhorred the practice because of its intense brutality. Yet like the later coliseums, soldiers and onlookers when it happened found it entertaining.

Crucifixion was a statement: “You don’t challenge Rome and live to tell about it.”

Cicero called crucifixion the most cruel and disgusting penalty. Josephus described mass crucifixions where soldiers rotated positions for their own amusement. To get better views.

Crucifixion was routine, refined, and feared across the empire.

Victims were stripped of dignity, then of life. Erased in full view of the entire known world.

Jesus, already battered and broken, entered that machine, built to ensure demise…

Flogged Till Flinching

He was first whipped until flesh dangled from his body. Red rags of muscle and tissue.

The flagrum tore through skin with embedded bone and metal. Eusebius records victims of the cat-o’-nine-tails whose veins became exposed to the elements. Muscles, blood vessels, and organs visible through rib cages like port windows.

Many died before reaching the execution site.

Yet, Jesus endured this and then carried the patibulum through the streets. Gawkers lined up to see him lead coagulating streaks of pus-filled gore.

No wonder he collapsed, and another had to take his place up the hill. Victims in severe shock do not survive long without intervention. Blood loss, dehydration, trauma…all stacked high with Golgotha a mile away.

By the time Jesus reached “The Skull,” he was a crumbling ragdoll. The idea that someone in that condition could later revive stretches beyond the limits of human physiology.

But it happened.

And the worst was just beginning…

Hammer, Nail, Asphyxiation at Scale

Crucifixion killed through strangulation. No nooses involved.

When a body hangs from outstretched arms, breathing becomes a fight. To inhale, the victim must push up on pierced feet and pull with pierced wrists.

Each inhale a thousand needs through the heart
Each exhale a hurried rush to relief

All while stings and cramps ripple through every joint and bone.

Medical analysis, including works published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, detail the gruesome end. Exhaustion plus zero oxygen made for a beeline to death.

Sometimes the spectacle lasted days. To speed things up, knees were sometimes smashed with clubs until shattered.

Jesus died before this step. No bone in his body broken. But that was a small consolation…

Crushing the Human Spirit

Only slaves, the worst criminals, and noncitizen enemies of the Empire lucked into crucifixion. Rome wouldn’t go so far as to disgrace its own citizens, even if they were criminals, with such a horrid demise.

Onlookers made up of mixed crowds gathered in droves. Few family and friends (they too despised). Mostly haters. In many cases crowds spat upon the cursed as they dangled overhead.

Victims were stripped naked. Bared to the elements. Insults flew freely. A titulus displayed the charges above their heads. Formed execution into a public warning.

The Gospels record all the above…

Mockery from soldiers
Taunts from passersby
Religious leaders joining in
A plaque blaring “King of the Jews”

Pain isolates. Shame degrades. Together they crush what remains of human strength.

Yet even here, Jesus remained composed enough to speak, forgive, and endure with clarity. They saw him as a criminal, but he would always be King…

The Crown, the Sponge, the Spear

His crown was instrument made symbol. Thorns many inches long buried deep in scalp and skull. Some surely reached his brain, but Jesus remained alert and coherent.

Adam’s curse pounded into the only One who could bear it.

That part of the head is one of the most vascular areas of the body. Bleeding would have been enormous, and trauma to the head bred the insult of shock.

Then he was offered the vinegar on a sponge. A Roman latrine sponge. Used to wipe feces from filthy behinds. The risk of infection was astronomical from that one quick taste. Which was unimaginably horrid.

But at that point, his misery was at its end.

Jesus willingly gave up his spirit. A soldier drove a spear into his side.

The Gospel of John records blood and water flowing out. Liquids in the chest cavity. Pleural effusion. Blood cells had separated and congealed.

Jesus was dead.

And his guardians knew it. Their own lives depended on finishing the task, guaranteeing his end. A living prisoner removed too soon meant death for the soldiers and their families.

There’s no record anywhere of a Roman execution squad failing. Not one.

No one walked away from the cross.

The single record of someone being removed from a cross comes from Josephus.

He tells of three acquaintances he successfully petitioned cut down. Despite immediate medical attention, two still died. And they endured only a partial crucifixion.

No whip
No spear
No broken legs

With the exception of the third, Jesus endured the full process.

Which leads to another absurdity. A severely wounded man would need to move a massive stone, avoid guards, and travel on pierced feet. Then appear to his followers not as someone clinging to life, but as the conqueror of death.

In three days!

Imagine Jesus limped into the disciples’ presence bleeding across the floor, gasping for breath and mustering up a crackly “pep-talk.” Not exactly the spark of eternal movements.

Yet the early Christians became an unstoppable force…

Can’t Contain God Most High

Something happened after the crucifixion that changed everything.

The disciples didn’t speak like men protecting a weak leader who barely survived. They proclaimed a risen Lord who defeated death. Fearful followers became public witnesses, willing to suffer and die for what they were certain they’d seen.

Paul records appearances to many, including a group of over five hundred. Large groups are harder to dismiss. Collective experiences resist hallucination theories and demand better explanations.

People don’t give their lives for what they know is a lie. They don’t stake everything on a man ripped to shreds and bleeding out on the stone floor. And every one of the earliest believers in Judea was in such a position to determine the truth.

So there’s only one conclusion…

The Death That Secured Life

Jesus died and rose again. For you.

The methods were too severe, the verification too careful, and the aftermath too powerful to explain any other way.

The Messiah bled, surrendered his own life, and conquered sin and death. He returned, not broken, not hiding, but alive with purpose. To take over rightful rulership of the heavens and the earth.

He is why the cross still stands at the center of history.

Not as a symbol of defeat, but as the foundation of the final victory and the everlasting life it brings.

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Did Abraham Invent the Eucharist?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:31:32 GMT

Bread and wine. Body and blood. Eternal symbols of the Eucharist, the last meal of Christ, that originated with our Savior. Or did they?

Two millennia before Jesus, a meeting occurred that most people skip over. A meal shared in the desert in the aftermath of war that quietly shifts the entire structure of the Bible.

In Genesis 14, a priest-king appears out of nowhere to meet with Abraham, the patriarch of our faith.

No lineage
No origin

He brings bread and wine. Body and blood. Abraham recognizes him instantly. And from that encounter, a line is drawn that runs through King David, through Jerusalem, and straight into the final meal of Christ.

Fates intertwined by design.

Once you understand Abraham’s meeting with Melchizedek, you stop reading the Bible as disconnected stories. You see it as a single thread moving through war, covenant, kingship, and sacrifice.

This article will show you the significance of their meeting, who Melchizedek really was, and how a peaceful meal after warfare became the most significant turning point in human history.

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Human War, Cosmic Conflict

Abraham, still known as Abram in Genesis 14, finds himself caught up in a conflict between Canaanite kings and clans of Nephilim descendants. Another rebellion. Not against God, but men against men.

Led by Sodom, multiple kings take up arms against Kedorlaomer, a conqueror who subjugated many lands and made the people cower beneath his rule. Abraham’s nephew Lot, who had already split from his company, gets captured as a prisoner of war. Forces Abraham to act.

With only 318 trained men, he routes the armies of Kedorlaomer, rescues Lot, and saves Sodom from destruction...for now.

But what looks like a military skirmish is something far greater. Kedorlaomer is King of Elam, based east of Babylon in Mesopotamia, near where Babel occurred. Abraham’s former home attacks the Nephilim descendants.

The Battle of the Valley of Siddim is interdimensional.

The eternal Creator enters where the sons of God had once rebelled and the Nephilim were born. And asserts his dominance over the ruling gods of the land.

Yahweh. On the scene. On a mission to restore justice and righteousness to creation.

He never left. He was always there but became obscured in the muddle and confusion of gods. The sons of God, given charge over the nations, worked tirelessly to steal every ounce of worship away from God Most High, El Elyon. Yahweh before Israel.

Few humans still worshipped him. One of them shows up at the precise moment of Abraham’s entrance into the political and religious disputes of early Canaan:

Melchizedek.

Melchizedek confirms God held the line. And so much more…

Priest-King of God Most High

It’s become commonplace to envision Melchizedek as a theophany (appearing) of Christ Jesus in the Old Testament, based on how the writer of Hebrews connects the two figures. And how some Second Temple texts interpret Melchizedek.

Josephus recognized Melchizedek as the first builder of the temple.
Philo expanded on the story of Genesis, picturing him as the Prince of Peace and the administrator of a great banquet over Abraham.
Fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls connect Melchizedek to prophecies in Isaiah, Daniel 9, and Psalms 7 and 82, framing him as the anointed bringer of good news in the Spirit. Who will both restore, atone for, and liberate humanity, while simultaneously judging the nations and the fallen sons of God.

The connections are true.

The theophany false.

Confusion arises because we’re provided little detail about Melchizedek’s background. There’s no explanation for how a Canaanite city-king came to follow El Elyon (God Most High) and no inclusion of Melchizedek in any biblical lineages. The priest-king of Salem is a genuine mystery.

But as far as we know, Melchizedek is a real human being, living in the land of Canaan, encountered early after Abraham arrives and makes it his home. Any assessment that makes the priest-king godlike is speculation.

Genesis tells us he’s king of Salem. An antiquated short for Jerusalem. The city central to the later Israelite kingdom, where Solomon would one day build the Temple.

His name, Melchizedek, means “My King is righteous.” While utilized as a proper name in Genesis, it’s also a title. Representation of the priest-king’s God. Wherever Melchizedek went, people knew the God he served was the source and embodiment of righteousness.

And his God is the same God Abraham followed to Canaan. Our God.

Who establishes a foothold in the heart of Nephilim territory. And is about to work wonders...

Only God Will Be King

Melchizedek approaches Abraham after the victory against Kedorlaomer. The text doesn’t say why, or mention anything about the priest-king’s involvement in the war, if there was any.

Some scholars think his appearance in Genesis 14 is a later addition because of its odd placement. In the preceding paragraph, the king of Sodom is the only king said to meet with Abraham in the Valley of Shaveh (Valley of the Kings).

But Melchizedek’s entrance flows with the story and sets up a sharp contrast between him and the king of Sodom.

Melchizedek asks for nothing. Abraham gives him a tenth of everything anyway, because of Whom he represents. A spontaneous act of reverence later formalized in the Mosaic Law. The 10% tithe.

To the king of Sodom, however, Abraham refuses to give or take any gain.

The king of Sodom proposes a trade: He’ll take the prisoners of war, and Abraham can keep the loot. Based on what we see of the Sodomites in Genesis 19 (the abominations they practiced which led to their decimation by heavenly fire), we can assume all prisoners of war were destined for heinous abuse.

Abraham, having already sworn an oath to God Most High, denies even a thread or a sandal strap from Sodom. He instructs the king of Sodom to divide the spoils among Abraham’s Amorite (Canaanite) allies, the ones who accompanied his family into battle.

His denial is a complete rejection of everything Sodom represents, and an early recognition of the covenant God Most High would inaugurate with him in chapter 15. Abraham’s lineage would, both materially and spiritually, replace the post-Babel nations and the gods who had abandoned their Creator.

Abraham chose the priest-king of righteousness over a damned king of this fallen world. Every generation since has been asked to make the same choice.

A request sealed in blood...

Libations for the Fallen

Melchizedek hosted Abraham and the king of Sodom on behalf of El Elyon, near the mountain of God. Moriah. Showing ancient hospitality to the victors.

Their meeting spot, the Valley of the Kings, is our clue. It’s the same location where David’s son Absalom later sets up a monument to himself in 2 Samuel 18:18. Close to Jerusalem.

A great feast is prepared in honor of the slain. Bodies fell, blood was spilled, but victory was attained because of Abraham and his God.

Two unique items are highlighted amidst the mix of mourning and celebration.

Here’s what the passage says:

“And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.’ And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” (Genesis 14:18-20)

Bread and wine. Body and blood.

El Elyon would no longer be one option among many. He was actively moving. He would re-establish himself as King over the heavens and the earth, taking back the rights that duly belonged to him.

The king of Sodom and his men are brought forth to participate and bear witness to his sacramental blessing. To acknowledge the supremacy of God Most High and the man (Abraham) he chose as his instrument of salvation.

Melchizedek’s meal also looks forward to the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Where Abraham’s faith is tested, and God provides the sacrifice of his own design. A foreshadow of the final sacrifice. On Mount Moriah…the Temple Mount.

Bread and wine. Body and blood.

Sound familiar? It should…

The Last First Supper

Abraham is God’s people pulled from the nations. Melchizedek is God’s people among the nations. And Christ is the intersection.

Psalm 110 shows evidence that during and shortly after David’s rule in Israel, there was an effort to inaugurate kings who would double as priests. Modeled after Melchizedek, the first priest-king of Jerusalem:

1 The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
2 The Lord sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies!
3 Your people will offer themselves freely
on the day of your power,
in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
the dew of your youth will be yours.
4 The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.”

Other surrounding kings and nations could also function as priests, but most were considered gods in the flesh or demigods like the Nephilim. Melchizedek was not.

Only Israel held the anticipation of a King of kings, Lord of lords, Priest of priests, who would become the Messiah of God. Merging the lines of David and Melchizedek.

And then comes Jesus.

He makes direct reference to Psalm 110 in Matthew 22, when the Godhood of the Messiah is contested:

41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,
44 “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet” ’?
45 If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Jesus then connects himself to Melchizedek, in all four gospels, through body and blood, bread and wine.

God and King.

At his last first supper with the disciples, our Eucharist, he celebrates final victory in the cosmic war with the sons of God and mourns the coming trial. His own death and resurrection, through which sin and death would be slain.

Jesus links to David as King, Melchizedek as Priest, and Abraham as chosen one of God Most High. Through whom all nations are saved and blessed.

The writer of Hebrews traces that connection in depth. Shows how Christ takes back the rightful rule of Yahweh over creation, as true heir of both the heavens and the earth:

15 This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, 16 who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is witnessed of him,
“You are a priest forever,
after the order of Melchizedek.”
18 For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness 19 (for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.
20 And it was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath, 21 but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him:
“The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever.’ ”
22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

God’s first elect bound to God’s final elect through covenant and sacrifice. By which all nations may be saved.

God’s Eternal Offering

Christ took the journey into our world of his own accord with full intent to live a perfect life and lay it down upon the altar for us.

To save the fallen and broken
To forge an everlasting covenant
To build a kingdom beyond this world, in this world, for this world

Through him, the rule of the gods is destroyed. The corruption of sin and death erased.

From Salem to Jerusalem, from Abraham’s tent to the upper room, the table is always set.

Melchizedek let us know dinner was coming. Christ served the victory. And you and I...we’re invited to the banquet.

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Babbling Babel in Babylon

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:23:56 GMT

What do you get when you put millions of humans together in the same location, with the same language, and a single cause or identity?

That question’s no riddle. The obvious answer? A nation.

Modern progressives want you to think diversity is our strength. But that ignores the complexity of the human condition and also presumes all humans are inherently good, with righteous intentions.

Yes, civilizations with diverse populations have survived and even thrived. The Roman Empire and the United States are the two most prominent examples.

However, diversity was not the glue that held them together.

They both lasted long periods because they had a populace that could communicate clearly in a common language (Greek/English), communal respect for instrumental symbols (gods and Emperor/God and country), and a higher purpose (unite and civilize the ancient world/become a bastion of freedom for all men under God).

These features combined and strengthened them despite diversity and found greatest strength in locales with more homogeneity between peoples. Because humans have an inclination toward evil that they enact most viciously toward perceived opposition.

Historians dub the phenomenon tribalism. And its impact is lessened when clear, specified, and protected boundaries exist to keep humans from tearing each other apart over differences.

Many stories from history warn of the horrors bred by broken boundaries. We’ve already discussed three: the fall in the Garden of Eden, the first murder in human history, and the monstrous perversion of the Nephilim giants.

But no other story has presented the destruction of boundaries and its ramifications as starkly as the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

Most readers focus on the division of languages by God, as a judgment, and think that’s the focal point of the story.

It isn’t.

Today, we’re going to explore the real story of Babel, why it’s integral to the Old Testament, how it relates to Jesus and the kingdom of God, and how you can avoid the chaos suffered by those rebellious humans in your own life.

Heaven and Earth Collide

For any biblical story, geography and background are essential. And the Tower of Babel has a fascinating one.

In the Ancient Near East (all around the ancient globe, in fact), it was customary to build temples as sites of intersection between the heavens and the earth. Stairways for the gods.

Hence their construction as triangular monoliths with steps.

We call them pyramids today. Ziggurats were what the Sumerians and Babylonians called them. And it’s thought by archaeologists that one in particular fits the bill for the Tower of Babel: Entemenanki (“House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth”).

Dating puts the earliest ziggurats between 4300-3500 B.C., approximately. Entemenanki among them. Dedicated to the god Marduk, whom we noted in our last article is a figure matching the Canaanite Baal.

Both fought the ancient sea gods and became rulers of the gods. The dedication of Babylon to Marduk meant it was his palace in the moral realm. With the expectation that he would enter and dwell there with his royal subjects.

But a nearby stele (“The Tower of Babel Stele” c. 600 B.C.) names Entemenanki the “temple tower of Babylon” and shows an honorary procession with a king ascending the steps toward the heavens, staff in hand.

A human enters the heavens.

The Akkadians, nearest predecessors to the Babylonians, would’ve called the temple babilu, “Gate of God.” Babel is a Hebrew wordplay stressing the Akkadian label, while also lamenting the confusion that transpired there.

Entemenanki has the name, story, and, most of all, location. Neatly centered smack dab in what the Bible calls the plain of Shinar...

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Way Off Par in Shinar

After Noah and his family left the ark, forgot about God’s commands, and let more fallen sons of God mate with human women, breed more Nephilim, and lead humanity astray, Genesis tells us they converged at the plain of Shinar.

Nimrod, who may have been one of the first Sumerian kings, builds the city of Babylon there. He’s called a “great hero” like the Nephilim.

But his father was Cush, and appears in the lineage of Noah as one of his descendants (Genesis 10, “The Table of Nations”). Nimrod was likely only a powerful ruler, perhaps with god-like ordination. In the eyes of the people.

Which could explain the purpose of the tower’s construction:

The humans who were not Nephilim wanted to become like Nephilim.

Mixed blood of gods and men
Revered by their peers and other humans

Genesis 11 states that they tried to storm the heavens in order to make a name for themselves. To become heroes.

They stormed the skyward castle of the gods. Where they could commune with and become part of the divine assembly. Invade the holy throne-room of God Most High. Steal godly status. Instead of going outward, multiplying and spreading across the face of the earth to rule over it (as God commanded).
A venture sure to kill them and destabilize the cosmos…again.

They almost succeeded with their unified purpose, language, and intellect. God confused their tongues so they couldn’t understand each other anymore and dispersed them out into the earth by force.

He could have annihilated them, but per his promise to Noah (Genesis 9), he refrained from destroying the creation anew.

Rather, he gave humanity exactly what they wanted...

According to the Sons of God

Deuteronomy 32 shares a unique insight into Babel. Verses 7-9 state God gave the nations their inheritance.

And what was that inheritance? He divided them according to the number of the sons of God.

The earliest manuscripts of Deuteronomy in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) all say “sons of God.” Later, in the Masoretic Hebrew Text (c. 1000 A.D.) the phrase is rendered “according to the number of the sons of Israel.”

The evidence suggests the Masoretic version is an alteration.

Working from the oldest texts, Dr. Michael Heiser has argued that the division at Babel was an intentional division in which God split up the nation amongst specific sons of God tasked to lead them back to God, and these “gods” failed by taking worship from the nations unto themselves.

However, Romans 1 provides the more likely explanation: Humanity was given over to their twisted desires to worship the creation instead of the Creator.

The fallen gods already spread across the lands. Other sons of God came down and mated with human women again after the Flood. Committed the same sin as the pre-Flood sons of God. Guaranteed their banishment from the heavens.

Even prior to Babel, they and their Nephilim offspring were revered. Everywhere. Humans, again, wanted to become gods themselves in the divine assembly. Coveted the throne of God.

So, the logical conclusion is God gave them over to their desires.

He confused them to divide them and trap them with the fallen sons of God.

“Divided them according to the sons of God” simply means they were separated from one another and given over to idol worship. To worship of the fallen sons, the demons who once ruined their world.

Humanity could worship the creation all they wanted. But it would be the twisted, vile, corrupted creation, not his holy heavenly host.

Post-Flood humans chose their masters…

Taking the Heavens By Force

Babel’s context explains God’s forbidding the Israelites from having other gods before him.

Through Abraham and his descendants (drawn out from Babylon to Canaan, pre-Flood Nephilim HQ), God made Israel a nation for himself to be the vehicle through which the Messiah would rescue and reunite the nations within the kingdom of God.

Israel was holy. Set apart. Intended as a nation of priests.

Though they failed that mission, God still brought Jesus into history. Used them as a vessel for his own entry into history.

And it’s significant that when speaking with the crowds of people about John the Baptist, Jesus mentioned Babel.

In Matthew 11, after John the Baptist sends his disciples to confirm Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus sends them back with affirmative evidence, Jesus then says something profound:

“Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (11:11-14)

Jesus’s reference isn’t explicit, and since he places it within the context of John the Baptist, Elijah, the prophets, and the law, there’s a definite dual meaning.

But the key verse (I’m sure you caught) is “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”

Prior to Israel, the kingdom of God/heaven was in the actual heavens. And when the Nephilim arose, the cosmos was plunged into violence and wickedness everywhere, judged by Flood, and then a new violent race of men (Noah’s lineage) tried to take the heavens by force at Babel.

When God chose Israel and began building his kingdom on earth through them, the nations went to war with them until they were exiled. Led by the fallen “gods.” Elijah, a precursor to John the Baptist, faced off with Baal and his worshipers, as did other prophets.

Then, upon their return from Persia, endless conflicts overtook the Jews.

Jesus is telling the people in Matthew 11 that the culmination of the cosmic war they’d always been part of was at the threshold. Stage set by John the Baptist. War waged by Jesus, the eternal Creator.

Mount Hermon, the gates of hell, in Galilee is where Jesus spent most of his time. Resisting Satan, healing, being transfigured, exorcising demons. In the land where the sons of God had originally rebelled and caused the Flood.

The kingdom of heaven, from the heavens, was about to enter the world through the actual Son of God in ways they’d never before dreamed...

No Love Lost at Pentecost

Jesus’s death and resurrection beat sin and death, broke the stranglehold the sons of God had on the world, and opened the door for all nations to come back to God.

The only mission left was to spread the good news. Build the kingdom.

Pentecost is the beginning of that movement. Of the spread of the kingdom of God across the globe. It’s also an immediate reversal of Babel.

Second Temple period Jerusalem was a tourist destination. The Temple, a wonder of the Near East. People from all over...Gaul (France), Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Jordan, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, you name it...came to witness the magnificent sites.

What was the confusion at Babel? Language. When the disciples were touched by the tongues of fire, the Spirit moved, and they spoke, what happened? Everyone heard the Gospel of Christ in his own native language. His own tongue.

No confusion

No obstruction

Just the Truth made plain for all to hear, ponder, and embrace.

When everyone who heard returned to their home countries, they surely shared about the mysterious wonder encountered and what the twelve men preached.

Seeds were planted. The ground prepared for Paul and his ministry to the nations.

And, not coincidentally, he, his followers, and some of the other apostles went to every location listed in Genesis 10. To the lost nations of Babel. With Israel, the contested Canaan and former home of the sons of God, as the headquarters for the movement of salvation.

The Ever Eternal Kingdom

Christians allegiant to Jesus are now the body of Christ. The kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

Holy
Set apart
Like Israel

We’ve inherited the mission. To bring the world back into the fold. Under the rule of the King.

That means the commandment to have no other gods before God Most High, Jesus Christ our Lord, is more important than ever.

The gods of this world, the fallen sons of God, are the enemy. Many people of the nations remain enslaved to them, and Jesus is their only path to freedom.

Those demons want us to keep violating God’s boundaries. The real cause of division. Whereas the kingdom of God unites us in the good and holy.

If you’re allegiant to Jesus, then you too have an obligation to spread the Gospel, fight evil, and destroy falsehoods in the name of Christ. Protect boundaries. Live and bleed Christ everywhere you go.

Because, even though victory is assured, the powers and principalities of darkness cling to this world with their filthy claws and do everything they can to pull every soul imaginable down into eternal torment.

God’s kingdom…in Christ our Lord…is the only blockade.

What's Up with the Nephilim?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:03:44 GMT

Modern scholars try to pawn off the Nephilim in the Bible as heroes because of the way they’re described in Genesis.

But ancient Jewish writings agree that the Nephilim are the corrupt giant offspring of the sons of God. And they were FAR from friendly. In fact, they’re a main cause for the Great Flood.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, it’s found in Genesis 6:1-4. Here’s what we’re told:

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. The the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown” (Gen 6:1-4).

No other part of Scripture has been discussed more in recent times than this passage.

Because, rightly understood, the story of the Nephilim explains most of the mysteries in the Bible.

And that raises important questions: Who were they? Why were they unfriendly? Were they just humans or more? Who were their fathers, the sons of God? Why did they cause the Great Flood?

We’re about to answer these questions with a look into Genesis 6:1-4, other biblical texts, and extra-biblical sources that formed the Hebrew worldview, and construct a narrative to help you understand the Nephilim, their importance, and your place in the story of God.

Get ready for a wild ride.

Sons of the Sons of God

It’s hypothesized that Nephilim comes from the Hebrew word naphal (”to fall”). Other possible words of origin are nephel (”miscarriage”) and/or pala (”extraordinary”).

I personally think it’s derived from a combo of all three because of who fathered the Nephilim.

The bene ha’elohim (sons of God) are divine beings in Genesis 6:1-4, and there’s no way around that.

The only two alternatives of any popularity in recent years have been the Sethite view and Divine Kings view. Both suffer from the same flaw.

Proponents of the Sethite view (which used to be my view) say the sons of God were the descendents of Seth who remained loyal to God, whereas the daughters of men were the descendents of Cain, who had been severed from God because of the murder of his brother Abel.

The former co-mingled with the latter, and that led to human corruption.

Only problem is, Cain was human just like Seth and both were sinners, whether or not one had an additional curse of banishment. There is no violation in Seth’s descendants mating with Cain’s descendants, not even incest, since there was less genetic variety in their world (see our last Wednesday article on Cain and Abel).

Furthermore, Cain’s ultimate curse was separation from the Spirit of God, mirroring the serpent’s own banishment. God remained with humans after the fall, but not with the serpent, the devil. Because he murdered God’s creation, unleashed sin and death upon it through deception.

Divine kingship suffers the same flaw as the Sethite view. Even if the sons of God were divine kings, elected by God, they were still human at their core, and their mating with human women wouldn’t have been against God’s design. Yet, as noted, ancient Jewish writings saw the Nephilim as corruptions by their nature and association with the sons of God. In fact, they’re considered abominations in Second Temple writings.

That goes beyond human sin.

God considers certain acts, like homosexual behavior, abominations in the Bible, but never humans themselves. Because abominations directly dissolve God’s design.

The only viable conclusion is the sons of God were spirit beings created by God in the heavens. Part of God’s divine assembly, which appears throughout Scripture. The heavenly host. And the Nephilim were their demigod children.

While the nations honored them as great warriors, biblical and extra-biblical evidence suggests they were unruly, cannibal giants. A blend of the bloodlines of the heavens with the bloodline of man. Causing corruption of mind, body, and soul…

Twisted Demigods: A Quick Mythological Detour

How could spirit beings mate with humans?

Simple. They took on human form. In the ancient world, there’s plenty of precedent for human-god mating.

Of Titans and Men

A prime example from Greek mythology is Zeus. He took many forms, sometimes not even human, in order to mate with women he found desirable. His two most famed demigod offspring are Hercules and Perseus, but many of his demigod children became abominations.

Perhaps that’s why when Greek became the chief language of the Mediterranean Basin after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the translators found an easy parallel between the Greek demigods and the Nephilim giants.

The Titans especially. They, even in the Greek stories, were perversions led by their youngest and most unhinged brother, the evil god Kronos.

Son of earth (Gaia) and air (Uranus), Kronos castrated his father and led a rebellion against the most ancient gods to take control of the heavens and the earth. A long war ensued, and Kronos was defeated by his son Zeus, who soon proved to be another form of chaos, just as vile. As was his brother, Hades.

What’s important is the overthrow of the heavens by the Titans, led by Kronos (symbolized by a serpent), resulted in the production of perversions of creation on earth, monstrous deformities among whom were giants (gigantes).

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Cosmic Conflict in Canaan

The story of the Titans comes from even more ancient roots.

It stems from the Phoenician/Canaanite stories of El (the creator god) and Baal (storm god; lord of all). All the major figures from Greek mythology find matches in the more ancient context:

Kronos/El
Zeus/Baal
Poseidon/Yamm
Hades/Maat

In Phoenician mythology, a great war ensues when Baal fights Yamm and then seeks to strip the throne of the gods from El. Maat (death) beats Baal for a time until he’s revived by his sister and overthrows Maat. Throughout the saga, El grants Baal a luxurious palace and essentially hands him the keys to Earth, instead of fighting for rule.

The Egyptians saw Kronos as their own god Geb (earth) who was the father of serpents, separated from his sister Nut (sky) by their father Shu (air).

Geb was the father of Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. They too, after a great war, fought each other and got into wars of their own, just like the Greek and Canaanite gods. Wars that extended from the heavens to the earth so there was only wickedness and violence everywhere (Genesis 6:5).

The above mythologies are important because there are thousands of flood stories from the most ancient societies across the globe, and many of them include great wars between the gods and depictions of giant abominations. Even some in Egypt, Canaan, and Greece.

Atlantis, for instance, is judged with a great flood after attempting to overthrow the whole Mediterranean to create an empire for Poseidon, according to Plato.

The Israelites understood the stories in the Ancient Near East as representations of a collective memory of actual past events repainted with differing cultural flares. And determined that the closest explanation for the Nephilim and the flood had its home in Mesopotamia, particularly Babylon, where post-flood humans converged at Babel...

A Mess in Mesopotamia

The two stories which captured their attention most were the Akkadian myths of the Apkallu (sages), the Enuma Elish creation myth, and the epic of Gilgamesh, which all have more ancient roots in 3rd century B.C. Sumer.

The ancient Sumerians understood the universe as born through battles with the dragons of chaos, living within the eternal primordial waters. (Apophis, the night serpent, in Egyptian mythology echoes those wars.)

Akkadian cosmology confiscated the dragon myths and told of two waters, Apsu (fresh) and Tiamat (salt), personified as serpent monsters. Yonge gods emerged from their essence and made lots of noise. Infuriated Apsu, who tried to kill them but was slain by Ea.

A massive conflict ensued when Tiamat was enraged, and another Baal figure, Marduk, defeated her. He then built the heavens and earth from her body and made humanity as slaves for the gods from the body of her servant Kingu.

The Apkallu are sage-gods fish-like bodies, sent from the most ancient gods to teach humans

temple-founding
city-building
mathematics
necromancy
agriculture
divination
exorcism
writing
crafts
law

And the order of the cosmos.

They mate with humans and have children of their own among them. Who become heroes in the eyes of the ancients.

But humans then make lots of noise and annoy the gods, so Enka sends a great flood to wipe them out. But Enlil spares one man with an ark.

The children of that man repopulate the earth, the Apkallu sages reteach humanity the secret knowledge, and then they leave, only their offspring remaining to preserve the wisdom from the heavens.

Gilgamesh in the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of these giant wise men who becomes another mighty hero. But he longs for immortality, so he seeks out the man of the ark, who is said to possess the secret.

The man from the ark points him to a plant/tree of life. Gilgamesh finds it, but while he sleeps, a serpent steals the tree of life away in the dark of night so no man can taste the immortality of the gods.

There are nuances to the story, as with all stories, modern or ancient. But the same themes appear:

There are eternal waters, no eternal god or gods
The most ancient gods and their children are power-hungry control freaks in endless battle
Humans if not accidents are made as slaves to the gods
The Apkallu (ancient sons of the gods) teach them the mysteries of the cosmos, the arts, and the sciences
The creator god, if there even is one, is like the other gods or a weak pushover (El)
Only chaos, no real order, and chaos is represented repeatedly by serpents
Humans eventually annoy the gods so they become a nuisance and are destroyed by flood
The great heroes are the giant offspring of the Apkallu (sons of the gods) who maintain the sacred wisdom
A serpent steals the tree of life

Within all these stories, the Israelites saw everyone had it backwards, traced the collective memory, and articulated an alternative history that is unique in the whole of human history...

The Hebrew Worldview

Genesis takes a different path. It starts with the serpent stealing eternal life through trickery.

There IS an eternal God who makes humanity in his own image, endowing them with divine purpose, to multiply over the earth and rule with him. And get their knowledge from him as his children.

But the serpent (likely a spirit being himself, a seraphim) convinces them to choose quick knowledge over life with God. Unleashing sin and death into the world through disobedience.

Rebellion sparked ongoing conflict between the heavens and the earth, between man and man, between man and creation, and between man and God.

Even so, God extends mercy, spares humanity from instant death, and allows his Spirit to remain with men (with the exception of Cain who murders his brother). They are at first only cut off from accessing the way to everlasting life.

But then, the sons of God see the daughters of men and take some as wives, merging the bloodline of heaven with the bloodline of earth.

Genesis doesn’t tell us the sons are the Apkallu, but 1 Enoch, written during the Second Temple period, aligns with the Akkadian story almost word for word and calls the Apkallu the Watchers.

They descended upon Mount Hermon, north of Israel, mated with human women and taught humankind the depths of secret knowledge, carrying on the work of the serpent. Their offspring became giant abominations, the Nephilim, who were vicious cannibals, slaughtering and feasting upon humans and creation.
Humans who bowed to them and envisioned them as mighty demigod heroes were spared and became their slaves. Soon, humankind took on the nature of their masters, and paired with the intelligence of the gods, began killing their own kind until there was no end to the creative violence.

Pre-flood humans were knowledgeable but had no wisdom because they didn’t follow God, and it ended in annihilation. As Wisdom says in Proverbs 8:35-36: “For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”

Such was the condition of the pre-flood world.

The Global Flood wasn’t sent because humanity annoyed the gods with noise. God sent it to purge the corrupt bloodline of the Nephilim (the first and most grotesque sexual perversion in history) and end humanity, since their thoughts were evil all the time and there was only violence everywhere. And he imprisoned the original rebellious sons of God (Apkallu) beneath the Euphrates River.

God spared Noah and his family because they were uncorrupted by the Nephilim bloodline and remained loyal to God. Never bowed to the Nephilim rulers…

As Above, So Below

Nephilim appear again after the Flood, and the Bible doesn’t say why. But the story of the Apkallu gives a clue:

Other sages (sons of God) returned to re-educate humanity in the lost knowledge. Followed the sins of their brothers. Which means they likely mated with human women again, created more “men of renown,” “heroes of old,” Nephilim.

Noah, knowing the old ways, should have put an end to it, to keep the cycle from repeating. But according to Genesis, he became drunk on much wine and fell into the same sins as Adam. Failed to lead his family to God.

Instead, he gorged himself on the land, forgot about Almighty God, was dishonored by one of his sons, and watched the world deteriorate in chaos again.

The only difference this time was God promised never to flood the earth again (Genesis 9:8-17). So, cataclysmic judgment, un-creating the creation, was out of the question.

But there would be a long history of God battling with the forces of darkness, the fallen sons of God, and destroying the descendants of the Nephilim from earth.

While most of humanity converged at Babel in Mesopotamia, ruled by some Nephilim, many Nephilim returned to Canaan, the land where the first sons of God descended upon Mount Hermon. It would become the headquarters of spiritual and physical war for ages to come.

When the Israelites arrive at Canaan in Numbers 13, the spies who survey Canaan are horrified because they encountered the descendants of the Nephilim. The enormous Rephaim, Anakim, Emim, and Zamzummim. And the land is consumed with bloodshed and cannibalism. A microcosm of the pre-flood world.

God commands them to wipe out the monsters to put an end to the Nephilim bloodline and its terror.

But that’s not the only puzzle pieced together by the Nephilim…

God’s Rescue Mission

As Christians, we’re in the middle of God’s ancient war. On the victorious side of it, since all roads lead to Christ.

From rebellious humanity, God selected a nation for himself through whom he would work to bring about victory over the seed of the serpent, destroy the power of the gods of the world (the fallen sons of God), and eliminate the bonds of sin and death for good.

From the heart of post-flood humanity’s central hub (Babylon), he brought Abraham into the land of the Nephilim (Canaan), gave him a stake in the land, and promised him his ancestors would purge Canaan of the evil of the Amorites (general descriptor for the inhabitants of Canaan). And Abraham’s seed (a Messianic promise) would bless all nations.

Egypt was a refresher of the war. God went down to face the gods of Egypt, the fallen sons of God who controlled that corner of the world, and began the battle anew. They thought the war was over, but God said, “Not today.”

He rescued Israel from their grip, made Israel a nation for himself, showed them a sacrificial system to deal with sin and death, and brought them back to the promised land of Canaan to become a nation of priests to humanity (Exodus 19).

God wanted them to be his holy vessel. But when they failed to eliminate the Nephilim descendants entirely and worshipped the gods of Canaan, even bringing those gods into his holy Temple, God brought judgment upon them.

Yet, through a holy remnant, the line of King David (who routed the final Nephilim, Goliath and his family of giants), he worked to bring about the arrival of his own Son, Jesus, as the final sacrifice of atonement and conqueror of sin and death. In the Nephilim backyard!

Since Israel forgot God, like Noah, and worshipped other gods, evil festered in Israel. Hermon became a stronghold for the fallen sons of God, ruled by none other than Satan. The Second Temple Jews, by the time the Romans took over, considered the land of Bashan (Galilee), where Mount Hermon towered over the North and Jesus spent most of his ministry, the “gates of hell.”

When Jesus faced temptation in the wilderness, Bashan is where the Spirit led him.
When Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, Bashan is where they went.
When Jesus performed exorcisms, most were done in Bashan.

Jesus, God-made-flesh, went to war with the headquarters of the fallen sons of God, and made sure they knew the time of their end was at hand. The world was about to be stripped from their grip forever. For the kingdom of God had arrived.

Where We Are Now

Because of Christ’s war, final sacrifice, and resurrection, we now live in the era of the kingdom of God. While the principalities of darkness, as Paul calls the sons of God in Ephesians 6, still fight for the souls of humanity (ours is becoming another world that hates wisdom and loves death), they are powerless against Almighty God because the victory has been sealed.

They’re permitted their raging folly for a time, storing up wrath for themselves in the Day of the Lord. In the final moments leading up to that day, John tells us in Revelation that even the sons of God imprisoned below the Euphrates will be released to wreak havoc, killing a third of mankind.

But nothing will compare to the wrath and justice of Christ to come. God will make all things right and new. Destroy sin, death, and their arbiters with such permanence, only eternal glory, beauty, and goodness will remain for his children.

Christ comes on his white stallion, his own mouth like a sword. No enemy against the eternal Creator shall prosper.

Order is to be restored.
The chaos serpents slain.
The gods defeated.

And the kingdom of God shall reign forevermore.

A Stone's Throw Between Brothers

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:56:29 GMT

If you’re like me, you’ve read the story of Cain and Abel a thousand times. If not, what follows will be new to you.

As shocking as this may seem, Cain’s wife IS NOT the most important facet of the story.

Atheists bring her up as if she’s some slam dunk in their waste bin of anti-God arguments, while completely ignoring the background and larger points of the story.

For instance, Adam and Eve, driven from the Garden of Eden, remained close to God and within proximity of the Garden.

Genesis 4:16 suggests they knew exactly where Eden was and even shared the location with their own children, likely because they longed for the life contained within its boundaries, defended by the fiery cherubim.

And God remained accessible to them.

These are important elements of the story of Cain and Abel overlooked because our infatuation today is with the alleged mystery of Cain’s wife.

The feud between the brothers is the first recorded dissolution of relational bonds that ends in the physical destruction of material life. Influenced by jealous rage.

And that has IMMENSE bearing on the story of not only the Bible, but the Gospel.

Below, we’ll briefly address Cain’s wife and why she’s not really a mystery, and then explore the theological and historical heart of the passage to the story of God and mankind.

Pop! There’s a Woman

Since our world is so warped by evolutionary theory as the only “acceptable” history of the natural world, including humanity, stories like Cain and Abel in the Bible are often reimagined as myths recounting the history of groups of people through singular figures.

Because of that, when mention of Cain’s wife pops up in Genesis 4:17, skeptics immediately jump to the argument that there were more humans who existed separate from Adam and Eve and their sons. Humans of different bloodlines who evolved from separate ape clans encountered by Adam and Eve after they left the Garden.

All of that is pure speculation, of course. But they love it. And insist it’s the only explanation for Cain’s wife.

They’re wrong.

The real and only answer for the identity of Cain’s wife permitted by the Bible is she was his sister.

That makes us recoil because these days, incestuous relationships result in horrible genetic and psychological abnormalities, disabilities, and diseases which ruin humanity.

But what most don’t consider is if humanity actually came from two first ancestors, like Adam and Eve, there would have been much less genetic diversity...the actual cause of destructive genetic mutations. Making it possible and even necessary for incestuous relationships to exist for a time so humanity could populate the earth, adapt, and diversify into what we see today.

By the time of the Law of Moses, humanity had diversified so much and spread across the globe that incest was destructive and therefore banned by God amongst the Israelites as an abomination. Because of the fact that it destroys the image of God.

The Bible makes clear that Eve was “the mother of all living.” That’s the very reason for her name, given to her by the first man, Adam, her husband. So, we are left with no other adequate explanation than to infer all humanity came from her and her children.

Even though the text hones in on Cain and Abel, two sons of Adam and Eve, it does not eliminate the possibility of other children being born to the first couple. After all, time jumps from when Eve gives birth and thanks the Lord for them in 4:1-2 to their giving of their sacrifices to God as grown men in 4:3-5. Their entire childhood is omitted.

Logically, in the story, they would’ve had other brothers and sisters already by the time they were grown. And Cain selected a wife from among his sisters.

Nevertheless, the whole fiasco with Cain’s wife distracts from the more important matters in the narrative...

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From Disobedience to Violent Murder

Strange Scriptures, Part I: Ignorant God?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:41:34 GMT

The Bible is the true Word of God.

But the Bible is also weird, strange, confusing, and challenging. What are we to do with the passages that utterly baffle us?

Pay close attention.

As the late Hebrew scholar Dr. Michael Heiser said, “If it’s weird, it’s important.”

Over the next several months, we’re going to travel through the weirdest parts of Scripture to explore what they mean and why they matter, so you can gain a better understanding of God’s Word and how it applies to your own life.

Beginning with Genesis 3:9 and the question of God’s knowledge:

“[T]he Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”

So many commentators, Jewish and Christian, have dealt with the question of God’s omniscience in Genesis 3:9 through the ages…it’s almost annoying we are still puzzling over it.

Yet, the verse is popping up again. Particularly in the withering weeds of modern atheism.

Just yesterday I saw an atheist on X argue the verse was a sign God is not all-knowing.

But is it REALLY?

I want to take you through a deep dive of the verse, its surrounding context, and language to show you it has never and will never show God as an ignorant fool.

What’s the Context?

Anytime we’re dealing with a verse or passage in Scripture, we must first consider context.

For Genesis 3:9, context is particularly important. I wrote in depth about the full context of Genesis 1-3 in a recent article:

For our sake now, below is a brief summary.

Genesis establishes God as the eternal, transcendent Creator. In the beginning, there was God, and there was nothing else until God spoke everything else into being.

By that definition, it’s impossible for him not to know everything since he transcends everything, including knowledge. He’s the Source.

Humanity was made in his image in this world and given three commands:

Be fruitful and multiply
Rule over the earth and subdue it
Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

The last command came with the consequence that they would surely die if they ate of the tree.

The serpent, who came to be known as Satan in Second Temple Jewish tradition, tricked Eve into eating the fruit by promising she and Adam would not die but would become as gods.

When Adam and Eve both ate, a slow death ensued:

Erosion of human-divine and human-human relations
Erosion of human-creation relations
Erosion of divine-creation relations

The curses from God reflect a collapse of creation and the original commands. I called them inversions in the previous article, but they are really perversions.

The serpent’s curse is a perversion of proper design
Adam’s is a perversion of the command to tend to and rule over creation
Eve’s is a perversion of the command to be fruitful and multiply

Adam and Eve gaining knowledge isn’t the problem. The way they went about it is because they disobeyed the eternal Creator, their Father, and violated established boundaries put in place for their own safety and the safety of creation.

Safety against the nothingness. To keep it from encroaching on and consuming God’s very-good creation.

That brings us to Genesis 3:9...

Before you go on…

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A Walk Through the Garden

Immediately after eating the fruit, Adam and Eve make a foolish attempt to hide from the presence of God.

The verses directly preceding verse 9 illustrate their foolishness in a comical way.

They hear God walking through the Garden and realize their nakedness (a symbol of their exposure, which was previously good but now bad because of their sin), they attempt to create a design but it comes out faulty (their makeshift clothes from fig leaves), and, here’s the key, they try to hide from the presence of the eternal God.

If God wasn’t around and didn’t know what was going on, that last reaction is odd. Adam and Eve had all the knowledge in the world at their fingertips and could’ve tried to outwit God.

That they hid implies they were overwhelmed by the knowledge received, knew any attempt to outwit God was futile, or still had an attachment and hunger for the perfection and safety of the Garden.

I’m guessing it was a combo of all three, but Genesis doesn’t tell us.

Anyway, God comes walking through the Garden. In human form. Meaning he made himself accessible to his creation.

Also implied by context is that God was enjoying the fruits of his labor, per the seventh day in Genesis chapter 1.

Up to this point, Adam and Eve were without the immediate presence of God. God gave them leeway to enjoy the Garden and enact their designated duties to tend and rule over the creation. And to enjoy each other.

That God picks the exact moment after they sinned to show up means he already knew what happened. The text doesn’t leave another option. Any others must be speculated.

God deliberately seeks Adam and Eve out because he knows what they did, and intends to confront them, as any good Father would do for his children.

So, when he says, “Where are you?” it’s being used as a rhetorical device. Like if my son did something bad, I knew it, and found him hiding behind the couch to escape the consequences. I might say, “Where are you?” to give him a chance to respond and come clean, even though I know full well he’s guilty.

The context of Genesis 3:9 doesn’t bear this interpretation out alone. Analysis of the Hebrew language supports it too...

Ayekah: An Emotionally-Packed Pun

The Hebrew word used most commonly for general locational inquiries is the neutral eiphoh. But that’s not the word God uses in Genesis 3:9.

Instead, he uses ayekah, derived from the adverb aye. And it shares consonants with the exclamatory word eichah (”How!”) used mainly in lamentations over sorrows. Aye itself also carries a nuance of anguished expectation or lament.

Put together, God’s question is more precisely rendered, “Where have you gone when I expected you here?” or “Why have you hid from me?”

Bearing the emotional punch of mourning.

And if God had no clue what had taken place and where Adam and Eve had actually gone, there would be no need for mourning until the disobedience was discovered.

So, God is far from ignorant in Genesis 3:9. He knows what Adam and Eve did and seeks them out in good faith, while devastated by their choice to defy him and follow the creation instead of their Creator, their heavenly Father.

The above revelation also explains the subsequent questions in verse 11: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The conversation isn’t one to determine unknowns; it’s one to give Adam a chance to make his case. To take accountability for his own actions, which he fails miserably. Blaming his wife instead, who then blames the serpent.

So, God doesn’t heap curses upon them and the serpent haphazardly. With a heavy heart, he distributes the curses because the consequences were promised, and God will not violate his own Word. And he hates every second of the trial.
But as the loving Father he is, he also slips into the curses a promise that he will keep fighting for them. The promise there will be enmity between the serpent and the seed of the woman, and though he bruise man’s heel, man will crush the serpent’s head and emerge victorious.

That promise is considered the first Messianic promise, alluding to the coming Christ Jesus, who would restore the relational bonds perverted by the fall in the Garden.

In other words, the cross and resurrection reversed and overcame the consequences of sin and death.

The necessity of the cross is further signified by God pushing death off onto two animals instead of letting it overtake Adam and Eve. In an act of mercy, he slaughters a lesser creation to preserve his own imagers and then clothes them in the skins of the slain.

Blood was shed to cover the shame of sin. A prelude to the sacrifices in the Law of Moses, which would be fully satisfied in the final sacrifice of atonement through the body and blood of Jesus upon the cross.

Benevolence, not Ignorance

When atheists argue God was ignorant, they must deliberately misinterpret the text of Genesis through surface-level reading.

The language and context make plain that God is no fool reacting to cards as they’re dealt. He owns and knows the table, is surprised by nothing, and works to secure the victory, even in the face of seemingly horrible odds.

God’s invested in us and creation, not just intellectually but emotionally. He loves all he made and hates that divisions were born between us and him, us and creation, and him and creation.

But he’s also a God of his Word. And since we were made with free will to make our own choices and disobeyed despite knowing the consequences, he would’ve been dishonest and dishonorable not to hold us accountable for our crimes.

No amount of kicking and screaming alters the above revelation from Genesis. It only continues the blame game begun by our predecessors and reveals the underlying condition of the perverted human heart.

Our corruption requires a Savior. And Christ bore the penalty we couldn’t bear in order to reverse the curses Adam and Eve so ignorantly unleashed upon us all.

Survival of the Unfit

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:02:28 GMT

Evolution is false. And most are waking up to its failure as a narrative of natural history. So how did it become the only “scientific” theory taught in schools?

For much of the 20th century, many Americans not only disagreed with Charles Darwin’s theories. They despised them. Knew his theories presented an invalid history of the natural world.

Hard-fought battles were waged against them, as people recognized the threat to foundational truths about creation and humanity’s place in it.

Resistance remained well into the early 20th century. When atheist materialists and eugenicists in America, such as Margaret Sanger, Leon Whitney, and Madison Grant, vied for Darwin’s theories to eradicate Christian mores, their drivel was rightly disregarded, since it was openly racist and false.

These figures promoted ideas of racial superiority and population control, masking their bigotry and evil intents with the guise of scientific progress and Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.”

However, Americans’ dismissal of their foolishness wouldn’t last. Evolutionary theory was eventually forced upon the public.

Below is an account, from Rene Descartes to modern America, of how deep-rooted anti-Christian agendas propelled this flawed worldview into mainstream culture.

So-Called “Enlightenment”

Universities were created for theological study, and the different subjects like history, philosophy, and science were subsets of that study. Without Christianity, modern education systems never would have been founded.

The roots of higher learning trace back to Christian monasteries and cathedrals in medieval Europe, where monks pursued knowledge to better understand God’s creation.

After the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the Church was blamed, even though conflicts arose between European nations for various reasons, ranging from religious, territorial, political, and commercial. “Enlightenment” ideals (a prior minority), detached from God in Christ, slowly rose in popularity.

Rene Descartes, often hailed as the father of modern philosophy, was a devout Catholic who sought to defend Christianity through rational inquiry. His famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” aimed to establish certainty in knowledge, including the existence of God, within a Christian framework.

However, Descartes’s emphasis on reason and doubt inadvertently paved the way for secular “rationalism,” which later rebelled against religious authority.

His emphasis on radical dualism also separated mind and body, influencing a mechanistic view of the universe which reduced everything to material explanations and sidelined divine intervention. Later popularized by Immanuel Kant as the phenomenal (natural) and noumenal (spiritual). A new Gnostic revolution.

Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher of Jewish descent, went further than Descartes in challenging organized religion. Excommunicated from his Jewish community, Spinoza’s pantheistic views equated God with nature and denied a personal deity, miracles, and biblical revelation.

In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he critiqued the Bible as a human document filled with inconsistencies, advocating for its interpretation through “reason” alone to promote tolerance. Undermining its divine authority.

Spinoza saw Christianity, particularly its dogmatic forms, as superstitious and oppressive, favoring a secular society where religion was privatized and clergy power limited.

These ideas fueled Enlightenment skepticism toward Christianity. And sparked the bloodiest revolution and church persecution in 18th century France…

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The French Connection

Charles Darwin’s theories only made headway in the 1800s due to secular philosophy. Evolutionists exaggerate his views were popular. They were popular mainly in French circles where like-minded “scientists” were rampant after their own secular revolution.

During the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror” in the 1790s, radicals sought to eradicate Christian influence:

Church lands were seized
Priests mass slaughtered or exiled
A “Cult of Reason” replaced traditional worship.

And from that “anti-religious” socialist climate emerged Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French naturalist. He laid the groundwork for evolutionary thought decades before Darwin.

You Know God Exists

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:39:37 GMT

Image of 1 millionth of the human brain from Harvard-Google imaging

If you believe in God and disagree with evolution, apparently you’re a bad thinker. At least, that’s what an atheist told me yesterday.

And it was the least shocking interaction ever because that’s how most atheists treat Christians.

They are obsessed with the theory of evolution, never think twice about it, and when someone decides to critique it in any way, or dares suggest it should be scrapped entirely, that person is just nuts.

Dogmatic much?

Ironically, the conversation revolved around the concept of thought itself, which atheists reduce to matter in the human brain.

Here’s what the atheist from yesterday said. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

It really is rather simple: your brain wasn’t designed for the purpose of thinking. It evolved to solve real-world problems like how not to get eaten by a tiger, how to successfully hunt big game, and how to get laid. Increasing mental complexity leads to greater universality, meaning greater chances of survival in disparate environments. And this is before we consider the fact that the major constraint is competition from other members of your own species, who are playing the same game and getting smarter about it, just the same as you. The key driver of increasing human intelligence is other humans.
As for how you can trust your thinking, it follows directly from the foregoing: you predict future world-states and find out if you were correct, or not. That’s what thinking is. However, past a certain point of complexity of modelling, you can use it to model counterfactuals just as well as factuals. Even then, however, counterfactual thinking is usually applied to real-world problems such as “the Babylonians have conquered us, and now we’re trying to preserve an ethnic identity in exile” or “Oops, the Romans just killed our supposed Messiah. What now?”

All of this is pure conjecture about history that can’t be prove with any confidence unless we go back in time and watch history unfold, which can’t do. But let’s play devil’s advocate and take it as a serious argument.

The linchpin, of course, is “survival of the fittest.” Evolutionists, especially of the atheist variety, believe it explains everything.

But what about art, music, public faith systems, etc.? What do those have to do with survival?

Atheists ignore art and music, but they have lots to say about religion. Ask an atheist and they’ll tell you religion bad. It doesn’t help us survive. The fittest are those without religion.

But there are hundreds of religions active around the globe. If they aren’t fit, shouldn’t every religion have disappeared ages ago, as the people who believed were deposed by the alleged more fit?

Also, note how the atheist begins by presuming evolution is de facto true. He holds to his faith just as rigorously as everyone else.

And these are a mere handful of problems with his argument. The rationality, mimetics, and consciousness he presumes simple evolutionary features actually disprove evolution and prove the existence of God.

A Daunting Project

Your brain is an astounding work of craftsmanship like no other. So complex, making a microscopic map of the whole thing would take up minimum 140 acres of computer servers.

It took Google and Harvard 10 years to map 1 millionth of it. This is what they found:

Like with so many other organs and organisms in the world, every part of the brain must be present in order for the brain to work at all. Remove even the tiniest fraction of a cell and death occurs. Making it irreducibly complex.

And atheists want you to think it evolved by random chance through slow simple processes over time?

Maybe they could get away with that explanation if irreducible complexity was all creationists had. But C.S. Lewis astutely observed why simple mindless processes are still a problematic explanation:

Random chance produces nothing with intentionality or in any meaningful way. If our brains are just mindless processes interacting without design, mere chemical reactions as atheists believe them to be, then the entire enterprise of thought is nothing but superficial feeling without purpose. Including rationality and logic.

So, no arguments matter in a materialist worldview. Exploration is pointless. Curiosity, pure delusion.

The atheist offered survival as a way to give meaning to the enterprise of thought. But if our thinking is chemicals manufacturing sensations without direction, even survival is suspect because chemicals could randomly react to anything. Even trick us into “choosing” (if there even is such a thing) something harmful.

I put “choosing” in quotes because we really have no freedom in such a materialist universe. We are enslaved to our passions and give credence to certain ones over another because they help us live longer.

But how do we know living long is even the right goal? How do we even know what right and wrong are if there are no such things? If we’re pointless slaves to our atomized animalism?

Survival seems nice, but if death is coming for us anyway, no matter what, and there is nothing higher to strive for (it’s just lights out), how can it be considered good?

What even is “good”? It’s a noun, which means it identifies an object. So, what object?

The atheist above never considers these questions. And they reveal another fatal flaw in evolutionary “survival of the fittest” as an explanation for the mind: Abstraction.

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Medieval Times

If you’ve never heard of St. Anselm, you should check him out. He’s popular for formulating what’s known as the Ontological Argument for God.

He and a monk named Gaunilo had spat over it in Middle Ages. Every time I read their conversation, I picture an intellectual jousting match.

Anselm argued that the fact we can imagine a most perfect Being indicates that Being exists because it can be imagined. Gaunilo countered by saying just because you can imagine something doesn’t mean it exists.

He used the example of a most perfect island. One can picture such a place, but the existence of that place is only in the mind if not discovered in real life.

In a way, Gaunilo’s argument was a precursor to Immanuel Kant’s later separation between the phenomenal (material) and noumenal (spiritual).

And it is severely flawed.

Anslem made the stronger argument, and it’s proven through the mimetics atheists love so much.

Humans learn through what is called mimetics. Through the senses...sight, sound, taste, touch, and so on.

That means anything we know, any interpretations we have, come from what we’ve observed in the world or what we’ve heard from other humans before us whom we trust.

Like a mime, we follow the lead of our own species if they appear right...and sometimes if they don’t.

Such behavior presumes an objective reality of right and wrong. It also tells us that the thoughts in our minds don’t pop up out of thin air.

In order for us to have an image of something in our brains, we must have had an encounter with it or met someone else who did and described that encounter in detail. And that detailed encounter was then filtered through prior knowledge gained through either observation or previous detailed exchanges with other humans.

Hence, the only way we would have a concept of perfection or a perfect Being is if those objects (nouns) were actual experiences of ourselves or prior humans.

The same goes for Gaunilo’s perfect island. In order to conceive of one, he must know what perfection is and know what an island is, either by having observed one or had one described to him in detail by someone who witnessed an island.

As for perfection, here’s where it gets super interesting...

Where’d You Get That Idea?

Perfection is an abstract object. What that means is there is no tangible real-world material one can grasp known as perfection.

Rather, perfection is the ideal state of something. Existing as intended, as purposed, with no deviation from said intention.

Implied in its definition, perfection presumes the existence of intention or purpose, which are also abstract objects. States of being. Which are by definition immaterial. So, off the bat we have three immaterial realities self-evidenced within human thought in relation to the universe.

But if humans are mimetic and have to observe or be told about objects in order to know about them, how do we know abstractions are real objects?

Here are three possible explanations:

1) We’re completely deluded and nothing matters. Humans made up abstractions to help them survive this world. They are actually subjective, and we just pretend they’re objects.

2) Abstractions are eternal and were written on our heart by a perfect eternal Being. They are also written into the fabric of this universe and inescapable.
3) The first humans encountered perfection. A perfect world, a perfect Being, and interacted with him and then spread the story of his witness to subsequent generations. And while that story has been watered down or altered by societies throughout the ages, it remains imprinted on humanity.

The latter two explanations are not mutually exclusive. They also make the most sense.

If we are moist robots that emerged from atoms colliding together in a primordial goo, somehow developed consciousness (we’ll get to that problem in a moment), and then only experienced a material reality, there’s no logical reason for abstractions at all. Because abstractions can’t be witnessed, measured, or tested in a lab.

Immaterial objects are not subject to the senses. So, states of being and the idea of a perfect, transcendent Being of all beings make no sense in a strictly material universe.

And they certainly don’t help survival.

Could you imagine if perfectionists ran the show? We’d all be dead in week. They’d still be tinkering on the first project they started while everybody starved.

Belief in a higher Being if one doesn’t exist would also be a hindrance because people would be worshipping in temples when they “should” be farming, fighting, and exploiting the less fit to survive, if there even is a “should.”

If abstractions don’t exist, they shouldn’t show up at all. Anywhere in history. But they do.

By implication, the universe isn’t strictly material. An immaterial reality parallels our own.

The Curious Case of Consciousness

Abstract objects aren’t the only immaterial problems for atheist materialists. Abstract thought is an equal pest because it too is immaterial.

Dr. Michael Egnor is a life-long neurosurgeon. In his recent book The Immortal Mind, he documents pages and pages of evidence for a separation of the abstract mind from the material brain.

Nowhere in the brain is activated when you think abstract, aware, sentient thoughts. Ever. Neuroscientists have tried to locate said region of the brain for well-over a century and come up wanting. It doesn’t exist.

The best explanation for this finding is that your brain, the vastly complex super-computer run on 20 watts that would take up 140 acres to map with modern imaging, acts as a receiver for your conscious, sentient mind.

In other words, your consciousness is your soul. And until the moment of death, it is tied to your earthly body.

Why Are We Even Arguing?

We’re still arguing because atheists refuse to acknowledge the presented case and the problems it entails for their worldview. They’re trapped inside their own religion and hate the opposition.

Sure, some act nice in practice. But inside, they’re all suffering from the same bitterness, uncritical dogmatism, and deluded rage they accuse other religious people of harboring and living.

Venture over to Reddit and the mask falls off. They spend all day in an echo chamber mocking religion and religious people in group therapy sessions, filled to the brim with emotion and shoddy logic, and fail to realize how religious they are themselves.

The “bad thinker” ad hominem (which wasn’t just lobbied at me; it was also thrown at C.S. Lewis, one of the most astounding and prolific writers, thinkers, and philosophers of the modern age, appreciated by atheists and Christians the world over) ends up betraying the atheist from yesterday’s own failures.

It turns out he himself is not thinking. At least not critically. His evolutionary explanation is a regurgitation of talking points for the popular narrative about history adopted by his preferred faith.

Though offered to refute C.S. Lewis’s quote, it only skirts the issue brought up by Lewis: the lack of intentionality in the evolutionary worldview.

Without design, we are molecular robots floating in space in a cosmic accident that, through many more accidents, somehow produced order from chaos, life from dead matter, consciousness from the unconscious, awareness from the unaware. In which nothing is trustworthy, and abstractions like “trustworthiness” are illusions.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Skipping Through Strawmen

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:30:44 GMT

Christians these days often think it’s hard to face an atheist.

Even I do sometimes, and I’ve been talking to atheist for years. Used to be agnostic myself.

But every now and then, an atheist comes along to remind us how fragile their own perceptions really are.

Take for example this meme I recently shared:

At first glance, it appears clever. He’s dropping bombs and blowing up Christianity before our very eyes.

It’s a rush. You want to ride the Harley. See where it takes you. Participate in the thrill.

But looks...especially in this case...can be deceiving. He misrepresents Christianity by a country mile, and his makeshift Titanic tumbles beneath waves.

Holes in the boat are blatant. Water’s everywhere. In fact, it’s a boat without a bottom.

Here’s why the atheist’s 11 critiques fail before they ever get started.

1. What’s With Those Bible Thumpers?

The argument “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” is where the atheist gets his first track.

And it’s so 20th century.

Few serious Christians use it anymore when speaking to skeptics. For the reason the atheist outlines: It’s circular.

The mantra assumes the Bible is the ultimate authority without first establishing why.

However, one approach the atheist hasn’t thought of, as most don’t, is that the Bible isn’t just one book. It’s a series of books written over thousands of years with multiple authors (lowercase “a”) from different walks of life across many nations and three separate continents.

And within that series, there is interconnected validation historians would consider multiple attestation, which lends credence to the Bible being true.

2. God’s Attributes in Nature

The atheist next attacks the trees, which appears to be a reference to Intelligent Design. But it’s straw-manned by minimizing ID and also ushering in a crass ode to the alleged “problem of evil.”

Trees and photosynthesis alone are not what ID advocates appeal to when arguing for God. The irreducible complexity within everything is what captures attention.

Every system in every creature and everything in our universe is incredibly complex, and complex objects are only ever witnessed to be created by minds. Therefore, by logical implication, the complex systems in the universe must have come from a Mind.

And since their interworking parts provide vital functions down to the most microscopic level, without which they all would die, slow and random processes over billions of years is an invalid alternative explanation.

Even the mold, which the atheist considers evil (we’ll get to that below when we discuss morality), is vastly complex. All he has shown is he misunderstands the argument for ID and has instead set up a pile of hay as an irrelevant, convenient punching bag.

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3. Silent as the Wind Blows

“You can’t prove God doesn’t exist” is typically a cop-out used by an unprepared Christian who has run out of arguments, not one any serious Christian leads with. But the atheist treats it as if it’s our standard modus operandi. So, he’s already being disingenuous.

And he also finds it convenient because it’s an easy argument from silence. One of the simplest logical fallacies to refute.

After all, silence doesn’t tell us anything. In the absence of evidence is when we speculate and invent falsity. Punching the dark.

Which is the ultimate end to the atheist bringing it up. He wants to paint us (Christians) as having blind, empty faith. Because it positions him as the “reasonable” one and puts him on a pedestal of righteousness.

But note how the atheist himself just assumes his own position correct in this case. Without providing evidence.

As determined in the last section, simple random processes over billions of years are an inadequate explanation for the irreducible complexity witnessed in the universe. But without turning to God as the only remaining explanation, simple random processes are all he’s left with, meaning the atheist is operating on blind faith.

Hence, his bringing attention to the argument from silence is a distraction from his own weak worldview.

4. Much Ado About Nothing

Atheists love the “Who made God?” question. Think they’re being clever. “Something can’t come from nothing” is a rendition of that question. And a misrepresentation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God.

I’ve written about the argument in a past article. It states:

Anything that has a beginning has a cause
The universe had a beginning
Therefore, the universe has a cause

Virtually all credible cosmologists over the past century, with very few exceptions, have agreed that the universe began at the Big Bang, and prior to that, there was nothing. Which provides a compelling argument for God.

Here’s how I phrased it in the past:

Space, time, and matter came into existence at the Big Bang. That is settled science. Few dispute it, and those who do aren’t taken seriously in scientific circles.
Logically, that means whatever was before that moment had to be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.
Nothing doesn’t produce anything, so this whatever had to be something else capable of producing.
The only things or beings capable of producing, that we have observed for millennia, are living creatures, meaning whatever made the universe must be alive.
This universe is vastly complex and astounding in wonder. So much so that whenever we try to replicate it, we fail to come anywhere close to matching the observed complexity within. This suggests whatever that living maker is, it is extremely intelligent and creative.
Only sentient beings (persons) willingly create, so that Being must be a sentient person.
Ergo, a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, living, intelligent, sentient God.

Now, God could have a cause, but in order to establish that, one would have to prove he had a beginning. But we can’t. Not to mention, it’s unclear how one would go about such a proof since by necessity God is TIMELESS.

So, until then, “Who made God?” is an invalid line of inquiry.

One also has to consider that the impossibility of infinite regresses (an eternal strand of objects) tells us the buck has to stop somewhere, or else nothing would ever begin. Because, again, nothing produces nothing.

God MUST have eternality built into his essence, which matches the description of the biblical God. An everlasting sentient Being who exists alongside nothing and then chooses to create the universe and make humans in his own image.

I’m guess the atheist avoids the whole above argument because, again, it’s easier to punch hay.

5. Let’s Get Fussy About Good and Bad

Morality is another of those topics atheist think they’re experts at, while in the very same breath they’ll treat Christians with the utmost hate and contempt. Not realizing the depth of their own hypocrisy.

But their own position fails in other ways as well.

They get one thing right. Value is in the eye of the beholder. But they don’t go far enough.

If humans are the makers of morality based on subjective value judgments, then morality is built on sinking sand. Anyone with enough power can come along and redefine ethics to fit his or her own agenda. Because humans have no objective rights in such a world.

And anyone who fights back would have no leg to stand on because its just his word against another’s.

Ironically, the worst outcomes of subjectivism have played out in atheistic societies. Namely communist countries.

The death toll from the enactment of communism and socialism stretching from the French Revolution to the end of the 20th century numbers in the 10s of millions. And that doesn’t account for the millions more who were tortured, abused, and had their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

All in all, the figures outnumber and outweigh the devastation from so-called “religious wars” throughout the entirety of human history. By a loooong shot.

Add into the mix the systematic slaughtering of 300 million+ babies through institutionalized abortion in the 20th century (by atheist liberals), and nothing has caused more damage to society than atheism.

Why? Because, as it turns out, humans can’t figure out on their own “don’t murder Dave.” Even worse, if everything is random and material, there IS NO “don’t murder Dave.” It doesn’t exist.

Unless there’s an ultimate Beholder who made all things with purpose and design and established order into reality, including a moral order written into the fabric of this cosmos. A Beholder to whom all humans will one day give account of their doings and be held accountable for their sins.

By implication, evil itself is the absence of the good order established by the Beholder. It is not a thing. It’s the NOTHING encroaching back into the SOMETHING the Beholder made.

Which again, aligns with the Bible.

Adam and Eve disobeyed the perfect Maker, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil prematurely (instead of trusting the Creator), and their rebellion destroyed a barrier against chaos and disorder (nothingness), thereby opening up the possibility of the absence of God’s goodness in this world.

Yet again, atheists deny this moral framework, and because of that, they are left with no foundation. Moral laws require a Lawmaker.

6. Is It Getting Crowded in Here?

That Christianity is the most widespread religion across the globe is a compelling stat for its impact across the last two millennia.

But that billions believe in Christ is a bandwagon fallacy if used as a standalone argument for Christianity’s validity. So, the atheist is right to condemn it.

However, the atheist also doesn’t give credit where credit is due and shows his lack of historical knowledge.

He brings up that billions used to believe the sun orbited the earth, which is a natural mistake to make because the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. With their limited technology, past societies could not observe beyond the horizon of this earth or could only do so in a highly limited fashion.

Furthermore, most societies used astrology for religious purposes, namely prophecy.

What changed? CHRISTIANITY.

Christians were the first to see true design in the natural world, so they chose to explore it deep in order to understand it from a scientific perspective. Believing it would enhance their relationship to their Creator. Without their ventures, people would still believe the sun orbits the earth.

Therefore, atheists take credit for science, just as much as they take credit for morality, despite their lack of presence in either topic until recent centuries. Talk about unjustified hubris.

7. All About Them Vibes

I find it funny how atheists are all about observations with the five senses (empiricism), yet they deny feeling (which is one of those senses) when a Christian claims to have felt God.

Don’t get me wrong. Feelings alone are not substantial proof of anything. Human experience is subjective. Which is why experience should never be just accepted outright.

But atheists’ denial of such feelings without studying the many claims to them and determine their validity or lack thereof (through proper open-minded, logical examination) is the epitome of hypocrisy.

And there ARE many claims to spiritual experiences throughout the ages.

It’s mathematically impossible for them all to be invented. They have to be explained.

Atheists typically default to delusion as the explanation, but in order to know someone is experiencing delusion, you must know with a high degree of certainty what the truth is. And the atheist worldview comes up wanting in that regard...as already well established above.

There are three potential explanations for spiritual experiences:

God and the supernatural are real and people have experienced him and other spirits.
The material world is all there is and humans made up the gods and spirits.
A mixture of the first two in which some have experienced God and spirits and others have had psychological problems, and all claims to supernatural experience must be tested.

Atheists cannot go beyond the second with their restricted naturalism, making them seriously closed-minded.

At least with explanations 1 and 3 the possibility of alternative realities to our own is permitted, and we can engage in metaphysical discussions.

With explanation 2, our own thoughts are restricted to mere neurons firing inside randomized matter that somehow (without justification) produces the illusion of intelligence. So, we can’t even trust our own reasoning in relation to the cosmos.

Hence, the entire enterprise of rational exploration is tripped up before the journey even begins.

8. Can’t Beat Perfection

Fine-tuning is another facet of Intelligent Design. And of course, atheists hate it because it obliterates their materialist fantasies.

We’ve already discussed the immense complexity in the cosmos, but fine-tuning goes one step further, asking the question of mathematical degrees. And creationists are not the only ones asking said question. Big Bang cosmologists with evolutionary leanings also take it on and tend to agree with the findings.

We live in what’s known as the Goldilocks Zone of the universe within the Milky Way galaxy. Conditions and distances are perfected with precisions so specific that for them to have happened by chance is beyond logically impossible.
We’re talking 10 squared by 1000s+ when all the numbers are crunched. That’s like tossing a penny into space, waiting a billion years, and then trying to find it blind-folded with a toothpick.

So many factors are required for life to exist that even a microscopic change to any of them could spell doom for the universe. Yet here we are.

We should have died long ago, all things considered, so the 99.9% death rate the atheist brings up must have another explanation.

That is, of course, entropy. The nothing encroaching on the something. Evil/chaos unleashed on God’s very-good creation. Which isn’t part of the original design.

The atheist seems to presume entropy has always been part of the cosmos. But if that’s the case, and the universe has been experiencing a slow death for billions of years, why are we still around?

Death moves at varying rates of speed. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. So why is it taking its time with the cosmos as a whole?

I’ve never met an atheist who can adequately answer that question.

9. Dr. Strange Wants His Powers Back

Near Death Experiences (or NDEs) are out-of-body experiences encountered when someone has been clinically dead for a certain period and then brought back to life. Such events have occurred throughout history at around the same rate as claims to experiences of the supernatural.

Atheists, like the one who made the meme, are again forced to resort to delusion as an explanation. They default to random neurons firing in oxygen starved brains. But the same problem emerges here: If we’re just mindless matter, atheists’ own argument can’t be trusted because it is just neurons firing randomly.

Furthermore, he misrepresents the findings of neurology. Abstract, rational thought cannot be mapped to any part of the human brain. AT ALL.

As in, no part of the brain activates when you engage in sentient faculties. Which is significant evidence for the existence of your soul.

The brain appears to act as a receptor, like a radio antenna, for your mind.

So, NDEs are entirely possible and plausible since your mind is separate from your matter.

That doesn’t mean you can astral project Dr. Strange style any time you want. And that doesn’t mean all NDEs are credible and acceptable.

They must be tested like claims to miracles and the supernatural. But such inquiry is outside the bounds of science.

Once one enters the realm of the metaphysical (the realm of non-repeatable one-time events, like witness statements), investigative methods akin to those relied upon by historians, detectives, attorneys, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers (comparative analysis, logic, and reason) take over.

Empirical science only provides data. And data has to be interpreted.

10. Mustard Seeds Grow Big, Bro

“Just have faith” can be an “intellectual tap-out,” as the atheist calls it. If used to deflect away from intellectual inquiry.

In that sense, no Christian should use the phrase. But faith itself, as in trust in certain presuppositions about reality, cannot be escaped.

All significant advancements in the modern world start with faith in a hypothesis of some kind, which was experimented with to see if it aligned with reality and was logically, objectively true. That process is the foundation of philosophy, without which empirical science would not exist. And Christians, as noted, while not the first to recognize said foundation, were the ones to embrace it because of their belief in God’s intelligent design.

Every human has faith in something. The atheist has faith in materialism. That’s his worldview, and by it (unless he steals from Christian morality), he develops rites and rituals that guide him through life. That FORM him. It’s Christianity’s opposition to his worldview that causes him to be so passionately against it.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t care in the slightest. Which also refutes his next point...

11. Freaky Frustration Says a Lot

Atheists always say, “hard to hate someone you don’t think exists,” but those same atheists spend all day ragging on and mocking Christ and Christians.

And location doesn’t matter. Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, especially in Muslim and atheistic countries, and it’s not even close.

In places like China, certain countries in Africa, and some countries in South and Central America, churches are forced underground, with Christians being arrested, tortured, and sometimes executed for practicing their faith in public. The same is increasingly being done in places like Europe and Canada as Islamic invasion and materialist atheism (usually in the same old form of socialism) take hold.
Even in countries like India, Christianity is threatened daily by Hindus and Buddhists, who aren’t as peaceful as modern society likes to paint them. Missionaries all over wake up each day wondering if it could be their last on this earth because of the hatred they experience daily.

Go to places like Reddit online, and atheists never shut up about how much they hate God, think he’s evil, and believe Christians (not any other religion; just Christians) are stupid, ignorant morons.

We are warranted to ask: If the Christian God is mere fiction, why are he and his followers so hated across the globe?

No one in history has ever hated fiction, but millions upon millions have hated truth that makes them uncomfortable. And only the Christian God has been hated with such terrible ferocity by all nations since Christianity’s inception following the crucifixion of Christ.

Either Christianity is false, and humanity is throwing a fit over it like a bunch of petty children because they’re delusional. Or Christianity is the true myth of reality, and humans don’t want it because it demolishes their preferred worldviews.

Would You Look at this Mess?

After trouncing the arguments for God hard, it turns out the atheist was beating up the wrong guy.

He pictures flimsy Twizzlers he can dissolve in a centimeter of liquid. Sacred cows, easily tipped over in forlorn fields at dusk.

But that’s only because his imagination deceives him. The real arguments for God behind his dreary strawmen are quite strong and remain intact, despite years of hatred and criticism from anti-Christian parties.

And all it took for us was a close exploration of his points to diffuse the so-called bombs. In fact, the real bombs blew up his own boat.

Because reason is the enemy of atheism. A little scrutiny, and their whole worldview comes crashing down at the feet of Christ our Lord.

6.3 Million People Heard About Christ in 1 Post

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:51:11 GMT

You might have heard the buzz last week. If not, let me tell you.

Elon Musk publicly affirmed he approves of the teachings of Christ Jesus.

His exact words were: “I agree with the teachings of Jesus.” In response to a post from a major influencer (whom we’ll talk about in a bit) calling for Christians to evangelize Tesla and Space X’s notorious founder.

Obviously, knowing Jesus’s teachings and agreeing with them isn’t a guarantee of salvation. You must know Christ personally, accept his gift of grace, and become allegiant to him above all else to be saved.

That’s real faith. And where Allegiant Faith Network gets our name.

But for the first time in forever, the most popular and richest man of our time spoke the name of Christ, and it went viral.

And by viral, I don’t mean all over X. I mean, EVERYWHERE.

News headlines on both conservative and liberal media outlets were covering it. Yahoo News, which is usually anti-Musk and anti-Christ, was surprisingly objective. This is what they said:

“Who Will Lead Elon Musk to Christ? X User Believes Someone Needs to Evangelize to Him,” Yahoo News, Precious Uka (2/19/2026)

Building bridges. Seeing faith in new ways. Big ideas beyond rockets and cars.

Americans haven’t talked like that in ages because we lost our higher calling in the materialist age. Now, through one man, everyone’s astir.

Many Christians are concerned people will get the wrong idea and be led astray, not understanding the true Gospel. Think works more important than faith.

But there’s another way to look at Musk’s amazing revelation about Jesus.

In All Ways Christ is Proclaimed

When I first read Musk’s comment (and I saw it long before it was in news outlets since I know the original poster), I was amazed because I know Musk’s reach.

His posts receive upwards of 25 million views on the regular. And the ticker was climbing fast.

It wasn’t long before 1 million people saw the comment. The grand total after several days is 6.3 million.

6.3 MILLION PEOPLE SAW THE NAME OF JESUS AND HIS TEACHINGS AFFIRMED BY THE MOST POPULAR MAN OF OUR TIME, outside of President Trump.

Christians should celebrate from the rooftops because a seed has been planted. Paul had said reaction in his letter to the Philippians:

“I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” (1:12-18)

Truth matters. And without the accurate Gospel, souls are lost. But even the Apostle Paul knew that the name of Christ proclaimed is better than others never hearing of Jesus at all.

We often get wrapped up in our doctrines and preferred theology camps so much that we overlook the more important vocation to which we are all beholden as servants of the Lord:

Daily and relentless preaching and exhibiting of the character and good news of our Savior.

In ways that get the attention of powerful figures and open up doors for the advancement of the kingdom of God in the here and now.

Today’s Christians can be so cowardly they won’t even take to the streets of the virtual online world. Yet Paul wrote those words of celebration to the Philippians from a prison cell.

With the internet and your freedoms, you can move mountains in ways the apostles only dreamed of with the click of a few buttons.

And I’ve got something that will show you how.

Change Hearts and Minds on Purpose

Elon Musk’s response was no accident. The original poster was none other than . The founder of our partner, Masterclass.

And he got exactly the reaction he wanted. Luck had nothing to do with it.

AoP challenged Christians to evangelize Musk. Then focused the challenge to his specific audience with a question, followed by a picture of Musk praying inside a church, eyes lifted to the heavens.

Readers were doubly convicted
Had clear and actionable instructions
Could visualize the positive end result
Were endowed with feelings of honor, glory, and beauty

The post attracted so much attention that even Musk couldn’t ignore it. Nor could Yahoo News. They said:

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God is Real, God is Good, God is Sovereign

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:47:50 GMT

You hear atheists these days trying to discredit Yahweh as an unruly or demonic god in the Old Testament.

The accusations stem from Yahweh’s behavior. Sometimes he’s calm and merciful, sometimes he’s stubborn and immovable, sometimes he’s angry and exacts tragedies.

There are even times, like with Abraham before Sodom and Gomorrah, where Yahweh appears to change his mind.

The popular sentiment recently has been to dismiss Yahweh as evil. But in a previous article, I already outlined how that view is dangerous. Gnostic in its roots:

Gnostics portrayed Yahweh as the demiurge, the anti-life/spirituality force working against the eternal God. Theirs was seen as a false religion by both the Jews and the earliest Christians, one that slandered God Most High (Yahweh and then Christ Jesus) and produced in adherents a grotesque superiority complex wielded against the flesh.

With its hyper-dualism (division of spirit and body) and emphasis on secret knowledge for the elect, Gnosticism erodes anything it touches by convincing proponents to destroy “oppressors” and can be found embedded deep in the worst political movements of our time, particularly socialism.

So, it isn’t to be trifled with.

But an important question is raised atheists and gnostics: How can the eternal, perfect God, Yahweh, be emotional and still sovereign and good?

The issue arises from a misunderstanding of sovereignty and goodness. A misunderstanding derived from Ancient Greek philosophy about the eternal God.

Below is a summary of said misunderstanding, how some scholarship has tried to cope with it, and why you can do away with both (the misunderstanding and scholarship) and trust Yahweh is the perfect, eternal, good Creator God of the universe, made flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Fictitious Immovability

Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, and others like Xenophanes before them, had trouble with the gods because they saw them as unruly caricatures of humankind.

They (the gods) would sleep around, get drunk, hold orgies, get high on drugs, experience fits of rage, slaughter and mutilate opponents, etc. Enslaved to desires, just like the Greeks and other humans.

Honor was a scarce trait among them. Goodness, a trampled memory, if ever it existed.

In their minds, an eternal, perfect God had to be immovable, including void of emotion. Different from humanity in every way.

Because the Romans conquered mostly Greek lands, such philosophies were everywhere in the Empire, and Gentile Christians, who were former practitioners of their schools, mixed them with the Christian faith.

Tertullian (2nd century AD) famously saw that mixing as a problem and is known for his line, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

Nevertheless, the mixing continued throughout the Middle Ages after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, and eventually influenced famous philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, who postulated God as the Unmoved Mover.

While philosophy itself is not bad (it means “love of wisdom” and entails logical study of everything available to the human mind), the idea of immovability as a component of sovereignty and goodness is not one that was shared by Ancient Israel. Or at least, not in the way the Greeks saw it.

That contradiction and the so-called “enlightenment” mingled to produce some strange scholarship.

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Enter the “Enlightenment”

With Rene Descartes and others like him in the 1600s, the scope shifted away from the divine toward humanity as the ultimate good.

Renaissance humanism from the 1400s (built upon an appreciation for humanity as designed in the image of God) was confiscated by those who distrusted Christianity and made into a supreme philosophy. With the underlying idea that humanity is inherently good and must be freed from the shackles of spiritual rule.

Socialism and evolutionism became prime outlets for the expression of the separation between spirit and flesh, unknowingly accepting Gnostic ideals in reverse. Flesh is all there is, they mused, and subject to systems of oppression.

Power slowly replaced truth, culminating in the current postmodern leftism seen everywhere today.

How it manifested in biblical scholarship was through what is known as the Documentary Hypothesis (18th-19th centuries).

Elohim and Yahweh (the two names for God in the Old Testament) became seen as separate entities invented by different camps amongst the Israelites. Using linguistics (a highly speculative form of analysis), said scholars (Julien Wellhausen being the most famous) outlined four strands of fictional authors throughout the Hebrew Bible:

1) J (Yahwist/Jahwist): containing vivid, humanistic images of God; considered “early” (10th cent BC); including Genesis 2-3, flood narratives, and southern (Judah) patriarchal stories
2) E (Elohist): abstract God; northern Israel; fear of God focused; uses Horeb and not Sinai (9th cent BC)
3) D (Deuteronomist): legalistic and focused on ethics with a centralized worship pattern; considered part of King Josiah’s reforms (7th cent BC)
4) P (Priestly): ritual texts, genealogies, tabernacle details, and precise dates; Genesis 1, Leviticus, Numbers (6th-5th cent BC)

While interesting, the Documentary Hypothesis has major, unreconcilable problems and has been all but abandoned in most scholarship, despite being taught in introductory Old Testament courses as “fact”:

Methodological weaknesses: Ancient Near Eastern deities often went by multiple title/names; no clear lines of thought can be traced for each member of JEDP; styles in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) and the other books match styles from their purported time periods (like Hittite suzerainty treaties, etc.); alleged contradictions often end up complementary (like Gen 1 being panoramic and Gen 2 being focused).
Philosophical bias: Wellhausen relied heavily on Hegelian (socialist) evolution of religion (nature to ethics to ritual), which has been discredited again and again; naturalism cannot explain morality.
Lack of external evidence: No manuscripts from J, E, D, or P exist; Jewish tradition was unaware of the source (which is strange considering how good they were at documenting), and the Dead Sea Scrolls treat the Torah as unified (so do the New Testament writers); and there are no Ancient Near Eastern parallels for such fragmentary piecing together of texts.
Overly speculative dating: Early J has minimal support and E is virtually non-existent, suggesting better explanations are out there variances in the Bible.
Literary alternatives: Hebrew prose uses parallelism, multiple perspectives, and resumptive repetition to create emphasis, not multiple authors.
Conservative rebuttals: Biased against the supernatural without adequate support; again, the texts match very early styles consistent with the alleged time periods within their stories; and archaeological support for early dating (Yahweh inscription, Soleb 1400 BC).

Hence, the Documentary Hypothesis is pure, unreliable fiction devised to remove trust in Yahweh and the Hebrew Scriptures.

Which means another, better explanation for Yahweh’s personality exists.

Emotional but in Control

The name Yahweh is a variant of the Hebrew verb for “being,” meaning “I AM.” Elohim is a general descriptor for spirit beings, often translated as “gods.”

The former is God’s formal name and was used to designate his eternality and transcendence by the Israelites.

He is supreme and sovereign, the determiner of all reality and morality. That alone signifies his status as perfect and good because he is THE STANDARD.

But the Israelites also did not see emotions as bad. Emotions are part of our design in the image of God. A way in which we reflect him in this universe.

Emotions can be corrupted, but that isn’t on God. He, being spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and the standard, did not invent evil. Evil is the absence of his goodness. The nothingness encroaching into the something he made.

Sin and death are the manifestations of evil unleashed upon the world by Adam and Eve disobeying God, which disrupted and corrupted God’s very-good design.

So, humanity is no longer inherently good. But God is. This means that even God’s emotions are good.

The Unmoved Mover Still Moves

In the Israelite view, then, God is an Unmoved Mover with his own good emotions, and unlike what Greek philosophy often forgot, the Unmoved Mover still has agency and can move on his own.

Whenever we read the Old Testament, we have to take said agency into account: God is the ultimate Agent, and humans are small agents made of his own design, to relate to him and follow him.

Whenever Yahweh expresses emotions that appear “bad,” one has to consider the human component. Every time, his (God’s) reactions are instructive (pointing toward the best path), just (righting wrongdoing), and/or relational (inviting participation in his divine plans). Human actions, to the contrary, are flawed and without clear direction, especially when they do not align with God’s perfect will.

Nothing God does happens by accident. He is always in control. That’s how the Jews saw it and how the earliest Christians saw it, so whenever we see otherwise, we have to question ourselves first and the humans in the text before we ever question God.

God consistently shows himself as leading with mercy throughout the texts from the beginning:

Instead of Adam and Eve dying outright, God pushes death off on an animal and clothes them
Humanity persists for generations despite their sins until led into endless violence by the Nephilim, resulting in the Flood
Humans exist together in unity until they try to storm the heavens by force with the Tower of Babel, making God divide them
God makes a covenant with Abraham to create his own nation amongst humanity to save them
Humans prove so corrupt that even the nation produced from Abraham, the Israelites, betrays God over and over again, repeating the Fall
God sends them into Exile with the promise that he will bring up a Savior among them
Yahweh comes as Christ Jesus in the flesh, lives a perfect life, dies on the cross, and then rises again, destroying the bonds of sin and death with a new, willing sacrifice unlike the animal in the garden
Jesus sends his church out into the world to be the renewed very-good image of God, the body of Christ, the kingdom of heaven on earth

Mercy is at the forefront. Always. But it is paired with justice throughout that entire narrative.

All humanity was not destroyed in an instant with the Flood; they lasted generations. Sodom and Gomorrah were around performing despicable acts for centuries before God destroyed them. The Canaanites and Amorites were barbaric but allowed to thrive a long time before the Israelites conquered them. The Israelites were stiff-necked and dishonorable toward God relentlessly before God sent judgments.

And many judgments were the consequence of their own actions, like what happened in the Book of Judges. They did what was right in their own eyes, and the repercussions were disastrous. A product of the contingency built into our reality.

Everyone who dismisses Yahweh must overlook these cases or twist them by pretending humanity is good, despite evidence to the contrary.

Test Everything by the Word

The prevailing data supports the Bible being authentic and an excellent explanation for the human condition. When allowed to speak for itself.

We too move without clear direction or purpose without God. Fall into horrid evils. When he’s abandoned, everything falls apart. Every time.

As the writer of the Book of Hebrews notes, the Bible is alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing unto soul and spirit. If you pick it up and find yourself arguing with it more than considering its wisdom, then you are using it wrong.

Yes, there is a place for detached study, but the Bible demands much more than that. Transcends it like the Author behind its words.

When you get trapped in detachment, you risk becoming blind and resisting the Truth. And when you misunderstand God’s nature, you misunderstand yourself.

God is real, God is good, God is supreme, and he left you his revelation to show you the way to his eternal kingdom. Drown out the noise and heed his beautiful, perfect will.

No More Mr. Nice Jesus

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:41:27 GMT

There’s been an unhealthy trend lately of weirdos condemning genuine Christ-followers for being mean.

The condemners equate the latter with hate, although none of them explain why.

One of them recently harangued me during a conversation last week after expressing disdain for the destructive behaviors of overweight people in our age.

The approach I took admittedly wasn’t nice because I was shaming people for practices like eating unhealthy foods, overeating, watching from the corner while their buddies workout, and so on.

My accuser thought that was hateful, but refused to explain when I asked why. Instead, he asked what was loving about my shaming. This is what I said:

I “shamed” the hypothetical “fat” guy because he’s unhealthy and killing himself. And because I love him as a human being designed in the image of God, I hate seeing him eat unhealthily and fail to work out and care for his body. Shaming can be an act of love, believe it or not.
Oh, but I forgot. We’re not supposed to be like the Jesus who flipped tables and drove money changers out of the Temple with a whip for turning it into a den of thieves, stealing from the masses to line their own pockets.
We’re just supposed to be like the hippy, always nice, never-causing-controversies Jesus, who is a complete unbiblical invention and doesn’t distinguish between right and wrong.
If anyone does something harming themselves we’re just supposed to let them be. “Live and let live.”
Give me a moment while I go give my son the good news he’s allowed to get away with everything now.

The explanation is emotionally weighted, sure. But necessarily so. Too many confuse love with niceness and forget that the Savior himself wasn’t always kind.

And the man who confronted me was no different. In response, he offered a series of questions I refused to answer until he told me what was hateful about my original shaming...a request that remains eternally afloat in the ether.

However, now I find it important to address his questions to put to rest (hopefully once and for all) the misconception that Christians are supposed to be forever nice.

Why is shame the first tool you reach for? Is that how Jesus taught us to love one another? With mean-spirited comments and shame?

The questions make many presumptions:

Shame is the first tool I reached for.
Jesus never taught shame as a tool of love.
Mean-spirited comments and shame are bad.

These are presuppositions my accuser never once substantiated with evidence. Let’s deal with them in order.

1) The original comment was this: “That dude’s comment is what one expects from the chubby guy hiding in the corner of the gym with a bag of fries while his ‘buddies’ pump iron.”

It was in response to a note shared by a friend. The note quoted a line in an article written by a man that said “Women don’t need men anymore” with the addendum from my friend, “I can smell the lack of testosterone from here.”

The note and my comment were contrived to condemn the lack of masculinity in our present culture.

Men and women are equally important, designed by God to complement each other, but men are actively, openly hated and mistreated, thanks to the spread of feminist ideology. And a result of said spread is men not caring for themselves physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

The hypothetical “chubby guy” is representative of that horrible side effect. One way men naturally encourage one another is to call each other out when we see a friend doing wrong. It’s built into our design. A healthy sociological feature that makes us distinct from women.

But notice how “chubby guy” wasn’t the only one condemned. I place “buddies” in quotations because no self-respecting friend would let a brother sit out a workout. Speaking from experience, real buddies would keep the pressure on. Help and encourage their friend to take good care of his health by lifting and eating right.

So, in the scenario, shaming is inherently healthy, productive, and necessary...both ways.

Also, since this is a hypothetical, how does my accuser know that shaming is the first tool used, since there is no beginning or end to the story?

2) Jesus is God-made-flesh, our Designer. The definition of perfection. Are we to assume that he wants men to ignore their design in order to take on the passive role of nice nurturer, a role biologically belonging to women?

Well, thankfully we don’t have to make that assumption because Jesus and Scripture both denounce it.

Jesus in the Temple is just one instance of him resorting to “mean-spiritedness” to defend the truth.

“Christ Driving the Money Changers Out of the Temple” Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632)

He was always bashing heads with the Pharisees. And he never played nice. He called them out for their hypocrisy (acting holy while living unrepentant lives). One of his favorite descriptions for them was “blind guides.”

Matthew 23 and Luke 11 are famous for containing “woes” against the religious leaders (Pharisees and Saducees), 7 and 6 “woes” respectively. Both passages ruthlessly rip the leaders to shreds.

Now, one could say Jesus’s hostility was saved for the leaders and not the people. Rightly directed at the leaders because they were the ones who should’ve known better.

But note how virtually every speech Jesus gave was in public, in front of the people and the leaders. He wanted the people to see and know the right way and follow it. The public declaration starting his ministry in Matthew 4 was “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” directed at everyone.

By implication, it follows that anyone who comes to know God and his will should be held accountable for failure to repent, even if that means being confronted through “mean-spiritedness.”

Jesus’s rebukes to correct wrong behavior and fake character, therefore, were perceived by those with eyes to see and ears to hear as loving corrections. Void of hate.

3) Lastly, the accuser assumes that mean-spiritedness and/or rebuke are bad. Without first making a case for their wrongness.

He proceeds as if said wrongness is self-evident, when it’s nothing of the sort.

For example, if my toddler child is about to touch the hot stove and I respond, “Do what you want, buddy. We’ll talk about your feelings after,” I’m sure he’d stop and reconsider his actions, right?

OF COURSE NOT. He’d keep going and burn his hand. Unless I physically intervene or create enough urgency to get his attention and make him understand the danger.

If the exchange isn’t our first rodeo, I may even get exasperated or angry with my son because he failed to heed my instruction and almost hurt himself.

Would me getting angry make me any less loving? By no means, as Paul would say.

When someone is heading down a wrong path that leads to death or serious harm, the correct response is to correct them and make them change course (aka repent). An objective fact of life we all know.

Yet, when it comes to spiritual harm, suddenly modern “Christians” draw the line and say, “You just need to be nice all the time. Live and let live.”

That is a lie from the pit of hell, as damning as “Did God really say...?” And Satan smiles his razor teeth every time we buy in.

Discipline in the name of Truth, whose name is Christ Jesus, requires courage, resolve, resilience, and sometimes stern or even aggressive reaction. Reactions demonstrated by God Most High throughout Scripture. Time and again.

The same God who became flesh, dwelt among us, and died so we could live.

Rebuke against the wrongdoer is the enduring cornerstone of justice.

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So the ends justify the means? Is hitting your kid when he misbehaves also an act of love? Are Muslim honor killings an act of love?

How Can We Trust the Gospels?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 16:37:11 GMT

The internet is aflame with controversy again.

Over the last week, week and a half, the Epstein files were released. And all they served was an enormous distraction.

Everyone got sucked into the vortex, and while some important matters were seemingly confirmed (like how the world is ruled by Satanic, immoral, globalist elites), many pointed out that the releases still showed signs of selection. Tampering.

We are only being showed what the powers-that-be want us to see. So, how can anything be trusted?

Well, you may not trust the Epstein files, but you CAN rest confident in the reliability of the New Testament gospels. The whole Bible, in fact.

You’ve surely seen these stats before:

The Bible is 66 books written over 6000 years by 40 different authors with a coherent, intelligible, and continuous story from beginning to end.

If you’re Catholic, Orthodox, or Ethiopian, you have more than 66 books in your Bible, and those stats are even more impressive because the story still doesn’t change.

God made it
We broke it
Jesus fixed it

That’s the plot all the way through. A living and active plot that speaks directly to the condition and history of this world.

A fact that alone stresses its incredible authenticity.

But when one studies deeper the evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament, he finds mounds and mounds more to stamp out any doubts it is the recorded Truth of God Most High.

Confirmation Like No Other

Earlier this week, I wrote about the 6 criteria for historical authenticity for paid subscribers.

They are:

Historical coherence
Multiple attestation
Cultural background
Embarrassment
Dissimilarity
Consistency

The whole New Testament knocks every single one of these criteria out of the park, but especially the four gospels.

Substantial Manuscripts

There are 5800 Greek manuscripts available for the gospels. The earliest a fragment from John dating to the second century.

For comparison, Homer’s Illiad only has 647 manuscript copies available. And the earliest dates much, much later than a century after the writing of the original text.

Add to the 5800 for the gospels thousands more in other languages, like Syriac, Ethiopian, and so on, and text critics have been able to piece together to within 98% accuracy what the original gospels said.

Meaning the Greek your New Testament comes from is what the earliest churches read, with microscopic variances. And almost all the variances deal with spelling errors or a handful of misplaced words, none of which change substance of the gospels in any way.

The two biggest variances are noted in every Bible: (1) the second ending to Mark 16 and (2) the first passage of John 8, the famous story about the Pharisees attempting to stone the adulterous woman. While still deemed authentic stories by most scholars, it’s generally agreed that those passages are later additions, not in the original gospels.

Nevertheless, our New Testament gospels are accurate beyond comparison to any other ancient documents. And then there’s dating.

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Early Dating

Liberal scholars who hold fast to late dating for the gospels will try to convince you they’re the majority. But they are not.

They’re able to keep up the illusion because in any papers they write they just keep agreeing with each other instead of re-evaluating the evidence. If they did re-evaluate honestly and objectively, they would conclude for early dating, since the evidence is substantial.

There is overwhelming consensus that the gospels were written at least 20-60 years after the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. Mark is considered the earliest, then Matthew, then Luke (who both used the bones of Mark to construct their letters), and John was the last.

That puts them within living memory of all witnesses. Which is enough. But it gets better.

There are important reasons to considered the gospels written even earlier.

Acts is the second volume of Luke. No credible reader or scholar of the Bible denies this. And Acts can be confidently dated to 62 AD (yes, I said AD; I don’t ascribe to the BCE/CE postmodern bullcrap). Here’s why:

Luke details the persecutions of many Christians and records the deaths of both James the brother of John and Stephen, the first martyr, but never mentions once the persecution under Nero (64 AD) or the Jewish War (66-70 AD)
Luke presents Rome is friendly toward Christianity, which was not the case after 70 AD, since Christianity was grouped in with Judaism in Roman eyes
Certain theological topics (like the issue of circumcision) addressed within Acts would have been irrelevant after 70 AD
None of the executions of Peter, Paul, or James the brother of Christ (62-67 AD) are recorded, which would surely have been mentioned had they happened

These pieces of evidence are incredible.

Both disasters were devastating events seared into the minds of all Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire. Thousands of Christians were executed and tortured under Nero (including Paul), and Jerusalem was sieged by the Romans so long in 70 AD that all resources were cut off (parents ended up cooking their own children for food) until the Romans finally breached the walls, slaughtered most survivors, and destroyed the Temple brick by brick, as Jesus predicted would happen.

Events of such significance are what historian and psychologists consider pivotal events. And would have been recorded by a historian of Luke’s caliber, but instead, his letter leaves them out, stopping at Paul’s arrival to Rome? Implausible. The only coherent explanation is that Acts precedes Nero’s persecution and the Jewish War.

And if Acts precedes those events, that pushes back the dating for at least Mark, Matthew, and Luke to between 50-62AD. Around the same time as the epistles of Paul. Many scholars, even a few late-date proponents, place Mark earlier, in the 40s AD. John’s own omission of the events, failing to address them in his theological reflections, may indicate a pre-70 date for him as well.

Another important piece of evidence is that Paul appears to rely on Luke in 1 Corinthians (55AD) at several key points in his letter. The parallels are almost identical, which suggests Luke’s gospel was already written by 55AD.

That means, we have confident early dating for at least 3 of the gospels and have accurately reconstructed what the originals said. But there’s more.

External Corroboration

From ca. 50-175 AD, a wide number of external sources corroborate not only the existence of Christ Jesus but all the main emphases of his story in the gospels.

Said sources are a mix of friendly Christian sources and unfriendly sources. Some are vehemently against Christianity.

Nine in particular are letters from Phlegon (140 AD), Thallus (55 AD), Celsus (175 AD), Lucian of Samosata (166 AD), Mara Bar Serapion (73 AD), Pliny the Younger (112 AD), Suetonius (120 AD), Josephus (93 AD), and Tacitus (116 AD).

And they all confirm these details between their works:

Jesus claimed to be God
Jesus’s disciples worshipped him as God
Jesus was born of a virgin and raised by a carpenter
Jesus was a Rabbi whose disciples passed on his teachings
Jesus prophesied and did many miracles among the people
Jesus was known for his incredible wisdom and virtuous life
Jesus’s death was followed by an earthquake and period of prolonged darkness
Jesus was crucified in Judea by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar
Jesus’s followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead and seen his wounded hands
Belief in Jesus resulted in Jews being expelled from Rome under the rule of Claudius

Judging by these results, anyone who thinks Jesus was just a myth is either downright lying or deluded. He’s one of the best attested figures in history.

Even archaeology points to his existence and the accuracy of the gospels.

Archaeologists have discovered the site of Nazareth (long thought a fiction made up by the gospel writers); affirmed the accuracy of first century Jewish and Greco-Roman life alleged in all four gospels (agriculture, topography, economics, living conditions, and so on); confirmed the existence and brutality of crucifixion and that the Jews maintained proper burial customs for crucifixion victims, like was done with Jesus (they were not all tossed into mass graves); located a first-century fishing boat in the Sea of Galilee that corroborates the disciples’ fishing expeditions; and discovered the Pool of Bethesda, mentioned in John (another long-though fiction in the gospels).

In fact, all the locations mentioned in the gospels, especially in John, have been located and excavated. Showing each had impeccable knowledge of the geography of ancient Israel in the Greco-Roman period.

Major characters have also been confirmed:

Pilate
Caiaphas the High Priest
James the brother of Jesus

And more. All through digs in Israel. But the evidence doesn’t stop there.

Internal Evidence

When examined together, the gospels themselves show signs of being witness statements rather than fictions.

Together, they recount the same larger story with key narratives all consistent inside their pages.

Other key identifiers are:

Undesigned coincidences
Embarrassing details
Consistent 1st-century Greco-Roman setting

The last one was already attested to in our discussion of archaeology. The gospels get the setting right in every detail. Locations, economics, customs...you name it. All precise.

Which is highly unusual in accounts of ancient fiction. Suggesting the gospels are not fiction in the slightest.

And said suggestion becomes much more credible when undesigned coincidences and embarrassing details are added into the mix.

Undesigned coincidences are when one writer/witness adds details another writer/witness left out that further explain what happened in a particular situation or correct a memory. Embarrassing details are information that is unflattering to the image of a figure or his circle of friends.

Each is incredibly rare in ancient fiction. But everywhere in the gospels.

The best example of undesigned coincidence between Matthew and Luke is the scene of Jesus being beaten right after his arrest. Matthew tells us that his assaulters tried to make him guess who hit him, which is weird if he can see them. Luke clarifies when retelling the same story that Jesus was blindfolded. Such coincidences are all over.

But the embarrassing details are even more compelling because they’re relentless. The disciples are constantly making mistakes, Jesus is always hanging with the lowest of the low, Jesus is always confronting the elites and religious leaders and contesting their authority in public, Jesus talks openly with women in public, and women are the first to discover the empty tomb.

Anyone trying to save face and embellish with fiction would have erased all these details from the gospels because they were unsavory in Greco-Roman society. There was no incentive to include them since they were not persuasive. Unless they were the truth.

For comparison, the Gnostic Gospel of Peter recounts the resurrection quite differently.

The disciples are first to discover the tomb
The women are nowhere to be seen
Jesus emerges as a bright dancing cross
A large and loud heavenly procession ensues as they (Jesus, the disciples, and angels) leave the tomb in triumph, spreading the news to everyone nearby

The Gospel of Peter’s depiction is consistent with embellishments of elite figures in the ancient world, stressing its unreliability as an account of the resurrection and reinforcing those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And there’s one last piece of evidence to consider.

Style: 1st-Century Biographies

In style, structure, and organization, all four gospels match ancient Greco-Roman biographies most consistently. Which tells us several important things.

They had to be honest in order to be accepted. Biographies were typically written about the elite, paid for by the elite, and expected to be accurate, with little embellishment (minus the erasure of embarrassing details). If they did not meet these standards, there were harsh penalties for the scribes. Social exile was guaranteed, loss of wages and profession likely, and execution possible.

Any witnesses of an elite’s story interviewed were also discarded if deemed to be untrustworthy. They could experience the same penalties as scribes if it was determined they were lying. And that remained true regardless of social status.

Every Jew and every Roman, whether they could read or not, would have been familiar with these standards and would have rejected the gospels and their writers for any serious violations.

Not to mention, since the gospels were written early enough to be within living memory of witnesses to the events recorded, the witnesses themselves would have objected to any inaccuracies and set the record straight.

This latter fact has double assurance because most of the eyewitnesses were Jews who knew the laws against bearing false witness in the Bible well. Overlooking any errors or blatant lies would have been a serious sin and violated Greco-Roman customs.

But we know with confidence the gospels were circulated amongst first century churches and used for teaching and reproof. Substantiating their acceptance and reliability.

Names and the Question of Translation

The three main objections still raised against the gospels are (1) the presence of the supernatural and miracles, (2) their anonymity, and (3) the issue of translation.

The first says more about the psychological biases of the objectors than the integrity of the gospels. Because (1) the existence of the supernatural cannot be disproven and (2) if we were to reject the gospels based on supernatural elements then we would have to reject most of history since nearly every ancient record includes stories of the supernatural. The alternative is intentional hypocrisy.

As for anonymity and translation, those two objections deserve deeper consideration.

Anonymous Gospels

The gospels were originally treated as anonymous. What that means is the earliest churches didn’t use the names of their authors as identifiers. Irenaeus in the second century was the first to use the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to describe the gospels, as far as we can tell.

Skeptics have used this as fodder to claim we don’t know where the gospels came from and cannot determine confidently their reliability. Some even suggest the early churches didn’t even know who wrote them.

But that is a weak argument from silence, bearing nowhere near the weight that the omissions in Acts do toward verifying an early date.

With Acts, Luke sets himself up as a trustworthy recorder of major events, including persecutions, but leaves out the two worst in first century (Nero and the Jewish War). Either he’s actually a terrible historian, which is implausible based on the accuracy of his works, or he wasn’t writing after those events took place.

In that case, the silence has a tangible and identifiable explanation that makes the most sense (the latter). So does the absence of names for the gospels, and it isn’t that the early churches didn’t know who wrote them.

Since the church faced hatred and persecution from it’s inception, the most likely explanation for the omission of names is that they were kept anonymous to protect the writers from harm. It makes the most sense within the surrounding historical context of their writing.

By the second century, the writers had passed away and the church had a firmer foothold within the Roman Empire, so Irenaeus could speak their names with confidence.

Are the names attributed to the gospels accurate? Who knows?

They probably are because the earliest churches likely kept internal records or a tradition of memory, which meant much more in the ancient world because they were expert memorizers. Way better than we are today.

But even if Irenaeus was wrong, the names given to the gospels do not erase the other evidence in their favor as eyewitness testimonies to the existence and events of the life of Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh.

Tag You’re It

You’ll hear skeptics say that the writing of the gospels over time and their translation into other languages was like a game of phone tag.

A frequently used illustration is that of kids sitting in a circle in a room. One whispers something in the ear of the one next, and then the next repeats it to his neighbor. By the end, the piece of information has changed so much it’s unrecognizable from what the first kid said.

However, the writing of the gospels and their translation is much different for several reasons:

The gospels, again, were written within living memory of the witnesses to Jesus, so they would have corrected any errors. And, as noted, their memories were a whole lot better than ours. Even in the illustration, the first kid is around to correct any errors in transmission.
The translations we have today were made by expert text critics who went back to the available manuscripts, made sure they said what the original gospels said, translated them into modern language, and then thoroughly critiqued each other to ensure accuracy. With few exceptions (and those exceptions predate the 20th century).
The accurate modern translations we have verify that even prior translations (pre-1900s) were genuine and mostly accurate. And the ones with heavy inaccuracies are easily determined, pointed out, and their errors revealed.

So, writing and translating the Bible has been a serious project incomparable to a mere game of phone tag.

Conclusion: Why is this Even A Question?

You’d be warranted to wonder why the integrity, authenticity, and accuracy of the gospels is even a question, considering all the evidence.

They are early, carefully preserved, properly recorded biographies of the lives of Christ and his followers that have been studied for centuries by the brightest of minds and transformed the world.

The only logical reason to maintain skepticism against them is a preconceived bias against God Most High and Christ Jesus our Lord. A hatred for the Truth.

Because all evidence and intelligence points to their validity and bows before their wise instruction.

Recommended Sources

Craig A. Evans. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

Craig S. Keener. Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2019.

Jonathan Bernier. Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022.

J. Warner Wallace. Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Colorado Springs, CO: David Cook, 2023.

Richard Bauckham. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017.

Titus Kennedy. Unearthing the Bible: 101 Archaeological Discoveries That Bring the Bible to Life. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2020.

https://biblicalfaith.online/2023/09/04/the-gospels-seven-reasons-to-trust-their-reliability/

https://evidenceunseen.com/theology/scripture/historicity-of-the-new-testament/evidence-for-an-early-dating-of-the-four-gospels

https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2022/11/18/top-ten-historical-references-to-jesus-outside-of-the-bible/

How Do We Judge the Trustworthiness of Ancient Texts?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:45:20 GMT

Science matters less than history. And I’ll prove it to you.

I once had an atheist argue God doesn’t exist because God is like dragons. Then he suggested there’s no proof dragons exist, and you (me) don’t believe in dragons, so you shouldn’t believe in God.

Eventually he said:

“Now, let’s say there is a book written 2000 years ago which claims that 7 headed dragons existed…
Would you take that seriously?
How exactly would you investigate that ancient well “documented” claim?”

Those questions deserve attention. And are easily debunked with counter-questions:

Why shouldn’t we take stories of 7-headed dragons seriously?
How do you know there is no proof of 7-headed dragons?
How do you know I don’t believe in 7-headed dragons?
How do you know God is like a 7-headed dragon?
What do you mean by “proof”?

The last counter-question is most important because it signifies the underlying implication of the atheist’s statement above:

How do we verify the authenticity and trustworthiness of ancient or so-called mythical texts?

Historians have wrestled with it for centuries. Entire disciplines formed around it.

Methods were devised, refined, challenged, revised, then refined again. Painstakingly. Because fields such as history, philosophy, theology, sociology, and so on don’t bend to empiricism like modern science. They deal with one-time, unrepeatable events or concepts.

The standards of abstract study, therefore, must be much more rigorous and demanding to determine truth.

Over time, historians hammered down a set of shared criteria for evaluating historical documents of all kinds, especially ancient and myth-laden ones.

Craig A. Evans summarizes the main six of those standards in Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, from which everything below is derived.

I’m going to take you through them one by one, summarize them in my own words, and discuss their implications and applications to help you build confidence in both history and God.

The 6 Criteria for Historical Authenticity

Here’s a list of the key criteria followed by all credible historians:

Historical Coherence
Multiple Attestation
Embarrassment
Dissimilarity
Cultural Background
Coherence or Consistency

These criteria enjoy wide acceptance across disciplines. Each serves a distinct role, but none functions in isolation.

Meeting at least three or more lends tremendous weight to the acceptance of a piece of evidence.

Below is what each standard means, how to use them, and an application of the criteria to the atheist’s 7-headed dragon analogy:

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Did God Lie to Adam and Eve?

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:29:38 GMT

Our world is hellbent on demonizing God. And few care to ask why.

One answer is modern criticism has devolved into cynicism. “Cynicism” is when someone always looks for falsities, faults, or problems everywhere, even where none exist.

And no criticisms are as cynical as those lobbed toward the God of the Bible.

Someone argued to me that God lied to Adam and Eve, while the serpent told the truth. And claimed their interpretation is the only honest reading of the Genesis text.

Below is the full list of their objections:

The sin of Adam and Eve was not that they tried to be like God
God told a story to Adam and Eve that turned out not to be true
They were ignorant of the Law, so their actions could not be counted against them
The equating of the serpent with Satan/Lucifer occurred 1300 years after Christ, in Christian fan fiction like Dante's Inferno
Nebuchadnezzer was Satan in the minds of the ancient Jews, and Christ was the only one compared to a serpent (the one on the staff of Moses in Numbers)

All these objections are cynicisms that have been around for a long time. Ones both the Second Temple Jews and most ancient Christian churches addressed and condemned as fallacious.

Here, I will provide a response to explain why the above objections are wrong, why God is wholly good and perfect, and where the unjust cynicisms against him originate. Thereby unmasking the enduring enemy in our midst.

What Really Happened in Genesis

Chapter 1 of Genesis opens by telling us that God made the heavens and the earth. Before he made anything, there was God and there was nothing else.

He is depicted as the eternal ground of all being and is, therefore, the ultimate standard. By definition, he can do whatever he wants and is accountable to no one and no thing.

After God created the universe and everything in it, the Bible tells us he gave three specific commands to Adam and Eve:

Be fruitful and multiply
Rule over and tend to the creation
Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

The above were the first Law, predating the Law of Moses. They were uttered directly from the mouth of God to those bearing his image and breath of life and were expected to be followed.

Of the laws, the third one was accompanied by a warning of the consequences: “In the day you eat of it, you will surely die.”

Though they were like children experiencing something new for the first time, Genesis makes clear that Adam and Eve understood the commands from God, especially number three.

When Eve speaks with the serpent, she acknowledges her awareness that if she and Adam were to eat from it, death would follow.

The serpent initiates the conversation with her. Seeks her out. And states, “Did God really say that you would surely die?”

When she responds in the affirmative, the serpent denies the claim and counters with a promise that she and Adam would become as gods. With no need for God.

So she eats. Then shares with Adam.

Immediately, they lose their innocence and are ashamed because they know they have disobeyed the command of God. A slow death ensues:

Adam blames God and Eve (erosion of human-divine and human-human relations)
Eve blames the serpent (erosion of human-creation relations)
God condemns the serpent (erosion of divine-creation relations)

Subsequent curses issued by God reflect the pattern of death and confirm the world will now be a place of suffering, torment, and eventual annihilation.

The serpent’s curse is an inversion of proper design, Adam’s is an inversion of the command to tend and rule over creation, and Eve’s is an inversion of the command to be fruitful and multiple.

God also promises the serpent that one day a seed from the woman will smash his head. Highlighting the serpent as the enemy of mankind.

After the curses, physical death comes for Adam and Eve, but God instead slaughters two animals and clothes Adam and Eve in the skins. Signifying grace through the sacrificial spilling of blood by the divine.

And they are exiled from the Garden because in a state of death they can no longer participate in the eternal life offered by the tree of life (the other prominent tree in the Garden of Eden).

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Who’s the Liar?

Postmodern scholars love to argue that God was dishonest because Adam and Eve didn’t instantly die a physical death. But the argument itself is dishonest because they DID die, eventually.

A fact the serpent states outright would NOT happen. At all.

God also didn’t reveal to Adam and Eve that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would give them knowledge of good and evil (although it’s plain in the name). But that doesn’t make God a liar.

Because his command to steer clear of the tree was plain, understood, and acknowledged by Adam, who then conveyed it to Eve (who also understood and acknowledged).

Furthermore, as the ground of all being, the definition of existence, and source of eternal perfection, God CANNOT lie. So, compared to what standard is any scholar saying he lied to Adam and Eve? His own?

If so, we must be reminded that God is the standard himself and is accountable to no other beyond himself, which means he can do anything he wants. Even rewrite the rules. And we would have no say in the matter. Period.

That’s no mere philosophical conclusion. It’s a limitation set by Genesis itself.

According to that limitation, the serpent, just like Adam and Eve, was accountable to God. And he failed just as much as they did. Only his error was worse because it was premeditated.

Though he revealed the nature of what the tree would provide, he denied negative consequences and doomed humanity and creation to certain corruption and death. He is the Adversary in the story.

And he was equated with Satan long before Dante.

Ancient Views of the Fall

Serpents were a paradox in the ancient world. They were associated with both virility/healing and seen as lethal.

The god Marduk battles the winged serpent goddess Tiamat in the creation myth of Babylon

A major reason for the dualistic view is, in many mythologies, a serpent is credited with stealing eternal life.

The most memorable account besides Genesis is the Enuma Elish from Babylon. In it, there are two serpent stories. The god Marduk battles the serpent goddess of chaos and makes the universe from her mutilated body. Her death gives life.

Then, the giant hero Gilgamesh finds a long-lost plant (tree?) containing eternal life, after being told where to look by the lone survivor of the global Flood (Noah by a different name). Overnight, while Gilgamesh slept, a serpent snatched the plant and stole it away.

Such stories appear to reveal a collective memory of the first encounter at the beginning of time, where the serpent trickster deceived humans into losing the way to immortality. The only perceived solution is to somehow defeat the serpent.

What’s most important for us is that ancient Jewish sources not only agreed with those other stories but also came to attribute the title “Satan” (adversary) to the serpent as a proper name. And blamed the serpent (not God) for the Fall in the Garden of Eden.

Here’s a list of Second Temple sources and what they said about Genesis 1-3:

Wisdom of Solomon: The Fall was caused by the envy of the Devil and ushered in death, which was not created by God.
Life of Adam and Eve: Satan comes to tempt Eve out of penitence, and this is said to be their second encounter. The first was as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, where his deception resulted in sin and death for all creation. Again, the envy and pride of Satan are highlighted as the cause.
Antiquities of the Jews: Josephus attributes the Fall again to the serpent, who persuaded Eve to despise the command of God and try to take the place of God. By forsaking peaceful communion with God and Adam for equality.
Apocalypse of Moses: This document claims Satan possessed a real serpent or snake, which he then used to tempt Eve in the Garden. Satan is portrayed as a fallen angel attempting to corrupt humanity.
2 Enoch: Depicts Satanail, Satan, or Devil as also taking on the form of the serpent in order to tempt Eve to betray God and Adam. The temptation is described as seduction.
Apocalypse of Abraham: Azazel, who is identified elsewhere in Second Temple texts as the chief demon or adversary (satan), is equated with the serpent in the Garden. He comes to humans as a dragon or viper. In Leviticus 16, he is also linked to goat demons in the wilderness, where Israel was commanded to send the scapegoat during the festival of atonement.
Ben Sirach: The Wisdom of the Son of Sirach re-narrates God designing everything in pairs and ordering nature, and considers the Fall resulting from poor human choice, which resulted in sin.

All the above Jewish texts either predate Christianity or were written in the first century when Christianity was growing as a movement following the resurrection of Christ.

And they make clear:

God was not at fault for the Fall
The serpent was the adversary and trickster
Satan became associated with the serpent in Jewish circles

So, why didn’t Israel call the serpent “Satan” sooner?

Lord of the Flies

The reason Satan wasn’t associated with serpent sooner is because Baal was the primary threat for Israel through most of its history. The Canaanite storm god who defeated the sea god Yamm (symbol of chaos) and became lord of the gods.

Ezekiel in chapter 28 of his letter considers Baal the serpent. Specifically Baal Melkart, the version of Baal that ruled over the wealthy seaward cities of Tyre and Sidon.

It’s no coincidence that the region in which those cities resided (Bashan, home of Mount Herman, central hub north of Israel for temples to all the nations gods) became considered the gates of hell and is possibly the desert place where Jesus faced temptation from the devil.

In the gospels, the Pharisees refer to the devil as Baalzebub (lord of the flies). This was a mocking title attributed to the serpent to disown him in the Greco-Roman period. It identified him with the trash heaps in the region of Gehenna. The rotten stench of decay.

They attempted to connect Jesus with Baalzebub when he was casting out demons. Then Jesus dropped his famous retort about how a house divided cannot stand. Satan would never interfere with the work of his own demons. So, Jesus was not an ally of the serpent.

Baalzebub was envisioned as the ongoing enemy of the world since the dawn of time. Seen as the chief adversary (satan) and enemy of God Most High and his children.

The idea that God is the real bad guy and the serpent the defender of humanity didn’t come from the Jews. Instead, it came from a vicious enemy condemned by the church since its inception...

The Cult of Secret Knowledge

Obsession with knowledge has existed since the beginning, as the story of Genesis itself reveals. But in the Greco-Roman period, certain mystery religions began an esoteric relationship with knowledge.

The resulting product was a philosophy known as Gnosticism.

It became a religion of its own that could adapt to the framework of any other religion it wanted to. Like Hydra with its many heads.

Before we get to how Gnosticism connects to faulty interpretations of Genesis, we must take a quick detour through the beliefs of the religion. To plainly visualize it in our minds.

The formal religion was disbanded long ago, but we still face its central tenets in order forms today (see if any of these sound familiar):

The universe is an accident
Humans are trapped by nature and must transcend it
Certain groups are unjustly oppressed by systemic evil
Salvation comes through secret knowledge only a select few possess
Select groups must rule over the masses and bring about utopia

As you’ve guessed, that’s an outline of socialism/communism. It’s also an outline of Gnosticism, stripped of any spiritual jargon.

Ancient Gnosticism argued there was a Supreme Being (the Monad) who wanted to design a spiritual reality alone. He made aeons inside a Pleroma (expanse) that he filled with divine entities.

One of these entities did away with Wisdom and became the Demiurge (symbolized by a serpent with a lion face).

The Demiurge made material reality and archons (rulers) to govern it, against the desires of the Monad.

The material universe is therefore evil and corrupt. But humans have a divine spark inside them, a spirit they must be made aware of. A mistake the Demiurge overlooked.

Only a Messiah figure, a revealer with access to the secret knowledge of the Monad, can free humans from their prison of ignorance, awaken them to the spiritual, and save them from their corrupt flesh.

“Jewish,” and later “Christian,” sects of Gnosticism in the late first century became convinced that Yahweh (Creator God of the Bible) was the Demiurge, Yaldabaoth, who concealed universal knowledge to the detriment of humanity.

The serpent in the Garden was the liberator. The first revealer. He showed Adam and Eve the truth that the Demiurge sought to hide from them, which was to oppress them and keep them from becoming gods.

Yahweh’s curses were, then, the unsavory and psychotic responses of a deranged mind, hellbent on further oppressing humanity. Restraining them from reaching their full, spiritual, enlightened potential.

He trapped them in mundane tasks of survival so that they would never attain higher knowledge. Which required another Messiah figure, or revealer, to come and remove the scales from their eyes. Let them see the light.

Jesus, for the “Christian” sects, was said revealer. He wasn’t material at all. He was pure spirit in human form and never died. And was re-appearing of the serpent.

The cross was essentially a stunt to showcase the true power of the Monad (think thunder, earthquakes, tearing of the Temple veil), and prove that evil material had no control over the spiritual.

Secret knowledge of the Monad Jesus spoke to his disciples, which they never shared with anyone except the Gnostics. Therefore, the Gnostic “Christians” were the enlightened ones. With the vision to see the truth. Everyone else who did not heed their warnings and join them was damned for all eternity.

Gnosticism is where the perversion of Genesis comes from. Fueled by pride and a superiority complex, an elitism like no other.

It was rightly condemned by both traditional Second Temple Judaism and the Christian church. Because it’s a complete inversion of the teachings of the Old Testament and of Jesus and his apostles.

Gnostic interpretations have resurfaced now because they have a new face. Postmodern socialism, as noted earlier.

The new “enlightenment” thinks itself the objective superior and just re-interpreter of the ancient world and considers all else vile folly. But it’s only rehashing what has already been destroyed, dressed up in modern language.

Conclusion: Almighty God Still Reigns Supreme

Neither the text of Genesis nor interpretations from antiquity permit visualizing the serpent as the hero of the story.

He is plainly painted as THE villain, who acted out of pride and envy to sabotage God’s very good creation by tricking Adam and Eve into unleashing sin and death through disobedience to the Creator.

In every imaginable way, he is the Adversary, the Satan. His weapon is deceit, and his end is evil, chaos, disorder, and death.

Ancient Israel, Judaism, and Christianity all recognized him as the usurper, the coveter of the throne of God. He wanted to replace the Almighty in every sense, and partially succeeded.

But God intervened immediately in the Garden with sacrificial grace, paving the way for the future sacrifice of the Messiah. Who would rescue not through secret knowledge, but through his own blood. On the cross. And then rise from the grave, conquering sin and death.

Jesus not only separated himself from Baalzebub. He vehemently opposed him and exorcized his demons from the Jewish people.

The Christ made clear he was God in the flesh, the Creator God Yahweh, pre-existent Maker of everything. More than spirit. Beyond created things. Born to restore eternal life.

He smashed the head of the serpent. And he reigns supreme, seated at the right hand of the Father in the highest heaven.

No amount of cynicism will ever overcome our everlasting Lord.

Chess Match With Satan

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:19:09 GMT

Waves lapped the shore. There was the occasional slurp, like a dog drinking from an iron bowl.

Leonidas stood resolute as the shadows of the Persian fleet entered the bay north of Athens. One second there was only fog, and then they emerged, specters from the underworld.

A single doubt split his mind that the 300 Spartans who accompanied him may not be enough to keep the enemy from devouring the whole of Greece. But he stamped it out like an unwanted blaze.

They were fiercely trained, better than any of the other armies on the peninsula or the encompassing islands.

And help wasn’t coming. The rest of the city-states had made it clear they cared not what became of the Persians or Sparta. Both were annoying fleas, and of the two, they’d rather live with the new nuisance than abide the old.

Though Leonidas hated them for it, he couldn’t blame them. The kings of Greece had been at odds for over a century.

But he also didn’t need them. His small band was sufficient to at least blacken the eye of Persia’s god-king.

Whether live or die, they would send as many Persian troops to Hades as possible and become legend in this life or the next.

And that’s exactly what they did.

When Xerxes received word of the insurmountable losses, he had no choice but to demand retreat. The small Spartan fleet was dead. But not before making a mockery of his armies.

He’d been promised the Greeks were mere flies, easily swatted, but now his authority, power, strength, and integrity were an embarrassment. And the rest of Greece took notice.

The king’s pride and false sense of certainty ensured failure. That’s what happens to everyone who worships himself.

Pride is a chess match with the Devil. One you’ll easily fall into if not careful. And one you’re guaranteed to lose.

The Nature and Depth of Pride

We mistake pride as simple self-centeredness. It's so much more.

Like Xerxes, Adam, Eve, and the serpent tried to become gods in the Garden of Eden. An act of rebellion against God’s authority. As Sandra Richter puts it in her book The Epic of Eden, they could choose their sovereign (that upon which they would depend) and chose poorly.

Said choice, said disobedience, attempted to co-opt the divine.

Pride is lust for unjust power and control over something perceived as valuable. Fueled by the illusion of self-reliance. Intellectual and moral blindness undergird the vice because of the smokescreen of “autonomy” it creates.

The serpent, crafty and knowledgeable, posed a threat because of pride. He mastered it. Just like he mastered full knowledge of the cosmos.

A seraph, guarding the tree of knowledge until Adam and Eve were ready, he positioned himself for a thorough attack. Held all the cards. They were oblivious, like children, unprepared for universal secrets.

God and man stood as obstacles to absolute power, and because the latter were ignorant of the workings of the cosmos, they were easy prey.

Satan was, in fact, the first child predator.

In his hands, knowledge and wit became weapons for an attempted coup of the heavens and the earth. And he’s still on the hunt…

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You're Saved by Faith in Christ Alone

𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖊𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘 — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:10:27 GMT

Debates about salvation by faith alone (sola fide) are ramping up again. And it’s all just splitting hairs.

Catholics and Orthodox currently and historically hold that faith and works are inseparable, and Protestants put greater stress on faith.

The latter see works as part of sanctification (purification of an already saved and justified soul in Christ), which emerges from faith in Christ’s completed work on the cross.

But works aren’t separate from faith. They just have a different role. Through each Christ rescues us from the abyss.

So, what if there is no issue? What if faith and works align as allegiance to Christ the King?

Let me explain.

Faith vs. Faithfulness

Definitions are most helpful when it comes to theology.

“Faith” is belief merged with trust. When you believe something (or someone) is true and trust in it (or them), then you have entered into faith.

“Faithfulness” is the enduring inward and outward working of faith (aka loyalty) toward the object of said faith. Expression. The expected behavior emitted from belief and trust.

The latter term is interchangeable with “allegiance.” It also happens to be the most consistent translation of the Greek term pistis in the Bible.

This suggests that whenever the term is used, the most basic assumption in the New Testament is holistic inward and outward living of faithfulness toward God in Christ.

But What About Paul?

My fellow Protestants love to stress what Paul says in Romans 10:9-13 to show how one is justified by faith in Christ Jesus. And rightly so. It says:

[B]ecause, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The passage is clear. Anyone who confesses with his (or her) mouth that Christ is Lord and believes in his heart that Jesus rose again from the grave, that person will be saved.

But verse 10 is also clear: The confession is an action that emerges from the belief. It is a work of faith. The beginning of faithfulness. Different in role (outward evidence of faith) from the belief (inward experience of faith).

If your faith in Christ Jesus does not move you unto faithful obedience to Christ, into action on behalf of the Savior, to following him, then it isn’t really faith.

Which is why Paul’s argument here is consistent with James’s own words in his letter: “Faith without works is dead.”

Straight From the Mouth of the Savior

Jesus did say, “You believe in the Father, believe also in me” (see John’s Gospel).

But Jesus didn’t start his ministry with “Believe in me.” His exact initial words were, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

He then sought out his disciples and accompanied that first command with, “Follow me.”

Each command imagines a journey. You are expected to turn away from the world and toward the Savior.

Later, the imagery of Jesus’s first commands is combined with the metaphor of the Good Shepherd (referring to Jesus), who leads his flock to green pastures where they may feast and find abundant nourishment. All the while protected from the wild enemies of the world.

We’re told Jesus takes his role as the Good Shepherd so seriously that he would leave the 99 to find even 1 who wanders astray. Saving his disciples from the vile clutches of darkness (sin and death). From the wayward path they are prone to wander.

Jesus is going somewhere, on a rescue mission in this world, and wants anyone who wishes to become his disciple to forsake all else and fall in behind him, tailing wherever he leads.

The Perilous Yet Sacred Way

Jesus doesn’t allow us to disconnect faith from the journey. Anywhere in the gospels.

“Narrow is the way and few find it,” we are told.

Faith alone in God alone through Christ alone by grace alone is true. He is the sacrificial Savior, Good Shepherd, and Lamb of God, who laid down his life as a ransom for many and then conquered the grave.

But faithful acknowledgement of that profound reality is pointless without faithfulness (loyalty to him, his commands, and his leadership) to back it up. The one who has faith in Christ will forsake all other masters, idols, gods, and worship Christ alone.

Allegiance to Christ Jesus is the total picture. Accepting his sacrifice and trusting him to guide you through the wilderness to the promised land by obeying his every word and command.

The Purpose of This Account

Allegiant Faith Network exists because we believe passionately in the vision allegiance to Christ the King.

Whichever walk of Christianity you come from doesn’t matter to us.

What matters is whether or not Christ is the foundation upon which you stand. The eternal Guide leading you home.

We strive to tear down every stronghold against your journey. Destroy every blockade. And put up blinders to all other masters but the everlasting Lord.

So you too can have courageous faith in King Jesus.

If that mission resonates with you, welcome to Allegiant Faith. Give us a sub.

I’m the founder, Courageous Chris, a fellow traveler on the winding narrow way, and I can’t wait to accompany you home.