Our 20th Q & A episode is now live. In Episode 154 of the Naked Bible Podcast, Dr. Michael Heiser takes on an eclectic and theologically rich batch of listener questions. Kicking off with a question about why a bronze serpent healed snake-bitten Israelites in...
Daniel
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 143: Ezekiel 28
The focus in this episode is Ezek 28:1-19. As readers of my book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible know, this is a controversial passage. All scholars agree that this is an oracle and lament against a human prince of Tyre. The...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 122 – Ezekiel 14-15
The words of Ezekiel 14-15 were addressed to Jewish elders in Babylon who had come to Ezekiel for a word from the Lord. Knowing they were still idol worshippers in their hearts, God refused to give them comfort. Instead he lowered the boom: Jerusalem’s judgment was...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 101: Jesus, the Exile, and the Tribulation
Mike does some eschatology (and next week, too). Kind of like a Bigfoot sighting. Get it while supplies last! In this provocative episode of the Naked Bible Podcast, Dr. Michael Heiser reframes the popular evangelical understanding of the “tribulation” by exploring...
Naked Bible 82: Q&A 8
Our 8th Question and Answer episode! Transcript 82 Q&A 8 00:00 – Intro and holiday update01:00 – Genesis 32:22–32 – Is Jacob wrestling with God a unique story?06:55 – Enoch – Was Genesis 5's Enoch based on earlier material or real?17:45 – Enoch’s 365 years and...
Seventy Weeks of Daniel (aka, The Pit of Despair)
Remember the albino from The Princess Bride? The guy who was in charge of the pit of despair? That's who I feel like when asked to talk about the seventy weeks of Daniel. It is a quagmire of ambiguity and obtuseness. And yet so many people hang so much on one...
An Eschatological Spasm: McFall's Chronology of the Prophetic Weeks of Daniel
Well, it took the women in ministry issue to drive me back to eschatology :-). Just kidding. I was reading through the blog comments tonight and was prompted to see if I could find an alternate source for Leslie McFall's fascinating article on the chronology of the...
Eschatology Spasm
I wanted to post this before year's end, but things didn't work out. I plan to append this post to the eschatology archived threads. Came across three articles that (again) point out certain aspects of eschatology that all-too-often assumed rather than thoughtfully...
Christian Fundamentalism, Aliens, UFOs: What About Matthew 24:37-38 and Daniel 2:43?
As promised, in this post I'll be wrapping up my "Understanding the Christian Fundamentalist View of Aliens and UFOs" by addressing Matthew 24:37-38 and Daniel 2:43. My last few posts on that thread have directed readers to my Naked Bible series on why an obsession...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 12
Before leaving Daniel 9 I wanted to comment on Peter Gentry's very recent article, as well as two others. All three take Daniel 9:24-27 as messianic (i.e., that the anointed one who is cut off is indeed Jesus the Messiah), though they do not take all elements of the...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 11
As you read this, bear in mind again I am not taking a position or describing where I'm at with all this. My goal is to show the ins-and-outs of how Daniel 9:24-27 could be viewed (i.e., the "self evident" problem). Previous post found here: Reevaluating the 70 Weeks...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 10
Continuing on with our series, "why the seventy weeks of Daniel is more complicated than popular prophecy writers tell you -- or even know." This Daniel 9 issue requires especially close attention. It runs so contrary to what all the popular end times experts have...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 9
Continuing on with the assumptions made in regard to the 70 weeks of Daniel... In the last post we jumped into Daniel 9:24-27 and saw (to the surprise of some I am sure) that, although so many people are sure that the 70 weeks prophecy was about a timeline that had...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 8
I was going to try and address Daniel 9:24-27 in one post and then move into another point of eschatology, but the comments have persuaded me that this passage needs close scrutiny. My reason for that is the same as it has been for this entire series: I want readers...
Why An Obsession with Eschatology is a Waste of Time, Part 7
The question to address in this post is much simpler than others: Is there any biblical proof that the 70th week of Daniel = the tribulation period? This equation is critical to the pre-trib, premill vide of the rapture. That is, without this equation, that view is...