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Biblical Imagination
At Nerd Church we played a game in which we had to build a society in a fictional world and see how long we could get it to last before it caved under the weight of its social problems. The scenario I offered was a world in which angels and humans procreated and gave birth…
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The Disembodied Souls of the Giants
As an exorcist, I have had to deal with many kinds of demons, each one with a different strength, weakness, and personality. When I started this ministry, I’d try to force them out, but it rarely worked. It wasn’t my Christian authority that was in question—indeed, I had forced one of them to admit that my…
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The First Fugitive
Many have heard about the “mark of Cain,” even though no one knows what it is. Whatever it was, its intent was to protect Cain from being killed by anyone now that he was a known fugitive for murdering his brother. This mark communicated in some way that if anyone killed Cain, vengeance would be…
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Serpentine
I worked quite a bit with serpentine imagery in an allegorical fantasy book I wrote. The villain was a huge snake with robot legs and robot wings, who tried to pretend he was a dragon. Temptation was offered by snakes that tried (very poorly) to pretend they were harmless sheep. As humans gave into temptation,…
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Fall Like Lightning
The story of Satan’s fall is told in several ways, but the general narrative remains the same. In Ezekiel 28, he’s described as a wise and beautiful cherub who lived in Eden. But once his pride went to his head, he sinned and was cast to the ground. Isaiah 14 explains this pride further, telling…
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Splitting the Adam
You may have been told that women have one less rib than men, but this is not true, as both men and women have 24 ribs. You may have also been told that God made Eve from Adam’s rib, but this is not correct either, as God made Eve out of Adam’s ṣēlāʿ, a Hebrew…
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The Genesis 1 Debate
Many Christians are insistent that God created the world exactly as described in Genesis 1 and that if you question this, you’re not saved. But this argument is inconsistent, for no one actually holds to the creation story as it’s written—everyone adds some level of science to its account. Ancient people had a mythological understanding…
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Glory Light
Glory is a difficult word to explain, even for theologians. In a literal sense, it can be something like weight or heaviness. Perhaps this is why priests couldn’t stand up in Solomon’s Temple when God’s glory entered it or why a common manifestation of the Holy Spirit is for people to suddenly drop to the…
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The Heavenly Melting Pot
The great melting pot is not America, but the coming New Creation where Heaven and Earth merge with one another. America may celebrate its cultural diversity, but it does so with the unspoken expectation that if you’re going to live here, you must blend in. Don’t do anything unfamiliar to the white majority or we…
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Meditate, Not Memorize
In starting his career, God told Joshua that he needed to meditate on the Book of the Law day and night and do everything written in it without straying to the left or right. This will be an important task for this new political leader of Israel if he is to create a just and…
Jamin Bradley 