Quotes from Brian Godawa

The fact that God uses anthropomorphisms—human traits attributed to a nonhuman subject—to talk about himself is a powerful indicator of the value of imagination and human imagery in communicating and understanding truth.

1Enoch has had more influence on the New Testament than has any other apocryphal or pseudepigraphic work.[45]

Enoch protested again, "How do I know you are telling the truth? I have never heard from Elohim before. How do I know I can trust him?" The angels knew the question was reasonable. Gabriel had prepared for it. "This very night, your city will be besieged and your king will die. When you, Enoch, son of Jared, are offered the opportunity to be king, know this: If you accept, you and all your family line will be executed to clear way for a new regime.

Uriel completed the prophecy. "If you choose to escape the city with your family, you will be protected by — well, yours truly." He could not pass up the opportunity for a touch of wit. Gabriel thought Uriel's wit lessened the urgency of their warning. He reiterated, "Do not accept the offer of kingship, Enoch. It will be deadly.

Methuselah sat quiet. He was stunned. Of all the crazy dreams and visions his father had experienced throughout the years, this one was different. It hit Methuselah more like the truth than anything ever had. He thought that was strange, because he was not the mystical type. But this time, he just knew it was true.

Judah is a lion's cub; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes. And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples." And then Sheshai said, "Lion and scepter. The kingly seed we seek is the line of Judah within Israel." Talmai said, "One out of twelve tribes. But that is still not as specific as we require.

the next smallest court, the Court of Priests. This was where the animals were cut and bled and burned on the large horned altar of unhewn stones that stood before the Temple, while a chorus of priests played their instruments and sang hymns of praise to the deity. A bronze laver stood nearby for what appeared to be cleansings. The Temple façade stood sixty feet high behind the altar, with its golden roof visible from anywhere on the entire temple mount.

Only in the boundaries of a loving Creator can humanity be free. Is a fish out of the water free? Is a bird out of the sky free? Only in fulfilling our god-given purpose can mankind experience the liberty of obedience. Disobedience is not enlightenment, it is pure blindness; it is not freedom, it is slavery.

It turns out that the commonly used standard we cited above of interpreting the Bible through our plain sense, common sense, ordinary and usual meaning is an act of cultural prejudice. Our Western plain sense literalism is simply not the priority in a very symbolic genre of a different culture with a different plain sense than ours, different colloquialisms and memes than ours, and a different sense of what is ordinary and usual.

Human sacrifice empowered the gods with the spiritual life source of their victims.

understood the larger picture they were all participating in. Jesus was binding the principalities and powers over the land, and his next target was at Caesarea Philippi.

Inside was the holy place, a huge candelabra, some incense stands, and then the curtained Holy of Holies where the Ark of Covenant housed their god Yahweh. Or at least that is all Longinus had been told by his rabbi informant.

When the plain sense of prophecy makes sense, beware your own bias and seek the genre sense. Take every word at its primary, extraordinary, symbolic meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and historical facts, indicate clearly otherwise.

Twenty-five miles to the south, the Sea of Galilee and its surrounding cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida and Tiberius were all within reasonable distance for common travel and economic activity. Caesarea Philippi was a multicultural nexus of ethnicity as well, with a thoroughly mixed population of Semites, Greeks and Romans from all over the empire.

He saw them as a mob, carried away by their own bloodlust, and just as easily manipulated by their rulers as their entertainers. A crowd of otherwise intelligent or moderate individuals, could become a hive of unthinking insects, hornets incited by a wave of the hand or the proclamation of a meaningless slogan.

It could not be more perfect. Ba'al, the very god of the Anakim, Israel's ultimate enemy, was already undermining Yahweh's inheritance through spiritual adultery, and they had not even yet faced off in confrontation. "Well then," said Sheshai with a pleased smirk, "We must certainly let the influence of Ba'al do his work on these people, And we will see which god ends up dispossessing which people after all.

watched Jesus and the disciples. The brothers saw residents of the city that were standing around or near the visitors begin to tremble violently. The people could not control themselves. They fell to the ground howling and screaming as if in torment. But the voices were not their own, for the cries had an eerie, otherworldly presence to them. Evil spirits possessed the people. There were a dozen or more of the spirits, all belching out blasphemies and curses.

Messiah, "He shall be called a Nazarene." He was also well acquainted with the Davidic Psalm that spoke of Yahweh having a unique Son. "You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

All twelve of the disciples began casting out demons from those near them, in the power and authority of Jesus. The crowds moved away in fright. The celebration had been interrupted. The crowd ran away in droves. Hundreds of them. They seemed frightened to death by what they saw. Simon knew where they were running to: Pan's cave on the outskirts of the city. He knelt beside a young girl on the ground spitting up foam and speaking what sounded like magical incantations in foreign tongues.

Jesus looked outside the city just to the east where a cliff was visible, rising up a couple hundred feet in the air. It was the destination of the fleeing demoniacs: the sacred grotto of Pan. Jesus turned to the disciples and said, "Men, it is time to storm the Gates of Hades.