00:05:50.800So I am a big fan of this idea of, like Top said,
00:05:53.460expanding on these biblical concepts because so much is missing, right?
00:05:58.040We're just sort of armed with what we need to know.
00:06:01.200But as far as, you know, deeper context or really even humanizing these characters in the Bible,
00:06:09.140making them relatable in the sense of it's not just an idea in an old book.
00:06:17.380These are real people that really existed who had real experiences,
00:06:20.860and to try to expand on those experiences is, I think, it's a great idea.
00:06:25.780I kind of want to go with what you said, Top.
00:06:28.480We're going to get into some of these earlier books,
00:06:30.960and I kind of want to do that first maybe if you guys don't mind.
00:06:35.340And Jezebel, where did you go with that?
00:06:40.600Well, first of all, they're part of the series Chronicles of the Watchers.
00:06:44.560And Chronicles of the Watchers is actually a spinoff series from Chronicles of the Nephilim, the first series.
00:06:52.840And what these books are is the whole premise of all my series, they're all integrated, right?
00:06:59.100And the whole premise is to retell biblical stories where there are Nephilim or Watchers, that supernatural component that is connected to the storyline that I call the War of the Seed, which is that seed of the serpent versus the seed of Eve.
00:07:21.020And the idea is trying to stop the Messiah from being born, as well as these very supernatural elements that do show up in the Bible, but they're not always very clear.
00:07:35.380And so, like you said, I wanted to retell the stories and be biblically consistent, so I do that.
00:07:42.220But then I fill in the in-betweens with fiction, but I base it on historical research and mythological research.
00:07:51.900So, for instance, in the Jezebel story, I retell the Jezebel story, but what I do in all these novels, I do in Jezebel as well and in the Daniel novel.
00:08:02.900And that is, I'm not just telling the human story of what's going on, but I'm telling what might be going on behind the curtain of the spiritual world.
00:08:13.540And so the premise of all of these is, what if the gods of the ancient world, you know, we've got down in Egypt, we have Amun-Ra, Horus, right?
00:08:25.120in Canaan, we have Baal, Asherah, and various others. And of course, in Mesopotamia, we have
00:08:31.560Marduk and Ishtar and other deities, right? And so we know their mythologies, but what if these
00:08:37.160gods of the ancient world were actually the fallen angels that the Bible talks about,
00:08:43.500and they're simply masquerading as the gods of the nation so that there's some demonic reality
00:08:48.380behind those myths? I'm not saying the myths are real, but I'm saying that there's some demonic
00:08:54.440reality where they get these ideas from, and they're spinning their stories, right? And so
00:09:00.200what I do in the novel and in Jezebel is, one of the other premises of the series is,
00:09:07.680in the Bible, it talks about the link between the heavenly realm and the earthly realm.0.81
00:09:12.480And so Deuteronomy 32 verses 8 through 10 talk about how the Gentile nations of the earth are0.63
00:09:20.920under the authority of these fallen sons of God versus Yahweh, who's the authority over Israel,0.94
00:09:27.000right? And that's sort of what part of the watcher paradigm that goes throughout the whole Bible as
00:09:31.640well. And so if that's true, then there must be something going on in that spiritual realm. Again,
00:09:38.720we get glimpses of them, like in Daniel chapter 10, of what these principalities and powers are
00:09:45.580doing behind the scenes. But the principle is that it's connected to what's going on in the
00:09:50.600earthly realm and these spiritual principalities are connected to the earthly principalities and
00:09:57.560that's that's the concept of what's going on so i thought well if if i'm telling this story of
00:10:01.900what's going on for instance in jezebel and how this you know she she was the most wicked queen
00:10:08.160in all of of the history of i don't you could you could argue for history uh but um certainly for
00:10:14.040Israel's history as well. She gets married to King Ahab in order to cement an alliance with
00:10:26.800Tyre, but that represents a compromise with idolatry that she then brings into Israel,0.98
00:10:36.320her Baal worship. So I tell that story, what's going on as she's influencing Israel to bring0.98
00:10:43.400in more Baal worship. Meanwhile, what's going on behind the scenes with the fallen angels as gods,0.97
00:10:50.600Baal, Asherah, Anat, right? These beings. And so I create the storyline. Again, it's going to be
00:10:57.260speculative and fictional because we don't know, right? But I try to tell the storyline in a way
00:11:01.740that works with what's going on historically. So for example, when we have the prophets of Baal
00:11:07.620versus Elijah on Mount Carmel, I actually have those principalities and powers and what they're
00:11:14.940doing versus the archangels behind the scenes, right? And- Are they sleeping?
00:11:21.360No, but by that point in the story, of course, Baal is not allowed by God to have any of that
00:11:27.540power. Because we do see, actually, we do see these spiritual beings with some power and
00:11:34.440influence over history. Like I said, Daniel 10, which we'll talk about more today, but
00:11:40.100Daniel 10 talks about the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece, and they're battling,
00:11:45.020and that battle reflects the earthly wars that were going on in history between Persia and
00:11:52.980Greece. At least in Daniel's day, it was in the future, but it was coming, right? So there is
00:11:59.420some kind of real connection. But when God wants to display his power and show that the power of
00:12:05.840these fallen watchers, these gods of the nations, are nothing compared to him. So he stops their
00:12:11.960ability. And so Baal's not able to call fire from the skies is the point. So yeah, that's what's
00:12:17.340going on. And of course, there's child sacrifice in Jezebel. And I show the, even though this is0.95
00:12:26.960an ancient story you're going to see the parallels between modern world with abortion and feminism
00:12:33.760and so that's kind of cool but i i don't i try it's not like i try not to trumpet it you know
00:12:40.140like it's this political message you know but i make those connections real because i think they
00:12:45.880are real you know so my advertising for the books are a little bit more contemporary like you know
00:12:50.100uh you'll see a picture of jezebel and the ad will say smash the patriarchy you know that kind
00:12:55.080of thing. That's a good move. Yeah. It does appear to me that Jezebel is like this archetype,
00:13:00.440right? And that's what a lot of the characters in the Bible are. It kind of goes back to this,
00:13:04.640one of my favorite sayings from Ecclesiastes is there's nothing new under the sun.
00:13:08.520These things just kind of come in these cycles. And you can see a lot of that. A lot of this
00:13:14.280character that is Ahab plays out in a lot of men in modern day. And this character that is Jezebel0.58
00:13:21.460does play out in this modern feminism.1.00
00:13:23.720You know what's crazy until right now,1.00
00:13:49.540and they're like mimicking each other as above.
00:13:51.460so below sort of thing. I didn't realize that. Do you know the time span between that story
00:13:58.220and Ezekiel and when Jezebel was coming into Israel? Is there a significant gap?
00:14:04.600Yes. Yeah. So Jezebel is around the 9th century, I think, BC. And Ezekiel is a prophet in the exile.
00:14:16.300so that's going to be the 6th century bc so it's a couple hundred years later definitely um well
00:14:23.140let's see i thought so i think it was like um 900 800 yeah so uh about two three hundred years later
00:14:30.040so yeah there's a there's there there's a lot of history going on between there right
00:14:34.180but um and i do that the interesting thing for me is those gods since they're immortal beings you
00:14:41.740know these these angels they are the they are the through line throughout all the stories you know
00:14:46.740so you've got these same beings showing up in all these stories and various different storylines and
00:14:51.340such yeah but you're right about the what was i going to say about this um um the the jezebel
00:14:57.720story oh yeah so reading it you know you get these modern connections but um i thought i forgot where
00:15:07.380i was gonna go with that basically i was saying that you have these archetypes in in um in king
00:15:12.140ahab you know in in men that exist today and you have the same thing uh you know an echoing sentiment
00:15:17.120of the character that is jezebel in modern day feminism yeah i'm sorry thanks for so that's
00:15:22.380all right where i was going with that was what's interesting too is like i don't try while i have
00:15:26.460clear villains and and heroes uh i'm not i don't i don't like the modern day anti-hero worship you
00:15:34.280know um so i do have clear heroes and villains but even within the classical paradigm of classical
00:15:39.340hero stories uh you know the hero has to have uh failures and flaws that he has to overcome so
00:15:46.160that's for sure even you know all my even my holy characters and my prophets all have
00:15:51.200have distinct character problems but also my villains are not always not cardboard villains
00:15:57.580so for for example jezebel i don't depict her as this wicked you know wicked queen a witch queen
00:16:03.320you know like uh snow white or something like that you know in the snow white story um i actually
00:16:07.740have her as she's an actual honest pagan who who believes in her canaanite gods and they actually
00:16:16.560do believe in bringing they actually see israel as a backwards unsophisticated culture right and
00:16:24.100they are less sophisticated technically than tyra because remember tyra was a um you know a uh a a
00:16:31.280a nation that was involved in cosmopolitan um trade with all the world because they're on the
00:16:37.400ocean right so they were much more sophisticated culturally right but uh so she actually thinks
00:16:43.740she's bringing sophistication and sort of helping these religious bigots uh understand the new ways
00:16:51.920right so uh she's she's she becomes obviously she becomes what she is in terms of her evil
00:16:59.120But what I'm saying is she starts out as this person who has good intents within her own worldview, if that makes sense.
00:17:06.740That actually is a much more effective – I don't want to call it a plot device.
00:17:10.360It's really a peek into human nature because as far as your convictions go, they're not long-lasting if you don't have a sense of righteousness about you.
00:17:20.240self-righteousness, you know, and whether or not that is real righteousness, you know, in its
00:17:26.940accurate form, or if it's just your own delusions. It's crazy because what he's describing is playing
00:17:32.500out again right now. So like you said, the idea of abortion or child sacrifice and feminism back
00:17:38.720then will play out again now. But right now what we're looking at with the alien deception, and
00:17:43.220again, I saw our friend Timothy Albarino tweeting this like, hey, Christians better catch up to
00:17:48.700what's happening because yeah christians will be seen like israel as this backwards culture i saw0.64
00:17:53.880you make that tweet yeah once they uh you know they start doing disclosure and they reveal whatever0.58
00:17:58.880alien stuff they have going on and christians oppose it we will be yeah that backwards culture
00:18:03.920that hasn't caught up yet and the cosmopolitans that you know yeah i mean well we have been0.98
00:18:08.520considered that for 2 000 years you know yes yeah that's true nothing new under the sun there we go
00:18:13.620again yeah fundamentalists and all that yeah yeah yeah standing in the way of progress um you know
00:18:19.160i i could see that happening yeah a hundred percent so um i i do think that you're you're
00:18:25.420right on on the money with that there is a high likelihood what we get from jezebel is easily
00:18:31.480mocked and i'm not saying it's not deserving of mockery but you know the way that she deals with
00:18:36.240the um the olive vineyard owner and things like that uh on behalf of king ahab who slumps into
00:18:41.820a depression and gets real sad and then has his girl boss wife go and uh take care of the job for
00:18:47.500him but you know that like i said on its face is easily mockable but if you're once again humanizing
00:18:53.980these people and you consider them real historical characters then you have to try to imagine what it
00:18:59.880is to be in the mindset of an individual who who goes that far and yeah i righteous um kind of
00:19:06.520indignation would would lead you down that path not just a hollow slop i was gonna say so um
00:19:13.720that's another thing i try to do in these stories is a lot of times that when we're reading the
00:19:17.960bible we see the highlights and we don't see a lot of the in-between and sometimes those highlights
00:19:22.300kind of come out of nowhere and you're like where why would they do that you know what i mean and
00:19:27.280um if i recall correctly you know because by the way we're talking about jezebel which is a few
00:19:32.380years back for me. So I've been focused on Daniel the last year. So I'm trying to remember some of
00:19:38.040the stuff of Jezebel. But if I recall correctly, that whole vineyard thing, just the way it works
00:19:44.460out, you kind of read and go, that kind of sounds odd. Normal people don't seem to do things that
00:19:51.040way. So what I try to do is I try to fill in the story that how they got there with the vineyard
00:19:56.360and all that so that when she makes that suggestion it makes sense right so that's another
00:20:02.400thing that the fiction when we're when novelists who are trying to remain true to the bible you
00:20:06.860know because there's a lot of biblical fiction novelists out there and most christians get it
00:20:12.220you know sometimes you get these christians you know i've got the bible and that's all i need or
00:20:17.480you know you're playing with the word of god because you're making it fiction you're like no
00:20:20.900no that's not what we're doing we're trying to we're trying to expand the in-between parts of
00:20:25.560the story in order to make sense of the parts we do know and believe, which by the way, is not much
00:20:31.600different than what a pastor does when he's exegeting a passage and he's filling in with
00:20:36.500the background and trying to explain, well, here's why this passage is in the Bible, because you've
00:20:41.240got all these ancient Near Eastern contexts that make sense of it. So that's one of the things that
00:20:47.020I do, like selling vineyards or getting rid of vineyards or taking vineyards. And there's many
00:20:52.560other things as well. Like in the book of Daniel, there's a lot of highlights and strange things
00:20:56.960that occur that we don't know what's going on there. And so I try to draw from that ancient
00:21:04.840Near Eastern culture because a lot of times, and this is another big problem with a lot of Bible
00:21:09.500stories, and you've already pointed this out, but there's a lot of things that will occur
00:21:16.440or be referenced in the text and we don't know what they mean because it has a different ancient
00:21:24.740context. And I think that there's obviously been in the recent years, a greater appreciation of
00:21:30.640this, I think, in the Christian world going into this ancient Near Eastern context. And a lot of
00:21:37.920that has to do with the occultic worldview that is in Canaan or Babylon, wherever they are at,
00:22:11.780yeah well that that's sort of i think what might be responsible for a large resurgence in people
00:22:18.800who are interested in christianity uh or at least people who are in the know claim that the numbers
00:22:23.960you know are seeing a significant uptick my aunt actually was talking to my wife yesterday and she
00:22:29.840was talking about this whole uh resurgence of people to to the church and i think part of it
00:22:35.200has to do with exactly what you touched on there you can observe some of these pagan concepts or
00:22:42.440occult concepts in modern day conspiracies in a big way you know you have the whole epstein thing
00:22:47.660gets a huge spotlight on it suddenly you're left to tango with like what is moloch you know and
00:22:53.640yeah well if you go to the bible you're gonna find that so and it seems like your series is
00:22:57.860gonna have like a an excellent through line again i haven't read the uh the nephilim series or the
00:23:03.800Watchers series, but I assume that these characters, they don't change. From our show,
00:23:09.460we got in a lot of trouble saying this, that we think that the aliens and certain spirits are
00:23:14.720just rebrandings of what they were in previous times. They tell you a different name and present
00:23:19.860a slightly different image, but they do the same thing. So in your books, if you're going by that
00:23:25.580idea, you'll have the same characters recurring throughout your entire series of work.
00:23:31.760Yes. Now, obviously, the Bible goes over several thousand years, right? And here's one of the things that I, when I first started all of these books, I thought to myself, okay, we tend to, I think the average evangelical, at least let me speak for myself, before I studied this stuff, my understanding of the demonic world was very minimal.
00:23:55.200And yeah, I believe in angels and demons, but it's very alien to me, you know, and I don't experience, I haven't experienced any of that kind of stuff in my own life. But also I tended to sort of think of the evil world as this unified, you know, all these hordes of demons, right? And they're all unified in this one goal to fight God and his people and his kingdom. And of course, I still believe that.
00:24:18.960But what I didn't think through was I thought, well, you know what, demons, including the fallen angels, they're personal beings, they're individual beings. They're not like animals even or, you know, inanimate objects. So they have individual wills is my point.
00:24:38.040And I thought, even if they're evil, yeah, they may be united in their attempt to overthrow Yahweh or get Yahweh's people to worship or humankind to worship them, right?
00:24:49.720But they're going to have their own individual goals as well.
00:24:52.540It's kind of like the mafia or gangs, right?
00:24:55.160And plus the whole paradigm of the principalities and powers, the watcher paradigm in the Bible is precisely that when there is war in the heavenlies.
00:25:06.760and there's war not just between the angels archangels and these fallen angels but within
00:25:13.340themselves this is where you get in daniel 10 talks about the prince of persia um is is uh is
00:25:21.200is you know fighting with michael the prince of israel but then he says the angel says but
00:25:25.640the prince of greece will come and fight against the prince of persia what's that all about well
00:25:30.180the context of Daniel is the four kingdoms that the four Gentile kingdoms that will rule
00:25:37.500over Israel until Messiah comes. That's the whole overarching theme. So you've got, and that's why0.64
00:25:44.060you get the statue of the four kingdoms. You get the four beasts. It's all a recapitulation of the
00:25:49.380same concept that there will be the Babylonian kingdom over Israel. Then there will be the0.55
00:25:54.720Medo-Persian, then the Greek, and then finally the ancient Roman kingdom when Messiah comes and
00:25:59.960brings those kingdoms down with his kingdom. And so now I know there's various interpretations
00:26:04.620of Daniel prophecies, but the idea there, the basic idea is these four Gentile kingdoms. Well,
00:26:12.040when Daniel's talking about Prince of Persian Greece, that's reflecting the fact that in the
00:26:18.480near future from Daniel, he was under the Persian kingdom when he was writing the latter portions
00:26:24.160of daniel the greek kingdom would come and that was alexander the great's massive you know he was
00:26:30.080macedonian greek and that greek kingdom overthrew the persian kingdom so that's why he describes
00:26:37.200the prince of persia versus the prince of greece these aren't earthly kings he's talking about
00:26:41.780there these are the heavenly ones but if those are all both fallen deities and they're fighting
00:26:46.760amongst themselves that reflects the earthly um hostile conflicts if that makes sense and so um
00:26:54.100I wanted to make the villains have their own inner squabbles, just like you would see in any
00:27:00.600mafia movie, you know? And so they're jockeying for power, overthrowing each other. And then
00:27:05.680when one kingdom overthrows another kingdom, the principality of that kingdom also overthrows and
00:27:12.100maybe in chains or puts in bonds that other principality, right? So there is a lot of that
00:27:19.000going on. However, it's the spiritual realm as well. And I don't think there's a one-to-one
00:27:23.740correspondence of all the gods in every pantheon with some fallen watcher you know i think there's
00:27:29.160basically you know one principal deity over that each nation but maybe he has some minions that
00:27:35.500help him right um but the idea there is that uh is that uh since they are spiritual entities
00:27:44.240we know that like satan can disguise himself as an angel of light right so they can take on
00:27:49.680different this is my this is my premise i'm thinking if we've got these watchers of the
00:27:54.660nations sure they've got main entities of power but they're also overthrowing each other and i
00:28:01.000don't think there's a one-to-one response so i think they can they can change identities if they
00:28:04.860need to you know like yeah one guy's presenting to be bail and maybe he gets overthrown and he
00:28:10.660moves to another country and he becomes marduk or something like that right so sure so look we don't
00:28:15.460know. It's all speculation. And I'm writing fiction, so I've got that freedom. I'm not
00:28:20.380claiming this is doctrinal truth, right? But I'm trying to make theological sense of the principle
00:28:26.760of the watcher paradigm. So, okay. I think that's a reasonable thing to do. And throughout our
00:28:34.240research, I find the same thing. It seems like these things will kind of rebrand. They have a
00:28:39.600pride and an arrogance about them, they would like the worship or the fear. They will often
00:28:45.300settle for just pulling worship away from God. We've even spoken to like just regular people
00:28:51.620who say that they're in contact with this entity or that entity. And I'm like, probably not. You're
00:28:56.760probably in contact with like a lower level demon that just called itself that. Yeah, they'll go,
00:29:01.460I'm talking to Azazel. I'm like, it's probably just a dead Nephilim. So I think there's a lot
00:29:09.200of we know date azazel is is bound in the earth so right yeah and but you get that ozymandias i
00:29:16.240think is another one is or osmodeus or yeah asmodeus um so i'm sure there is a lot of great
00:29:23.800reasons and i can see the through line why you would go from the watchers and chronicles to
00:29:29.200daniel but i'd love to hear it uh from your perspective why did you choose daniel uh it's
00:52:39.060In fact, he was an Egyptian idol worshiper
00:52:41.180until God took him, you know, brought him out.
00:52:44.520And so Moses writes, you know, the five books,
00:52:49.220but if you look in there, you see influence of Egypt,
00:52:54.160not just in the language, but in some of the ideas,
00:52:56.360so much so that it's arguable, for example,
00:53:00.780that Genesis 1 engages in what's called a polemic.
00:53:05.980And there's a lot of polemics in the Bible where you're writing a story, he's writing a story about, you know, the creation, but embedded within that story of Genesis 1, he's making references in conflict with the typical Egyptian understanding, right?
00:53:25.540So, you know, the Egyptian understanding would be that, you know, a mound, the primal mound, it comes out of the chaos waters, right?
00:53:33.640and and moses describes oh you know god's separating the waters from the land etc but
00:53:38.720it's yahweh and it's yahweh spirit over the deep not amun right and not these other deities and
00:53:46.280then there's a whole system where you know egypt had these uh primal eight ogdoad eight primal
00:53:53.420deities that created the the universe and one is a spirit of wind and one is water and all this
00:53:59.520kind of stuff and and no moses uses the same language in describing how yahweh was actually
00:54:07.560creating the spirit and the winds and the you know and and such but it's showing that
00:54:12.940it's demythologizing it's these aren't spiritual beings they are natural world things in control
00:54:21.220but of the hand of yahweh not your ogdo ad right yeah there's a lot of that polemical a lot all
00:54:29.140throughout in fact that's one of the things that shows up in a lot of my novels is precisely that
00:54:33.780what what i find to be the case is um a lot of these pagan and occult practices are about um
00:54:41.660engaging with fundamental building blocks of this realm that we inhabit and systems that god has
00:54:48.320created but twisting them and misattributing them to some other entity um and so you know in that
00:54:57.020way i'm not gonna i don't want to say they have a lot in common with us but they're not operating
00:55:02.440outside of the realm of reality meaning the nature of the realm that we inhabit is as such um you
00:55:11.280know occult practitioners are going to engage with um with frequency in their chance and they're
00:55:18.100going to engage with geometry in the pentagrams and such that they create and they're going to
00:55:23.220have um sacrifices you know and this is something that's consistent throughout the bible but they're
00:55:28.840going to be doing this in an effort to manipulate reality yeah by by screwing with fundamental laws
00:55:37.040that that god has created and they're doing it at the behest of or the idolization of a false god
00:55:44.260but in that way they have done a thing that christians have pulled away from entirely and
00:55:51.200I'm not saying we should be practicing that.
00:55:52.900There's no need for sacrifices anymore.
00:55:54.720There's no need for any of these things.
00:55:56.320But to inherently call it demonic, it's like it's not inaccurate.
01:02:08.480Yeah, something with an M, I forgot the name of it.
01:02:11.000mirage mirage yeah yeah but he's he's like likening that to a spiritual entity and we're
01:02:17.160like well god says you're either for me or against me so there is no neutral maybe there are there
01:02:21.160are actors that kind of don't want to be so bad but there are two sides it's either you're
01:02:26.280detracting from god or you are pointing at god and with him and it's interesting because when
01:02:31.160you look at that the concept of a daemon it says um the idea of integrating it is recognizing and
01:02:37.960honoring your inner guiding voice which is like if we go to we have a clinical psychologist friend
01:02:42.600who talks about schizophrenia and the influence of demonic entities um so maybe maybe it sounds
01:02:49.880flowery language right honoring your inner guiding voice or quote god within which is like all right
01:02:56.760we're in a weird place and this is transforming it from neglected force into a creative driving
01:03:01.520force and if you combine that concept with all of the instances of people being inspired by
01:03:07.820something outside of themselves to create works of art or something like that channeling is really
01:03:12.240what that's called yeah like the i mean the nine muses in short greek mythology yeah which is
01:03:17.420it's where a lot of this this kind of you know idea comes from um yeah yes it's a slippery slope
01:03:25.260What you're getting at, too, is that what you're explaining is exactly also what God is doing in the Bible, which is this polemical subversion, right?
01:03:38.520So, for example, you're saying, you know, the young in psychology and modern-day notions, you know, it's not that, oh, those are meaningless, those are nothing, they don't exist.
01:03:48.660It's like the Christian saying, like, other gods don't exist, you know?
01:03:53.260I used to believe that, but now that I follow the Bible more closely, the Bible says they do exist.
01:04:01.880It says, take no other gods before me.
01:04:03.740Exactly. But this isn't polytheism, right? We're not saying polytheism, but it's definitely not
01:04:08.840the modern day Western monotheism that's rooted more in a medieval understanding of things.
01:04:15.160And it's going back to a more ancient world, the biblical worldview that says there are Elohim,
01:04:19.500there are gods yeah but they're not like god at all and they have you know it's not like
01:04:23.680keno theism or polytheism but you have to understand that worldview correctly which
01:04:28.620is what gets you to saying okay so all these systems modern day you know occultic or even
01:04:34.340secular systems they're actually rooting into connecting into the spiritual world in some way
01:04:41.720and they're being deceived they're being manipulated they're by demonic entities or
01:04:45.860what have you. That's the polemic that says there's some reality to what they're saying.
01:04:51.560It's just not the reality they think it is. And so in the Bible, again, many times, one of my
01:04:56.680favorite examples is a writer of the clouds. You know, there's many passages, which includes
01:05:02.680Daniel seven, the son of man rides on the clouds up to the ancient of days. But there's many times
01:05:09.080when God is described when he comes to judge nations or cities like Egypt. He says, I ride
01:05:16.560on the clouds in Isaiah. He comes on the clouds. He's chariots in the clouds, the day of clouds.
01:05:22.220Well, this cloud concept, you don't read about that back in the days of Moses because they're0.97
01:05:28.920in Egypt, a very different world. But when they go into Canaan, they encounter the storm god,
01:05:35.820Baal. And Baal, in the actual texts of the Baal epic, he's described as the charioteer of the
01:05:44.820clouds, the rider of the clouds. And so within their ancient context, the storm god, clouds
01:05:51.980represent the power of nature, and he brings the rains and such like that. Well, there wasn't rains
01:05:56.780in Egypt, right? So you don't see water language about God when they're in Egypt, but you do in
01:06:04.780Canaan, and he's using the language that they used of Baal, but they're using it of Yahweh.0.55
01:06:10.080Yahweh is the writer on the clouds. Why? Is that because, you know, modern liberals will say,
01:06:14.760well, you know, they try to subvert it and say, well, that's because the Canaan or the
01:06:19.780Israelite notion of Yahweh evolved out of the ancient Canaanite notion of Baal, and they made
01:06:26.380Yahweh from Baal and all this. No, no. He's entering into this land in conflict with it and0.85
01:06:32.600saying, yeah, Baal is not the writer in the clouds. He's not the storm God who brings the0.57
01:06:37.920rains. Yahweh is the storm God. Yahweh is the one, right? And so they're using that common0.90
01:06:43.860understood language to say, no, your God's not the God of gods. Our God is, you know? And so that's
01:06:50.400a common thing throughout the whole Bible, you know? We do have that. I feel like that is,
01:06:55.680we're not called to keep the gospel to ourselves, right? We're called the great commission is to go
01:07:00.240forth and make disciples of men. And that doesn't exclude pagans and occultists. And a lot of the
01:07:06.740fault of modern day Christianity is that they can't speak the same language as these people
01:07:11.080who are having real and profound experiences that are outside of the materialistic paradigm
01:07:14.800that we have in the West. If you can speak the same language as them and say, yeah, yeah, I
01:07:19.520acknowledge the thing that you're interacting with. You are having profound and meaningful
01:07:24.780experiences and if you can just kind of get to that point and have some of that guard let down
01:07:32.180because of course you imagine these people are being told by anybody who will listen to them
01:07:36.040that they're kooks that they're out of their mind for for saying they're having spiritual experiences
01:07:41.120or any of these things if you can have a conversation and eventually get to this point
01:07:46.000where it goes now i gotta break it to you you're having a fundamental misunderstanding of the
01:07:50.480nature of the things that you're interacting with mostly because the things you're interacting with
01:07:56.120are telling you their nature so it's like it's not like all of this is bull you know you are having
01:08:02.520really profound spiritual experiences that go back to the people of antiquity this is this is
01:08:10.620actually something that's fundamental to the human experience this isn't outside of it um
01:08:16.120And the Bible does have answers for these things, but most Christians don't know that.
01:08:22.580So it's like you've received the gospel, you've received salvation, you know, by faith, through grace, and then you've kept it to yourself.0.51
01:08:42.420And I think it's a huge disservice because these people, I find that the testimony given by individuals who came through paganism and then were saved by Christ is really potent, really powerful.
01:09:00.300It's some of the most meaningful testimony that I've ever heard given.
01:09:06.760And these people, in other words, I think they're important.
01:09:10.520I think these people who can see through that veil, who don't just believe in, you know, whatever America has given them or really just the modern day world at all has given them, you know, you go to work, you do your nine to five.
01:09:24.680The supernatural is pseudoscience. It doesn't exist. There are people who go, no, I don't buy that.
01:09:30.420And they they push through that and they they interact with something that is real. It's right here all the time.
01:09:38.180This is spiritual warfare, and I'd love to get into that conversation after this, but those people that are willing to do that, those are passionate people.
01:09:49.680Those are people that if you can help them find this narrow path, their testimony can go on to help endless amounts of people.
01:10:00.260Actually, our second show today, the guy Seth Kicklighter does come from that field, a New Age practitioner who kind of figured out what we're talking about now.
01:10:12.740At the very beginning, you were talking about when you're writing these character arcs for your characters within the story, these biblical characters, you include their flaws.
01:10:22.100when i read the book of daniel um i don't see many flaws in the i don't see any flaws realistically
01:10:30.280it's a yeah it's it's such a long span of time and from the beginning to the end of this story
01:10:36.400and it's kind of like just daniel just does all this awesome stuff just seems like he crushes
01:10:41.500super hard yeah he yeah and it but it doesn't make him as more as a relatable relatable relatable
01:10:49.620as like a david character right we yeah we really love david because he's he's failing and he and
01:10:54.580he's doing great things and he's he's a human being daniel is just kind of always on it unshakable
01:11:01.940unshakable never never having doubts where do you wait i mean i'm sure if if i pick this thing apart
01:11:08.660you'd gleam some some aspects of his character but what do you what are you seeing in this yeah
01:11:12.740Yeah. Well, that's a very good question. A lot to say about that. So yeah, all my biblical heroes
01:11:20.180are sinners saved by grace, right? So Daniel does not start out as a holy, perfect obedience to God
01:11:28.540because no human does, right? And so, but it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't show that.
01:11:33.440Well, think about this too. He's there 70 years and it shows like the first, you know, 20 years
01:11:40.440of nebuchadnezzar it has like three or four incidents out of all those 20 years and then
01:11:46.820a couple incidents during belshazzar belshazzar and then during cyrus well like there's so much
01:11:54.760that's not shown it's only showing the highlights of that so that it's so it's so spread apart
01:12:00.540exactly get chapter to chapter and and then they go wait a second there's a guy daniel that could
01:12:05.300help you and i was like what do you mean he just did this but it's like no this is 20 years yeah
01:12:09.400a long time you go how are you forgetting and look but the nature of literature is such that
01:12:14.400you have to you know and the bible has its chosen themes and what it's focusing on this is why
01:12:19.120also you don't really read about any females there might be a couple queen references in in
01:12:24.840daniel but there's no females in there uh so i have a i have a love interest a romantic interest
01:12:30.020in my story with daniel because i you gotta have a love story man i love love stories right
01:12:57.680this is where the fiction and speculation fills in.
01:13:01.300And so I draw from what Daniel ends up,
01:13:04.780And I know that's how he ends up. And so how does he begin? And so, you know, the story begins where Daniel's like 15 years old and he's a noble in the royal family, you know, and there's some indications of that in the text.
01:13:19.320And I thought, well, what might be relevant to a story like this where a kid who's actually maybe an achiever because he's in the royal line, maybe he's even in the royal line, not directly, but close enough that if enough people were killed, he might become king himself.
01:13:35.760So maybe Daniel had some aspirations of royalty himself, so he wanted to be the best of everything, right?
01:25:51.660And it was on X's at first, you know, but anyway, so, so he does that.
01:25:56.980But also I draw from the Babylonian mythology and I like to incorporate
01:26:02.660elements of the Babylonian theology into the spiritual world for their
01:26:06.560storyline. So when you read my stories, it's not just a,
01:26:09.420original storyline of the gods you're going to actually learn a little bit about the worldview
01:26:14.100and their mythology for example you know i have um there's a myth about called the anzu bird and
01:26:20.560the anzu bird uh is this hybrid monster in the spiritual realm and you know he's like a lion
01:26:28.280and an eagle and a you know and he flies and stuff like that so he's in in the mythology he
01:26:34.600steals the tablet of destinies, which is the talisman of power that the king of the gods
01:26:42.200has. And Marduk has to go and kill him and get the tablet back. So I incorporate that into my0.77
01:26:49.980storyline, but in a way that fits in with also the story of Daniel. And so reading this, you're
01:26:55.160going to get that taste and flavor of their mythology, but it's in the spiritual realm.
01:27:00.280It's not going to be, I'm not saying the mythology really happened, but I'm just saying
01:27:03.500um in the spiritual realm how might these beings operate so we have uh there are um
01:27:09.860mushushu dragons you know if you've seen the ishtar gate with these dragons that have a lion
01:27:17.560body and front claws and eagles talents at the back a dragon head and a uh a serpent tail very
01:27:25.600very common that was the emblem of nebuchadnezzar that was the emblem of his family and so i have
01:27:33.280those as real spiritual creatures as well you know so in the spiritual realm and that that keeps it
01:27:38.760in in that realm of the angels fighting with the um the gods of the world very cool you've made it
01:27:45.900so that i have to now read these books uh i would love to see an adaptation of this sort of thing
01:27:51.720by the way you can start with daniel a lot of times people i'm gonna wait till all three books
01:27:55.960are done you don't have to every book is a beginning middle and end and the same in the
01:27:59.960whole series so you can start with this daniel book and if you really like it then you can say
01:28:05.040okay i'm gonna go back and read the whole series you'll be fine um so and don't don't wait till
01:28:09.040the whole series comes out because you won't need to it's a complete binky in the middle and like
01:28:12.940we were talking daniel has these major key points in his life and i'm telling each of those key
01:28:17.540point stories in the trilogy i can feel already that like maybe the first book that's already out
01:28:23.500right now has a lighter vibe he's a younger dude and as we go into the second and third book it
01:28:28.860probably gets pretty dark and a little bit gnarly it does let me ask you any plans for uh
01:28:36.060bigfoot nebuchadnezzar well i can i can tell you what i'm gonna do with that nobody's gonna know
01:28:45.100nobody's gonna catch until it happens it's gonna be so cool but i am dealing with that that that
01:28:50.600notion what about werewolves and all that kind of stuff um so yeah in fact uh i might even have
01:28:57.780something similar to vampires in the second novel oh interesting and something similar to zombies
01:29:06.100what fascinating honestly i think i'm a bit i'm really um into all of the sort of the cryptids
01:29:13.700and everything i think there's there's more than likely a biblical basis if any of these things
01:29:17.460are actually real you can find instances instances of them uh in the bible and and you know i just
01:29:24.180I'm a big fan of believing that the Bible has explanations for so many things that people think don't exist.
01:29:31.240And if they find out they do exist, think that Christianity could never address it.
01:29:35.540I find that to be overwhelmingly not the case.
01:29:38.720I think it's going to be a great time to be an author of a biblical narrative in the way that you're doing, especially with the new the new what is it called?
01:29:48.980The resurrection, not the resurrection.