God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

A dive into Hebrew Bible metaphors that we can apply today I am often inspired in my writings by things I heard in adult Sunday School class or in a sermon. Last Sunday the topic in Sunday School was George Friderick Handel’s Messiah. We heard the soloist sing the passage in Malachi 3:2, 3: “But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire. And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (All passages are NKJV, biblegateway.com) I love to study biblical metaphors. Refiner’s fire…a process in which the impurities of an ore are burned away, changing the nature of the ore, leaving the pure substance like gold or silver. We discussed how fire is good…it cooks our food, gives us light, and keeps us warm. It has the capacity to drastically change the substance of what it burns. It can purify metal, sterilize or cauterize a wound, or turn a house into ash. Fire has to be...

On Tuesday mornings, I join a Zoom Bible study called Text Talk, led by my former Citrus Heights ELCA Lutheran pastor. The topic this week was Jeremiah 36, where King Jehoiakim sliced and burned the prophetic scroll dictated by Jeremiah the prophet to his scribe Baruch. Sources:  2 kings; 2 Chronicles; Jeremiah 31-39; Lutheran Study Bible notes; biblegateway.com; Wikipedia. Backstory and timeline 721 BC, as prophesied by Isaiah and others, Northern Israel fell to Assyria. Her people were removed to Mesopotamia, and foreigners were imported into the region. This squelched national identity and made it impossible for captive rebels to stage an escape. Nor could Judah decide to ally with the north to strengthen resistance to invasion. It was genius, really. So, the towns and villages of Judah were the remnant of the people of Israel. 640 BC:  8-year-old Josiah became king of Judah in Jerusalem. Under the tutelage of faithful priests, he initiated reforms, trying to discou...

The Dark In the global quest to understand the occasional, mysterious lights or floating objects in the sky, we’ve come a long way. Public attention to the topic began in 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted what the press later called “flying saucers” skipping across the sky. That was followed up in June by the infamous Roswell incident. Additional public pressure and reports engendered a series of Air Force investigations—Projects Sign and Grudge, Project Blue Book, The Robertson and Condon Reports, and the establishment of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), all to sort out whether those events were swamp gas, weather balloons, or something otherworldly. The military and Pentagon tried hard to dismiss interest in the topic of UFOs, all the while allegedly squirreling away crashed vehicles. The public cried out for “disclosure,” the real truth about the lights in the sky and the odd poltergeist activity that followed close contact. Then there were books about alien abductions. The pu...

   Image from Pixabay 4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. (1 Corinthians 12:4-11, New King James Version, from biblegateway.com) Let’s take these verses a bit at a time: 4  There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.  5  Ther...

 Bible Tidbits are shorter than blogs. I send them to an email list.  Thelink below is from ASOR, American Society for Oriental Research, and their newsletter "Ancient Near East Today." The link talks about archaeological research into when Homo sapiens and the ancestor Homo erectus and other Homos began to control fire and cook their food. It's a good short presentation on the consensus of human development.  https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/when-did-humans-start-cooking-food Why am I sending this link under Bible Tidbits? Because it has to do with our interpretation and application of Genesis 1-4. Hermeneutics is the branch of knowledge that has to do with how we interpret the Bible and other literary subjects. Do we take those chapters literally? Are we falling away from Jesus or failing God if we take them metaphorically and plumb them for the theological message therein? Here's the thing. I think I've written about this before, but it...

“As I lay on my back and prayed into the darkness, I saw a Scripture in light—Luke 3:16…” All Scripture passage are from biblegateway.com New International Version (NIV) Because I was raised Catholic, until I went away to college I had never read the Bible. I heard about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for the first time as I read the book by David Wilkerson, The Crossand the Switchblade . He was an Assembly of God (Pentecostal) pastor loving his rural Pennsylvania congregation until the night that God spoke to him clearly to go to New York and help the street gangs there. He converted several gangs and gang members, including a leader named Nicky Cruz, and started an organization called Teen Challenge. It was 1965, and I was a flaky student at the University of Washington. While I was on lunch break at my summer job in the university district, a female colleague sashayed up to the table where I was talking with a fellow student worker. At that very moment, I was disparaging stupid ...

Astrophysicist Travis Taylor A Utah ranch. Scientific measurements. Paranormal activity. And the hitchhiker effect. “There are days,” said Travis, “When we all feel packing up and getting out of here.” The Skinwalker Ranch Investigations In June, 2022, UFO journalist George Knapp, author of The Hunt for the Skinwalker , interviewed astrophysicist Travis Taylor, participant in the TV series “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch,” which just ended Season 5. The show ran in tandem with “Beyond Skinwalker Ranch,” in which two investigators, one a journalist and the other a former CIA employee, search out the connection between hauntings and alien lore on other western ranches. I was taken by a comment of Taylor while the two newish sleuths were describing the weirdness and possible danger of their findings. “There are days,” said Travis, “When we all feel like packing up and getting out of here.” Travis was reflecting on the harm that the haunting entities have the capacity, and often willin...

Why does the Holy Spirit call this person or that to a particular ministry and empower them with spiritual gifts?    A midrash is an ancient Jewish term for a fictional/historical/interpretive literary expansion of an Old Testament passage. They don’t add or take away from the actual Scripture, but they pad around it with “imaginative liberties,” stories that bring it home and make it real, like learning about the War of Independence through a romantic novel. The OT is full of reversals that are counter-intuitive to us. For example, 1 Samuel 2:5 is a liturgical song by Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel: “Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more. She who was barren has borne seven children, but she who has had many sons pines away.” It’s about attitude. Having 7 kids doesn’t mean you’ll automatically pine away. Having 7 kids and tormenting your husband’s other wife who cannot bear children could get you a big ...