Discernment Episodes

If you have followed this podcast for some time, you might detect some discrepancies. And you would be right. I’m not what many would call a seasoned Christian. My journey as a Christian has been but a few short years. Perhaps my life was preparing me for the journey, only God can say, because when I finally embarked on this journey, it was what many would describe as fervent, zealous - even fanatical if you ask some. I have a “four to eight” program (Go to bed at 4 PM, get up at 4 AM, study unt...

Some of the most challenging tests for the Berean Filter app come from religions that don’t negate Jesus but redefine Him. We saw this when we researched the Muslim challenges to Christianity. Today, we looked at the top 5 challenges a Jehovah's Witness would present and fed them into the Berean Search app to test the response. Armed with the response from the Berean Search app, we then turned it around and started asking questions that would make the average Jehovah’s Witness uncomfortable. Unl...

We scoured the web for some of the top objections a Muslim person would raise against Christianity. Then we fed those questions into the Berean Teacher Search App to get a direct scriptural response. This was part of our plan to test the abilities of the Berean Teacher to respond to some of the toughest objections a Christian might face. When the question of lineage comes up, there is something the Berean app initially failed to bring up that completely reframes why Mary's genealogy is so import...

This is exciting for us! Today, we launched The Berean Teacher so our listeners can access the same tool we use daily to understand the Bible and find answers to scripture that are supported by scripture. We will be refining this tool to adhere strictly to Berean standards, supporting scripture with scripture, avoiding interpretive traps and doctrine. The tool is not meant to flatter or affirm the user’s ideas; it is meant to correct and teach appropriate scripture based strictly on what the Bib...

We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about how the internet and AI can lead you astray with one simple strategy: affirmation. Your social media account, all the places you’ve visited online, all the videos you watch, all of it is a reflection of you. Jump into an AI chat, tell it what you're thinking, even if it’s completely wrong, and you’re likely to get the most amazing support to the point where you’re convinced that you could never be wrong on this. It’s worse when there are multiple, but unp...

I just watched a lengthy interview on Danny Jones podcast of Chris and Emily Bledsoe. the Title is NASA’s Forbidden Alien Study Finds Proof of Spiritual Beings | Chris & Emily Bledsoe. These are two of the most credible people discussing alien encounters I’ve ever seen. The point here is not to debunk their experience. Quite the opposite, I think we should take it very seriously. Included in the source material is our original document “Signs, Spirits and Synthetic Minds and then a follow up art...

One of the temptations of reading ancient biblical text is to dismiss it as, well, ancient. Like it doesn’t apply to us. We are much more sophisticated, more cultured, wiser, smarter, more civilized. At least that is probably the thought running through a passive reading… until you pull back the curtain on today. Note for the Ancient War in Modern Dress Episode Link: https://www.rabbitholesandmeditations.com/the-ancient-war-in-modern-dress-looking-behind-the-curtain-of-modern-spiritual-warfare/

What is it about the word “No”? I don’t know about you, but for most people, the minute they are told they can’t have something, they want it. Or at the very least, they are curious. A friend of mine has a two-year-old, and up until now, he’s gotten everything he’s asked for. Now, he’s learning the word “no”. There is a reason we call this age the “terrible twos”! Inevitably, when the boundary is set, a person wants to see what is on the other side of the barrier. And that doesn’t stop at the ag...

You can read the Bible as a historical text, but if you do that, you’ll be hard-pressed to explain several passages that God-fearing people are often pressed with. One such question that often goes unanswered is how a loving God can command the utter destruction of entire races. One such example: Deuteronomy 20:16-18 - However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorit...

I happened to catch Pope Leo and the Catholic Church discussing concerns about AI. I thought this might be a good opportunity to weigh in as well. We’ve been very open about our use of AI on this podcast. Included in the source material is a recent Vatican discussion on AI and our response to it. I was particularly triggered by the idea that an institution heavily using AI is telling its members not to use AI. This is mentioned briefly in the paper. I think, ultimately, like with any technology ...

When you engage with the Bible and the Holy Spirit, you never know where it is going to lead you. This morning, in my quiet time, I sought to understand the relationship between the old temple and the new temple. That led me to seek a deeper understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. As you dig into these questions, you can't avoid the garden metaphors that are everywhere, so we chased those metaphors. That led to one of the coolest revelations of all. God is Growing a Garden. Well, it all co...

In our last study, we addressed the question of the rapture head-on. This taught me a lesson that I sometimes forget. Read the text! Understand the context. It seems that no matter what denomination and no matter how well-versed the pastor is, the theory of the rapture changes like changing the channel on the television. The pastor is the news anchor. If you don’t like CNN’s version, flip over to Fox. If you don’t like Fox’s version, flip over to MSNBC. Nobody seems to be reporting the event. Th...

You know, 10 years ago we would see the stories on the front page of the National Enquirer with headlines like: My Dad is an Alien . Now, the people who were once on the fringes of the News headlines are testifying to the US Congress. Americans are bracing themselves for disclosure. So far, there’s a lot of testimony, some pretty interesting videos, and random smartphone videos pepper the web. Whether real or not, it's common. I don’t think it will be long before we are presented real actual und...

I think, as a rule, we tend to dismiss people who express profound interest in the spiritual, ghostly realm. Worse, we think those who claim to have had actual experiences with ghosts and spirits as “crazy”. It all gets swept under the table. I think as Christians we are missing a profound opportunity if we do that. The Bible is no stranger to the spiritual world. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this w...

I think we are on the cusp of a buzzword becoming reality. Ray Kurzweil predicted the singularity to happen around 2030. I think he was right about the substance; he was wrong about the when (but not by much). The (technological) singularity is a hypothetical point when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, triggering rapid, self‑accelerating technological change that fundamentally transforms society and human life. The inspiration for this discussion came from a video by Wes Rot...

Yesterday we talked about: “The serpent we built.” This is the other side of the coin, now looking at the shepherd we follow. It derives from the exact same conversation we had with the Berean Teacher application about the Serpent We Built. We’ve entered an era in which we’re getting our guidance from AI - WAY BEYOND what to buy and what website we're looking for. You've heard people say this, I'm sure: “I absolutely know this is true! I saw it on the internet". Some say it tongue-in-cheek but m...

The Serpent We Built is an article developed for our Berean Teacher series. As you may have learned from recent episodes in this series: We used our Berean Teacher application and uploaded discussions and videos from a number of sources to get the Berean Teacher (an application confined to the scriptures) to weigh in on the recent news and topics submitted by our audience. The idea was to cover as much from all sides of the discussion as possible and then let the Berean Teacher respond with a co...

We used our Berean Teacher application and uploaded discussions and videos from various sources to have the Berean Teacher weigh in on the recent news. The idea was to cover as much from all sides of the discussion as possible and then let the Berean Teacher respond with a comprehensive biblical perspective. The Berean application evaluates modern ideas, spiritual claims, cultural narratives, and emerging technologies through the authority of Scripture alone. Its purpose is to separate evidence ...

If you’re watching some of the biggest YouTube channels, or at least the biggest ones I watch - Chase Hughes, Steven Bartlett, Tom Bilyeu, the Why Files, and more, across the board, you are going to run into almost a universal consensus that we are living in a simulation. We decided to pit this theory against scripture using our Berean software. The Berean application was written to avoid the affirming nature of AI chats. The explicit instruction is that if I say something contrary to scripture,...

I don't know about you, but if the four Gospels were identical copies of each other, what would be the point? If four people walk into a courtroom as key eyewitnesses and they deliver exactly the same testimony, what would you think? Why should you expect the eyewitness accounts in the gospels to be any different? As a Christian, I always read knowing that I'm seeing the gospels from different perspectives. If you want to view the Gospels from a single narrative, look up the Gospel harmonies tha...

There is a lot of rhetoric online about Israel and Iran. The US is clearly approaching a war with Iran if not already in one. So, things against that automatically get one marginalized by those who support the effort in Iran. And of course, relative to the Middle East, you're going to get people calling out "Zionists," people who support Israel, people who take a more discerning approach toward support for Israel, and everything in between. People that I’ve followed for quite some time now seem ...

The first time I read the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown I was fascinated by it. It was a work of fiction, but it felt absolutely true. At the beginning of the book, it even says this: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” I happened to be on a flight to Paris when I was reading that book, years ago. One stop among many was the Louvre’, which, as you know if you’ve read the book, is the setting at the beginning of the book. In The Da Vi...

We take a break from the Red-Letter journey today to just discuss the elephant in the room. And to be sure, your elephant might look different. You could be looking at the tail or a foot. Or at the trunk. You're just a speck on this huge planet, and your perspective will drive your agenda... or perhaps your agenda will drive your perspective. I'm not sure in which direction we travel. As I was looking at this, I recognized that I, too, have an agenda. So does President Trump. So does Netanyahu. ...

We are on the other side of the crucifixion. Easter has passed, and on our Red-Letter journey, we come up to what I can only describe as jarring! When you have invested as much time as we have and focused on the harmony of all four gospels, there is something in Mark's last chapter that I've simply highlighted and marked as OPTIONAL. Let's explain. We have added Mike Winger's research and transcript to this Podcast. Mike has done an in-depth study of Mark 16. We summarize his video transcript in...