Episodes

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. Un...

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 imp...

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...

Well, I started right where I should have in our journey tracing events in the bible where God has lived among men. The Israelites are about to construct the first human-built dwelling for God to live among them. I started today with Exodus 25 and didn’t get very far. I got to thinking about the last commandment (thou shalt not covet), about everything God is doing in this moment. I chased those thoughts. So today’s podcast isn’t not about the place where God lives … but then, as I think about i...

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...

Just chillin’ with A.I. today. We may inject these conversations we have with A.I. occasionally into our podcast. One note before you attempt this. Always do it from a grounded position… or you will come away with a firm grip on the unreality you entered the conversation with! That, I believe is one of the dangers of A.I. We treat it as all knowing. You’ll see from this conversation that we do not let A.I. grab the limelight. We enter into the conversation from a very solid framework. If you ...

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...

Probably nothing is debated more among Christians than the Rapture. I was just watching a sermon by Pastor David Jeremiah, and I think even he is caught up in the systems developed to predict and explain the rapture of the church. Frankly, while I love this pastor and, like so many others, I think he gets it wrong on this issue. Full disclosure. If you follow me through this podcast, from the beginning, I present all the angles. It is really a hard question, and if you rely on Pastors and Teach...

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 unde...

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 ...

This podcast is responding a listener request about reincarnation. During the discussion, we learned a number of things. While addressing the issue of reincarnation, we also found out the following, and I have a feeling this is more common among professed Christians than you might think. These statements are telling. I find it really difficult to read the Bible; it’s just too hard to understand. I’m a good person. I think all people end up in heaven. Bad people come back reincarnated to lea...

If you’ve ever gone through the interview process of some of the bigger companies, you were probably given some sort of a personality test… even if you didn’t realize it. The tech company I worked for liked Myers-Briggs. We all knew our MTBI, and most of us could ascertain the MTBI of our coworkers in a matter of minutes. As a salesperson, I was trained to ascertain my client's MTBI as quickly as possible and to tailor my responses to what works best within that person’s framework. Yeah… compani...

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 R...

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 th...

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...

So, I’m in the midst of writing a book and the first part takes place in Israel and I’m trying, as a Christian, to understand the Bible from a Jewish perspective. IT IS REALLY HARD! I don’t know if it’s just because I have not engaged the scripture so much from that side of the fence or not. In a game of Christian vs. Jew, the Christian ideology seems to make more sense of the text. The Jews have an obstacle that they have to dance around - namely Jesus and the Cross. Notes for Jews and Chris...