Sometimes things are hidden in plain sight. We may even know they are hidden, but we don’t know where to look. That is how I felt the year of 2018 as my Bible Study group was reading through the Bible Chronologically, I felt that there were pieces missing from my understanding of topics like idolatry, giants, and the prophetic books. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says that “What exists now is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing truly new on earth.”, but yet, I couldn’t understand why someone would worship a lifeless token, why I (a Gentile) should care about Israel’s rebellion, or any number of other passages that I could not explain from within my 2000 A.D view of this ancient book.
It wasn’t until my wife, Christi, and I took a trip to Africa that I discovered the answer. No, I didn’t have a revelation. I simply felt more than the culture change while coming back into the US. There was a sense of a change in spiritual warfare tactics the moment we landed in the U.S. In Africa, there seemed to be a spirit of fear everywhere, but in the U.S. there seemed to be a spirit of self-pleasure. It was not just a cultural difference, because the airports on both continents were the same physical environment. Upon mentioning this to my pastor, Pastor Douglas A. White, he recommended looking into the work of Dr. Michael Heiser. After watching Dr. Heiser’s first two videos on the Naked Bible Podcast ‘Start Here’ page, I was hooked. The Bible opened up to me in a totally new way. The overarching story was the same, but I had missed the scope. This wasn’t just about a girl eating a piece of fruit from a snake. Real spiritual warfare had been present from Genesis 3 through Revelation 20. Every biblical author seemed aware of this, but somehow while reading the entire Bible multiple times, I had glossed over these details.
My wife, 6 children, and I always walk through a 25-day advent book each December, letting each of our children take turns placing a felt ornament on our Advent tree, and building the anticipation for the consummation of the story of redemption. In 2018 After learning about the divine council, the original context of the scriptures, and the bigger cast of characters in the Bible, I realized that our typical advent studies were skipping some of the most exciting and interesting parts of the redemption story. That’s when I started writing “An Advent for The Cosmos”. It has become more than I had hoped, and I am excited that it was published through The Naked Bible Press.
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