Our culture struggles with authority, not because people despise it, but because they reject illegitimate authority—authority that abuses its power. Many perceive God as such an authority, believing God has the power to prevent suffering, but chooses not to, which seems unreasonable to those unfamiliar with what the Bible teaches about God.

This episode discusses what God wants for humanity and what He doesn’t want according to the Bible. It also discusses the contrast between what humanity wants and what God wants. Most people have not heard what the Bible actually teaches about this subject - they've only heard criticisms of what people who haven't read the Bible assume that it teaches.

A lot of people believe that while there is a Creator, He does not intervene in the universe. He set it up, it is running like a clock full of natural controls, but He is off elsewhere doing God things. The Bible has a lot to say about this idea, especially in the first book in the Bible titled after its main character, Job. This literature is over 4,200 years old and directly addresses the idea of a God who is not there as opposed to a personal God. In the story, the narrator tells us that God and Satan agree on a bet. The bet is that if Job is afflicted with his children dying, losing his riches, sickened with terrible boils over his body that Job will curse God. God disagrees and takes Satan’s bet. This episode of the Bible Bard presents what this ancient book of the Bible says in its story - and it is shocking to hear!

What does the Bible teach about talking to God? About prayer? All people, even those who do not believe in God, would like to talk to him if they could. For example, in the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark we have the character Dr. Marcus Brody stating, "The Ark is a beacon. It’s a radio for talking to God." In this podcast you will see that YOU are the ARK for talking to God!

This podcast episode describes three essential things the Bible teaches about prayer - these are so simple and direct - the opposite of what many churches and non-Christian religions both teach about prayer.

The Bible Bard reflects on what the podcast has done todate and why. Here’s the problem with information about anything:        

There is too little information so that we are missing content that we need or there is too much information so that the essential content we want is difficult to find. The Bible Bard has tried to strike the correct balance between these two problems.

The Bible Bard has not included teachings about these subjects because the Bible teaching on many subjects is debatable. Instead, the methodology employed has been literary analysis of very simple and direct Bible teachings using an inductive approach that adds these simple ideas together until answers to questions, like who is God, can be expressed.

Listen to this important explanation of how the podcast works and what it does.

The Book of Job is controversial in both the date assigned to its original publication and the story that make up its contents. As said before, the Bible Bard is not here to dispute or defend the Biblical text. We have textual evidence that this is the first book of the Bible, written before the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Setting aside the book’s date of composition, the meaning of the story in the book of Job is also disputed. As listeners to this podcast know, the Bible Bard uses the methods of literary analysis to understand any text. Simple questions about the story like who, what, when, how, and why are answered, and a literary understanding of what any paragraph in the text is saying is used. While the Bible is a holy book because it tells us who God is, it is also literature, because it tells us about human beings. It does not require secret instructions or mystical templates to be understood.

Get the Story of the Book of Job as its literary content presents it. Stay away from anyone who claims that you lack training, secret information known only to them, or a theological or ideological framework that they possess (that you do not) before you can understand a biblical text.

In this podcast we look at the Great Commission and try to understand who it is given to and what it means. Here is the actual text:

"Then Jesus came to them (the disciples) and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19 (NIV)

The Great Commission is purported in tradition to be the commissioning or marching orders of the Christian church. But we know that is not correct. This episode discusses what the literature of the New Testament directly states and the context for those statements as we use the techniques of literary criticism to understand this wonderful commission.

Ask a Christian, what can Jesus do? and the answer lis usually, "anything". In this podcast we look at what the book of Mark says about Jesus in his healing ministry. There is something Mark says that Jesus cannot do. Jesus could control disease, evil spirits, and even the weather, but what he couldn't control tells us a lot about him and God's purpose in the way he has structured his relationship with human beings and in the way the world works.

The Bible verses quoted by the Bible Bard assert revolutionary things. These are thoughts and ideas human beings didn’t make up. Acting upon this information by doing what God says that is the problem discussed in this episode.

The Bible Bard podcast has discussed before why figurative language is needed in the text of the Bible. In this Part 2 of this discussion, we reflect a little bit more on the use of poetic language, simile, and metaphor, and analogies in the Bible. Here's a couple of the important metaphors of the Bible:

• Jewish nation is the wife of Jehovah, therefore Israel is married to God.
• The Christian church is the bride of Christ therefore, Jesus is the bridegroom.
• Jesus Christ is the lamb, the light, the vine, the bread.

A literary analysis of the biblical text is very important because huge differences in meaning flow from deciding the meaning of a simile, a metaphor, an analogy, and what is meant literally. This episode details what happens when an ideological need overwhelms the text itself. The Bible is a literary as well as sacred text.

interpretation conflicts with the larger meaning of a story

The Bible is a compilation of 66 individual books written by over 40 authors over a period of about 1,600 years beginning about 1,500 BC – and ending about 100 AD. This podcast Part 2 answers the question, How was the text of the Bible actually composed? This episode looks at several places (among many posside places) where the text answers this question.

Scoffers who do not believe in the supernatural, say that the many Bible prophecies made at one date, which were later specifically fulfilled at a future date, are lies. If effect, they think that bible redactors who lived after a prophesied event, edited the text to post-date the predictions so that it would appear there was a supernatural communication!

This episode explores these ideas.

In this lesson we are looking at what the Bible teaches about sex, specifically rape. Sex is such a powerful force in human life, so the Bible has a lot to say about it. Because the Bible Bard uses a literary approach to understanding the Bible, this topic compares two different rapes recorded in the Bible and finds some amazing things the Bible says about the girls raped, their attackers, and how important and revered Bible personalities responded to these crimes. You may also want to see the other topics about sex:

• Bible Bard 42 Sex in the Bible, sex in marriage, Part 1 of 4. YouTube: https://youtu.be/eCR1oW90Cgk
• Bible Bard 43 Sex in the Bible, sex in the family, Part 2 of 4. YouTube: https://youtu.be/_JQSnw4TcEg
• Bible Bard 44 Sex in the Bible, single gender sex and sex with animals, Part 3 of 4. YouTube: https://youtu.be/Hjfgw-hh-XY

The Bible Bard podcast is not trying to convert you to a religion. The podcast is informational and provides what the literature of the Bible actually teaches about a topic.