{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Weird Stuff in the Bible","title":"Altars, Idols and Spiritual Gates: Unlocking Heaven and Hell","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1851,"description":"There was an incredible comment left on my last episode: “God is the biggest sci-fi nerd ever”And I loved it because yeah, I know lately I’ve been talking about portals and gateways and UFOs and someone might wonder if I’ve been watching too much Star Wars instead of reading my Bible. But these concepts didn’t start with science fiction; we’re seeing that they go all the way back to ancient times, written in Scripture itself, and will have a profound impact on how we understand spiritual warfare today.And yeah, I’ve probably been watching too much Star Wars as well, but that’s always true. A lot of these revelations I’ve been finding are actually new to me, including what I’ll be talking about in this episode.So in the last two weeks, we established a few facts we can observe from the text of the Bible: 1- for spiritual beings to pass between our realm and the spiritual realm, they can’t just pop in anywhere they want to. There has to be a way made through; a gate.2- there are gates of heaven and gates of hell, and these are for the angels/good spiritual beings and the demons/bad spiritual beings3- the gates are tied to physical locations on planet earth4- the gates can be tainted or closed, as we observed in the story of Bethel5- once the gates open, they stay open. It’s not like Dr Strange where he opens a portal, jumps through it, and then closes it right behind him. Once the gate opens, it stays open.But how does it open?Well as I was reading about these locations where gateways had been established on the earth in Genesis 12 and 28 and 35 and I Kings 13 and several other places, there was a particular word that I would see come up again and again and again throughout these stories: “altar.”I found this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible. Turn to Genesis 12, and let’s get weird.Sign up for the weekly newsletter! Get additional insights and Bible study tips for unpacking strange things in scripture. Enter your email...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/DJ0tfJ3XSg1opjzzlnBLv703XymHRviv_4zjUMvY4RU/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9hZjcw/Nzk2YTExZTI1NjBl/MTZmYjkzNDViM2Q3/NWJiMS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}