Cassian's Recap: Do gods still exist today?

Do Other Gods Still Exist, and What Is the Biblical Creation Story?

Hey everybody, this is Cassine Blino your host of biblically speaking and this is my post episode recap. This is gonna be a recap of the episode with dr Joseph Miller where we discussed do God still exist today and I mean that in there like a genuine sense because if we look at History we know about polytheistic religions.

We we know that there were gods like multiple gods hundreds of gods and I guess my background if I'm gonna again like speak through a Sunday school mentality is I was raised to be like, well, I've got my Christian God and you've got your Hindu God.

And which one's gonna be true? We'll find out when we die. I think that is where we're starting here because I want to know do other gods still exist. How do they exist and more specifically? What's the differences between the polytheistic origin story and my Hebrew Almighty God?

Creation story that we see in Genesis. What are the key differences? And I think I'm just curious like what did people believe before so if you want to hear the full episode that was Literally spoken to you by an expert listen to the episode with dr. Joseph Miller.

These are just my thoughts because at the end of the day did he answer my question do other gods exist today? And how did they start? What were their creation story? And how does it differ from Genesis?

The Tower of Babel and the Rise of False Gods

My main thoughts about this is Dr. Joseph Miller does a really great job breaking down the timeline of it and kind of showing Why certain things happen in the Bible that we just kind of say like, oh, okay.

Why did why was that included? How does that play a part? He shows very clearly how and the way that we start off is the Tower of Babel and How this was people worshiping false gods. Because the gods of people that were dispersed from the Tower of Babel were in nations that were led by these fallen entities.

Doesn't that sound familiar? Which when he mentioned this I was like, this is exactly what Josh Waltman was talking about on the unseen realm Episode is that when you have the Tower of Babel people were dispersed and then God sent out his angels to lead those nations.

But those angels said no, I want these people to worship me not God. So they defected they went rogue now. They're demons. They don't worship God. They're not letting these people worship God. They're letting these people worship them.

So now you've got these people they've got a religion they're worshiping what we can see now are demons but to them they are gods and they need to reverse engineer a Origin story. So let's say it's for greed.

I don't know. I wasn't there now. We need to reverse engineer. Well, we got to build a temple because there's a God. Okay, so the creation story of these other religions led by demons are An origin story that's come out of reverse engineering of justification for the human sin versus a God creation story is It's the opposite that he intended to create humans that he has a purpose that we have a God.

So let's build him a temple. Let's build him a tabernacle. We see this in Exodus and Leviticus is I'm a God build me a temple versus there's a temple. We need to find a God if that makes sense. So if we look at Genesis language, there's a lot of stuff like gardens.

The creation of the world in seven days, there's a flood. And we see those a garden a flood the seven-day creation theory. We see that in other religions. Okay, and we see that in the black the Babylonian the Akkadian version.

They have a creation story. They all have these similarities. It's just slightly Twisted and this is the meat of it. This is what was really interesting to me. Is that okay. We have the creation story.

We know we've read Genesis. We're Christians.

The Enuma Elish, Violence, and the Contrast With Genesis

So what was theirs?

He said there's a lot of different versions but the Babylonian Akkadian version is called the Anuma Elish and this is where you see the hierarchy of power between gods and humans or higher being gods are more powerful have more value and Then you've got lower gods which are less value and they serve those gods and they got humans which is like slavery.

It's like bottom of the barrel and so totally different from Genesis where he breathed life into us. He gave us jobs to have dominion and subdue the earth and these Akkadian Babylonian stories. It's the opposite in Anuma Elish there's essentially a greater God lesser God the greater gods are gonna kill the lesser God and the blood of the lesser gods.

That died mixes with the clay of the earth and through that you have humans to do the bidding. They have no purpose. They have no intent. There's no design. We don't see the hand of God in that story.

We see an outcome of violence. There's even other stories like Medjugorje and Tiamat and it's essentially a female God and a male God. He kills her and rips her body in half. So again, this violence this conquering that is their origin story not love and intent and creation design complexity and creativity.

No rips the female gods body in half half of it goes to the sky half of it goes to the earth. So again, like like the degradation of the human life doesn't mean anything that you just use that to create our things.

It's it's a life from bloodshed versus like purpose and intent. I think that it is really interesting that people heard this and they weren't like that's Google bananas. I won't believe that people heard that and believed it.

Okay, we have to live in that truth and they're not weird for that. They're not even dumb for that because if I'm gonna be honest, we do that. Okay, that's us and I'll we'll get there but essentially the Israelites the ancient people heard these stories of polytheistic gods heard these stories of violent origins and They believed it.

They lived in it. They celebrated it. That was their religion. And if we move forward with that knowledge that they lived that they believed that. We can then look at the characters in the Old Testament and be like, oh.

That's why they reacted that way. Oh. That's why God did that that was random like all of the plagues that he gave to Pharaoh. Why did he choose locusts? Why did he turn the Nile into blood? You know like obviously crazy cuckoo things that God was doing but like why locusts why frogs?

Why blood in the Nile and like papyrus isn't cheap. This was all intentional and it's because God knew that he was speaking to people that their gods were the God of water. Their gods were the God of crops or the God of livestock were the God of specific animals or fertility.

They worshiped that to them. That was the ultimate deity and here comes a Hebrew God that says I have power over those things. That Nile that you worship I can turn it into blood. These crops you rely on I can ruin them with locusts that those animals that you worship the cow.

I'm gonna kill it. I'm gonna create a famine and so that was a very intentional design in order for God to speak to people that worship these things. As gods can now be like, oh we're dealing with a bigger boss even after they see.

Oh, we got a bigger boss. We've got a boss God. That can split the Nile that can create a walkway through through the river. You would think and we look at these poor Israelites and we're like idiots.

How did you see the splitting of the Nile and then create a golden calf to worship? How did you see all the wonders of that God and then three days later be like What are we gonna eat and like have doubt and have worry and have anxiety like you're dealing with the biggest boss ever and so God had to really Pull out all the tricks to be like, I understand your hearts.

I Understand that you don't know me yet. You're unfamiliar. I'm showing you my capabilities. But you don't trust me it because you just you have more trust in the comforts that you're used to. You would rather go back to Egypt and be a slave and worship your other gods.

Your gods of Ra because you know them and you're familiar with them. Even though I just showed you that I could split the Nile that I could create all of these plagues. You still would prefer that because that to you is more familiar and comfortable and how often do we do that?

How often are we like? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no church is cool. But like I really love sleeping in and I I really love my yoga class and my workout class and that's like during church. And I just I would rather do that.

We do that. They're doing that and this was thousands of years ago. We're not any different and God knows that all right. That's the good news is God's not ignorant to our hearts and desires. So when they start seeing this like, oh this new God this new Yahweh who splits the Nile and causes these plagues.

He's cool.

But I still like love my other gods and now it's not just Yahweh as the one and only the God Almighty. You know, it's there's Yahweh. Who's this cool new God among the lineup of other gods that I still worship and he's still not the main player.

So That to me was very identifying and that's like oh we still have God's today like to me. That was the answer to the question is like do we still got sick? Yeah, it's called comfort. It's called gratification.

It's called a 401k. We worship all of those things a perfect family. Perfect like meeting perfect beauty standards having a good job. God's all of those are gods. They might look a little different. Sacrifices are a little different still the same thing.

They're still there's a lineup of things we worship and sure our Christian gods in the lineup. But so are all those other things and to me that was Mind-blowing. So yeah, we do have God's today. That's what they look like though.

They're not but all they're not. You know the Hindu gods or whatever it's that and even as a Christian we're polytheistic which oh.

That knocks me off my feet.

Flood Traditions, Marriage, and Faithfulness to God

Some other really cool things that I'm just gonna kind of briefly touch on is that we see similar events in other religions. Like Noah's Flood we see stories of this flood in other religions. Like the epic of Gilgamesh also mentions a flood and I I was posing this is Joseph Miller.

Like how do we know that you know, Noah's Flood is the one to believe when like we see it in other epics. I kind of that like how do we know that like ours is true and we just have to know that the Bible has the most evidence to support it if we're gonna look at like this one event and be like Is this one likely we'll look at the whole Bible all of that was unlikely yet.

It has evidence to support it and then we kind of talk about marriage. He says like the point of marriage like the way that God is saying like do not marry outside your beliefs. And it wasn't because like, uh, there's our worst.

You're gonna dilute your value by marrying outside your religion. It was a very intentional like when you marry someone of a different belief system. You marry that belief system. Those beliefs are now your beliefs.

You don't keep that separate because in marriage it's a full unity so when God's saying go into Canaan and Be there, but do not marry them because then you will marry into their religion and I need someone.

That is going to be Christian and so when God chose Abraham and he's like you go in and defeat these people. It's not because Abraham's ethnicity or his belief systems were better than the people that he was attacking.

Abraham was chosen because his lineage is what led to Jesus. Essentially, we needed to go down and fulfill the one to salvation not bring in other belief systems. And I think people try to like frame it as like, oh this race or this group is better than the other.

That's not it at all. Okay on top of that. You might be thinking like well those Canaanites those poor Canaanites God came in and he's like don't mix with them. They've got the wrong beliefs they can't even marry in because we need to make sure that the belief system is going to lead to Jesus the one true salvation and God is faithful and he essentially outlines like listen I'm so then I give these Canaanites a chance to turn away from their pagan beliefs and know God.

I'm gonna give everybody that chance and that begs the question of like really God's gonna make sure every single person has a chance to experience him and they have the choice to say yes or no. What about the baby babies and the Amazonian rainforest?

Are they gonna experience God and it's one of those questions where it's like, I don't know. Okay, how could I possibly know that? How could I give you an answer about that? But I know my God and I know what I have faith in and he says he does do that.

He says that he will be true and will give everybody opportunity and will bring the word to everybody. So I have to believe in that and that's simply the end of the sentence. That's the end of the response.

It's like I have faith in a God that said he would do something. So I believe he will and for us to be like, well, I don't think that's possible. So it's probably untrue that logic is not as smart just because we can't prove it doesn't mean it's untrue moving on.

Do we have gods today? Yeah, they're called comfort. They look a little different and will everybody have that opportunity to experience God? Yes, I believe so. Is it really important that we understand the mentalities of the Israelites in the Old Testament?

Yes.

Because we're them and God has shown that he will still repeatedly show his glory to reach these people and give them that authentic Opportunity to choose him knowing what you we believe and knowing about the comforts that we hold close.

This is just me. If you want to hear the full real way better explained explanation for this topic Listen to the full episode with dr. Joseph Miller also. Biblically speaking is growing. Follow us on Instagram to know about all of the updates.

But if you want to tune in to listen or support we have options. We have Venmo if you just want to send a one-time donation. There's options for monthly contributions to support the show. Everything I do for the show isn't free nor is it cheap and it all adds up.

So I'd appreciate any contribution to keep this going so we can keep finding guests. So you give us really simplified answers in the Bible to help us grow in our faith. We're also building a school community that Essentially allows you to ask these scholars your questions and gives you access to the things that helped me completely transform in a year.

I want to share that all those things are available in the show notes below so go ahead and join. But thanks so much for listening to biblically speaking.