Flat Earth or Round Earth -
About this sermon
Host Mike Zwick interviews Pastor Dean Odle about biblical cosmology and Odle’s conclusion that Scripture describes a stationary, enclosed earth rather than the modern heliocentric model. Odle recounts his gradual change of view, argues that Genesis 1 should control Christian cosmology, and says that accepting secular accounts of origins has weakened confidence in the Bible. The interview is presented as advocacy for Odle’s position, not as an independent scientific assessment.
Chronological teaching outline
Select a section heading to play the sermon from that moment.
Mike Zwick introduces Dean Odle through Odle’s public debate with Greg Locke and frames the interview as a fair hearing of biblical-cosmology claims. Both men say disagreement should lead to examination rather than ridicule or personal attack.
Odle recounts accepting heliocentrism for years after his 1987 conversion and changing only after sustained biblical and observational study. He presents the change as reluctant submission to Scripture rather than an idea he brought into Christianity.
Genesis 1’s waters, firmament, lights, and ordered creation become the controlling text. Odle argues that harmonizing the chapter with the Big Bang and a moving globe has caused skeptics and Christians alike to distrust the Bible’s plain account.
Odle describes photographing structures across roughly eleven miles of Mobile Bay and calculating how much should be hidden by curvature. He says the visible lower portions contradict globe expectations; this is his experimental claim and is not independently evaluated in the package.
The interview revisits criticism surrounding Odle’s debate with Locke and urges opponents to understand the position before attacking it. Odle says he had not forced the view on colleagues and objected primarily to confident dismissal without investigation.
Biblical passages about waters above, the firmament, foundations, pillars, and a stationary earth are assembled into a single cosmological picture. The speakers argue that these descriptions do not naturally produce a spinning water-covered sphere in space.
Job 38’s earth turning like clay under a seal and language in Isaiah are used to describe a shaped, bounded world. Odle connects these texts with the title of his book and interprets them as physical description rather than poetic accommodation.
Odle cites engineering and aviation documents that use a flat, non-rotating earth in their equations. He treats the modeling assumption as an admission about underlying physics, though such technical use and its implications are disputed outside the sermon.
Gravity, electromagnetism, relativity, and the repeatability of scientific claims are compared. Odle argues that observation and experiment should outrank appeals to inaccessible space missions, and he cites similarities between gravitational and electromagnetic equations.
The interview recommends Christian and non-Christian researchers for further study, then connects cosmological deception with Odle’s wider Vatican and end-times framework. The final invitation is to investigate directly while treating Scripture, not institutional authority, as decisive.
Open each passage and read it in its complete biblical context.
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Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
- 0:00:00
If not for God with Mike Zwick Hey this is Mike Zwick with If Not For God with Mike Zwick and I've got my friend Dean Odell here for the two people who haven't heard of Dean Odell out there. He is the guy who actually went to Greg Locke's church and debated him face to face and man I hate to say it and I'm being unbiased here but it wasn't even close. So as we get started off here I just want to say a prayer real quick and Lord I just want to come to you in prayer right now Lord I thank you Jesus that you are King of Kings and Lord of Lords and Lord we know that it says in your word that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free and today Lord we are just trying to share the truth and we are trying to open the hearts and the minds of God's people to change the world for Jesus Christ and we give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus name Amen. Amen. All right so Dean you got a church word out of Auburn, Alabama or? Well we're you know Auburn the city of Auburn and the city of Opelika are twin cities they're right next to each other so we first started the church in Auburn but now we meet in Opelika but everybody's calls it the Auburn-Opelika area I mean you don't know when you leave one and go into the other type thing it's kind of like that. Gotcha man and so you grew up in that area is that right? I did I went to Opelika elementary schools junior high high school except for my last two years in high school I moved to Montgomery and went to Jeff Davis a big big high school there and then went to Troy State which is now Troy University down south of us that's where I went to start out with but as you can see yeah we're talking we were talking about beforehand yes I'm a big Auburn fan I grew up going to Auburn football games going all the way back to when Archie Manning was still playing and I was the kid oh yeah I got to see Archie Manning play and Eli Manning play so that was that was pretty cool yeah Wow man and I think I think they're saying Eli might be in the Hall of Fame someday so he's won two Super Bowls but yeah man that's it's pretty cool we went to Appalachian State so I know Troy we actually play you guys in football I think every year and Auburn basketball is having a good year and I think I'm telling you my team Appalachian State we actually beat you guys in basketball earlier this year and that was that was kind of exciting man but today we're not here to talk about football we're not here to talk about we're not here to even to talk about you or or anything else what we're here to talk about is the issue that has been on everyone's minds and hearts lately and people flip out
- 0:03:05
over it what is the shape of the earth right and good well no I mean yeah I mean people flip out because they actually cannot believe there are people out there that do not believe the NASA government narrative that it's a sphere of 24,901 miles of circumference and and that there's evidence to prove that and of course once you get into the Bible side of it yeah there's the Bible does not teach a spherical spinning flying water ball through an endless vacuum of space it just that's not what the Bible teaches and so it causes quite a stir because of course we've all been indoctrinated with the Copernican heliocentric model and we've been shown stuff from government agencies pictures and images that we believe are true and people are finding out that they're not so true so it's it's a big thing yeah I mean and so you grew up I think you got saved in a very young age right well I got saved yeah when I was about 11 12 years old in that time about around 1979 somewhere in that time period in a little Baptist Church up the road and I was truly born again I mean I had a powerful experience with Jesus I understood that he you know I was a sinner and I needed his blood and his forgiveness and his atoning death and his resurrection and you know I remember going forward in that church and the power of God came on me I was in tears and I felt his presence his love his peace the job you know and but of course I was young and then you know right after that my parents divorced so we stopped going to church and then as I get I got into my teenage years and just hanging out with the wrong people I just kind of gradually got into all that it was very gradual but I got it all that you know started drinking and going to parties and then it's you know drugs and then you know it's just by the time I you know I was into 9th 10th grade I was you know just full-blown drinking all the time partying all the time doing drugs and same thing when I went to the Troy state which is Troy University I joined the Sigma Chi fraternity I was living in the fraternity house party nearly every night and so right between that time period like after my first year there that summer I was going to take some time off and go spend some time on my dad out in Oklahoma and then I just I ended up going over the state line and working in Arkansas this was in 87 and I was 19 and the Lord I started working for a guy who was a born-again Christian and he started talking to me about Jesus and one of the things he said was you can't be a drunkard and go to heaven and you know gave me that from Galatians chapter 5 and it kind of woke me up and God convicted me for about three weeks and you know that time I'd maul in contract and I had just done screen tests and I just had just had landed a part first die-hard movie is supposed to be in that and the Lord spoke to me though when as I was convicted for
- 0:06:05
about three weeks by the Holy Spirit the Lord said these were first time I really heard God speak to me up in my heart and he said son you can have everything the world has to offer and go to hell or you surrender your life to me and live forever and I thought for a few minutes and I said Lord I'm gonna go with you either I'm going all the way or I'm not going all I will not be a hypocrite and so I gave him my life right there that was June of 1987 and he called me to the ministry shortly after that and that's what I've been doing ever since well and so I just don't let people know we're not here to attack anybody who disagrees with a certain belief we're simply here to present what the facts have cut up hand out and what you've seen yourself and so it's not like in 1987 all of a sudden when you said I'm gonna surrender my life to you the biblical biblical cosmology belief that you have right now it's not like you have that back in 1987 is that right no no I didn't I all through my years you know I've studied the Bible a lot I mean I spent many many many hours studying Hebrew and Greek the original language looking up the words and definitions and teaching and preaching the Bible from going to Africa to the island of Mauritius to the Middle East to prisons and stuff I've preached all over the place and but what would always bother me though when I would be reading the Bible because I believe the Bible is the inspired infallible Word of God so I I believe it to be true from Genesis to Revelation and so when I would read stuff like Joshua 10 when he commanded the Sun and the moon to stand still I would just have this pause and be like I would say to you the Lord I don't understand this I don't understand this this doesn't make sense and of course because you know from being a child you're ingrained with it's a the earth is spinning and that's what causes all this and it's not the Sun moving in a circuit over the earth and so you're like well did Joshua not know what he was talking about or did God make the earth stop spinning I mean what happened so that used to always trouble me but I didn't ever really have my eyes open fully to the true nature of creation and the true shape of the earth until 2015 that was when it happened for me and a good friend of mine who I was kind of discipling and mentoring he lived out in California and he was always asking me questions about stuff and so he sent me a video with a question he said does firm earth ring a bell now I had no idea what he was asking it was the one of the weirdest questions I've ever been asked but he said this video with it so I was like I gotta answer I gotta watch this you know it's about a 25 minute video I gotta watch this video because I didn't know what Sam's asking but because he was a young believer and I was kind of trying to disciple him I thought well I've got to answer his question and so I got to figure out what he's asking so I turned this video on and what had happened though about two months before this is the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said I have something
- 0:09:06
else to show you and it's big and I'm I was just kind of waiting on you know I couldn't imagine what it was because I'm already controversial preacher that talks about stuff that most of the preachers don't so when I looked watch this video started out with a bunch of NASA fakery which I already didn't trust NASA and I already didn't believe in the moon landing so that wasn't a stretch for me but I begin to realize you know what they really have been lying to us about everything about the ISS about the moon landings about all these kind of stuff and I'm watching this and I knew it was like instinctively I knew from the Holy Spirit where it was going and then it started showing the long-distance photography giving the measurements the eight inches per mile squared where we shouldn't see things at distances we see things then it showed how to to balloon footage and it completely 120,000 feet completely flat horizons 360 degrees around I started seeing that and then of course they showed the Chicago the famous Chicago shot from the beach in Lake Michigan there 60 miles seeing the Chicago skyline it should never be possible and so I started that's when I realized wow then the second half of the videos get started getting into the scriptures of the true nature of creation so here I am like pulling the Bible out pulling out the lexicon starting to relook at everything and I'm like wow not only is there a solid evidence for this like you can it's exactly what the Bible teaches and it finally a lot of things that I had questions about in the scriptures or didn't make sense to me finally made sense like it all came together and I was like it was almost it was it was so powerful that that time in 2015 that it was almost like it saved all over again it was just I like it an awakening for me it was kind of the last big deception that was still on me that I didn't realize was on me and once that lifted off and I just accepted the scriptures and like if somebody would have came to me and said Pastor Dean you don't believe the whole Bible is the word I would have laughed I would have said no way I believed the whole thing from cover to cover but I realized that I had believed man in an area believing NASA and science science theories about creation some of them instead of just believing what God's Word said as a Christian and as a Christian we should just believe what God's Word says that you know that that scripture in Romans let God be true and every man a liar and I realized I had us I had to repent I asked God to forgive me for trusting man over his word and man and and take treatment it's been a wonderful whirlwind ride since then about what God has done and I've never seen more atheists come to Jesus than I have in the last eight years it's just unreal what has happened the people that have gotten saved well and what you just said maybe the start of
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