Bill Griffin brings a unique combination of personal, pastoral, and educational experience to interpreting and teaching the Bible. His lively insights into the meaning behind biblical texts elevate his students’ understanding of the ancient mysteries that have connected generations of believers.

Bill grew up Lutheran, but don’t hold that against him. He was a teenager in the Jesus Movement ‘70’s when he surrendered his stubborn heart to Christ. He puts it this way, “I went from knowing about God to knowing Him personally. Jesus started something in me that continues to guide my life.”

It was about a year later when Bill came heart-to-heart with the Holy Spirit, “In that hour and a half of intense encounter with God I had an experience where I saw and felt the words of Jeremiah 1:4-8 come off the page of my Bible and embed themselves in me. That was the beginning of a life-long fascination with the Holy Scriptures.”

The following year, a fellow UC Davis student showed Bill a personal copy of the Hebrew Bible and another friend was learning New Testament Greek, Bill says he fell in love with the ancient texts, “I just had to learn to read Hebrew and Greek.”

Seminary was the next stop on his journey. Bill encountered the various disciplines of biblical criticism in which he and his fellow seminarians were immersed. He says, “For my professors there was no spiritual world in and around the Bible. But for me the Bible spoke of invisible dimensions of reality that were quite real and full of meaning.” His professors explained the mysteries found in the Bible as “legends and fantasies”. But Bill saw another side of reality: what the Bible calls “the Heavens.

What began as a longing became a life-long calling, to integrate experience of the Heavens with biblical scholarship on the Earth. This calling to see heaven and act on earth has become the hallmark of Bill’s twenty-five years of pastoral ministry and central to his eighteen years teaching as professor of Bible and Ministry at Simpson University (Redding California).