Discipleship – Page 4 – Divine Council

Church

DC Has Product Sponsor for Logos Mobile Ed Subscription!

By divinecouncil November 14, 2018

First off, thank you to the 42 believers who responded to the question posed in the last email, “Would you take advantage of free access to ALL the courses in the Mobile Ed catalog?”

Now that FaithLife has agreed to reinstate our subscription from last year, it’s truly heartening to hear how these courses would bring scholarly insight into God’s Word all over the globe.

We even had five subscribers donate $95 towards this mission which is more helpful than you might imagine.

I’m excited to share the news that we now have a product sponsor who will put 100% of the proceeds of sales of “First Words” towards DivineCouncil.org’s Logos Mobile Ed yearly subscription!

Yes! Until we reach our goal for this mission, 100% of the proceeds will be donated to DC to help get us there. So, even if you don’t happen to be in the market, you can still help by forwarding “First Words” to family, friends, or anyone you know who might be interested. For example, do you know anyone in the mission field in Latin America who might want to get a jumpstart on their Spanish?

“First Words” is a father’s quest to present (via digital flashcards) the 1000 most optimal “First Words” to begin teaching his children Spanish, French, Latin, & Greek.

These are not just any words; they are 1000 of the most frequently used words in each language (though only Spanish is currently available.) All the words on the 1000 Optimal First Words list are in the top 5000 most frequently used words in Spanish. And 787 of them are in the top 3000! That makes them pure gold for the student first learning Spanish.

You can read the story of “First Words” discovery here and how the quest began. The Sales Page explains in detail precisely why learning these words first is the optimal way to jumpstart your way into practical usage and language mastery overnight.

America

Legal Threats to House Churches & Bible Studies

By Terence Gillespie September 21, 2018

Those who would attack the church require only the slightest pretense. Where no basis in law exists, a legalistic pretense will be created as illustrated in two recent examples (with thanks to WND for reporting on them.)

Town Changes Rules to Ban Church

The first occurred when a town changed their rules to ban a church from the civic center.”

In this case, a misguided fear of “violating the Constitution’s establishment clause” led the city council to ban church worship services.

The case is not yet resolved, but will likely go in the church’s favor (with no help from the constitution’s establishment clause.) The city was inconsistent when implementing their policies: they let other groups use the civic center for similar events and rented office space in the same building to a Lutheran church. But that didn’t stop “their fears” from making up ad hoc rules to exclude the church.

If cities should implement their policies consistently, or cleverly revamp them from scratch to exclude the church, protection from the constitution’s establishment clause will be revealed to be merely rhetorical. Practically, only those with the resources to press the issue will be heard in federal court. In the meantime, ministries will be shut out or shut down until the local domains excluding them have a compelling reason to relent.

‘Constitutional’ Protection?

The federal constitution doesn’t prevent a city from making policies and ordinances. There is no agreement between these entities (fedgov and city). The state constitution might have a clause to which churches may appeal, depending on the state. Such will only be tested if churches in their domain have the will and resources to protest.

The church in this first example protested to local authorities and will likely prevail. Their victory will stem from the inconsistent policy implementation by the city.

Retired Pastor Threatened With Eviction Over Bible Study

The second case hits close to home when a “retired pastor is threatened with eviction over his Bible study meetings.

A company that runs a senior-living center in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has decided that a Bible study is a “business” and consequently has threatened to evict a retired Lutheran pastor and his wife for conducting one in their residence.

From the start, the retired pastor characterized his Bible study as a “book review” to avoid friction with the management company. Then we see another example of a private entity making ad hoc changes to their policies to justify an eviction. In this case, they recategorized the Bible study as a business.

As in the first example, the company ’s mistake was inconsistently implementing their policies. Other groups were permitted to meet in the same space to engage in activities ostensibly identical to those of the pastor’s Bible study. The company would have to show that holding a Bible in your hands when meeting others somehow makes it a business meeting to justify their eviction of the pastor.

The legal defenders of this small group say the federal housing act (FHA) may be the remedy for the pastor:

The actions by the Evergreens “violate the Fair Housing Act and its accompanying regulations,” First Liberty contended. “The FHA prohibits discrimination ‘against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of … religion.”

Private Homeowners in HOA Domains

The FHA might be a remedy for church activities under its domain. But what about private homeowners? 40 million households (53% of households in America)¹ are in the legal domain of a Home Owners Association and bound by the agreement that defines it.

Fortunately, four small groups recently prevailed when an aggressive atheist brought suit against the HOA of a retirement community in California to put an end to four Bible studies.

HOA agreements control the use of the home. Could the language in those agreements be changed, after the fact, to restrict Bible studies or house churches?

Of course, they could.

What if the atheist in the previous example was on the HOA board of your community? What would prevent him from making up an ad hoc rule as was done in the first two examples in this article?

Most of those who’ve signed HOA agreements have little knowledge of their contents. After the fact, homeowners may object to their restrictions. But those restrictions are clearly outlined in a document bearing an essential legal feature: the signature of the homeowner. Indeed, participation in this domain is entirely optional.

As faith-based attacks on homes in the domain of an HOA increase, believers must be mindful about their voluntary consent into these domains.

First Line of Defense

A believers first line of defense is prayer and God’s supernatural protection. However, Christians should take notice of Walter Williams’ description of the first line of defense in secular terms.

A civilized society’s first line of defense is not the law, police, and courts but customs, traditions, and moral values. Behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error.²

The “customs, traditions and moral values” Williams refers to came directly from the foundational document of western civilization: The Bible. So did common law, although the current legal system in America is commercial.

In other words, whereas the Bible, itself, was the primary legal document in Christendom, Americans must now appeal to its faint echo filtered through society and commercial law.

Recommendations

While not possible or righteous to avoid all persecution, we are sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Mt 10:16.)” As hard as dove-like innocence may be to some, and serpentine-like wisdom to others, the fulfillment of the great commission requires both. Where one is lacking, believers are compromised.

Any justice received by Americans is limited to what they can or will afford. For ministries already entangled by legalistic pretense, it will cost money to break free. More often, what’s required is the wisdom to navigate the various domains of the territory to remain on task.

Pray for God’s supernatural guidance on every premise and decision of your ministry.
Look for states, counties, and cities with widely shared Christian beliefs; without a history of making ad hoc ordinances to quell irrational fears or provide temporary convenience.
Disabuse yourself of the false mindset that your first line of defense is the law. The legal system is the last line of defense and available only to those who can afford it.
Look for protection from the inconsistency of your opponent’s policy implementation or the customs and traditions of the domain of your ministry.
Think carefully before signing a home owner’s agreement that might one day be used as a lever of control over your Bible Study, ministry, or house church.
Where they don’t “receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” (Matthew 10:14)
Where escape is impossible, stand your ground for the truth and God’s glory. Bear your cross with steadfastness and joy and “consider this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Co 4:17–18).

https://hoa-usa.com/about.aspx ↩
Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University. Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate ↩

Storytelling

Two Movies: ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ & ‘Full of Grace’

By divinecouncil March 19, 2018

These two movies are from the same director, Andrew Hyatt. “Paul, Apostle of Christ” is coming out this Friday the 23rd, see the trailer and behind the scenes videos, below.

Another Christian movie from Andrew Hyatt, “Full of Grace” has been posted online in its full-length since November of 2016.

Paul, Apostle of Christ

“Risking his life, Luke ventures to Rome to visit Paul — the apostle who’s bound in chains and held captive in Nero’s darkest and bleakest prison cell. Haunted by the shadows of his past misdeeds, Paul wonders if he’s been forgotten as he awaits his grisly execution. Before Paul’s death, Luke resolves to write another book that details the birth of what will come to be known as the church.”

Behind the Scenes

EWTN Interview Jim Caviezel, Raymond Arroyo

Full of Grace

Released in October 2015, this movie has been posted online for quite a while so I infer this is the producer’s preference. I have not seen the whole movie, yet, but am encouraged by this review.

“Mary of Nazareth spends her final days helping the church regain its original encounter with the lord.”

Full Movie

Communication

FaithLife Terms Changed to “Legally Recognized Churches Only”

By divinecouncil October 18, 2017

I received a call from FaithLife, yesterday, notifying customers that the eligibility requirements for a FaithLife Church Group subscription have been changed. They are now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.

Back in June of this year, when we purchased our subscription, it was open to all church groups regardless of legal status. As of today, this is no longer the case. Indeed, the sales page on FaithLife has been updated with this new restriction.

For DC to maintain our FaithLifeTV & Logos Moblie Ed subscription, we would have to reorganize as a legally recognized church. Though not impossible, it’s not something we can do quickly. It’s also not something we’ve even contemplated, until today.

Background

Over the past two months, I’ve been in contact with multiple levels of FaithLife sales asking for guidance on how to expand the reach of our group. Based on their lack of direction I came to understand that FaithLife’s church subscription was a “pilot” sales program for the company. Their approach was to make the subscription available to see where it would lead. They were discovering things as they went along and, unfortunately, this has led to the new legal restrictions on access.

The good news is that hundreds of us on DivineCouncil.org were able to view some of the best Biblical courses in the world for almost five months. The bad news is that Faithife is now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.

Since DC is not currently a legally recognized church, please reach out to your local church to extend your access.

In the meantime, I’ll be in contact with FaithLife to see if there’s another option for small groups (and the ever-growing number of believers who have no affiliation with a formal church).

Update: After a day of thinking and discussing this with others the impetus behind this new policy became clear: the storage and streaming costs make it cost-prohibitive for FaithLife to handle organizations with members scattered around the world. In our case, we had almost 100 people from China, Korea, and Japan subscribe in the past month! Fantastic, from our point-of-view, as part of our aim is to penetrate the 10/40 window with the best Biblical materials in the world. However, if your business model or pricing structure does not account for such streaming costs, it could become impossible to break even while delivering hundreds of gigabytes of video courses.

I speculate that FaithLife’s new policy of “Legally recognized churches only” is their way of saying “Local Only”. Therefore, even if DC had met every criterion of a legally recognized church our subscription would still have been terminated due to streaming costs.

For the latest updates and discussion on this see this thread on our private forum.

Culture

How to Lose by Winning Battles on Social Media

By divinecouncil July 27, 2017

By Mark Ward, originally published under the title, “What Would the Author of ‘Amazing Grace’ Say about Social Media?”

John Newton wrote a beautiful letter to a friend which is called in _his collected works, “On Controversy”—because that friend was about to engage in public controversy over Christian doctrine; Newton wanted to give him some scriptural counsel. I have read it 20 times over nearly as many years, and thought of it countless more. In order to more fully get the principles into my own soul—because I, frankly, have not always lived up to them—I have taken the liberty of “transculturating” it for today’s Christian SMWs—Social Media Warriors. If Newton were to write the same letter today, this is my guess as to what he would write:_

Dear Christian Friend about to Post a Comment in a Social Media Battle,

I’ve always appreciated your love of truth—and I know that itch you’re feeling right now, the itch to jump into the fray.

I happen to agree with the position you’re about to defend. We’re together on this. And truth is stronger than fiction: our side cannot lose. Not even the gates of hell could prevail against it. So even a person without your skill with a keyboard could enter this particular social media mêlée with some confidence of coming out on top—in the end, at least.

But we must be more than conquerors. We need to triumph not just over error in others but over sin in ourselves. Some battle wounds may make us wish we had never won.

Let’s stop and think about our opponents, the internet bystanders, and ourselves.

Our social media opponents

I’m ashamed how often I myself have forgotten step one, step zero: have we prayed for our internet sparring partners? I mean prayed for them not only before pounding out a response but between every keystroke. Are we praying for them as our fingers hover over the return key? If we ask the Lord to teach them and bless them, that prayer will soften our hearts and our prose in profoundly healthy ways.

If our opponents are Christians, we can imagine the Lord saying to us what David said to Joab about Absalom: “Deal gently with him for my sake.” The Lord loves our opponents; his love for them was longsuffering long before we met them, ahem, fifteen seconds ago. If we wring their rhetorical necks, we’ll not only risk unforgiving servants, we’ll risk proving unforgiven ones (Matt 18:35).

Someday our Facebook pages will be memorial walls for whatever friends we have left—and so will be those of our (Christian, remember?) opponents. Think about what will happen then. All of us will be together in heaven, forever, and our love for each other then will be greater than our love for our best earthly friends now. Our opponents may be dead wrong, but after we’re all dead—they’ll be right again.

If our opponents are not Christians—and I try not to be too quick to come to that conclusion if they claim otherwise; before their own Master they stand or fall—the best emotion to feel toward them is compassion, not anger. “They know not what they do!” But we know who’s responsible for giving us new hearts dedicated to truth. It didn’t have to be this way. God was not required to save you and me from our sins. But for the grace of God, we’d have their list of Likes.

There is room for an Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18), an Isaiah mocking the silliness of idols (Isa 44), and a Jesus Christ mocking the Pharisees (Matt 23). But those seem to me to be exceptions to the general rule that one ought to “correct his opponents with gentleness” so that “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim 2:25). If we are writing for spiritually blind people, we must be careful not to put any trip hazards between them and the cross. God’s grace is necessary for salvation, but this is no reason to push people (humanly speaking) further away from him.

And there are mudslinging trolls out there—Christian and non-Christian—whom it is foolhardy to engage. They’ll only drag you down to their level (Prov 26:4; Matt 7:6). My rule of thumb: I do my best to avoid debating people who can never bring themselves to acknowledge that their opponents have just made a good point. (I also, by God’s grace, do my best not to be one of those people—if I can’t see the genuine strengths of viewpoints I disagree with, it’s likely my fault.)

The internet bystanders

Among those reading and liking (and trolling) will be three groups:

1. Those who disagree with you

It’s easy to forget these people when our eyes are focused on our direct opponents. But those opponents represent many, many others who hold the same opinions. Many will watch who will not comment. Regarding these I will point again to the thoughts above.

2. Those who don’t care about your religious points

But then there are people who don’t know or care about the doctrines we defend online, because they aren’t religious at all. If these people are generally indisposed to dislodge their rather shining views of their moral rectitude, that doesn’t hinder their ability to sniff out pride in us. Even those who can’t follow our arguments can read our spirits pretty well in between the pixels. And they know that religious people—particularly Christians—are supposed to be meek, humble, and loving.

Every day online the Scripture is proved true: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” If we mix invective and scorn into our posts, we’re forgetting that the weapons of our warfare—the only weapons which, in reality, can break down strongholds of error—are “not of the flesh.” Whether we persuade anyone of anything else or not, somehow we must persuade bystanders that we wish others well. We are known by our love (John 13:35).

3. Those who agree with you

Read the Full Article Here

Unseen Realm

Frank Viola Interviews Michael Heiser re: The Unseen Realm

By divinecouncil July 19, 2017

July 14, 2017 by Frank Viola

Countless books pass through my hands each year. Evangelical publishers send me their neaw titles routinely. Once in a while, I will interview the authors. Most of the time I don’t.

Recently, however, I came across a book where I actually found fresh content that was significantly helpful to my own thinking. Given how much I’ve read over the years, this rarely happens. Most Christian books today simply repeat what others have already written.

Here’s the story.

While doing my research on my upcoming book on the kingdom of God (due to release Summer 2018), I began reading everything I could find on the world system (which is one of the primary enemies of God’s kingdom). This led me to take a fresh look at what Scripture calls the “principalities and powers.”

In exploring the “principalities and powers” in the world of biblical scholarship, I came across Michael Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm.

While reading the book, Heiser and I began an email dialogue that delved deeper into the themes of his book and my specific area of interest. I then followed that dialogue up with the following interview for this blog. Below you can read Heiser’s answers to my interview questions regarding the content of his book The Unseen Realm. (Our own private dialogue isn’t reflected in this interview.)

The most important contribution of The Unseen Realm in my own thinking is Heiser’s treatment of cosmic geography. His work on this subject colored in many gaps that I never observed or considered before, particularly the detailed parallels between Pentecost and Babel as well as God’s relationship to the nations of the world in biblical history.

I can’t say this about most authors today, but I owe a debt to Heiser for showing me aspects of the principalities and powers that I’ve never seen before nor read in any other scholar, theologian, or commentator.

For this reason, I cite Heiser quite a bit in several chapters of my upcoming book on the kingdom.

Here’s the interview.

Enjoy!

Instead of asking, “what is your book about,” I’m going to ask the question that’s behind that question. And that unspoken question is, “how are readers going to benefit from reading your book?”

Michael S. Heiser: Several ways. First, if reviews and interactions I’ve had with readers over the last year are any indication, _Unseen Realm _trains readers to contextualize their Bible. We think “reading the Bible in context” means thinking about the handful of verses before and after the verses we’re looking at on the page. That isn’t the case. While that’s important, context is so much wider than a handful of verses.

What I mean by context is worldview—having the ancient Israelite or first-century Jew in your head as you read. How would an ancient Israelite or first-century Jew read the Bible—what would they be thinking in terms of its meaning? The truth is that if we put one of those people into a small group Bible study and asked them what they thought about a given passage meant, their answer would be quite a bit different in many cases than anything the average Christian would think. They belonged to the world that produced the Bible, which is the context the Bible needs to be understood by.

Our contexts are foreign. They derive from church tradition that is thousands of years removed from the people who wrote Scripture and the audience to whom those people wrote. _Unseen Realm _demands people read the text of Scripture—particularly in regard to supernaturalism—the way ancient people would have read it. Second, it exposes people in the church to high scholarship—peer-reviewed material produced by biblical scholars—but in readable, normal language used by non-specialists.

It’s important for people in the Church to realize that the way they talk and think about the Bible isn’t the way Bible scholars talk and think about it—and I’m including “Bible-believing” scholars there. There is a wide gap between the work of biblical scholars, whose business it is to read the text of the Bible in its own worldview context, and what you hear in church.

Scholarship aimed at truly understanding what the biblical writers meant often does not filter down into the church and through the pulpit to folks who show up on Sunday. I think that’s just wrong, but scholars rarely make any effort to decipher their own scholarly work for people outside the ivory tower. _Unseen Realm _deliberately does that. Though readers might think that things in the book are novel since they never heard them in church or read them in a creed, every paragraph is the result of peer-reviewed scholarship. People need to know what they’re missing.

Over the years, I’ve met some Christians who deny the reality of the demonic/satanic world. They believe that the cosmology of Jesus and Paul was archaic. Mental illnesses were ascribed to “demons.” And “Satan” and “principalities and powers” were metaphors for personal and structural evil, etc. What would you say to such people in order to convince them that the spiritual worldview of Jesus and Paul does in fact reflect reality, even in the 21st century?

Michael S. Heiser: Well, the first thing I’d say is that their worldview isn’t the worldview of Jesus, Paul, or any of the biblical writers and characters. And if you don’t have the worldview of the people who produced the Bible (under inspiration no less), you can’t understand what they were trying to communicate in many respects. Biblical people weren’t modern people. That’s self-evident no matter how much we try to deny it. We doubt the supernatural because we’ve either been taught to deny it (thinking—wrongly—that it’s incompatible with science) or because we just want to be comfortable.

We impose our modern worldview on the Bible to make it conform to our intellectual happy place. But we deceive ourselves into thinking this works or is legitimate. We fail to realize that the supernatural things we want to avoid are no more supernatural (or “weird”) than the things that define the Christian faith. What’s so “normal” about the virgin birth, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the hypostatic union of the incarnation (Jesus was 100% God and 100% man)?

Why don’t we “de-mythologize” those things in our Bible while we earnestly try to deny supernaturalist interpretations of other parts of the Bible? It’s a hopelessly inconsistent and self-focused approach to say part of what the Bible says about the supernatural spiritual world are fine but other aspects of its portrayal of that same non-human world are too strange and in need of being explained away.

What is the difference between a cherub and a seraph in Scripture? They appear to be different from their biblical descriptions (number of wings, faces, etc.).

Michael S. Heiser: There’s no difference conceptually. Both terms are job descriptions of a divine being whose role it was to protect sacred space from defilement—to guard the presence of God. The terms and the descriptions are not anatomy lessons—spirit beings are not embodied by definition. Rather, the descriptions in the visions of the prophets serve as metaphors for describing a role. They are basically job descriptions.

The terms are drawn from ancient Near Eastern iconography (Mesopotamian and Egypt, respectively). They utilize the imagery these civilizations used to describe divine beings who guarded the presence of gods or god-kings. We know that because we have the iconography (sculptures, paintings) in their appropriate context. The Babylonian context for Ezekiel’s cherubim is obvious from the first chapter. Most Bible readers don’t realize, though, why (historically) Israelites living during the eras of Ahaz, Uzziah, Hezekiah, and Isaiah would have recognized Egyptian motifs. There was a lot of royal interaction with Egypt then.

What does it mean, exactly, that Satan (the devil) is “the ruler of the dead?” And where can we find this in Scripture? Related: What does it mean that Satan once had “the power of death” — Hebrews 2:14 — implying that he doesn’t have it anymore.

Michael S. Heiser: The idea comes from several trajectories. On one hand, you have verses like Heb 2:14 (“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil”).

The point isn’t that Satan pulls a lever somewhere and someone dies. The idea is that all humans will die—we are not immortal—because of the transgression of the Eden that the serpent instigated. He was cast down to the underworld, the realm of the dead (I discuss the terms and motifs behind that at length in Unseen Realm), which is where all humans are destined to go and remain because of the Eden tragedy. God’s plan of salvation was designed to remove humans from the realm of the dead. Humanity followed the serpent in rebellion, and so his domain is where humanity goes.

But our destiny can be different because of God’s plan. On the other hand, there are theological ideas running in the background that produce the same idea. In Canaanite religion, for example, Baal was lord of the Underworld. He was called baʿal zebul. Sound familiar? In Ugaritic it means “prince Baal,” but by the time of the New Testament it became a descriptive title for Satan. Baal, of course, was the major deity-rival to the God of Israel. He was the lead adversary to Yahweh in Israelite religious context. What people thought about Baal informed the way they thought about the Devil later on.

Regarding the origin of the devil (“Satan” as the NT calls him), in your view, specifically when, why, _and how _did he fall?

Michael S. Heiser: I believe that all Scripture tells us is that the being the New Testament calls Satan (and which it associates with the serpent in Eden) fell when he engaged Eve to steer her out of God’s will. Eve’s existence, purpose, and destiny were of no concern to the serpent figure (which I don’t believe was a mere animal—he was a divine being in rebellion against God). Fiddling with what God told her was above his pay grade; i.e., contrary to the supreme authority, which was God. We are not told he rebelled earlier than this. We have only this initial act of rebellion. Some folks appeal to the notion that he rebelled before the creation of humanity and took a third of God’s angels with him, but there is no passage in Scripture that teaches that. In fact the only place you find the “third of the angels” talk is in the last book of the Bible—Revelation 12.

But in that passage, the war in heaven is explicitly associated with the birth / first coming of the messiah, which is considerably after creation (and the Fall). As far as why he rebelled, we aren’t told specifically. But why would an otherwise intelligent being (like you and me) overstep authority? Several reasons come to mind, like self-interest and arrogance. Since there are a number of (Hebrew) inter-textual relationships between Genesis 3 and Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, and since those prophetic chapters use the tale of a divine rebel filled with hubris to malign the kings of Babylon and Tyre, respectively, I’d say we’re on safe ground to presume that self-interest and hubris are at the core of the rebellion.

The divine rebel story behind Isaiah 14:12-15 has the villain wanting to be like the Most High and above the stars of God (a term drawn directly out of Canaanite material for the divine council / heavenly host), it’s clear the villain wanted to be the highest authority in the supernatural world. He was a usurper propelled by his own arrogance.

How does your view fit in with Ezekiel 28:14, which some believe is a reference to the devil before he fell. However, assuming that interpretation is correct, he is called “an anointed cherub.” How does that fit into the idea that the devil was once a member of the Divine Council, which some believe?

Michael S. Heiser: I believe the “anointed cherub” phrase in this verse points to a divine rebel, not Adam as many biblical scholars want to suggest. There are many reasons for this, some of which are very technical. Readers of _Unseen Realm _will get the overview, but if they really want the details, they should read through the companion website to the book, moreunseenrealm.com (click the tab for Chapter 11).

Since the Old Testament doesn’t use terms like “devil” and never applies the term “satan” to the serpent (in any passage), this question requires more unpacking than an interview can provide (i.e., it’s best to just read the book where I can take two chapters to go through it). But I’ll try and compress a few thoughts.

On one level, by definition every divine being loyal to God is a member of the divine council, presuming “council” is understood as the collective body of heavenly beings who serve God. There are of course tiers of authority in the council, but the idea can be collective as well. So, prior to his rebellion, the being that came to Eve and caused her to sin and that later became the known as the devil was a member of God’s council, broadly defined, merely because he was a spirit being. But since we have no prior history of him before Genesis 3, we can’t say much beyond that. (The serpent of Genesis 3 is not the satan figure of Job 1-2 because of a certain rule of Hebrew grammar [again, you have to read the book], so Job 1-2 isn’t much help there).

Some scholars want to restrict the term “divine council” to the “sons of God” tier, presuming them to be the only decision makers, but this understanding doesn’t reflect the variability of the terms and ideas found in ancient texts parallel to the Hebrew Bible from which the council metaphor is drawn in many instances. The analogy of human government in civilizations that had a conception of a divine council makes that point clear. Not all members of a king’s “government” would be directly involved in decision making. There are layers of advisors who have input. But these governments had service staff or “lesser bureaucrats” who were nevertheless part of the king’s administration.

Perhaps a modern analogy of government in the United States will help make the point. We can speak of the federal legislature, by which we mean that branch of government responsible for passing laws. The term “Congress” is a synonym. However, our Congress has two parts: the Senate and the House. Decision-making members of these two bodies, and hence the Congress, are elected. The House and Senate both have service staff (e.g., “guardian officers” like the Sergeant at Arms). Though they have no decision-making power, they are nevertheless part of “Congress” in certain contexts where that term is used.

For example, saying “Congress was in session” does not mean that all service staff were given the day off. “Congress” can therefore refer to only those elected officials who make laws, or can refer to the entire bureaucratic apparatus of the federal legislature. As we will see in this discussion, the heavenly bureaucracy (council) is layered and its members serve God in different but related ways.

Rebellion against God results in being cast out of his service. God doesn’t run the affairs of the spiritual world or our world with rebels on his payroll. They are cast to the Underworld (in the case of the Eden rebel), or a special place in the Underworld (e.g., the offenders of Genesis 6:1-4, who are, to quote Peter and Jude, “kept in chains of gloomy darkness” or “sent to Tartarus”). There are more divine rebels than that in the Bible, but hopefully that scratches the surface enough.

In the book, you argue persuasively that Deuteronomy 32:8 and Psalm 82 are speaking about God assigning heavenly beings to oversee each nation in the world (after Babel). How do you envision an unfallen heavenly being specifically carrying out the tasks listed in Psalm 82? Namely, _defending the just, defending the weak and the fatherless; upholding the cause of the poor and the oppressed. _This was God’s role for them before they rebelled, but how do you envision them doing this work exactly?

Michael S. Heiser: He would do what God would do. God’s standards for justice are revealed in his moral laws, in how he tries to get humans (his imagers) to relate to each other, and in true worship. Biblical theologians encapsulate all that in the concept of “order” (the opposite of which is “chaos”).

Ruling the way God wants you to rule means fostering the ordered relationships he desires, not because he is a killjoy, but because that order maximizes human happiness and love for God. Part of that is worshipping only the true God and no other. Psalm 82’s diatribe against the fallen gods is directly linked to justice because, in the biblical worldview, failing at just living produces chaos on earth—and it’s the job of superior beings to make sure that doesn’t happen. Instead, the picture we get in Psalm 82 runs from neglect that causes chaos to stirring the pot of chaos, thereby making the lives of people miserable.

Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air” in Ephesians 2. What do you think that means exactly?

Michael S. Heiser: On one hand, “air” is part of the vocabulary for the spiritual world—the world which humans do not inhabit, but which divine beings do inhabit. But “air” was also a descriptor for the heavens below the firmament in Israelite cosmology—still distinguishable from God’s abode, which was above the firmament (Isa 40:22; Job 22:13; cp. Gen 1:7 to Psa 29:10). The “air” metaphor allowed people to think of the spiritual world in terms of (a) not being the realm of humans, and (b) still beneath the presence of God, or the place where God lives.

That meant Satan wasn’t in God’s presence or in control of God’s domain. Angels could be sent into the world to assist humans and would of course be opposed by those spiritual beings in control of earth’s “air space” so to speak. Ultimately, the spiritual world has no measurable parameters, or latitude and longitude (the celestial sphere is no help locating it!). Human writers have to use the language of “place” to describe something place-less (in terms of what we, as embodied beings, can understand). For that reason, it isn’t always a neat picture.

Throughout Ephesians, the phrase “heavenly places” is used in a positive sense. God’s people are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph. 2). All spiritual blessings reside in Christ in heavenly places (Eph. 1). However, also in Ephesians, we are told that evil principalities and powers operate in heavenly places (Eph. 6). In your view, what are the “heavenly places” in Ephesians and how can both evil spirits and Christians occupy them at the same time?

Read the Rest (~4,500 words) of the Interview of Michael Heiser by Frank Viola

Education

How Do We Help the Next Generation Navigate Culture?

By divinecouncil July 8, 2017

by Sean McDowell

As a parent of three kids, I am frequently trying to help them best navigate cultural voices vying for their hearts and minds. This is why I am thrilled about the new book by A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World, by Brett Kunkle and John Stonestreet. They are both my good friends and ministry partners. But most importantly, they have written an excellent book.

If you work with students in any capacity—parent, youth worker, teacher, mentor—this is a book you need to get. Read it, study it, and pass it on to other youth influencers. Here’s a quick interview to give you a taste of how to help students best navigate culture:

SEAN MCDOWELL: Why did you feel the need to write a book helping the next generation navigate culture?

KUNKLE & STONESTREET: There are nine reasons we wrote this book: Alexis, Micah, Paige, Ella, Jonah, Abigail, Ann, Ali and Hunter. They are our kids, from 22 years old all the way down to 2 months old, and we’re in the middle of trying to help them navigate the challenges of this cultural moment. We speak to parents all the time who sense, like us, that the tides have shifted significantly.

We’ve watched as the culture has become saturated with explicit sexuality, omnipresent glowing screens, increasing racial tension, marketing messages promising the good life, information from a thousand different voices, and the celebration of perpetual adolescence. However, kids growing up in this culture have never known anything different. If they are going to be discipled in Christ within the context of these challenges, we must be intentional in some very specific areas and some very key ways.

Also, we wanted to provide a resource that was tremendously practical, as the title of the book says. There are many good academic and theoretical treatments of culture have been written recently, and we wanted build on that work and leverage the insights of those books to help parents, teachers, and mentors of the next generation apply these insights in ways that will equip the next generation to thrive as followers of Christ.

What is culture? And are Christians in, above, or against culture?

To answer the second question first, yes! With proper discernment and grounding in the overarching story of redemption that Scripture provides, we will find ourselves at various times in culture, while holding to truths and values and practices that are above culture, but will occasionally (and in some contexts, often) find ourselves against culture. We see all three approaches at different times throughout the history of the Christian church. In this Practical Guide, we hope to help the next generation cultivate the wisdom to know which approach will be required in various arenas of culture today.

Defining culture, which is how we begin the book, is essential for developing that discernment. Many Christians reduce culture to all the bad stuff “out there.” On this view, our posture will constantly be against anything and everything in culture. However, this view fails to recognize that you find culture wherever you find human beings, so we cannot reduce it to the stuff “out there.” Culture is simply what humans make of the world. It includes all of our ideas, institutions, habits, and the structures we embrace to live life together.

God made us to be culture creators. Thus, culture in and of itself is not what is bad. Instead, it’s the worldview underneath our culture-building that is true or false and it’s the direction we take culture which may be good or evil, life-giving or dehumanizing.

How does the ubiquity of information shape the way kids think? And what are a couple practical ways to counter this?

Those of us living today will encounter more information daily than someone living just a few centuries ago would have encountered during the entire course of their life. Ours is the age of information and we must understand that information constantly communicates ideas about how we are to think about and live in this world. Ideas are not merely confined to the theoretical realm but ultimately, ideas have consequences for all of life. And bad ideas have victims.

In this age, access to information has replaced the pursuit of wisdom. So, without a keenly developed sense of discernment, kids may have all the information in the world at their fingertips and yet, not know how to live life well, with wisdom. Additionally, technology has “flattened” the world such that it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between what is an authoritative source and what isn’t. For our kids, this creates a major existential struggle as they ask, “Who should I trust?” In a world with so many voices, should they listen to mom and dad, their pastor, their teachers, their friends…or Wikipedia? Often, the inability to discern truth from error among all these different sources can lead to skepticism and cynicism about truth itself.

Thus, discernment is a skill we must help our kids develop. Practically, in the book we suggest that parents, mentors, and teachers should learn from the greatest educator in history, Jesus. Jesus was much more than a teacher, of course, but as He taught He harnessed the power of asking good questions. Often, His response to a question was a another question, in order to expose faulty assumptions, reveal truth and develop discernment in His listeners. In this book we offer a number of discernment-building questions to use with students to cultivate wisdom and discernment.

Perhaps the most important question students should be asked and taught to ask is, “What do you mean by that?” This important question can bring much-needed clarity amidst all the information out there. For instance, we often find ourselves using the same words as others in our culture, but not meaning the same thing. When it comes to words like love, truth, freedom, God, gender, and purpose, the Christian’s dictionary will be very different than the culture’s dictionary. When we equip students with good questions, we help them find clarity in the language and ideas of the culture. Next, we then teach them how to employ those questions when they are watching a movie on Netflix, listening to their college professor, or having a conversation with their Muslim friend.

What do you think is the most pressing issue youth influencers need to address?

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