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What You Know May Not Be So

This transcript is of a presentation given by Michael Heiser entitled “What You Know May Not Be So — How Biblical Prophecy is Unclear and Why.” My best guess for the date of the presentation is January 5th, 2012 given to the first “Future Congress.”

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

The transcript is ~8800 words and includes 50 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube.

The excerpts, below, are 1/8th of the entire transcript. They are a sample of the transcript, not a summary of the presentation.

What You Know May Not Be So

I’ve entitled this what you know may not be so. And the subtext here is how Biblical prophecy is unclear and why.

I should preface this by saying that the reason I proposed this topic and was interested in doing this, because I don’t really do prophecy, but I have a concern that there are a lot of believers who are sort of locked into one perspective and prophecy. And my concern is that if certain things don’t pan out the way you sort of expect them to, then it’s going to have a very dispiriting effect on the church.

The fact is that there is very little that’s self-evident when it comes to prophesy. Really, almost nothing. And I’m going to show you why that is. Why do people disagree so vehemently when it comes to Biblical prophecy? There are actually reasons for it, and I’m going to give you a few of those, by no means all of them, but a few of them.

So what I want to do is to illustrate the problems (by) plucking a few examples out and then apply the results of those difficulties.Roadmap

So, illustrating the problem. Problem number one is something I call clarity of intention. Basically, this is the issue or the problem of how do we really know what the biblical writer of a prophecy intended as far as fulfillment or what was the intended meaning or the intended outcome. How do we really know?

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Splitter or Joiner?

Why is it when we come to prophesy, instead of harmonizing, instead of joining, we split? It’s the only place we do that.

Here’s what I mean. Read 1 Thessalonians 4; a familiar passage. Again, the so-called rapture passage.

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

A very familiar passage.

Then we look at this one. Zechariah 4, and they say: “Well, here it says, ‘on that day his feet shall stand the Mount of Olives and why that lies before Jerusalem the East, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two’ …blah blah. Hey, this doesn’t sound like this.”

Splitter or Joiner?

Or I could put Matthew 24 up here, which has a lot of similarities with 1 Thessalonians 4. But, you look for differences, and then you split them.

Here’s the point: the reason you believe what you believe about the rapture is because you have decided. If we put all the passages about a second coming, a return of Jesus let’s put it that way. If we took all those passages about a return of Jesus and put them all right here in front of us, you would either harmonize them, or you would look for differences and split them into two events. If you’re a splitter, you have a rapture and a second coming. If you’re a joiner, you don’t have a rapture. It’s just a decision you make. Neither one is self-evident.

The Bible doesn’t have like an instruction appendix in the back that says addendum to the last chapter the book of Revelation when thou shalt encounter a prophecy passage, split or join. We don’t have an instruction book. We just make this decision. Usually, because we’ve read somebody who splits and then we decide what sounds great I’m going to split, too. Or we’re going to be a joiner, and then we read a split. They’re interpretive decisions that color, that dictates, that compel, where you end up when you come out.

Imminence?

Another one: Imminence. Again these are all problems with certainty, with what we do when we talk about prophecy. Imminence whatever that means now why do I put it that way? Well, people define Imminence differently. Some people say Imminence means Jesus could return in the next I blink. In other words, there’s nothing preventing it. Some other people say Jesus will return soon, that’s what Imminence means. It means soon. But there might be some things that still need to happen.

Okay, other people will say well it means Jesus will return unexpectedly. So those are these are the three most common definitions of Imminence that you see.

Imminence? Now, here’s the point. you go back to these definitions of Imminence how would you apply them to first Thessalonians 5? Well, the reality is that anything that smacks of a sign in the New Testament, heavenly portents, celestial things happening, the appearance of the Antichrist, you know. Jesus even said you know things like about even what’s going to happen to some of the disciples again talking about you know that is coming and how do we handle that now that we’re dealing with a distant future, all this kind of stuff. Signs are relegated to the second coming only if you presume a rapture when you read 1 Thessalonians 5. If you don’t, then you have no problem with things appearing before the actual return.

In other words, these are decisions you make. I’m not saying any one of them is bad. What I want you to see here is that a lot of what you believe about prophecy you believe, not because it’s just so plain from the Bible. You believe it because you’re filtering it through, again, things you’ve read your experience and the exposure you’ve had to certain things. As you study you develop again presuppositions, presumptions, inclinations to look at things a certain ways, it’s just a natural human thing. Because I don’t know which is right. I don’t know if we should split or join because there’s no instruction manual. And I’m not inspired, so I’m not going to tell you that you would have to pay for that. I can’t do that.

What I want you to realize is that a lot of this stuff is really here. It’s decision oriented. It’s about presuppositions. It’s about thoughts you bring to the text when you read it that it’s going to inform and guide the way you think about it. And someone else will bring another set of thoughts to the same text and come out totally different, and this is why. Because there are ambiguities, it’s going on in the text.

So conclusion. What I want you to get out of this is that you just be aware you just be aware that this is sort of the nature of the problem. There are things going on in the text. There are things God does conceal, he did it a lot the first time, and it could be significant points. Things are cryptic there’s the problem of how do I know what an author originally intended.

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This third transcript is Part 2 of the presentation Michael Heiser gave in 2013 to Future Congress 2. It’s entitled “The Post-Christian Future, Part Two, Pop Culture as High Priest of the Post-Christian Religious Worldview.

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

Part two is ~8500 words and includes 40 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube.

The excerpts, below, are 1/8th of the entire transcript. They are not a summary of the presentation.

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Pop Culture as High Priest of the Post-Christian Religious Worldview

MH is Michael S. Heiser

MH: What I’m going to focus on is talking about the post-Christian culture post-Christian condition. And then sort of zero in on how in the post-Christian world what you’re going to see, as far as the morphing of Christianity. And I’m not saying that the morphing is going to be good. In fact, I’m suggesting that the morphing is not a good thing. And it’s really going to morph into something that’s actually very old. And we’ll talk about that at that point. So this is going to be sort of, hey here’s what I think it’s going to look like. And it’s not really just opinion because I’m going to show you what people are saying right now okay, the Futurists scholars and religious studies scholars and pop culture that sort of thing. And we will comment on it as we go.Techno Utopian Values

MH: Techno-utopian values. The usual suspects, here: progress, purposeful evolution, human power over nature, material or technological advancement as the key to success in the future world, all that sort of stuff. Freedom really translates to don’t give me any rules or any dogma so I can be free — happiness and hedonism right in their presentation. The singularity, something we’ll talk about momentarily.

MH: But I want to zero in on this document: “A Cosmist Manifesto,” this one here, and here are the ten points. I’ve abbreviated the annotations for the cosmos manifesto, but here are the ten principles, ten points humans will merge with technology to a rapidly increasing extent. It’s a new phase of the evolution of our species.

Cosmist Manifesto

MH: You might be thinking cyborgs here, which is one think about it. But if you know anything about nanotechnology that’s an invisible integration. That’s something you never see, but it has the potential. Once you have control over every atom in your body I mean you know every molecule you can change the human species as we know it. And this is going to be and is now, I mean, you can buy whole books on the ethics of nanotechnology. I’ve read a couple of them this year again to get my head into the sequel to the novel. And they’re talking about things like elimination of disease, optimizing the human DNA for its various potentials, and they’re really ultimately talking about immortality because you’re dying cell by cell and every cell is made of molecules and at you know that sort of thing. Well if you can control and release nanobots into the body so to speak that instantly repair cellular loss you have potential immortality other than somebody you know shooting you in the head or something like that I mean you get the idea. You will not age you will not decline as a physical specimen. So this is how it’s going to be cast, but this is the sort of merging they’re talking about, too. It’s not just what we would sort of think of as a cyborg.

MH: So what’s the theological cost? Well, we become divine apart from God’s plan of glorification.

New Theology of Humanity

MH: It redefines salvation only in terms of the end, glorification, rather than it dismisses the means which is the cross and the whole reason for it which is sin.

Gnosticism

MH: I drew this from my series I did on The Da Vinci Code, someone out there may have seen.

MH: So, what is Gnosticism? The basics. Well, the Gnostics believe that there is something they refer to as the true God or the light or pneuma, which is spirit. And isn’t God a spirit, doesn’t John 4 say that? God is a spirit; he’s pre-existent, God is preexistent, uncaused, and perfect? Sounds pretty biblical, so far.

MH: Gnostics imagined the true God of being both male, the Father, and also female. And the reason they thought this was because everything else that exists is produced by this God.

MH: Now, in terms of cosmology, the highest Aeon is called, in Gnosticism, the Logos. Is that a familiar term? Okay, this is the highest son of the true God, the Logos. The first aeon, the first emanation, the first act of the father, he is the entire likeness and image of the true God. And these are Gnostic statements okay. He’s the form of the formless, the body of the bodyless, the face of the invisible, the word of the unutterable and all these things. And he actually possesses the knowledge of all the eons. He is unquestionably superior. He’s the top dog, the top Eon.

Gnostic Cosmology MH: Now, the Logos right here again is the top, and together the law goes with the true God, the father and mother element in the true God, form the Triad. Let ‘s just call it a Trinity and be done with it. It’s not the same as a Trinity. If you know your trinitarianism, this is not same. But they’re using the three language.

Mutants & Mystics

MH: Last point: there’s a whole scholarly book. This is University of Chicago Press this, and this is a dense read, it’s a scholarly book called mutants and mystics science fiction superhero comics and the paranormal. And guess who wrote it? Our friend Jeffrey Kripal. He has an entire chapter if you’re into UFOs this will be shocking to you. his entire last chapter is on Whitley Strieber and communion. The whole purpose of the book is to show how comic books, and specifically the alien theme, has been a useful and wonderful and delightful vehicle for transmitting the truths of Gnosticism. I mean, they’re not secretive about this. It’s just, here it is, you know?
Mutants & Mystics 2

MH: I highly recommend that you read this. He argues that much of the recent popular culture of the u.s. Comes from what we used to be called the paranormal. He has a third book called authors of the impossible where he as an academic says academic scholars ought to own up to the fact that paranormal stuff is real. And he’s arguing in favor of paranormal stuff within the account.
Mutants & Mystics 3

MH: He even goes into Madame Blavatsky. None of this is new. The whole alien thing is just rehashed Gnosticism slash occultism slash theosophy slash whatever, fill in the blank, for a technological society. That’s all it is. And this is what’s going to reach the masses.

MH: And what I’m telling you this whole presentation comes down to this: the adaptation is going to be led by people who know what they’re doing and will control the vocabulary and teach others. They will teach others to mine the vocabulary and morph the theology, and it’s only going to take a generation before that becomes the articulation of what Christianity is.

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As described in a recent post, there are all kinds of great uses for transcripts, and I’ve started creating them for video and audio materials important enough to have in text format.

The first transcript I completed is of a documentary interview with Jordan Peterson conducted by David Fuller for Rebel Wisdom entitled, “Truth in the Time of Chaos.” You can find that transcript on McGillespie.com.

This second transcript is the first part of a presentation Michael Heiser gave in 2013 to Future Congress 2. It’s entitled “The Post-Christian Future, Part One, Thinking Theologically About the Utopian Impulse as a Perversion of the Judeo-Christian Worldview.”

(Note: I’ll be posting the transcript on the forum. What follows, here, are short excerpts)

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

The presentation was given while Mike was preparing to write the sequel to “The Facade.” Part one is ~9000 words and includes 25 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube. The transcript is merely an attempt to make video and audio material more accessible.

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Road Map

MH is Michael S. Heiser

MH: There’s always been sort of this impulse to either create the perfect society or more pertinently, force it on people. And so, I see looming on the horizon a new effort at creating a wonderful, blissful, totalitarian state and I want to sort of pursue that a little bit and talk about it. And again, for those of you here, and for those of you who listen later to the presentation, I just want to get you thinking about why it is that this always seems to rear its ugly head and why even Christians, at times, are not immune from this notion that we can make things perfect, that we can just make it alright if we did this, that, and the other thing, everything would be ok.

MH: So, I want to try to think theologically about those things, and we’ll see what happens. So, here is our roadmap for the day.Road Map

Definition & Relevance

MH: So, first part: definition and relevance. Utopia as you may or may not know, again, is this idea of a perfect human society. The term itself refers to an ideal place that actually doesn’t exist.Definition & Relevance

MH: It’s imaginary, you know, it’s conceptual. It’s this grand wish, something that can’t be real in the real world but boy we wish it was, that sort of thing.

MH: And again the breakdown of the term utopia: no place, a good or no place. And you’ll see it spelled either with the “e” or with the “o” forming the “u”, in either case. But it actually could have either derivation depending on who’s using it.

MH: An imaginary world where social justice is achieved, whatever that means, and the means of guaranteeing all that is secure. That’s where the control comes in. So that’s what we’re talking about. And as far as the impulse, what are the elements?

ExamplesUtopian Examples

MH: And HG Wells, of course, a lot of a lot of their thinking was influenced by eugenics. To create the ideal society you need ideal people, right? You need to sort of weed out the unfortunate or less desirable elements to the human population. So that was very common in the United States. A lot of later not-so-eugenic theory and practice was drawn from American and British writing. Those were the seed beds to some of those things that we would come later on.

MH: Marxist Leninism, of course, this would be the Lennon experiment with Marxism. Of course the Revolution of 1917. You know, again, the working class. We’re going to create the community where the worker is in power. Ostensibly, this is how it’s marketed. This is how it’s put forth.

How It’s Sold vs. Actual ResultEcological vs Neo-Paganism

MH: Nowadays we refer to eugenics as genetic engineering and genetic selection. Genetics is just the new eugenics. And I’m not here to demonize all genetic research because that would just be ridiculous too. But, once you have the power of the genome in your hand, eugenics is really easy. You know, it’s just it’s just how do we how do we accomplish this thing we can easily do now on a wide scale? That’s the only question you need to ask.

MH: Politically, of course, world peace freedom from crime which in their right mind would oppose that? Well, I’m not opposed to that. I am opposed to statist fiefdom. If you’re a statist, you are anti-individual. Think about that. That means if you’re in control you get to criminalize practically anything. Criminalize self-protection —that would be like gun laws taking guns away okay. We’re going to criminalize your ability to protect yourself. Why? Because your emphasis is on the state, the utopia, as opposed to the individual.

MH: Citizens self-sustenance, we talked about that with the food supply. You have each individual state, state being defined as country here, trying to implement their view of perfection, their view of the ideal situation. But ultimately you have a push toward global government.

Progress or Human Control?Progress or Human Control?

MH: Progress, human improvement, science & technology. Human control is what this means in our day and age. So, whereas we would call it progress human improvement through science and technology what it really means is control of people through science and technology.

MH: We have information control. In other words, we’ll fill your head with what it needs to be filled with. Knowledge is power. It’s easy to propagandize things like the political process. Eugenics, that’s progress because we’re weeding out…we’re clearing out the gene pool there and that a good thing. Police state we have to have a police state to enforce progress. Commerce comes under state control. Basically, everything you do, if it’s viewed as being an impediment to progress, then it needs to be controlled or eliminated. We have to be able to keep the progress going. We don’t want progress to stop.

MH: Now, utopian impulse as a biblical perversion. And this is where your handout comes in I’m going to go through this quickly, and I’ll tell you what the handout supplements.

MH: Here are the fundamental myths of utopianism. The idea that humans are perfectible, that’s a myth. Either on an individual level or a corporate level, it ignores human capacity for evil. It ignores you know the condition of the heart. But it’s a myth that drives utopianism. The other myth is that you can force human perfectibility. That just isn’t going to work. So enforcing an Edenic state. In other words, it would be Eden by human effort. Eden created by a ruling human elite.

Babel and Myths of UtopianismBabel & Myths of Utopianism

MH: Babel is a big deal with this because if you understand what’s going on at Babel a ziggurat, Tower of Babel, was built to bring the divine to earth. We’re going to build you a house we’re going to build you home because gods live on mountains so let’s like build our own mountain so that the deity will come here and when he comes here we can negotiate; we can we can kind of barter.

MH: It’s the same logic of idolatry. The ancient person wasn’t wasn’t an idiot he knows that this thing he just made isn’t his creator so why do they make idols? Because they believe deities can be summoned to reside there; you locate the deity. This is why Israel was forbidden to make graven images because Yahweh cannot be tamed. Yahweh will not be brought anywhere for negotiation. That’s up to him. It’s a completely different perspective on it. But you have the same thing going on with Babel. We are going to reestablish Eden we are going to bring the deity back to earth. We’re separated from the deity now we got kicked out in all that stuff we’re going to bring the deity back down to earth, and then we’re going to you know do all this stuff, all this good stuff. Well, again it’s a usurpation of God’s plan God’s punishment. Humans trying to remedy and re-kick-start what they ruined. Babel is sort of the beginning living illustration of this idea that hey let’s bring heaven to earth. Utopian thinking. Heaven is not going to come to earth until God wills it and not before. But that’s what the utopian misses or hates take your pick, one way or the other.

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Apologetics gives artists confidence to speak into the darkness.

Article by Alex Aili for “A Clear Lens“.

During the first class of the morning at the small Christian college, our professor stopped the lecture and used his walking stick, curiously similar to a wizard’s staff, to step from behind the podium to the front of the class. He did this when he really wanted us to listen.

He leaned on the staff as if he was Pastor Gandalf and scanned the class before muttering a kernel of weathered wisdom. It was a heartfelt opinion, but it resonated with the force of a command: “Christians ought to be at the forefront of every discipline.”

Are we at the forefront of the Art that’s shaping our culture?

No. We’re lagging, relying on tropes and stereotypes to preach simplistic sermons when people want to experience compelling stories (although The Case for Christ is a recent example of success).

So yes, we must learn how to make better art, but what good is that if we aren’t speaking the same language as the culture around us?

In Apologetics and The Christian Imagination, Holly Ordway insists that the lost meaning of Christian terminology is what prevents many believers from being intelligible to unbelievers. For example, our world doesn’t hear “Jesus,” “faith” or “sin” as defined by Christians. She argues that an effective, and underused, way to reclaim lost meaning is to create art with sound doctrine (her specific focus in the book, however, is apologetical literature).

In a word, Christian artists need to learn apologetics in addition to their craft. If you have the creative drive and you believe Jesus is the Son of God, then learn apologetics. Know what you believe and why. Your art will be better because you’ll be confident enough to tackle tough issues.

Christian artists don’t have to hide in the realm of “self-expression.” If we study apologetics, the more we’ll naturally see how we can demonstrate Christianity’s implications in our work.

For a start, here are 4 habits to ignite artistic apologetics (although my primary focus is narrative art, creators of other forms may still benefit).

Develop the Worldviews Behind the Central Conflict

Art enables us to raise deep worldview questions without coming across as hostile. How? Well, in storytelling, there is a single question called the dramatic question, which involves the protagonist’s (main character) central conflict with the antagonist.

This clash arises from conflicting desires, which arise from conflicting values, which are motivated by their conflicting worldviews (or perhaps variations of the same worldview).

To put it plainly, the main character wants something and the bad guy wants something else. But they both can’t get what they want because they value different things, so a conflict arises.

For example, the dramatic question of The Lord of the Rings is: “Will Frodo destroy the ring?” And the antagonism is that Sauron wants to reclaim it.

If desires drive characters, values drive desires, and worldviews drive values, then destroying the ring drives Frodo, selfless heroism drives his desire to destroy it, and Goodness motivates his selfless heroism.

With Tolkien creating this conflict, we are drawn in. We want to know what happens to Frodo.

When we empathize with characters by vicariously experiencing their journey (not to mention the world they inhabit), we participate in the worldviews involved in the story as well, albeit indirectly.

So whether we agree with it or not, we let the protagonist’s worldview speak as we follow the story because the answer to the dramatic question unearths deeper worldview implications based on which desires were met and which values are maintained.

How do we develop the expertise to naturally develop worldviews into our art? For starters, learn the craft of dialogue, character development, sentence structure, description, scene structure, etc. Study award-winning stories and the conflicts that generate them. Take a poorly-rated movie, TV show, or song and rewrite it. Then use that as an inspiration or primer for your own work (don’t plagiarize, obviously).

All it takes is the desire to learn. Ask experts. Google it. YouTube it. The Internet Age has its benefits!

Embedding worldview into the central conflict is perhaps the most important element in creating art because when it’s done right, deep questions are raised, which demand inward attention on the audience’s part.

Wrestle with the Darkness

Christian art cannot be pigeonholed into what is family-friendly (although the genre is necessary), aesthetically unambitious or, worst of all, thinly-disguised proselytization. It requires provocation with novelty and sound theology with beauty. It must engage with our world and be relevant.

Please read the rest of, “When Christian Artists Learn Apologetics.”

In a recent article, Arjun Walia documents how modern and historical “elites” use black magic rituals to conjure up entities for more power.

Good Research, ‘Secret’ Conclusions

Walia states the problem well.

Looking into various subjects, from MK ultra and other forms of mind control, to the information coming from whistleblowers/insiders, the use of ceremonial magic for perverse reasons by the elite is really not that far-fetched. Although scary to contemplate, it does happen. Those who we consider our leaders, those in positions of great power, those behind the global corporatocracy we see today and the propaganda we’re all subject to, could all be guided by ‘spirits’ from places we have yet to learn about. And as a result, the massive manipulation of humanity could be guided by these ‘demonic’ entities.

Then comes to ‘Secret’ conclusions.

The main takeaway from this article should be that our connection to spirit is strong, and there are those that dwell in other worlds that can assist us, but not for our own material desires that stem from human greed, ego, and ignorance. If your heart is pure and intentions are good, if you would like to use manifestation for the goodwill of the whole, then you need not fear talking to and acknowledging this realm.

This is consistent with “The Secret” where the law of attraction puts a universal energy source at the disposal of the magician. The results of magic rituals, we’re told, are determined solely by the thoughts and intentions of the magician.

An Unexplained Leap

Walia’s conclusions also make an unexplained leap from the rituals upon which they’re derived.

Hall, and most of the historical figures he cites as having been influenced (Socrates, Napoleon, Faust), were interacting with individual spirit entities each with unique characteristics. And yet, in Walia’s conclusions about them, the personal demons of the magicians somehow become a collective “it” rather than a personalized “they.” In contrast, the invocations in “The Complete Book of Magic Science” always call upon “the invisible inhabitants of the elements” using a specific name.

For Walia, the unseen realm does have duality: it has both good and evil demons. But that’s where his distinctions end. Unlike the rituals performed by the elites of his subject, he makes no distinctions about what or who is being contacted.

Protected by their purity, we’re told, the white magician is safe to draw upon the collective energy of an amorphous host of demons functioning like the “Force” in star wars. If one has the pure intentions of Yoda, only the good demons respond, and vice versa for Darth Vader.

Cosmic Powers Over This Present Darkness

Though Walia makes no biblical references, his “elite … those in positions of great power, those behind the global corporatocracy” are called cosmocrats in Ephesians 6:12.1

“Cosmocrat” is anglicized from the greek κοσμοκράτορας or kosmokratoras. They are the “world influence of any influential, governing authority over the inhabited world understood in terms of physical control; including both human and preternatural authorities.”2

The entities (“those that dwell in other worlds”) being called on for guidance and power are the preternatural counterparts of the cosmocrats: “the rulers … the authorities … the cosmic powers over this present darkness.1 These terms have one thing in common: they are all terms of geographic dominion.3

Their Beliefs, Not Yours

If all of this seems far-fetched, esoteric, or inapplicable to real life, take it up with the elites in Walia’s article. It’s their actions and beliefs that are of concern. One need not prove the existence of the unseen realm to discuss the behaviors of those declaring that they seek power from it.

If the invisible entities the elites are calling on for power don’t exist then what’s all the fuss about? Again, the “fuss” is about the actions and beliefs of those in earthly positions of power. If a psychopath threatens, “I’ve been commanded by Satan to kill you” the immediate problem is his belief in Satan, not yours.

Ceremonial Magic

What is ceremonial magic? The works of multiple scholars, from Plato to Manly P. Hall and further down the line, suggest it is essentially the use of rituals and techniques to invoke and control “spirits” or lifeforms that could be existing within other dimensions or worlds. For example, according to Hall, “a magician, enveloped in sanctified vestments and carrying a wand inscribed with hieroglyphic figures, could by the power vested in certain words and symbols control the invisible inhabitants of the elements and of the astral world. While the elaborate ceremonial magic of antiquity was not necessarily evil, there arose from its perversion several false schools of sorcery, or black magic.”

The essence of magic is bypassing God or Godly means to do something. The worst of all forms is to involve the lower-g gods forbidden in the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”4 Ancient Israelites would have understood such a god to be “a supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force.”2

Plato Was Right

Yet if we examine the works of Plato, we see he specifically condemns, both in the Laws and in the Republic, the idea that “gods” can be influenced by the performance of certain rituals — called “necromancy” or “magical attack.” He believed those who try to control the spirit world should be penalized.

The Bible is clear that lower-g gods exist5, and that they are not to be tangled with.6 Plato’s belief was consistent with these prohibitions.

For the Jew, and later the Christian, it has always been “black” to communicate with elohim other than Yahweh. All magic, in this sense, is black.

Socrates was Almost Good Enough?

Socrates, about whom Plato wrote much, also spoke of an entity that guided him. It was never given a name, but references to it ranged from daemon to daimon. Socrates believed this entity was a gift, and manifested itself in the form of the voice within, something we all possess. His communication with this entity was actually used as one of the charges against him when he was put to death. Socrates believed it to be a link between mortal man and God.

Socrates seems to be an exception when it comes to using these concepts for perverse reasons, and, as Hall points out, he provided evidence that “the intellectual and moral status of the magician has much to do with the type of elemental he is capable of invoking. But even the daemon of Socrates deserted the philosopher when the sentence of death was passed.”

If Socrates’ intellectual and moral status were not enough what made Hall believe the average man would be safe in practicing “white” magic?

Good men are capable of invoking evil spirits. The question is not whether they are able, but whether they are willing.

The ‘Guided’ First Whistleblower

He (Socrates) was put to death for “corrupting the youth” and spreading “false” information amongst the people, but looking back, he seems to be a figure more like our modern day revolutionaries than a malevolent influence, put to death for exposing the aristocracy’s secrets and encouraging people to question the true nature of reality, to question the doctrine that had been provided to the masses by those in power.

In Socrates lifetime the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Pentateuch) were assembled, and the term “Torah” first used to refer to them. What better time to start “exposing the aristocracy’s secrets and encouraging people to question the true nature of reality” then in parallel with the 66 books of the Bible that would soon encourage the entire world to do exactly that?!

Who’s in Control?

In the Faustian bargain, the recipient becomes at the disposal of the devil after fame and fortune are delivered. Indeed, people seem more likely to become at the mercy of these things than harness them for the good of humanity.

For Hall, the “invisible inhabitants of the elements” are put under the control of the magician who’s used just the right combination of symbols, cloths, words, and ceremony to conjure them. Why would Hall presume that such inhabitants are controllable?

Once conjured, rather than “control the invisible inhabitants” the magician more likely must cede control to them; presumably a problem worse than being only guided.

Who’s More Powerful?

Those seeking more power from “invisible inhabitants of the elements” already have earthly power. Wouldn’t those who could provide more be more powerful than the seeker; the grantor superior to the grantee?

Phenomena like these appear in various cultures during different time periods all throughout human history, so what makes us think these practices have stopped today?”

Indeed, these occult practices have been occurring since at least the time of Moses (1500-1300 B.C.). They were proscribed in the Old Testament, and yet, have continued throughout human history. Their prevalence, today, is such that one can hardly process the news without an understanding of their implications.

Before finishing this commentary on Walia’s article, I discovered it was published in 2016 under a different title: “Ceremonial Magic & Sorcery: How an Ancient Art Became Perverted by the ‘Global Elite’”.
I don’t think the elite have perverted an ancient art; they’ve merely resumed the practice of one corrupted from its inception.

Though I disagree with Walia’s conclusions, I recommend his article for the awareness it brings to these practices. The cosmocrats are real, and so are the entities they’re calling upon for guidance and power.


  1. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Eph 6:12). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. 
  2. Sean Boisen, Mark Keaton, Jeremy Thompson, and David Witthoff. Bible Sense Lexicon: Dataset Documentation. Lexham Press: Faithlife Corp. 2017 (DB version 2017-08-15T17:40:39Z) 
  3. “rulers” (archonton or archon), “principalities” (arche), “powers”/“authorities” (exousia), “powers” (dynamis), “dominions”/“lords” (kyrios), “thrones” (thronos), “world rulers” (kosmokrator). These lemmas have something in common—they were used both in the New Testament and other Greek literature to denote geographical domain authority. Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, loc. 6093. Kindle Edition 
  4. The first commandment. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ex 20:3). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. 
  5. “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah”, The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ps 82:1–2). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. 
  6. “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. (Dt 18:10–12, see also Leviticus 19:26, Lev 19:31; Lev 20:6, Lev 20:27) The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. 

I’ve been mesmerized and confused by “prosperity gospel” (PG) sermons for decades. Twenty years before the phrase came into use to describe them, I wondered about the supposedly direct relationship between the Gospel and prosperity so boldly proclaimed by PG preachers.

Though most of PG’s heyday, I had not yet mined the depths of the Biblical text. I was unarmed and unable to refute or affirm the Biblical references placed at the bottom of the screen during these sermons. Did they prove the relationship between the Bible and prosperity, or did they merely proof-text long enough to separate believers from their tithe?

Blessed” provides history about, but no answers to such questions. It leaves the Bible unopened, provides the facts, and risks only tentative opinions on the so-called prosperity Gospel. The book is no more and no less than “A History of the American Prosperity Gospel.” The history comes in a series of newswire-like reports on the preachers, events, and relationships associated with this Pentecostal offshoot “movement.”

The Bible is Unopened

The Bible remains unopened in the author’s historical exploration. Except for quoting a preachers use of a Biblical verse, there is no exegesis or comment on some PG tenet or another.

Just the Facts

If you read a string of newswire reports about the Viet Nam war, you might form opinions about it. However, except for the editorial choices of which stories to cover and which to leave unreported, newswire services are not (or shouldn’t be) in the business of providing opinions. Likewise, except for a few tentative views at the end of the book, neither does “Blessed” offer those of the author on her subject.

The Deification of the American Dream

The exception to the opinion-less nature of “Blessed” comes at the end of the book when the author comments that the prosperity gospel is “the deification of the American dream.”

The point is offered and then only partially made by the author. Counterpoint questions such as, “But, didn’t the advances that made the dream possible stem naturally from a new nation adhering, however briefly, to Judeo-Christian principles and values?” are not posed or answered.

A Paradox for the Reader to Untangle

If there’s any truth at the heart of the prosperity gospel, it will have something in common with all great truths: paradox. That discovery might begin with questions neither asked nor answered in “Blessed”:

  • What is the relationship, if any, between the Gospel and human prosperity?
  • How could salvation of the lost have nothing, whatsoever, to do with human flourishing?

Every believer with a heartbeat might have an opinion on such questions. But, what is the truth contained in the Biblical text? What might a believer seeking the whole counsel of God, conclude? Have some, or all, of these prosperity gospel preachers been fleecing the sheep or does the fulfillment of one or more of the missions of Jesus Christ involve prosperity and believers?

Blessed” neither poses nor answers, such questions. For those interested in forming their own opinion, however, the history documented in the book provides an informed place to start.

I wanted to get more out of “Blessed” by sharpening my thoughts and confronting any scriptural tensions between prosperity and the Gospel. But the book is subtitled as history, so the fault is mine for bringing those expectations to it. Perhaps the author will build on this book and dive into the heart of the matter (the paradox?) in a future work.

An excerpt from the article The Elohim: What (or Who) Are They? by Michael S. Heiser.

The biblical use of elohim is not hard to understand once we know that it isn’t about attributes. What all the figures on the list have in common is that they are inhabitants of the spiritual world. In that realm there is hierarchy.

For example, Yahweh possesses superior attributes with respect to all elohim. But God’s attributes aren’t what makes him an elohim, since inferior beings are members of that same group. The Old Testament writers understood that Yahweh was an elohim—but no other elohim was Yahweh. He was species-unique among all residents of the spiritual world.

This is not to say that an elohim could not interact with the human world. The Bible makes it clear that divine beings can (and did) assume physical human form, and even corporeal flesh, for interaction with people, but that is not their normal estate. Spiritual beings are “spirits” (1 Kgs. 22:19–22; John 4:24; Heb. 1:14; Rev. 1:4). In like manner, humans can be transported to the divine realm (e.g., Isa. 6), but that is not our normal plane of existence. As I explained earlier, the word elohim is a “place of residence” term. It has nothing to do with a specific set of attributes.

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

In a fascinating 1942 essay, C.S. Lewis offered a “universal law” of human experience:

Every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice is made. . . . You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first. (“First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock)

In other words, overvaluing a lesser good results, paradoxically, in losing it. In a letter to his friend Dom Bede Griffiths, Lewis expanded on his observation, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.”

Lewis applied his law of firsts and seconds to everyday life. The woman who makes her dog the center of her life loses “not only her human usefulness and dignity but even the proper pleasure of dog-keeping.” The man who focuses solely on the woman he loves, doing nothing but contemplating her, eventually loses the pleasure of loving her, as well as all the other things that make life rich and enjoyable. On a much larger scale, Lewis believed that the civilization of his day was imperiled because it had been putting itself first, rather than second to a higher good.

Woe to Second Thing Seekers

Jesus himself taught that seeking second things first results in losing both first and second things. And not only in this life (as Lewis emphasized), but forever. In Luke 6:24–26, Jesus pronounced four woes.

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

“Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry.

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”

These four woes match the four Beatitudes that come immediately before them, each of which describes future blessing from God in his eternal kingdom (“you shall be satisfied, you shall laugh”). Correspondingly, the woes describe an eternal state of divine judgment upon God’s enemies.

It may appear, at first sight, as though Jesus warns his hearers not to be rich, full, happy, or well-regarded. But, as J.C. Ryle pointed out long ago, Abraham and Job were rich, with plenty to eat; King David laughed and rejoiced; and Timothy had a good reputation, as did the seven men appointed to serve the church in Acts 6. So, what is Jesus actually warning against?

No Good Apart from God

The key is the last phrase of the fourth woe: “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” Jesus warns not against a good reputation per se, but specifically the sort of good reputation enjoyed by the false prophets. We’re in danger of divine judgment when we’re well-thought-of for ungodly reasons, when we say what’s not true to gain the good opinion of others, sacrificing truth for popularity.

This helps us understand Jesus’s woes. Jesus doesn’t pronounce woe upon all who are rich, but upon those who find their consolation in riches rather than in God — who treasure their wealth above God. Jesus doesn’t pronounce woe upon all who are satisfied, but upon those who place the satisfaction of their appetites above God.

Jesus doesn’t pronounce woe upon all joyful people, but upon those who seek happiness apart from God. The problem is not wealth, food, laughter, or reputation in and of themselves. It’s the idolatry of elevating such things above God. When that happens, the law of firsts and seconds applies, forever.

Do You Love It Enough to Love It Less?

Read the Whole Article

By Mark Ward, Jr

Should pastors and other Bible teachers bother to learn Greek and Hebrew? You can use Greek and Hebrew without having to memorize a single paradigm, let alone 3,000 vocab words, so why torture yourself?

I’ll give you ten reasons studying the original languages is worth the pain, five this week and five next.

1. Because they increase interpretive accuracy.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor by training. He had no formal theological education. Yet he went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most influential preachers—and a proponent of studying the Greek and Hebrew. He said that the languages

. . . are of great value for the sake of accuracy; no more, that is all. They cannot guarantee accuracy but they promote it. (Preaching and Preachers, 127–128)

Lloyd-Jones knew that some preachers would be tempted to treat a sanctuary like a linguistics classroom, and he discouraged that. But he also understood the interpretive power of Greek and Hebrew study. This pulpit master, in his classic work on preaching, goes on to rigorously subsume the value of the original languages to the end goal of conveying the biblical message to people. And it’s key that, in his view, they only “promote”—not “guarantee”—hermeneutical and homiletical accuracy.

I have heard comparatively untutored preachers teach Scripture accurately to groups that included numerous biblical studies PhDs. I have also heard the opposite; I have sometimes thought to myself, “Does this guy have any idea who he’s talking to?” (Indeed, the phrase “the gall!” has only ever come to my mind while listening to preachers.) If you are a Greek/Hebrew novice, by dabbling into something you don’t know, you may very well limit the effectiveness of your ministry to the educated by unwitting inaccuracies.

2. Because they make contextual connections which are necessarily obscured by translation.

There’s an apparently awkward break in the chain of Jesus’ reasoning in English translations of John 15:1–4. See if you can catch it:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

One of these sentences doesn’t at first seem to flow very well with what comes before and after it. Why does he break out of his vine and fruit talk to mention, “Already you are clean”? That “already” implies some contrast with uncleanness—but he was just talking about pruning, not cleaning. And after his reference to cleaning, he goes back to talking about the main topic of the paragraph, namely branches and vines.

This is a perfect example of the kind of thing that knowing Greek can do for you. The word translated “clean” and the word translated “prunes” in the previous sentence are from the same Greek root (καθαρος). Jesus isn’t awkwardly lurching; he’s making a bit of a pun that’s hard to put into English. You can’t make these sorts of connections (the sorts that are necessarily obscured by translation) without knowing the original languages.

3. Because they rule out some interpretations.

Knowing original languages is more often helpful for ruling out bad interpretations than anointing true ones. Consider Psalm 14:1.

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. (ESV)

In the English Bible translation I grew up with, the KJV, the words “There is” are italicized, meaning that they were supplied by the translators and not present in the original Hebrew. That’s true.

So I have heard numerous people say over the years that, supposedly, the italics indicate that the original Hebrew reads, “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘No, God!’” (I particularly remember hearing this from a clever roommate in college, who won the smarter-than-thou award for that day.)

But once I learned Hebrew I discovered that there’s a significant problem with this argument: the Hebrew word translated “no” doesn’t mean “no,” as in the opposite of “yes.” It means “non-existence of.” The fool described in Psalm 14:1 is denying God’s existence, not saying “No” to God.

Knowing Hebrew didn’t give me the right interpretation of this verse; that was something I already knew from my English translation(s). It just enabled me to decisively rule out the urban legend interpretation.

… For reasons 4 through 9 please follow the direct links, below.

5 Reasons Studying the Original Languages Is Worth the Pain

5 More Reasons Bible Teachers Should Learn Greek & Hebrew