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Unseen Realm

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by Dr. Ronn Johnson

I have been away from this blog for some time, though it has been constantly on my mind. Since my last post, I have written and presented a course at our church on the big story of the Bible. It was rewarding, yet undoubtedly the toughest challenge I had ever faced as a Bible teacher. As I told the class several times, sometimes out of desperation, it’s one thing to teach a passage of the Bible, or even a survey of books within the Bible—most of us have tried that—but something entirely different to approach the text with the sole intent of tracking its largest narrative. Sometimes I felt like I knew where I was going, while at other times I felt very unsure of myself, even within an hour of walking into the class. Now that it’s over I look forward to stepping back and reviewing what I said, thinking through where my work needs improvement.

I would like to return to this blog for such a purpose, in fact: to review what I said in the class and hear myself talk. I invite your response if you have the time. In previous blogs my thinking has been largely negative, pointing out perceived problems with evangelicalism’s traditional understanding of the big story of the Bible. It will feel good to turn the ship around at this point and head in a positive direction. As you could guess, my understanding of the story will be categorically different from the Sin Paid For model that I have been talking about—where the punishment required for sin by God was voluntarily paid by a behaviorally perfect individual, with this payment then being applied to those who accept this gracious provision of Christ on their behalf. I realize that many people like this story because it offers God a way to relieve the tension between his justice and love through Jesus while remaining true to his own demands of grace and impartiality. But as I’ve recommended, this does not seem to be the tension played out in the biblical story. And once we change the tension or crisis of a story we are in effect writing a different story altogether.

In my class, I developed the biblical story by working through the chronological flow of the text. This is easier said than done, I came to realize, and I’ll talk more of this below. But in general, I tried to not give away what happened until it actually happened. I did this for those in the class who were unfamiliar with the Bible, as well as to experiment how this would work within my own presentation. For purposes of this blog, I will lay out the whole story right up front, from beginning to end, then return back to go through the details in upcoming posts. I presume that readers of this website are familiar enough with the Bible to not be annoyed at being given the end of the story too soon.

I have used the analogy of a brick wall before so I will continue the analogy here. What follows are the one hundred bricks which make up, in my opinion, the big story wall of the Bible. Ending up with this round number is not accidental, as you could guess, but mostly because I didn’t like the idea of ending on an odd number, like 89 or 105. I constantly reworked my pile to keep it at the century mark, which is unimportant in the long run. The number can certainly change. Here are my bricks listed in the order in which they appear (or occur) in the story, starting with Genesis 1:1:

  1. God creates the universe
  2. God creates elohim above humans
  3. God creates humans below elohim
  4. Humans fail a loyalty test
  5. Humanity dies and awakens
  6. Creation is sentenced to frustration
  7. Adam’s family shows divided loyalties
  8. Elohim interfere in human affairs
  9. God destroys the earth
  10. Elohim receive territorial rule

 

  1. Elohim abuse their authority
  2. God judges ruling elohim
  3. Abraham switches spiritual loyalties
  4. Abraham is promised blessing
  5. Elohim come to earth as messengers
  6. God designates loyalty as right
  7. God designates disloyalty as wrong
  8. Abraham’s family shows divided loyalties
  9. God’s family is named Israel
  10. Jacob bears twelve tribes

 

  1. Joseph saves the family in Egypt
  2. Pharaoh enslaves the family
  3. God reveals his name
  4. Passover redeems Israel
  5. Israel accepts Torah
  6. Israel worships Baal
  7. God clarifies his jealousy
  8. Loyalty is demanded
  9. Disloyalty is predicted
  10. Sacred space is institutionalized

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Yesterday was Darren Wilson’s “Finger of God” and today is his “Furious Love”. WP Films is making their films watchable for free during Easter week!

I’m half-way through Furious Love and can now recommend it. Here’s the trailer:

I don’t know what movies will be shown, tomorrow, so tune in to find out!

by The Bible Project

The talented folks at The Bible Project explain the Council God has created to administer his Kingdom.

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by Doug Overmyer

“I’ve received a lot of hate from Christians,” the psychic told me, her eyes guarded.

When I thought to title this post, I almost wrote, “Psychics: A Christian Perspective,” but I realized how off putting that might be to psychics who have received something from Christians that they shouldn’t have: hate.

You won’t receive that here.

I do, however, want to offer a perspective from the Kingdom of God Mindset that lays at the foundation of how I interpret what seers see.

I frequently receive emails asking for readings from seers or psychics. Obviously, that’s not what this site is about, but one of those emails last week prompted these thoughts.

In the public arena, a psychic is someone who receives hidden information from extra-sensory perceptions. Where does the information come from?

As described here, those with psychic ability probably fall along a continuum of ability. For ease of understanding, I’ve broken the continuum into 7 categories.

The source of the extra-sensory perception depends on where the psychic is on the continuum. But not all “psychics” receive extra-sensory perception.

Charlatans

Charlatans are great at reading people’s physical states. They are extremely observant and able to detect what their subject wants or needs to hear. In The Wizard of Oz, Professor Marvel is a charlatan.

Once, while staffing a booth at a psychic fair, a young man with yellow eyes came to me for a “reading.” My team, of course, was doing prophetic encouragement but in that environment, we adopted the local language and offered “spiritual readings.”

I told this young man what I told everyone: the source of our knowledge is the Father in heaven, and the only way to the Father is Jesus, so we’ll ask the Father through Jesus to have the Holy Spirit reveal what God has for this young man. I invited the Holy Spirit, asked for a word, and waited.

This man stood perfectly still with a blank affect looking directly into my eyes.

I received the prophetic word and gave it to him.

He was visibly startled.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear that. I go to a lot of these, and there’s a lot of fakes. They just read your face. I wanted to see if you were fake. Your reading was the most accurate I’ve ever received.”

I followed it up with, “It wasn’t me. God really wants you to know him.”

My point: he was looking to expose charlatans.

Empaths

An empath is very sensitive to what other people are feeling, to the point of feeling their emotions themselves. They are extremely intuitive. In the Myers Briggs/Keirsey Temperament Sorter, they are extreme INFPs or ENFPs.

It’s a marvelous gift and ability.

They are called into counseling, therapy, or pastoral ministry. Somewhere along the lines, they received guidance to channel their ability through the mask of psychic ability.

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

These kinds of psychics were not trained to use their gifts appropriately. It is not rooted in the pure truth of God’s love as expressed through Jesus, so the help they end up offering others ends up tainted and distorted.

Parents: if your child expresses INFP or ENFP tendencies, guide him or her to get trained to use these amazing gifts for the most good.

Sensitives

These are people who are spiritually sensitive. They pick up spiritual baggage, spiritual entities, and spiritual destinies. They navigate these impressions, filtered through their worldview, to advise their clients.

They don’t see the baggage or entities or destinies, but they do receive impressions, and the impressions are probably accurate. The distortion comes from the incorrect worldview.

It’s important to adopt the worldview that Jesus had, or something close to it, rather than a gnostic or scientific framework when navigating spiritual impressions to advise someone.

Seers

Seers are sensitives to an extreme: they actually see spiritual baggage, entities, and destinies, and use what they see to advise their clients. Think of Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the movie Ghost.

The ability to see spiritual things is what this site is all about, so at the risk of sounding redundant: the best way to navigate what seers see is through the Kingdom of God Mindset.

False Prophets

Among Christians who think about these things, there is a ton of bad information regarding false prophets.

A false prophet is not a prophet speaking for God inaccurately or incorrectly. This is a “presumptuous” prophet. [Deuteronomy 17:13]

A “false prophet” is a prophet who gets his or her information from a “false god” or any spiritual entity not aligned with God. (A “false god” is any spirit that receives worship, other than the one true God Most High).

Basically, a False Prophet is anyone who delivers supernatural information from a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit or aligned with the Lord Jesus Christ.

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by TheBibleProject

In the second video in the Spiritual Beings Series, TheBibleProject explores the Biblical word, “Elohim”.

Elohim

Did you know that the biblical word for God is actually a title and not a name? And did you know that this title can refer to other spiritual beings as well as to the creator God? In this video, we explore the biblical terminology for spiritual beings and how this helps us understand what the Bible means when it says that “God is one.”

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by Frank Viola

Today I interview my friend Michael Heiser.

If you’ve read my book Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, Michael’s name should be familiar to you since I quote him in several places in my discussion of the fallen principalities and powers later in the book.

(Michael also graciously wrote a robust endorsement for the book, to which I’m thankful.)

Like all of my work, much of Michael’s work is marked by exposing unbiblical traditions that Christians have embraced. Those traditions are so ingrained that God’s people routinely filter the Bible through them.

Recently, Michael released a new book which covers the waterfront on what the Bible has to say about angels. And in so doing, he corrects many erroneous ideas that Christians have imbibed about angelic beings.

I’ll say at the outset that many books have passed through my hands that seek to expound the biblical teaching on angels.

For example, see my free article The Origins of Human Government and Hierarchy where I cite many of them.

But Heiser’s new book Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God’s Heavenly Host trumps every book I’ve seen on the subject of angels.

(Man, Heiser should pay me well for this Introduction! Cough).

I caught up with Michael to ask him some questions about his new book. My thinking behind these questions is that they would be of interest to you, my audience.

Let’s see if I’m in the ballpark on that assumption.

Enjoy the interview!

This first question would fit the category of “pastoral.” Namely, how does your book on angels benefit a believer’s day to day life? 

Michael Heiser: I’ll answer this by relaying the most frequently-mentioned item I get from readers and people when I speak on the topic of the supernatural world: the more we understand how God thinks about, and relates to, his supernatural family-partners (the loyal members of the heavenly host), the more clearly we will see how God thinks about us. One is a template for the other.

It is no accident that the vocabulary of “holy ones” used almost exclusively for the supernatural heavenly host is not used of angels in the New Testament. Instead, it’s used of human believers. It’s also no accident that the same is true of the phrase “sons of God.” God wants us in his family, alongside his supernatural family, partnering with him as they do, just in our world.

God’s vision for human believers is to rule with him, displacing the rebellious supernatural sons of God as his council-partners in a new, global Eden.

Angelology informs our identity, mission, and destiny. If we placed more attention on those items we might just be more motivated to remember that this world isn’t our real home. And if we approached each day that way, the Church would change.

There is a movement that often comes up with some wacky ideas and practices with respect to the spiritual realm. For example, they teach that Christians could command angelic beings to do things for them. What is your response to this?

Michael Heiser: I’ve heard this idea and write about it in the book. Hebrews 1:14 is usually the point of reference for the notion we have the authority to command angels: “Are they [angels] not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”

Some people presume that the verse means that God has sent angels to minister at the behest of believers, which in turn suggests that Christians can command angels to do their bidding.

The book provides more exegetical details, but it’s sufficient to say here that this interpretation can’t be sustained in light of the grammar of the verse. If we’re supposed to command angels, no one in the New Testament (or the Old) got the memo. There isn’t a single instance in Scripture where a human being commands an angel.

We agree on this. What do you believe Hebrews 13 means when it says to be hospitable, because you may be “entertaining angels unawares” (KJV)?

Michael Heiser: Hebrews 13:1 hearkens back to unexpected angelic visitations in the Old Testament (it’s the book of Hebrews). The Old Testament has several examples where people unknowingly interacted with angels. Lot’s exchange with the two “men” in Genesis 19 is a good example.

The two men looked entirely ordinary. It was only when they did something beyond human ability (they struck the men of the city blind; Gen 19:11). The two had shared a meal with Abraham (as well as God himself) in the previous chapter. There was no indication in that encounter that Abraham knew they were angels. Gideon (Judges 6) entertains the angel of the Lord without knowing who he was.

These incidents are precedent for the remark in Heb 13:1, suggesting that the same sort of episodes could happen to people in the New Testament era—and now.

In the Gospels, we are told that after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the angels came and ministered to Him? If you and I were there watching, what do you think we’d see? In other words, how do you think the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness, exactly?

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By TheBibleProject

This is the first of a video series by The Bible Project illustrating material from biblical scholar Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s Unseen Realm.

In the first pages of the Bible, we’re introduced to God and humans as the main characters. But there’s also a whole cast of spiritual beings who play an important role throughout the Bible, though they’re often in the background. In this video, we begin to explore these beings and how they fit into the unified storyline of the Bible.

Spiritual Beings

If you’ve ever been puzzled about angels, demons, and other spiritual beings in the Bible, you’re not alone! Our modern depictions of these creatures are mostly based on misunderstandings of who they are and how they fit into the overall storyline of the Bible. In this first installment of our Spiritual Beings video series, we’ll introduce the biblical concept of spiritual beings and rediscover their role in the biblical story that leads to Jesus.

Here’s the link to the series Exploring Spiritual Beings.

by Brandon Smith for Alt-Market.com

Over many years of investigating the mechanics of global events and the people behind them I have become perhaps a little obsessed with one particular subject – the source and motivations of evil. This fascination does not stem from a simple morbid curiosity, but a strategic need to understand an enemy. Much like an exterminator needs to understand the behavior of cockroaches to be effective, I seek to understand the behavior and nature of organized evil.

One very important fact that must first be made clear in people’s minds is that evil does indeed exist. Establishment propaganda has spent immense time, effort and capital attempting to condition society into believing that evil is nothing more than a social construct – an opinion. Evil is supposedly in the eye of the beholder; a product of religious conditioning. This is a falsehood. Just like concepts of beauty, concepts of evil are actually inherent in our psyches from birth. The “eye of the beholder” is irrelevant.

Two particular areas of human psychology support this fact:

First, as the work of Carl Jung (and by extension anthropologists like Joseph Campbell) exposed, all human beings no matter where in the world they are born, from the most isolated tribe in the Amazon to the largest metropolis in America, carry the same archetypal symbols in their psyche. That is to say, we ALL have the same psychological elements in our minds regardless of environment.

This fact alone is so overwhelming to modern man that some people refuse to even acknowledge it as a possibility. We have been trained like lab rats to see only one path through the maze; we have been told over and over again that everything is “relative”; that each person is entirely a product of environment and that we all start out empty as “blank slates”.

The vicious attacks on Carl Jung by the establishment (including lies that he cooperated with the Nazis) tell me that Jung was very close to the mark. He had stumbled upon something very dangerous to the establishment; something that could derail their conditioning of the public.

Second, the undeniable existence of the human conscience suggests that we are born with an understanding of duality. Meaning, just as Jung discovered, our psyches contain inherent concepts of good and evil that influence our decisions and reactions. Jung referred to evil, or psychologically destructive impulses, as the ‘personal shadow’ and the ‘collective shadow’.

The vast majority of people have an intuitive relationship with good and evil. They feel anxiety when confronted with evil actions or thoughts, and they feel personal guilt when they know they have done something evil to other people. Some might call this a “moral compass”. I would refer to it as part of the soul or spirit.

In any case, there is a contingent of people in the world that do not have it – a small percentage of the population that is born without conscience, or that finds it easy to ignore conscience. We’ll get to those people in a moment, but first, we should probably define what evil is.

Evil is first and foremost any action that seeks to destroy, exploit or enslave in the name of personal gain or gratification. Unfortunately, evil actions are often misrepresented as advantageous for the group, thereby making them morally acceptable. The needs of the many supposedly outweigh the needs of the few, and thus evil is rationalized as a means to a “positive end” for the “greater good”.

In most cases, however, destructive actions do not end up serving the interests of the majority, and only end up giving more wealth and power to an elitist minority. This is not a coincidence.

Evil begins with the denial of the existence of conscience, or the denial of the existence of choice. Each person is born with a capacity or freedom to choose. We can listen to conscience, or we can ignore it. We can do good, or we can do evil. Evil tells us the choice is relative and that morality is relative; that there is no difference between a good choice and a bad choice, or, that the evil choice is the only choice.

Beyond ignoring conscience, we must also define the motivation that drives evil. Psychology would suggest that destructive self serving actions stem from an obsessive desire to obtain or control things we cannot or should not have. Interestingly, this is also what some religions teach us, but let’s stick to a secular examination.

As mentioned earlier, there is a group of people in the world who do not see good and evil the way most of us do. Their psyche functions in a completely different way, without the filter of conscience. These people exhibit the traits of narcissistic sociopaths.  Full blown high level narcissistic sociopaths represent around 1% to 5% of the total human population, and most of them are born, not made by their environment. Also, 5% to 10% of people hold latent traits of either narcissism or sociopathy that generally only rise to the surface in an unstable crisis environment.

I have written extensively on narcissistic sociopaths and the globalist establishment in numerous articles. I have also outlined how such people, contrary to popular belief, are not isolated from one another. They do in fact organize into groups for mutual gain.

There is an ideology or system of belief that argues for the exact opposite of what conscience tells us is “good”, and that system is Luciferianism. In fact, luciferianism appears to be the source influence for most existing destructive “isms” in our society today (including socialism and globalism).  It is my theory that luciferianism is a religion or cult designed by sociopathic narcissists for the benefit of sociopathic narcissists.

It is sometimes difficult to identify the true “sacraments” behind luciferianism because, for one, luciferians refuse to admit that the system is a religion at all. They prefer to call it a philosophy or methodology, at least in public. The system also seems to encourage active disinformation in order to dissuade or mislead non-adherents. The historic term for this religious secrecy is “occultism”. I would call it “elitism”.

There are some foundational beliefs that luciferians do openly admit to. First and foremost, the goal of luciferianism is to attain godhood. That is to say, they believe that SOME human beings have the capacity to become gods through the accumulation of knowledge.

I have written about the insanity of the goal of godhood in the past, outlining how quantum physics and Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Proof make total scientific and mathematical observation and understanding of the universe impossible. But mathematical reality does not stop luciferian circles from destructively chasing that which they cannot have.  By extension, scientific knowledge not tempered by discipline, wisdom and a moral compass can lead to catastrophe.  Material knowledge is invariably abused by those seeking godlike power.

The notion of self-worship is a core trait of sociopathic narcissists; Luciferianism just codifies it as if it is a virtue. Another problem with the idea of becoming a god is that one inevitably develops a desire for followers and worshipers. What is a savior, after all, without a flock? But how does a human being gain a flock and become more a god? Through force or through trickery?

Second, luciferians claim they seek to elevate the power of the individual in general. In the minds of many people this doesn’t sound like a negative at all. Even I have argued for the importance of individualism in the midst of societal controls. That said, any ideology can be taken to extremes.

The pursuit of individual gratification can be pushed too far, to the point that the people around us begin to suffer. Because of the elitist nature of luciferianism, they are not necessarily seeking the elevation of ALL individuals, just certain “deserving” individuals. There is a tendency to view non-adherents as “inferior”; stupid people that should be sheared like sheep by those who are chasing a superior dream of personal godhood.

This attitude can also be seen in the common actions of narcissistic sociopaths, who have no qualms about conning or exploiting people around them as resources, feeding off others like parasites.

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by Michael S. Heiser

Most Bible study resources describe fallen angels as demons who joined Lucifer in his rebellion against God. But what if I told you that the only place in the New Testament that describes angels sinning does not call them demons, has no connection to Lucifer, and has them in jail? Welcome to the world of 2 Peter and Jude.

For . . . God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. (2 Peter 2:4)

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. (Jude 6)

Second Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are nearly identical in their description of angels doing time, but there are differences that help us figure out “what in the spiritual world is going on.”

Jude 6 defines what 2 Peter 2:4 means by the angelic sin. These sinning angels “left their proper dwelling.” Second Peter doesn’t say they were in cahoots with Satan, or that they did anything in Eden. It tells us they left their designated realm of existence and did something in another realm. But what did they do?

Both 2 Peter and Jude compare the sin of these angels with the Sodom and Gomorrah incident, where the sin involved sexual immorality (2 Pet 2:7; Jude 7). Second Peter also connects it to the time of Noah. There is only one sin involving a group of angelic beings in the entire Bible, and it coincides with Noah and is sexual in nature. That incident is Genesis 6:1–4, where the “sons of God” leave heaven, their normal abode, and come to earth and father children (the Nephilim giants) by human women.

Who are the “sons of God” who sinned?

Two features in these passages in 2 Peter and Jude point to Genesis 6:1–4.

First, “sons of God” is a specific phrase used elsewhere in the Old Testament of angelic beings (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Psa 89:6; Deut 32:8).*

Second, both 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 explicitly tell us that these angels are imprisoned in chains of gloomy darkness—in “hell” until judgment day.

*The ESV and NRSV properly adopt the manuscript reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint.

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by Dr. Michael Heiser

I get a lot of email about my views on Yahweh and divine plurality. You’d think people would find my material via Google or my divine council website, but I guess not. I’m making this page for you all, of course, but also to provide myself a convenient one-stop link to send people.

Mike’s “lay level” work on the divine council and the nature of Israelite monotheism (the basic essays)

Mike’s relevant scholarly publications

  • Some of these live on my divine council site as well. Others cannot be posted here due to the wishes of the academic journal that published the content (if you subscribe to my newsletter you can access articles not linked here via a protected folder). These articles tend to be technical, save for the one critiquing Mormonism’s use of Psalm 82.

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