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.
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.
(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?
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.
Pastor Alan Scott says the key to seeing revival break out in a city is for ordinary believers to partner with God in both the supernatural and the supernarrative—to operate in the gifts of the Spirit and to understand how their everyday life fits into God’s grand story. He saw both these things happen at his former church—Causeway Coast Vineyard in Coleraine, Northern Ireland—and as a result witnessed a move of God break out in a historically divided and secular city. When that happens, even a Starbucks can become a site for the supernatural.
During that move of God, one of Scott’s friends was at a coffee shop when he met a young man whose partner had just come to faith. He told the young man, “Hey, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to pray in a moment. A wind is going to come into this coffee shop. It’s going to swirl around you. Then you’re going to know that God is real, and you’re going to give your life to him.”
The young man, skeptical, shrugged and said, “OK.”
The two bowed their heads to pray together, and the moment Scott’s friend began to pray, a mighty wind came into the coffee shop and swirled around the young skeptic. Immediately, he gave his life to Christ.
“It’s kind of easy bringing people to Jesus when that kind of stuff is breaking out,” Scott says. “But that kind of stuff is a product not of a sudden movement of God but of a gradual movement of His people going after the city, changing the atmosphere of the city. When that kind of climate takes root, it makes everything a little bit easier.”
Scott knows from personal experience. He first came to Christ through an awakening in his community, helped usher in a move of God at his first church and is now eagerly contending for the Spirit to work through his new church in Anaheim, California.
It’s not going unnoticed. Pete Greig, the founder of the 24-7 Prayer Movement, says: “When Alan Scott speaks, I try to listen. Where he leads, I try to follow.”
For Scott, community-shifting transformation won’t be accomplished by scheduled revivals or frenzied church meetings but rather by years of diligently sowing seed into a city.
“Every church thinks their city is hard to reach, and every city is hard to reach—when we stay in the building,” Scott says. “But it’s amazing how open people are when we actually move beyond the services into our communities. People are desperately open. They’re desperately looking for life change. [Christians] can start there. They can start with the people around them whom God is moving in.”
Scott spoke to Charisma about his experience with moves of God, his journey from Northern Ireland to Southern California and how believers can be the catalysts for spiritual renewal in their cities.
Moves of God
Scott wasn’t raised a Christian. In fact, he says, he was a teenager before he ever met a Christian. But that all changed after his brother became a follower of Jesus. And his brother wasn’t the only one coming to Christ in his city.
“Suddenly, there was—a ‘move of God’ would be too strong, but definitely something stirring in our community—where some skinheads and some punks became believers,” Scott says. “One of them happened to be my brother, so I watched the transformation of his life, slightly intrigued and slightly afraid.”
At the same time, one of Scott’s friends began attending a Christian youth organization and invited him to join. Scott began attending, until one night he got saved during a screening of the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. He says he was “absolutely arrested” by what he saw on screen and—despite not knowing any of the sinner’s prayer etiquette—decided to follow God because “what I saw on the screen is real and I need that in my life.”
By the time he was 27, Scott and his wife, Kathryn, were co-founding and pastoring the Causeway Coast Vineyard in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. They learned a lot during those early years of ministry.
“I think it’s the same for any pastor,” Scott says. “We always think it’s about building the church, and then you realize, Actually, Jesus was forming me. I am the project, and all these things that are happening around me are designed to create something within me.”
Coleraine, a coastal town of approximately 25,000, enjoys influence belying its small size thanks to 3 million tourists who annually visit the famous Causeway Coast. When the church was founded, Scott says the town’s Protestant and Catholic communities were sharply divided, a situation which was only growing more tense with time. Though Scott’s initial focus was on growing and developing his small church community, his entire paradigm shifted during a church leadership retreat.
During that time, Scott felt God impress upon his heart, “If you’ll go after the lost, I will look after the church.”
“As church planters, we’d been trying to build the church, and it really isn’t our job to do that,” Scott says. “Jesus said, ‘I will build my church.’ … That was the seminal moment for our church, because we began cultivating an outward focus: to go out and engage the lost, to get churchgoers to think beyond the building and develop ministries—[from] healings on the street to compassion ministries. To desire to pursue the Father as He was pursuing the lost.”
Causeway Coast’s first step was to bring peace to its polarized community. Scott says parades were an area of significant tension in Northern Ireland, stoking division and escalating violence within a region. That year, before a key parade, police asked Scott if his church would come attend the event. When Scott asked why, the police officers told him, “We can see that when you show up, there happens to be a change in the atmosphere.”
From there, the church began serving wherever God gave them favor—eventually ministering everywhere from hospitals to public schools to branches of government.
One key initiative that paved the way for revival was the church’s healing ministry.
“We really invented a simple model in the community,” Scott says. “We erected a banner that says, ‘Healing.’ We got out four or six chairs, and we literally waited for people to take a seat, [even] in the rain or in the freezing cold. As we did that, God had this beautiful way of showing up and transforming lives.”
People began getting healed. In a small town like Coleraine, news travels quickly—and thanks to its tourist traffic, news travels far. Healed people brought their friends to be healed too. Scott recalls that once a busload of soccer players pulled up to the healing banner, ready to see the team injuries healed.
“I had people from all over Ireland and even beyond Ireland come,” Scott says. “I saw every conceivable cancer healed—sometimes really dramatically, most of the time really slowly over a period of time. But it never gets old. It’s just an amazing thing to watch God do what no one else can do.”
The supernatural started but didn’t stop with healing. In October 2013, a prophetic voice told Causeway Coast, “This month you have seen on average three people a day come to faith. It has astounded you, but I tell you that from this day you are going to see between five and 10 people a day coming to faith.” The following week, 35 people came to faith. By 2014, Scott says “a significant move of God” took hold in Coleraine, and thousands of people came to faith. Scott says for a time, 56 to 70 people started a relationship with Christ each day. During that time, Scott says the Holy Spirit gave ordinary people prophetic words, words of knowledge and dream interpretation. He believes this move of God is at least somewhat duplicable and the result of reaping a long-sown harvest.
“When you sow a seed in the community over a period of time—the long haul, spending every week on the streets … it actually begins to alter the calling of the city,” Scott says. “It begins to change and blooms this beautiful receptivity to the community, where it’s just easier for people to come to faith.”
Called to California
Alan and Kathryn Scott never imagined they’d leave the Causeway Coast Vineyard. After all, their years of work were finally shifting the atmosphere of the entire community, and they loved their brothers and sisters in the church there. But the Lord had other plans for the Scott family.
“For a long time, Kathryn had sensed God speaking about us living in the U.S. at some point,” Scott says. “I thought it’d be maybe after our kids had gone to college and all that. But then we were in the gathering, and very clearly the Holy Spirit began to speak and say, ‘I want you to build an altar again. It’s time to pioneer again.’ Honestly, you tend to tuck those kinds of things away, but from then on, it was like prophecy central. Everywhere I went, people prophesied over us. Initially, I didn’t want to hear it—we were loving the community there and loving what God was doing. Who would want to leave something like that? It’s what we dreamed of and desired for years. But the Lord kept speaking into it.”
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.
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)
These live on my divine council site; the items selected here can also be found in the Faithlife Study Bible (FSB), the Lexham Bible Dictionary (LBD) and a volume of the InterVarsity Press OT Reference series (IVP). They are short distillations of the topics:
I should also mention that these issues feature prominently (among many other points of biblical theology) in my best-selling book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible(Lexham Press, 2015), and its “person-in-the-pew” distillation, Supernatural: What the Bible Says About the Unseen World and Why It Matters (Lexham Press, 2015).
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.
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.
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.
“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. ↩
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) ↩
“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 ↩
The first commandment. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ex 20:3). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. ↩
“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. ↩
“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. ↩
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.
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?
The First Indictment of the gods of the Nations & its Theological Significance for Everyday Life
Deuteronomy 6:4-15 (ESV):[The Shemah] 4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates… 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.”
The Lower g gods are Real
We tend to think the lower g gods are make believe. That they are idols of wood and stone. While the idols they inhabit are wood, stone, and sometimes gold or silver, the lower g gods that people worship are real, just ask anyone in India. If you know where to look, the Bible confirms this all throughout scripture. The best example, however, is Psalm 82:
Psalm 82 (ESV): God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: 2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. 4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you; 7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
God pronouncing judgment of other gods??? And why does God seem to be angry that they have ruled unjustly over mankind (v.2-5)?
Because behind every evil nation is a pantheon of lower g gods (fallen angels) entertaining their fantasy to be worshiped as divine:
Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (ESV):“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”
But when did God disinherit, divide up mankind and fix the borders of the nations?
The Importance of the Tower of Babel
At the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) God divides a united and rebellious mankind and confuses the language of humans who then go on to form the nations of this world (Genesis 10 Table of Nations).
Note: there are 70 nations listed in Genesis 10. We’ll come back to 70 later
The Tower of Babel was a ziggurat. What’s a ziggurat?
Ziggurat
Ziggurats were man made, stepped buildings, in the shape of a mountain. In the Ancient Near East, deity was thought to inhabit mountain tops. The gods descending from the heavens would surely want the best real estate far away from pesky humans and so it was believed that they lived atop mountains.
Humans wishing to barter a deal with the lower g gods would build ziggurats with a temple at the top for worship of that deity. They would bring the god to them, instead of going to the god. God told Noah after the flood to “fill the earth”. Humans responded:
Genesis 11:3-4 (ESV):And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Notice how the bricks are sealed with tar (bitumen)? That means that The Tower of Babel was not only going to reach the heavens… it was also going to be waterproof! Mankind didn’t believe God’s promise never to flood the earth again and sought to build a waterproof tower to protect themselves as they bartered for a better deal.
So God comes down and essentially says, “you want to worship other gods, go ahead. You can have each other. Israel/the Church will be mine.” God disinherits the nations and then IMMEDIATELY sets about bringing them back to Him. That is why Abraham is called in the very next chapter… to bless the nations. They are not forgotten about.
This brings us to The Exodus
Each plague in Exodus 7-12 is aimed at the Egyptian pantheon of gods to show the Egyptians, their gods, and Pharaoh that only YHWH is God:
Exodus 12:12 (ESV):For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.
10 Plagues Jehovah vs gods
The number 10 is USUALLY a very bad number in the Old Testament as it most often was thought to symbolize judgment. There are 10 generations from Adam to Noah and the flood. There are 10 generations between Noah and the judgment at Babel. How many plagues were visited on Egypt? 10. How many of the 12 tribes were taken captive by the Assyrians never to be heard from again? 10. How many horns does the beast nation have in Revelation? 10.
The fact that these 10 plagues of judgment happen at Passover is NOT a coincidence.
We are LITERALLY Exodused out of the nations of this world to the children of God.
Passover, the Firstborn & Jesus
At Passover, YHWH delivers the children of Israel out of the evil nation of Egypt as the firstborn of Egypt are buried.
On their way out of Egypt, Israel/the Church is given gold and silver from the Egyptians as Israel’s wedding gift, a dowry before its marriage ceremony to YHWH at Mt. Sinai:
Exodus 12:35-36 (ESV):…for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. 36 And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.
Israel is the bride and YHWH is the bridegroom. At Mt. Sinai a marriage will take place.
On their way out of Egypt, Israel also vacates the Tomb of Joseph to bury Joseph’s bones in the promised land:
Genesis 50:24-26 (ESV):And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” 25 Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” 26 So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
400 years later…
Exodus 13:19 (ESV):Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.”
This foreshadows the New Testament where WE—the Church, Israel—are saved at Passover… as the firstborn of God is buried and the Tomb of Joseph is vacated.
[see chart for Typological below connections between Joseph and Jesus]
The Israelites will forever live in the shadow of the enormous cost of their freedom. After the all the firstborn of Egypt are killed in Exodus 12, God IMMEDIATELY claims the firstborn of Israel in Exodus 13:1-3:
Exodus 13:1-3 (ESV):The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” 3 Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.
The firstborn was to be circumcised on the 8th day and bought at a price ranging from a Lamb to two turtle doves depending on the economic status of the parents. It served as a constant reminder of what was done for the children of Israel. Israel was delivered from an evil nation ruled by gods that were hostile both to humans and to YHWH.
Jesus the Bridegroom, the Wedding Ceremony & the First Lord’s Supper
After the Exodus out of Egypt, God leads Israel to Mt. Sinai, also known as the “mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1, 18:5). But why bring Israel to a mountain?
Remember, deity lives atop mountains in the Ancient Near East. But most importantly, to the Israelites, the Garden of Eden was thought to be on top of God’s mountain. This can be seen when Ezekiel calls the King of Tyre, none other than Satan incarnate:
Ezekiel 28:13-14 (ESV):“You were in Eden, the garden of God… 14 You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God…”
In the Garden of Eden, what do you have? You have water flowing from sacred space. You have a man’s side being opened up (blood) as he receives his bride. On the Cross, what do you have? Blood and water flowing from sacred space as Jesus, the new Adam, His side is opened up and He receives His Bride, the Church. Jesus is arrested in a garden. On the hill where he is crucified there’s a garden. He’s laid to rest in that garden. After the resurrection he’s confused for a gardener. The NT writers are clear. Jesus is the new Adam, succeeding where Adam failed. We are going back to Eden. Back to the Garden of God.
Adam and Eve were the Bible’s first arranged marriage. God’s original plan, to make all the earth Eden, had been delayed through sin but would not be thwarted.
In Exodus, God is bringing Israel to Mt. Sinai because Israel, like Adam and Eve, will be charged with spreading Eden to the ends of the earth. Heaven and earth would be reunited. But in order to save the world and humankind on the Cross, YHWH would need to protect the bloodline through which He would one day redeem all of mankind. This would be done through a covenant with Israel in another arranged marriage ceremony.
Jeremiah makes this explicit in Jeremiah 31:32:
Jeremiah 31:32 (ESV):“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, THOUGH I WAS THEIR HUSBAND, declares the Lord.
Israel arrives at Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19:1 where God immediately announces his upcoming marriage to Israel:
Exodus 19:3-6 (ESV):…“Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Israel consecrates itself to prepare for its marriage to YHWH by washing their clothes and abstaining from marital relations with one another.
Then something interesting happens…
In Exodus 24:9-11, 70 ELDERS (the same number of nations that were disinherited at Babel) ascend the mountain and have a wedding feast with the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ:
Exodus 24:9-11:“Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.”
This is the first Lord’s Supper in the Bible and it occurs right after the marriage ceremony at Sinai. It will be repeated in the upper room before Jesus’s death, and again at the end of Revelation as the Church celebrates the return of her bridegroom, Jesus Christ, in the most massive cosmic wedding reception recorded in all of scripture.
Israel remains at Sinai for 1 year before their journey into the wilderness. Why? Because…
Deuteronomy 24:5 (ESV):“When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.
We Are The Bride Of Christ Called Out Of The Nations To Be In Communion With Our King
“Politics is the church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the prince of this world.”
—JACQUES ELLUL
Contrary to popular belief, the OT takes a very dim view of earthly kings…
1 Samuel 8:4-19 (ESV):Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah 5 and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
10 So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. 12 And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
19 But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, “No! But there shall be a king over us, 20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
The book of Judges ends with a woman being raped and chopped up into 12 pieces before a fratricidal war breaks out in Israel. Why? Because “25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” Judges 21:25 (ESV). This is a Messianic prophecy. Son of God, Prince of Peace, Savior of the World, Gospel. Those of us who grew up in Christian homes have just always accepted these titles of Jesus without knowing their origin. Every single one of these titles was used of caesar. Caesar was the son of god, the prince of peace, the savior of the world. Rome spread peace through war, and after victory in battle was achieved, messengers were sent throughout the empire to proclaim the good news… to proclaim the “gospel.” Afterwards Caesar would send apostles to the newly conquered territory. The sole job of an apostle was to get a conquered nation ready for a new system of government.
When NT authors steal these titles, and apply them to Jesus and the Church, they are making politically treasonous statements. This is a death penalty offense. As long as the Church is pledging allegiance to this or that president or adhering to a republican or democrat plan for salvation the Church will be divided.
We tend to bifurcate politics and salvation. We have our Jesus over here in one box and we are going to heaven and that allows us to have our politics over here in another box and so we can have our spiritual salvation and our earthly politics. We can have our cake and eat it too. Unfortunately, the Bible itself does not allow this.
Be it Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome or America scripture is clear…
Revelation 18:5 (ESV):“come out of her my children lest you share in her plagues…”
This is Exodus language and a warning to those of us who live as immigrants, foreigners and exiles in Babylon. Remember…
John 18:36 (ESV):“My Kingdom is not of this world.”
After the marriage at Sinai, Israel and Judah would be judged by YHWH for political adultery. Ezekiel 23 graphically and undeniably portrays how God views sharing his Church with the governments and militaries of this world. Israel and Judah’s involvement in politics and militarism is described as an insatiable adulterous wife whoring herself out to men with genitalia the size of donkeys and ejaculate like that of horses…
Ezekiel 23:4, 11-27 (ESV):Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem…. 11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. 12 She lusted after the Assyrians, governors and commanders, warriors clothed in full armor, horsemen riding on horses, all of them desirable young men. 13 And I saw that she was defiled; they both took the same way. 14 But she carried her whoring further. She saw men portrayed on the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion, 15 wearing belts on their waists, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them having the appearance of officers, a likeness of Babylonians whose native land was Chaldea. 16 When she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoring lust. And after she was defiled by them, she turned from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her whoring so openly and flaunted her nakedness, I turned in disgust from her, as I had turned in disgust from her sister. 19 Yet she increased her whoring, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt 20 and lusted after her lovers there, whose members [genitalia] were like those of donkeys, and whose issue [ejaculate] was like that of horses. 21 Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians handled your bosom and pressed your young breasts.
22 Therefore, O Oholibah, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will stir up against you your lovers from whom you turned in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side: 23 the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, desirable young men, governors and commanders all of them, officers and men of renown, all of them riding on horses. 24 And they shall come against you from the north with chariots and wagons and a host of peoples. They shall set themselves against you on every side with buckler, shield, and helmet; and I will commit the judgment to them, and they shall judge you according to their judgments. 25 And I will direct my jealousy against you, that they may deal with you in fury. They shall cut off your nose and your ears, and your survivors shall fall by the sword. They shall seize your sons and your daughters, and your survivors shall be devoured by fire. 26 They shall also strip you of your clothes and take away your beautiful jewels. 27 Thus I will put an end to your lewdness and your whoring begun in the land of Egypt, so that you shall not lift up your eyes to them or remember Egypt anymore.
This is how the Word of the LORD describes political idolatry and the judgment the Church heaps on Herself as a result of failing the test of Luke 4:5-6:
Luke 4:5-6 (HSBC):[The Temptation of Jesus by Satan] 5 So he took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 The Devil said to Him, “I will give You their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 If You, then, will worship me, all will be Yours.”
both parties same demons
Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (ESV):When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
Isaiah 34:2 (ESV):For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host; he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter.
Isaiah 40:17 (ESV):All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
Revelation 11:18 (ESV):The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
The early Church didn’t have this problem. They suffered and died violent deaths to avoid politics. The entire book of Revelation is written to these people, to warn them that they cannot deny Jesus and enter the Kingdom of God. To remain faithful until death. And they were. Anyone coming the Jesus Christ having worked in government had to renounce their office or be rejected by the Church…
“In us, all zeal in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead. So we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than the affairs of State.” — Tertullian to the Romans circa 195 AD
Taitian, in AD 160, agreed when he said: “I do not wish to be a King. I am not anxious to be rich.
I decline military command. I detest fornication. I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea. I do not contend for military honors. I am free from a mad thirst for fame. I despise death. Die to the world, repudiating the madness that is in it! Live to God!”1
Origen also wrote to Celsus in an attempt to explain the peculiar Christian practice of noninvolvement with Roman politics, saying: “It is not for the purpose of escaping public duties that Christians decline public offices, but that they may reserve themselves for a diviner and more necessary service in the Church of2
Clement of Alexandria, in 195 AD, said, “We have no country on earth. Therefore, we can disdain earthly possessions.”3
And Tertullian wrote, in 212 AD: “As for you, you are a foreigner in this world, a citizen of Jerusalem, the city above. Our citizenship, the Apostle says, is in heaven. You have your own calendar. You have nothing to do with the joys of this world. In fact, you are called to the very opposite. For the world will rejoice but you will mourn.”4
“The new ones to be accepted are questioned by the teachers about the reason for their decision before they hear the Word. Those who bring them shall say whether they are ready for it and what their situation is…Whoever has a demon needs purification before he takes part in the instruction. The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established. A pander, one who keeps a brothel, shall give it up or be rejected. A sculptor or an artist must be warned not to make idolatrous pictures; he shall give it up or be rejected. If anyone is an actor or impersonator in the theater, he shall give it up or be rejected. A charioteer, an athlete, a gladiator, a trainer of gladiators, or one who fights wild beasts or hunts them or holds public office at the circus games shall give it up or be rejected. A pagan priest or guardian of idols shall give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill. If he is commanded to kill in the course of his duty, he must not take this upon himself, neither may he swear; if he is not willing to follow these instructions, he must be rejected. A proconsul or a civic magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword, shall give it up or be rejected.
“Anyone taking part in baptismal instruction, or anyone already baptized who wants to become a soldier shall be sent away, for he has despised God. A prostitute, a sodomite, one who has mutilated himself or who does unmentionable things shall be rejected because he is defiled. A magician shall not come up for examination either. An enchanter, an astrologer, a diviner, a soothsayer, a seducer of the people, one who practices magic with pieces of clothing, one who speaks in demonic riddles, one who makes amulets: all these shall desist or be rejected. The slave who is a concubine and who has reared her children and has no relationship except with her master may become a hearer. If it is otherwise she must be rejected. Whoever has a concubine shall leave her or marry her legally. If he refuses he must be rejected. Should we have missed anything here, practical life will teach you, for we all have the spirit of God.
—Hippolytus, Church Order in The Apostolic Tradition 16; ca. A.D. 218.
So if we accept the Bible as God’s word, and God’s word tells us that the nations of this world are given over to the devil (Luke 4:5-6) and his angels (Deuteronomy 32:8-9), and that is enraged at all the nations (Isaiah 34:2) and counts them less than nothing (Isaiah 40:17) and that on the last day the nations and those who destroy the earth will be judged (Revelation 11:18) because Jesus’ Kingdom is truly not of this world, why then do we feel the need to vote for this or that caesar? Why then to do we talk circles around God’s word in a futile effort to exalt practicality over and above obedience?
It’s because we have forgotten the words and the practice of Early Church. Since Constantine, the Church has been pledging it’s allegiance to Rome, to Babylon. Again this is why Revelation 18;5 tells us to “Come out of her my children, lest you share in her plagues.”
I’ll close with a quotation from Preston Sprinkle’s Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence…
“But allegiance to Jesus’s kingdom often clashes with all earthly ones, and the Philippians feel the tension. This is why Paul commands them, “Live out your citizenship [polistheuamai] in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Phil. 1: 27, author’s translation). Some translations interpret this command as “walk in a manner worthy” rather than “live out your citizenship in a manner worthy,” but the Greek word polistheuamai does not simply mean “walk” or “live” but has to do with citizenship. 3 Even if you don’t know Greek, you can probably tell that the word polistheuamai has something to do with politics. The word contains the root polis, which means “city” and gives us words like politics and metropolis. Polistheuamai is a verb, so it means something like “act like a citizen,” “be a good citizen,” or “live out your citizenship” as I translated it above.
But notice what Paul is doing here. He does not encourage the believers at Philippi to be good citizens of Rome, but to live out their citizenship in allegiance to Jesus. Many in the church probably have Roman citizenship. They are tempted to find their pride and identity in Rome instead of in God’s kingdom. In the same way, it’s tempting for American Christians to find their pride and identity in American citizenship rather than in their heavenly one. Such allegiance to Rome (or America) makes good sense to the world but finds no support in the New Testament.5
My favorite book of 2014 was The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, Psi, and the Apocalyptic, by Cris Putnam.
The reason the book is important is summed up by Chuck Missler in his foreword:
How will you deal with empirical validations of extrasensory perceptions? Of near-death experiences? Non-biblical spirits? Evidence that the mind goes far beyond the organ we know as the brain?1
… the current trends toward a “Supernatural Worldview” will prove to be a critical challenge to those who take their personal destiny seriously, and we can certainly anticipate that our adversaries will exploit these challenges to advance their own agendas.1
Cris Putnam And Derek Gilbert On “The Supernatural Worldview”, Parts 1 & 2
Cris Putnam And Gary Stearman On “The Supernatural Worldview”
Table of Contents
— Foreword by Chuck Missler
Chapters:
1. Paranormal Witness to Gospel Witness
2. The Supernatural Worldview of REALITY
3. The Paranormal Paradigm Shift
4. The Ethos of Demythologization and the Excluded Middle
5. Near-Death-Experience Science Drives the Paradigm Shift
6. Telepathy, Dreams, and Remote Viewing
7. Precognition, Theology, and Watchman’s Warning
8. Apparitions, Hauntings, and Poltergeists
9. Mediums, Ghosts, Familiar Spirits, and the Supernatural Worldview
10. Satan, Demons, and the Ghost Hypothesis
11. Spiritual Warfare, Juvenile Prophets of Baal, and the Zombie Apocalypse
12. The Supernatural Worldview of the Bible
SkyWatchTV 3/7/17: Tribute to Cris Putnam
I was shocked to learn that Cris died, last week. Here’s a tribute to a tenacious researcher, talented author, believer, and husband, by the folks at SkyWatch:
Chuck Missler, Foreword to The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, Psi, and the Apocalyptic, Defense Publishing. ↩
It’s a shame to see people, who believe (or might believe) in the supernatural, engage in pointless arguments. Even more pointless is talking about it, at all, with those whose beliefs are confined to the limits of the five senses.
For the skeptic, new inventions must bring the invisible within range of the five senses. Only then are they “free to believe” in anything invisible. Prior to the microscope, the skeptic would have reported you to the looney bin for your “outrageous” belief in the microscopic. After the microscope, the skeptic thinks it was your sanity that was restored by the invention, not theirs!
Separating Skeptics from Cynics
This is the sort of “progress” the skeptic is limited to unless they take a “leap of faith”. Fortunately, for the skeptic, that leap is possible. If presented with sufficient evidence, skeptics can be jarred into a reluctant admission that invisible things exist. The cynic, on the other hand, will remain unfazed by any evidence put in front of them.
Miracles, Defined
A miracle is a natural event with a supernatural cause.1
In other words, miracles look, sound, feel, smell, taste … normal. Their appearance is natural, their cause is invisible. So, where does that leave us with separating skeptics and cynics?
It leaves us where C.S. Lewis arrived a long time ago:
C.S. Lewis on Cynics
… the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.2
The skeptics “philosophy” is, “I’ll believe it when I see it”. The cynic’s “settled philosophy” is the supernatural does not exist, regardless of what is seen.
Skeptics are worth your time; cynics are not.
Prisoners of Time
Both skeptics, and cynics, are limited by the detection devices of their day. To them, everything discovered is obvious, and that which is yet to be discovered, is fantasy. Bring evidence in front of their senses and you’re being “reasonable”. Otherwise, the matter is closed to all but the “unreasonable”.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.3
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
The price of such “reasonableness” is imprisonment within the limits of their era. They are, for the same reasons, prisoners of science.
Prisoners of Science
Much of what’s left for mankind to discover is beyond the range of the five senses. Without access to an electron microscope, for example, you won’t be able to “see” much of anything in such areas of discovery. So, what do you do?
You’ll need a mediator between the known and the newly discovered; between what’s true or false, and the newly discovered to be true or false. What do you call someone who functions as a mediator between visible and invisible things?
They’re called priests. But the skeptic will use a different word for the same role: scientist.
Those who won’t contemplate the supernatural need no priest to interpret scripture. They do, however, need a mediator between themselves and nature.
As the frontiers of human knowledge push beyond the ability of the five senses to perceive, skeptics and cynics need their “priests” to be told what’s real, and what’s not real, more than ever.
The Secular Priesthood
And so, scientists have been promoted into a secular priesthood. They are the “reasonable”, and therefore trusted, mediators between what exists and what doesn’t; between what is true and false; and what is, therefore, deemed reasonable and unreasonable.
Who cares what scientists do as long as the remote control (invisible infrared beam) changes the channel of the TV?!
If that were as far as it went, there’d be reason only to celebrate. When mankind is working hard, and using the fruits of their labor to serve mankind, then everything is just dandy!
Unfortunately, Reality is not as simple, nor as benevolent, as all that.
And their ‘church’
Scientists, like priests, are not in charge. They serve their parishes, and report to their bishops, cardinals, and pope. The scientists know them as customers, labs, foundation administrators and benefactors. Can we depend on the good-spirited benevolence of this organization?
Unfortunately, we can barely trust the formal clergy, who’ve taken public vows to be Holy and good, pledging loyalty to only their Creator.
Whether we like it or not, scientists are becoming more widely-accepted as mediators between the seen and unseen realms, than priests. And though science has no purview on philosophical or theological matters, scientists and priests are two kinds of priesthoods, pitted against one another.
Priests Travel Faster
The frontiers of human discovery have pushed out of pandora’s visible box and into invisible realms. Because of this, scientists may feel like they’ve finally arrived at the big game.
But, wherever a scientist may go, his arrival will always be preceded by either a priest or a poet. These travel faster than light; at the speed of thought. They do that by combining story with imagination. And while scientists may work on practical discoveries beyond the visible (finally!), priests and poets have been contemplating “the beyond” since the dawn of humanity.
Conflict? What Conflict?
Personally, I see no conflict, whatsoever, between science and faith. Science explores and quantifies the world as the Creator has turned it over for exploration. I thank God for every discovery and invention! So far, every source I’ve investigated, claiming a conflict between science and faith, has been one side, or the other, arguing past one another. Those who’ve thought through the roles of science and faith are left with nothing but the progress of each to celebrate!
Headline News of Devils, Demons, Witches, Robots, ETs, Exorcists, AI & Terror Threats
… And that’s just in one day! Here’s a snapshot of the drudge report headlines on the night of March 2, 2017, ~8 pm.
7 Questions for Mommy & Daddy
I have an 8-year-old son who reads well, now. I know the following questions could easily be put to a parent whose child is looking over their shoulder and reading the news headlines, above:
What’s an exorcist?
Do witches really cast spells?
Is the devil real?
What’s the difference between Satan and the Devil?
Why did they murder someone for a demon?
Do people come from God or are they grown in a lab?
Are there really ETs or was that just a movie?
What are the answers to those questions, mommy and daddy?
If you’re a skeptic or cynic about the supernatural, that’s fine. Coming from your child, then, what’s your answer to this question:
If the supernatural does not exist, why is it all over the news?
Hollywood, Game Developers, or You?
A worldview without a handle on Realities beyond the limits of the five senses, is so incomplete it leaves one unable to even discuss the news. I would prefer to lead such conversations with my children, not merely keep up, or react to the news.
When introducing a book called “The Unseen Realm”, and its more easily read version “Supernatural”, to friends, I say that, if we (parents) don’t teach our children about the supernatural then 20-something game programmers, and Hollywood screenwriters, will gladly fill in the gaps.
I would prefer to teach my children what I believe to be the truth about the supernatural aspects of the world. I don’t want it to come from the imagination of a screenwriter or game developer. And, I don’t want it to come from the imagination of a paperback writer who’s decided that vampires or demons are “Hot” subjects, right now.
My 8-year-old has me gasping for breadth (pun intended) with his questions. It’s astounding how discerning, and naturally oriented towards the supernatural, children are. If you have kids, you already know this. If you don’t, just watch one for 5 minutes. Your world may be limited by what you can see. But, their world isn’t.
More than Child’s Play
Discussing the supernatural is more than child’s play.
“In the contemporary world where there is a strong current of postmodern relativism…many people are far more interested in their own feelings, or what “works for them”, than in the question of what is actually true. But there is a price to be paid for rejecting the truth.”4
End of Part 1
Attributions
Main Article Photo by Felipe Posada, The Invisible Realm, Toy Boat
Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial”
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The reason the book is important is summed up by Chuck Missler in his foreword:
