As described in a recent post, there are all kinds of great uses for transcripts, and I’ve started creating them for video and audio materials important enough to have in text format.
The first transcript I completed is of a documentary interview with Jordan Peterson conducted by David Fuller for Rebel Wisdom entitled, “Truth in the Time of Chaos.” You can find that transcript on McGillespie.com.
This second transcript is the first part of a presentation Michael Heiser gave in 2013 to Future Congress 2. It’s entitled “The Post-Christian Future, Part One, Thinking Theologically About the Utopian Impulse as a Perversion of the Judeo-Christian Worldview.”
(Note: I’ll be posting the transcript on the forum. What follows, here, are short excerpts)
The presentation was given while Mike was preparing to write the sequel to “The Facade.” Part one is ~9000 words and includes 25 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube. The transcript is merely an attempt to make video and audio material more accessible.
MH: There’s always been sort of this impulse to either create the perfect society or more pertinently, force it on people. And so, I see looming on the horizon a new effort at creating a wonderful, blissful, totalitarian state and I want to sort of pursue that a little bit and talk about it. And again, for those of you here, and for those of you who listen later to the presentation, I just want to get you thinking about why it is that this always seems to rear its ugly head and why even Christians, at times, are not immune from this notion that we can make things perfect, that we can just make it alright if we did this, that, and the other thing, everything would be ok.
MH: So, I want to try to think theologically about those things, and we’ll see what happens. So, here is our roadmap for the day.
Definition & Relevance
MH: So, first part: definition and relevance. Utopia as you may or may not know, again, is this idea of a perfect human society. The term itself refers to an ideal place that actually doesn’t exist.
MH: It’s imaginary, you know, it’s conceptual. It’s this grand wish, something that can’t be real in the real world but boy we wish it was, that sort of thing.
MH: And again the breakdown of the term utopia: no place, a good or no place. And you’ll see it spelled either with the “e” or with the “o” forming the “u”, in either case. But it actually could have either derivation depending on who’s using it.
MH: An imaginary world where social justice is achieved, whatever that means, and the means of guaranteeing all that is secure. That’s where the control comes in. So that’s what we’re talking about. And as far as the impulse, what are the elements?
Examples
MH: And HG Wells, of course, a lot of a lot of their thinking was influenced by eugenics. To create the ideal society you need ideal people, right? You need to sort of weed out the unfortunate or less desirable elements to the human population. So that was very common in the United States. A lot of later not-so-eugenic theory and practice was drawn from American and British writing. Those were the seed beds to some of those things that we would come later on.
MH: Marxist Leninism, of course, this would be the Lennon experiment with Marxism. Of course the Revolution of 1917. You know, again, the working class. We’re going to create the community where the worker is in power. Ostensibly, this is how it’s marketed. This is how it’s put forth.
How It’s Sold vs. Actual Result
MH: Nowadays we refer to eugenics as genetic engineering and genetic selection. Genetics is just the new eugenics. And I’m not here to demonize all genetic research because that would just be ridiculous too. But, once you have the power of the genome in your hand, eugenics is really easy. You know, it’s just it’s just how do we how do we accomplish this thing we can easily do now on a wide scale? That’s the only question you need to ask.
MH: Politically, of course, world peace freedom from crime which in their right mind would oppose that? Well, I’m not opposed to that. I am opposed to statist fiefdom. If you’re a statist, you are anti-individual. Think about that. That means if you’re in control you get to criminalize practically anything. Criminalize self-protection —that would be like gun laws taking guns away okay. We’re going to criminalize your ability to protect yourself. Why? Because your emphasis is on the state, the utopia, as opposed to the individual.
MH: Citizens self-sustenance, we talked about that with the food supply. You have each individual state, state being defined as country here, trying to implement their view of perfection, their view of the ideal situation. But ultimately you have a push toward global government.
Progress or Human Control?
MH: Progress, human improvement, science & technology. Human control is what this means in our day and age. So, whereas we would call it progress human improvement through science and technology what it really means is control of people through science and technology.
MH: We have information control. In other words, we’ll fill your head with what it needs to be filled with. Knowledge is power. It’s easy to propagandize things like the political process. Eugenics, that’s progress because we’re weeding out…we’re clearing out the gene pool there and that a good thing. Police state we have to have a police state to enforce progress. Commerce comes under state control. Basically, everything you do, if it’s viewed as being an impediment to progress, then it needs to be controlled or eliminated. We have to be able to keep the progress going. We don’t want progress to stop.
MH: Now, utopian impulse as a biblical perversion. And this is where your handout comes in I’m going to go through this quickly, and I’ll tell you what the handout supplements.
MH: Here are the fundamental myths of utopianism. The idea that humans are perfectible, that’s a myth. Either on an individual level or a corporate level, it ignores human capacity for evil. It ignores you know the condition of the heart. But it’s a myth that drives utopianism. The other myth is that you can force human perfectibility. That just isn’t going to work. So enforcing an Edenic state. In other words, it would be Eden by human effort. Eden created by a ruling human elite.
Babel and Myths of Utopianism
MH: Babel is a big deal with this because if you understand what’s going on at Babel a ziggurat, Tower of Babel, was built to bring the divine to earth. We’re going to build you a house we’re going to build you home because gods live on mountains so let’s like build our own mountain so that the deity will come here and when he comes here we can negotiate; we can we can kind of barter.
MH: It’s the same logic of idolatry. The ancient person wasn’t wasn’t an idiot he knows that this thing he just made isn’t his creator so why do they make idols? Because they believe deities can be summoned to reside there; you locate the deity. This is why Israel was forbidden to make graven images because Yahweh cannot be tamed. Yahweh will not be brought anywhere for negotiation. That’s up to him. It’s a completely different perspective on it. But you have the same thing going on with Babel. We are going to reestablish Eden we are going to bring the deity back to earth. We’re separated from the deity now we got kicked out in all that stuff we’re going to bring the deity back down to earth, and then we’re going to you know do all this stuff, all this good stuff. Well, again it’s a usurpation of God’s plan God’s punishment. Humans trying to remedy and re-kick-start what they ruined. Babel is sort of the beginning living illustration of this idea that hey let’s bring heaven to earth. Utopian thinking. Heaven is not going to come to earth until God wills it and not before. But that’s what the utopian misses or hates take your pick, one way or the other.
During the first class of the morning at the small Christian college, our professor stopped the lecture and used his walking stick, curiously similar to a wizard’s staff, to step from behind the podium to the front of the class. He did this when he really wanted us to listen.
He leaned on the staff as if he was Pastor Gandalf and scanned the class before muttering a kernel of weathered wisdom. It was a heartfelt opinion, but it resonated with the force of a command: “Christians ought to be at the forefront of every discipline.”
Are we at the forefront of the Art that’s shaping our culture?
So yes, we must learn how to make better art, but what good is that if we aren’t speaking the same language as the culture around us?
In Apologetics and The Christian Imagination, Holly Ordway insists that the lost meaning of Christian terminology is what prevents many believers from being intelligible to unbelievers. For example, our world doesn’t hear “Jesus,” “faith” or “sin” as defined by Christians. She argues that an effective, and underused, way to reclaim lost meaning is to create art with sound doctrine (her specific focus in the book, however, is apologetical literature).
In a word, Christian artists need to learn apologetics in addition to their craft. If you have the creative drive and you believe Jesus is the Son of God, then learn apologetics. Know what you believe and why. Your art will be better because you’ll be confident enough to tackle tough issues.
Christian artists don’t have to hide in the realm of “self-expression.” If we study apologetics, the more we’ll naturally see how we can demonstrate Christianity’s implications in our work.
For a start, here are 4 habits to ignite artistic apologetics (although my primary focus is narrative art, creators of other forms may still benefit).
Develop the Worldviews Behind the Central Conflict
Art enables us to raise deep worldview questions without coming across as hostile. How? Well, in storytelling, there is a single question called the dramatic question, which involves the protagonist’s (main character) central conflict with the antagonist.
This clash arises from conflicting desires, which arise from conflicting values, which are motivated by their conflicting worldviews (or perhaps variations of the same worldview).
To put it plainly, the main character wants something and the bad guy wants something else. But they both can’t get what they want because they value different things, so a conflict arises.
For example, the dramatic question of The Lord of the Rings is: “Will Frodo destroy the ring?” And the antagonism is that Sauron wants to reclaim it.
If desires drive characters, values drive desires, and worldviews drive values, then destroying the ring drives Frodo, selfless heroism drives his desire to destroy it, and Goodness motivates his selfless heroism.
With Tolkien creating this conflict, we are drawn in. We want to know what happens to Frodo.
When we empathize with characters by vicariously experiencing their journey (not to mention the world they inhabit), we participate in the worldviews involved in the story as well, albeit indirectly.
So whether we agree with it or not, we let the protagonist’s worldview speak as we follow the story because the answer to the dramatic question unearths deeper worldview implications based on which desires were met and which values are maintained.
How do we develop the expertise to naturally develop worldviews into our art? For starters, learn the craft of dialogue, character development, sentence structure, description, scene structure, etc. Study award-winning stories and the conflicts that generate them. Take a poorly-rated movie, TV show, or song and rewrite it. Then use that as an inspiration or primer for your own work (don’t plagiarize, obviously).
All it takes is the desire to learn. Ask experts. Google it. YouTube it. The Internet Age has its benefits!
Embedding worldview into the central conflict is perhaps the most important element in creating art because when it’s done right, deep questions are raised, which demand inward attention on the audience’s part.
Wrestle with the Darkness
Christian art cannot be pigeonholed into what is family-friendly (although the genre is necessary), aesthetically unambitious or, worst of all, thinly-disguised proselytization. It requires provocation with novelty and sound theology with beauty. It must engage with our world and be relevant.
In the process of introducing a new theory on how life began, two notable evolutionary biologists have just dismissed the reigning theory of Darwinian evolution, maintaining it would take many billions of years to accomplish and would extend beyond the very age of the universe, making the current understanding of evolution impossible.
The study of Darwinian evolution, the gradual assemblage of molecules that somehow were constructed and then began replicating themselves out of some imaginary “primordial soup” or “warm pond” as Charles Darwin once described it, has just taken a U-turn.
Today the vast majority of biologists maintain what they call RNA World existed on Earth before modern cells arose. For the past few decades the consensus of molecular biologists is that life originated from RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is a single strand of nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) unlike DNA which is double-stranded, and is bonded with ribose sugars rather than deoxyribose sugars that comprise DNA.
However RNA is more unstable and prone to degradation than DNA and makes a less plausible platform for the origin of life say two eminent researchers. For the very reason of RNAs inherent instability, two researchers now say RNA couldn’t have endured the time it would have taken for evolutionary life forms to appear.
Scientific U-turn
The scientific U-turn is this. According to astrobiologist and (Honorary) professor Brig Klyce, “Virtually all biologists now agree bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemical in one step. If life arises from non-living chemicals, there must be intermediate forms. Among the various theories on the origin of life, biologists have reached consensus on the RNA theory (called RNA WORLD), which serves as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA and initiate and control the synthesis of proteins. But now evolutionary thinkers say life’s first molecule was protein, not RNA.”
Carter and Wills argue that RNA could not kick-start this process alone because it lacks a property they call “reflexivity.” It cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needed peptides to form the reflexive feedback loop necessary to eventually lead to life forms.
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?
A few months ago, there was a 60-day preview of Unseen Realm on LOGOS and Michael Heiser asked some of his more veteran readers to help shepherd newcomers to the material on the FaithLife Forum.
Growing out of those discussions has been what I hope to be the first sister website and forum for writers, artists, and believers looking to interact with others on the material: DivineCouncil.org.
What is it?
It’s a full website & forum with three writers contributing to the front page blog. I hope the site may also serve as an outlet for others. So, if there are any believing writers, artists, photographers etc. Looking to contribute, this might be a good fit for you.
The forum part of the site is structured around the Unseen Realm in terms of the overarching missions of Jesus. We are organizing it to be a central hub for small groups to share materials and study the Word of God, wherever they are on the planet!
So What?
There’s a special resource manager setup to disseminate materials to small groups and make it easier to find things to bring to your church. Each resource can be reviewed, and have discussions formed around them, so people know how they can be used, the ideal audience, attributions, etc.
There’s also a live chat area, so you might be able to catch fellow listeners online for a brief chat while you’re on the forum.
Better than Facebook!
Facebook is fun, but if you’re tired of conversations scrolling off the screen (and other FB pitfalls) the private forum environment is more conducive to organized and focused discussions that can be searched later by yourself and others.
So, if you’re looking for a more private and trusted environment for discussions around this material you have another option available in which to do that. And, if your looking to start a small group, our forum may be the ideal place in which to find, organize, and disseminate the optimal subjects of study for your group!
What Next?
Over 50 people have signed-up to the forum in the first week, and the platform will scale up to as large as it needs to be.
If you’d like to use the forum to organize (and optimize) your small group, send Terence an e-mail at tg@McGillespie.com so he can set you up.
Nathan, Terence, and Zechariah hope DivineCoucil.org will fill a need for the Kingdom, empower small groups, and be a worthy site for the Church.
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. ↩
I’ll refer to the author as Rosenberg to distinguish him from the apostle Paul.
“Again I am raising a difficult subject, but again, it’s something that needs to be said. And my title is true. The Bible – the holy book of more or less all Christians – has become an idol. And yes, I do mean idol as in “false god.”
A book, no matter how good, remains a book and should be treated as a book. A deity is something far different.
Not every Christian uses the Bible as an idol of course, but many millions do – probably a majority in North America – including nearly all of the TV preachers.
The Bible is 66 books with ~40 authors written over ~1500 years put between one cover and referred to as “a book”. None of the books are deities nor are they above, or outside of, Reality.
A Christian may hold the Bible to be the most important “book” in the world but it’s not a substitute for God unless He’s absent from their lives (which is probably the crux of the matter, here).
What is an Idol?
An idol is something you hold above reality.
The Bible uses the word “idol” to refer to that which a man holds above, or in place of, God. Since only that which created Reality could be above (outside, beyond) it, Rosenberg’s use of the word is roughly the same.
A true God – a creator of the universe, for example – should be held above reality, since he created reality. If, however, we hold something else above reality, we make it an idol. A created thing should be considered a part of reality, not held above it.
So, when I say the Bible has become an idol, I mean people hold it above reality, putting it into the position of a god.”
The Bible refers to the gods being worshipped in the OT and NT (represented in stone, wood, or gold idols) as real and created by God.1 These created gods, as well as the Bible, “should be considered to be part of reality, not held above it”.
Not a Book-Based Religion?
As long as the relationships between people and their Creator are replaced (avoided) with rituals we’ll be stuck with the word, “religion”.
“Christianity very clearly did not start as book-based. When Jesus “preached the good news,” he quoted just a small number of scriptures and usually as a necessity, answering people who questioned him. And several of those were of the “you’ve heard it said… but I say” variety. He read a few lines from Isaiah in his hometown synagogue once, but we see very little more than that.
Even the very literate Paul uses Greek poets in his sermons almost as much as Old Testament passages. (He uses some scriptures in his writings.)”
The New Testament refers to the Old Testament 2,572 times including allusions, echoes, citations, and quotations.2 Here’s the total breakout as well as that for Jesus and Paul.
Jesus’ use of the OT is consistent with, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Mt 5:17) One astounding aspect of that fulfillment was His abiding by the laws while supplanting them with grace.4 His scripture was the Septuagint (A Greek translation of the Hebrew canon made in 250 BC.).
While Jesus fulfilled the laws, Paul documented much of that fulfillment in canonical extension, later to become known as the New Testament. Paul’s use of the Septuagint is consistent with writing eight to thirteen of the 27 books of the NT.
Stating the Obvious, Extrapolating the Unnecessary5
Those writing, copying, and assembling books of the New Testament did not, themselves, have access to completed copies. To therefore conclude, somehow, that books not yet written were unimportant to those writing them is to extrapolate the unnecessary after stating the obvious.
In that sense, neither is Judaism a book-based religion. The Old Testament was written and assembled into canon over a period of ~1000 years. It was then translated into Greek to make it accessible to Jews who had been in exile so long they’d lost touch with their own language. Does a project requiring 33 generations to complete imply apathy?
The first Christians valued Christ over everything. Their first independent actions were to spread the word about Him and what He’d just done. They weren’t apathetic about writing things down. A remarkable aspect of the NT is how little time had passed from the actual events to the time the 27 books were written and then assembled into canon. They were documenting what they’d witnessed while simultaneously risking their lives to spread a faith that would become the largest in the world.
I do agree with Rosenberg that the apostles and first Christians weren’t risking their lives for a book (or books) but for what they’d just seen. Also, even without completed copies of what has become the New Testament the early Christians were, no doubt, more effective and consistent than most modern Christians.
Facing the Bible
Those of us who’ve read the book know the laws in the Old Testament that no one follows anymore. We know how the apostles disagreed. But – and this is where idolatry comes in – millions of us pretend that we saw nothing and move on. Or if we’re trying to be very religious, we come up with creative interpretations to resolve the flaws.
Conjuring up “creative interpretations to resolve the flaws” is worse than a waste of time. It degrades integrity and faith. It also avoids some of the best opportunities for spiritual growth.
Do the “Bible is the word of God people” think the Author needs their help in deflecting attention away from weak parts of an otherwise stellar attempt to reach mankind?
The Laws that No One Follows Anymore
I’m no expert on Judaism. Still, I doubt that anyone, other than Jesus and a few prophets and priests, managed to abide by all 613 commandments of the law.
There are orthodox Jews who still believe they must abide by most of the laws. They claim to be excused from the sacrificial laws (159 of the 613) because the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. But, how were they released from the remaining 454? If they don’t recognize Jesus as their messiah how (and when) did these laws become inactive?
And let me be clear on this: Trying to prove everything by the Bible is a deviation from actual growth. If you’ve done this for any length of time, you’ve hindered yourself.
Rosenberg may be referring to the often lazy habit of quoting Biblical text as self-proving. To a non-believer this is recursive reasoning. It’s much more effective to quote applicable verses and explain why you think they’re true in the context of the discussion.
A larger point to understand is that the Bible doesn’t contain all knowledge. Such would be like a map with a scale of 1-to-1: accurate but useless. There are no microwaves, jet planes, toasters, CAD design programs, or even hidden codes in every 70th (or whatever) letter predicting the third Reich. Neither does Ezekiel contain the design plans for an alien spacecraft. The sooner a Christian is disabused of the notion that everything is in the Bible, the better.
The Bible is what God deemed sufficient for the realms it covers. It was not intended to be exhaustive. Exhaustive knowledge is a utopian myth. Humans have to work for knowledge just as they have to work to get food from the ground.
Doing, Or Not Doing?
Readers of the book really should know these things. The core of the New Testament – the recorded words of Jesus – require people to do the things he taught. The “Bible as word of God” people, on the other hand, spend endless hours arguing about who Jesus was, comparing scriptures, finding hidden meanings, proving their interpretations right, and proving the interpretations of others wrong. And so they bypass doing.
Though admonished by one commenter to “stick to subjects he knows about”, Rosenberg could just as well be paraphrasing Paul in 1 Timothy 1:3–7:
“As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”6
The Sad Part
“The central requirement for any follower of Jesus is to love. Everything else comes second. Jesus not only taught this again and again; he exhibited it in his life. Christians, however, consistently push it aside in favor of other things. (I could tell you stories, but you probably have your own.)”
Indeed, “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Ga 5:14)
“The really sad part of this is that the Bible idolaters – or at least a great number of them – do have experience with the divine impulse, of contact or at least innate yearning for a transcendent ultimate. But they never develop these things, because they’re busy idolizing a mere book, following the traditions and commandments of men.“
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for treating the OT in exactly this way. How much worse for a Christian to do the same with the completed Bible?
What’s Rosenberg Getting At?
Rosenberg sees the Bible as a valuable resource. He greatly appreciates the impact that Judeo-Christian ethics have had on western civilization. He believes there’s a creator of the universe distinct from the created. He has a “divine impulse” and “innate yearning for a transcendent ultimate”. So, why would someone so philosophically, though not theologically, aligned with Christianity be frustrated enough to write about Christians using the Bible as an idol?
At the risk of being presumptuous I’ll put into my own words what I think are some of Rosenberg’s points. If doing so would make fellow Christians consider them then it will have been worth the effort:
Because of the enormous, yet squandered, human potential of a third of humanity. If a small fraction of that number patterned their thoughts, will, abilities, beliefs, and expectations on the full range of Jesus’ teachings the world would be so dramatically transformed it might be mistaken for heaven.
Because millions of Christians who claim Jesus as their role-model either don’t take him seriously enough, or are afraid to discover, let alone implement, the full breadth of His teachings.
Because the Book of Acts describes the behaviors and experiences of Christians before there was a Book of Acts. And yet, the first Christians were more Christ-like, with limited access to fragments of text, than modern Christians are with a completed New Testament.
The Christian Difference
Voltaire is credited with saying, “Show me your redeemed life, and I’ll believe in your Redeemer”. And then there’s the rhetorical question that, “If you were jailed for being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?”.
There’s nothing different about people living inconsistently with their own stated beliefs. You can find them in every house and on every street-corner in the world. Christians are supposed to stand out in such a way as there’s no doubt that something is different about them. Why else would anyone care to learn more about their beliefs?
Can we blame non-believers for concluding that a redemption without fruit is no redemption, at all?
The Christian difference occurs in believers who call Jesus a role model and have the courage to act consistency with the goal of becoming more like Him.
That means diving into his teachings and exposing yourself to the full-spectrum of what you find. No picking and choosing what you, or those around you, might be comfortable with. No strip-mining the supernatural out of the events. No arrogant presumptions that God needs your protection of His Bible because someone sent you a list of “flaws” on Facebook.
Set a goal of nothing short of putting on the mind of Christ. “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.”7
Faith without Works
Faith without works is trust without transformation. It’s an attempt to be oriented towards the Creator without “power according to his glorious might”. (Col 1:11) In daily life, it’s hope without joy.
Transformation of Character and Supernatural Power
Dallas Willard, speaking on “Being Church” said:
“When the kingdom of God is present, power flows. And what characterize the people of Christ throughout the ages is transformation of character and supernatural power. Those two things always follow. When Jesus brought the kingdom he brought manifestation.”
That’s what the early Christians had and what many of today’s Christians don’t have. That’s what’s at the core of Judeo-Christian ethics that have transformed the world.
The early Christians weren’t risking their lives for unfinished scrolls on parchment or papyrus. And they weren’t risking their lives because Jesus was a smart guy who’d just laid some awesome philosophy on them. They risked their lives to remain true to what they’d just witnessed: Jesus performing miracles all over the place, raising people from the dead and then rising, himself, from being dead. And if that wasn’t enough, walking around and eating meals with them while detailing how He’d just fulfilled their scriptures. It was the resurrected Jesus that told them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”8
In that sense, I agree with Rosenberg, that Christianity is not a book-based religion. It’s a relationship with God centered around His presence in our actual lives. Without transformation of character and supernatural power there will be no great works. But, with them?
“My contention is that, if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world. This is not to suggest that the best interpretation of a passage is always the most supernatural one. But the biblical writers and those to whom they wrote were predisposed to supernaturalism. To ignore that outlook or marginalize it will produce Bible interpretation that reflects our mind-set more than that of the biblical writers.” Heiser, M. S. (2015). The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (First Edition, p. 18). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press. ↩
Jackson, J. G. (Ed.). (2015). New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife. ↩
There are four relationships that are used: Citation, Quotation, Allusion, and Echo. These terms are understood as: Citation: An explicit reference to scripture with a citation formula (e.g. “It is written,” or “the Lord says,” or “the prophet says”). Quotation: A direct reference to scripture, largely matching the verbatim wording of the source but without a quotation formula Allusion: An indirect but intentional reference to scripture, likely intended to invoke memory of the scripture. Echo: A verbal parallel evokes or recalls a scripture (or series of scriptures) to the reader, but likely without authorial intention to reproduce exact words. ↩
“For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ro 6:14). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. ↩
“Yes – as I have said many times in classes: Scholars have a habit of embracing the obvious (redaction) and then extrapolating to the unnecessary (XYZ “universally accepted” critical theory that actually has significant weaknesses – as though there were no other options).” http://drmsh.com/does-higher-criticism-attempt-to-destroy-the-bible/ ↩
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (1 Ti 1:3–7). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. ↩
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Mt 28:18–20). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. ↩
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ge 1:28). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.” ↩
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The reason the book is important is summed up by Chuck Missler in his foreword:
