EP33: The Unseen Realm w/ Dr. Michael Heiser

[Music] ladies and gentlemen does the Bible teach that there are other gods other than Yahweh and if so isn't that polytheism and what did Paul mean when he said that we wrestle against the rulers and cosmic powers you really have a supernatural worldview just how supernatural is it well my friend dr. Michael Heizer about five years ago wrote a seminal book that has really helped change the world view of many evangelical Christians when it comes to the supernatural the book is called unseen realm we re covering the supernatural world view of the Bible and we're going to talk about that book today and what's in it now I gotta warn you your world view may be rocked by listening or watching this hope one live stream today because dr. Heiser is uncovering things that I think have been sort of covered up in the evangelical world for so long he has his PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison yeah they have a ph.d program there in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages and his website is DRM sh dot-com for dr. Michael s Heiser and we had him on the program about three weeks ago we're bringing it back on it's not just him this time though it's Norman the Pug Heiser areas ladies and gentlemen Mike how are you and Norman this morning you know Norman is doing fine I don't know about me [Laughter] it's first appearance on the on the Hope long livestream now Norman is getting his first appearance but you have another pug in the house don't you know moremore is usually the one that sleeps and this one wants to take a nap now I guess I'm so comfortable my wife shows up he'll snap to alert and just go dessert [Laughter] wife you just used the word wife and he's looking around look at that now how old is doorman the pug pug - he's - and how about for you hi Laurie Laurie's five yeah Maurice chill Norman's the livewire typically was the one to watch so I thought we could bring him on as a visual aid when we talk about demons he's chillin right there and our audience is loving they're absolutely loving the Pug right now I can tell so but what I want to do Mike and if people haven't heard about you or your books yet I hope today will be in a way keen because what you've done in unseen realm and sort of a summary of unseen realm is a shorter version of that called supernatural they can get either of those books their worldview is gonna be rocked but I really want to start by asking it kind of the the question from 30,000 feet so you know before we look at the details of passages such as Psalm 82 Genesis 6 Deuteronomy 32 we're gonna get to those details I want you to take 5-10 minutes however long it takes the sort of sort of give us an overview of the supernatural world the unseen realm that the Bible teaches all the way from pre creation to eternity okay just take some time and do that give us an open it's a small Lord it slimy really you know the unseen realm basically covers the gamut you know it covers all that and so what I'll do here is I'm not gonna I'm not going to drill down on anything I'm just going to say stuff and but I'm gonna tell your audience that everything I say you know is discussed in depth in the book and the dirty little secret of the book is that Mike never had an original thought okay so what what the what the book does is it takes decades in some case a century or so peer-reviewed scholarship on all this stuff and it distills it to something comprehensible and decipherable for people who aren't going to get degrees and a lot of it you're correct as you begin it doesn't filter down into the church so there's there's sort of a an omission problem and then some of it we're taught to not see okay so the way the Academy talks about all this stuff as opposed to what you hear in church there's quite a bit of a difference there but you know let not your heart be troubled our theology is intact our theology is biblical theology but there's a whole backstory to it it really kind of puts it into place and gives it perspective gives it depth and layering so you know the biblical story is essentially a story of what God wants what God wants is two things God wants a family he wants a human family that can interact with him be with him and he also wants partners who wants the humans to be partners with him in enjoying the things that he does and in carrying out his will now before God decided to create a human family he already had one okay so before creation he has a family the heavenly hosts the beings of the supernatural world they're referred to as sons you know children of God they're around before creation job 38 tells us that very clearly the sons of God are witnessing God creating the foundations of the earth then of course after that we're going to get you know humans into the picture so when God decides to create humans this is Genesis 1:26 this is why we have plurals in Genesis 1:26 and it's also why it switches back to singulars in Genesis 1:27 the very next verse you know let us create humankind in our image you know as our image in our likeness our our these are this is plural language and typically this gets explained as the Trinity in the church well there are there are a number of problems with that one is if the if all the members of the Trinity are curly turtle and coalition God doesn't need to tell them anything alright and if you go to Genesis this is the babel incident it says the Lord since the divine name Yahweh comes down you know to earth to see what's going on at that Babel and then two verses later in verse seven he says let us go down and confuse their languages whoa no wait a minute if this US language which speaks of the Trinity and the Lord is already down there wouldn't they be down there too I mean it just doesn't it doesn't make a whole lot of sense so we have dividing up the members of the Trinity you know we have you know Co eternal Commission beings that seem to need to know information it just doesn't make much sense what you really have going on is God you know going into the room as it were and announcing to his heavenly hosts I have a great idea we're gonna create humankind as our image in our likeness and they're gonna they're gonna image me which you know all the image of God is is a representation they're going to be my proxies my my representatives they're gonna bear my name on earth and they're gonna be part of a part of you know our family and they're going to participate with us and what we want to get done here and it sounds like that heads for plural creation but it actually doesn't because the next verse only God is creating all the language is always singular you know it reverts back so God created them you know male and female in his image in his life as he created them and it's singular you say well why do we get singular and plural it's a very simple idea from the very beginning of human creation the language here connects us and God and the members of the heavenly host and in what way well they're supposed to they and us the way they image God in the way we image God is supposed to operate symbiotically as in heaven so on earth what happens here is supposed to reflect what happens there we both have the same Creator we both have the same you know boss as it work we are partners with the same God and as they serve God there and present him in this in the supernatural world that's what we're supposed to do here and we're supposed to be doing the same thing for the same reasons for the same God you know you know we know the story it's messed up it gets ruined and so on and so forth but this is what God wanted for the very beginning humanity was created for sacred space unlike all the other ancient near-eastern material where humans are icky you know like well we don't like one thing here with us you know this is why gods dwell on mountains and in gardens and remote areas because that you know humans aren't supposed to be there that is not the story of Genesis humans were created to be fit for sacred space there they were created to be fit to occupy the same room as it were as God and the rest of the heavenly hosts but that isn't what happens so what as the story goes on and this is a big difference in unseen realm and also in the demons boat you have I approach it's going to sound really really odd but I approach the biblical story the way the church tradition and if you ask the average Christian you know why is the world such a bad side this go raw what about cosmic evil and in the answer you're gonna get his odds to fall yeah that's the fall you've done your head you know haven't you read your Bible well yeah I know it's the fall but if you ask that the same question to an Israelite who had a Bible and a Second Temple period intertestamental period Jew that's not the answer you would get the answer is not befall the answer is well there's actually three reasons why the world just want any wire and why we have all this depravity why we have you know supernatural you know entities that are hostile to their creator there's actually three reasons and the first one is the fall let's think about what the fall does the fall gives us a death problem okay there is no more Eden humans have lost immortality they are estranged from their father and their creator from this point forward everything dies everything has the same destiny you know everything is going to wind up in the lap of the original rebel we is the serpent the Satan to figure everything is going to die and so in one sense he is now the master and owner of everything he is as the New Testament will call them later the god of this world why it's not because he's bigger and better than the true God it's because everything dies he owns it but then you have another rebellion you have the sons of God of Genesis 6 and we've been taught since the 4th century AD that there's nothing supernatural going on here so let's ignore that even though all of the ancients took it the same way that is you know that the sons of God were we're divine beings they come down yes you know that you have this cohabitation language with women they produced an ethylene you know and you know which become lethal enemies to the Israelites you know we get all that strange stuff but the real impact in Jewish thought of this is that what happens here leads to the proliferation and acceleration of death and destruction through depravity you know we can tell we can unpack that a little bit later but that's that is why there's such a concern then there's a third rebellion what happens at Babel ok I wasn't I was a PhD student before I saw this burst believe it or not and I had read it dozens of times but I never saw it because in PhD programs I don't like to read English Bibles for one thing you know you have to read primary texts and we can read through Genesis 1 you know Genesis 11 and ask for work where the name it's like where are the following God's you know where where's all this bad stuff and you're not going to see it if you go to Deuteronomy 32 89 you'll see it it says when the Most High divided up the nation's you divided them up you know fix their boundaries you know you divide them up according to the number of the sons of God this is what the Dead Sea Scrolls read in Deuteronomy 32 ate a lot of your English translations will not have this they'll have sons of Israel he number that look for the sons of Israel well that that's a head-scratcher because it girl didn't exist yet israel's only might be birthed after Babel in response to what you know God judges humanity he divorces himself for them he assigns the nations to to the lesser members of the heavenly host you know who could become corrupt eventually and we find that out from Psalm 82 because that's why they're being judged in Psalm 82 the text actually means what it says God is judging the other gods well where did we get them we got him at Deuteronomy 32 that the sons of God who were appointed a lot and Deuteronomy 4 uses the like that language Deuteronomy 29 uses that language of them there are a lot of to the nations the nations are allotted to them this is a punishment God still wants the world justly because they're imagers he's still interested in them because he makes a covenant with Israel or with Abraham to create his real right after Babel and in that covenant he promises that the nations will be blessed through the you know the offspring of Abraham so he's still interested he wants them real Justin but that's not what happens these entities so chaos they their lights the tree we're beyond people listening to the broadcast have you ever wondered why when you're reading through Genesis 1 through 11 everybody knows who the true God is and it's sort of relating to him and he's relating to them and then Babel happens and and now we've got Abraham and if we look at Abraham's genealogy of then we Tara and Abraham's brothers later at the end of the book of Joshua they're idolaters like how can that happen where did my Dollar Tree come from it just pops into this no it comes from this event this is the origin of where we get these other gods and how everything just goes haywire so if this is your supernatural worldview it explains a lot of passages in the Bible about Israel being Yahweh's domain and everything else being under the Dominion of something else that hates Yahweh that hates his people it is really against the nation's it's Yahweh against the gods the whole rest of the story is framed by these three incidences human depravity human evil idolatry the whole bit it's all framed in Genesis 1 through 11 now if this is your view what do you expect of Messiah will you expect Messiah to do more than correct the fall again this is where we're at as in Christian theology zhis came too so that we could have eternal life you know resurrection and and you know we could be brought back into a relationship with God it's true that's true look oh well we don't see is how the work of Christ fixes the other two problems because we never see the other two problems we're never taught about the rest of this stuff you know why is it that we don't get any demon possessions in the Old Testament when Jesus shows up there like everywhere you know like where does that come from why was it why would did you expect the Messiah to have this as part of his profile but he'd be able to cast out demons there's nothing like that in the Old Testament least Ori why the expectation there's all sorts of questions like this what you know why does Paul not use the word demon hardly ever but instead he uses principalities powers rulers Thrones dude he's is all these geographical membership terms why does he do that because of Deuteronomy 32 where does Daniel get his theology about Prince the Prince of Persia the Prince of Greece and Daniel 10 did Daniel just think that was kind of a cool like like he was like working for Marvel at that point or DC like I got a great story let's just invent that no no he's getting it from Deuteronomy 32 first we never seen because we're not reading English translations that use the Dead Sea Scrolls I have to use the ESV you're a little lucky here here because it does that you know there are a few translations that the committee's actually again had a bit of a revelation why don't we include the Dead Sea Scrolls and what we translate here but you know not all of us are that fortunate you know so we've got this whole cast of characters might the subtitle of the demon's book is what the Bible really says about the powers of darkness the reason I titled that was because not every but not every power of darkness is adenine hmm okay there's there's a whole different cast of characters the same with the angels book what the Bible really says about the members of the help of God's heavenly hosts well not I remember the heavenly host is an angel angel is a job description okay so we've got this huge cast of characters we've got a three-prong problem we've got a Messianic expectation that's supposed to take care of all of the mass not just one one part of it and so we drift into the New Testament and you would expect that this is what you see and you do but we just don't have our senses trained to see it well let's do this Mike let's let's go into some of the details now and I want to start I want to go back to your your demon question you just had but before we do one of the greatest insights there's so many great insights in the book unseen realm and supernatural that really help you understand why certain things occurred I never understood the Tower of Babel till I read your book can you also make the connection to Pentecost because that was a brilliant connection I never saw Oh go there first and then we'll come back to demons and Sami to go ahead yeah I mean well the work of Jesus naturally addresses the first two volumes but the third one you know Babel we're all that we might see a glimmer of this if we recognize the pain Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles okay we get that much but there's there's a lot before we get Paul so at Pentecost everybody's read this passage I mean how many sermons have you heard on Acts - okay I mean just you know dozens and dozens of these but the logic of what's going on escapes us if you read acts 2 carefully yes we have the coming of the Spirit that's obvious but if you read the dialogue it's you know you come across a couple of terms in acts 2 about you know that divided tongues and they were bewildered okay well okay they were and I don't know what a divided tongue is but now I'm just gonna keep reading the wait you know let's stop there if you were looking at this in an inner linear and you looked at the Greek word and if you looked up or ask the question hey what I wonder where that Greek word occurs in the Greek Old Testament that the New Testament writers used 75% of the time mm-hmm you would find that one it shows up in Genesis 11 at the Bible story and the other one shows up yes we're in Deuteronomy 32 8 9 yeah again so the writer has linked the reader that need the close reader back to you know this rebellion and then as your tunes in Acts chapter 2 you would see that they moved from east to west they start wearing the Jews are in exile in the east and they start moving westward and then when they hit the Mediterranean of course they split off you know in the northern north and south because it's it's just water nobody's living there okay so we've gotta gotta go all the way back through and you would realize that you know what's kind of interesting here is these place names cover all of the regions that you could put all of the nations from Genesis 10 which were the nations that were disinherited at Babel you could put them off in all those regions what a coincidence you know and then you keep reading in the book of Acts and the Spirit directs people and has the gospel preached to all the places that are connected with Abraham and his descendants in the Old Testament you've got Damascus you've got Samaria you know even even the south the Ethiopian eunuch why there because again we're not told this in the biblical history but there was a colony of Jews at elephantine a okay in this area Philip his training after he speaks to the Ethiopian eunuch who's going to take the gospel down there talk to his countrymen then he's transported to as Onis like what's that it's Philistine territory it's it's it's part of the territory that wasn't quite you know gobbled up in the dominica minute every place it's to the Jew the gospel goes and then we get the conversion of Paul because the gospel is the Jew first and then to the Gentile and so Paul has as his mission to keep going throughout all of these regions all of these places that are covered in the table of Nations to take the gospel there why because the nation's need to be brought back into the family it's a reversal of the babble curse the babble event and what's really cool about it is that toward the end of his life Paul is deeply concerned in Romans he mentions this twice he's deeply concerned about getting to Spain well what Spain did they did he does he just like the food they're not up Spain is Old Testament Tarshish it's the furthermost the westernmost point at the table of Nations geographically reaches the disinherited nations it's the only place that the gospel has not arrived at and so Paul has this sense that I have to get to Spain to complete the job to reclaim the nation's so there's actually a logic to Pentecost to the chapters before Paul in the book of Acts to Paul's ministry you know that relates directly to reclaiming the nations that were disinherited to Deuteronomy 32 them you know and in the demons book I have a pretty lengthy quote from Plato this I think is is really worth pointing out the Gentiles that Paul is talking to had the Deuteronomy 32 worldview in their head Plato says exactly the same thing this is hundreds of years you know BC you know that Paul would walk into a Gentile city and he he would basically be saying to them look I understand that you know what's going on here you know you we have we share the same worldview here you accept that you think that you're your God's a lot of the gods to you that you should worship the bigger God's made the rules and you're supposed to worship this God and not that one or else they get angry and fight with each other but they have this sense that we worship the gods we do because the gods allowing us to do that and we're not supposed to do anything else so Paul would say them look I understand this year you're fearful you think that if you come over and embrace Jesus that you're going to be in big trouble that the gods are going to come after you mm-hmm so what he basically says is look here's the story the most high the most high became a man he died on a cross so that she could be brought back to God your sins can be forgiven he rose from the dead so that you'll have eternal life and you need not fear because the Most High who gave these other gods their authority and a punishment back you know after the flood has now withdrawn that authority he has nullified it it smoke you're not only allowed to come back to him but he insists on it hmm and that's why I'm here you need not fear the Most High who is mightier than all these other ones there is no sir I just want our viewers here Mike to understand the significance of this of the tapestry that you have exposed that the Scriptures are and that is at Babel God disinherited the nation's and assigned these lesser Elohim these lesser God's to these other nations and then in Pentecost which by the way this year is Sunday May 31st my friend Jack Hibbs at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills is going to start his services back up that day and a lot of the churches in California are going to do the same that in Pentecost god rien hurts the nation's and this is why all is so interested in going to the other nations that go get'em so please read this Frances story is so coherent when you let the Bible when you interpret the Bible in the way somebody living in in the first century what it would interpret it or somebody living back in the day of say Psalm 82 which we're about to go here this is why I think it's so important the work you're doing here Mike because it's really helping us understand what in in my mind and I've been to seminary has been a a kind of cryptic pad what's the tower Babel all I don't even get that and you're angry that they're building a building boy and we don't have time to cover all the details here because we want to get to questions here in about the next 10 or 15 minutes but I do want to say this Mike and I did a couple of podcasts on the cross exam and I don't have enough faith being a theist podcast in July of last year 2019 I listened to the one we did the first one we did Mike and you covered so much ground in that podcast that people need to go back and listen to that get the cross-examined app you can listen to it and we did two shows on this but I do want to Mike go I want to ask you one question and go to Psalm 82 you mentioned earlier about there's not much in the Old Testament about demons and then suddenly Jesus shows up and demons are everywhere can you unpack that white what where did this come from why demons all decide it's it's hard for us to understand this because again we're not the first century right the quick answer to this believe it or not this is the quick answer okay the quick get to do this and I just did have a podcast episode of my own podcast I think it might actually be dropping this weekend on Psalm 91 okay so what we did let a couple of weeks ago on one is crucial because it's part of a of a second temple tradition that Psalm and some other ones that held that David and Solomon had written songs Psalms a handful of them that dealt with casting out Dean's and so many one is part of that mix and we don't see it because we don't realize that the terms that are translated like pestilence and plague and the arrows that fly by day these are all names of can ideas again.i entities that that you know are hostile to God okay and so Psalm 91 is part of a conquest of this so there's this whole tradition again that we just can't detect with our eye because it's filtered out through nation that when you know Jesus shows up there would be people who very naturally would say okay if this is really the Son of David then he ought to be able to do with David to do and what Solomon can do he should be able to cast out demons so when he starts doing that it's like game long they're like okay I should probably pay attention there you know so it's very natural that when he shows up I mean that the hostile forces of darkness they know who he is and it's interesting when he's on Gentile territory they refer to him as the son of the Most High man he's a Jewish probably Broadview in there too you know mister he's air I'm heated by Gentiles to make the point I'm not just Messiah for the Jew I'm here for all hey Mike say that point again you see you dropped out again you said when he's in Gentile territory they called them son of the Most High when he's in Jewish territory what did what did they call it what do they say to Deesa hey son of David son of David okay all right you'll have these episodes where the demons you know that he's confronting realize how to address him in different contexts mm-hmm again it says Deuteronomy 32 cosmic geography you know sort of thing work it out and and and so you know you they know who he is they know why he's there it's like well you know like Satan you know in the temptation he's not a he's not a doofus okay like like okay if he's here though God must be at that silly once Kasturi story and kind of nonsense and you know it so he they know who he is and why he's there but they don't know how God is going to get from point A to point B they don't know the mechanism of the plan and so Satan goes on a fishing expedition you are we talking about Psalm 91 he actually Satan puts an exorcist except Jesus again to try to try to get some information here to get Jesus to do something that he'll learn something about the plan Jesus is having you know it there there's just a lot of things that are sort of undercurrents you know to that episode but but when he shows up yeah this was a litmus test this was a litmus test they need any artists has been put on notice well the interesting thing is that he's Satan is quoting from Assam that is supposed to be a some about as you say exorcising demons and that's 20 quotes yes and you also pointed this out - which is a great insight as well that in first Corinthians Paul says that if the spirits had known that what the plan was they never would have crucified Jesus and that's why I'm looking back at the Old Testament prophecies you go with some of these prophecies are fairly specific but you know it doesn't pinpoint every every aspect I am but if he had then Satan wouldn't have encouraged the death of Jesus if he had known what plan was so so when Satan's you know quotes Psalm 91 and says okay you know I take you up to the top of the temple here throw yourself off you know because the psalm says that these angels will guard you and protect you lest you dash your foot against a stone I mean you know so he wants it's essentially okay if you're the Messiah let's see it let's see oh you know and and of course if Jesus does this and angels protect him or if he if he dies and then God has to raise him back then Satan has learned something really important mmm-hmm it doesn't do any good to kill him mm-hmm it's God I'll just bring him back right exactly what needs to happen mm-hmm and so Jesus again knows the plan Satan is not and again he happened none of it we're not putting any cards on the table because I do want to get to questions and our viewers have a lot of questions before we do we have to go to Psalm 82 because this was your initial entree into discovering or recovering as you say in the book the true supernatural world view of the Bible tell us what's in Psalm 82 that woke you up to this and then over decades of research it ultimately it landed in the book unseen realm yeah and and also why Mike isn't a Mormon that in their introduction to unseen realm I really you know my own epiphany again I've you know I was in church you know kill there was a guy in church she was in the Hebrew Department with me and as I say in the book I don't remember what the conversation was about but I'll never forget the way then because it was life-changing he he just handed me his the Hebrew Bible and said it was open to samba deities and you need to read Psalm 82 you know in Hebrew and the first verse is just you know it left me thunderstruck because it says Elohim that Sabah el Elohim capital G OD again the reason is that the table is a singular verb form so it's one capital G OD God takes his stand in the divine council and in the next line the same verse is the carrot Elohim yesh pote in the midst and the Elohim he passes judgment hey it can't be the Trinity because if you read verses 2 through 5 the other Elohim are really crummy okay they can't be part of the trade anymore they are under judgment okay and you can't be in the midst of one so we've got a group of Elohim here and if you go down to verse 6 you know the speaker God says I said to all of you you know / clurel proton you are gods you are Elohim all of you sons plural of the Most High but nevertheless you're going to die like men okay so you there's no escape you have God speaking passing judgment in a council meeting over a group of gods mmm look at that and I thought well that looks like a pantheon I mean I I mean I was not a viable newbie I'm in a doctoral program in Hebrew studies by that point I have two masters degrees I have taught at the Bible College level for five years I've been to Bible College I've been to seminary it's like how in the world could I never have seen that before I felt the same way when I hit Deuteronomy 32 eight subsequent like how in the world could I have never seen this and it it rattled me in the sense that I mean what do I say to this you know what like what do we got here but then again providentially I also had another thought that was a bit jesus knew that verse okay but Paul knew but the New Testament writers knew it and somehow the theology that they articulate has to be consistent with this I just I just can't see how and then I went off into commentaries you know what might my trusted the evangelical sources which said either nothing about it or they just said oh the Elohim here are just people there is Israelite judges right no that's comforting because when I flip a few pages and go to Psalm 89 and so many too has the sons of the most high as Elohim so you know there's only one most high their sons of God okay and then you go to Psalm 89 you have the sons of God in Council you have the same council language as in Psalm 82 but the council's in the skies it's in the heavens this is a this is a supernatural Council you know last time I looked at my Bible there aren't a bunch of Israelite elders floating around the sky it was just absurd you know and so I wasn't getting any help and the critics love this because now they can take Psalm 82 and argue all the Israelites they were polytheists originally and they're they've evolved to the wonders of monotheism now this is what in this evolutionary trajectory which you reject which I read you you know that actually became a focus point of my dissertation because as I as I got into this to try to try to noodle this problem I saw things I actually counted them I have a published article in the Tyndale bulletin it's available online it's available in the web where you've got over a hundred and sixty instances in the Dead Sea Scrolls which are well past the era of Isaiah when Israel broke through to the glories of monotheism okay this is hundreds of years later okay at the Dead Sea Scrolls you've got over a hundred and sixty references to plural Elohim and Aiden and sons of God in a dozen places it's divine counsel scenes so somebody didn't get the memo you know if this is polytheism somebody didn't get the women's and so I thought this is ridiculous this is this is inconsistent inconsistent it's incoherent there must be an answer and eventually you know I you know again I'd love to say I just figured it out because I'm just as smart but honestly I I have to say that what I know and what I discovered I was shown I mean honestly I'm just just shown I have a whole series of providential things that just just planted me at the right place at the right time to here here the right paper at a conference to stumble into a book you know or a journal article I'm you know that's just the way it worked and so Mikey you've got to draw a distinction for our viewers then whatever actually what the plural Elohim oh yeah it's all of it is a term you would use as a label for any resident of the spiritual world okay this is what the biblical writers use Elohim of lots of things that aren't the God of Israel it has nothing to do with a unique set of attributes mm-hmm this is not polytheism there is only one Yahweh there is none like him ontologically okay there is none like him he has species unique Yahweh is an Elohim but no other Elohim or Yahweh has nothing the term itself has nothing to do with attributes it all it is is it's like it's a word like spirits gain you're a member of the the supernatural spiritual world this is why the human dead are referred to as elevated this is why the gods in the nations are almaty this is why the shame of deuteronomy 32:17 quickly translated demons they're called Elohim it's not because they're at the same level as the God of the Bible there's only one of those you know no Israel I would think my dear departed five-year-old is now in an ontological par with the God of Israel well they're both Elohim nobody's thinking that and this is the error of Mormonism Mormonism takes the plurality of Elohim in Psalm 82 and assumes they're all interchangeable that there is no ontological distinction at all mm-hmm it's why Satan and God and Satan and Jesus in Mormonism mm-hmm okay that is a failure to note that the term a has nothing to do with the unique set of attributes and be the attributes that Yahweh has in other passages are specifically denied to other Elohim all irrelevant so you're only getting part of the picture if you're talking to a Mormon and and this is a fundamental error that they made well you you point out in the book unseen realm that there are at least five or six different ways or I should say different spiritual entities to which the term Elohim could apply other than Yahweh himself who are the others their deceased human dead in 1st Samuel 28 30 13 you have said the spirit of Samuel shows up he's an elevating he's a nice ball dealt he you know the medium what do you see she says I see it Elohim coming up out of the ground all right okay you get the gods of the nations like commotion low I have they're called Elohim it's the biblical writer isn't gonna think it's the same as Yahweh would Bobby ordered you know he might what was that we've all be considered in Elohim yes and any spiritual being is an Elohim Elohim it's just like like recoat spirits this is a label you're gonna I'm going to stick on you because you're a member by nature of the disembodied spiritual world mm-hmm now we could we could go on for hours on this and Mike's book goes into great detail I know there's a lot of questions that have been generated by this shocking discussion for some of you and as I say I've been to seminary and I never heard this okay and but when you look at the text this is what the text says the question is how do we interpret the text and so I want to bring Jorge on because Jorge I know we have a list of questions from our viewers there's viewers on YouTube there's viewers on Facebook there may be viewers on the app and our website if you want to ask a question type the big block letters capital letters question and then give a very short succinct question in complete English we'll see if we can get to it go ahead Jorge bring it well take it away everybody we actually on dr. hi sirs page - and we have a bunch of people watching there and since we don't have a monitored area you guys can make your way either to the Frank toric page or the cross examine page and ask your questions there first one Carmel asked can you give your credentials for for people who don't know you Mike because I know this is shocking so go I don't and lay it out for them yeah I have a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages from the University of Wisconsin Madison by the way the Hebrew program is now part of the classics program there it's not a self-standing program anymore I'm a master's degree in ancient history with specializations in Egyptology and Canaan Syria Palestine from the University of Pennsylvania we have another master's degree from UW Madison also in Hebrew studies and went to Bible College went to seminary but yeah you know I I I have been I have been from fundamentalism to the uw-madison I I know all the conversations that can happen uw-madison is the Berkley of the Midwest and it deserves that reputation when it had it has a long-standing history of being friendly to evangelicals in free verse studies when I was a grad student there every graduate student was a Christian was a believer hmm every one of them it's different for undergrad you had a lot of Jewish students there but it was a good environment you know at least as far as you know its acceptance you know they knew who we were we knew that kind of thing they just asked that you didn't work nobody forced anything on you there but and to my advisers credit he let me do a dissertation that ran directly against the mainstream the local scholarship because everybody who's non confessional and I'm sad to say somebody even jela ought into the yeah Russian biblical that more polytheists that had to discover monotheism this evolutionary trajectory I don't buy it for a minute I think it is internally incoherent it implodes it's based on circular reasoning but on the other side we do a great disservice to the to the serious Bible believing community when we camouflage what's in the text through either our translations or a tradition because I'll guarantee you there are people out there in the wild world on the internet and YouTube that know this material well and they love to pounce on Christians knowing that they've never heard this stuff and they're going to use it to destroy their faith mm-hmm every week hmm okay this is part of why I do what I do you do not need to fear your Bible okay you're only getting part of the story you're getting filtered and stilton information you're being told you can only think one way about the data and that is demonstrable incoherent and not true in fact Mike let me say that your book in a certain respect sorta gives the box top to the puzzle that many see the Bible as once you get a box top when you realize say there's a connection between say Babel and Pentecost you go ah that box top is very heavy believe it or not okay you might want to be sitting down for this this profound statement that's gonna come maybe actually going in Norman so you can take credit that's right the Bible is supposed to make sense it's some host it makes sense but but we because we don't read it through the eyes of an ancient Israelite when we're in the Old Testament or the eyes of a first century Jew because we don't read it that way it's then we read like a textbook of bullet points and self-help guide or something like that we know lots of parts of it but we have no we have no framework into which all of that data fits mm-hmm so what I'm trying to do in unseen realm is I'm trying to convince people you know I want the Israelite living in your head I want the first century Jew living in your head if you do that if you commit to reading it like an ancient person you set aside your denominational distinctives you set aside your traditions okay read it like the original ancient people would read it you will be reading your Bible again for the first time you will not be able to unsee what you see and it will help you put the pieces somewhere in place and see how they connect to each other see you'll be able to see threads of thought from Genesis to Revelation it'll start to make sense for you and I can say that because that's what it did for me again I was not a Bible movie when I had my Psalm 82 moment and this simple but but at the time scary decision that I'm just going to jump in here I'm gonna I'm gonna pretend I'm an Israelite I'm going to pretend I'm a first century Jew I'm just going to look at the text the way they look let the chips fall because I believe that Paul of Jesus and the other New Testament writers did that and I know where they came out okay it'll I'll be okay it's gonna be scary but I'll be okay and and I it all happened to me you know I was reading my Bible again for the first time like I can't believe you know what I what I never saw and and that was out of that experience was was what would become unseen realm because I can remember sitting in Memorial Library one day just enjoying I mean how many people actually get to enjoy their dissertation you know but I mean I the thought hit me that you know the average Christian who really cares about Scripture they will never see my 85 pitch none of this hmm I'll never see it they'll never have the thrill of like all this stuff and I thought you know I that's what I should do I think I can do that I think I can take this stuff and put it into a readable comprehensible form and then you know help people move down this path that I was moving and the summary of that is called a book called Supernatural so if you don't want to go through 300 plus pages of unseen realm okay look natural and then you can go to unseen realm is question up here that I want you to get just give a short answer to this if you can Mike about and then demons we're gonna talk about demons in a couple weeks that's another book but people keep asking where are you getting this this Dead Sea Scrolls translation what Bible would you recommend people get so they can get the dead zones whole perspective all right I will I will my disclaimer here is that there is no perfect translation all right they're all good so if you Deuteronomy 32 ats-v has incorporated the Dead Sea Scrolls into Deuteronomy 33 and also verse 43 because you know the same omission there about the Elohim in verse 43 that you do in verse 8 but yes he is right on top of this this data that is the reading of the Dead Sea Scrolls it's the oldest form of the Hebrew text we have and they include in their translation so good for them and as NRSV will have it NLT well translated something like angels of God so they're they're tracking on it that it was so you know those are three that come to mind immediately okay not without English translations where the committee that produced them have many choices like this where where the choices need to be made so those were three go ahead or hey what else we got I got one here in what way do believers today interact or fight with the powers of darkness are we instructed to do it in you know particular weight we are we actually are okay this is another one I would need Norman for does this will be deeply profound spiritual warfare you can write the words or if they're a piece of paper put the equal sign and then write great condition mmm that is spiritual warfare you have to ask yourself a simple question what do the powers of darkness fear they don't fear you shouting at them they don't fear loud music that's Christian music they don't fear you know you going and you know in the rooms in your houses and if you want to do that stuff you know it's not a bad thing but this is not what they fear what they fear is the loss of their status and their Kingdom and eventually their own existence now we talked about the Deuteronomy 32 worldview that that the reclaiming of the nation's began at Pentecost and progressed to the Ministry of Paul and Jesus gave us the Great Commission well why why did he do that well Paul in Romans nine and eleven links the quote fullness of the Gentiles his ministry with the return of the Lord which includes the day of the Lord which includes the destruction of the powers of darkness that we read about in Psalm 82 it in an unseen round by I show how all these things are connected but the powers of darkness they I also get this question do they think they can beat God well no they don't they know who God is but it depends how you define victory okay if you define victory as keeping the Great Commission in other words keeping the fullness of the Gentiles away you keep kicking that can down the road so it never happens then they're not going to get destroyed their Authority has been nullified it has been removed but they are hanging on to their turf they hate you they hate gone so they game plan is really simple keep you from accomplishing the Great Commission keep it from discipline people hmm because the longer we can forestall that we get to stick around hmm is what they feared so if you want to do something in the name of spiritual warfare that they fear go witness to your neighbor and ran under the demon go witness to your neighbor they do something that sounds like the Great Commission you know Jesus and we think the Great Commission is Matthew 28:19 20 here's a verse before that it's verse 18 I've mastered that much math right all Authority has been given unto me in heaven and on the earth and who who had Authority before that sneaked the disk that has been removed he said out is the beginning of your end so this is how this Jesus would not come back in a time machine that Great Commission I should have said this no I mean he's got it correct this is what we're supposed to do excellent I got one more before I give it back to Frank in this one he asked have you had any supernatural experiences they have influenced the writings of these books have you dealt you know of evidence you know things like demonic possession evil spirit attacks and the like are you aware of these things that I know a little bit because of your podcasts about fernand and Audrey if it's so just expand on that a little bit before we cause to show I have not had anything direct that I would call you know as a spiritual attack or something like paranormal experience or anything like that you know indirect is an important term you know because the context here is like some kind of attack or or like you know a Joseph Smith experience you know angel came and dictated see all right nothing like that you know I know people though who who minister to people who are ritually abused you know I've known people who've had such encounters again and they don't make it the centerpiece of what they do their identity it's just this happens you know and I you know I believe that of course it happens it happened in New Testament you know yeah it's not like the normative Christian experience but it's out there now I will say you know that I feel like I was I was helped okay I would use the word helped but I know you know visionary experience or anything like that I mean I can describe a particular episode where I think I was helped because I don't know I think I think God had pity on me in a few points my dissertation where he had to had to give me some help but you know we don't need to go there unless you want to and I can tell you a story but I don't have any other questions well Mike I have a question because we always end this show because it's about hope it's the hope one show we're given we're trying to give people hope during this lockdown as you look at the grand view of the Bible where really is our hope our hope is in the accomplished historically rooted work of Jesus and that includes the resurrection and the Ascension you know I I think we're heading into days where the enemies of all that are actually going to be using a resistance to believers believing in the supernatural world against us okay if we can have a whole show on that and any library on that but I think our our hope is to realize that there is a God that is a completely coherent idea all of these other ideas about the spiritual world all that the Bible teaches about us other spiritual beings are derivative of the one fundamental proposition but there is a God and that is sound it has been attacked for millennia and it's still here and it's not just on life support it's here a powerful way in ain't going away so I think we can be confident in in God who Jesus is what he did you know rooted in written the facts of real history and you know that secures our eternal destiny if those things are true this world is not our home and we have no reason to fear look at those two websites friends as you're we're wrapping up the show here at the bottom of your screen drm sh for dr. michael s Heiser calm also you can go to mi qlae t org for all of dr. Heiser's work he has a podcast called the naked Bible podcast avail yourself for that and don't forget the two shows that we did on the I don't have enough faith to be an atheist podcast in July on this topic we've only scratched the surface here and there's a lot more in the book obviously unseen realm supernatural and let me recommend one other book that will be very helpful to you particularly if you're a new believer in it for you even if you're not it's called what does God want mm-hmm dr. Michael Heizer very simple to understand you can give it to anybody and it'll give you some more meat on the bones of these ideas that may have been new idea see it today even though they've been in the scriptures forever Mike thanks so much for being on the show Norman couldn't stick with you very long could he but you're gonna come back in the next couple of weeks and we can do more of this is that Alright Maury that time you may never see him or even plug next time all right friends don't forget tomorrow dr. Sean McDowell who did his dissertation on the fate of the Apostles will tell us how the Apostles handled pain and suffering so don't miss tomorrow's show and then on Monday we'll have his father Josh McDowell on so hope to see you guys here on hope one next time thanks gentlemen bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Cross Examined

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Length: 59min 49sec (3589 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020