Kinds of Spiritual Beings: With Dr. Tim Mackie

hey everybody joshua lewis here with the remnant radio got an exciting interview today we're in a different space we're out here in houston renting out this space for a conference that uh michael uh roundtree and michael miller are both participating in and i'm just kind of snagging some really cool interviews in the meantime we are on the other line with dr tim mackey from the bible project i'd so honored to have him here today before we give a moment for him to introduce himself and his ministry we're going to talk a little bit about remnant radio who we are and what we do we are theology broadcast we interview pastors and teachers from across the world uh if you're familiar with uh dr mackey you might also be familiar with the the bible project podcast he's interviewed people like it's amazing uh carmen himes and nt wright guys we've had on our show i've also interviewed dr michael heiser craig keener sam storms jack dear wayne grudem the list goes on so if you're interested in theological conversations with people outside of your specific denomination remnant radio is a great chance for you to do that so go ahead and hit subscribe like the video and see other content that we're coming out with uh speaking of yeah speaking of speaking of yeah so well first of all what we did last night which we also did right here in the studio we've been here for uh the week and uh and so yesterday we talked about is there such a thing as a balanced charismatic or charismatic approach and and we talked about some of the the maybe pitfalls of the charismatic movement as well as uh some of the beauty and power of it and kind of just what does it look like to pursue that in a balanced way and so we i had a great episode on that last night and then tomorrow we have one coming out uh we've been kind of slow dripping these todd white interviews so uh is todd white a prosperity gospel preacher we addressed this very thing with him asked him some very pointed questions and i think he'll have an answer uh from the horse's mouth so that'll drop tomorrow at four o'clock come on for yeah so uh those are just a few things that we have uh we have going on and uh dr mackey we're so excited to have you on the show yeah thanks really good to talk with you guys and uh sorry to be awkward but you'll make me uncomfortable if you call me doctor okay okay timmy everybody's a little bit different we've actually we have some people some people say the opposite they're like actually could you call me doctor and that's always more awkward than asking you to us to remove the doctor than being told i totally get it but just to you know put put those cards on the table tell us about yourself there's seven and nine and um whenever my wife sarcastically calls me doctor they just think it's the funniest thing oh things just just uh uh you're not a real doctor you're just a doctor oh like like you don't do surgery so you're not a real doctor right so michael mike is coming a little hot yeah so tim could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about the bible project yeah um let's see i i live here in portland oregon uh i grew up here and um i have been a pastor for many years i went to school for far too long i just loved everything in biblical studies especially ancient jewish backgrounds ancient near eastern backgrounds literature all that stuff and uh so but what i found was that i wanted to play a role translating the best of biblical scholarship biblical theology into the life and mission of the local church so i went in the local church ministry for a lot of years just teaching and um i was moved back here to portland after being in graduate school and i had a friend who um while i was getting a phd in like ancient hebrew uh he was developing employable skills here in portland uh starting an animation company that made explainer videos mostly for tech companies um his name is john collins and uh he pitched to me the idea of starting a youtube channel where we made short animated videos explaining biblical theology and so we started that project about six years ago actually about seven we launched the youtube channel called the bible project in 2014 and it's just been a wild roller coaster ride since then everything you make has millions of videos it's really amazing millions of views views yeah michael's showing his age he goes uh everything he makes makes millions of videos i i'm so old [Laughter] he's like five years older than i am so josh what's our topic for today so uh today what we'd like to discuss is kind of the uh the supernatural worldview talking about angels demons the elohim the spiritual beings in the heavenly places the powers that be and we'd love to just pick your brain the bible project i did a couple of videos and a full playlist that you have on your channel discussing these elohim discussing these spiritual beings and podcasts you guys have released on spotify and itunes and everything else i'd love to unpack some of that uh today could you maybe introduce us into this idea for those of us who are westerners trying to grapple with the understanding of a spiritual non-material world out there yes well uh you're right so we did a um we did a long video series it was actually our longest uh little ministers up to that point we did seven videos exploring this whole theme in the storyline of the bible and really i chose to move towards it because personally it made me so uncomfortable and it was so uh as i really dug deeper into this theme and the difference between the view of reality that the biblical authors have versus the view that i was raised with as a modern west coaster in america i just i i realized like i have to take this to the bottom uh or else the bible is going to remain just a bizarre strange other world to me and so uh all of a sudden like three or four years later i emerged with some clarity some intellectual clarity about what all these things are going on in the bible uh but still personally for me you know it's uh it feels like adopting a a different view of the world than the one that feels natural to me so i'm happy to talk about it but don't mistake me for somebody who actually like still like lives in the world as if i really believe all this is true i i actually still have to choose it as a a world view that feels a bit foreign to me still but that's okay we're all on a journey aren't we yeah that's great really so where do we even begin this conversation i mean you've got i mean the the elohim the sons of gods you've got powers and principalities uh in the new testament you've got book of daniel a different you know prince of persia prince of greece there's so many places to dive in should we just start at the beginning in genesis what do you think's the best starting point absolutely for me um understanding genesis 1 and the concept of the cosmos that it's um trying to trying to invite us into is crucial yeah actually none of the biblical story will make sense if you don't understand the shape of the cosmos that's laid out in genesis 1. so let's do start there okay um so oh man genesis do you actually do you have an illustration that you could like accompany i'm just joking i i'm used to hearing your your voice with the illustration in the background so yeah i need we need cartoons we need cartoons we are piloting a new type of video series that's gonna come out later this fall 2020 it's going to be called visual commentaries um and they're going to be yeah just that visual commentaries and so they're going to be unpacking the literary design and main themes but of individual chapters or literary units throughout the box so cool and the first pilot video is genesis one uh and i'm so excited about it um because it's cool so first off genesis 1 is actually not genesis 1. it's genesis 1 verse 1 to 2 verse 3. and just on page one our medieval scholars botched the the literary units so it's kind of unfortunate so the literary unit goes from okay got it so um but it's not that big of a deal because you can still see that the author has repeated all of the words of the opening lines of genesis 1 but and repeated them in the closing lines of genesis 2 verses 1 through 3. if you do a comparison it's like a bookend around the um the six days that are in the middle of the two bookends so what's important for understanding the spiritual realm um is you know genesis 1 opens with darkness and uh wilderness wild and waste uh and then these waters these dark waters um and we won't get into all of the debates that unfold from there um but what happens everybody agrees on is god speaks over a series of seven days he speaks ten times over the course of seven days and the six the first six days their literary design is really important the first thing that god does is do three acts of separating that take the darkness and the waters and to begin to split them into ordered realms so he splits light from dark on the waters from the waters and then the land from the waters as the dry land emerges that's days one two and three and um so what happens days one through three is about god creating these realms so you have the realm of time or the order of time which we don't think of as a place but it's different for the biblical authors um day two is about um those waters those dark waters get split in half and this is a very common ancient near eastern creation motif that the biblical author is is developing and actually kind of polemicizing doing a little trash talk against but that's a whole other conversation oh yeah yeah but but the splitting of the waters is something that god does uh without any effort just with his word whereas marduk you know the patron god of babylon i mean he almost died trying to split the waters and he was barely able to do it with all of his strength anyhow so but what that gives you is um the waters below and the waters above uh which are called the waters are better called sky and then you get on day three you get the land which days one through three so what happens on days four five and six um is that you now have these three realms you have this the waters above you have the sky then you have the land and then the waters below it's a three-tiered cosmos and what happens on days four five and six is the the order returns and god begins to fill each of those unique realms with inhabitants so he uh places inhabitants in the skies they're called lamps in hebrews the word ma'or it's the same word used for the lamp in the tabernacle places the lamps up in the sky um and it never uses the word sun or moon uh it just uses the words big lamp and small lamp uh and then also the stars the stars like just get a passing mention take a big lamp a little lamp uh the big lamp rules over the day and the little lamp rules over the night okay that's important um so they're they're up there and and the thing that god was doing separating day and night which god did on day one he gives that responsibility now over to these lamps he says they are the ones who are now going to separate day and night day five uh god puts sky flyers who fly against the waters above and then the water swarmers who swim in the waters beneath and then day six you get the land so you can just see you're just systematically working through the three tiers of the cosmos and um on land there's two creeps two sets of creatures there's the land creatures and beasts and crawlers and so on and then the last kind of pinnacle creature is humans who are god's image and god tells them to rule as his image on the land so notice that symmetry between the inhabitants in the skies above who rule over day and night and then there's the land dwellers who rule over the land do you see that so that that's an important pairing or symmetry there's the rulers above and there's the rulers below and they're each given their own um realms of responsibility the rulers above do stuff that rulers above do they they they guard the um the order of time their markers um the rulers below don't belong up in the sky they belong on the land because there they image and reflect god who is above the heavens of the heavens the solomon says in 1st kings 8. and so you have the symmetry right there in genesis 1 between these these rulers above and rulers below and then what you get after those six days is a little summary statement that says and thus we're finished the skies and the land and all of their in the word is hosts and you maybe know that phrase from the lord of hosts or in older translations it's um the lord's s dispelling the hebrew word with english letters but the word hosts is um and so it's really important it's right there in genesis two verse one the hosts above of heaven and the hosts of the land below now i'm pretty sure host of heaven might trigger some uh associations in in our minds um they're the ones singing you know on all our christmas cards the host of heaven they're the ones singing when jesus is born so the host of the skies is the standard biblical term that's going to be used for these figured call figures called elohim or the sons of elohim spiritual beings and so the worldview is actually right there in genesis 1. there is a heavenly realm that's above and transcendent and it has different kinds of inhabitants than here on the land below and heaven and earth are mirrors of each other in genesis 1. the rulers below mirror the rulers above and who rules over all of them it's you know the creator of all things and so um the biblical authors don't spend a lot of time here but that realm above and its inhabitants just hum in the background as you go on into the rest of the biblical story and but every once in a while these characters from that parallel realm so to speak pop onto the main stage um and so we could talk about those but this was so helpful for me to see this is the cosmos that the biblical authors are inviting us into and just one more comment i'm not very concise and you get me excited about things and i talk for a long time right hey keep it coming but uh genesis 1 is using vertical spatial language to talk about these two parallel realms right heaven the heavens above and that's going to continue right out throughout the biblical story however the biblical authors are going to go on to some nuance and show that heaven and earth even though there's a spatial words like up and down the biblical authors have a way more sophisticated view of these two parallel realms because heaven and earth can overlap in the same exact space like in jacob's dream where he wakes up he has this vision of dream and he sees heaven and earth are connected by the stairway ramp and he sees the house of heaven going up and down traffic between heaven and earth so the temples high places mountains eden these are all places where heaven and earth are the same thing the same place and so earthly characters can encounter heaven and its inhabitants right here on earth um and so that you know gets us into a whole kind of other set of questions it's really cool but it continues into the new testament paul the apostle talks about the powers and principalities and rulers that are in the heavenly realms but then he'll also use those same titles to talk about people and institutions that he sees around him on earth and so it's a pretty sophisticated view of two parallel realities and one of them is seen and visible and the other one is hazy and not always visible to us but there are moments where we can encounter that heavenly reality right right here okay so like the the bible readers today right like if they were to pick up a book in genesis and uh they had no context for ancient near eastern culture they had no context of christianity they had no uh biblical literacy and they were to read the book of genesis pick up they'd see sun and moon right they'd go okay probably they would see the big lamp and the little lamp right right so so yeah so so they they wouldn't i wouldn't imagine because i don't know of a translation that has big lamp and little lamp right they would see they would see sun and moon they would see you know uh the creatures coming forth from the earth these luminaries they would see uh man ruling the day but then if they continue reading the story like you said it talks about the hosts and all all in them uh they would they would have to then read okay i i've learned about what hosts are they'd read and then they'd go back on the cycle they'd read again and then they would read with an entire different context to say oh i because i've read i can actually read some of these things back into genesis um yeah is that is that a helpful way of kind of communicating because people reading this in an english bible are going to see that's a sun that's a moon let's move on but you're actually saying that there there are key phrases uh when you're talking about the hosts when you're talking about these luminaries we see actually in other places in scriptures that these stars that fall from heaven the heavens are shaken these different kinds of texts that are um in many cases uh very uh eschatological in many situations talking about uh the end times that they they refer to stars in the heavens as being these spiritual things and spiritual beings so we're able to kind of peer in on that worldview and then go back and re-read after we've learned i guess some of the world view of the bible is that is that a helpful way to help coach those who are tuning in that just see sun and moon yeah yeah yeah there's maybe two two things there one is the nature how biblical literature works the early chapters of genesis introduce everything you're going to encounter in the rest of the bible but usually in seed form and what will happen in the rest of the biblical story will be the sprouting and blossoming of some core word or idea that was planted there so to speak in usually it's mostly genesis chapters 1 through 11. so i i forgot to say this in genesis 1 14 these lights up above are called signs that's the first thing that god calls them he puts them up there to be signs and markers of the day seasons and years but the first word uses is signs it's the hebrew word oat and it's the hebrew word for a symbol for something that stands for another thing um so um when how when moses famously you know is doing the signs and wonders before pharaoh like throwing his staff down and becomes a serpent that kind of thing these are called signs so they're symbols of god's power and so that's what that's what these lights are called in in genesis 1 verse 14. so what on earth does that mean um i don't know if it's ever occurred to you like why does it say that there are signs and i think it you have to read on well what do they correspond to the rulers above and the rulers below we're told that the creatures below who rule are also signs and symbols they're called the image and so um the lights above in the in the biblical author's imagination they don't think of them the same way that we do as huge balls of fiery plasma gas right like pumbaa said from the lion king great balls of gas in the sky yeah totally yes pumbaa got brought into this discussion i'm sorry pumbaa wasn't created till the sixth day bro i know i'm my bad we're still we're still talking about luminaries continue so i so this is a big important topic in genesis one is that many of the debates modern debates around genesis 1 are trying to translate the view of the cosmos and material reality that the biblical authors have in the language of genesis 1 but make it fit our modern view of physics yeah and the universe and so on and um so what we need to do is check check our concepts of the universe at the door and then let the biblical authors help us see the world from their point of view which is that ancient point of view and we should respect it as such so we can understand what they're saying and so the yes on page one of genesis we're being told that the lights are symbols of the divine light and power that's behind the whole universe but just like humans are symbols of that divine power and beauty here on the land below and so you know did they actually think that they're like beings and creatures um and it's actually a more difficult question to answer and i still don't have a concise way to talk about it israel's neighbors in canaan and babylon would often depict their deities as stars but then they would also have other symbols uh and language to talk about them too and so uh whatever whatever else you want to say is the the heavenly hosts are called signs and symbols on genesis 1 verse 14 and i think that gives us that little seed planted there of the rulers above there and the way we conceive of these lights is that they are symbols they're pointers to um some one who is greater and above and beyond them and uh so yeah okay so i want to ask so when god creates these stars and these luminaries up in the sky are is he at the same time creating these angelic beings or is he merely creating the physical cosmos but he's saying hey this physical cosmos speaks of something else also yeah so that's the trick that second step that you're making is the step i want to make too but it's the step where i'm translating the biblical imagery into my view of the universe does that make sense in other words and what i want to do is keep myself from doing that and so i don't think for the biblical authors there's any difference between those lights up there and the things that they symbolize which is sentient intelligent creatures that uh often appear and interact in the world and called by different terms the hosts of heaven angels spiritual beings and so on i don't think they see a separation whereas we do we're like well but we know it's just a ball of gas okay um and as a follow-up question you you talked about the lamp and uh what's the significance of the the big lamp the little lamb that language for you yeah well it has to do with what the tabernacle represents um so the tabernacle was a little miniature cosmos um it was a little and so you have and then it gets translated out into the temple you have the outer courtyard where that huge thing of waters uh was and it was called the sea that's what it's called and then you go inside into the next layer and you go through a door you go inside into this place called the holy place and what you see are all of these land creatures and plants and then you go inside the holy of holies and what you see are two big heavenly creatures the the cherubim uh winged heavenly creatures and so it itself is a mirror and so it's as if you're passing by you're passing through the heavens up into god's realm when you pass by the menorah the lamp in that second tier of holy space so the tabernacle is all designed as a symbolic cosmos where humans can go from heaven and ascend up into the heavens the holy of holies is heaven um on earth which is why there's those heavenly creatures inside of it um the form god's throne as he says in the book of isaiah so uh i guess i have two questions and i kind of preface the first one is you talked about heavenly creatures so what what categories of heavenly creatures are there and then that follow-up question would be you talked about them being symbols we're being symbols we are marked with an imago day so my first question and i can repeat the the follow-up question my first question is what kind of spiritual beings are there and are they all image bearers are some of them image bearers and how does that work out yeah uh so first when you're asking tim i have no clue uh that's that's a good secret tell you what i've been able to conclude as i've really tried to work through the whole bible and how all this works out so as you go throughout the biblical story the vocabulary to refer to these parallel beings in the parallel reality it diversifies you get a diversity you get a phrase in hebrew called the binay elohim where the sons of elohim which is often translated the sons of god they appear in genesis 6 for the first time um and they appear right on right and throughout the biblical story it's a hebrew turn of phrase to uh when you use the phrase um sons of such and such it's a way of saying members of that group like elijah and elijah have this crew who's always like following them around in their stories and they're called the sons of the prophets yeah um and it doesn't mean that elijah and elijah like had a lot of wives and had all these sons it was it was their fruit it was their prophetic crew they're members of the group called prophets and so uh the sons of god are members of the category of being called elohim which in hebrew is a category title uh it's not a name elohim which gets translated as capital g god which is kind of confusing because it's not actually a title in hebrew it's a category title like human and it means a non-visible an inhabitant of that heavenly realm and so the sons of elohim they're called the hosts of the skies and then what happens is that a metaphor starts developing that is called in psalm 89 and psalm 82 a divine council and so if it's a way of conceiving of god's presence in the heavens of the heavens above the heavens and god is depicted by the biblical authors as a king sitting with this heavenly court in a throne room um and so this appears throughout the biblical story and sometimes biblical prophets you know they wake up in dreams and they are there they're in the throne room um like isaiah or uh mikaya bin imla in in 1st kings chapter 22 and uh they see the hosts of heaven and so you get this idea that there's like just like in a royal king or king queens court there's all these courtiers and some are messengers and summer counselors and some are this and that and there's narratives about god actually consulting with this crew and talking with them and making group decisions the book of job begins with you know this whole crew they're called the sons of god um so that's where you get the development of the concept of tears um or different levels of species of these creatures and uh yeah again we're just given tiny tidbits in the biblical story you mentioned the some that appear in the book of daniel they're called princes and paul has a development vocabulary um as well as other jews his time period of rulers and authorities and powers principalities and so on um but so there's a lot we don't know what we do know is all of that language of different types of spiritual beings comes from that core metaphor of the royal court of the creator god and however powerful these beings are none of them are ever rivals true rivals of the creator god uh they're always subservient um to him even ones that you know turn malevolent uh like the satan yeah let's let's talk about the satan for a moment let's talk about okay the serpent in genesis 3. so what is am i good on my microphone here you are it's starting to obey so genesis 3 take us there how does this relate to the divine counsel yeah well so again uh um as you go throughout the hebrew bible this image of the divine council uh and and maybe if you're viewing you're like this guy's crazy i just i urge you to go uh consider psalm 89 beginning of psalm 89 or psalm 82 where the poet the whole point of what the poet is saying is um who among all of these beings in the heavenly court are like the one creator god yahweh the biblical authors believe in a populated spiritual realm um and so when you go back to the garden of eden narrative you notice a couple things what you notice is that this is a heaven and earth spot it's where god's presence in humans are in the same place you'll notice some details that later biblical authors will pick up on to help you see that eden is on a high mountain um and even there's a detail in the story that's pretty obvious because it's you're told that one river goes out of eden and then as after it leaves eden then it separates and waters the four corners of the earth um and last time i checked water always goes downhill you know right the very conception and ezekiel and isaiah both call eden on a mountain so it's a high mountain spot mountains in the bible are heaven and earth spots but there's heavenly creatures there do you remember when god posts the cherubim which are the same creatures guarding the divine presence in the tabernacle he posts two like live ones not metal ones like real ones at the boundary uh of eden and then like the normal world and so you know there's cherry bean cruising around the garden right there's earth beings and there's heavenly beings so here's something that's interesting when the cherubim are depicted throughout the biblical story there are these um uh high um oh man we made a made a whole video about the cherokee i can't remember the word right now they have they're multi-form um they're like mult they have multiple animals mashed into one yeah so they have wings and lines hybrid hybrid yes yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry i was going to go with mutant but it's probably like blasphemous so what the cherubim are is they are they're creatures in whom every earthly creature is symbolized that's what they're multiplying they represent land creatures error creatures sometimes sea creatures they represent all of the creatures of the land of of the world and what they do is they're god's courtiers or they're depicted in the book of isaiah as singing and here's what's fascinating the book of isaiah when he depicts in a vision that he has about the divine throne and surrounding it or these creatures he doesn't call them cherubim he calls them snakes um now something odd has happened in the history of our english translations um because it's the normal word snake seraph that's used there but our english translations refuse to translate the word snake there um yeah they just spell the hebrew word with english letters seraphim um but but it's the normal hebrew word for snake as um so i think to be honest i think english translators are just too freaked out to like take people there there can't be snakes in heaven snakes are mean and they have and they have wings yeah they're flying snakes which is like as normal as can be of an icon in the interview i was about to say isn't that the most universal symbol in every form of pagan worship across the world is like there's flying serpent snakes like these dragons that are in standard egyptian religious art um it was a standard motif um in babylonian art and an ancient israelite art we have ancient israelite like archaeological artifacts that have snakes with wings on them yeah and you've got it's in asia it's in uh south america i mean we've got dragons everywhere yeah totally so okay so um so you have this heavenly serpent being in isaiah chapter six english translators call it a seraphim and uh and so you're making a connection between that and genesis 3 it sounds like um i won't die on this hill um but it seems to me somebody reading through the hebrew bible regularly which i think psalm 1 is assuming the ideal reader of the hebrew bible does that you will go as you go through the hebrew bible when you come back to that snake you have a category for the type of creature that it is it seems to have knowledge about god's heavenly decisions and purposes and it's on a mission to deceive the humans um and that's one thing two there's a strong motif throughout the whole book of genesis of disguised deceivers uh people donning disguises in order to deceive people to usurp their place and usually it's a younger person trying to overturn an older usually an older sibling so think of what jacob does his brother tamar uh tricks judah with the disguise um joseph tricks his older brothers by donning the disguise and so on so these are design patterns the biblical authors weave in and you go back to that snake and you're like wait a minute so uh so that's what i think we're being invited to see in genesis 3 is a rebel heavenly being a heavenly being that wasn't satisfied with its role as a delegated ruler and what it tried to do is usurp the power and authority of the humans and that's why the snake is exiled he's made to eat the dust uh and which is a symbol of shame and and death uh and he's also um uh as it were exiled uh from eden he goes out there with them because then all of a sudden you have these this malevolent spiritual being who's like chasing the humans around and getting them to do terrible things to each other oh and he's right there in genesis chapter four um when god says to cain when cain's really angry well first of all okay this is genesis 4 7. this is so awesome you guys so genesis 4 7 this is when cain um realizes that god is favoring his younger brother's offering and so what god says to cain as cain's face falls and um he gets angry and so god comes up and he says kane why are you angry and why is your face um fallen and what god says literally in hebrew is if you do good won't there be exaltation but if you do not do good sin is crouching at the door its desire is for you um a lot of people throughout history think the door is somehow like a metaphor for his heart or mind like there's sin is crouching you know at the door um but uh it's a it's a that's not how you use talk about hearts in biblical hebrew there's no such thing as the door of the heart um whereas there's a perfectly good explanation for the door or the entrance um in the narrative it's the entrance back to eden that they just got kicked out of and so they're they're offering sacrifices at the door of eden which is the natural thing you would do right if you want to get back in you just like the altar right at the entrance of the tabernacle same exact parallel and so what what we're being told is that there is a malevolent being whose desire is to consume and devour king it's at the door it's as if the snake's loose and he wants you to um but but what's important is that the creature is not called the snake it's called sin sin has become an animal as it were um and so welcome to paul's theology of sin in the letter to the romans right sin and death seizing it's like he personifies it yeah or you could say that paul is using the personification of the snake as sin from genesis 4. and so just you know i encourage you listeners go check out romans 7. what paul is doing there is retelling the story of the human condition as it's explored in genesis 3 and 4 because sin is a being that can deceive and consume and kill and enslave you just like the sin does in genesis 4. and so by the time you leave genesis 4 it's just stories about selfish stupid humans doing terrible things to each other and those first two stories the eden story and genesis 4 set the groundwork for all of it and so there'll be little clues where some kind of being might pop up its head in a story but for the most part um these malevolent spiritual beings are just kind of cruising in the background uh of all of all of the narratives uh until you get to some later biblical books and then uh it's as if jesus flushes him out of the bushes and now when you get to the gospels in the story of jesus it's just the snake and his minions are just everywhere so you know he said a couple times that uh the seed form is found in genesis we can find the seeds in genesis 1 through 11. and we've talked about these spiritual beings um there's this chapter six that has this story about these nephilim in the sons of god that's present there as well uh so there's some seed form stuff going and i don't mean to use the word seed in a sort of uh joking way yeah one was thinking that until you said it and there it is uh so so i'd be curious what what's your understanding i know there's a popular um kind of uh pushback against a super natural worldview on this text to say that the the seed of the woman is like the the righteous seed of seth and that his line his descendant uh whereas uh you know the descendants of cain would be uh not not a not a righteous seed so i'm curious uh what's your take on that passage and maybe explain those those nephilim beings to us yeah into sons of god went into the daughters of men and nephilim came about somehow so yeah yeah absolutely yeah no it's very bizarre and again uh just to make clear the fact that i have come to feel like i have a i'm compelled of a certain explanation doesn't mean any of this is easy for me to believe oh sure we love your humility but but i'm what i'm trying to be is open-minded that the way that i happen to have been raised to see the universe in my culture there is no reason well i should just take for granted that that's that's what's really going on in the universe you know like what a presumptuous thing to think uh nothing in your life experience has taught you that it's normal for angelic beings to come down and reproduce with humans like that's that's not part of your normal experience in sunday school uh however it was a very uh prominent story in the ancient world so we'll get we'll get to that in a minute but let's stick with genesis so an important way that biblical literature works is the biblical authors plant these seed ideas and themes in the first few pages of genesis and then what they start to do is play out the biblical story in what we call design patterns we made a video about it the bible project or cycles so that later biblical stories are told uh to in such a way as to resemble earlier stories but often inverting them in creative ways and so the sons of god in genesis 6 is a great example in genesis 3 you have a woman talking to a spiritual being and what we're told is she sees what is good in her eyes and she takes what she wants for herself under the direction of a spiritual being and what happens then is that humans along with the spiritual beings are exiled from the heaven on earth place down into the realm of of death and mortality so when you get to genesis 6 what you have is the exact inversion of genesis 3. you have the sons of elohim the sons of god which you can do a quick word search on that phrase appears about eight or nine different times in the hebrew bible and it has one meaning and referent every single time it occurs the house of heaven the spiritual beings above it never once refers to humans the sons of elohim now it does in the new testament but that's an additional layer in development of what's going on in the hebrew bible um so psalm 89 psalm 82 the book of job and a couple others so that's the first step second is so what do i make of this um story well pay attention to the wording what we're told is that the sons of elohim sons of god they see women that they are good our translations often have that they are beautiful but it's the hebrew word good and the structure of that sentence is copied and pasted from genesis 3 verse 6. the sons of elohim see that the women are good and they take them for themselves wow so genesis 3 is depicting a human rebellion and and what is the human rebellion the snake says that you can be like elohim if you eat from the fruit and so here you have elohim sons of elohim taking human women it's exactly the inverse of genesis 3. and so if genesis 3 is about earth creatures trying to become like the heavenly creatures by their own wisdom genesis 6 is about the heavenly beings trying going out of their proper realm of authority and trying to seize and take power um and take take women uh on the earthly realm does that make sense they're exactly the inverse of each other um and so what results is uh us um well what we're told in the parallelism there's too much detail here but the way um genesis six verses one through four is designed as a chiasm this cool little literary symmetry and that at the outer ends of it are the sons of god taking the women and then at the bottom end of it is these creatures so to be called the nephilim uh which means giants um it's also spelled with the same hebrew letters as the as the word fallen ones ones who have fallen uh and that's actually where we get the word fall from to describe genesis 3. it's not from genesis 3. it's from genesis 6. nothing and not interesting so um what uh we're told is that around the same time that that thing happened with the sons of elohim and these human women you know who just happened to be on the scene at that same time was these huge warriors called the nephilim they're men of the name they're they're men who gain um their reputation uh through battle um and um the first of these guys that you're going to meet is in genesis chapter 10 it's a guy named nimrod who is the founder of the city of babylon and he's a man of the name everybody loves to say his name like nimrod a great hunter before the lord people love his name just like they loved the name of the nephilim in genesis 6. and so what we're told in between there is when god sees he now has a rebellion of earthly creatures trying to be like elohim and now he has a heavenly rebellion trying to merge with earthly creatures and so what god decides is he says my spirit is not going to either contend or dwell there's a translation debate there but what he says is 120 years and this thing's over and what many people think is what god is doing is putting a life span limit on humans because of what the sons of elohim did which is kind of odd it's also odd because you're going to meet tons of people who live longer than 120 years in the rest of the story but if you pay attention to the chronology of the ages of those all those patriarchs given in chapter five what you'll find lo and behold and this is the earliest jewish interpretation is that the flood begins 120 years after uh the narrative in genesis 6 verses 1 through 4. um so i know i'm getting nerdy and kind of detailed here but the point is that this story seems so odd to us but it's the biblical author's way of describing how um the kingdoms of our world and and for the biblical authors this meant assyria babylon persia greece um they are the product and the result of human and spiritual rebellions that result in catastrophic violence and bloodshed in our world and these are these were ancient empires where where the king and and the warriors valor on the battlefield like you know kraken heads and slitting throats this is how you become a man of the name like those nephilim in genesis six verses yeah these are the heroes of the ancient world read the read homer's odyssey and it's the whole story about them and so um what the biblical authors are telling us with this story is that um when when we look out at a violent government you know here in our modern world view we just think like oh stupid humans bad policy and what the biblical author is what paul the apostle wants us to see um and this isn't just paul's idea uh this goes all the way back to genesis 6 is to say nah man there's two realms overlapping here and there are dark powers at work that are trying to destroy god's good world and they've actually duped humans into thinking that the way we're gonna like rule the world and get ahead is by slaughtering each other right right this is that's really it's not very difficult i mean when you're talking about uh modern world view versus ancient near eastern world view it's not very difficult for a 21st century american to go yeah i could see darkness in a political sphere right now it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on you're like yes darkness is everywhere so um you can get over the giant thing this was their way it was a it was their framework for talking about dark spiritual powers that are behind the the violent empires of our world so you would say the nephilim is just a landmarker a historical landmarker to say that when the sons of god took these women the nephilim these giants was a historical landmarker to say this is around that time when that happened uh correct yep and what's interesting is the giants will continue to appear sporadically throughout the story they're going to be in the land of canaan um when the israelites go there and you're gonna have caleb and joshua who are like yeah we can take them out it's not a big deal um and then the one who kills the last giant the giant slayer uh is damon sir boy david yeah yep and and his 30 his 33 men who kill a few after him he's about to say yeah he's uh in the chronicles they were talking about slaying giants weren't they um totally yep that's exactly right so and what he is is he is that genesis in genesis 3 15 when god exiles the humans what he promises that a seed will come from the woman who will crush the head of the snake and so what you're looking for is a human who won't give in to the deception of the snake but rather who will overcome the snake and david is the primary image of that messianic figure that's why david and goliath in fact actually this is so cool um goliath's armor is um really the focus of the david and goliath story and what you're told about every piece of armor is how much bronze it's made out of and the word bronze just appears all over that story the word bronze is spelled with the same hebrew letters as the word snake i kid you not and so in hebrew when you're looking at goliath what you see in hebrew is just he's got snake all over him and then david takes him out uh and then as it turns out david himself gets seduced by sin right with bathsheba and he from his roof he sees a woman who is good and he takes her yeah so david becomes like the rebel sons of god in the story of bathsheba okay and so and so there you go this all this whole point is this leading us to jesus as as he is the human in whom divine and human image of god image of man heaven and earth meet together in one person and so the stories about him being tested in the wilderness is about he is the he is the anti-cain uh and he's the anti-nephilim and he defeats the the tester in the wilderness and then he's going to go on to do everything he's going to do but the point is that jesus sees himself stepping into this drama between this battle of two realms and that explains all of his exorcisms and why that was such a big deal to him but he's just just striking me as kind of cool but also weird about jesus is that you know he was so exorcism was such a big deal for him but if you fit him into this story with this view of the cosmos from genesis 1 it makes perfect sense why jesus is going around doing doing what he's doing and it makes perfect sense of why the apostle paul wants to invite us as followers of jesus to see that these two realms are very much still in operation as we look out at our world today and and that we are short-sighted if we only appeal to stupid humans for all of the stupid stuff going around us paul very much wants us to see that that snake is still on the loose he's still seducing us uh and uh that we have the snake crusher jesus to look to that's the one who who uh has delivered and will deliver us again amen amen now a question i have is i'm curious about where demons come from and the reason i want to ask is because when i think about so in jude it's around verse eight or nine i think it's verse eight yes and it talks about how these uh these beings were put in chains of gloomy darkness might be the word uh and from the context it's not hard to see that he's drawing from genesis 6 and he seems to be talking about these sons of god who were somehow punished in that time by being put in these sort of gloomy chains of darkness whatever that is if i remember right i think peter calls it tartarus yes and so you have these beings that are chained so if they're chained in some sort of strange underworld prison where are all the demons coming from yeah totally so what one thing that the apostles did not do is sit down and have a conference where they like all agreed to use the same language and imagery all the time this is a tartarus conference [Laughter] charter is 20 20. that's the great let's do one tardis is the greek word used and it's also reflected in second peter as well and tartarus is the greek standard greek word used in um homer's odyssey for the realm of the dead in the gods of the underworld and so the biblical authors are participating always in a cultural conversation within their own ancient context as they work out these ideas another key part of what both second peter and jude are doing is they are informed by second temple jewish conversations happening about these things and specifically we know where one of the sources of these ideas is it's an attacks that jude quotes from called scholars called first enoch um and so what what first enoch and other jewish literature the period tells us is the way that they understood the flood narrative was that the flood was where god um thoroughly punished and destroyed the nephilim and chained their um their souls or spirits in in the underworld um but that um the satan the snake figure is on the loose and he has certain minions from that crew who go about doing their work this is why when jesus meets that guy in the graveyard and he you know says what is your name and then what do they answer back to him we're allegiant we're nephilim they're warriors they're nephilim they're the spirits um i think this which sounds crazy but that's what they mean this is all connected for them and so um these spirits are chained or imprisoned in the underworld but apparently they can also still be going about doing damage don't ask me to explain how that works but that seems to be what's going on in these texts um and and the point of the gospels about jesus is that he is the one um who has authority over heaven and earth and over these over these creatures which is why when he meets all of these spirits and demons what they beg him not to do is don't destroy us yet because they know that jesus has control over their existence uh they're just asking him not you know to take control yet um or not to destroy them uh yet so that's that's my best understanding of what's going on um it doesn't cohere on a literal level but in terms of the larger narrative of these creatures in their presence throughout the bible it does make sense okay so you uh so we've talked about their origins and kind of the development that of that over time and then we've talked about what jesus came to do and deal with the serpent maybe now we could talk about pentecost and then the development of this into the church age what does pentecost do for the church in this battle between good and evil spirits yep well so i mean we just we kind of glossed over the jesus part but that's actually really important um when jesus starts intentionally agitating the religious leaders of israel he goes to jerusalem for passover week on purpose and he starts poking the bear as it were uh he pulls his stun in the temple which is a very i mean all historians of first century jesus scholarship agreed that it was the thing he did in the temple that put the last big target on his back it's the equivalent of storming like the white house here in america right storming the white house lawn and saying that you're the president um through your actions you don't have to say it with your words and so when jesus got arrested in the gospel of luke luke 22 53 when he comes to get arrested by the soldiers what he says he says this night belongs to you this is your hour and the hour of the powers of darkness in other words jesus sees himself confronting in the form of these israelites joined by roman power structures he sees himself facing off not just against stupid humans but against stupid humans who have bought into a lie about what is justice and what is good and they are willing to murder an innocent man in the name of justice and goodness and peace and that's the subtext going on and jesus says he's confronting the powers right then uh and he's going to rob them the only tool that they have which is violence and death and so that's a big part of what's going on in the death of jesus it's it's his what paul will say his triumph over the principalities and rulers and powers and so what you see happened then when jesus like in matthew in the resurrection narrative he says all authority in heaven and earth is mine and so go out and announced everybody that i am in charge of heaven and earth now he's the image of god he's the human who rules over heaven and earth and so what he says in matthew is i will be with you to the end of the age luke gives us an extended narrative of what that with us means in the form of pentecost now there's a bunch of things going on with pentecost in terms of layers of significance but but the coming of the wind and the fire over each individual person this is a temple in tabernacle imagery of when the divine fire at mount sinai shifts to come over and dwell in the holy of holies over the over the temple and so what luke is trying to say with the coming of the spirit is that the same spirit that empowered jesus through non-violent resistance and loving your enemies style kingdom of god to confront the powers now jesus's followers will be or at least ought to be the same heaven and earth place that he was but as little copies of him so to speak and so then they go on and they carry out the same mission in the world that he did which is to announce that he's the boss and he's the best boss you could ever dream for because he loves you more than you could possibly imagine and he died for you uh amen and that we don't have uh to fear these these principalities and power that meet us in the form of what paul um you know when paul talks about the principalities and powers in one place in first corinthians 2 he says that they are the ones who crucified jesus and you're like wait i thought caiaphas you leave with pilate crucified jesus and paul would say yes that's exactly right paul wants us to view with suspicion not unnecessary suspicion but he always wants us to be aware the way that human communities religious and political um can begin to assume that their mission and method and goals and agenda is god's agenda uh and what human communities tend to do is we exalt to the place of god our particular cultural values and goods you begin to obey them to deify them to sacrifice our lives or at least the lives of somebody maybe it's somebody or a group of people who who we think are less significant than us and there and there you go it's human history in a nutshell and no we were just talking about that today uh we had a couple of pastor friends come to us and talk to us about like um in particular they were asking about uh specific charismatic expressions that they felt like was just kind of idolatry that we just we started making such a big deal of our own culture the charismatic culture that we're actually just kind of um really making making uh you know like when you preach the bible you're gonna preach the bible in proportions you know like you don't wanna like uh uh preach your favorite section because then it becomes in-proportionate or and they're saying that that feels like what we're doing with our culture our culture has been has become christianity um when it's it's not that it's not it's not the the you know the presbyterian culture the anglican culture the charismatic culture it the christian faith transcends culture in many ways yeah and that expression yeah yeah i mean it's uh the principalities and powers especially in the new testament are very powerful set of glasses that the new testament is giving god's people to begin to see even their own church communities with a healthy dose of realism um yeah because when our institutions and cultures are submitted to the sermon on the mount the authority of jesus man amazing things can happen in the world amen something happens we all know it because we see it all around us we see it even in inside of our own lives or families or subcultures something happens and all of a sudden we um we are are not acknowledging king jesus even though we might be a religious group that has jesus name like in the title and uh and so all of a sudden you have a very powerful uh set of lenses to begin to look uh at all of my life through that's pretty darn compelling um that has a way of helping me see and interact with my lived environment and culture in ways that my again my modern western west coast kind of secular materialist world view just doesn't give me any tools for uh for dealing with this stuff um why why is it that humans can so quickly as a group come to see that it's good to hurt other humans in the name of this new definition of good how does that happen and the biblical authors say let me tell you how it happens humans aren't the only show in town and um if we don't account for some other parallel kind of reality that is interacting with ours i think we have an impoverished view of the universe and you know actually i don't know that much about quantum physics but i know enough to know that quantum physicists have actually been trying to tell us this kind of thing for a long time is that the four dimensions you know that we inhabit and consense you know with our senses are like it's just the tip of the iceberg that there are multiple overlapping dimensions of reality that we have no way to know except by math that they are real but they are real and uh biblical authors have just been sitting there for three thousand years waiting for us to wake up to this for us to catch up could affirm quantum physics hey so i want to honor your time uh this is uh typically an hour-long pride uh broadcast and we we uh requested that so what we typically around this period of the show is we kind of go around with closing thoughts and you i mean you did such a great job just talking about these things point to christ um but but what i'll do is i'll just kind of ask everyone if you want one kind of thing to walk away with in the show and i know you've already left us with a solid one but but michael i'll start with you and i'll have doctor uh i'm sorry i'll have tim give his closing thoughts and then we'll uh kind of wrap the show up yeah uh i i think that it just shows i mean with the example that you shared about kane and sin crouching out at your door it shows how subtle evil is it's like evil is so subtle you don't notice it at all until it's absolutely overwhelming you and and it's like you see that in our culture and it's just this this reminder and and paul makes this point in ephesians 6 we all typically fall into identifying the wrong battle and uh and because we we're not seeing these subtle behind the scenes realities and so we're we enter full full on into the fray of the cultural battle or the political battle or whatever the battle and and all of those things are super important but they're important while holding these two realities together and uh and paul says your battle is not against flesh and blood and man uh i don't know when i see christians out there we seem to be uh at least in the public sphere kind of hateful sometimes and um and i think we enter into the wrong battle i think there's some more subtle and yet extremely powerful forces at work and and i would love to see the church taking up the armor of god instead of just armor that's great uh uh tim what are your thoughts sir yeah you know uh i live in portland which has been uh in the news you know recently in the year 2020 um somehow it's become a focal point of these conflicting powers power agendas in our culture right for different views of the nature of what america is um what's interesting is that christians have for the most part just filed up on one or the other of those battle lines haven't they um and i think paul would urge us um to say you know both what you said because you're just quoting him michael right ephesians 6 12 our our true enemy is not human but even more so what paul the biblical authors have a very sophisticated way of thinking about the nature of evil and how it works on humans like you said so you have a portrait of adam and eve or kane that's very personal and individual but then you have like a story about the building of babylon in genesis 11 where a whole culture exalts itself and its name and its language to the place of the gods up in the skies and the biblical authors don't play individual evil and corporate evil off of each other they're both necessary ways to think about what's going on around us and i i just find that really helpful because in these culture wars happening in america right now that's often the way is well evil is an individual thing and if you want to deal with evil in our culture people as individuals need to come to know and follow jesus and then you have other people saying no it's structural it's the structures that have to be fixed and the biblical authors want us uh to step back and say that it's a false dichotomy both have to be tackled because both are manifestations of how evil works on us as humans and so that's something i've been thinking a lot about uh just given where i live and uh what's happening in our culture right now and uh so that's a takeaway that i've been pondering a lot when it comes to these topics excellent thank you so much for coming on the show it was an honor to have you today uh on remnant uh we would ask uh if those who are watching this has been encouraging life giving to you in any way go ahead hit the subscribe button maybe share this to a friend or family member also consider donating in the description of this video there's links you can give to paypal or you become a patreon of ours and give monthly there we give special content to our patreon all of our best content is released here on youtube where we interview pastors and teachers if you want to like the subpar stuff like what were our thoughts on some of the interviews or our thoughts on eschatology you can you can give on patreon and get some of those uh shorter clips not as good as because we want we want the good stuff to be free right now help support us get on there and maybe pick our brains with some of the other theological minutia uh and we would love to pass that on to you anyway we'll see you guys next time monday night 8 30 p.m central standard time or tuesdays typically from four or from four to five but today it'll be a little bit different uh anyway that's that yeah blessings guys have a great day for mackie drive stay on for just a little bit longer and then uh and we'll say bye to everybody else peace god bless you guys

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 100,994

Rating: 4.928082 out of 5

Keywords: bible project, spiritual beings, Kinds of Spiritual Beings, spiritual beings in the bible, spiritual being, Tim Mackie, Tim Mackie Bible Project, spiritual beings tim mackie, tim mackie, dr. tim mackie, pastor tim mackie, tim mackie spiritual beings, spiritual warfare, spiritual warfare tim mackie, tim mackie spiritual warefare, tim mackie elohim, elohim tim mackie

Id: Woo8HrOn6QA

Length: 71min 36sec (4296 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020