The Supernatural Realm: Interview with Dr. Michael Heiser - The Becket Cook Show Ep. 41

[Music] hey guys welcome to the show i have a very special guest today dr michael heiser you might i mentioned him before on the show he is the author of several books including the unseen realm which i talked about on the show which is a it's a must read you must read this and if you don't want to read the the big version there's a kind of a distilled version of it called supernatural it's the more popular version of it but today we're going to be talking about his latest book which is called demons and it's going to be a fascinating conversation because christians and even non-believers have so many misconceptions about the demonic realm or about the the evil realm so we're going to clear up a lot of those misconceptions today and let's welcome dr michael heiser yeah thanks for having me when you say we're going to clear up those misconceptions i'm thinking yeah and we'll put a bunch of questions back in there please so well so to begin with let's tell us a little bit about your background and how you even got into this area of study and also if you if you can if you will give us an update on your health situation sure yeah well um yeah i didn't grow up in any kind of uh christian context i became a believer as a as a teenager i i really i mean i could fill up an hour with stories of stupid stuff i did because i had i had no you know real guidance you know i didn't i didn't have a mentor or anything like that you know trying to figure out what to do with my life but you know i was always interested like i like to say in anything old and weird so i can remember in seventh grade in ancient history class the guys up there mr weddle talking about ancient egypt and i remember thinking this is what i want to do i want to be a crusty old professor someday and do this stuff so you know i i i've always been into it and then when i became a christian it's like the bible was the sweet spot you know it's like well there's lots of stuff in here that's weird you know it's old i i i was good at school i liked languages um so eventually i you know i literally went to my pastor when i when i graduated from high school and asked you know hey you know high school's over what should i do now [Music] and he said why don't you try bible college you know just try it for a year you know see if you like it and so i did and i loved it it was like wow this is amazing you know and i remember the the day when i'd like how could i miss this but i remember the day when when i learned that people actually paid other people to teach this stuff and just thought like you gotta be kidding you know somebody gets paid you know to teach bible stuff that's what i want to do and so you know it was just sort of one mishap and one misadventure you know after the other but eventually you know i i went to seminary uh and enjoyed it but i couldn't you know i couldn't afford it i didn't have any i didn't have any money you know like i i worked full time you know going through school took me six years to get through college and then it was the same deal when i got to seminary and you know i got married and sat out a year and we saved money then i went a year and then we sat out another year and i'd save money and we go another year and you know eventually you you just kind of realize that well if if i'm if i'm going to get a phd because i have to get one of those you know to teach somewhere this is going to take forever so i wound up quitting seminary and going to grad school where i could at least get loans you know and i got a small scholarship in loans and i decided to go into old testament and semitics because i thought that's where most of the problems were and i i still think that um so i wound up taking that route and again just enjoyed it loved it got through graduate school which again took me 15 more years all together you know a couple of master's degrees and my phd from wisconsin but again it was you know i still had to work full-time it it took me you know a long time to get through but i just figured this is what i'm supposed to do with my life and the lord will work it out somehow i'll i won't regret it somehow you know i'll on the other end i'll i'll get a job doing something and and we'll try to do useful things you know so it was really that sort of simple and convoluted at the same time people ask me you know for how i wound up where i wound up and it's like you know i really hate to tell you because i don't want you to follow my example in any way because it just it's so atypical but yeah you know i i got through grad school i worked at logos for 14 years which was a great job for academics that didn't involve grading papers um met scholars all over the world you know helped them you know with projects they were doing for us and it was just great it was a great environment i'm i'm in jacksonville florida now where i essentially had my own school and and i teach i go through unseen realm in a year so 30 weeks and then the second year is kind of whatever i want you know whatever i'm interested in and we're not pursuing accreditation or anything like that it's more or less for anybody who wants to learn something we have we have a little over 1200 students most of them are online they're still 20 or 30 that are ending their two-year certificate live but since i i was diagnosed with cancer you know i have pancreatic cancer so we have a guy justin bass who i've had on the podcast filling in for me for this last term and you know once that's over everything's going to be online for for all of our students but yeah i started the podcast on the way this is how most of my life operates okay somebody said to me at work one day you should have a podcast and i said what's a podcast i had no idea what it was you know so i listened to one or two like why would i want to do that you know like who's going to want to listen to me talk every day you know what would i say i have one person but but that's that's like seven years ago you know and you know the podcast has a really uh significant following it's it's sort of the centerpiece for um i now have a non-profit why you ask because someone said to me one day you should have a ministry you should have a non-profit by the way the the podcast is called the naked bible yeah bible bible we'll have a link down below because you guys need to get on that but go ahead so i tend to do a lot of things because someone will suggest it and i think that sounds like a good idea you know let let's try we could always fail and never do it again and we'll you know we'll give it a whirl but people are hungry for content i mean that's the one thing that i you know i i have to confess you know when you're in grad school a long time and you know we were spoiled i was spoiled as a teenager the church i went to was really serious about content i mean now let's move you know the clock ahead you know 40 years and it's like people are just starving for content and i i just you know i took it for granted you know that that was behind my answer well why would i want a podcast like doesn't everybody learn stuff in church and that's like well not really um you know you just sort of get in your own little world you know your own little blinders you know and you don't realize how how what i grew up with is just absent i mean it's not like a a shallow version of what you had it's like it's not even there it's just you mentioned the unknown realm you mentioned the unseen realm that seminary is like a mile wide and an inch deep and that's so true and and it's supposed to be i don't know yeah but that's what's so valuable about what you do because it you really dig deep you're an archaeologist in this stuff but anyway my the the cancer update is we found out a week ago that i have the operable variety of pancreatic cancer so there there's a very uh high possibility that i could be cured praise god yeah yeah it was a big lift you know for obviously for everybody here so the the process is i have a meeting tomorrow with the oncologist which i i presume out of that meeting will emerge a chemo schedule so my my tumor on my my pancreas has to be shrunk before it can be removed so that's going to be i'm guessing it's going to be months you know of chemo so that you know we've all heard the horror stories about chemo you know and probably know somebody who's who's been through it so that you know i i got to do that first you know but at least there's a at least there's a a legitimate thing at the other end of chemo that you know they could get this out of me and then it's gone you know so that that was a big deal you know hearing that so that's the latest but there's there's gonna be all sorts of hurdles you know along the way well we're all praying for you uh so everybody just keep praying for mike kaiser yeah and his family as well um so yeah thank you for that my wife especially drina you know who who listens to your your show all the time so oh she does so good yeah she'll she'll have to listen to me this time because i'm on your show i love that and so um you say you know in the unseen realm you say you know i think in the beginning of the book you say once you read this book you'll never read the bible the same way again and that's absolutely true it it completely blows your mind and it also helps connect these these data points as you say that you would never imagine or connected which we'll get into a little bit but yeah i would say the same your listeners should know that it's not marketing schtick like you know i i mean i i i mean it you will read your bible again for the first time you know you'll never read your bible the same way and i can say it because that's what happened to me so a lot of what i'm leading readers through i you know i didn't run into any of this stuff until i was you know had my psalm 82 watershed moment you know in graduate school and then it's like i'm supposed to be writing a dissertation like like now i have to go back and rethink everything like are you kidding but you know i i took the red pill you know and it i i'm unrepentant doing that but i all the things that i i say about the book i had to experience first so it's yeah i mean it's legit and i i would say the same about demons it really does it changes the way you uh you know you read the bible in terms of the demonic realm or that the realm of darkness or whatever it completely changes how you think about it and you know it's just it's amazing so let's jump into demons um let's see you in the beginning of the book you say christians embrace a number of unbiblical ideas about the powers of darkness what why is that so well there there are there are sort of errors of omission and errors of commission you know in some cases we we get what we think is our doctrine of you know cosmic darkness from tradition you know that the classic example for me has become this notion of well when when satan fell in the garden he took a third of the angels with him you know this is where we get demons now you know it it's just it sounds wonderful you know it is but it's really milton's paradise lost it there isn't a single verse in the bible that says any of that you know if you look up where where do we get the talk of a third of you know third of the angels you know well there's only one passage that that occurs and that's revelation 12 which if you actually read the passage is in you know war in heaven in the spiritual world breaks out at the birth of the messiah which is considerably distant you know from from adam and eve so it's like it has nothing to do with something that happens in eden you know before humanity or you know when humans are initially created and all that sort of stuff so like where do we get this you know and if you dig further now if you're following the revelation series you know we've been through revelation 12. if if that statement about the third of the stars being cast down by the dragon if that refers to daniel you know eight which it does daniel 8 10 and 11 well that's not a fall that's a defeat that's like a spiritual war where the good guys lose so it has nothing to do with with the way it sort of turns out in tradition but we accept this as doctrine i mean you'll you walk up to the average christian you know when you know where where did demons come from this is what you're going to hear yeah i used to believe it i used to think the same thing yeah that's what i was always assuming and i that's what i was taught too you know it there isn't a verse you know in the bible for it at all you know when you really start to to get into you know what one of the other big things in the book it's not just unseen realm it's pretty much everything i do is i will i will say things like my goal is is i want you to read the bible in context so i want you to be serious about it so when you read the old testament i want the the ancient israelite living in your head when you read the new testament i want the first century jew or the second temple period jew living in your head when you read the new and if if you start to contextualize scripture the way people were thinking at the time when the writers themselves lived like their worldview which we think this this ought to be obvious like of course we would read the bible this way well of course you know actually you you don't and and most of the most of what you've been taught what you think you know doesn't pay any attention to that stuff anyway it's all you know revised by church tradition but once you get into that they have ideas there that you have to wonder like where in the world are they getting that yeah you know like the origin of demons demon being a disembodied spirit of one of the nephilim you know remnants like that's crazy talk where are they getting that you know in the bible and then when if you actually read their stuff they'll tell you like they'll look back at passages in the old testament that you know in this case like isaiah 14 where you have the rephyim in hell okay in sheol oh i never noticed that before well lots of people in the in between the testaments did you know and and they wrote about it yeah and by this by the way the second temple period is is the period between it's the inter testament period like 5 16 to 70 a.d 516 bc 70 a.d yeah so it's it's roughly you know 500 years we'll call it 500 years for nice round numbers but there there are serious people in the believing community the jewish community that are writing books about guess what the old testament why would they do that because they consider it the word of god you know like like we're supposed to and so these they're they're doing exegesis they're doing they're studying it and talking about it and and the our problem is is we're entirely cut off from that discussion if we don't um you know try to contextualize what we see in scripture in light of again these people who you know they they lived it they were alive again in the second temple case i mean this is just a couple of centuries before or during the time of jesus and the apostles they were having conversations about the old testament that we would never have in seminary today yeah it's just completely off the radar and so what i want people to do is you would probably need to pay attention to those guys because it was their native language they understood you know a lot of the imagery and a lot of the metaphor and a lot of the symbolism and they they could work in the languages you know it's probably worth looking at you know what what they were thinking about the text you know instead of you know somebody living 600 years later in the christian era that didn't know hebrew but only knew latin and you know is you know half a millennium divorced from you know any of this world you know so we really have it backwards you know we really filter the bible through our traditions and it's hard to admit that you know i again i had to go through the same thing it's like you know if i really go down this path and it's going to disqualify me from jobs i'm going to lose friends you know it's just like you know do i really want to do this but the lord knew me well enough to you know to dangle the carrot [Laughter] where i would find it irresistible for some reason you know and there we go yeah okay well let's get into so you say you see i think in the unseen realm you say that or you say this too on on your podcast but um that most christians when they're because i want to talk about the three divine the three rebellions and get into kind of the specifics of who or who were the characters in those rebellions but most christians when you ask them why the world that is why the world is so chaotic today why is it such a mess christians will say because of the fall but that's just part of the answer there's three parts to the answer there's the the first rebellion is genesis 3 the fall um and then there's genesis 6 where the sons of god go into the net the sons of god go into the they have sex with the human women and there's the tower of babel story tower of babel incident so let's start with genesis three what so who is who or what is the serpent in genesis 3 who's tempting eve and who who destroys i i think that the heart of this and any ancient person would have read it this way is that this is a this is a supernatural being that comes to you know adam and eve in the biblical story either in in the form of a serpent or in the guise or maybe serpent doesn't even mean that you know the serpent depending how you take it grammatically could mean simply the one that dispenses divine knowledge which the serpent certainly does in the story it could also mean the shining one which is a characteristic description of a luminous being or it could be a you know just a plain old you know serpent but but behind all of that any one of those options is we have a supernatural entity that has now entered the story and is about to deceive you know the humans and i say any person in the ancient world would have understood this intuitively because snakes don't talk you know you can go to any number of other ancient stories and and when when animals do things like talk you know whether it's the shipwreck sail or an ancient egypt or some story from mesopotamia the people know that oh wow that animal is talking there the gods must be up to something let's see what they're up to they must be up to no good they're going to trick someone you know like there's this intuition that this isn't normative you know they're not thinking about things like oh well maybe in the process of evolution snakes once had legs and vocal cords you know that's just ridiculous but you'll see christian writers who say stuff like that no they're you know the gods must be up to something they're they're fiddling around with the normal creation order to attract attention and here we go you know it's game on so it's the same here what you have is you have a a member of god's counsel god's heavenly host you know we use i use divine counsel yeah and it's just it's just a member of the heavenly host uh who you know works for god and and one of them decides he doesn't like the creation order that has been laid out and so the the easy path to getting these mortals these embodied mortals that psalm 8 says are lesser than the elohim lesser than him and lesser than all the members of the heavenly host you know why should why should they inherit this at this place why should they live in the same house that we do you know god's abode because eden is where you know heaven comes to earth earth can't go to heaven god comes to earth this is where he lives and eden now with his human family and where god is his entourage is you know again this is very simple ancient you know thinking very biblical thinking if you just take it from what it says and and one of them doesn't like it and so we're going to get them to transgress what god said and god will eliminate them problem solved you know and of course that's not the way it works you know god is is so committed to you know his desire to have humans with him that he forgives them he does banish them but he doesn't eliminate them and he had he's committed himself to working with humans as as children and partners that he doesn't just start over he doesn't wipe the pieces off the chess board he doesn't say that was a terrible idea you know like an omniscient being can have a terrible idea you know it he doesn't do any of that he he stays committed to plan a which is i am going to dwell with my my people i'm going to dwell with humans on earth i'm going to get my way this is what i want and despite this ruination despite now we have the entrance of death because it's separation from god there is no access to the tree of life and all these all these metaphors and places are really important because god is the source of life to be with him is to be alive to be separated from him is to die or or be in the realm of the dead and this is how these ideas play out in the rest of the bible why is the desert wilderness the place of the dead where we find demonic beings answer because it's not eaten it's 180 degrees away from eden yeah it's a desert you know what what more do you need you know like you know get get the picture in your head of what eden was take it all away and now you've got the desert you know the scripture writers use these these things all the time and these episodes happen in the in the lives of god's people to to reinforce all of these ideas and so the first rebellion results in an estrangement from god we now have death we have the realm of the dead because the serpent i.e the supernatural being is banished you know from eden uh he is cast down to the ground one of the words there is eretz which can be earth or land or ground but it's also the word for the underworld okay and in ancient cosmology the realm of the dead was was thought to be in the ground in the earth anyway you know so so now we have this realm and and and the outcome is that from this point forward everything dies everything dies everything descends into chaos and so god it appears isn't going to get what he wants okay but but god says yes i am going to get what i want yeah you know we're we're not giving up on plan a there is no plan b so god continues his relationship with humanity and then we things bump along until you get another transgression so yeah the next transgression is the genesis 6 it's right before the flood it's increasing there's the corruption on the earth is increasing and i'll just read briefly the the four verses uh when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them the sons of god elohim saw the dot that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose or women as anybody chose then the lord said my spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh his day shall be 120 years and this is verse 4 that's crucial the nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterwards when the sons of god or elohim came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them these were the mighty men who were of old the men of renown um so who are these characters who who are the sons of god the elohim who is the who are the nephilim in this story what what's what's going on here yeah this is this is rebellion number two of three that the first one is the one we're allowed to see in church tradition the second one is the one we're told isn't there and the third one is is the one that we never get to see because our bibles are not using the dead sea scrolls you know so so we have a we have a one legged stool you know two legs you're missing so the the middle one here the sons of god this is a phrase the binet elohim or the bineha elohim is used everywhere else in scripture that it's found uh of supernatural beings members of the heavenly host and you know everybody accepted that at face value until you know the 300s a.d you know right up right just before the the heyday of augustine or augustine there was a early church figure julius africanus who rejected the what we would call the supernatural view of genesis 6 and then you know augustine did as well and because he he carried such weight in the early church his view became dominant from that point forward but all of if all the second temple jewish writing takes it at face value all the christian writers up until this time take it at face value because they know what it says so you know augustine or augustine you know makes this what's called the sethite view that the sons of god are the godly men of you know the line of seth and then the you know we don't really want to talk about the women because it makes all the women unbelievers i guess if all the godly ones are the men of seth and everybody else must be ungodly it sounds misogynistic right out of the king you know it doesn't say anything about the line of cane being where these women originate as the competitor to the line of said doesn't say any of this but this is what you'll read you know in standard commentaries that you know you have these two lines and this is the the explanation for this well well that's wonderful but it's just too bad that nobody in the ancient world thought that way and in fact when the old testament gets translated into greek the septuagint okay which is you know the the old testament that the new testament writers use most often because they're writing you know in greek to largely a greek audience uh guess guess how you know nephilim is translated it's gigantes it's giants we don't get giants from like you know two normal you know couplings and all and all this sort of stuff like it doesn't make any sense yeah like like why would the sons of seth if they're godly produce nephilim giants that are terrible you know and ungodly why like how would that work and how does it fit with verse five how do we go from the first four verses all this weird stuff about the nephilim to verse five now now this somehow results in the corruption of humanity and mass well the real answer to this is if you understood the original context for genesis 6 1-4 why it's even in you know the book of genesis then you would you would it would be completely comprehensible and you know in in unseen realm i reference the work here of amar annos who's in helsinki or you know he's a he's a cuneiform scholar um actually he's from estonia i think he's still in estonia but he uh in 2010 published an article about this whole issue now we're if you've taken a religion class or if you've watched an episode of ancient aliens and if you have don't admit it but the story you get you know it goes something like um well you know what what we have here in in in genesis 6 is we've got um a situation where you know humanity's created by a bunch of gods well why well because mesopotamia has flood stories you know gilgamesh and all this and the biblical writers just copied this stuff off of them and no that's not what's going on but we've all heard it we've all heard that babylon babylonians you know had had flood stories and they did but but what anus did was he he said you know nobody's really gone back and looked at the flood stories from mesopotamia and asked is the weird stuff in verse you know the first four verses can we find those elements in these stories you know before we even get to the flood what about the the first four verses all the weird stuff and lo and behold we can okay there's something called the era epic that has all of the elements already in there and the story is of the the up kalu and the apollo were a group of deities who before the flood they were 100 percent deity 100 percent divine and they had a lot invested in humans they they're the ones that the mesopotamians thought gave them civilization the reason that babylon was great was the apkalu and all the things that they taught human the bigger gods say one day we're sick of these humans we're just going to destroy the earth with the flood and the op color like what you know all this work's going to waste like we can't have this happen and and so what you know to cut it short the apkalu intermix with humans to preserve the knowledge for of human civilization to survive the flood i mean this is this is kineform stuff so after the flood the op kalo are mixed they are quote from human descent from this point forward but their knowledge survives and they're also giants like is this does it sound familiar okay yeah it does but the thing is nobody knows about it now honest did his work in 2010 this is why i tell pastors if your commentary of genesis is published before 2010 and doesn't interact with honest it is by definition obsolete you are by definition interpreting the passage out of context not in context this is why it's here because the the biblical writers want people to know that this was not a blessing the apollo are not our heroes and and the people who wrote in in between the testaments you know books like enoch or the genesis apocryphon which is a dead sea scroll that referenced this story i mean some of them have have gilgamesh there by name the book of the giants i mean they they had access to this material and they knew it and and it became part of their theology of genesis 6 and more importantly the nephilim weren't what weren't what were important to them because the apcalu the knowledge that they taught you can actually find in in kineform tablets of the thing is they taught humanity the things that the babylonians thought this is why we're awesome and you're not okay there's a growing there's there's astrology there's arts of seduction there's idolatry there's there's a whole list of things and lo and behold those are the things that are condemned in jewish literature in between the testaments about the same story so it all makes sense because what's trying what they're trying to communicate here is that this is not a good thing this is a transgression of heaven and earth we were not supposed to to know this stuff and look what we did with it how did this knowledge affect humanity both in the biblical story and and you know all this other stuff arts of warfare well that's wonderful now we can kill ourselves more efficiently you know now we can be you know arts of seduction now we can be immoral more efficiently basically these are all things that lend to self-destruction there's even drugs you know listed because they produced altered states which is part of idolatrous worship i mean it's the whole grocery list so genesis 6 is really about divine beings corrupting humanity so that they can more efficiently destroy themselves and those around them that's why it was viewed as abominable you know in in in the jewish biblical context so is this the origin of demons and genesis it is because what what results in this is you get you get the the comment in genesis 6 4 they're nephilim on the earth and also afterwards and if the story picks up in numbers number 13 numbers 13 20 32 and 33 where it says when joshua and moses take the israelites in to into reckon order um the the promised land after the exodus they go in and they and they the the 12 spies get sent in they come back and 10 of them you know are not optimistic to put it lightly they're like man the land's awesome it's everything that we heard it was it's just great it's glorious you know look at all this great stuff that's over there you know all the food but there's a problem there's giants right they're the anakim or the the anakim are in the land the anakim descend from the nephilim so we're like we're we're just toast we're doomed i mean there's no way that we're gonna go in here you know and and conquer this lad and of course two of the spies joshua and caleb are like don't you guys remember the red sea like are you idiots you know but but they lose the argument and this is the event that that causes the 40 years of wandering in the biblical story this is the event yeah this is the event that's referenced in hebrews 4 about the failure due to unbelief so god says well you're going to wander now until the first generation dies off who didn't believe and then we'll try it again and when they go in again you know they go up the trans jordan and god tells moses look don't worry about the moabites don't worry about the ammonites why because the descendants of esau who also descend from abraham have already removed the ameem and the zamzumi who are like the rephy you know they're they're giants and they're already gone we already took care of this problem you guys need to go up to bashan and take care of business there and then you cross into the land and we're going to go after the anakim so it actually becomes a rationale for the conquest but when you killed one okay this is this is how this we go from what i just said to there are rephaim in shield in a couple of texts in the old testament you know how do the rephaim how do these giant dudes you know wind up in hell or why are they spotted in hell and so out of that comes the theology that well when you killed one the disembodied spirit that's where they live now because they are aligned with chaos they are aligned with rebellion their spirits live on and seek re-embodiment as demons you know again they have a whole second temple judaism had a whole blown theology of this where where you're not going to see a word of this in seminary i mean not a word and i'm not trying to exaggerate i mean like zero okay unless unless somebody stumbles into unseen realm accidentally you know in a class or whatever um but this is what everybody was at they're all on the same page this is where we get demons and it matters because in the gospels jesus will go to some of these places that have these old testament histories yeah we'll get to that we'll get to mount hermon and other players caesarea philippi you know it's just you know why does he pick this place to go there and do that wow i love that it has a history you know i love that uh how you break that down but we'll get to that in a second so the third rebellion is babel the tower of babel and that's when obviously the the whole earth had one language and these people come together and they go to the plains in the land of shinar china or shinar i think it's china and they make you know they say let us make bricks and they build the ziggurat yeah and try to kind of bring uh make a name for themselves and bring god i guess the gods down to them is that yeah yeah it's it's it's not that god hates legos you know or something like that yeah the the first rebellion is death and estrangement from god the second rebellion is about the proliferation of depravity you know across the earth and the third rebellion is about the fragmentation of god's initially one family god you know there was there was no jew gentile distinction until this moment and and this grows out of out of a rebellious set of circumstances where yeah they go to they they come out after the flood and god repeats the eudenic command okay now go over spread the earth you know we're going to try this again we're kick-starting eden remember that you know let's try it again and lo and behold they just do the opposite and and genesis 11 is great because there's a line in there that says well let's go to you know the land of shinar to build ourselves a tower you know lest we be scattered abroad oh like it so if you don't do that you'd be a bit obedient like lest we be obedient let's do this thing over here so that they go and again it's not that god doesn't like building projects the point is everybody agrees it's a ziggurat and then you have to ask yourself what what's the problem with a ziggurat ziggurats were part of temple complexes why do you build temples you build temples to bring the deity to you yeah that is not the game plan [Music] it's like 180 degrees away from the game plan and so god has basically had enough this is why i refer to to babel as the romans 1 event of the old testament where god more or less says okay you know i'm i'm just done i've had it up to here we're going to let you people do what you want we'll see how it works out i'm going to give you over to your thing right you will see how it works you know and so what he does that he he divorces humanity he severs the relationship between him and humans and he confuses their languages confuses their languages i'll scatter you good you know we'll get you to do what i what i wanted you to do one way or the other and we know what these nations are they're listed in genesis 10 which is the precursor to genesis 11. and but we don't read you know that much we sort of know and you say well where are the supernatural beings in the tower of babel story in genesis 11. well they're they're not there but if you go to deuteronomy 32 if you stumble into that and if you happen to be reading an english translation that follows the dead sea scrolls here and there are there are a few esv does and rsv does nlt you know does even though it's a looser translation um you'll read like esv says when the most high divided up the nations when they fix their their borders their boundaries and he sets the boundaries he divided them up according to the number of the sons of god there's that phrase again sons of god but israel is yahweh's portion jacob is his allotted inheritance and so that's deuteronomy 32 but this idea of of the nations being dispersed among the gods or to the gods and the gods to the nations is actually found elsewhere in deuteronomy deuteronomy 4 19 and 20 yahweh takes israel as his own but he allots again the sun moon and stars who are called elohim in deuteronomy 17 he allots them to the nations and he forbids israel to worship them deuteronomy 29 is another passage deuteronomy 32 17 is you know is another passage where they they worship these other these other deities they're called shadeem which english translations have demons which is an unfortunate translation a shade or shadow was a territorial entity which makes good sense because we're talking about geography here what scholars call cosmic geography land associated with the deity and deity to the land and and so this is what emerges out of babel that god says i've had enough okay we're going to allot you you know to the lesser members of the heavenly host now we know god wants them ruled well how do we know that we know that for two reasons one is god doesn't end his program there what he does next in the biblical story is call abram he says watch what i'm going to do now i've just i've just divorced myself from humanity but i'm also committed to humans having a human family so i guess you're wondering what i'm going to do now well just watch you know i'm going to go to this this abram dude you know in ur of the chaldees and his wife can't have children so she's perfect because i'm going to enable her supernaturally to have a child and from that child i'm going to have a new humanity we're going to call that israel and so i'm going to have my own people we're going to start over again and so god does that and he makes a covenant with abram and says now it's going to be through one of your children that ultimately the rest of these nations are going to be blessed i've not forgotten about them they're on the shelf but i know where they are okay we're going to get back to them but the rest of the old testament is informed by this this is where you get jew israelite and gentile and it's where yahweh now has enemies you know because in psalm 82 this is the other reason we know that that god is not happy when the nations are abused by the supernatural powers that are that are linked to them is this is all of psalm 82 this is what the psalm is about god is angry with the gods in psalm 82 1 for the way they sow chaos and injustice among their the nations this is where daniel gets his theology daniel 10 which which a lot of christians know the prince of persia prince of greece oh behind nebuchadnezzar's empire there was a supernatural being the prince of you know prince of this or that yeah that's true but but daniel gets that from the deuteronomy 32 world view this is where he gets his theology it's also where paul because paul dips into daniel 10 paul gets his theology of principalities powers rulers thrones dominions all these terms paul uses for cosmic evil evil entities or terms of geographical rulership i mean he'll occasionally use the word demons like in first corinthians 10 where he quotes deuteronomy 32 17 about the shadeem so they must be real else we have to deny that paul believed in demons and isn't that uncomfortable you know mr evangelical who doesn't want to believe any of this stuff you know sorry but you align yourself against paul it sucks to be you at this point you know you know i mean it's a whole coherent worldview but but we cut off parts of it in the way we teach this stuff and i think ultimately and i was in this boat too it's just too weird it's just too weird but when when god set the elohim and by the way elohim we as chris as evangelicals we think of elohim that term as yahweh but elohim just simply means disembodied spirits right and yeah it's a term you would use of of any supernatural being who by nature is disembodied and a member of the spiritual world and you say well how do we know that mike do we have to just trust you because you have a phd no what you do boring things like look up all the 2000 occurrences of elohim i mean you can do it with software instantly and then go look at the results but you'll find out that the biblical writers use elohim of beings that are not the god of israel so that tells you immediately well the term can't be about a unique set of attributes because if it was they'd never do that so it must mean something else you know we don't have polytheism in psalm 82 or other passages what we have is elohim is like is a word like spirits it's a term you'd use for oh okay you live over there in the spiritual world okay now we know what to label you you're an elohim you're a spirit you know that sort of thing it has nothing to do specifically with attributes but evangelicals really stumble and choke over this because they've been taught that the term itself means is equatable to a unique set of attributes and that is not how it's used and so when god sets elohim over the the 70 nations that he disinherits or at babel uh were those elohim corrupted before or did they become corrupt after that i don't i don't think i don't think they they were corrupted when they were appointed and the reason for that is i don't i can't find any clear instance in scripture where i mean god is certainly sovereign over evil okay we we know that that that much is clear but i don't see any any clear indication that beings who are in rebellion to him are on the payroll in other words you know it's one thing to be to be mightier and sovereign over an entity like you know satan okay you know satan in a state of rebellion isn't working for god he's not showing up for work on monday and saying you know okay what's my job description today you know no he's in rebellion he's been cast away he's you know he's doing his own thing in an adversarial relationship to god god doesn't employ adversaries he uses them he steps on them occasionally you know at some points you know he'll he'll you know manipulate them you know to getting what he wants anyway because he's he's god they're not so he can do that but the i the idea that that they show up for work again i i just can't i can't find any clear instance of that in scripture you know now what about evil spirits that tempt saul or not temp but they they torment saul and things like this well the word evil there can just mean unfavorable or really catastrophic you know god can can make somebody sick he can you know make someone you know mentally unbalanced as a judgment it doesn't necessarily mean we have a cosmic entity that's you know that's hostile to yahweh as well why would that why would that entity show up for work and then take the job directions and do them i mean if he's an adversary why would he do that you know it just doesn't make any sense it makes it makes a lot of sense if if they're not on the payroll and so my view is that eventually again we're not the story we're given is is pretty truncated in places we're eventually you know told that they were appointed and then they get to the point in psalm 82 and even before that even before that in deuteronomy 32 later in israel's history they they seduced the israelites into worshiping them instead of yahweh and who know for all we know that might have been the turning point you know who knows but they certainly um seek worship that doesn't belong to them and they they treat god's imagers human beings terribly they abuse them you know and god is unhappy with both situations um and they can do that because they like us were created you know to image god to be his proxy they're in the spiritual realm and we on the earthly realm and to accomplish that imaging status we're given attributes god shares his attributes with his intelligent you know creatures that he wants to have a relationship with he wants them to be partners with him so he has to share his attributes to do that he can't do it with a kumquat or even a pug dare i say you have a pug we have two pugs and they're awesome um but you know god makes these decisions and and one of those attributes is freedom and and god knows i mean god's not you know he's not ignorant he's he's omniscient god knows at the very moment of creation what this means if i do this if if i want you know humans you know and these other guys if i want this badly enough to have these relationships then at some point they're going to fail or they're going to rebel because they're not me they lack my perfect nature and so you know i get asked all the time why is there evil in the world you know how can you reconcile this with a good god well it depends how you look at it because what what the story of evil in scripture really says is that yeah god knew that was coming he knew that was coming and if you think you know evil and misery better than god does then that's you need to have your head examined because he sees every evil act of every person that happens you know to the innocent every day every moment he's he's well acquainted with it and doesn't like it but he committed himself to to creating this thing we call humans you know and again the the supernatural beings but he realized that to not do it the only way to to prevent the world from becoming this is to not have us at all so take your pick you know what what is it what does it say about god that he would he would be willing to suffer with us through the world the way it is versus not have us at all god makes the choice i would rather have them at some point i would rather redeem i would rather save yes there's going to be suffering but if i if i don't do this i can't have them i i can't have a human family i mean to me that that puts a whole different perspective on on you know how we should think about evil and suffering and yeah you know i mean it's real we can't minimize it but at the end of the day it god isn't back there saying come on you guys i need you to sin a little bit more for this other thing to happen here you know god isn't coaxing sin he doesn't need it he doesn't desire it but he had to choose to live with it to have us at all and that's what he did so let's move to the new testament and jesus what's the significance when jesus comes on the scene he starts casting out demons what's the significance of that yeah there's this is really cagey stuff um there are places where oh just one simple illustration like when there are places where jesus goes that are predominantly jewish you know there are other places in first century judea that are predominantly gentile and you see this in the legion episode where they're they're out there hurting pigs well it's probably not jewish territory there it's a good guess yeah but when jesus casts out a demon again in jewish on jewish turf the demon will refer to jesus as something like you know you know why are you picking on us you know son of david or you know something like that you know going after a very jewish messianic title but when in the legion case when they're clearly in gentile territory they refer to him as son of the most high you know which is you you think well big deal well where do we get most high we get it in the division of the nations we get it in the deuteronomy 32 world view and so so you even there you have a sense that that on on that turf they recognize who he is and they call him but they they observe proper protocol you know you're son of the most high uh you know you're more than just the son of david you're over here now you're son of the most high you know don't is it you know don't torment us before our time has come and you know we know the rest of the story so there are little things like that but then there are other episodes where where you know jesus goes up to to uh you know in his day it was called bonus or ponies but caesarea caesarea philippi was another name but it it's in the region uh that was known in the old testament as bashan it's at the foot of mount hermon which is significant because this is for the watchers that's enoch's second devil jewish terminology for the sons of god of genesis 6 it's where they descend you know to to decide to corrupt humanity but he goes to this place in this region bashan which in old testament times in canaanite if you were a canaanite you would refer to it as bethan which meant serpent which again that's not a good thing you know let's let's go for some r and r in the place of this yeah you know and and you know asteroth and edrai which are mentioned in the days of moses and joshua were thought by canaanites to be gateways to the netherworld you know to the realm of the dead even in their religion so it was known as the gates of hell you know and this is where the gates of hell passage happens you know they're at the foot of mount hermon you know at this place and so jesus you know this is where he has this conversation who do men say that i am you know the disciple ah some say this some say that and peter you know he asked peter who do you say that i am he said you're the christ the son of the living god and jesus essentially says yep that's correct but you know don't get a big head the spirit of god helped you to understand but then he says and you're peter and upon this rock i will build my church and then we have this big discussion of the catholics say oh he's founding the church on peter because peter petrus petra you know and the protestants say no the rock in the old testament was a reference to god himself you know so you we shouldn't be catholics and you know back and all i'm saying is hey have we considered have you ever been there have you ever been to where they were standing there's a huge rock you know it's the grotto of pan you know and you can't miss it it's enormous you know upon this rock i'm going to build my church basically i think the messaging there is is you know we're at the gateways to hell fellows and essentially this is where i'm going to pick to start you know my church right i'm gonna i'm gonna just gonna steamroll it right over satan's house you know we're gonna turn it into his tomb you know how's that so i think it's a pr it's provocation because as after he says it then they go six days up into a high mountain according to matthew well there's only one mountain there it's hermon and again this is where the watchers were the sons of god and what happens there is the transfiguration he's like well guess who's paying a visit you know to your holy spot you know cosmic evil you know do something about it i think he's picking a fight because right after he does these two things on demonic turf the gospel writers say he began to teach his disciples that he needed to go to jerusalem and die and so you know they're like you know peter gets freaked out like he gets freaked out most everything jesus says that he doesn't like you know and that this is where he has to say get behind me satan you know in other words don't play the role of adversary here this has to happen you know and so a week later they have the triumphal entry and then a week after that he's dead yeah so he's pushing buttons and and jesus sends out the 70 70 72 72 depending on the septuagint or the the hebrew but so he sends out the 70 and that i love that it's a mirror image of it is the disinherited nations that and exactly 11. yep and basically jesus shows up and he's like i'm gonna i'm reclaiming these nations back yeah i'm not i'm not just the messiah for this this this israel it's like the size of new jersey i mean yeah i'm here to get that but i'm here to get all of it i'm here to get everything else all the nations of the world i mean look at look at the great commission we and we tend to define the great commission as matthew 28 19 and 20. and we forget about verse 18. you know verse 18 says all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth okay well who has the authority now well the the resurrection and ascension and i talk about this in demons a lot are linked by paul to the nullification to use paul's language the stripping away of the authority of the principalities and powers it's the signal of their defeat they they lose their rightful sovereignty that was given to them at babel they no longer have any claim over over any person in any place they're done they're toast you know jesus says you know you know all authority has been given to me not only in heaven but on earth go therefore and make disciples of all nations i mean it couldn't be any clear you know the the whole gentile inclusion he does it he does it in his first sermon which is why people get the people at the synagogue of nazareth get mad at him he walks into the synagogue of nazareth and he and he you know he gets the scroll for isaiah 61. and we know that he only quotes part of it you know this whole thing about setting the captives free and then you know the day of release and the blind scene and the you know the death here and then he cuts it off right right at the just before you get to the judgment on the gentiles like he actually just stops you know at this verse and what we don't realize is that jesus does the same thing repeatedly this is the gospel of luke you'll find it in luke 7 and a few other places in luke where he'll quote stuff about the messiah at the end of days but he leaves out in all the passages he quotes he goes four or five new old testament passages but he always leaves out the stuff about the gentiles getting judged and and people get mad at because they i mean they know the passages like what do you mean the messiah is supposed to shut you know show up here and and beat up on rome and get rid of these guys and we're going to get revenge and blah blah blah blah you know and this is why new testament scholars are fond of saying well the portrait of the messiah in the new testament just doesn't conform to the old testament we have a contradiction here now what we have fellas is that jesus knows something you don't that you ought to that you could have learned in sunday school okay what we have is that jesus remembers yeah yeah there's this messianic stuff about the messiah showing up and that would be me and i'm supposed to clean house here and get revenge the day of the lord oh yeah yeah there's all that stuff but you know what there's something that comes before that and that's the abrahamic covenant that through the messianic seed all nations of the earth would be blessed and so jesus has a firm grasp on an obvious thought we can't bless the nations if we annihilate them first so it might be a good idea to bless them first and then if they won't believe well you know if we get to the day of the lord and you're still not a believer well you know then you get what you deserve but you know let's not reverse those two things jesus is here to redeem first this is the mission i am here to bless i am here to include you i'm not here to to render judgment you know the messiah has two things to do on the job description okay not just one two and and you know his audience was expecting the one you know that i love i love how you connect uh talk about pentecost and how you connect what happens at pentecost back to the tower of babel gosh how many times have we heard acts 2 preached you know and it's it's just really cool you know like you you go you go into acts 2 and you get this first of all there's the language about divided tongues and then they're they're bewildered both the the greek terms there if you search for the greek terms in that in the pentecost passage there that describe the coming of the spirit if you search for them in the septuagint you will find one of those terms in deuteronomy 32 8 which is the key passage right and you'll find the other one in genesis 11 which is the tower of babel passage you know so so right away the writer connects what what you see happening here what we're reporting on here should make you think of deuteronomy 32 because we're going to reverse the fragmentation of the nations and so the jews from these nations that are living in all these places because of exile and again you talk about god using evil for good there you go okay they all they all show up at pentecost and they see this happen with the spirit they see these these bunch of crazy men you know going around able to speak their languages and they tell them you know about jesus what happened here and three thousand of them believe and where do you think they go they go home so now we've got cell groups planted all over the all over the mediterranean in all of the the geographical regions that were disinherited at babel you know the lord is preparing you know for the gospel to penetrate all these places now there's one outlier which is tarshish but if you take the list you know which is spain tarshish is spain correct yeah spain which paul mentions you know in his letter to the romans like i i'm convinced paul believed he wouldn't die until he got to spain that's why he's telling the romans well look i'm in teens here i'm going to appeal to caesar you might not know what's going to happen here i guess none of us know but you know i'm going to see you for a while and i'll be in rome for a little bit but then i'm going to go to spain who cares you know well he cares because it's the last place in the table of nations that doesn't have the gospel yet so you can tell it's just it's right in the center of his brain i'm the apostle to the gentiles i am here to be the agent to reverse the curse here to reverse the the third rebellion this i'm the one god picked to do this job and i'm not going to die until i until i have it done i mean that would make no sense you know but but if you if you go through the nations in acts 2 it goes from east to west and it covers all the geographical regions of all these places that were disinherited yeah they were disinherited and even the ones even specific places that are that are that are missed you get them later in the book of acts you know you get ethiopia you get you know with africa you've got samaria again it has a long old testament history you get you get philistine territory i mean the book is intelligent okay it's design it's designed to fulfill the in the first chapter acts 1 8. you're going to be my witnesses in jerusalem judea and samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth you know we start with with the places that matter for for jews in the old testament the places that are included in the promised land so once all of those get the gospel coincidentally now the the the whole book shifts to the gentile with cornelius and then the you know what happens with saul who becomes paul again it's very intelligently laid out but for some reason we can't you you can't see the patterning or you don't think to look for a pattern unless you have this sort of deuteronomy 32 reversal thing going on in your head yeah and and this is what i try to do in the books you know i the unseen realm is not a theory of everything it's not you know the book that answers every question and that's that that's not its intention like in the introduction i i say this you know it's it's it's not an end point it's a beginning what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to build the matrix i'm trying to give you a framework that when you when you start in your bible study when you accumulate data you start learning things about scripture you'll have a framework into which those things can fit and you'll you'll be you'll you'll begin to be able to to connect dots because lo and behold biblical writers want you to connect dots it's supposed to make sense and and it it was an easier task for people who lived you know in their day because they're thinking in different modes than we are this is why i tell people you'd get a lot more out of your bible if you read it like it was fiction because when when you pick up a novel you just know that that the writer is trying to do something to you mm-hmm it's not like reading a textbook but that's how we read the bible we're like it's a textbook now i'm going to take bullet points and i'll do well on the quiz you know but when you read a novel you just have an intuition that this place is going to be important again this word is going to be important again this person is going to be important again i'm going to see it again and again and again i'm going to look for patterns because i know the writer is trying to direct me you know we just have that sense and we read it differently yeah we just don't read the bible that way and if we did we would get more out of it yeah yeah and you so i we don't have time to get into all and i think the last chapter of your book you get into the common misconceptions about demons and um i i guess i mean i think you do you there's like 13 or 12 or 13 common misconceptions you talk about but let's just end on one we'll just do one if you have time sure can a christian become demon possessed yeah i i don't think so because if you mean by possessed and this is usually what what people are thinking at least in tradition if you mean owned then the answer is no if you're a a christian you are owned by christ you are part of christ's body okay there there is no higher power incidentally this little bit of a rabbit trail here but in the book where i talk about possession i make the point and so does the book of acts there were there were exorcists like in judaism in jesus day that were casting out demons and so on and so forth you say what's the difference between what they're doing and what jesus is doing all of them appeal to a higher power they'll invoke the divine name or the most high or something like that you'll notice when you read possession accounts in the new testament when jesus is exercising demons he appeals to no one he appeals to no higher power because there isn't any it's just his word you know so this is the one who owns you as a believer okay you cannot be owned by another you know entity now if you mean possessed in terms of harassed and oppressed you know and abused and you know bad things can happen to you well then the answer is yeah and the new testament is you know has a number of warnings about you know we need to be aware that we can be manipulated by you know satan or some other you know evil power we can be led astray we can be harmed in some way but we cannot be owned so i think it's an important distinction uh to make when we get into you know exorcism passages because and you know we've all been influenced by hollywood you know that that sort of thing and we tend to think that christians you know can be so victimized they cannot be owned they can be harmed they should stay away you know from things that would be a solicitation but ownership is not on the table you talk about this in the book too that the reason demons or satan tries to harass christians or tries to prevent unbelievers from coming to christ tell us why this the demonic realm does that because they know what they're they know what their fate is they know what the game is they know what their destiny is why are they harassing us yeah i get asked a lot you know well dude do demons think they can win okay you know does satan think think they can win and again it depends on how what's your definition of winning okay if you're asking do they think they can kill god or beat god or they're better than god no again they're not idiots they they know better than that but they they must be interested in something else then there must be another way to define it and the way i i get people to think about this is i'll say if you were having a conversation with a demon or a principality right now what is it that you think they would fear what are they afraid of what don't they want to happen and the answer to that is they don't want to be destroyed and that comes at the time of the end it's the judgment of psalm 82 which is part of the day of the lord and other old testament passages isaiah 34 the first four verses they know what awaits them but in the new testament paul very specifically links the final day of the lord judgment which includes them to the quote fullness of the gentiles in other words when when when the great that's in romans 11 fullness yeah yeah when when the great commission is accomplished when when god is satisfied that he has extracted the the people from the nations that were disinherited back into his family and only god knows you know what what that number is or when that mission is fulfilled but when it is fulfilled the fullness of gentiles is accomplished then we have the awakening of israel you know again all israel will be saved whether that means you know something national or something more narrow that jewish believers or they get another chance or they're going to see the messiah and have a chance to believe you know there's a number of different views to that but each one of these things triggers the next so you have the fullness of the gentiles you have the reawakening of israel then you have the the day of the lord and the return of christ and then you know the final end comes we have the final judgment and that's when they're judged so so their strategy is pretty simple so in other words we only get destroyed when the great commission is accomplished so let's delay as long as we can so yeah let's distract the church as much as we can let's make it worldly to invalidate its message let's do all that we can to give jesus a bad reputation you know let let's do all that we can to keep people blind and misdirected and distracted you know not thinking about their eternal destiny all these things because if we can do that long enough we're going to be here quite a long time so that's what we're about that's our business that's our business plan well we know when that's where they know what's going to happen yeah at the end that's that's our hope so we know the ending so we're excited about that um and then the church just needs to do its job you know there's this graphic i i have where if you know according to the pew foundation there's and you know wheaton college did a survey of this they're supposed to be like 90 to 100 evangelicals in the us and they counted like anyone who's like a cultural evangelical or whatnot let's just let's cut it in half let's just say 50 million evangelicals and i'm defining evangelicals people who actually know what the gospel is and and who since they know what it is they will share it if you just do the math you know if if all 50 million of those believers would disciple you know win somebody and disciple one person a year now you got a hundred the next year now you got 200 and you got four i mean you see where this is going in less than 10 years we would exceed the population of the world see we look at the great commission and think it's impossible it's just a math problem i mean really you know if if the church would do its job in just one person a year every christian one person a year i mean this is what it's going to take to just imagine how how just just the first year would affect the world yeah let's just say we let's just say we do we do one year and we fail the other nine we've got like 50 million more it it it's it's really when you actually look at it in terms of the math it's like this is amazing the the exponential you know way this adds up is kind of amazing so the question is why doesn't it happen and and that's you know we're the reason for it yeah well let's get out there christians and do that so the lord will will return the fullness of the gentiles will happen then christ will return that's why so my demons are afraid of math yes so we're gonna we're gonna end it there and guys again the the book is demons by michael s heiser that we'll put the link below and i i really do recommend i mean you can read demons on its own but i re i recommend reading this first to kind of get context the unseen realm or supernatural and um and also please listen to the naked bible podcast it will blow your mind i mean every day i go on these walks up in beverly hills i live in west hollywood i go on these walks and i listen to the podcast and i just every time i listen to it my mind is just like it's like that emoji with the mind blown so i love it i love trey strickland like he's he's great and um so guys please uh tune in to that and pray for mike uh pray for his health and for his doctors and his family and um thank you so much mike you're a trooper thank you for coming on today oh we made it we made it i don't think you'll have to edit anything out yeah i mean there i i missed you know pay us i don't know five pages of questions but we're going to have to have you back on later you know sometime and we'll we'll get to more stuff yeah we can take questions yeah all right cool well thank you mike i appreciate it yep thank you bye-bye all right bye [Music]

Channel: Becket Cook

Views: 28,521

Rating: 4.9201994 out of 5

Keywords: LGBTQ+, Chynna Phillips Baldwin, California Preachin', Becket Cook, A Change of Affection, Matt Walsh, Dave Rubin, Andrew Klavan, Lila Rose, Allie Beth Stuckey, Christopher Yuan, Candace Owens, Dr. Michael Heiser, The Remnant Radio, PragerU, Daily Wire, John MacArthur, Jesus, Christianity, Larry Elder, The Unseen Realm, Demons, Supernatural, Nephilim, Tower of Babel, Garden of Eden, Azazel, Deuteronomy 32, The Watchers, Exorcism, Mount Hermon, Augustine, Spiritual Warfare, Satan

Id: n5JnXBRyx_w

Length: 76min 12sec (4572 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021