The Unseen Realm Q&A with Dr. Michael S. Heiser and Dr. Ben Witherington III

welcome to the behind the scenes conversation about the Unseen realm I'm here with Dr Mike Heiser and Dr Ben witherington III and we're going to talk a little bit about the Practical implications about learning about the Unseen realm gentlemen thank you for being here good to be with you so you guys have been Bible scholars for decades uh Dr Heiser Old Testament is your field Dr weatherington New Testament is your field yep before we go any further I want to answer the question what is a Bible scholar and how is that different from a pastor well it's a lot more education for a start I mean most pastors um will have had some Seminary training or at least detailed Bible College training to being an older New Testament scholar in America you would have to do a master's degree of two or three years and then you would have had to do about a five-year or more program in a PhD program because the American PhD system involves coursework comprehensive exams and then if you're not dead after that a thesis and the thesis usually takes about three years and a thesis is basically a a big book that you're writing correct yeah right Dr Heiser what does a Bible scholar do well typically if you have a a university or seminary appointment you have a job at one of those you're going to be teaching courses you might be depending on the institution you might have some undergrad you might have graduate students you know I.E Seminary students if you're if you have a seminary or Divinity School context so a lot of your time is taken up in the classroom typically you have teaching assistants so some of the the grunt work you know like grading is taken away for you but other than that you're you're going to be writing you're doing research you need to get published Journal articles books again if your tenure track that becomes really important in the Summers again it's concentrated writing time you might be speaking in places or you know sitting in front of a camera like we are now indeed indeed so Dr weatherington what is the unique contribution of a Bible scholar you've written commentaries and other things like that help us help us to understand the the contribution that a Bible scholar makes to the person going to church on Sunday morning well um to understand my work you really kind of need to understand a little bit about my context Methodist Church in America was founded by Circuit Riders who had no Seminary education and certainly didn't have a PhD until about the 20th century I mean seminaries are actually a modern phenomena the the First Methodist seminaries were in the late 19th century and into the 20th century so the the level of education required to be a pastor much less a Bible scholar has changed over the course of time but since methodism was largely founded by Circuit writer preachers and lay people we unlike the Presbyterians did not have a long tradition of scholarly pastors much less just Scholars and so that really is a 20th century phenomena in my denomination for example I'm the first person in the Methodist tradition to write a commentary on every book of the New Testament I mean Calvin did that back at the beginning of the Reformation that's a whole different tradition so for me what I was trying to do for my tradition is what reformed Scholars and reform past sisters like Jonathan Edwards and others have been doing for a very very long time in other words I was trying to do catch-up ball for my whole ethos that's great so Dr Heiser you have a unique position as a scholar in Residence here at Faith Life describe to us some of the work that you do and and what is involved with that research and after you answer that then we're going to get into the Unseen realm but I really want to give this context for people yeah my answer would would sort of dovetail with what Ben just said um the materials he's producing are really are going to you know contribute to the next generation of seminarians and pastors pretty directly uh some of what I do does that we also sort of pitch you know what I write either reference content or books or magazine articles at the layperson outside the context of Faith Life I have a podcast I have websites and I think you're actually seeing in this day and age Scholars do more of that kind of thing it's not that they're not doing what Ben is doing some of the younger ones have caught on again to this thing you know we know is the internet and it's sort of an immediate delivery of content and so they they have to sort of make the decision to contribute their content to that space and then sort of act intentionally as well and intelligently about how best to do that you know sort of pitch it at the right level but at least they're doing something intentional to have an impact on the believing Community or really anybody that's interested in biblical studies the other side of that for me is that 11 years ago Asbury started a doctoral program and so so that's where you teach that yes I teach at Asbury seminary in Kentucky and um the side of that for me is that I'm now investing in the Future Leaders not only of denominations and local churches but the scholarly world for the sake of what I will call Evangelical methodism I mean that's where I'm putting my war in the order so we have 57 doctoral students in Old and New Testament at Asbury and so now I'm not just concentrating on doing things for the laity or the local church or even just Scholars talking to Scholars now I'm trying to prepare the Next Generation for teaching that's great well this brings me to my first question about why is it important to try to read the text of scripture through an ancient world view yeah I I get that question all the time and I mean Ben I'm sure has the same impulse here that you know we do that just sort of without thinking we do it reflexively and I've done it so often that it's kind of startling to even get the question but I get it a lot and we have to remember that to the average person in the Pew again this is a a sort of a revolutionary idea or something they're just not exposed to so I I think the quickest way to sort of answer that question is we have to remember that scripture again God providentially chose and prompted you know individuals at a certain time in a certain place with a certain worldview a certain culture to produce this thing we called the Bible and they were writing to people in their own time with that world view with that you know cultural context and so the Bible was written for our benefit and for the benefit of people who are going to be alive a thousand years from now but it wasn't written to us it was actually written to someone that is quite distanced you know from us chronologically and in all sorts of ways of thinking and so to to Really properly understand the scriptures in their fullness and in the detail sort of the framework lots of unusual passages like we get into with unseen realm you really have to be able to think along the same thought patterns as the original writer and the original readers and so that's why context is so important yeah I like to say it text without a context it's just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean and see the real problem is that since about Middle Ages we've been preaching McNuggets sound bites little portions of Passage and that just further encourages anachronism that is reading into the text something's not there and then when you throw in also in conservative churches the sort of anti-intellectual attitude of I don't need to read all these commentaries I don't need to know the original language is why I can just get up into the pulpit and the spirit will give me utterance when you're dealing with that then you know then you're really not studying the Bible in its original context and that that's a problem I'll give you one illustration I was minding my business right after my doctoral work and I was pastoring some Churches and I got a phone call from a carpenter named Ben Ray Smith brand new Christian he said Dr Ben I have a problem I said how can I help Lynn Ray he said well my fellow Carpenter he knows his King James version and I don't really and I was telling him I was going to breed my hunting dogs and he said no the Bible says you can't breed dogs and I said Glenn Ray I'm pretty sure the Bible doesn't say that but I'm going to look up every pick in reference to dog and I'll get back to you so I hung up and I started going through my King James lexicon nothing in the New Testament going through the Old Testament and I found this verse Thou shalt not breed with the dogs I called up Glenn Ray I called up Glenn Ray I said Glenn Ray I got good news I got bad news here's the good news those furry little four-footed tail wagon Critters breed all those you want but there is this verse in context which says Thou shalt not breed with the dogs and what it means is the true Israelite should not sexually fraternize with a foreign woman he processed that for a minute and then he said well I'm feeling ever so much better now Dr Ben my wife Betty Seuss just from Chatham County now for me this is the perfect illustration of a text without a context you can make it mean anything you want to so one of the real values of of the scholarly work that Mike or I do is to to prevent us reading into the text stuff that's just not there and reading out of the text what was its original meaning to the original audience I think that's great and one of these things about this is the familiarity with the languages right and this is again just it will seem basic to people and Scholars but it is a big deal so for people who again might not be familiar with how do we get all this information about how people had their ancient world view Mike what is required in the languages to get a framework for how people thought yeah language is one aspect it does effect take you into this thing we call world view I mean there are other things obviously that do that you you really need to I think at least at the very least learn Greek and Hebrew alphabet be able to follow the discussion in a commentary or maybe something on a website where someone will reference a Greek or Hebrew word so that you can follow the discussion you know in a very simple manner also to use tools again that you know will allow you to sort of penetrate the English either visually but especially in terms of searching one of the things I like to show people sort of when I'm out on the road is it's one thing to say well here's an English word in your translation here's the Greek or Hebrew word behind it sometimes there'll be a numbering system like Strong's Concordance numbers to search those things but people really get drawn in when you show them look it's not just about searching all the times that a Hebrew or Greek word shows up somewhere oftentimes writers Old Testament writers will repurpose Old Testament content New Testament writers will repurpose New Testament content and you often get a situation where it's not just one word there might be a cluster of two or three or four words in a passage here and if you're able to penetrate the English you'll find those same you know three or four Greek or Hebrew words somewhere else and that's not accidental the writer is repurposing material he wants the reader to look at it here and sort of be Jarred in his thinking they assume you know your text well enough that you you know you're going to go over and look at this thing now but since we can't guarantee that an English translation will use the same English word for a Greek or Hebrew word you lose all of that you lose clustering you lose connectivity and so you're never sort of alerted visually unless you can penetrate the English that the writer's trying to do something with some other passage the other thing is I mean all of these ancient cultures were oral cultures and I mean Hebrew poetry like the Psalms beautiful Rhythm rhyme alliteration assonance you lose all of that in Translation you know that's that's a big problem to get the sense of the the emotive force of the language but the other problem is that every translation however faithful however good is already an interpretation because sometimes you have to make judgment calls on what it could be the meaning of this word in this context because words have a spectrum of meaning and so you know I mean people are always asking me well what translation should I follow and my answer to that is well for what purpose is this for a study Bible is this for just introducing somebody to the Christian faith I mean what's the purpose of the translation yeah so there's a lot that we assume that we know and we wouldn't know otherwise until you dig a Little Deeper yeah we wouldn't want to anyone to get the impression watching this that you know the translation they're using is a bad one okay I mean I I always like to say when I you know what's the best translation I'll say well really the best translation is the one you'll read okay and read consistently right but you also have to realize there's no perfect translation and Publishing houses you know have really put forth a not only a good faith effort but just a lot of time and energy into forming you know communities and Committees of Scholars to produce your you know the translations that we use today so you can feel good about the translation that you bought at the Christian bookstore and you're using but the most important thing is to actually read it no matter what it is right so let's talk a little bit about some of those assumptions that we make we talk in here about recovering a supernatural world view now Ben you have talked about the difference between Supernatural and natural can you elaborate on that a little bit well um if you if you're a student of intellectual history of the West and you sort of dial it back to the enlightenment this is when we really begin I mean at the beginning of the Enlightenment the queen of the Sciences was theology give us a year for the enlightenment for maybe some viewers who well in the enlightenment really began in Italy with people like petrarch and the idea was they wanted to recover the original classics the Latin Classics the Greek Classics and that whole middle year okay of studying Antiquity in various ways and it's also the period where we have the rise of science uh and so what happens is that we begin to have the beginning of specialization okay scientists they're going to study the material universe and things over here uh the humanities are over here including Theology and that's going to be a different feel with its own specialization and study of ancient languages and all of that sort of stuff and so what happens what grew out of that was okay over here is the natural world and we begin to hear over here is the supernatural now that distinction doesn't really exist in scripture it's not it the Ancients didn't think that way I mean the father of History writing was Herodotus he with all the time talking about how the gods were interfering with human beings in day-to-day life here there in Yonder ancients didn't divide the world into sword two Realms or two possible spheres uh they just thought that the Supernatural and the natural intermingled regularly but uh modern people often don't think that way and so today we talk about the spiritual realm and the material realm where the supernatural realm and the material realm so we make that sort of bifurcation you read the Bible That's not in there all the time you're running across Miracles or acts of God in day-to-day life even right do you find that sometimes Scholars might or or just regular people might be hesitant to affirm the supernatural because of that sure because the other part of the Enlightenment was an increasing skepticism about the miraculous and and therefore about the miraculous content of the Bible I mean that's one of the things that happened in with Scholars is that you established your critical chops as a critical scholar by seeing how much you could deny about the miraculous and that's still going on today as well as this proves that you're it's sort of justification by doubt rather than justification by faith so we'll show how much we can explain away and therefore that shows we are critical Scholars well that's part of the ethos since the Enlightenment and do you feel that that may be where like you talked about some conservative Traditions would be I don't need anything to do with Biblical scholarship I kind of inherited from that tradition of skepticism and the that's that's exactly right and the funny thing is that most Americans are oblivious to the fact that many of our founding fathers were deists that is they believed there was a sort of watchmaker God that wound up the universe and then left it to its own devices but they really didn't want to hear about miraculous interventions here there in Yonder I mean that's this is classically Thomas Jefferson who did an edited version of the gospels and edited out all the miraculous and just left Jesus the talking head I mean several of our founding fathers Benjamin Franklin was like that Thomas Jefferson was like that you have very some that were like that well Americans are oblivious that that's actually even in America where religion is very much still alive and well part of our tradition of being Americans is that tradition of skepticism about miraculous I think that is a great setup because it places scholarship and in-depth study and all in this context of sometimes doubt about the supernatural World Mike you relate in the book uh the Unseen realm about your experience reading through Psalm 82. talk to us a little bit about that experience yeah I mean some of this is going to dovetail you know with what Ben just said and the the deism is a good illustration because that helps Orient people you know who are listening to us talk now 1700s you know 1776 100 years earlier you know a few centuries or that's the enlightenment period and we are still living with that and I was sort of you know when I had the you know my little watershed moment about Psalm 82 again in that conversation that story to us because some maybe not everybody has uh has read that story I was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and again I sketched this out in the first chapter of the book um and I was at a church I had another you know fellow there with me who was in the Hebrew Department as well and we were just you know killing some time before church like like we do and I don't I don't remember what the conversation was about but I'll never forget the way it ended he had his Hebrew Bible with him he opened it up to Psalm 82 and he you know didn't shove it at me but he showed it to me he said you need to read Psalm 82 in Hebrew and and I I did it's not very difficult you know Hebrew but the first verse was just kind of shocking because it said Elohim that L God capital G and it's capital G because nitsav is a singular verb form so a singular God Capital God takes his stand in the Divine Council or the Divine assembly and then the next line in the first verse is Baker of Elohim yashpote in the midst of the Gods he passed his judgment the second Elohim is plural so he got Elohim twice in the same verse one is singular the other's plural because of the grammar and I looked at that and I thought well that looks like a Pantheon but again providentially I also had thought well I bet Jesus knew that verse I bet Paul knew it but the apostles knew it you know that this was nothing why why should I sort of fear what I'm looking at it is the text of scripture it is what it is and as I as I sort of got drawn into it that became a focus of my dissertation and you know Journal articles and whatnot and you know there's a lot of it in unseen realm I was struck as Ben was saying with the notion that you know it's hard to find evangelicals who will just sort of at this point let the text say what it says you know we we import the idea of well the gods here are just men or they're Idols well you know I don't really see any any evidence in Scripture that Idols are in the employee of God or supernatural beings that are in Rebellion they're not showing up for for work you know if it's God you know as the boss they're in Rebellion they're distanced uh you know they're they're not you know in his employ anymore and if you go over to Psalm 89 the human explanation just doesn't work they Psalm 82 verse 6 you know or the speaker who's God says I said all of you your Elohim Sons plural of the most high there's only one most high that's God so sons of God or Elohim you take that to Psalm 89 and the council the assembly there is in the skies and again the last time I looked at my Bible we don't have a bunch of Jewish guys in the skies you know ruling the nations of the world so it you know I was struck with why do we do stuff like this why do we come up with these really odd sort of explanations and the answer goes right back to what Ben was saying we have a little trepidation over how how populated the supernatural world really is you know we're content to have God Triune God and Jesus and angels angels angels at Christmas demons I mean Satan has become a question mark and a lot of you know believing churches and and we draw the line there but you get into a passage like this where we've got Elohim and there again there's just all sorts of nuanced vocabulary not only for the beings of the supernatural world but sort of what they do you know and they're inner relationships and whatnot that it really sort of forces a question and that is how much of what a Biblical writer believed about the supernatural world am I willing to believe and that's another that's an uncomfortable question it it really is um my wife grew up in the Roman Catholic Church 16 years of parochial education and she also became a biologist and you know she didn't really study the Bible much uh she went to mass regularly with her family that sort of thing and she really came to what I would call saving Faith through a charismatic Bible study with Gordon fee a Pentecostal New Testament scholar right and one day we went to Tremont Temple Baptist Church in downtown Boston because a faith healer was showing up well you got everything in there right all in one story faith healer showing up right they were going to do exorcisms leg lengthenings uh put hands on people that had goiters and this that and the other and see if they fell off and that sort of thing we go to this and and my wife who was prepared to believe in miracles right sitting there on row two and we watched people who were crippled healed and we watched The Exorcism people writhing on the floor and coughing up demons and this that and the other my when we left I mean this really shook my wife up and it was uh it was not a boring worship service and when we left my wife said to me well there goes 16 years of scientific training and I said no honey no but what you've seen is you've had the curtain drawn back the veil drawn back and you see the rest of what the universe is really like there is the Supernatural and there is the natural and the main thing is that we've been shielded from seeing the rest of reality because of the sort of attitude we have about what is really real it it brings that that shielding or that Veil as a scholar Ben did you look at uh had you heard of divine counsel or the Deuteronomy 32 world view like uh you know what's the what's the broader framework for these things well you know I mean I read the Bible and I mean I remember one of my pastors saying what does it mean in Genesis Genesis when it says let us make them in our image and who is the hour there and you know I mean the the church fathers the cappadocian father said it's the father of the Son and the Holy Spirit Old Testament Scholars you start reading Ike Road or some of the others I read that is not what they were saying so I mean to me that kind of opened up the door to thinking more broadly in some some of the terms that that Mike has talked about but I was open to that I mean the 60s and 70s were turbulent when I went through school when I was first up coordination in my own denomination which many of people didn't believe in a personal devil or demons or that sort of stuff they said okay this is psychological aberrations a person who talks like that has a mental problem right um when I went up coordination they asked me do you believe in a personal devil I said yes do you believe in demon possession I said yes do you believe in angels I said yes they delayed my ordination for a year because because I believe these things you know and I kind of never heard of that before wow okay I believe the Bible listed lame ordination but I you know it was not a part of my everyday experience growing up in the first church of the Frigidaire to see exorcisms or any of that sort of stuff I was Mainline Protestant and it was really not for me the Breakthrough moment was reading C.S Lewis's the screw tape letters I thought okay there really is a devil and there are demons and I'd better watch out because things go bump in the night and so for me it was a gradual process of coming to the point that Mike did from Reading Psalm 82 and that's what happened I I I'd like to add to that I'm I would classify myself as the uh the believing skeptic okay I'm I'm skeptical of every claim but I'm open to all of them right um every Claim about every Claim about the supernatural or something like this now I spent a lot of time you know outside scripture I I'm a sort of a student of paranormal stuff and I'm skeptical because I've I've read enough again peer-reviewed serious literature on these things to know that lots of what passes for paranormal is counterfeit or a misunderstanding you know some sort of weird you know problem it's just nonsense or it can be it can be reproduced either in a laboratory setting or by magicians that are very skilled I mean just it runs the gamut but alongside of that you have outliers okay that none of that what I just described works for so I I want claims to be evaluated but I think if we're honest we have to be you know open to they're just like Ben said there's a natural world there's a supernatural world we have to have both of these categories open but that doesn't mean that we aren't evaluative right you know we're not looking for well the most the most coherent explanation of this is the most bizarre and Supernatural no that that's not it at all because you talk about the excesses that are out there no the advice I got from my eighth grade educated Baptist grandmother was when you go to Seminary don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out right so it's not the case that we're suggesting you shouldn't think critically about these things you should use all of your mental capacities to evaluate things and some of this is going to be generally genuine and quite a lot of it's not going to be genuine but you wouldn't know that unless you did critical evaluation of it you need to sort of weigh and test things God doesn't mind if you ask critical questions about scripture you're not going to hurt it okay scripture is going to be here a long time after we are there's no harm in that and I think you know we are created with those capacities and inclinations and so we need to use those skills but at the same time again if we're thinking that there is no you know Supernatural world I don't think we're being honest we're not being honest with with data uh if you could have a you know and there are millions and millions of claims if just one of them is correct okay then the category is open uh you know philosophically this is sort of where I gravitate for I don't have bends you know the benefit of Ben's charismatic experiences or any really anything unusual happening to me but a lot of what well I'll go further than that I'll say basically all of scriptures sort of Supernatural claims extend from one proposition that there is a God right okay if if there is a God if that is a coherent proposition and philosophers whether they're Believers or Christians or Jews or or just you know atheistic Skeptics you can find serious people who have defended the coherence of this proposition okay that there really could be a a God we can't like disprove this they may not choose to believe it but it is a it is a coherent philosophical conclusion based upon the rules of rational coherent thinking okay if you can't undermine that and destroy it then it remains on the table and if that is on the table then other things like well could God have created other beings like himself that aren't embodied that are in a spiritual world could those beings actually do something could they think thoughts could they interact with the answer to all those questions becomes yes because of the coherence of the of the main idea I I love the quote that is in an Ansel Adam about book it says we look at life from the back side of the Tapestry on a day-to-day basis what we see is loose threads dangling knots in a morass of color but occasionally the light of God shines through the tapestry and we get a glimpse of the larger Divine you know design the larger design we get to see just occasionally occasionally we get to see the supernatural realm and what's going on and it reminds us there's more to this universe and this life than we think in our mundane thinking on a day-to-day basis and then that's that sense of wonder and awe that that you know you want to inspire but some people might respond in fear oh yeah right they do but I think the the bigger problem I'll admit again it is an uncomfortable proposition you know am I willing to believe what the biblical writers believed about the non-physical Supernatural world all that but I think our culture has just as big of a problem in that people are looking for a replacement to it and what I mean by that is you have there are just millions and millions and millions of people who are fixated on paranormal topics or Ancient Aliens or something like that and you have to ask yourself why well they don't like the materialistic totally darwinistic explanation for why the world is what it is and they don't want to gravitate over to the judeo-christian world view so so a lot of this stuff is right in the middle it preserves a sense of mystery of transcendence without having to accept the other two and so they they fill the void with with this stuff that that you know has just a lot of crazy elements to it but it it fills a need it fills a void in them the other part of that is we're all created in God's image so I mean when Chesterton says the only alternative to good religion is not no religion it's bad religion people are always looking for the Transcendent looking for the supernatural looking for a bigger picture of what is the purpose of life and all those kinds of things and you know even with people like that occasionally God peels back the tapestry and gives them a glimpse of a much bigger picture and for them that's just sort of a mind-blowing thing I have a member of our staff Tammy Hogan whose daughter goes to the University of Pittsburgh well she graduated now and one night she was crossing the street from the University to the other side of the street and she was hit by a car and sort of smashed to the road by the car and was was picked up and taken immediately to ICU in the nearby Hospital Presbyterian hospital and Tammy got a phone call and she races up there and the the head trauma specialist was called in because it was so severe I mean she was in a coma huge swelling the skull all this sort of stuff was she even gonna live what was going to happen you know and and she was in there for weeks and weeks and finally finally this world's leading head from a specialist said look I've seen this hundreds of times and the chances of her coming back to normal are like one percent I I want to prepare you for that I I don't believe in miracles I don't expect a miracle I don't I I think you just need to be prepared at best the swelling is going to go down she's going to be in vegetative state for the rest of her life and probably in a coma right and of course this was shattering to Tammy who is a devout Christian person and she was praying and praying and all of us at the Seminary were praying and um then the next day um a lady who was a cleaning lady an African-American woman who was cleaning uh was out in the hallway and all of a sudden Katie woke up and said I need some water and she just woke up she was coherent and um Tammy was like stunned right and this cleaning lady comes into the room and Tammy said what just happened here and the black lady said I know what just happened here said I've heard this whole story about your daughter what happened when she was smashed to the pavement is that an angel called her head so it would not bang against the pavement so her cerebellum would would not be detached from the spine and and she would be a whole person again and what's happened is that God has woken her up now that the swelling has gone down and she's going to be fine and that is what happened so here comes uh here comes the head trauma specialist going Shazam I don't believe in miracles but I've never seen anything like this before and uh so last May Tammy and her daughter went on a trip with me to the Holy Land and she's just Katie's just fine you know she finished her school and she's just fine and and they had trauma specialist had no explanation because it wasn't any medication they tried it wasn't any treatment that they did all of a sudden she woke up and walked out of the hospital right but the black lady was pretty sure she knew what happened a supernatural being caught her and prevented it from being worst case scenario wow and those things like that you just don't have an explanation before physically just and I think Mike to your point you're just saying look if there is no physical explanation on the table should be some things that we can't explain physically at least be open to the supernatural well let's shift gears just a little bit here to some of the questions that people might have as they personally open the door up in their faith uh one of the questions that comes up often is well I'm a Christian can I be demon-possessed how would you respond to that me for me I I usually quote scripture and just say greater is he who is in me than any of those forces in the world or to put another way if Jesus is Lord of your life he's Lord of all your life there's no room in the center of your personality for Christ and the Holy Spirit Plus demons so Christians can be Bewitched bothered bewildered tempted pestered from outside by powers of Darkness that definitely happens and the Bible confirms that that happens the New Testament is pretty clear about that but but at the same time no Christians can't be demon-possessed unless they like commit apostasy or get into black magic or satanic worship or something like that no because greater is he who's in you than these powers that are in the world what about you do Christians have anything to fear in that yeah I would agree with Fen that Christians cannot be possessed what he just described I would call oppression certainly and you know the New Testament I think is clear that you can have Believers that are maligned and oppressed and you know harassed in some way I mean we're actually warned about that so if if the New Testament writers are warning us about it chances are yeah that's something to worry about is this kind of like Ephesians and the fiery darts of the wicked one there's enough the devil and he will flee yeah right yeah that's a lot different though Than You Know The Possession I think think the vocabulary is important when I think possession that question I think ownership to possess something literally yeah when you were controlling the control center of a human personality their mind their heart their emotions their will control of the center of their personality that's possession and I would add controlling their Destiny as well because you would think if you're owned Again by Satan then he's not going to want to surrender you and he can extract you and a Biblical example of possession of the manatee gatterenes right right yeah right yeah exactly yeah again when someone comes to Christ you know saving Faith they are put into the body of Christ they're translated into the kingdom of his dear son Colossians 1 13. uh I don't think there's scriptural evidence to suggest that Satan can pluck someone out of that condition and own them right okay so I think that's an important element that we need to think about when we talk about possession and if that's true that means a lot of common Christian vocabulary for for example in Pentecostal search rules that I'm familiar with is just wrong I mean people saying things like well I have a devil of a cold I have a cold that a demon gave me or a demon did this or a demon did that a lot of the time what that really is is not wanting to take responsibility for your own bad actions a lot of the time that's excuse making I had a seminary classmate who borrowed our churches throwing in a professor's car and wrecked it and he went to him and said all of a sudden the devil took control of the wheel and and turned the car into a telephone pole no that is not what happened what happened is you screwed up right so there's a lot of loose talk about the demon that gave me a cold the demon did this there's a demon under every Rock in the Bible so again critical thinking yes there are angels yes there are demons yes there is a personal devil not just the power of evil but a personal devil but at the same time for the Christian person greater is he who is in you than these forces in the world you have a power to resist that stuff and uh don't make excuses for your own bad behavior you know I think it would be instructive for people that the the kind of folks that Ben is talking about here there is far more said in the New Testament about our struggle with our own flesh right then there is some sort of prompting by an external Force to do evil there's there's actually very little of that you know relatively speaking we are just we can mess up our lives just fine okay on our own right we don't need any assistance so we're not looking for you know Supernatural forces and demons under every Rock behind everything we do that's really not a scriptural approach you know we need to take the other part of this is what Paul says in second Corinthians 4 he says outwardly we're wasting away an old Margaritaville inwardly we're being renewed day after day when we think about the Christian life now okay the minds being renewed the the heart the emotions has been the will is being straightened out the intentions are being clarified the one part of us that's not being renewed now is the physical body which is why we hear so much about the Temptations of the flesh we we don't get the body renewal to Resurrection so outwardly we're just we're subject to disease Decay and death suffering sin and sorrow inwardly we're being renewed so the focus in the New Testament is on the the spirit is pulling us this way and the sinful inclinations are pulling us this way which mainly has to do with the physical body that that's the weak in the Christian's armor talk a little a little bit more about the role of the Holy Spirit maybe both of you here because in this uh film we are talking about a lot of the inhabitants of the Unseen realm but the work of the holy spirit in the life of the believer depending on your tradition could be completely ignored yeah and so what is the relationship depersonalized maybe that's a better way of saying that yeah makes me upset in seven languages is when people treat the Holy Spirit as an it as if it were just the power you know I I like to say you can no more have a little bit of the holy spirit in your life then you can be a little bit pregnant even either the person of the holy spirit is in the life of the Christian or you're not really a Christian because Paul says by one Spirit we are all baptized into the one body of Christ and the spirit is given to each one of us from which we are nourished or drink right so and the spirit is working on our character that's what the fruit of the spirit our love joy of Peace patience kindness that's Progressive sanctification the spirit is a person it can be grieved it you know it can be quenched there's a lot of things to be said about this and you don't get the Holy Spirit on an installment plan but what is true is that the spirit progressively gets hold of more aspects of your life cleans up more of your life cleans up more of your thoughts your feelings this that and the other progressively that's true so the holy spirit is is the invisible agent that Christ sent to us to straighten us out and it's the big difference between people in the New Testament and people in the Old Testament that only sporadically have the spirit of God inspiring them or empowering them or whatnot now we have the Holy Spirit as as a possession within our life just as Christ is in our hearts as well and that's the big difference now you talk a little bit about the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament Mike maybe you could elaborate on the Old Testament spiritual experience that people had and that that relationship I would I would agree with Ben I mean the evidence is pretty clear that it was sporadic uh there does have to be something new about the New Covenant okay part of the New Covenant promise is the coming of the spirit the indwelling of the spirit and for people who who and for everybody even men servants and maidservants it's not just sort of the clergy get the Holy Spirit such as kings and Prophets and things like that and the New Covenant being god making a covenant with Israel and and Judah to write his law on their hearts you know it's connected with the restoration of the people of God you know we find out in the New Testament that the people of God is a little bit wider than an Old Testament Israelite would think includes Gentiles and I would say it included Gentiles from the very beginning there are little hints of that new testament writers quote the Old Testament when they talk about it well shoot Abraham was a gentile to start with so come on now he was so I would agree again that it's in the Old Testament it's a little bit different I'd actually add this thought that when we when we sort of make the holy spirit in it like Ben was saying we actually sort of backhandedly dis Jesus yeah okay and people may not understand what I'm talking about there but uh in unseen realm I discussed this a little bit where you know we have this this godhead thinking in the Old Testament I I do spend three chapters on this uh in the book where we have God appearing as a man in the Old Testament but still Transcendent you have the sort of two yahwehs thing going on invisible and Transcendent and then on you know present typically as a man on Earth in Old Testament you know situations and sometimes they're in the same scene sometimes they're different you know distinct the Old Testament affirms that there's only one Yahweh there's only one Yahweh but but you actually get this again two in one sort of thing now what's interesting is that two in Oneness gets transferred in the New Testament to Jesus but the the kicker here is that just as you know Christians struggle a little bit to talk about this well Jesus Is God but he's not the father well if he's not the father how can he be God you know we go back and forth on this language well there are places in the New Testament that do the same thing between Jesus and the spirit right okay there are places where the spirit of Jesus the spirit of Christ show up in the same verse equated with the spirit of God Paul refers to to the Lord Jesus as the spirit twice and again it's not that one replaces the other but when Jesus ascends to the Father the spirit comes and how else could Jesus say you know lo I Am With You Always unto the end of the age or where two or three are gathered in the midst there I am it's because in some way the spirit is but isn't Jesus Just Like Jesus is but isn't the father again you have this godhead thing going on so if you're going to relegate the spirit to just being an it like a critter again that's just a backhanded you know slap in the face to Jesus yeah and you know I mean when you really probe the depths of Johanna and theology Jesus is called uh the parapleitas he's the agent johannian theology for people who don't the gospel of John's theology uh paracletos technically means an agent so Jesus was the agent Who Came In the Flesh of the father and then Jesus says I will send you another paraclet to us another agent who will be my agent and the thing about that whole language of agency is uh the the famous Jewish thing was a man's agent is as himself he he speaks on the authority of the one who sent him he is empowered by the one who sent him whatever he says he says on behalf of the one who sent him and he wouldn't say something that the one who sent him wouldn't have said in the first place so those who have seen the son have seen the father those who have the spirit get the sense of who Jesus is as well the there they are three but there is one purpose and you know one plan and one salvation it's one God expressed in three persons you mentioned Jewish writers when you're talking about that Mike are there any touch points where Jewish writers you picked up on this uh you know two yahwehs these challenges well what I talk about in unseen realm uh in the chapters where we get into this this godhead thinking in the Old Testament that's really the basis for something later that Scholars would refer to as the two powers in heaven in Jewish theology there's a very famous book book seminal work on this written in 1977 by Alan Siegel who was a rabbinic scholar I believe at Brandeis but Siegel you know the whole purpose of his work was to answer the question where did we eliminate this from our theology in other words how how how did it come to be declared a heresy a lot of people don't realize a lot of Jewish people don't realize that they used to teach in antiquity the idea of a godhead and narrow that down for me a little bit in Antiquity are we talking between the writing of the Old Testament New Testament period this this was a huge area of discussion for ancient Jewish writers and what Siegel shows in his book and what he you know ferrets out and and shows the reader is that that idea was eliminated from Jewish thinking around the beginning of the second century which would be the 100s A.D coincidence no no I don't think it is a coincidence no I I even said you have the Greek Old Testament take it exactly that coincided eliminating that part of their theology coincided with the creation of what we think of as the masoretic text the standardization of the Hebrew Bible and the dismissal of the Septuagint you know the Greek the Greek translation of the Old Testament so I don't think it's a coincidence at all and I'm not I'm not trying to be overly negative the Jewish Community was doing what would be normal they're circling the wagons they want to try to preserve their own Community because a lot of people are leaving it to join the Christian Community and part of that argument was the godhead stuff two powers in heaven again this isn't a good one and a bad one it's two good one I mean Daniel 7. that was a seminal text holy mackerel tell us about what story are you talking about there's it's the story about the one like a son of man who comes into the presence of the ancient days and the Ancient of Days empowers him to have a forever Kingdom and to be worshiped by forever and ever amen and okay only God's supposed to be worshiped and yet somehow they're going to do obeisance or worship this son of man figure and and and and then here's the real kicker you get to the synoptic gospels our earliest gospels what are the two phrases most regularly on Jesus's lips son of man kingdom of God what is the only Old Testament text that mentions both of those things almost in the same breath Daniel 7. in other words Jesus is exegeting himself out of Daniel 7 the very text that Jewish Scholars were going what's up with that text that looks like to God and they were writing about that talking about it it was hot at that time it was that was that was one of the main texts again going back to Siegel's book and he's not being anti-semitic or anything there right like he's a rabbinic scholar he's not a Christian he doesn't have a Christian acts to Grime he just wanted to know like when did this go away when did we abandon you know this theology it's interesting I mean I I knew Alan Siegel and one time he wrote me a letter I mean he tragically died uh prematurely of of some dread disease and he wrote me a letter because he really liked my book The christology of Jesus where I just talked about what I just said that Jesus interpreted himself especially out of Daniel 7 and he said that's exactly right and it's what the early Jewish interpreters of Daniel were debating and thinking about and Jesus simply picked up that ball and ran with it so even though he didn't believe in Jesus as his savior right he could recognize that in the text yes that Jesus is alluding to Daniel said which is kind of where we started this conversation isn't it we were talking about illusions of clusters of words thoughts and you know we see Jesus as the son of man and I I know when I read I think well maybe he's talking about his Humanity there he's he's trying to emphasize that but that's not any we think Son of God okay Divinity son of man Humanity well that's a much later imposition on those phrases because the the text in Daniel 7 suggests someone who's human and yet more than human in other words if you want one text in the Old Testament that sort of suggests both the humanity and the Divinity of the son of man it's the son of man turn that represents that not the Son of God term yeah in unseen realm I the other part of Daniel 7 that's really significant is he comes with or upon the clouds right that is that was a stock description of deity in the ancient world yeah coming down to judge the world or whatever theophany being a appearance of a God yeah no mere angel that was a stock description of deity it's actually used four other times in the Old Testament only of Yahweh but Daniel 7 is the exception because the Ancient of Days is already in the picture but it's not the Ancient of Days who's coming with or upon the clouds it's this other guy the son of man and Jesus quotes this at the at his trial before Caiaphas basically Jesus is saying you think you're judging me you think you're judging me well the son of man is coming to a theater near you and is going to judge you and he basically alludes to Daniel 7 about his return to judge the Earth and that's the son of man is the one who's going to judge the Earth and he's claiming deity there to show to show where this isn't contrived between Ben and myself what does what does Caiaphas do right after Jesus quotes Daniel 7. it's not it's not when Caiaphas says are you the Messiah the Son of the Blessed it's not then the Caiaphas tears his robe it's when he quotes about son of man that he tears his rope because that's blasphemy blasphemy is claiming to be deity bless me I mean Jews didn't expect a Divine Messiah right oh that's that's interesting yeah they so it wasn't the title uh mashiach or Christos or even son of the blessed that was really frying caiaphas's brain it was when Jesus said the son of man's coming to judge you and by the way that's me you know and that's what he reacts as this was blasting me it's time to get rid of this guy so this is an interesting thing you talk about the Jews didn't expect a Divine or Divine you know I don't know if that's the right word they didn't expect God In the Flesh right as the Messiah higher so for but they read and memorized the scriptures so Mike this brings up this question about the term that we some people might have heard about the perpiscuity or the clarity of scripture and we're reading through these things a lot of these Concepts although we keep going back to the Bible verses a lot of them are new to people they've never thought through these ideas but if scripture is supposed to be clear clear to who we'll see that that that's the question I mean perspicuity the clarity of scripture is uh let me I won't say is I will say can be a very self-serving Doctrine because the question is well who is it supposed to be clear to it allows people to say well I don't understand your point or I think what what you know Mike or Ben are saying here that that just isn't clear when I read the scripture so it can't be right right okay perspicuity the clarity of scripture I would suggest this we need to think better about it the stuff we're talking about would have been very clear to the original audience sure and the original writer so so what audience are we talking about when we talk about perspicuity like Caiaphas yes it's completely clear you know and and more doesn't like the answer you know to us I mean we're thousands of years removed and so yeah some of the things that you know I talk about in the book or we've talked about here in in our our video presentation they might feel new they might sound new and might genuinely be new to someone you know watching and listening but that doesn't mean they were new or novel to someone in the biblical period or not clear they would have been quite clear I like to say you know my one of my little ditties is if you know if it's weird if something's weird in the Bible it's important it's only weird to us because we're so far removed from World Views and culture and things like this if it was them they would have known precisely how to how to process illiterate person in the biblical period Old Testament New Testament they would have known what to do with the passages that we think are weird and we're just so flummoxed about they would have known I tell my students don't Whittle off the hard edges of scripture and those things that are hard for you because this is actually going to tell you more about your progress and understanding than it's going to tell you about the text it's not the text is so difficult it couldn't possibly be understood by even a genius that's not the problem the problem is your angle of incidence into the text is so modern or even post-modern that this seems really strange and weird to you so let the text be what it is if you have to come back to it later and do so but but it's important that you you let the scriptures be like it is but the other part of this and just in terms of Prophecy is what I like to say about prophecy is God reveals enough about the future to give us hope but not so much that we don't have to live by faith every day so it's not that the prophecies are opaque or unclear it's just that they're not extensively detailed with every little detail mapped out with times and dates and persons and all of that sort of stuff so you know a Jew reading for example Isaiah 40 through 55 and the famous suffering servant in 52 and 53 well early in that whole segment Israel is called my servant the nation is called my servant so when they got to 52 and 53 they thought oh the suffering servant it's about the nation suffering for the sins of the world they didn't think Messiah dying on a cross in light of later Revelation in light of the Life of Christ in light of crucifixion to Jesus through the inspiration of the spirit we can look back at that and say oh this is a multivalent text it was it was alluding to more than they could understand at the time it was written and that's a great thing but hindsight's a wonderful thing we tend to forget that even for the New Testament writers were able to write what they wrote because they had the benefit of hindsight exactly you know hindsight and the spirit you know guiding them to make you know to connect dots I mean I like to use Luke 24 to illustrate this I mean there you have the Risen Christ standing in the room in front of them and Luke still says that he the Lord had to open their minds so that they could understand I mean he's standing right in front of them but they're not able to connect the dots until later when they reflect back on events and what Jesus said and they look at the scriptures again and then I use the the metaphor of a mosaic in the book unseen realm that that the mosaics started to to become assembled I I actually think a lot of that was deliberate and intentional on God's part yeah let's talk a little bit a little bit more about that the intentional I don't know if obscuring is the right word God God had a plan God is not obligated to put all his cards on the table at once no and and so uh I would stress you need to have a sense of progressive revelation in the Canon right yes the Old Testament is the word of God but it's not the whole story and if you want the clearest understanding of the character of God you need to look at Jesus you need to look at christology you need to look at the benefit of hindsight stuff that's in the New Testament to really fully understand what's going on in the Old Testament and if you if you just sort of have a flat view of scripture and you don't progress through the revelation from Genesis to Revelation well then there's a lot you're just not going to make sense of right yeah you talk about not making sense of things I think Mike you talk a little bit about the the spirit the evil spiritual entities not being able to make sense of some of the prophecies yeah I mean if if intelligent evil could have just cracked open you know a Tanakh you know a Hebrew Bible oh well this is what's supposed to happen so now we know what to do again I I think that's a really good point I think so he's going to go to a cross and he's going to die okay everybody let's avoid crosses right so let's not kill the guy you know that's why I'm saying I I think we need to take what Paul says in First Corinthians 2 seriously you know I had the rulers of this world known you know what what the result would have been they would never would have crucified the Lord Of Glory I mean the rulers of the world being it's vocabulary that that's that Paul and and some of the gospels use you know for Satan and other you know Supernatural powers and the humans that are their agents like Pontius Pilate you couldn't just crack it open oh there's the plan let's not kill this guy I mean to me it's it's the wisdom of God setting them up to be duped because that that's the impulse now you know we know from the gospels that when Jesus is confronted by Satan or demons they know who he is okay it's the Son of God Son of the most high right okay they know who he is and and they can sort of do the math to think well the only reason he would be here is because God doesn't give up on that silly Kingdom of thing you know and restoring Eden and all that nonsense so so they they know sort of what the end game is but they don't know the pathway they don't know the plan in all of its elements and that's where they're duped they wind up doing the very thing that needs to happen the and the other part of this is we often as Christians make the mistake of reading the Old Testament as if those folks back there were just Christians right this is such a huge mistake I mean take one little episode one of my favorite ones Elisha he's having a bad day right and there are these kids who say go up old bald head go up old bald head and Elisha calls on the uh cross-eyed bear to come out of the woods and Maul these kids well now what in the heck is going on there what in the world is happening there well God had empowered Elijah and Elisha to do remarkable things but the power was in their hands they're not be behaving as Christians they're not even behaving in a Christian Manner and so the great Old Testament figures Elijah Elijah David you name it man they're sinning all over the place they are not Christians before their time it's a mistake to read all of Christian character and everything else back into the Old Testament Faith because uh Old Testament hero does something doesn't make that a prescription for us to go do it and it doesn't it and it doesn't mean that that they are Christians before their time they're just not they're just not I mean there's a reason Jesus had to come there's a reason the Holy Spirit had to be sent there's a reason to ethics of Jesus is really much more demanding than Moses right Moses just says an eye for an eye a hand for a hand a life for life to tooth for a tooth he's trying to limit Revenge taking in a fallen World Jesus says we ain't doing any of that we're even gonna love our enemies right I mean it's a much higher ethic because to whom more is given more is expected we have the Christ we have the Holy Spirit the ethics of the New Testament are far more not less demanding than Moses and that's where we get into this impact of the core takeaway for people Mike what would you say if you could just narrow this down to something practical on a day-to-day basis what is the impact of learning all this ancient stuff yeah especially the supernatural I would say ah let's take the supernatural first these these two are going to dovetail I mean I think Angel a lot what we call angelology or demonology is important because the more we know about how God thinks about and talks about the Heavenly Host his Supernatural family okay and the Rebellion that occurred there and the language that's used you know Holy One sonship language all that stuff the better off we'll be able to process how God thinks and thinks about and looks at us because some of that vocabulary gets transferred over you know who are the holy ones in the Old Testament well except for one passage it's always the supernatural family who are the holy ones in the New Testament you never get it used in the Supernatural family it's always believers that's not that's not a coincidence right right you know you you might translate that Saints right or we have holy ones it's actually holy it's holy ones and it it's a it's actually a family belonging term uh so I I think I the more we we can sort of view what's going on over there in the Unseen World it helps us think better about our identity how God looks at us as family members and also our mission as Believers so identity and Mission are really important God wanted a family he wanted children you know embodied human children just like you had Supernatural children he made them fit for Sacred Space they were supposed to co-exist with his Supernatural family because where he where God is his Supernatural you know family is this is Eden Heaven comes to Earth all these big ideas that we talk about in theology they're encapsulated in in what's going on in Eden God wants a family and he wants partners he doesn't want slaves he wants Partners absolutely you know God works with his Heavenly Host he allows them to participate in decisions Daniel 4 Daniel 7 first green First Kings 22. well God looks at us the same way God doesn't need a counsel he doesn't need their help he doesn't need our help he doesn't need us he doesn't need the church but he just likes to have his children be partners with him to enjoy what he has made and you know do what he wants done and and he wants it done freely if you look at the nature if you look at the nature of love I mean I I've been spending a lot of time recently on first John 4 God is love what does that really mean right it occurred to me that we all the time are talking about the adjectives that are applied to God he's righteous he's holy he's Sovereign he's this he's that he's the other the omnis all that sort of stuff you know how about the nouns what does it mean to say God is love if God is love and the great commandment is All About Us loving God with our whole being and our neighbor as in ourself and Jesus even said love your enemies and yourself and Paul says of faith hope and love love is the greatest of these and the first fruit of the whole the whole fruit of the spirit is love love must be pretty important to understanding God if that's the case then love has to be freely given and freely responded to what God wanted is not automata he wanted persons who personally decided to love and worship God that that's the essence of what God wanted more than anything else just like a human family I mean you can order your children around all you want but guess what they have Wills of their own right so God God is the the lover of his creation and the lover of his Angelic as well as human beings and he wants a free loving response to him that's the nature of what he wants in worship it's what he wants in our lives he thinks that's the way that that a family grows and has a healthy life it's the essence of worship we could go on and on but it goes back to the very character of God God wants his very character of love and light and life replicated in our character in our lives so that there really will be a family both human and divine oh that's great Michael did you have the final word here Ben's just talked about the love of God and God Desiring a response from people free um maybe Somebody's Watching today and they don't know God's love in their own personal life and they hear about this idea that God loves them and he wants their response how can they have that in their life I think I think one of the big steps is they you you can't let your past your self-perception get in the way of God and his love you know Romans 5 8 is a big deal Romans 5 10 is lesser known but Romans 5 8 says that God showed his love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us verse 10 it says while we were enemies of God Christ died for us now you know that that pretty much covers everything it doesn't say while we were reforming ourselves while we were getting our act together while we were improving our Behavior while we were you know just filling the blank it says while we were yet sinners while we were enemies okay God loved us so I think that's a huge hurdle for a lot of people um they they imagine themselves as somebody unlovable because one thing or a whole pattern in life okay God doesn't learn anything you know when you think those thoughts he saw everything he knows about the things you thought about doing and never did but while you were at a center of Christ died for you and the message of the Gospel is that not that you Buck Up and improve yourself so that God feels positively disposed towards you so that you can get God to like you that's not the gospel the message of the Gospel is simply believe that God does love you and this is why he sent Christ on the and Christ died on the cross rose again the third day so that your sins could be forgiven you you become United in God's mind to the Son of God to Jesus and it's it's it's as though when he when God looks at you he sees his son you become part of the family and All is Forgiven and all was forgiven and the great none of these are obstacles that we will be conformed to the image of his son so we're going to become what we love and admire that's fantastic that's that's awesome well thank you Dr wetherington thank you Dr Heiser we hope that people will continue to just get in their Bible and read it and and keep looking for God in the pages of scripture and through Jesus Christ thank you for your service both to the church and on this project yeah you're welcome you're welcome

Channel: Logos Bible Study Platform

Views: 501,536

Keywords: Dr. Micahel S. Heiser, Ben Witherington III, Reuben Evans, Faithlife Films, The Unseen Realm, Angels, Demons

Id: oHXLnxlpZ1s

Length: 73min 54sec (4434 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022