WWUTT 2580 Q&A Seeing the Unseen Realm, How Dangerous is This Theology

The teachings of Michael Heiser and Doug Van Dorn have become very popular in many churches, and increasingly so, though Heiser has passed away.

Are these teachings something that we need to be concerned about when we understand the text? This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may comprehend with all the saints how wide, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ.

Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. Let me begin by reading from Psalm 82.

God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods he holds judgment.

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless.

Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy.

Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness.

All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, you are gods, sons of the

Most High, all of you. Nevertheless, like men you shall die and fall like any prince.

Arise, O God. Judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations.

This is the Friday edition of When We Understand the Text, and we take questions from the listeners.

You can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com or go to www .wutt

.com, click on the contact tab, and you'll find a link there to leave us a voicemail.

You can record a voicemail from your phone or from your computer. I just have one email we're going to be looking at today, and I'm going to use this email to introduce you to my special guest.

This is from Alex, who says, Dear Pastor Gabe, there are some things that have been happening in my church, and I'm really asking to see if I should be concerned or not.

It was about a year ago that one of the teachers became very interested in the teachings of Michael Heiser concerning his books on angels and demons.

This has since spread to other teachers who listen to Doug Van Dorn and Theocast and Haunted Cosmos and Blurry Creatures, and now even the pastor is mentioning some of these things in his sermons, though he claims to be

Reformed. A lot of what they say about angels and demons I feel like are the opinions of men.

They are relying on outside extra biblical sources, sometimes things that sound like ghost stories, and I don't see anything about this in my

Bible. Is this actually affecting our theology, or is this just some fringe thing?

Do you think I have a reason to be concerned, or am I being sensitive about being introduced to something new?

Thank you for your ministry, Alex. I appreciate that email, and to help us answer this question,

I am on the line with my good friend Fred Butler. How are you doing, Fred? I am doing really well.

First time on the program. But you've been listening for a long time. Yes, every

Friday. I usually just catch the Q &As with you and your wife, unless, of course, you're doing something

I'm interested in hearing, and then I'll listen to one or the other, the little short Bible studies, but I have been a listener, golly.

It's got to be at least as long as you've been doing podcasts, which has been almost ten years or so.

Yes, about ten years is how long I've been doing it. Somehow I've got a hold of you doing them, and I listen to them all the time.

I love the Q &As. I remember running into you at ShepCon for the first time in 2017, and you had addressed me as the man with the golden pipes.

That was the way you ... Oh, yes. There you go. Oh, yeah. You do. You should be one of those book readers for Audible or something.

I've tried that. I've actually ... I tried doing that. I had a contract with one book for a little while, but then they decided to pass and go on somebody else.

I don't know why. Never heard why. But now I don't have time anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Well, Fred, tell us who you are. You actually have access to a lot of great Bible teaching, which is why you don't need mine on the regular podcast.

Where do you work, and what do you do? I work at Grace to You Radio Ministries in beautiful Santa Clarita, California.

We're north of Los Angeles. I oversee the volunteer ministry.

The volunteers are basically maybe 120 retirees, folks who have retired, and they still wanted to serve the

Lord in some fashion. I inherited this ministry. It was there long before I came around, but basically they come in, and they're the ones who package books.

I almost said CDs. We don't do CDs anymore. We used to do tapes. I've been there since the tapes.

You've been there since the cassette tape days. Cassette tape days. We'd have to put the stickers on them and everything, but they would package all of that material.

If you're on our mailing list, you get a free offer every month, and that's how we raise our donations for our ministry.

They will come along, and they basically take all of the labels I create, and then we package this stuff up.

If you've gotten a booklet or any kind of Bible, I think we did LSB hardback a couple years ago.

Yeah, I got one of those. We did the Doctrines of Grace recently, and we are about to start a little study guide that's coming out on Philippians.

So if you get that in the mail in a yellow or white envelope, you are getting something my volunteers put together.

So I oversee that ministry, and it's great. It's like having a hundred grandparents.

I say that all the time. It's really great. That's awesome. They take care of me and my family. So that book,

Doctrines of Grace, that you mentioned, that was the last book that John MacArthur wrote before he died.

So this is a posthumous publication, right? Yes. Yeah, that's correct. He taught that material, and I would really encourage people to go and find the sermons online.

I was able to hear those on a Sunday evening when he taught those the first time. And then really, the book of Jude study that he did, that got turned into a commentary, the last three messages sort of bleed into that Doctrines of Grace, so they're good intros to the series.

But yeah, they've been wanting to put this material into print for a while, and other things would come up and kind of push it aside.

And they started editing it. And when John, what happens is that they create a manuscript, and then obviously it goes through Phil and other guys edit it.

Phil's the main editor, of course. And then John is the one who comes behind and he reads through everything.

All of this phony idea that he's got ghostwriters and all that is just below. I've heard all of that.

He would read everything and offer his notes and offer his comments and argue with them in the hallways if he didn't like what was said and explain his position and all of that.

So he had his hand on, this was probably the last popular book,

I mean, that we're going to really, you know, a book that's going to kind of go through our ministry that he had his hand on helping to edit and to complete and all that sort of thing.

I think the book of Daniel, there's a commentary on Daniel coming, and that'll probably be the last commentary.

I think he helped. So what was what would be the difference between this and the Daniel commentary that's already included in the

John McCartney? Yeah, well, the Daniel commentary they're doing, John didn't preach a whole lot of Old Testament books.

He did Genesis up to like chapter 12, I think, which is also some really fabulous sermons.

Most of his teaching was in the New Testament. So all of those books that he preached through have been created into manuscripts and reformatted and edited into like readable commentaries.

And they wanted to do that for the Old Testament. And obviously, John's not going to be able to do that for us.

But there's men that have been sort of selected, have been connected to our ministry, to Grace Church for years.

Seminary professors and Bible college professors and so forth, they're going to have a hand in that.

They've taken, I think, John's John did preach through Zechariah.

That's a an old John MacArthur Old Testament commentary. I've got that one. And then

Daniel was the other big book that he preached through. I know he did some selected

Psalms. I don't know how many of those he did. A Genesis, of course, and just some other places in the

Old Testament, some stuff maybe in First Samuel. But they're going to try to incorporate that material.

The last book that he actually did an exposition on or one that he did an exposition on was

Daniel. OK, so that's the one that they chose to like turn into a commentary. I have all of that in study guide format.

So if you have the little study guides from years and years and years ago, they had all of the stuff from Daniel printed and I somehow was able to collect it all.

I think that's the only one I have a complete set of. But they're going to turn that into like a really nice commentary volume.

Interesting. So we'll still see coming. We'll still see some John MacArthur works here in the future.

Yeah, in the future. And then we have thousands upon thousands of sermons that have been touched.

I mean, he's preached them and people probably heard him preach them. But there are series that we could create out of those sermons.

I think that is forthcoming, too. I don't think that we've touched like 50 percent, over 50 percent of what he's preached.

The stuff you hear on the radio, a lot of it's it's, you know, reran because we have new listeners.

I mean, you have a new Christian, a new new believers that come along and well, heck, we want them to know and hear about, you know, how to raise a godly family.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And so they'll be if J. Vernon McGee is still on the air, we can still keep

John MacArthur. I, of course, and and he's still going strong.

It's not his ministry hasn't really diminished that much. And he's still on several radio stations and everywhere around the world.

I still catch him on I still catch him weekly on the Reformation Network because I'm listening to him on my way to church

Sunday morning, every Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and it's the same that's going to ensure with R .C.

Sproul. A lot of his material is still widely available and you can get it and listen to it.

But they want to take a lot of these untouched sermons that John has not has not been turned into series or anything and basically turn them into, you know, turn them in into like a radio thing.

And so that's kind of going that they're going through all of that and considering that stuff.

So you'll see new things come along here in the years to come. New to us on the listener side, but not a list.

Yes. That's it. And, you know, and that's the thing you can appreciate about John, if his focus is on.

Teaching the Bible faithfully and verse by verse, he would get into some, you know, current events of the time, so they've kind of gone through a lot of that stuff.

I remember I used to listen to John and he'd be talking about the Beatles or something or something going on in a in a pop culture world in 1978 and you just happen to know about it.

But we've kind of gone through that and try to remove that because but I mean, but the teaching overall is timeless.

Right. Of course, that people in, you know, that story of those guys in Vietnam, they were able to take sermons from whatever they were, you know, from the

Book of Matthew and translate them into Vietnamese and take them to the rice patties and these little speaker boxes.

And they heard that people can hear them in a village and they just hear the teaching. So they're not getting, you know, current events and Trump mania and Democrats screaming at Trump or any of that stuff like that.

But they're getting the Bible taught to them. I mean, well, that's that's what we want to do. That's our that's our mission statement is, you know, one verse at a time, you know, unleashing

God's truth one verse at a time. And so, yeah, it's there's a lot of exciting things,

I'm sure, that will come around even after we've all passed from this earth. That grace to you will still be, yeah, still be churning out

God's truth. Yes. And at least that stuff will be available just like it was with Spurgeon's material.

Yeah. And, you know, so we do our best to kind of keep that, you know, going as long as we can, as long as the

Lord gives us the ability. Amen. Well, let's get let's get to the topic at hand. We've actually referenced you on the program before because we would have people that would write in and ask questions about Michael Heiser.

And since you just recently did that blog series last year, I've been I've been able to direct people to that and say, well, here's

Fred's read through Heiser's stuff. He's able to answer some of those questions that you're asking.

So regarding Michael Heiser and his teaching on the divine counsel, on angels and demons, what are some of the things that we need to know about this theology in the way that it's affecting the church today?

I know that's a very broad question. It is a very broad question, because I was kind of thinking about this when we when you were going to ask me to be you can talk about this a little bit like, oh, man,

I do have on my blog. If you go to my blog, it is hip and thigh after judges.

Fifteen eight, by the way. OK. In the King James, you go to hip and thigh dot wordpress dot com.

I do have a link, kind of a standalone article that has all the resources

I kind of found that could be helpful for people who might be having Heiserians in their

Sunday school class. Heiserian about the Heiser. That's good. They're talking about the

Nephilim and blurry creatures and Elohim and all that sort of stuff. But I think the things that really are troubling for me, at least what

I have seen, is that he tends to appeal way too heavily to what

I would consider to be higher critical scholarship. A lot of it is scholarship that comes from like the ancient

Near Eastern context, answering these ancient Near Eastern concepts. And they he pours too much authority into it as a means in which to understand our

Bibles. Yeah, I don't think you need to look at the ancient Near Eastern. I mean, obviously, as Christians, one of the primary hermeneutical principles is you want to know the context who wrote the

Bible. What was his history around him? Well, that stuff is useful. But what his what he has done has gone beyond that to where it's like, well, the

Bible's got to be reinterpreted according to like the how the the

Egretic texts in their various religious practices understood

Baal and El pantheon of gods, because he would suggest that the

Israelites were sort of mimicking that or borrowing from their cosmology to kind of explain their cosmology.

But no, no, God is a standalone. He reveals himself to his people. And while there might have been other obviously other religious groups to suggest that, you know,

Israel is borrowing from them and they're forming their, you know, their theology and their cosmology, according to the way these, you know, various pagan groups form their theology and their cosmology, that's extremely problematic because their their gods were sinful and wicked and ungodly and unholy.

They were basically demonic in the way that they would behave themselves and suggest that because the

Egretic temple had 70 divine council members around El and Baal as his various is his consort or whatever, that, you know, there's 70 divine council members on Yahweh's council.

That's that's ridiculous. I mean, we're you're totally contriving that it's totally made up.

Yeah. So let's think of lots. Go ahead. Oh, yeah.

I was just going to say, so let's think about like a glossary of terms here. So what are some things that Heizer will say?

What's common to Heizer's teaching that we may need to find for us? So, like, for example, who is the divine council?

What does he mean? What does Heizer mean when he talks about angels and demons, where they come from?

Right. So let's start let's start with the divine council, because this, I know, begins from Psalm 82.

The one book of Heizer's I know that I read was The Unseen Realm.

And that's the one book that I've read through that I'm most familiar with. OK, and I've looked through his dissertation, which the book came from.

The dissertation is a much is much more it's not as cautious and it's much more liberal, friendly in that particular document than he is in Unseen Realm.

He's sort of made Unseen Realm to be more palatable for the evangelical community.

But yeah, that's I'm familiar with those two. I'm kind of familiar with his reversing

Mount Hermon and some of his angels and demons and stuff like I know that he doesn't believe that Satan was the one that was confronting

Job, for instance, that that was a divine council member. Right, right. And he believes that Asiel and Leviticus 17 was really a goat demon that the

Israelites would send a goat out to. The scapegoat would go to the Asiel in the wilderness, which is an utterly blasphemous concept if you think about it at any length of time.

That's totally a liberal, higher critical approach to understanding ancient

Israel's sacrificial systems. So he's using a lot of like extra biblical sources to understand and define some of these concepts in scripture that may otherwise be a little bit confusing to us.

So let me come back to Psalm 82, because right at the start here, we have that reference that Heizer then uses and defines as this divine council.

It seemed to me that that when I read the Unseen Realm, it seemed like he begins with Psalm 82 and then his interpretation of Psalm 82, he reads out into everything else that may mention angels or demons or Satan, as you as you had said, like in Job 1 and 2 or the unclean spirits that Jesus is casting out in the gospels.

So he totally creates a different storyline, how we understand the Bible and its revelation to us, because of that.

So Psalm 82, this is the English Standard Version. God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods.

He holds judgment. And then verse six is the one that a lot of people are probably familiar with because of the way that the charismatic preachers would take this and twist it into the little gods doctrine.

But you have in verse six, I said, you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.

Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince.

So let me start with this, Fred. Let me ask you this. So that reading of Psalm 82 -1, and that was from the

English Standard Version. Is that even the right way that we should translate Psalm 82 -1?

Yes. So if you'll notice there, like, let me read this from the LSB.

All right. The legacy standard. Here we go. Legacy standard Bible. God takes his stand in the congregation of God.

He judges in the midst of gods. So that word congregation there is an important word because basically it means a congregation or a gathering.

It's not taught. You read it as divine council. It gives me the picture or it'll give the reader the picture that God has this what would be this big board of directors in the skies, in the heavens, that he consults that are involved in his decrees and all of that sort of thing.

And that these beings, and we'll talk about Elohim in a minute, but that these beings are somehow on the same level as God, since that they're

Elohims like he is and all this. Now, Grant Heiser will not, you know, he doesn't say that, and his fans are probably screaming right now at the podcast that I'm misrepresenting him because it's like, he's not psionatic.

God is the greatest all creature. He's the greatest, you know, uncreated, sovereign, all those orthodox things.

I get that. But if you read his material, it's kind of hard for you to get that.

But that congregation is just a word that you see frequently throughout the Old Testament where it's talking about God being in the midst of his people, being in the midst of his, you know,

Israel. It's in the book of Exodus, the congregation, and God came down from the mountain. The congregation was gathered.

It's just talking about where he comes and where the people are gathered around him.

The ESV is a sort of a revision of the RSV. Yes.

And the RSV is the one that holds that, that translated that as divine counsel. And the

RSV, if I'm remembering correctly, kind of it was one of the modern translations in the early 20th century that was beginning to kind of incorporate some of this new newfangled, you know,

Old Testament scholarship that was coming up that was basically claiming that, you know, there's a divine counsel of Elohim in the heavens with God and they, you know, rule the earth with him and he's assigned to them roles and functions and all this other stuff.

And so they translated that as divine counsel. That's not a good translation because even if you go to like, say, the

King James, they even have the God standeth in the congregation of the mighty judges among gods.

I mean, they translate it, you know, as a standard understanding of that passage, which is, you know,

God addressing his people, you know, these individuals that had he has given his authority to to be his mouthpiece and to function as his, you know, as his representatives on earth.

Yeah, that's what is what you find in the book of Exodus with the, you know, the people who are around the temple complex or around the tabernacle at the time.

Right. So this is a psalm of Asaph. So how relevant is that to recognize that Asaph is the is the author of this?

And does that affect Heizer's interpretation of it at all? I think it does. OK, so and we were talking about this before we started recording and you're like, we got to get this on because I'm kind of doing this little study of Asaph.

And when you find when you first discover Asaph, I'm going to flesh this out in a longer article at some point whenever I got time to do this.

But when you first encounter Asaph, he was connected to David back when

David was a brand new king. He was the one who sort of led the worship with the other

Levites. There's some other there, you know, the worship of the people. So he was involved in putting together,

I'm sure, writing psalms and songs and all that sort of thing. But you see his name appear in other points in Israel's history, which would imply that more than likely

Asaph was part of a family. I think I was reading on this last night, actually, at the library down at the church.

Would this be like the like the sons of Korah? Yeah, like the sons of Korah. And that James Montgomery Boyce was even kind of calling it like this, you know, this guild of, you know, this family that would have been involved in, you know, directing and writing psalms and that sort of thing for the people of Israel.

And of the ones that we have in the Bible, there's 12 of them by Asaph.

And there's Psalm 50 that comes right before Psalm 51. But the ones that are the most relevant are

Psalm 73 to 82. So you got those psalms there.

And if you look at them. And 83, 83 is also a psalm of Asaph. OK, that's correct.

OK, so there's 10 of them there. I'm trying to remember my count.

Is it 11 or 12 of them that are his thing? Sure. OK. And if you look at those psalms, the ones that have

Asaph, you know, go to your Bible app and look up his name. We can read them. They all seem to have this these reoccurring themes of him crying out to God.

Hey, why have you abandoned us? Why does the wicked prosper? That's Psalm 73. Right.

Why do they seem to get away with things? And it just seems like God is not paying attention.

In Psalm 74, which is really a lament of the destruction of Jerusalem, it talks about the temple being burned down.

Well, those were events that happened during the time of the Babylonian captivity or around that time.

And my this is, of course, I'm totally, you know,

I'm just I'm just a dude who has my Bible. I'm trying to read it and understand it. So I'm sure there's probably some people that could maybe, you know, give me some different perspectives on this.

OK, but as I'm looking at those psalms, I'm seeing that these more than likely were written around the time of the

Babylonian captivity, because a lot of the themes are him rebuking the people.

It's like, why did you, you know, forsake God? Why did you turn away from him? Why are you acting unrighteously?

You basically are the ones who are bringing us onto us. We need to repent. It's that's those sort of themes will pop up in those psalms.

And when you come to Psalm 82, the psalm has historically been understood as talking about just human judges.

That's who those Elohim are. Right. Men that God has invested his authority into. And the psalm would have been a psalm of him rebuking them for their, you know, for forsaking their duties of obeying the

Lord and taking care of the widows. You notice those themes there about the widows and the orphans and see the justice to the fatherless, maintaining the fatherless, the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

Yes. Yes. Those are all things that the prophets talk about before Israel was gone into captivity.

That's Isaiah chapter one. That's exactly what Isaiah is rebuking Israel for. Yeah. And he is rebuking these people.

And if that's the case, well, Heizer's understanding of the divine counsel would have been back, what is it, five, six hundred years before these events took place in Israel's history, which would have been, you know, this ancient

Near Eastern matrix where, you know, this divine counsel would have functioned or whatever in these writings in the psalm, as he's claiming.

But if it's not connected to that and it's really more of a psalm that finds its anchor in the time of the

Babylonian captivity in 586, you know, note that time period. Well, a lot of the ancient

Near Eastern societies that existed at that time had already been sort of taken over and destroyed and disappeared.

And you had Assyria and Babylon and all of Egypt at one point. They all come in.

They wipe out these little societies. Israel is the only one that's there because God's taking care of them because of his covenant.

Yes. But they would have been they would have disappeared. There would have been any concept of a divine counsel.

Yeah, Psalm 137 is another one that starts with by the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.

So that's clearly got to be a Babylonian exile psalm, right? Right. Maybe Jeremiah, I think, you know, would have written that this

Asaph guy is not even really he may not have even been in captivity. He might have been one of those guys that was left in the land, you know, the poor people that were left there to kind of, right, you know, take care of the place for the for the

Babylonians because they wanted to get some tax money off of the place, you know. And, you know, so he's there in the midst of all this and seeing this run and he's writing these psalms, you know, that's and, you know, at some point it's collected into are collected into the canon and canonized in the

Psalms as part of their worship. But it's like and I can't totally be certain about that.

I mean, the thing that really kind of connects it to me, if you read Psalm 74, the imagery there is clearly talking about the

Babylonian captivity and the Babylonians coming in and absolutely decimating land and destroying it and taking everybody.

It talks about people being killed and, you know, the sanctuary being burned and all that, that that only happened when they came in and took over the country.

Right. And took them into captivity. So, yeah, it's just that if that's the case, it's

I don't think his views of the divine counsel hold much water after that.

It doesn't really it's like, OK, well, that right there, that's kind of a big problem if that's what.

You know, if you're claiming that this is some sort of pantheon of gods that existed with the

Lord and his divine counsel that he gave over to the, you know, during the time of the

Tower of Babel incident, well, then that's I mean, that's far removed if this is really written around.

You know, the time of the Babylonian captivity, that's almost half of a millennium. Yeah, sure. I don't you know,

I don't think we really appreciate the time. I mean, we read the

Bible and you're reading, you know, a couple of books. We don't know. There's like 300 years of facts.

Yeah, right. It's not set in chronological order. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, where it's like volumes that are going to go year by year of all the events.

I mean, right. Even Jeremiah. Yeah. Even Jeremiah jumps around. So and Isaiah is the same way, too, or he's 52 years, you know, there's one king.

So a lot of this stuff was written, you know, during these long periods of time, you know, between these various kings and the reigns and then when they would fail or whatever it might be, just.

Yeah, I just don't I don't anyway, that's to me was kind of like, yeah,

I don't see his his position really, you know, right there.

That sort of just wrecked his position, in my opinion. Yeah, that's what if that's if that's the ace, if Asaph is writing his psalms during the

Babylonian captivity, well, right there, you've got some questions about the legitimacy of his view.

Right. So like in verse six, where it says, I said, you are God's sons of the most high. Heizer will take that expression, sons of God, and I think he almost always translates it as angels.

Isn't that right? Right. Right. So his view of Elohim. And I kind of agree with what he's saying.

I mean, I think he's correct on his definition. Elohim, when you see that term, for the most part, it's going to talk about it's a term of residency.

Obviously, Elohim live in the spiritual realm. They can come in and out of our physical realm.

So Elohim is the Hebrew word that gets translated for God as God. So that's why you will have like the

Elohim will also be used for pagan gods. Well, obviously, those are

I mean, it's a whole different discussion about his views of of monolatry and monotheism and those sort of things.

But you also have, like, for example, Samuel. Remember the witch of Indore says, hey,

I see this God coming up from the well, obviously, it's the spirit of, you know, of Samuel coming up.

Yeah. And I personally believe that was the real spirit of Samuel, because it was a moment when

God is judging Saul and is basically cutting him off, bringing final judgment and is basically affirming

David as being the new king after this battle with the Philistines. So there's at any rate, there's a couple of different translations or interpretations of that.

Some will think that that was another view that a demon that was right that was impersonating him, that sort of thing.

Yeah. But the Elohim there would have been a ghost. Right. So. You know, you think about it,

I think I wrote this in my articles is talking about like if you're thinking about it in Star Wars terms, you know, Anakin and Obi -Wan

Kenobi and Yoda would be Elohim as a force ghost, you know. It's like, but that's the idea.

But however, the key thing that we always got to remember is that with words like this and there's and I appreciate

D .A. Carson bringing this out in his book on exegetical fallacies,

I think is the name of it. OK. Words oftentimes are going to be understood in the context.

Right. Yeah. I mean, if you talk about gay and, you know, there's your grandma talked about being gay and happy.

Well, I mean, obviously that's not what we understand gay and I'm saying that. Yeah, sure. There's going to be a context.

And so with Elohim, that word is also used in other places to speak about authority.

And and in many cases, it's translated as judges. So if you go to Exodus in certain places,

I think in Exodus 22, 28 and Exodus 22, it'll talk about there being judges.

But it's translated from this this word Elohim or word Elohim is used in there and used interchangeably.

Well, it's just talking about individuals who have been given a certain kind of authority by the

Lord. They speak on his behalf. They issue they pronounce judgment on the people, because when you read the

Psalm 82, we read that he's going after them because of what we just mentioned there.

They weren't protecting the poor. They weren't seeking out justice. They all of this stuff is like things that even

James talks about whenever true religion is going to be. Yeah. James 127. Yeah.

It has to be the ones who basically take care of widows and orphans. Yeah. You know, it's just something that reflects a person who's just and wants to honor

God in his judgments. And and that's where that concept comes from.

So then moving from that into sons of God being angels, how does he how does he make that kind of avoiding the distinction,

I suppose? Yes. And well, even in that particular that particular phrase, the

Beno Elohim or whatever it is, that can also be used for spiritual beings, but it also can be used of people.

It's oftentimes used of Israel. It's off. It's used in the New Testament to talk about the sons, you know, sons of God in the sense of the church and the righteous.

So it's like this concept of it just exclusively being talked about as angelic creatures is it's not it's not legit.

Is other places in the context, again, will explain that. Right. And in the area where he really are, you know,

Deuteronomy 32 is where he usually finds that, because if you read Deuteronomy 32, where it's basically

Moses is it's one of his final sermons to the people before they go into the land.

And he's recounting their history and kind of where they came from. And there is in I think it is in Deuteronomy 32, is it 32, eight verses eight and nine.

Yeah. So let me go. I can read that real quick. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

Right. But the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob, his allotted heritage. Right.

And so that phrase there, sons of God, is a dispute is disputed because I think you're reading from the

ESV, right? It is. It's the English standard. There is. OK, so in the Septuagint. It has the

I think it even translates it as angels, if I remember correctly, but that's there's a there's a textual variant there where it has sons of God.

And so it's understood as like, oh, he's talking about the angels there that somehow they were over, you know, each nation had a guardian angel.

Right. That's kind of the idea. But there's also a variant that has

Israel there. Right. The sons of Israel or something like that. Even in the even in the English standard version, it does have the footnote.

It says compare Dead Sea Scroll Septuagint. The Masoretic text renders it

Israel. Right. So sons of God in the Masoretic text is according to the number of the sons of Israel.

Right. And so you look at that in your account. OK, well, which one is it? Well, I happen to agree with Heizer in that it should be translated sons of God.

OK, but is that sons of God angels? Right. Is that sons of God? Israel is real.

Yeah. Because if you read the context of Deuteronomy, he talks about God being, you know,

God watching after them. They were like his chosen children, the children of Israel.

I'm trying to pull up Deuteronomy 32 here real quick on my little device. So if you go if you back up, you just kind of read through the read through the whole entire context.

God is faithful and without injustice. In verse four, righteous and upright as they have acted corruptly towards them.

They are not his children because of their defect, but are a perverse and crooked generation.

Is he not your father who has bought you? He has made you and established you.

Well, OK, if he's usually talking about him being a father, well, who are going to be the sons of God then?

Is he talking about angels or is he talking about Israel? And he's talking about Israel.

Right. And there are occasions in the Old Testament where he refers to Israel many, many times as a son. Right. And at the

Tower of Babel incident, I just think he's just talking about how he's preparing the world in which

Israel will live and exist. And then how and how God took care of them. You know, even after that judgment, the

Lord was looking after his people, I think is what he's trying to get across there. Right. And but what he what they do is they're saying that God is he separated the sons of man.

Well, OK, so the sons of men, that's all of the pagan nations were separated by their tongues. He set their boundaries right wherever they went.

And it's according to the number of the sons of Israel. If you read Moses's Table of Nations, there's 70 nations.

And a lot of those nations are going to be the ones that are surrounding Israel as they are growing and as he's taking care of them, because all he's doing is recounting

Israel's history, which the Bible does a lot. Right. Sure. And he says my portion is my people.

Jacob is the allotment of his inheritance, meaning that he's going to take care of them. And he goes on to explain how he takes care of them.

He found him in a desert land. Where there was howling waste of a wilderness and he encircled him, he cared for him and guarded him as a pupil of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest that hovers over its young.

He spreads his wing and caught them and he carried them in on his pinions. And Yahweh alone guided him and there was no foreign

God with him. OK, so it's basically you are my people. You weren't paid.

You weren't being controlled by the pagans and all that sort of thing. And I just don't see that as being angels.

Right. I mean, just there's there's not a reason to. But he has concocted this entire worldview where you have basically

God, you know, he assigned each of the nations around Israel, one of the divine council members to oversee them.

I mean, that's part of his whole and his whole storyline concept, which is taken from it's a blending of like the book of Enoch and an explanation of Genesis six.

Yes. So and then using the Yiddish Baal temple divine council concepts,

OK, reading those into there. So let me ask you about that. Let me go to Genesis six. So so this still kind of under the umbrella of how he defines the sons of God.

So it's in Genesis six, four, of course, a very controversial passage because we're always arguing that I probably take the opposite view of you.

So you saw immediately you take the Sethite view. Is that the view that you take? No, I take the hold on here.

OK, well, let me read it while you're doing that. So Genesis six, four, get my drink of water. Gotcha.

Genesis six, four, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God, there you have it again, came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. So. So, of course, we have

Heizer interpreting sons of God as angels. There the angels came and mated with men and produced these right giant sort of demon seed offspring.

Well, yeah, sort of these these would be where the

Greeks would get their concepts of heroes like Hercules. It's half God, half

God, half, you know, man, that sort of thing. Now, I would sort of agree with him on that.

I think that that's talking about some event, some rebellion, something happened there that this happened and God judged it.

And it was one of the reasons why there was a flood. There's a reason why you had giants in the land when they went in to conquer the land and all of that.

But also but also afterward. So it was it talks about afterwards. Yeah. So it was before the flood and afterward there were.

So was this still going on? I'm kind of picking your brain on this on on the view that you have of.

I sort of think it was. And at some point it was stopped. I mean, there's got to be it's. Goliath and his brothers, and I don't think they're necessarily mean brothers in the sense of the men who are all from one mother, like the same offspring.

Yeah, it's basically the same offspring or they were they were obviously mercenaries that were used by the

Philistines to do their bidding. Right. And because they were obviously enormous in size and big.

You know, what's kind of interesting about that whole Goliath episode is if you read it in the

Bible and in the Hebrew text and even in the

Septuagint text, if the Septuagint is using the Egyptian measurements, because that's where that was possibly translated.

OK, Goliath would have been around eight to nine feet tall. That's a pretty big dude.

Right. And it wasn't like he was some big gangly, you know, basketball player. I think he was muscled up and he was proportioned to his size.

Right. Heizer, however, takes the liberal view that he was maybe just six foot tall.

Yes. Three. Yeah. Which would be about the size of my youngest son. And that David and everybody else was maybe five foot, three inches tall, sort of like this

Tom Cruise sized shirt. Arm. I got little guys. Yeah.

So despite it, despite it being that there was. Oh, what was

I going to say there? Well, the Nephilim producing this race of giants, even though he takes that view that you have a demon seed that are these mighty giant warriors.

Yet he would regard Goliath as actually being six feet tall. Yeah. And I know. And he said that when in that in the idea of I'm Goliath, then

I had shoulders above everyone else is that he was probably evenly matched with Goliath.

He might have been around six foot tall or something. And I would I heard when I read that, I was like, really?

That's that's rather inconsistent. Yes, I know. And he carries on about in his in the very opening of his unseen realm.

He goes like, well, you know, there's weird passages in the Bible and you don't you know, we don't need to, like, find naturalistic explanations for all the weird passages.

We just need to let them be weird. Well, that is kind of weird to have a nine foot tall guy because we don't have those around as much anymore.

That's right. Yeah. So why would you all of a sudden take the liberal view, you know, just because a

Septuagint, you know, has something different than what the Mesoretic text says?

I just it's just odd. I don't. So trace out for us then that interpretation of Genesis six and then how that even becomes an explanation for demons and spirits in the world that Jesus is casting out later, thousands of years later in in his earthly ministry, the evil spirits that are possessing people and Heizer's explanation for who they are.

OK, so Heizer's. OK, so now this is in some of his material I haven't gone through all the way through.

I haven't I've only heard bits and pieces, study bits and pieces of this. But as I understand Heizer, and I'm sure it could be some one of your his

Heizerian fans that can correct us, you know, in the on X, you know, here and whenever this drops. But as I understand it, when those

Nephilim were killed in the flood, their spirits are what become the demons that we know in the

New Testament are not fallen angels that fell with Satan, you know, during his rebellion at some point that again is unnamed, but we know it happened at some point because he's in the garden.

Right. Right. And Jesus references these demons. Well, these demons are these Nephilim creatures.

And that when Jesus, one of his purposes of his ministry was to confront that and to get victory over those demons.

And that's why he could cast them out. When you goes to the Mount of Transfiguration, Heizer believes that's on Mount Hermon because it's believed that Mount Hermon or Hermon was the mountain where the angels came down and, you know, mated with the women and copulated with them and created, you know, this demon seed, you know, and.

So even though even though scripture doesn't tell us at all where the Mount of Transfiguration was.

Right now, I could very well have been Mount Hermon because that's the tallest mountain that was up in that area where where Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus was at the time.

Right. And but does that mean that it's is it just because it was a high mountain?

Actually, Mount Hermon actually does play is important in the Old Testament in that it talks about these two mountains, how one of they basically were the boundary markers of what

God had put under the ban. Right. I write about that in one of my articles. You can kind of go look that up.

So there's one Mount Tabor, I think is what they call it now or are in the New Testament.

But it was called something else. And Mount Hermon was at the north. And that word

Hermon or Hermon is connected etymologically, you know, it's connected to the word that we have as going under the ban.

So the idea would be that those are the boundaries of that which God has declared unclean and that Israel, he's going to use

Israel to judge, which is what he did. And he drove them from the land or, you know, for the most part, they drove people out.

And it's where he set up, you know, Israel and, you know, drove out those wicked nations. Yeah, but it comes up a lot in Joshua Mount Hermon as a boundary marker.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a boundary marker. Well, Heizer understands that from the book of Enoch and the 20 chapters of the book of Enoch, and that's important to keep in mind because Enoch is the one who the pseudepigraphy that was written around the intertestinal period and that was passed along by a lot of these

Jewish mystical sects. Yeah, that that book basically is given all these extra details that are in my opinion, just sort of the sci -fi fantasy of that day and age because they were really enamored with angels.

OK, and so they would create these stories like, you know, the chosen does,

I guess, Jesus and create things that were extra biblical to explain some of the things the

Bible doesn't explain. Like the mythology behind angels, where they come from and what they do and the demons and how they came there and all that sort of thing.

So this long history of battles between angels and demons that we're not privy to from scripture, but apparently the book of Enoch almost kind of in a

I thought of it is like a Seventh -day Adventist. Oh, White, what was her name?

The prophetess? Oh, Mary Baker Eddy. Is that right? No, no, no, no, no. She was the she was the

Christian science gal. Oh, OK. OK. What is what was her name? Ellen G.

White was Ellen G. White. Yeah, there you go. So the way that she had come up through these visions of all the wars between angels and demons that existed before the world began, it's the whole gap theory in Genesis one, one.

Oh, yeah, yeah. To two. So she she creates this whole other world in which angels and demons exist.

That's what the book of Enoch kind of felt like to me. That's what I think a book Enoch is. And there's a lot of, you know, a lot of the

Asuka Picker is like that because it was just it was speculative stuff that the people of that these

Jewish sects would basically take it upon themselves to, you know, write about. And they got, you know, these books basically got maintained as, you know, library sources.

Heiser and a lot of Old Testament scholars today, modern scholars in particular, seem to suggest that these books had a lot more influence on the way

Christians thought and believed than what I think that they did.

I think they give way too much authority to these books being influential in early church than what, you know, they really were.

Yeah. Certainly the church was aware of them. And I'm, you know, Aaron and some of these guys cited from them.

We have the reference of Jude. Yes, Jude does. But Jude is but again, it's material that there could have been some legit history in it.

It could have very well been that Enoch as a oral tradition was passed down. And that's what, you know, he said at one point.

And Jude is just getting that part that's true. Right. And putting it in his book.

But he's not talking about the nature of angels or any of that. Everybody thinks that, oh, because Jude, you know, cites this one section in Enoch, well, then the whole book must be worthy of our attention.

And we need to, like, speculate about the way angels behave or the way, you know, our cosmology is set up.

So I've heard I've heard Heizer say this was in an interview that he did with Remnant Radio.

And Heizer was kind of talking for a while about the reference of the book of Enoch in Jude.

And because that happens, he he was almost kind of wrestling in his mind as he was answering the question in the interview and was like, you know, then

I have to I have to follow that out to its logical conclusion, that if the Bible is 66 books that are divinely inspired and they're referencing the book of Enoch, well, then

I have to conclude. And he just kind of ended it there. And then the host, like, jumped right in and asked another question.

And I was frustrated because I was like, hang on. I'm wondering if he's like, was he was this close to the time he died?

It was it was near the end. It was probably a year away from before he died or something like that.

But it was pretty close to the end. Now, I read the opening chapter to reversing Herman.

OK. And he does talk about he does try to make it clear that I'm not saying it's canonical.

Right. Like somehow it got missed from being put in. So I've heard people say that like they'll defend

Heiser and say, well, he did not think that, you know, like the like the Ethiopian Orthodox do, that Enoch should have been included in canon.

Right. Right. But it was an important book. Well, OK, Heiser. OK, I guess you could say that it was certain groups of Christians thought it was important and they read it.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's something that the church should, you know,

I think this goes back to our understanding of scripture. If God's divinely revealed scripture, he's moved in his people to recognize that scripture.

And he has seen fit that the church would put their hands on those manuscripts,

Old Testament and New Testament. They would preserve them. They would be faithfully copied and preserved and with all of the errors and all that stuff.

And it got handed down. And it's in our fixed canon that the

Lord would see fit to include that book as well. It's not going to fall out of interest for almost eighteen hundred years and sort of languish in an

Ethiopian Coptic, you know, community without any knowledge from the other part of the

Christian community, you know, in the West or wherever. And without God knowing it,

I mean, to me, it's like God's going to God is the one who gave us his canon. He's going to see fit that we affirm those books that are canonical and authoritative in our lives as a church.

And these other books, while they might like the Book of Maccabees, I mean, yeah, it's got some historical information that might be helpful for us to understand the period of the

Jewish wars during the intertestinal period. But we don't take that as, you know,

OK, we're going to use these books to shape our theology and to help us understand and reinterpret the

Bible and all these other things, because I don't think that's necessary. It's just it's going way beyond what

God intended there. Sure. I mean, OK, so I just looked it up and it was Remnant Radio had done that interview with Heiser in twenty one and then it was at the start of twenty three that Heiser passed away.

Yeah. Yeah. He passed away in February of twenty three. Right. Correct. So when would that have been that he was when he was dismissing that Enoch would have been canon, did his mind ever change about that?

I don't know. I'm just I'm just reading that from his from his reversing Herman book that is it's at the it's in the opening introduction material.

He's kind of introducing his topic as far as I got in that. That was published in twenty seventeen. So, OK, so that was early on.

So that would have been before, you know, he I don't know if it later as his view caught on caught fire and began to be spread around that he was rethinking a lot of this stuff.

And well, maybe it should be in the canon or maybe it should be, you know, amended to the back of our

Bibles. Right. I mean, I don't know. OK, so let's let's bring this around to the harmfulness of this.

So we've kind of been the way we've been talking about it. It's basically just been this is Heizer's interpretation of this.

Right. So what would be the problems with the way that he's interpreting these things? And how is he is he giving exhortation or implication regarding these things?

Or does this does this even change for us the nature of God, the way that we understand the Trinity?

What would be some of the complications of the way that Heizer interprets Elohim or even we didn't even talk about this, the two

Yahweh's, what are the two powers in heaven? OK, so what is what does that mean by dual or two

Yahweh's? OK, so in the Old Testament, we as modern, you know,

Bible believing Christians who understand in the New Testament is God's complete revelation. We know that it's the full revelation of God and it reveals to us a father, son and Holy Spirit.

And as the church has hammered out that doctrine, there are three persons and one God. When we look back in the

Old Testament, we see hints of that really clearly hints of that Heizer won't

Heizer's conflicted. It's hard to pin him down because he he kind of bounces around.

On one hand, he will say we can't read our Christian theology back into the Old Testament. I'm like, why not?

If it's God has given us this fuller revelation, I want this to help us understand, you know, oh, my.

Oh, yeah. This is what was being talked about here in Jeremiah, you know? Yeah, right. Well, that's what you know I'm saying.

He doesn't think you should do that. I'm like, OK, well, I'm a strict biblicist. I get the whole thing about creeds and all that sort of thing comes from the

Bible. But the Bible as a whole, you read, look at the New Testament, you're going to see shadows of the of the

Trinity in the Old Testament. Right. You see that all throughout the Old Testament. But he'll say that, well, the

Jews wouldn't have understood that the the the Trinity like we understood the Trinity. So you can't really put that view on them.

And so in order to for them to understand the various places where you have what appears to be

God talk, God, the father talking to his son, like in Psalm two or God, I think in I think is in Genesis, is it in Genesis is when the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is in Genesis 18.

It talks about the Yahweh on Earth calling down fire from the Yahweh in heaven. Yeah, right. Well, obviously what

Abraham was probably encountering was a Christophany is Christ, you know, pre -incarnate, you know, appearance of Christ.

So you have the his audience with Yahweh in chapter 18 and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in 19.

Right. And it's that statement of Yahweh called down fire from Yahweh in heaven.

Yeah, that's correct. So the Jews would look at that and they would say, well, there's these two

Yahweh figures. Where is that coming from? Well, that belief that sort of that doctrine, again, emerged in various fringe groups of Jewish sects, you know, believers.

And it wasn't the mainstream of Jewish thought. In the

Heizer claims that when the New Testament Christians began to preach

Christianity, they would often appeal to this two powers in heaven doctrine that had been previously floated around in these

Jewish communities is, you know, these two parties, two Yahweh's in heaven. They would say, well, that's talking about God, the father and God, the son, you know.

So now we have a fulfillment in Christ and that the Jewish leaders at the time didn't want to have anything to do with Jesus being affiliated with Yahweh.

So they condemned that view as a heresy. But that view was kind of being condemned as a heresy before any of that took place, because it was kind of weird.

But he the thing with Heizer, you're asking about where he's problematic when you start getting down into the weeds of his stuff.

He's the authorities that he appeals to to bring about his views of the

Bible are extremely troubling and problematic in my in my mind, because many of them don't treat the

Bible as historic, you know, faithful revelation from God, but they'll treat it as like, you know, mythology.

It's just a religious text from the ancient world. That sort of thing.

And it's like, you know, they have no reverence for the Bible and what it is right now.

Heizer will claim that he does. This is what's so frustrating. He will say, oh, yeah, I'm a

I'm a, you know, I'm a normal Christian, dude. And Aaron does in the Trinity. I'm going to and I think he disputes inerrancy.

Does he really? OK, OK, he might redefine that. I'm not I'm not entirely sure about that.

But if I go on his Web sites, only stuff is still available online. They maintain it as kind of an archive and you can chase some of this stuff down.

For example, the whole thing about, you know, the Sethite view we were talking about a little moment ago.

Right. He he appeals to this one liberal guy over in Europe who does all of this study in ancient texts or whatever, who talk about angels and, you know, coming down and being with men.

And somehow this guy is like the absolute authority on this topic.

And that if you're a Christian living today, you have no excuse to ignore his his scholarship.

And if you're still, you know, promoting the Sethite view that the sons of God were just the godly line of Seth, the reign of what?

Well, then you're you're you're woefully out of date. You're being you're promoting error.

And I'm just like, OK, well, you're using a guy who doesn't even believe the Bible is God's word to bring you to that conclusion.

Do you not see the disconnect there? What on earth are you doing, dude? I mean, to me, that's problematic right off the bat.

We haven't really gotten into his monotheism stuff. I mean, the way that he talks about the

Elohim on the divine council, sometimes you read his material and it sounds like he's talking about a pantheon of gods that you would find in the

Roman, you know, pantheon or the Egyptian pantheon. I've heard that accusation made of him, like he either he's espousing some lesser form of polytheism or he or he know theism where Yahweh is just the top god as as a theist would believe, like in the in the

Egyptian mythology, you had Ra was the top god. Then you had all these other gods under him or in Greek, it was

Zeus and then all the other lesser gods. So Yahweh is just the top guy. And then there's all these undergods.

Right. He noted this in Justin's interview when we talked about this issue in his dissertation at the conclusion of his dissertation, which became the work that became his unseen realm.

He talks about this is what he writes. More specifically, the dissertation demonstrated that Deuteronomy four and Deuteronomy thirty two invents a monolatrous worldview, monolatrous being this similar concept of monotheism where it's

God's the top god worthy of worship, a conclusion shared by many scholars of Israelite religion.

Well, scholars that are liberal. I mean, it's I don't know of any evangelical scholar that teaches that if they do shame on them, he goes on.

The God of Deuteronomy created the other gods, which are not idols. Let's Yahweh be an idol maker.

But get this, he goes on to say and decreed they be worshiped by the non -elect

Gentile nations. Well, what does he mean by that? What do you mean you decreed them to be worshiped by the non -elect

Gentile nations? He goes on, this monolatrous context of Deuteronomy therefore requires that declarations that there are no gods beside Yahweh be understood as statements of incomparability, meaning that not that there's no other gods that exist, but that these other gods exist, but they're not comparable to Yahweh because they're not sovereign, they're not eternal, they're not because they were created or whatever.

And you know what I'm saying? But that phrase or this whole paragraph is just sloppy and it has terrible theology in it.

And if you read that, I mean, it's just like, oh, he's basically saying that God decreed these, you know, these

Elohim to be over the nations and that they were to be worshiped by the Gentile non -elect

Gentile nations. That's what he's saying. Right. That's what I'm reading in there saying.

I have people tell me, well, that's not what he meant. What he means is that he's giving them over because he rereads

Romans one, for instance, to mean that that's talking about the Tower of Babel incident. Oh, really? You gave them over to be, you know, to a depraved mind.

So the idea there is that these, you know, these Elohim were corrupted and they started to corrupt their ways.

And so God gave in and the sinners wouldn't return to him. These nations wouldn't turn to him for true worship.

So he gave them over to what they wanted to believe. And and so they started worshiping these, you know, divine beings, these

Elohim that God had established to be their guardian. Instead, they became their false gods, you know.

So would he then interpret like in Romans one where it goes on to say that they burn with passion for one another?

Is he is he reading? I have no idea. Would he be reading that of the

Nephilim mating? Is that is that kind of I'm wondering if he could be? I don't know.

I'd have to go in research. I just know he mentions that Romans one text in the unseen realm, like in a footnote or something, if I recall.

Funny. And I'm just I'm like, OK, dude, this is. But you see how he's basically creating this entirely alternate storyline of the

Bible, right? So you have to, you know, Jesus, Jesus is not coming to redeem sinners so that they could be saved and have eternal life with God and God could be reconciled with sinners and that he can restore the earth, you know, to back to where Eden is.

But that guy that Jesus's mission was to destroy these, you know, demons, these

Nephilim demon spirits that had somehow, you know, to take back the land and declare

Yahweh the victor and all this sort of thing. Some other area, another area that's really problematic is he holds to sort of these open theistic views.

Now, he'll probably deny that he would probably deny that. But when you read his material, he talks about, you know, how

God had to create free will creatures because he doesn't want them to be, you know, he wants them to worship him freely and they should be able to choose him and that he took a risk, which is open theism terminology.

Right. It's one of those weasel words, the idea that God doesn't know the future, but has he doesn't know the future.

He had a plan and he risked, you know, sharing it with the, you know, the spirit family that the

Elohim and the human family that he created. And there was all this sin and and all of these falls that happened.

And so then God had to he hasn't called a plan B, but God had to basically hide what he was going to do in order to overturn the rebellion that these

Elohim creatures did, you know, against humanity. And that's why the mission of Jesus was top secret.

That's why it was a mystery. Well, when I read talk about mysteries in the Bible, just talk about something that hadn't been previously revealed.

Right. Sure. In the sense that God's purposes had hadn't come to completion yet. It wasn't like God is trying to hide and he has no sovereignty and control over his free creatures if they know his plans.

Well, they'll try to thwart him. Well, they can try to thwart him. But, you know, Nebuchadnezzar was quite clear in Daniel four that there's no one who can withstand his will.

I would think that would also include angelic creatures that he's created. Right. You know what I mean?

So what would be the most practical dangers then of of following Heizer's theology out?

Where is it going to lead somebody? I well, what I see it leading to is people getting into all of these speculative notions about angels and the

Nephilim stuff. I where I really first kind of heard this bantered around and I was with the haunted

Cosmos podcast. If you remember those guys. Sure. They're still doing that.

As far as I know, I kind of let off listening to them. Well, they jumped the shark and went from being speculative to this is all real.

So that's yeah. Yeah. Bigfoot is a fairy and and a descendant of the Nephilim. I had the wrong view of Bigfoot.

I was totally. That's not. But at any rate. But yeah, but it's all of this speculative stuff that's like it's pointless.

I mean, I guess there's some place where that I guess you can talk about some of the things, you know,

I'm not saying that the world is supernatural. I'm not trying to find naturalistic solutions to what is weird stuff that happens.

There are demonic things that happen. There are. Sure. You know, there are demonic creatures that are cryptids and all that stuff could very well exist.

But to say that that's like something that should occupy the attention of the Christian to the point to where you have

Bible studies, there was a whole entire little affiliation of Baptist churches recently that split because he's there was a group of guys that were trying to promote this stuff as being in in that compatible to the

London Baptist 1689. It's not right. Heizer's view of monotheism is terrible.

I mean, he's you know, he's believing that there's other gods out there that there you know, that there's could be you can't say that there's false gods or.

You know, or there's no other gods, because there are gods in his view, there would be gods, right?

Yeah. And that's just OK. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches. Yeah. So so let me conclude with this question, because I think this this really comes down to the biggest danger.

How does Heizer's emphasis on the unseen realm and his interpretation of all of this potentially shift focus away from human sin and our own responsibility, our own rebellion against God, and and therefore it it it corrupts the gospel.

How would this corrupt the gospel message? Well, it corrupts the gospel in that. Well, for example, and I was reading this in his reversing

Hermann book, is that he sees a lot of man's sin, the things that have sinfully happened, wars and all that sort of thing, that these fallen angels are the ones who sort of introduce men to secret knowledge and all of this sort of thing to where men don't really hold the responsibility for their sin.

And a lot of the things that happen is that these angels are the ones who brought this stuff to them.

These angels are ones who taught them this stuff and that men just sort of did it and it messes them all up rather than it being something centered on man's heart that has been given over to his sin and being separated from God spiritually that needs to be redeemed.

Well, it's really these angels, these Nephilim, these fallen creatures that are the ones who have done this to them.

And so immediately right there, that's something that's going to how would you say it's going to be something that's going to definitely poke a hole in the idea of total depravity of man's sin nature.

That needs to be it takes responsibility from him and places it on the devil made me do it.

Yeah, exactly like what Flip Wilson used to say. Yeah. He also has this idea. This is why charismatics are kind of warm to his stuff is because they have a more territorial view of spiritual warfare that it's taking territory from the devil.

That's the whole idea of the New Apostolic Reformation, where you've got to go in and take over all of the institutions and make them

Christian or whatever. Right. You see this among the Christian nationalist types, both millennial and a lot of their thinking.

It's kind of funny how this they do seem to find common ground on Heizer. You have the right.

Yeah. The reform guys who are dominionists and you have the New Apostolic Reformation guys who are dominionists.

And well, Heizer kind of speaks right to that. So it appeals to both views in being able to take over and Christianize the world, essentially, which is probably the way that they turn your ideas that Christ has come.

He's declared a victory over all of these demonic forces. And now we have been given and tasked with that responsibility as a new household of God, as a new divine council, to go and reclaim that territory of the world from him or for the

Lord. And rather than it being a matter of truth, you need to submit to biblical truth that is given to you with your new mind at regeneration and conform to the image and mind of Christ.

Well, then you go and you conquer the territories first, foremost, you overcome those territories, and then you can do the rest of that.

So it, I think, puts the focus on the wrong things. I agree that we need to have

Christian school teachers and judges and politicians, of course. I mean, who wouldn't believe that as a believer?

But their focus is that that's your primary goal. That's your main thing you need to do.

Yeah. And then these other things will fall underneath it. Right. Exactly. And spreading the gospel. It should be our primary goal in getting the gospel out to the nations.

And then as people become Christians, then Christians will get into these other places. And yeah, make changes for the sake of sinners.

Yeah, exactly. Yes. They don't sin because they're in a bad area or whatever. Right. They love sin more than they love righteousness.

The darkness more than light. I mean, that's, you know, that's now a lot of go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, I'll tell your folks are listening to this. If you go to my I don't know how you'll link this in the notes or whatever.

If you go to my pod or to my podcast, to my website, to my blog, I do have a list of articles and things of other people have written or some books that are probably good to kind of go through.

A lot of what Heizer is doing is Gnostic in my mind. He's got some kind of secret knowledge that if you look at the

Bible my way, well, then you'll understand all these wonderful truths that have never been seen before.

And and I just think that's that's not how you read the Bible. Well, how new and innovative is the stuff that Heizer put out there?

Because it just kind of see that. Yeah, go ahead. Yes. That's what I was going to say. That's right. A lot of this divine counsel angel stuff, you know, from Psalm 82 came within the last 150, 200 years, particularly as New Old Testament studies began to take fruit and get strengthened among various, you know, higher critical schools like over in Europe and here in the

United States. And he's basically taken material that is, as a lot of it had already been refuted back in the early 20th century.

And he's basically mainstreaming it. And if you look at it. There are a lot of the newer

Old Testament scholars, scholars are glomming onto that, they're re looking at the

Old Testament and they would be like, you know, solid men, in my opinion, some a lot of them, but they hold to some of his views and how you read the

Old Testament. They're getting roped into it. Yeah. Ancient Near Eastern mysticism and that sort of stuff. Yeah.

Cosmology should reread the Bible. And I think that a lot of people are unaware of just how many pots that Heizer has had his hands in.

So a lot of this, a lot of the stuff that you'll watch on the Bible Project's channel was if you watch the credits at the end, it will say that an advisor to the stuff that they put in that video was

Michael Heizer and just about everything on Angels and Demons that comes from the Bible Project was influenced by Heizer.

And then you have Logos Bible Software. I think he was one of the scholars in residence at Logos and was for years and years.

And he lived in Washington state. I had a pastor friend recently tell me he had spoken with some folks who went to a church where he was, where he attended.

And the pastors basically made him one of their teaching pastors and elders there.

And they said, before you knew it, he was teaching all this stuff. And totally. And we were all, you know, a lot of us were just these red flags are popping up all over the place that we've never heard of stuff before.

And of course, he sees that as a badge of honor while you're learning the Bible correctly. Really? Usually when someone tells me,

I haven't seen this before. Yeah, I haven't seen it before because you're totally, you know, making it up. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a problem. Out of your. That's a problem. You know what I'm saying? There are no there are no new truths.

There's old heresies that are packaged as new. So, yeah, it's like a new perspective on Paul.

There is no new perspective on Paul. Yeah, right. Always been some kind of. So anybody tells you it's new or something like that, you immediately should you should immediately grab your wallet because you're trying to rip you off.

Yeah. Well, Fred, I appreciate your time and you're helping us out with coming up with one of our

Q &As while I'm on vacation. And incidentally, by the time this program airs,

Shepcon has already come and gone by this time. So I know you're probably getting ready for the

Shepherds conference coming up here pretty soon. We are. We're anticipating I think it's like four thousand people.

It'll be different and kind of bittersweet, I think, because John's not there. Right. And I mean, he hasn't been he wasn't really there last year, but I mean, he was there in spirit because he did make a video for everybody and and he was around.

But now we know he's not there at all. And yeah, so it'll be different. I'm looking forward to seeing folks.

And I won't be there, though. I won't be one of them. Yeah, I made a surprise visit last year, but I'll be on the road this time around.

So I know. And we saw you come in a tent. I'm like, is that Gabe Hughes? Yeah. I didn't even tell anybody

I was coming. I just showed up. So, but man, I appreciate you a lot. And of course, grace to you has always been a beloved ministry to me.

And we're praying for you guys in the ministry that you do there. I need to get one of those doctrines of grace books because I haven't got one of those myself.

Oh, have you not got one of those? No, I didn't fill out. I got the card in the mail, never filled it out and sent it back in.

So you know what? They're putting in the pastor's box this year. Oh, yeah.

You're going to break my heart. Of course, of course, we can.

I'm sure we can find a way to get you a copy of the doctrines of grace. We're still sending those out a little bit.

So I'll try to you can have my copy if I get one. Well, Tom will be there if you hand one to Tom.

I'm going to see him then the next weekend. So, OK, yeah, I'll do that. I'll get it from Tom. I'll get it.

All right. All right. Well, God bless you, brother. All right. Thank you so much. And I'll have a link to his blog so you can find the articles that he did on Michael Heiser's teaching that will be in the show notes.

Hey, I want to mention to you once again that we are on the road. We're on vacation. All of these episodes this week were prerecorded.

Next week, there will not be any episodes. So let's see. Today is Friday the 13th.

Yes, this was a special Friday, the 13th episode. We were talking about ghost stories today and then 16, the 16th through the 20th.

There will not be any episodes. God willing, I'll be back on the 23rd. You will still hear the sermons, though.

They will still air on the Sunday edition of the podcast on the 15th and the 22nd.

Hey, I want to mention to you the White Harvest Conference. I have spoken. I've had the privilege of speaking at the

White Harvest Conference for the last two years in Marble Hill, Georgia. It's coming back again in 2026 for the

White Harvest Discipleship Conference that's going to be held on September the 12th. And you can register for this conference by going to White Harvest MIN .com.

This year, the speakers are myself. Privileged to be a part of this cast again.

Todd Friel, Ray Rhodes, Justin Peters, Tim Challies and Jim Osmond.

And the theme of the conference is going to be adversity and the believer. We've actually talked a lot about this in our church in just the past year.

So I'm privileged to be a part of this conference and to be preaching on this particular topic. If it's something that you want to attend, you think you've got yourself free to be in Marble Hill, Georgia on September the 12th.

Again, you can find out more details about this conference by going to White Harvest MIN .com.

Seating is limited. If you go to the website and you register here in the month of March, use the code

Hughes. That's my last name, H -U -G -H -E -S. And you will get tickets for a discount if you register here in the month of March.

So again, go to White Harvest MIN .com. Use the code Hughes, H -U -G -H -E -S.

And I think it's 10 % off your tickets. If you if you want to do this, if you want to plan for this conference and then join us there in Marble Hill, Georgia in September.

I I'm actually in the area this weekend, not Marble Hill specifically.

It's about an hour and a half from where I'm going to be. But I'm in Atlanta visiting my dad who has been put in a home and he is deteriorating, having been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.

So your prayers for our travels and for my parents would be greatly appreciated.

You know, one of the things that I've been asking my dad a lot ever since he received this diagnosis, which was in September, and he's he's gone downhill really fast since then.

But something that I continually ask my dad is, do you remember the gospel?

And and he delights to say yes, and he remembers Jesus. And then I remind him of the gospel, even though he says, yes,

I still share it with him so that he is reminded that Christ is his savior. As as his memory is slipping from him.

May the Lord bless him to hold on to that. So if you're going to pray for something for my dad, that's that's what to pray for.

Pray that he does not forget that glorious gospel message that Jesus Christ died for our sins.

He rose again from the dead. All who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

And in Christ Jesus, I know my dad will get a new body that is not failing him like this one is.

He gave so many years of of service to the Lord in Christian radio, proclaiming the gospel, booking concerts.

And I, I learned the gospel from my dad. I'm a Christian today because of my dad. It's so difficult to watch him have to go through this and to not be there for him because I live so far away and and I'm unable to move my parents.

My mom doesn't want to leave Georgia anyway. So they're they're remaining there in Georgia. I'm doing for them what

I can. But you can certainly be a blessing to us in praying for my parents.

Don and Polly are their names. My dad was a faithful listener to this broadcast for many, many years.

He's he taught me everything I know about broadcasting and otherwise. So thank you very much for your prayers as we are traveling.

And and as I said, God willing, I hope to visit with you again. I got to look at the date again because I forgot on March the 23rd.

But don't forget, you'll still be able to catch some sermons on Sunday as well. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness and grace to us.

And may we go in the love of Christ, sharing the grace of God with all we encounter, as said in Colossians chapter four.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

May we share the hope of the gospel with all that we have the chance to share the gospel with.

It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. This is when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the Web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good gospel teaching Christ centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again Monday for more