Blurry Creatures - EP: 134 Ghosts with Dr. Michael Heiser

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

The legendary Dr. Michael Heiser returns to the show for a second time. Heiser is a giant in this space, and is best known for his chart-topping book ‘Unseen Realm’. In just his second interview appearance this year, Dr. Heiser joins us to discuss the biblical view and scriptural understanding of ghosts. What are ghosts? Does God allow us to see our lost loved ones or are they just demonic spirits? We also explore the Rephaim and the delineation between the spirits of the dead and spiritual entities. Dr. Heiser is one of the rare and few theologians to get invited to speak at UFO conferences, he's not afraid to get weird and typically explores topics that make most of his peers and academic colleagues nervous. Join us in prayer also as we continue to ask for his healing and recovery from cancer. Mike has been generous to give us some of his time during a difficult season and for that, we are super grateful.  guest: https://drmsh.com contact: [e-mail] www.blurrycreatures.com Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com Aaron Green: https://www.instagram.com/aaronkgreen/ Mastering: ironwingstudios.com Outro Song: TimeCop1983: timecop1983.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke's so often, people email us, and they have this story, they're out in their woods, and they're looking in the bushes, and they go, what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say, what is that? What is this stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs, and that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs, you know, live as long as possible. I just lost my dog in December.

And I would have just, I would have loved more time with Carl. And one of the things you can do to get more time with your dog is to feed them better. Dog owners don't usually realize that live nutrients that their dog needs to thrive or missing from the food. You just talked about. What is that, right? That's where Rough Green comes in. It's America's number one dog supplement that you sprinkle on top of their food.

It's packed with prebiotics, enzymes, omega oils, and 20 live vitamins and mineral support digestion, energy, and overall health from the inside out. It's all natural made in the USA. And thousands of dogs are feeling younger, more energetic and healthier than they have in years. That's why we love it. I'm giving it to our two dogs. You know, and I've got older dogs, Nate, as I said. And so, you know, since they've been getting Rough Greens with their food, I've noticed

they have more energy, their joints hurt less. They're older. I mean, they were talking 12 and 13 years old. And Rough Green's really made a difference in their energy levels and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free Jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to Rough Greens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF Greens.com discount code blurry.

Rough Greens makes any dog food better. Listen, Luke, we know that we live in a world where everything is fake, fake food, fake clouds, fake news, everything's fake. And you know what? You get tired of it. And you're just like, if I want to buy a shirt or something nice, can I just, please give me something real. Quinn's is an amazing company that does high quality everyday essentials. So we're moving in. We're in spring here.

We're moving in the summer. Maybe you need to refresh that wardrobe so you're ready for the summer, t-shirts, shorts. These are everyday essentials made from premium materials. Here's a chance to refresh your wardrobe for the summer. At the price, it's 50 to 60% less than similar brands. And we always ask, how do they do this, Nate? And it's because they work directly with ethical factories, cut out middlemen. So you're paying for the quality, not the brand markup.

And everything is designed to last and look good, baby. Well, if you want stuff that's the real deal, go to quince.com. Like we have, I got a whole fleet of new T-shirts this last time, man. Because I'm ready for the spring and summer. I got 100% ringspung cotton shirts. I got a couple floated shirts with light and air to wear around, work in the yard, or wear to the studio. If you're like me and you want to get some new threads for the summer, refresh your wardrobe at Quinn's, go to quins.com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Now available in Canada. You're in America's hat. You want the goods. You can get it now. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quins.com slash blurry. On the one hand, we have a lot of people in churches that are evangelical deists, an oxymoron here, believing skeptics. And that is, they're very willing to affirm God and a Trinity and Jesus and the virgin birth and the resurrection and these things.

But then they want to sort of turn their back on or deny or explain away some of these other things. And folks, newsflash, it all comes from the same source. It's called the Bible. So on what basis are we allowed to affirm one set of things and then deny another set comes from the same source? So I tend to be an academic who objects to that, which gets me in the trouble from time to time because it makes other academics nervous. It makes Christians nervous to talk about these things. But that's what I want to know from you.

That's the question I have for you, the person out there in the audience who doesn't want to affirm these things on what basis? do you make this distinction? On what basis do you say this is real and this is not when both both things come from the same source? That's what I want to know. I wouldn't say that that's always a demon. I would say we're forbidden from engaging in necromancy. We don't know who we're talking to. We don't know what the other side is. It could be a counterfeit, could be an entity. So I think the reason we're forbidden from trying to contact the debt on our own is because we can be harmed and misled by it. Not because it can't be done, but for those two reasons. It's not our term. We have no reason to suspect that we can control the encounter. And so we should stay away from it.

The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermann event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Welcome back to blurry creatures today. Our guest, he has been immortalized on our show as one of the introses.

One, just one of our listeners recognizes the voice in our intro. Then it busts the whole paradigm, right? Yeah. Dr. Michael Heiser's coming on the show. He made a special appearance. I mean, Luke and I were just talking after the show about how he hasn't done, I don't know how we got on the list, but he's done two shows and we're one of them. Yeah.

Amazing. You know, if you think about it, pray for Mike, he's got, he's still going through all the cancer stuff. And so we're very grateful for his time. And, you know, his, you know, his view and teaching, of the Bible, Divine Counsel, DeRome 32, World View, you know, Psalm 82, those things are foundational for a lot of the way that we also, you know, read and interpret the Bible.

This book, The Unzained Realm, did be the first to say that he didn't create it, he just compiled it, you know, and put it together. But I know it's been instrumental for a lot of people in our community, for both of us, especially understanding the blurry stuff. It brings the supernatural back and puts the supernatural back into the Bible,

as much as that term has. You know, some bad commentations, in some circles, it really is the way the ancients understood, understood the Bible and understood their own world. And I think it's paramount in our show, Nate, in the way that we try to interpret all the weird things people experience and see, try to understand that and fit that into a biblical worldview because that's where we believe you can make sense of all of this. And Mike has been a big part of that, I know, in your journey and the journey of the show. And so we're just grateful for to have them back. And, you know, he just, you know, he just,

the guy doesn't need any intro in this space. Yeah. Mike's just generous and you can throw any question at him and it's not too weird. And I appreciate that, uh, that attitude as a scholar that everything's welcome to talk about. And he said some really great things and I'm excited to edit this one and put it together for you guys. And, uh, go support Mike and what he's doing. Pray for Mike. And we don't say that lightly and we don't say that generically either.

This is a really cool community here with Bloor your Creatures and all the, the guests and the people and everything going on. and I feel a sense of gratitude that just a couple of guys asking questions we've made friends of some of these these legends in this space and they actually give us give us an hour and a half when they've you know when they're dealing with a lot of stuff in their own lives so more than grateful for my Kaiser we're going to be watching his movie of the unseen realm next week it'll already happen at the time you hear this but it's just cool it's been nothing but a blessing to our And we just wanted to say thanks to all the members. You guys sold out BlurieCon before we even put it on the website.

And we're sorry for everyone out there that listens to this show, loves this show, and couldn't get tickets. For our first conference, we had no idea what to expect. And you guys bought all the tickets in a matter of hours. It's unbelievable. How much love you guys have for this podcast and what you're showing us. We promise in the future we'll have a bigger venue. But for now, let's get Mike Heiser on the show. you're now entering

the blurry verse we do have the legend Gandalf himself on this podcast and we'll have to say welcome back to blurry creatures Dr. Michael Heiser we, I just want to say thanks again and to you because you were a big part of my own just, you know, our last episode I told you, just kind of putting some pieces together like where sort of the Bigfoot creature

could fit into the biblical narrative and some of these other, you know, creatures that really opened my mind and really help us launch this show. So I don't think blurry creatures would be here without. you. So thank you so much for your work and what you've done to this community and giving us a platform and, you know, in some ways to explore these ideas. So thank you. And thanks for coming back on our show. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me back. Glad to see you guys have fun

with it. Oh, we love it. I would echo that and say that. I know we have, we have communities within our community that are reading Unseen Realm and going through the book. And I think, like Nate has said, I think in this space where we are, you know, trying to explain the things people see and experience things people will call supernatural, even though that term is probably not great because of some of the things attached to it, but it is the term. And, you know, I know you have the same view that I think the church is underserved at this point in time underserved sort of the marriage of the supernatural and the natural in separating those. And so, yeah, we're grateful to have you back. I know that a lot of our worldview comes out of the stuff you wrote. And I know you always

say it wasn't you're not your original thoughts you just you just put you compiled it but but we're grateful for the for the work you do and i know nate and our fans of the podcast and of your books and so good to have you back mike it's really good to see you we're doing a gold members movie night with watching the unseen realm you put it on youtube and we're all going to watch it on youtube now that's good idea yeah so we're going to get a bunch of people to watch that together we have to found this app where we can like our communities we can all watch movie at the same time it's kind of fun so lots of stuff. Send me that. I'd like to see that. All right. We'll have to have you pop in. Yeah. If you like, it's pretty great.

That'd be funny. We'll send you the link. Come in for a Q&A or something. Yeah. That would be awesome. That would be fun. So, yeah, so I think this episode kind of was like six months ago I wanted to do this episode. I know you've been working and get your strength back and our community's been praying for you a lot. And thank you for coming on the show again. And I know it's been ups and downs and hard times but appreciate it and um you posted something about how like you know the spirits of of the giants are different than the spirits of dead humans and there's a there's a delineation between these two things that's something that comes up a lot on our show trying to give people context of like what are what are ghosts

what are these they don't seem like they're they seem sort of like wandering lost people sometimes the stories that we hear yeah or echoes date like it's like there's a it's like sometimes people describe stuff as on a loop which doesn't really have a whole whole lot of, other than inspiring fear and people, it doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of demonic connotation, right? And so I think we in this space, and I'm sure you are, you and your, in your space as well are just, you're hesitant to just to broad brush everything with demonic, especially if you understand the scriptures. And I know that's why we're, we're sitting here and you're sitting there is that you are the, you're the expert with a 10,000

hours on how the ancients would have viewed this and probably more than 10,000, 20,000, whatever it is, where I'm sure you've tipped the scales on that. But we wanted to bring you on and talk about what the ancient Hebrews and what the scriptures does say about ghosts, familiar spirits, and even some of the things we see in the Old Testament. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for?

I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. I like to be simple. I like to be easy. I'm going to be throwing away money on big wireless carriers. You too can say goodbye to overpaying for wireless, get a simple bill, and that's where Mint Mobile comes in. So stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. That's what you do. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless service for a fraction of what the big carriers charge.

And you get to keep your phone number, get to keep your coverage, most importantly. And it runs on the nation's largest 5G network. So the question becomes, why has everyone been acting like this has to be expensive? It doesn't have to be. Dr. Judd Burton's out there dialing up blurry every day, giving us the scoop on what's going on in the academic world and the ancient world on MintMobile. Loud and clear on the job sites, way out in the middle of nowhere, Texas.

And if you want to save money, just like the illustrious Dr. Judd Burton, switch to MintMobile. If you like your money, say where it is. Mittmobles for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's mintmobile.

com slash blurry. Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month, five-gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full-price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. Yeah, it's actually a question of vocabulary

and whether terms that appear together redefine each other or whether they're just different categories. For instance, there's a term Maitim that's used in Hebrew where literally it's the dead. And so you have to ask yourself the question, okay, we have here a prohibition, for instance, against contacting the dead, where the dead wants living.

Is that why they're called the dead? That would seem to make sense. So right away, you can't really apply maintain to non-human evil spirits because they weren't once living beings that died and now they're the dead. So you've got this separate category, this apparently separate category. And that's something that I think has not been observing. very well in discussions, you know, about the underworld and so on and so forth, because a lot of our English translations will take these terms, and may team as one, O, which gets translated

as spirit or, you know, departed spirits or something like that, O vote is the plural. And they'll get translated as though they are the necromancer themselves. Oh. The person, like the medium, you know, doing exorcism. For instance, I wrote a couple of verses down here that we can we can talk about and look up. But if you go to, oh, let's see, what's a good one to go to? Deuteronomy 18. We might as well start with Deuteronomy 18, because that gets referenced a lot. You have Deuteronomy 1811.

And this is a list of forbidden practices. So you have, I'm reading ESV. I'll go back to verse 10. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer. And then you hit verse 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer. And medium there is someone who asks the O, or questions the Ove. And necromancer is Yidaoni.

Literally it's called a knowing one. You know, it sort of sounds like it's the person. The person involved is the medium and so on and so forth. But if you go to Leviticus 2027, that's really not possible to look at it that way. A man or a woman who is, this is ESV, who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. Well, the passage doesn't really literally say that. The passage, you know, literally has a man or a woman that in them is an O for a, you know, one of these other entities, or a knowing one.

A man or a woman who in them is, again, a no or a yidaoni, a knowing one shall surely be put to death. So it's not really a reference to the person who's the medium. It's a reference to being inhabited or possessed by one of these entities. And so the question is you've got different vocabulary now. You've got Maitim, you've got Yidaoni, the knowing one. You've got Ove or OVote, again, these spirits. Are they all the same or are they different categories?

And, you know, these terms show up maybe a dozen times. There's a fourth term that gets involved here that's used one time, Itteam, and that is properly translated in Ghost. Let me give you the reference for that, so we can put these all on the table here. That's Isaiah 193. Itteam has a very clear Acadian cognate. Etemu spelled exactly the same way in terms of consonants from Hebrew to Acadian. And the etamu is a type of spirit being, it's a ghost or like the spirit of a deceased ancestor,

something like that. So ghost is a pretty good translation. So you've actually got four different terms here. And the fundamental question is should they all be put together and point to one entity, one kind of entity, which would be the spirit of human dead? Or are they different? Are they different critters? Okay, different blurry creatures to go with the theme of the podcast here. And my, my predilection is to look at them as being different categories. And so we shouldn't be equating may team, for instance, necessarily with an evil non-human spirit, that those two things can be different. You can have,

You can have spirits of deceased ancestors, your ghosts of the human dead, and you can have these other entities that were never human. There's something else. And they all inhabit the underworld because this is the realm of the dead in Old Testament,

Israelite thought. Everybody goes to Sheal because everything dies. And in Sheal, you have the human dead. And actually, this is where they're in existence. And it's a very undesirable. dark place. I mean, for those who have watched, I guess, stranger things, you know, maybe that's a good analogy, you know, the way they just depict the upside down, this cadaverous existence where even the air is sort of lethal. It's just, you know, there's just death everywhere.

And the righteous in the Hebrew Bible hoped to be delivered from Shiel. They wanted to be delivered from death. And so you get, you get different Psalms, in other words, that describe the psalmist's hope of being with the Lord, walking, you know, with the Lord or in the Lord's presence, and not Sheal, you know, to be taken out of Sheal. So this was the hope of the righteous in the Old Testament. But there was this place, but what we would call the afterlife just generally, that Israelites imagined everybody goes to because everybody dies. In that place, there are spirits of the human dead, because that's where we all go.

And you have these other entities as well. So my predilection is to see these things as very possibly disparate categories. And I'm excluding one term here that definitely is not a normal human debt, and that is Raphaim. The Raphaim are also in the underworld. Isaiah 14, Psalm 80, verse 10. I think it's Isaiah 14, 9. You have these places where the Raphaim are in Sheal. and they are the spirits of the giants.

Once the giants were slain, they inhabit the underworld. And since they were viewed as the spawn of the sons of God from Genesis 6, the Raphaim or Anakim, according to Deuteronomy 2 and Deuteronomy 3, you read through both of those chapters. The Raphaim are Anakim. And the Anakim, according to numbers 1333, come from the Nepali. So you get this other category now. And that becomes fodder.

That's the most important link in ancient Jewish thought of when you get into the Second Temple period, the intertestamental literature and stuff that's between the Old Testament and the New Testament, books like Enoch, for instance. When you get there, there's universal agreement among Jewish writers. And this is unusual because Jewish writers rarely agree on anything in the literature. But this is, there's unanimity here that demons, again, evil spirits, also known as bastard spirits. We can talk about why they get some of this terminology. But unclean spirits, evil spirits, demons, bastard spirits, they all come from the disembodied spirits of dead giant clams, dead Nephilim, dead Nephene, dead Raphaine.

And so passages like Psalm 8, 10 and, you know, Isaiah 14, 9, and Job 26, verse 5, that have the Refaim as members of the underworld. And they are not just merely called, you know, the human dead. Again, it gets its own terminology there. This is the prime source for that Second Temple belief that demons were the disembodied spirits of Dead Nephline. And that is ubiquitous in Second Temple literature, scrolls, things like that. It's very consistent. So what do you think of the sort of the echoes are?

Like when people say their house is haunted, there's some sort of spirit there that doesn't seem to have the character traits of, say, like a spirit of a dead giant or something. Because we, you know, we could piece together sort of what their personalities were like. You know, a lot of cannibalism, you know, historically speaking, they weren't, you know, it doesn't sound like people liked them very much. They were chasing them to islands and they were getting rid of them as much. as they could. What, you know, sometimes there's these just stories of these people. I mean, it's so many times and so many people email us about their, they're experiences, or it's like

there's this almost benevolent creature. It's like, it's like someone in period dress, right? That just seems to be like on a, sitting on a bed or in a window or. Well, they're more, they're more like first Samuel 2813, where Samuel is, is brought up from the underworld. Yeah. And he's grumpy. Okay. He says, why have you heard me?

Why have you bothered me? But he's not malevolent. You know, it's Samuel. So you have instances like this. And in that particular episode, Samuel is called an Elohim. Elohim is just, again, as people who are familiar with my work will know.

Elohim is sort of a generic term like, you know, quotes, like spirits. You would call something an Elohim, if that something, was by nature a disembodied spirit, disembodied member of the spiritual world, the unseen realm, which the afterlife, of course, is part of.

So in that instance, you don't have an evil spirit. Right. You have something else. And so to me, that opens the door, interpretively when it comes to the Hebrew Bible. And then there's also hints of this in the New Testament as well, where you have a category legitimately that is a goal. ghostly visitation from from some person who was once alive and is now, you know, part of the

afterlife world. You know, I've heard, you know, I've never had had a ghostly encounter myself, but I've had friends who have no reason to lie to me. Some of them are pastors. They just, you know, they get into conversations and they just want you to know. Like I have a friend who's a pastor who went to a funeral of a friend who was a mutual friend of ours. And the deceased person for whom the funeral was being held was himself a pastor. And this other pastor said, we were at the funeral. I happened to look across the cemetery away from the gathering, and there he was. You know, and we just stood there.

We made eye contact, and it was him. And then when I looked back a little bit later, he was gone. And, you know, it didn't know what to do with that. They didn't have a category for that. Again, it's obviously not a malevolent sort of episode. We don't have like poltergeist activity. There's no demand for blood sacrifice. Right, right.

You know, feed me a blood offering. It's nothing like that, but like you hear in some of these horrific accounts. I was a friend with another lady who's now herself deceased, but she had to tell me, and what was interesting here is I did an appearance on the old Art Bell show, coast to coast a half years ago. Yeah. And I was on that show a lot. But for one of those episodes, I've been on over 30 times.

It's a fun show. And it's nice to be tolerated as a Christian, you know, on that show. Coast to Coast has been very good to me. But I got a phone call a couple days after one of the shows. And it was a lady that said, is this Mike Heiser? And I said, yeah. She said, I just, I heard you the other night on Coast to Coast Day. I want you to know that the appearance at first frightened me because my husband's name,

was Mike Heiser and he just died. So they spelled their last name a little bit differently. I spell it EI and they spelled it I.E. And we got to talking about her and her husband and whatnot and she lived in Indianapolis. And so one of our trips through back to Pennsylvania where we're from, I stopped at her house. And, you know, just a visitor. Her name was Fern. I wound up naming a character in one of my novels after. But Fern told me the story that after her husband had died and after the funeral, she was at home one one evening and her husband just showed up in the living room, you know, where they would spend most of their evenings together. And she said, I could see his, I could see him entirely except for his feet.

There were no feet. Like the vision just ended, you know, about at his knees. Yeah. But it was him. And he drifted over to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. And that was it. And he was gone. So, yeah, it was like, you know, one of those, you know, one of those things that you'd have happened to you,

If you were, you know, you've lost a loved one and your loved one wants you to know, it's okay. You know, I'm okay. My own parents had something of this happened when my dad's dad died. And they were, this was after the funeral. And they were lying awake in their bedroom. And my mom had this clock that would talk. You know, you could program it to say, get up, wake up, you know, there were a few phrases

you could use. It was just one of these, you know, novelty items, you know, that you'd have on the wall. It was this, I think it was a cat or something like that, but it would speak. It's like the singing fish, right? Yeah, yeah. Billy Bass. Yeah. But this, this clock said to them, it's okay.

Everything's okay, okay, okay. And that was it. Weird. And that was something his dad used to say all the time. So it freaked my mom out. She threw the clock away, you know, the one right in the trash. Yeah. Yeah.

Looking to see what's happening around your home? Rings battery doorbell helps you track packages and see who's at your door in real time. The outdoor cam plus protects your yard at night with a wide field of view and clear a retinal 2K video. Or upgrade to 4K cameras and doorbells with retinal vision for ultra-clear zoom in detail. Your door, your yard. your home. With Ring, it's protected. Shop cameras, doorbells, and more at ring.com now. But that's, you know, there's some of people that we have, we hear these kinds of stories a lot, and they're coming more and more. And it makes you wonder, you know, because I, that's,

yeah, what's going on? Well, more of the fundamentalist Christians think they, they're afraid of all this. They think it's, it's all demonic. Everything's nefarious. There's nothing. You know, they have a very hard line in the sand. This is all bad. And I'm like, I think in these, in those three examples, examples that I gave you. Those are the ones in my immediate experience. I think taking the 1st Samuel 2813 instance, what happens there in that chapter, I think there are times when God providentially allows such contact. That's the conclusion I draw from that. For whatever purpose he has in it, I think sometimes the purpose is to just bring comfort, something very simple like

that. It's not drawn out. It doesn't become, you know, an idol in their theology. It doesn't become something that they're going to go worship and adore now. It's just something that happened. And it brought comfort to them when they were able to process it and think about it. Of course, in Samuel's case, it brings condemnation to Saul. Saul is going to be judged by the words of Samuel, as, you know, occurs earlier in the book, too. When Samuel has plenty to say about Saul losing the kingship, he more or less repeats himself in 1st Samuel 28. that, you know, Saul has been forsaken by the Lord.

So it was a bad message there, but it was contact with the human dead. And it's something that appears on God's watch, so to speak. And so I have to assign it to Providence that God sometimes allows this sort of thing to happen. It has nothing to do with an evil, non-human demonic spirit. Yeah, I like that, Mike, because I think that, like, the knee jerk for a lot of people is that, like, Ovid inspires fears, demonic. And then I have to go back and like, how many times an angels show up that people were, that is they don't be afraid, right?

And they aren't more demonic. The lines are even blurred there with angels. Like, I'm glad you brought that up because like in Acts 12, when Peter's in prison and everybody expects him to be put to death. And there are people at, you know, the woman's house and the little girl named Rhoda is part of the episode in Acts chapter 12. But there are some of, you know, the followers of Jesus. They're praying for Peter in the house.

and they don't know that Peter has been released from prison by an angel. But he shows up at their house and knocks on the door to be left in. And the girl, the little girl, goes to the door and doesn't see him, but she hears the voice and runs back into the house and says it's Peter. And they think she's, they don't believe it. And one of them says it must be his ghost. It must be his, you know, his ghost, you know, his departed spirit. something. But the wording that actually shows up in Acts 12 is it must be his angel, his messenger.

But what they mean by it is sort of the departed version of Peter and his spirit come back. Or perhaps there was a belief in ancient Judaism that we all have guardian angels or sort of a spiritual double that's part of the spirit world that is attached to us. Again, this is Second Temple Jewish theology here. And so they assumed that Peter, they assumed this was a sign of Peter's death. And they were now being visited by his angel. Again, the spiritual Peter, the ghost Peter, you know, that kind of thing. And there's no indication that anybody viewed it as a demonic entity.

They thought it was Peter, that other Peter, Peter, Peter, you know. Yeah. And that's what they assumed in the episode in Acts chapter 12. So it gives you a glimpse into, again, part of the Jewish. worldview that the New Testament is part of on matters such as this. And again, there's no sense that it's an evil demonic spirit. Even the account where Jesus is walking on the water and they think it's a, they think it's a ghost or a spirit. The Greek word there is phantasm. Again, they're not assuming that it's demonic. They're assuming it's otherworldly. It's from the supernatural world,

somehow representative of Jesus. Again, a disembodied Jesus or something. Something's going on here. Then he, you know, Jesus Beckinson said, no, no, it's really me. You know, it's him in solid form, you know, in human form. He just happens to be God so he can walk on water. So he has to tell them, you know, how he basically tells them how to parse what they're experiencing. Then they bring him on to the boat. You know, so in none of these examples, do you have anything that we would identify as an evil spirit? Right.

They're all something else. And this is part of the biblical world. world view. It's so fascinating. It's almost like you can get a snapshot for a moment that humans have generally been sort of the same over the, you know, we have different experiences in different cultures, but we react similar. We've always been a little like spooked out. It's a ghost. That's not a, that's not a new phenomenon. It's something that we've been saying since the dawn of time. And one thing we hear a lot and we're doing, we're going to do an episode on it. And I want to get your opinion on this. When there's some sort of trauma involved, there's a lot of weird stuff

associated with like ghost ships and ghost trains where say a train goes off a ravine and falls into the ocean it'll like re-loop it'll go and people will see it it'll come through at night and there's a lot of accounts of these ghost ships these sailors out on the water and these ships just sail up to the side of the ship there and then everyone's freaked out there's nobody on the boat and then it just sails off and they're like it's impossible it's physically impossible but it looks like it's... Especially if it's a period, like a period. Yeah, yeah.

And they look tattered, like they've been at the bottom of the ocean for like the last 200 years and they just come. It's just bizarre. And so Christians have a hard... I think a lot of Christians get off into the weeds when this sort of stuff starts happening. They don't, for whatever reason, they don't have any biblical explanation for these things. What do you take on the trauma loops? And, like, someone gets murdered and then their spirit is like on loop in that house or something, because there's some trauma associated.

I mean, I tend to parse things like that as, again, a possible visitation of a deceased human. And again, what might be the providential purpose? Like justice? Justice, I think, is a big theme, you know, to get judgment for the person who did this. And, again, maybe comfort for the family or closure for the family, something like this, that this might be in the picture. again, we're guessing here, but again, in view of the fact that you often have these things happen to either bring comfort or have some positive outcome, you know, be the result of it. And again, not just torment or horror or solicitation of worship or sacrifice, you know, all the

things that we associate with demonism. But it's none of these things. That would be the way I would parse something like that that you have, again, providentially. is a way that God can allow the two worlds to connect so that these things are pursued in terms like, let's just use justice for an example. Now, what I don't think we should do is I don't think we should solicit contact. You know, I don't think this should turn us into ghost busters for us. I'm going to go out there. I'm going to buy some electronic gadget now. I'm going to go hunt for ghosts and try to solicit contact. We have no way of knowing whether this is a masquerade. Maybe it is a masquerade of an evil spirit to seduce us.

into pursuing contact and, you know, to our detriment or to our harm. So I think we are best off leaving these things up to the providence of God and not pursuing them and just trying to parse them as best we can in light of, you know, some of these examples that we see in scripture and other ancient texts. So the ghost ships and the ghost trains are interesting. What about the physical, like what do you think about the physical, you know, like the action? technology like one captain crawled on this boat jumped in the water and got on climbed up the chains on the back of this and one guy pulled up into a train pulled up into a station in the middle

night and he got on it and then it took off and he he said it was like it was and then he told his boss his boss didn't believe him but he he described the trains there hasn't been we haven't had that train on the tracks for several years so well you could have you can have beings from the from the spiritual world come over and assume material form. We get this commonly with angels, for instance. Angels can take physical form. So the question is, why can't? Is there some scriptural reason why a being, you know,

deceased human dead or even a demonic being, why they can't assume physical form? And to my knowledge, there's no scriptural reason to deny that possibility. On the positive side, there's scriptural reason. to affirm the possibility. Angels are the example I'm thinking of here. So you can have beings from this world, again, the spiritual world, the supernatural world,

assume physical corporeal form. So why not some of this other stuff, you know, fall into the same category? Now, you know, we don't know how this works. How would we know? Right. Because it's not our realm. But we can look, you know, to Scripture as some of these examples.

And again, at least create the categories for being able to understand or at least talk about some of these other episodes. I think scripture gives us that much. I mean, if you dive deeper into, you know, again, Second Temple Jewish literature, Greco-Roman literature, you find all of this. You find material appearance, physical, corporeal appearance, really across the board, good and evil, you know, whether there be objects or entities or persons. That's casting a wider net than scripture casts. But scripture seems to be a subset of that literature, of that world. And at least some of the broad categories can be found in Scripture.

It's up to us to, I think, you know, intelligently discuss the possibilities, which is what we're trying to do here in this podcast. But recognize, you know, if we restrict ourselves to Scripture, you know, we're a little more limited in what we can affirm or deny and so on and so forth. But I don't see anything in Scripture that allows me to deny that these things cannot actually happen. Yeah, Mike, I have a question. I think that when we read Deuteronomy and you put that verse out on the table, maybe think of a couple of things in terms of this. One is you talked about Samuel and the Witch of Endor and calling Samuel up. In these verses, it specifically condemns divination and channeling. And if you go backwards, and this is something that I kind of came across my Bible study that was, I thought was interesting, is you have some of the fathers of the faith that they have. you have house gods, you have, you know, Jacob stole him from Laban, and then you have Joseph

saying that he has a cup he uses for divination. And it... Yeah, you're talking about the tariffine there. Yeah, so it's interesting because I know it gets outlawed at some point, but at some point there was kind of practice, it seems like, whether it be Abraham or what happened with Laban and... They are present in these narratives. They're never cast as positive, but there are passages that they're neutral. You know, there's no condemnation, but then later on, you're right.

They certainly do come under condemnation. This is a question that actually fits against the backdrop of a much bigger question, and that is something that scholars refer to as the Deuteronomistic history. So we'll introduce a critical biblical scholarship term here. The Deuteronymistic history is the idea that at the very least, the books of Joshua through Second Kings were composed either by the same person or at the same time. And that time period specifically falls into the time period when you have during the divided monarchy, you have a lot of problems with idolatry. And so there's this

notion that you have some parts of scripture that could contain something like the tariff theme and be neutral. But then you have later parts of scripture based upon this assumption. And all of this is an assumption, but it's a reasonable assumption, that some of this material, and critics, biblical critics throw Deuteronomy into it. That's why it's called the Deuteronomistic history. Evangelicals that accept the idea. Some of them put Deuteronomy into it or at least parts of Deuteronomy. Others don't because of the controversy over mosaic authorship of the Torah,

which includes Deuteronomy. But there could be this evolution of thought between material that predates the Deuteronomistic history where you can have these neutral references to Teraphene. And then the stuff that comes later was written during this period and the terra femur outlawed precisely because of the times. And the times were given over to idolatry. And so this is why, for instance, if you look at the law, the law in Exodus versus the law in Deuteronomy for the household servant, the household slave that wants to become part of the household. In Exodus, you know, you put the earlobe up through the post and you hammer the all through it. And you do this in the presence of Elohim.

Now, it could mean either the presence of God, the presence of some people say Elohim means human judges, which I don't. But they'll say the human judges, like you had a bunch of Jewish authorities come up and watch the ceremony for whatever reason. Or you have Elohim as the departed ancestors, the rest of the family. Well, if you go to Deuteronomy, Elohim has been removed from the ceremony. And so the supposition is that something has happened here. You wouldn't remove it if it was God, because what's wrong with having God of them? You wouldn't remove it if it was human authorities.

What's wrong with having them there? You would remove it if it was a reference to household gods, household figurines. And that's what the Tarafin were. There's a very famous article, a very well-known article, at least to biblical scholars, by Cyrus Gordon, who was a famous Semitic scholar on this episode. He has an article on Elohim specifically within, has having to do with ancestral spirits, like, you know, Samuel, you know, Spirit, Samuel, being what's going on here in Deuteronomy,

and I tend to agree with them. I think he's right. Now, what you have with Tarafene, in the more neutral instances, there are what I would call the Polaroids of the Old Testament. You would make figurines that would remind you. They could either be human-shaped or maybe the head or like a face or some other object associated with someone, a loved one who has departed, but it's some object that reminds you of them. And you keep it in your house.

And you might do a drink offering to it. You might do some other kind of offering to it as a way of remembering them, as a way of bringing them into a family gathering so that they can somehow you feel like they're present, they're with you, that you can enjoy their company. They can enjoy your company again. See, we still do this, but we do it with pictures. We do it with portraits.

We leave objects at graves, like flowers or teddy bears or something like that. I mean, there'd be a cross around your neck could be considered. We do these things that connect us with the deceased and the deceased to us. Not out of worship, we're not worshipping them. We're not adoring them like saints in Catholicism or anything like that. We do it to maintain the connectedness with family, with our loved one. And so the terrify of that at one point, at least were like that.

There were these household emblems of the departed dead. But apparently, by the time we get to, you know, some of these passages, I think this is Deuteronomy 15, whenever that happened to be written, and again, if that's a, if that's something that was edited out later during a later era, I mean, I think scripture was, including the Torah, was certainly edited. There's a lot of, there's a lot of evidence for that biblical scholarship that would make a whole episode, you know, on a Bible podcast or something like that. You've got one of those.

Yeah. I have a lot of those. Place names are changed and updated all the time. You know, you get, you get updates in the Torah. If this is what's going on, then I think Gordon and other scholars, you know, are correct in thinking that the problem was Elohim, the term there, taken as a plural, that some people could interpret this as household deities. And we live at a time now when people are just prone to idolatry. Back in the days of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, when, you know, the Israel, you know, the Israel, faith as it were, was new and they were more loyal to the one God, Yahweh.

That isn't the case in the monarchy. The monarchy is a free-for-all spiritually. We know this from the Old Testament, that people were prone to idolatry in all sorts of ways. But now we're going to change the narrative a little bit to take that out and protect people, deter them from idolatry. It makes perfect sense if that's the way it happened. And I'm not omission. I don't know that it was.

but it makes very good sense. In our English translation and then says gods, right? So that's what makes it feel like it's different. It's funny, I think about the scene. I mean, I'm a movie guy. My favorite movies is Gladiator, where he has the little figurines of his family.

And he's praying to the Roman gods at the time, but he has his little figurines of his wife and kid that he has in his little altar he's built. And that's what we maybe think of. Yeah, and he knows they're not deities. Right. But they are part of the spiritual world. So in terms of ghosts, it's like a lot of people talk about crossing over.

And then you have history of the Egyptian book of the dead, stories of Lazarus. Could the Egyptians do something to bring people back? Yeah, they had, the Egyptians had a really wide belief when it came to the spiritual world. Every person had a Ba and a Ka, which are like different parts of a disembodied person, having to do with either personality or soul spirit, you know, things like that. And they believe that one of the reasons that you did offerings to your ancestors was, again, to not only to honor them, but to keep them comfortable, maybe in some instances to keep them from coming back and soliciting contact and whatnot

or, you know, enjoying fellowship. You know, there are different texts that have different reasons for why you would offer something to the car or to the bar and so. and so forth. But they had a very active, animate spiritual world. So it wasn't that they were, they were necessarily bringing them back, but you couldn't interpret some of these episodes, some of these ceremonies as invitations. You could certainly do that. But it's not that the average Egyptian had the power over life and death, you know, to bring these beings back, but you, I think a solicitation is a worthwhile way of looking at some of these things, at least in

certain contexts. You know, the Egyptians initially only, only the pharaohs got to go back, you know, to the positive afterlife, you know, with their ancestors, the gods. Later on in Egyptian religion, it becomes much more democratic where, you know, the average person has the hope of a positive afterlife in ancient Egypt, whereas initially it was just the pharaohs. but that gate widens considerably as Egyptian history and theology moves on historically. There was a question I wanted to ask you that rose in an episode several recordings ago with somebody else.

A lot of people talk about the Refiama as having some sort of returning, like coming back, like almost sounds as if they figured out a way to come back after the fact, you know? And there was a specific, I can't remember who it was, but they were talking about, how they cut the heads off the giants on purpose to to because they had either some healing ability or they were sending their soul to a certain place I don't know did they bring up any specific text because the only one I can think of was the one with Goliath yeah I can't remember who it was but it was just like I wanted it nothing coming to mind but I you know I I could see that but you know even in that case does that that kills the body doesn't really kill

still, you know, the deceased spirit. Well, no, because that's still free to run around in the underworld. Yeah. It's not really a death of the spirit being. It must have been, like, do you think the Giants maybe had some sort of healing capabilities? They could... Well, Raphaim, it's hard to say that the majority of scholars connect Raphaim with Rafa, that's Resh, Pai, Olive, across Semitic lines.

which specifically an Ugaritic, which means healer, okay, to heal. There are other possible etymologies for Raphaim, so hence there is a debate here, or we can't be sure. But it's another option is a verb that means to slack or lose power, to lose efficacy, which when something dies more broadly becomes part of the realm of the dead, that's what happens. Its vitality is lost. That's a possibility too. But there is a possible connection with healers in it.

In Canaanite religion, the Refaim were viewed as spirits that could heal, to heal you. So you would do things ritually to try to solicit this. It's not used in the sense that they could come back from the dead and be re-embodied, but there is this healing connection to it. Spirits that can heal. And one of the things that always comes up right is of Samuel. episode with him, the Witch Vendor calling him up on, and we've talked through this conversation

about the idea that these, these human spirits that they come to encourage and you have these, these episodes that feel like, as you would say, or as you did say, you know, it's got providence allowing this to happen to be encouragement. In this case, what's happening here? Because you have this medium, which Saul knows he's not supposed to do and he does anyway. And then actual Samuel comes up. And then you go, so my question is like, God's a allowing this. We know that. Yeah. I think God is hammering Saul. I think it's sort of adding insult to injury.

Saul already knows that the Lord has forsaken him. The Lord won't answer his prayer, which is why, you know, he has no means of contact, which is why he seeks out the medium at end goal. Okay. So I think God allows, again, to double down on the judgment. Yeah. God hasn't changed his mind. He has still forsaken you and handed the throne over to David.

And he knows that. So in this case, procedurally speaking, my question then is, are there ways for the darkness to then call up human spirits as much as God allows the encouragement here? We have like a medium. And we actually, she seems almost, I mean, I don't know if we've talked about this before, if she's surprised that it is, it's Samuel, that he actually does show up. or if, you know, does the occult, are they able to essentially do this outside of demonic, like as far as your understanding and bring human spirits back? Or is that?

Yeah. To answer that question, we'd have to know what her regular experience was. Sure. Yeah. And we'd also have to know whether she ever faked anyone. Neither of which we know. Right.

You know, we, she does whatever she does and it works. And she is startled, but we have to also factor this in. Maybe she's not startled because it works. Maybe she's startled because when Samuel actually shows up, that is her clue. Because if you read the narrative there, as soon as she knows it's Samuel, she knows who the guy is and soliciting it. And it's Saul and she fears for her life.

Because Saul has eliminated this practice. Of course, funny that he knows exactly where to find this woman when he's in a tight spot. So he kept an ace up his sleeve, you know, so to speak. But as soon as Samuel actually appears, she is alerted by his presence in some way to the fact that this is Saul. The guy who's asking me to do this is Saul, the king of Israel, who has outlawed us doing this, and I'm going to die now. So maybe that's what freaks are out rather than having it actually works. Then having Sam will show up. Yeah.

You know, it reminds me of, you know, one of the weirdest stories in the New Testament. So my question is, what happens after Christ's death in terms of shield and the underworld? Because, you know, right after he's crucified, there's those few verses, I think, in one of the Gospels where the dead rise up out of the graves and appear to many people. Yeah, Matthew 2070. What's that? What's that all about? Are they, like, sent back or freed? There are a number of scholars that believe that the resurrection,

Christ's own resurrection, is the trigger to this, even though in the episode these resurrections are like a precursor to Christ's own, but they're still connecting the two. And that's a reasonable interpretation to take of this. If that's the case, then what we have here is that Christ's resurrection is the key event that precipitates or makes possible the deliverance of the righteous from shiel at that point. And so what happens in Matthew 27 signals to everybody else the emptying of shield of the righteous. And it's a foretaste of the resurrection to come for themselves, you know, when they're going to die and be raised again at the last day and so on and so forth.

So it's a foreshadowing event of the later, greater resurrection. And again, it's a controversial passage. There are other ways that they can be taken. Some people just don't, a lot of scholars don't like its placement there, and they tend to deny that anything real is happening there. I'm not one of those. My first question is, why can't it describe just exactly what it describes? Right.

So I think this is a coherent way, not the only way, but a coherent way to look at it, that this is a precursor event when you have the righteous delivered from Sheal because of the Messiah and his own resurrection. And that's a foreshadow and a foretaste of what's going to come for all of us if we follow the Messiah in the future. Do you think it's triggered by him taking the keys of death in Hades? Like that potential? Yeah, because that's mentioned in the book of Revelation real early in chapter 1 and chapter 3.

of the keys of death and Hades and the other references the keys of David in the book of Revelation. So the keys of death and Hades are connected with messianic authority. You know, we don't want to miss that connection. But the underworld was viewed as being guarded

or kept by entities. You know, they held the keys, okay, who gets out, which is nobody, because they don't like anybody getting out. But Christ goes down and descends into the grave into Sheal, into Hades in New Testament language.

It's, you know, again, unfortunately, our English translation is translated as hell, which creates a different set of connotations in our mind that aren't necessarily in play here. But he goes to the realm of the dead, and he conquers those who hold the keys, you know, whoever these entities are mentioned in the book of Revelation. And now as holder of the keys, he has the authority over life and death. for all of us. So I do think that that passage is connected. Wow. What do you think

the underworld is like? You said earlier in the you kind of compared it to stranger things. Like it sounds like it's a place you don't want to stay. Yeah. I think at the very least. Yeah, but it just it doesn't sound like what I, you grow up in the church and you kind of have this understanding like everyone's just in terror.

Well, there are passages. There are passages. Old Testament that are terrorized. Was it like Tartarus? In other words, the terror element is added. You do have mention of flame. You have mention of a watery abyss like in Jonah. The image of, you know, there with bars.

It has bars. So you have to be let out, again, with a key, this kind of thinking. So it's not escapable. It can be a watery abyss. It can be a place where there's fire. It's a place where these other non-human spirits inhabit. And it's during the second temple period when you get more of the torment element caused by those guys than you do in the Old Testament. But certainly in the New Testament, that's part of it.

So it becomes not only a place that's just, I don't want to sound silly here, but just icky. You just don't want to be there. It's like graves down there with like maggots and worms. They talk about laying in graves after being dead. A cadaverous existence is one of the best descriptions I've ever seen. You don't want to be part of that. You want to be whole. You want to be with the Lord.

You want to be in the place where the Lord is at, where he dwells in the spiritual world, the place that he would call his home. Again, look at what we're trying to do here. We're trying to take a place that doesn't have latitude and longitude. Right. And it doesn't have spatiality or fact. physicality like we're familiar with. But it's the only way we can talk about it.

You know, it's the vocabulary we have at our disposal. So, you know, scripture does use this vocabulary because, again, we don't have any other way to talk about it. The biblical writers didn't have any other way to talk about it. So it's definitely a place you don't want to stay. Your hope is to be delivered as a follower of Yahweh and, of course, a follower of Jesus, follower of the Messiah. And it's emptying of the righteous is apparently triggered.

again or associated with the resurrection of Christ himself. Do you think they go to Abraham's bosom then, right? Or as Jesus describes on the cross, it's especially like Eden. Isn't the Greek today he'll be with me in the garden? There are gardenous descriptions in Second Temple literature of this place because it is supposed to remind you of where God dwells. One of those places is Eden in the Edenic way because God dwells in paradise. that's probably the word you're thinking of, paradise.

Right. Paradiso, right? Yeah, paradisos. And so you get, and that word overlaps with the word for garden. We actually did an episode of this on the podcast with Jesus as the gardener, which is one of these arcane passages that it's easy to read right over. But it's actually a fairly important passage because of the association of gardens, not only with Eden, but broadly in the ancient Near East and in the Old Testament,

gardens were associated with where kings dwell. Kings in the ancient near east were sometimes described as gardeners. That was one of their duties to maintain the garden. And it's because of this paradise effect, this paradise motif that gets associated with where God or the gods dwell. It's the best place. It's the oasis. It's where we have enough food, we have enough water. You know, everything is in abundance here.

There's no want. There's no lack of anything. It's beautiful. You know, it's luxurious, you know. It's a promised land. For an arid agrarian society of the oasis was it, man. You know, that was where you wanted to be. Sounds better than maggots and ickiness.

Well, it does. Well, I have a question for you then. So we know that Jesus goes to the Temple of Pan, you know, Cessori of Philippi, and there's supposed to be a cave there, cave to the underworld, right? and you know we get a lot of people send us links of all kinds of weird stuff and sometimes like oh yeah the euphrates river's drying up and that's where underneath is where the underneath the euphrates is where these entities are locked up or whatever shit yeah yeah i don't what is there any truth any of that i don't believe so i don't i don't see any scripture

you know for that kind of like inside the earth couldn't be like a jail cell or anything like that I don't think the spirit world has latitude and longitude. Okay. I think it's a, it's an otherworldly realm, you know, where God himself inhabits. The best, that's best way I can put it otherworldly, something besides this terrestrial wall, okay? Right. Something other, another plane of existence. If you want to, you know, in our terminology, we talk about parallel universes or something like that.

But even those are, are part. the physical created world. Is God really trapped in the physical created world? No. No. Why would we think of where God is as part of the physical created world, even if it is another dimension? We really don't have the vocabulary to talk about that and still divorce God

from creation. And that's an important biblical theological point that the creator is distinct from creation and is independent of it. And is in no way limited by it. You know, concepts like God's eternality, God's timelessness, God's, you know, incomprehensibility and his unlimitedness are tied up in this vocabulary. So we have to be a little careful about how we talk about this kind of thing in relationship to where God is. It's this other realm.

And where that other realm is, okay, well, let's use the word neighborhood. It has neighborhoods. Some of them enjoy the positive presence of God. others do not. Other parts of it don't. God is still everywhere present. Like David says, one Psalm 139, if I go to Sheel, you're still there. Well, yeah, that's because it's this otherworldly realm. And this is where God, of course, is. He's not part of the terrestrial world that he has made. He's part of a world that doesn't have these trappings. Again, we have to be careful of how we talk about God in relationship to the realm of the afterlife, the realm of the

dead, you know, even our own conceptions of heaven. Fortunately, God solves that one for us because heaven comes to earth, okay, in the new earth. So that's a little easier to wrap our minds around, rather than this otherworldly realm that we have to somehow think of as a realm, but yet maintain God's presence and his distance at the same time in it, because he's not captured by it. He's not limited by it. He transcends it in God's transcendence.

as part of this as well. Yeah, and we live inside the terrestrial law, like laws of nature, and we try to conceptualize that. I don't put God inside the terrestrial ball to talk about the afterlife realm of the spiritual realm. Well, I'm just wondering if certain created beings are locked inside. Because a lot of times people come on our show, and they describe seeing demonic creatures,

big foot creatures, rape creatures, or mothman-type creatures, and they smell like sulfur, and they look like they've been living underground. So there's just this weird connection to like the underworld, the underground, and the creatures themselves having some sort of, they're giving off some sort of sign that they,

that's where they live, they live underground or something. But, I mean, that doesn't have to be, you know. Or it's to make, it's to make whoever they contact with fear them. Or it is, it is a way of identity, you know,

it's an identifier that they can't get away from anyway, that identifies them, you know, sort of of which side they're on, which side of the fence they're on. So it may not be a physical property necessarily, but it may be, in other words, that they have, but it may be something that becomes part and parcel of the experience to let us know, to help us identify what's going on. And a lot of people on our show, like, talk about how these, you know,

these angels that sin are going to be let loose, let out again at the end. Do you, do you subscribe to that? I do think Revelation 9 does suggest that. I think Revelation 9 is about the release of the watchers for the time of the end. I mean, they're released to their doom, but it's this heightened terror period that is associated with the Day of the Lord. So they're released to their destruction. That's the good news. The bad news is that they're released at all.

Mike, do you think that there's a, that when that happens and when we see, you know, when these events happen, that the separation between the spiritual realm and what we consider it be the physical realm, because that's what we interact with, that is removed? people call the veil. I would say it becomes more interactive. Okay. More like Middle Earth. I don't know about a clear separation, but I think it becomes more interactive, which softens the separation for sure. Right.

I know we've talked a little bit about thin places and these places where it seems that there's a thinning. There's dominion. Yeah, or there's a thin spot between the spiritual realm and the physical where things sort of interact. Yeah. And I'm curious, like, because that is an idea that we hear, you know, went here in the 21st century.

And did the ancients, when you talk about Second Temple and we talk about the ancient, the heroes of the Bible and the foliage of the faith, they're thinking on the interaction of the spiritual and the physical was different. I mean, you wrote a book about it. Well, yeah, it's quite a bit different than ours, of course, because we're, you know, we're part of a technological materialistic society where we grow up either consciously or unconsciously sort of taught that the only thing that's real is what we can detect with our five senses.

It's tactile. Yeah. Everything has to be tactile or at least, again, detectable with one of our senses. They were not predisposed to that at all. And neither were the biblical writers. Yeah. That's just fascinating because I think that that's lost on.

I think that that is a huge symptom of our church. Well, it's actually important because on the one hand, we have a lot of people in churches that are evangelical deists or they're believing, you know, an oxymoron. here believing skeptics. And that is, they're very willing to affirm God and a Trinity and Jesus and the virgin birth and the resurrection and these things. But then they want to sort of turn their back on or deny or explain away some of these other things. And folks, you know, newsflash, it all comes from the same source. It's called the Bible. So on what basis are we allowed to affirm one set of things

and then deny another set comes from the same source? So I, I tend to be an academic who objects to that, which gets me into trouble from time to time, because it makes other academics nervous. It makes Christians nervous to talk about these things. But that's what I want to know from you. That's the question I have for you, if the person out there in the audience, who doesn't want to affirm these things, on what basis do you make this distinction? On what basis do you say this is real and this is not when both things come from the same source?

that's what I want to know. It's almost like they adopt some sort of scientism to give them that. Well, we can exclude all this stuff from the Bible because science tells us this. Miracles are an inconvenient truth then in those sense too. I know. Yeah, they get lumped in tune up. I mean, I have a high view of science, and there are things that are part of the scriptural worldview that we know don't conform to science. But that's just the point.

Scripture itself tells us that they're part of. the natural world. Scripture doesn't tell us that things like the afterlife or demons or angels, you know, it never, it never says that those things are part of the natural world. That's a different world. It's a different realm. So we have to honor this distinction that scripture itself makes between the natural world and the supernatural world and not conflate the two for the sake of feeling more comfortable with our Bible. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And another idea that comes up between the dead and the realms is that sort of these watchers are like gang leaders in jail and the demons are like the runners. What do you what do you think of those ideas because it seems as though

someone's still trying to yeah that is a very second temple view because really yeah in second temple literature the book of jubilees for instance specifically has a certain percentage of watchers allowed to harass people. And so you get a little bit of it there, but there's a distinction to be made biblically between the watchers themselves, the original offenders of Genesis 6, the ones who commit the act of Genesis 6

to raise up the Nephilim. And the later Nephilim, who, when you killed one, their disembodied spirit became a demon. Scripture puts these things in the two categories, but Second Temple literature, in some instances, blurs the distinction between the two. So you could read certain texts and come out with that, with that idea. I like the analogy that you struck there, the gang leader.

It's like John Gotti calling the shots from prison. Yeah, yeah. Burner found. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like there's some communication going on. It's somewhere.

They're in prison, but yet they still have some sort of influence. Yeah. influence, exactly. You're still running the operation. Yeah, you can get that impression from Second Temple material. You can. And besides Lazarus, is there any other stories in the Bible that are like someone coming back? Somebody, I mean, obviously, you know, is there any other kind of blurry stories that are, that give us more clues as to?

Well, I would, I would say that they're not much help. I mean, you have, you have either, they're either resurrected or resuscitation stories in the prophets, like the, you know, coming, the dead person coming into contact with the bones of the prophet, I believe it's either Elijah or Elisha and then coming back to life, but that doesn't really give us much information as far as what goes on in the afterlife and so on and so forth. And there is, again, there's an interpretive dispute there. Is that really a resurrection or is it a resuscitation? Like an end to E. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's not much, there's not much material to go on there. Do you believe that Elijah and Enoch were taken? Like they were the only ones that were like they were just whisked away? Yeah, I don't think either of them suffered physical death. That's wild. They were just taken away. Yeah, and so they become part of, I don't want to say, well, part of resurrected thinking, even though they didn't die, but, you know, you get glimpses and then like the transfiguration.

Again, the life that awaits those who will be with the Lord, and they get a glimpse of what that's going to be like. But yeah, I think I think scripture is fairly clear on both of those. I do think Moses does die. I think scripture is clear on that as well. There's different reasons why Moses and Elijah get sort of interchanged in end times discussion or apocalyptic discussion and Second Temple literature and even the New Testament.

And that's because they're both associated with the prophecy of the prophet who would come after Moses and so on and so forth. Moses, you know, speaking with God face to face and so on and so forth. But I think that's really inconsistent because I think Deuteronomy 34 is clear that Moses does die. I think the New Testament is clear because you have the weird passage with Michael and Satan, you know, the devil disputing over the body of Moses. So I think it's pretty evident that Moses does suffer death. So here's a question then.

If Moses and Elijah are appearing with Jesus at the Transfiguration after the fact, they're still being used in some sort. Is it kind of like Obi-1 Canobi, where they, you kill me and I'll be, I'll be stronger? Useful, I guess more useful. I don't think that they necessarily become any stronger, but they, well, they play important roles in the Transfiguration because one greater than Moses and Elijah is present among them. Yes. So a lot of these things are comparative with comparing Jesus as the better Elijah and Jesus as

the superior Moses. So in that respect, they're present. has a role to play in these past symbolism yeah and all the exodus imagery you get in the transfiguration with the cloud and all that sort of stuff again it is to telegraph that one greater than moses is here and this is a second exodus event that somehow jesus is going to be connected with a second deliverance which turns out to be the resurrection yeah you know as things play out in the biblical story i love that yeah because i mean our last episode and it was a big we A big part of our discussion was talking about, you know, about how Christ comes to do spiritual warfare.

And that's a big part of what people miss. And I just wonder if when we move on, are we a part of that war in some way? Yeah. I think we certainly could be. I don't think that the transfiguration passages allow us to deny that. We certainly are at the end because we are the holy ones. You know, we are not the holy ones in the great class. of witnesses in Hebrews 12 that are gathered with the angels in a festal gathering.

That all speaks of us. That's our future destiny to return with the Lord and at his coming to be part of the army that serves him and brings heaven back to earth. So I certainly don't think that's beyond the pale, you know, to be of use and of service in that way because it certainly will be in the future. So I don't think there's any passage that denies it. again, under God's providence for right now. I mean, there's a lot that, how do I want to say this?

I mean, for sure our spiritual warfare is more present, you know, than it is future, at least in terms of the information we're given, that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and so on and so forth, like in Ephesian 6. So we are engaged, whether we realize or not, with spiritual powers. And so that not only requires us to, passages like Ephesion 6, not only requires to admit that now,

but on what grounds would we possibly be excluded, you know, even after our death. In Acts chapter 12, they assume that the disembodied Peter, you know, comes back and is there at the door and you're knocking them the door to give them a message or whatever. They sort of assume the worst and that Peter's dead.

But if the disembodied person, whether it's an angelic counterpart or whether it is the spirit of the person that now essentially becomes an angel, okay, if we can think of it in those terms. If that's possible in Acts 12, why should we exclude it for other people? You know, the other X-Petor. Yeah. Right, why would we exclude it? The Guardian Angel thing, Mike, was funny.

Like, I think my first thought was, it's a wonderful life where he meets Clarence, oddbody. I says, I would have it. I would get an angel looks like you, you know. It's kind of how I think like, man, what do I get? What does my angel look like if that's the case? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we've heard some wild stuff on our show, Mike, in like the last couple years. And like, like, so I remember one particular thought. Someone said that seraphim could put, they could be in one location and put themselves in, and kind of possess somebody, a human being. from a different location.

Yeah, I don't know any Bible for that, but I'm sure you've heard it. Yeah, right, we get a lot we get a lot of stories here. What makes you wonder like Judas if the Spirit of Satan could have inhabited Judas to do what he did

and then, you know, but control them from... Yeah, it reads like it's more of a direct possession, but I follow what you mean. But that's weird because it's like, it's not a demon, you know? it would be a different entity inhabiting something worse yeah not worse and but and then Satan

how is Satan able to do that he's not disembodied right so I think that was the line of thinking there well why would we conclude that Satan is not disembodied why would we conclude he's a physical person yeah there is that there's that too the supernatural rebel that tempted Adam and Eve

and you know one way to read that is that he appeared as a serpent or had so contained features or something like that. Again, in unseen realm, I discussed that. But it's still a supernatural entity that comes, you know, to the two humans there to corrupt them and, of course, hoping for their annihilation. But I don't see any reason why we should think that Satan is a member of the animal kingdom or a member of the terrestrial world. I think he's a member of the other world.

So he could influence or possess, you know, a person. to do something. So you think one of my last questions for you, then, and this could get us into trouble, but who cares? So like any times a human being is communicating was say, like a past relative, a dead relative, and most people just say that is always a demon. That is always...

I wouldn't say that's always a demon. I would say we're forbidden from engaging in necromancy. Because we don't know who we're talking to. Right, we don't know. who we're talking to. We don't know what the other side is. It could be a counterfeit, could be an entity. So I think the reason we're forbidden from trying to contact the debt on our own is because we can be harmed and misled by it, not because it can't be done, but for those two reasons. You know, it's not our turf. We have, we have no reason to suspect that we can control the

encounter. And so we should stay away from it. It's just the whole thing with New Age too, right? It's this access into the spiritual realm. Yeah. Willy-nilly, yeah, in a way that we're not supposed to. We're supposed to access that through Jesus, through the persons of Jesus and not. We think a little too highly of ourselves there. Yeah, agreed. I love it, Mike.

I love it. I love it we could talk about ghost ships and ghost trains, and then you don't look at us like we have three eyes. And then, you know, we could talk about, you know, the spirits of inhabiting these. these you don't have three eyes but you have two heads is that is it maybe maybe suppose there were a race of giants with two heads but who knows you know like we've heard some weird stuff get into that good that good medieval literature when that's right the critters that were nothing but a foot yeah yeah oh yeah the foot guy look out for that guy my my favorite of the weird creatures is there's this there's this race called the blemys where their head is their face is in their chest

and they don't have a head. The belly's got a face. They're just a belly with a family. And supposedly there were these tribes of the, I don't know. It's so weird. It's so weird, Mike. I thought we would get some answers

and I think we just got more questions. But I appreciate it. Like, you don't, I appreciate your attitude. No, on our show specifically, not with you, Mike. I want to delineate that. We got a lot of good answers. And they was saying on our show, we get more questions because it's so much weird.

It's like the stone spaghetti on the wall. You just throw it up there and see what sticks. Yeah, and sometimes it's, you got a lot of spaghetti for that metaphor. But I appreciate it, though, because you can handle, we could talk about, like, you're not like, oh, those ghost ships are stupid and that doesn't happen. Or those dead in Christ didn't actually rise in the New Testament. Yeah, I have a hard time believing that everyone who has what we'll call a ghostly experience that everyone universally throughout the history of the world

and humanity's entire history, they're all lying. Right. You know, if even one of them is telling the truth, then you have to deal with that. There is. Well, I don't know if you know this, but your voice is one of five guests of our intro. So you just, that's what you said,

and we put that in the intro or show. It breaks the whole paradigm, yeah. Yeah, I didn't. What an epic way to end. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Mike. With that quote.

I was going to ask you, Because he mentioned it once in your podcast about our dogs going to heaven because I know you'd mention about the pugs. Speaking of the 80s. I mean,

I want Carl. All dogs go to heaven. I want Carl to be there too, man. There were theologians who have seriously tried to make that argument. Yeah. You know,

there's no reason to think that animals are part of the new earth. Right. Because it's supposed to be eaten recreated. Right. There are animals there. There are animals there.

We get the pugs and Carl and be around. Is it beyond God? God would give us something that we love here and bring it back. I do. That's what I think. Come on. I remember thinking about this in a really weird way. Remember, I was in the Louvre.

And it was in the same room as, it was in the same room as Mona Lisa. But on the back wall was the wedding at Canaan. Okay. This huge, you know, and Jesus is in the middle, but there's all these dogs on the side. And I was like, they put dogs in this painting. It's like this wedding. Come on. I was more interested in that painting than the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa was just like, looking for the smush-faced dogs. That's what we're looking for. But I was like, there's Jesus and all these people. And here's some dogs that even made into this painting. I love it. But thanks, Dr. Heiser. Appreciate you pumping our show. You're making time for us, too.

Especially the light of the season you're in. We're grateful for your time of night. and yeah we I hope you guys and trust you guys and your audience will pray for me we are the immediate prayers that I can get to surgery okay

we'll find out in another maybe three or four weeks when I get an MRI if I'm right now a surgical candidate or if we have to continue with you know other therapies yeah okay we're praying for that

and even for you for Drenna and the whole eyes of crying yeah yeah We're just great for you just, yeah, for being a friend of the show. And then we could do a whole episode on fantasy football. We might have to do that sometime, just take it aside. We could just be knowing how bad it's bad.

Yeah, right. They don't know something to cheer about. Do a recap and a redraft, right? Yeah, maybe tell our listeners if they don't know what you're up to, what you're doing, maybe how they can interact with you and be a part of your communities. Well, you know, I do have my own private community now. It's if you go to DRMSH.com, which is my homepage, right there in the front, at the top, there's a big picture that says join the community.

You click on through to that to join the private community. I mean, it is a paywall, so it's $9.99 a month, or you can pay less, you know, if you pay up for a whole year. But I'm in there twice a week, and we do a weekly Q&A. and then on one night a week I post an academic article on something, something that people can't get, you know, online. It's not available on the internet, but I have thousands of these articles. So I'll post something and then we all read it,

and then we get together during that evening and discuss it. So, you know, I'm on there a couple times a week. I'm in the community, you know, looking at emails, not emails, but things that are posted and interacting with them too. that's probably the best way to put fires out contact with me and then of course the podcast naked bible podcast.com subscribe to that or my youtube channel michael s heiser youtube channel a lot of ways to stay stay up with what i'm doing this this doing this doing this show is has been pretty rare this is one of two shows i've done probably in the last six seven eight months

thanks yeah because of my health conditions appreciate We'd love to see you, man. We want to see you when you're on the man. I would love to just hang. I don't know if that's ever even a possibility in person. You're in Tennessee. It's not like you're in China or something. We are doing an event in February.

And if you're up for it, you're going to here. We're doing Blurry Khan in Franklin, Tennessee. Oh, really? It's around the street from my house here. So zero pressure. Even just if we, you know, we'd like, you know, we'd love it. You're not far in Jacksonville.

like that's yeah yeah get down there and I'm gonna come trick or treat your house we'll see where I'm at in February

okay Lord willing I'd love to I'd love to think I'm in post surgery in February we'll be praying for that Mike

that would be great and get you get you all through that surgery and healed up and then damn it it'd be awesome

all right thank you guys thanks Mike thanks so much again appreciate it see how to see how to do you just such a big

support of like at least of our social media stuff so we go see her out there she's she's great so all right i'll tell her you said hi okay and we'll send you a link on monday if you want to harass our moviegoers on the unseen realm we'll send you a link idea you can just pop it yeah if you ever want to come on the show you're welcome anytime if you have something that feels blurry and you don't you don't know what to do with it you can hit us up anytime yeah if you've got a lot of angst about team up north we can the weird or the better

we can come together together as well they need some kind of shake up there agreed maybe they'll do it I doubt it but maybe they will all right bye bye you guys all right Mike I see you good night