Blurry Creatures - EP: 154 The Forgotten Prologue with Dr. Michael Heiser

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

The legendary Dr. Michael Heiser has stepped from our realm into the unseen realm. He is and was the reason this podcast came to be. We want to honor him by re-releasing our first episode with him. Mike was gracious to come on our show a few times. He is best known for authoring the chart-topping book ‘Unseen Realm’, Heiser talks with us about free will, the supernatural themes of the Bible, and why most of us have missed the beginning of the human narrative. Dr. Heiser was one of a minuscule few theologians who got invited to speak at UFO conferences, he's wasn't afraid to get weird and explore topics that made most of his peers and colleagues nervous, and in Episode 34 he took us down the rabbit hole with him. What does Bigfoot have to do with all of this anyway? We love you Mike! You will be missed.  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

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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. Welcome to Blurry Creatures. This is your first time listening. We're doing something different this week. one of our friends, a monumental man in the paranormal space and the fringe community, Dr. Michael Heiser is no longer with us. He passed away yesterday. And Luke, he's the reason

blurry creatures is what it is. I can confidently say that, you know, without Mike, Mike Heiser and his work, I don't think this podcast would have gone this direction or even happened, you know, because it was, it was sort of his, when he kind of came into my sort of just sphere of understanding him. He made sense of a lot of things and sort of just lit a fire like this is what this is what this is what this podcast

needs to be about. Yeah. It's funny how things go. You were really into Hyser's work and you know and into the thing, into his way of teaching and reading the Bible and it was new to me coming into blurry creatures and so you know, it's funny

even the first time we interviewed Mike I didn't really have a lot of context for it. You know, know and we got to to grow a friendship with this man who you know since then have read reversing Herman and the unseen realm which are just a really paradigm shifting and changing the way that he approaches the Bible and the way that he takes everything back to the to the original language and context for me was was just it opened up the Bible in in in a new and fascinating way in a way that was very much tied to what the words actually say and that it's that for me was so important you know and over the last you know a couple years

getting to to know mike and even his things as crazy is just talking football and fantasy football which he was such a big sports fan which is the irony of of someone who's so academic i think in in his space um it was really cool to develop you know a friendship with uh with dr michael heiser and and so yeah this is a uh this is a hard week you know might get promoted in a lot of ways He's now walking with Jesus. For someone that was very much by the divine counsel, and in his writing, he's a chance to sit with the council. And I just, it's heartbreaking this side of eternity.

And I know what God grieves with us, but at the same time, he took Mike home. So, you know, a hard week for a lot of folks in our space. A lot of guests on our show, either our direct friends with Mike or studied with him. And yeah, we're doing something a little different. If you are jumping in now, this is kind of a,

we apologize for the change up this week, but I feel like it was the best way to honor a man whose life's work is life changing. And I think our hope is that his people that listen to this show and perhaps, you know, even Nate and I, we can in some way carry on some of the work that Mike was doing in spreading the idea of reading and understanding, especially the Old Testament

and then the persons of Jesus through the context of the Old Testament and the original writers and words into the context and audience that he wrote to and so we're going to miss Mike this is a hard one. Yeah, I remember

where I wasn't my faith was, I was in this stage of many years of questioning you know, grow up in the Christian church you hear all these stories and I had a lot of, I don't know, I guess I had a lot of PTSD with just church culture growing up. I guess the best way I could say that.

And then when I heard Mike kind of just say things in a way that made the stories make sense for the first time, stories that I had problems with theologically or socially. There's all this social stuff and people are questioning their faith because of the modern movements. And it's hard to make sense of these stories. Mike saved my faith in a lot of ways. Without Mike, I don't know where I,

I'd be and I was going down some really wrong rabbit holes, I think, in terms of theology. Mike was instrumental in my life and helped me make sense of a lot of the Bigfoot stuff that I was, that was sort of my hobby. You know, I didn't, I loved listening to it. It was just something different. It was fun to let my mind go there when I was trying to stay busy doing work. And Mike kind of made it all make sense that the weird stuff never left. So we're going to really release our first interview with Mike Heiser today and sort of a tribute to one of my favorite episodes the first time he came on.

I was a little nervous. I remember when I did the interview because I was like your Super Bowl man. I remember because I didn't have a lot of context for it. And I was like, man, Nate's a little nervous on this. So this is a big one. Yeah. And so yeah, in releasing this, we just want to to say our prayers and our thoughts are with Drenna and the Heiser family. and you know Mike stepped into a turning into that great hope that we all have and you know the unseen

realm was now seen to him which is which is really a crazy thing and Mike really walked and and delved into the blurry spaces and again I don't think we can thank him enough for the work he did he would always he was the most humble man he would talk about how he it was none of his original thought all he did was compile the work of of researchers and across the the millennia that had studied the scripture. And it just was, it was organized and presented in a way that I think has been very profound to a lot of people in this community. And so we're grateful to Mike for his life.

It would hope that his work would continue as people pick up the torch and carry in his way of approaching and understanding the text and the Bible. What I think is cool about Mike is that he said he would go on 300 podcasts a year on average. And if you do podcasts, you know how much work it is to try to get your own show out or go on someone else's show.

And that's a big deal. So I think Mike was very generous with his time and energy to try to spread to fringe community, UFO conventions, and a lot of people in this space and bring sort of an academic perspective to those spaces

and say, hey, you can take these subjects seriously. And he put a sense of seriousness to this whole community that we're not all crazy tinfoil hat people. Like I said, he's, he's going to be missed. So this one's, this one's for you, Mike. It's right, because if one person's right and bless the paradigm, that's really all you need. 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 Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Welcome to the show, Dr. Michael Heiser. Dr. Heiser, you have a great resume. You have an MA in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania, PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You hosted a podcast called Pyranormal, which is kind of like science meets paranormal. And you retired that show. But you have a new show called Fringe Pop, which tackles topics that we talk about on our show. And you also have the Naked Bible podcast where you try to teach people this. you know, plugging in these narratives that we talk about on our show into the Bible and making

sense of it at the Awakening School of Theology. Man, it's great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for coming on. We wanted to bring you on the show because obviously I think you've helped many of people like myself kind of reread the Bible for the first time. Like I had been listening to, I got really into Bigfoot podcasts and started listening to these stories and then once I started listening I don't know how but you your episodes kind of kept coming into the things that I was listening to and you helped me kind of connect the dots like my mind was open to the idea of Bigfoot like there's this you know unexplained creature in the woods there's a lot of things I don't know and then when the giants and some of the stuff you talk about

kind of came in the story it was like I grew up in the church I heard a lot of this stuff half the Bible stories didn't make any sense to me and I and I kind of kept that to myself, you know? Only enough. Well, you know, the ones that I could remember. And, you know, just growing up, you never had those answers. So I just, I just want to say thanks because you helped connect the dots. And you say that a lot on episodes.

Like, you never had an original thought. You just connect the dots. And I heard you say that a lot. It's not magic. It's true. I have to ask you, have you had a big foot experience, though? I saw something, I saw a creature as a child. in the window of my parents' house.

It wasn't Bigfoot. And it wasn't until later on in life when I started hearing other people describe this creature that I was like, maybe I didn't make that up. Maybe I did see that. Yeah, I was wondering where the interest came from. It's ironic you mentioned that because I don't know if you listen to Monster Talk at all, which is a podcast about monsters, but it's put on by, I don't know, some skeptical society. I don't know if it's psychop or something else, but it's a good show.

I've actually been on the show. Okay. And they had two guys on that did a two-volume set research books on Bigfoot. And their whole thing was they would classify themselves as believers, but not that it's a creature. Yeah. It's some sort of paranormal thing. And I found the interview really interesting because I had no idea, and they had very direct, explicit examples of how Bigfoot stuff gets reported and all the all the extraneous paranormal stuff that go with it gets left out of the accounts

yeah orbs women in white you know basically their thing is if you took big foot out of these stories you'd have a polter guy story yeah interesting though i mean it was it was quite fascinating yeah i i had never it's a different niche to go back and collect all this stuff from both the literature and anecdotal stuff and going back decades, you know. And it's not just North America. They did it in other countries as well. You see the patterns. When you hear the stories, it takes time for your mind to open up enough. You know, you hear one weird story and you just go, nah, it's, it's, I can't do it. But if you hear a hundred of them, you start to go, there's something to all this. And the same goes with some of the weirder parts of the Bible. Like,

you know, a lot of people just, they do the same thing. They edit out. The weird stuff, from the Bible. And because they just, their mind's not ready for it, right? I see what you did there. See? You're a broad best professional, right? But like, I love the weird stuff. The weird stuff's what kept me going back to the podcasts, to Bigfoot.

And now it's like I can reread the Bible with fresh eyes. I feel like a kid again. I just, I don't know anything. I have to reread it again completely. Sometimes it feels like when you get a little. 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 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 gonna be

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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 Mint Mobile. If you like your money, say where it is. Mint mobiles for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's mintmobile.com slash blurry. Up front 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. Seamintmobile for details. Well, I mean, I felt same way. I mean, you've listened to me often enough. I'm sure that you heard me say that too.

But yeah, it's a it's a little disturbing but also invigorating to be. a PhD student in a major Hebrew studies department and feel like you're rediscovering the Bible for the first time. And it's a little bit humbling too, you know, but I just had to be provoked, you know, by providence and taken down a few pegs, basically to, you don't really know too much of anything. And do you think that's like the Holy Spirit or a supernatural thing that kind of opened your mind and your eyes to that? Or is it just? I think it was just, you know, I think there were a lot of, I mean, I use the word providence because I think God typically moves in ways that we don't even detect until we have hindsight.

You know, a lot of people, I think, make the flawed assumption or have the flawed assumption that God is present in the spectacular. And I'm not saying he can't be, but typically God is present in the stuff you never notice, just in the normal, mundane, everyday kind of thing. Because we forget that the Bible is very selective in the stories it tells. And even the people that it focuses on, we don't get a running account of every day, every 24-7 part of their life. We get snippets. You know, we get episodes.

It's very episodic and very selective. Most of the time, I'm betting Moses, was pretty bored. You know, I mean, it's just like, here we go again. I got to, you know, get out of bed. I got to do another 20 miles here with these people that just can't stop complaining. You know, in other words, it was a very normal. mundane kind of existence except when it wasn't, you know. Yeah, you get the highlights, right?

Yeah, we get the highlights. It's not like, yeah, man, there's a camel, you know, the camel broke down. So it's a flawed idea, therefore, to think that God is less active now than he was then. Actually not. You know, because most of their lives are, again, it's a series of providences that put them in the right place, at the right time. Are they going to be receptive or not? You know, just God has to move to somebody else to get something done. It's actually very similar. That's a great point. God is not less active now than he was then because that's the thing. It's a complete narrative now, the way I see it.

It's like the weird stuff still happening. And you do things like you go to UFO conferences and you kind of help sort of the amalgamation of the fringe and the academic. You can kind of allow smart people to look into this stuff. You kind of give them the keys like, hey, you know, you can do this. You can actually listen to some of these podcasts and you can read some of these books. But you also, you probably don't err on the side of going too far, like, because some guys in this space. I like to say, and this is true, this is just, you know, if you ask me to profile myself, you know, here we go. I'm skeptical of everything, but I'm willing to believe anything. You know, in other words, I want a data-driven argument, period.

It doesn't really matter what's at the end of that. If it's data-driven, it's data-driven. There we go. You know, I'm open to, again, people having very strange experiences. I do, as I say on my fringe pop, you know, YouTube channel, we open every episode of saying, the world is stranger than we think. But thinking should not be strange. Okay.

In other words, your thinking should be coherent. It should be data-based, you know, evidence-based. You know, critical thinking, use the tools of logic, tools of science when they apply. So, yeah, I think everything should be probed and questioned and critiqued, but also be open to an outcome of all that that might be sort of outside the box. Yeah. You've been occupying for most of the time. So you don't think the giants were 100 foot tall?

No, I don't. I don't. Okay. Now, this is a good example. How is that a data-driven argument? Well, it's a data-driven argument if we take, you know, biblically, and this is usually where the conversation lives, are any of them actually described in terms of their physical dimensions? We have an unnamed one and you got Goliath, okay? So, you know, if you're reading the Goliath story, you know, he's the most familiar.

The other one's just a tad bit taller, potentially, and you'll understand why I say potentially. But if we're looking at the original Hebrew text, you know, we get the Maseretic text that has him in terms of feet and inches, like nine feet, six inches tall. Well, that's wonderful except that the Dead Sea Scrolls don't say that. And neither does the Septuagint. So the Hebrew text from which the Septuagint was translated does not say that. Instead of six cubits in a span, both of those sources have four cubits in a span, which puts him at 6669. right and you say well you just ruin the story for me might you know well in a day when according to skeletal remains you know and we don't we don't really have very many skeletons from the biblical period say a thousand

bc in from Israel archaeologically but the ones that we have and the mummies okay that we have in other words mummified remains from at least the region have the average height of a male at like five foot two, five foot three. Okay, so put a five foot two guy up against, you know, two tall Jones or, you know, somebody, JJ Watt or whatever, you know, that's intimidating. Okay, you get a bunch of people out there who aren't warriors and they're a lot smaller against a trained army of,

that's sprinkled with these dudes. We're going to get our butts kicked, like really fast. So even if you air on, even if you air on the side of caution, is kind of what you're saying. They're still big. They're still big. You know, this is what kills me. You know, you read about these giants in ancient Egypt, okay?

Or these, you know, some pharaohs were alien, you know, human hybrids, which are supposed to be connected to Nephilim. I mean, all this, the way the bunny trail goes. We have their mummies, okay? The mummies can be measured with a tape measure, okay? they're, you know, with one exception, there's like one pharaoh over six feet tall. I mean, it's not hard to come up with data that can either support or undermine an idea. It's just that a lot of times people don't look for it or they forget, you know, some things that they might want to look at.

You know, this is just a problem with this whole, you know, fringe community. And I like the fringe community. I've been in it for over 20 years. And I'm willing to believe, like I said, I'm willing to believe anything if you have a coherent. Well, that's a good question. What's the strangest thing? Where's the line for you? Like, what's something you would say, this is the hardest thing for me to believe, but I do believe it.

Like, most out of the box. That's a really good question. I would have to say just the notion of an active, you know, animate supernatural world. I do believe that. In other words, I am not satisfied with a materialistic. worldview at all. I don't even need, you know, Bible stuff for that. I mean, I've read enough in paranormal literature to believe that, you know what, it's really unlikely that everybody who reports something strange that doesn't conform to a materialist worldview, that they're all

lying. That's really unlikely. So I'm going to assume at least one person. is right, because if one person's right, it busts the paradigm. That's really all you need. And, you know, you can test it, you know, through the rules of logic and stuff like this about what we know about science. And I know enough scientists, people in the hard sciences that will be very forthright and say, science just doesn't have answers to certain questions. And by definition, it can't because of the way it operates, you know, with detecting things with the five senses and testability and all this stuff. So, you know, you throw that all, you know, into the mix, and it's like it's a daring thing today as an academic to affirm the reality of an active supernatural world.

And I'm not a charismatic either. So I have, you know, I have difficulties with, you know, certain charismatic streams, even though I have good charismatic friends that I just enjoy a lot. You're saying you're not a snake handler? I'm not a snake handler. You know, I've actually been ruined. Let's be honest with you. I think I've actually been ruined with respect to charismatic movement stuff by my reading in paranormal literature. Because I know that I can find exactly the same speaking in tongues phenomenon over in some religion that is about as far away from the gospel as I can possibly get. I know that.

I can get healing, I can get speaking in tongues, I can get visions, I can get all of it. Yeah. Frankly, you can get all of it in UFO literature too. But if you widen the net, it's all there. And so that leaves me in a quandary. Like somebody comes to me with a story about this or that. And, you know, I don't shoot at them. Like, hey, you need to go over and read this book about what they're doing in, you know, Hindu land or something.

and, you know, to invalidate your experience, I'm not going to do that. What I, what I usually tell people is, look, there's really, if they ask me what I think, there's really only one way to evaluate this, and that is, does it bear fruit? And that's going to take time. So I'm going to spend judgment and see, does this give you a closer walk with God? Does it help your testimony? Does it bear fruit in other ways? Or does it just die and go away?

Is it forgotten? you know, that's, that's all I can do. So I'm kind of ruined, you know, by my lighter exposure to, to fringy stuff. Most people are. I think a lot of people grow up in and are, you know. We talk about that, like those things, right? Like the spiritual gifts, as they're called in. Yeah.

Do you see like a parallel in finding that in other places with, I mean, this is a little bit of a jump, but like the whole ancient alien thing where it really just ends up being semantics, like we're talking about, or are we talking about, or are we talking about, about things that like on this on a level of is this is this part of a counter? Well it I think it's I think it's both on one level it is semantics. Okay. For instance, if I wanted to write get a PhD in religious studies and do my dissertation on glossalia or xenoglossi, I mean, everybody's going to use the same language and talk about

the phenomenon no matter where it occurs. So the phenomenon has has consistencies. But you know, we either have we really have two. choices. Well, three, one, everybody's lying, which again, I don't think is coherent. Number two, is it's self-induced, or number three, there is a supernatural power. In other words, some non-material power behind this. If you opt for number three, then you've got a choice to make. Is it good or evil? Is it of God or is it of not? Is it not? And so at that point, I think you get into the counterfeiting territory. To me, it's not a stretch at all, given what we know about,

from scripture about the supernatural world, that the spiritual gifts could be counterfeited. I mean, you look at Deuteronomy 13. Everybody knows Deuteronomy 18. You know, if a prophet says something, it doesn't come to pass, then you're stoning. Well, we kind of forget that there's Deuteronomy 13, do. Which says, which has a prophet saying something,

and it does come to pass. They had the ability to do that. But if the messaging is, again, contrary to what the Lord says, get rid of that guy. Dang. It's like test, well, it's testing the spirits, right? Jesus tells you. Right. It's testing the spirits. And so, you know, you have, you have these sorts of things, you know, these, you get these little snippets in scripture, even like laws against necromancy. Okay, scripture has laws not because things can't be done. Like, there's no law that says, thou shalt not jump off a cliff and fly across, you know, the canyon there.

Well, of course not. At least I know I'll never disobey that one. You know, it has laws in, because things can be done and should not be done for different reasons. So you have laws against, you know, commands against doing things on supernatural turf. And there's a good, there are good reasons for that. God's not just like a killjoy. I mean, it's for your protection. Plus, why in the world would you think, given the fact that you're a human, you're embodied, that when you're on this turf, you know, what the heck's going on?

Why would you think that thought? That's ridiculous. You think a lot of the things we see like that are kind of crazy stem from that? like the Babylon workings and all this crazy stuff that we know about that happened. I do think there's a good bit of that. I'm willing to assign a good bit of that. And I'll put the label of misdirection on it. You know, something that blinds people to the truth in terms of here's something you should believe

as opposed to believing what you're off believing now. I don't think it's necessarily there to demonize or harm a person physically or something like that. I think it's more misdirection than anything, even though the other can happen as well. But I think you're into both. So sometimes there is a semantic art issue there. There's a lot

of similarity, but there's a lot of dissimilarity too. Yeah. When it comes to the ultimate messaging. Yeah, it kind of feels like a lot of times people are like, you know, a kid finding their dad's shotgun. There's a lot of power here and you don't, if you don't, if you're not trained. Right. Someday I do want you to use,

this. Yes. But we're not that that day yet. Yeah. And for, well, and for a purpose, right? This is, you know, we use this when you go, when you go duck hunting or whatever, not, not pulling the trigger inside. Right. And it sounds like to me, and I, and I don't know what your daily life is, but it sounds like you're trying to get people just even in that door. Like, there are entities. There is supernatural stuff happening. It's all over scripture. It's everywhere, and people are so skeptical. I would say initially that's true. It's become a little more acute for me, though. And what I mean by that is, you know, initially it's like, hey, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. It's unreasonable to think that everybody lies. Yeah. It's unreasonable to think

that everybody's pulling a hoax. You know, if you talk to people, like at a UFO conference, you have a dinner and around the table, there's a lawyer, there's a teacher, there's a school bus driver, you know, they're just normal people. And they're there basically to share their stories. They're not trying to be in a spotlight. They're very hesitant in most cases to bring this up outside of a safe community like this. They got nothing to gain and a lot to lose and a lot of irritation. So, you know, you start to see that and you want people on the outside to not marginalize these people and not make these assumptions, you know, because there's a lot of this stuff out there. But it's become more acute for me because, you know, I'm no profit or a son of a

profit, but I think this is a reasonable prediction to make. And that is, because it's already brewing, within the evangelical community, again, the ostensive, and it's not, I'm not saying ostensibly because I think it's fake. I think this is a genuine believing community. But within the evangelical community, there is, and is going to be more of a resistance to believing in supernatural things. Even the stuff that I write in my books, like divine counsel and, you principalities and powers actually being real, that the Old Testament writers actually believe the gods and the nations were real and their trouble, we stay away from them, you know, all this sort of stuff. There are a lot of evangelicals who just don't have any time for that. And what the reason it concerns me is that if I were an enterprising atheist, you've just given me everything I need to undermine anyone who follows you.

Because all I'm going to do is I'm going to say, okay, if I understand you correctly, here are our, supernatural statements in category A that the Bible says, deity of Christ, Trinity, you know, hypostatic union, you know, all these theological things, even the concept of salvation, okay? That's supernatural stuff, that's in category A. And over here's category B, the gods are real, principalities and powers are those gods, you know, Nephilim stuff, sons of God, Genesis 6. So we need to embrace this, you know, category A and we can reject category B. If that's the case, well, I got a question, on what basis do you do that when both categories come from the same source?

If I'm going to use your argument here in category B, what's to prevent me from traversing to category A and saying, that's not real either. That's not real either. That's not really. Yeah, exactly. You know, parse the equation for me. I've had these conversations with some of my friends who are, they have, you know, podcasts like this, and they push things that, like, Satan doesn't exist. There is no. And I say, because they have this idea, it sounds like, that the conservative church is the problem, because we haven't progressed. We don't know the issues. And I'm like, well, what happens when an alien shows up?

That means, you know, all your fear of bringing the supernatural into the conversation is out the window. People will not believe in Christianity, your Christianity at that point, right? I got one that's even more likely. What happens when masses of people around the world are convinced that aliens do exist, whether you actually get one or not? Exactly. That's the threat, right? You can move those herds.

You can move those herds without even producing one. Well, ancient aliens is already doing it, right? And then the problem becomes the same thing. It's the same problem. So I think that we're kind of, you know, and I get it to the, this is how it goes. Well, and again, I'm not saying this makes any sense, but somehow lots of evangelicals have convinced themselves that it's okay to demythologize the Bible for category B. But we have to have category A because then even calling ourselves a Christian would make no sense

at all. Well, the question is still on the table. On what basis do I have these categories and pick one and reject the other? It really just doesn't make any sense. And what it really comes down to in a lot of conversations is, well, I think this, the stuff in this category is just more respectable. I mean, I can, I can believe that and people won't think I'm crazy. Yeah. Again, the question really isn't answered. The question isn't what do people think. The question is to you, okay, you're the one that says you're the Bible believer.

And if your only answer is, I feel more comfortable with column A than I do column B, I can have better conversations in column A than I can with column B. that's really not theology. That's like looking to feel, you know, that's looking inward. You know, it just doesn't, it's not coherent. Do you feel like that's by design? Like if everyone doesn't believe, if everyone gets like, you know, they're hardcore into evolution, they don't think anything's supernatural.

We just kind of all evolved. Then, you know, there is this mass deception that could sweep in and deceive millions because they're primed. they're almost so far to the left that if something comes from the right, they're not thinking about it, they're not seeing it, it's like, oh. Yeah, I think people, I think people can get entrapped for all sorts of reasons. You know, there are plenty of Christians out there who accept both evolution and a supernatural world. There are plenty of Christians out there who don't accept evolution and don't accept a supernatural world. You know, there's no really, there's no neat way to sort of, you know,

create the taxonomy and then be able to pick, well, okay, this one's going to get attacked this way and go that direction and all that. So, you know, I think the, the threat, the sort, you know, the threat is common. The source of the threat, again, I think is intelligent evil. That's common. The strategy is what I think is different. In other words, the path that people can be led to or are on and don't see the implications of it. I think there's significant variety there. And I think part of the cheer is to have conversations like this one, you know, write books and do podcasts, you know, at least get someone to consider the implications of what they believe and what they're asking you to believe. And I think we can do that in non-confrontational ways. You know, like when I, you know, it's been a while

since I don't know, maybe five, six years since I've spoken at a UFO conference. But back in the old days, I did, I did Roswell, I don't know, for three or four years in a row. And there was always this one woman in the crowd. Like, I don't know, like, do you always take vacation at the same time in the year and go to the same place? The Roswell, you know, conference. But I, we would refer to her as the Gnostic chick.

You know, she was a Gnostic and she was committed, but she was always, she's always there and she wasn't bumbastic or anything like that. I mean, this is a thoughtful person. And she always had good questions. And what I would ultimately end up telling her, you know, depending on what the question was, is look. And you're doing this in front of everybody. Here's what I need to switch side. Here's what I need to come over to your side.

I need you to demonstrate this and this and this and this. So that was a way of me not just saying, well, you're just some crazy chick that shows up every year. You know, because that would be disrespectful and really untrue, you know, in her case. But it sort of gave her homework. So it didn't validate her position, but it let her know that I was taking the conversations seriously. And I might be thinking, you know, you really don't have a prayer of ever producing these things. But I'm not going to just dismiss you because of what you believe or what you think. And I was being honest, if you can do this, this and this and this, well, then you win.

Then you've got the compelling art. I love this is where it's going, though, Mike. If you're UFOs, if you're speaking of these UFO conferences, aside from, you know, engaging with this Gnostic woman, like what kind of, what platform are you presenting when you're talking about UFOs in that space? I'm not familiar with. Well, I would usually get invited to a UFO conference for one of two reasons or maybe both. One was people liked to hear me talk about could conservative, you know, Bible believe, leaving Judeo-Christianity, could it survive or sustain a genuine extraterrestrial reality? Okay, so that was like lecture one.

And then I didn't variably get looped into the ancient aliens thing. So that was usually took the form of a critique of Zechariah Sitchin or let's talk about Ezekiel Wan or, you know, something like that. So I would, I would get invited for one of those two things. And I really liked the first talk because it's important. But it gets me into a better understanding, because I think the dominant evangelical position about what the image of God is is weak, and it is very ethically tenuous. And I'm even willing to call it dangerous. So it would get me into the image of God issue.

And it was also an opportunity to go through the gospel, because ultimately you get to the question of, okay, if there are aliens, does Jesus have to go in all these worlds and die? So you have to talk about what the atonement is, how it's accomplished. So that invariably gets you through into a gospel presentation and talking about the theological subjects that attaches themselves to that. So that was always good. You know, it's a surreal experience to be going through the plan of salvation in front of four or five hundred people at a UFO conference. In a context of aliens, right? Yeah, in the context of aliens. But people, I've said this and it's offensive to a lot of Christians, but it's true.

So, okay, deal with it. You know, the average person at a UFO conference is more primed to have a good theological discussion with than the average person in church. Those people are ready for the conversation because they're hungry. They're hungry and they're already thinking about the major big picture questions. Who are we? Who is God? Like what or who is God? Why are we here? How do we get here? You know, these are all the big overarching theological questions. And they're down that road. So you can have really good conversations and people were interested in church-churchy talk or, you know, Bible talk as it relates to UFO stuff. because mentally most of the people in the audience have already wondered about these questions.

So it was actually very easy to do that. And there's a lot of evidence, you know, of ancient history. And you do a little bit of studying, you realize that the answers you're given don't satisfy. Yeah, the difficult point for a lot of people on both sides, whether they're Christians or not, is to realize that questions aren't answers. bad answers don't necessarily reveal the right answers. Yeah. You know, ancient aliens.

I mean, I understand why it's popular because it offers, I mean, just think about the intelligence that I'm talking about the, whoever came up with the idea. I don't think they had the foresight that were going to be in 16 seasons now. But as far as like the saleability of it, what you have is you have a lot of people who rejects, the narrative of the Bible, Judeo-Christianity. They reject the whole explanation of origins and who we are and why we're here and all that stuff.

But at the same time, you also have people who reject a Darwinistic approach. It's unsatisfying for any number of reasons. So there's this middle realm. And what ancient aliens does is it allows people to retain mystery to life. it allows them to seek and believe in something transcendent. It allows them to answer all the questions they have without appeal to these other two polls. It's this middle road that addresses all the important questions, which is why people find it so attractive. Plus, here's the bonus.

It comes with zero spiritual accountability. Well, it's like new age. It sounds like the new age movement almost. It's just you can fit in this. You can find this little niche, just everything. area and there isn't any accountability. It's kind of whatever you want to make it. It gives you a place. It gives you a place to disagree with the other two polls and have the discussion that you want to have. Yeah. Yeah, you can carve out, you can carve out your niche and then you can market yourself

to that niche and you can grow the niche. And then the problem is, is like, you know, have you watched that, there's a documentary on Netflix about, it was in Oregon that they started this quote. Oh, yeah, wild country. Wild Wild Wild Wild Wild Country. Have you seen that? No, I haven't seen it. Are you familiar with the cultish podcast? No. Okay, it's too, this is going to sound crazy in it of itself. It's two reformed guys who are open to the spiritual gifts. Like those two things don't go together right out of the gate.

Yeah. But they talk about cults and they've done some of that. So I've heard a little bit about some of these groups because I listen to cultish, but I've not seen the show. Yeah, yeah. Well, wild country is just start out this little. like commune and it just grew into this massive thing to where you know the government had to get involved it's a wild documentary you got to watch it it explains a lot of the phenomenon this is back in

the 70s of like how people can get into something and then they think they're having a spiritual experience or they think they're finding the truth and it just grows this massive level and I saw that in the music industry you know like a band would kind of put out a persona and then they would just blow up to be this huge thing and they were like come backstage and they'd be like man this is it's it's it like the caricature that I'm playing has grown beyond like they don't even take it serious but all the fans do it's it's a weird thing that happens when things go uh viral or massive and and and I want to say you know one of the questions I always have for you when when I'm listening to your podcast and I can't I can't ask you the questions but I'm thinking them as I'm

doing housework or whatever is how you know my understanding has evolved to where everything's so much bigger now is that how like when I think about Christ and what Christ does, it seems like there's so much more going on. Like when I think about the transfiguration, there's deeper layers. How is that the idea of Christ grown for you since? I would say exactly the same way, that the more interconnectivity you see, your sense of the bigness of whatever it is you're looking at in terms of the passage and the concepts therein, that has to grow in relationship, again, to that interconnectivity.

You take the transfiguration. There's a lot of Moses imagery. There's a lot of Exodus imagery in there. You know, the cloud, the voice, you know, the whole bit. You know, it happens on, you know, Mount Hermon. I mean, you take that simple story that gets preached all the time. And there's all these layers. And the more of that stuff you see, and then you also move from that

and you see how another biblical writer will hook back into this passage and specifically pick up on one of those invisible points. Like, you know, there's other layering that happens between passages. And for me, it's just, it's made me, you know, to use simple language, yeah, scripture is a lot bigger. The whole overarching story is a lot more, is a lot bigger. And when I mean, it's more complex, it's more intricate, and ultimately it's more intelligent. Because you have this document we call the Bible, this collection of books.

it's written over, you know, more than a thousand years, and the interconnectivity of it is so granular in places, you know, with how one author, you know, uses something else from another. It's really, I hate to use the word like magnificent, because that sounds a little too flowery, but that's what it is. It's just, it's kind of awesome. So, you know, all of this has just given me a bigger appreciation for the intelligence and the magnitude of what God is really up to. In the words, what God was up to didn't, it's not just the cross. I mean, the cross is the central linchpin, you know, event, but it's so much bigger than that.

And it, and it's actually told to you in the pages of scripture in so much, you know, bigger ways, more complex ways, more interesting ways, more clever ways, you know, more cryptic ways. Yeah, ways that UFO people could enjoy, right? Right. There's so much going on, you know, texts and subtexts. It's really become a thing of wonder, you know, to me. I don't feel like I'm like I've tapped scripture. You know, I told somebody a week ago that I already kind of know what I'm doing with the rest of my life. And that is, I'm going to, I'm going to, I could spend the rest of my life just doing nothing but Genesis 1 through 15. I would never run out of stuff to think about. I already know that. You know, it. It's just an amazing thing. There's so much in there, too. I mean, we just...

The prolog is everything. And we sit and look at just even on this show, especially, just look at a few verses in Genesis 6, which, you know, are a couple lines that talk about something that is such a huge topic. I know you've written on all of it on what happened on Mount Hermann and how that, you know, like, I think what's interesting, what I love what you said is that it's the, it's like the way it's woven, right? All that stuff then weaves itself in.

And if you, and if you understand, text and textually what happens in the beginning there, you see it all the way through, all the way through to Revelation. You see the threads, which I think is magnificent. It's a good way. I don't even know how to describe it. Well, esoteric is the word I keep thinking, right? Like, is it written in code kind of on purpose?

Like, is it written in a way where it's not? That thought helps us comfort ourselves. But I think, and what I mean by that is, I don't know if you're listening to the Revelation series on the podcast, where John, You know, John will be relaying, you know, some piece of his vision or, you know, something he saw. And he's crafting it in such a way to try to situate it within the prophetic tradition that has preceded him. He's just one of a line of prophetic voices here. And so he's dipping into the Old Testament.

But the way he does it to us is so messy. What I mean by that is he won't just, he won't ever have the thought, you know, I'd like to make this point. So I'm going to go cite this verse in the Old Testament. And I'm just going to stay there and you're going to be able to follow. No, that's not what he does. I like this phrase from this passage. I like that one over here. Four or five of these, throw them all in the blender, turn on the button.

And you're supposed to just know where he got the stuff and why he just did that. So it's comforting for us to say, oh, it's mysterious, it's cryptic, it's esoteric, like it's mystical. No, you're just not smart enough to follow this guy. He has assumed so much of his audience. He's assumed so much of a knowledge base of his readers. And the fact that you can't keep up with that, that's your problem. You don't get to retreat and say that John was trying to be obscure and mystified. you. No, you feel mystified because you don't know your Bible well enough to follow. And that's

really humbly. Do you think that everyone needs like their wilderness moment in their life to read it? Do you think that you have to go through some kind of struggle before you can see what it's saying to you? Because it seems like this just endless story of people coming to the end of themselves. I do think there needs to be some conscious decision, whether it's provoked by an episode. or a podcast or a book or sermon or whatever, there still has to be a conscious decision and it's a simple one, but it's a profound one and it can be a disturbing, troubling one.

For me, you know, it was, you know, like I related unseen realm in the very first chapter. For me, it was getting provoked to read Psalm 82 in Hebrew, okay? And as soon as you take the red pill here, you're gonna be confronted with the question, of, okay, am I really willing to read the Bible like an ancient person would? And what that means is I'm going to dispense or at least just set aside my community tradition. The way I've been taught to think about this, I'm going to set it aside and I'll come back and reevaluate it. But I'm going to take a long trip down this road, knowing that, you know, when I get far enough, down, I may not revisit this or I may only revisit part of it. And if I don't just come back full

circle and say everything's the same, if I, if I change some things, I could lose friendships. I could lose job. In my case, it was, is anybody ever going to hire me? I don't fit anywhere. You know, it's like I went, you know, 15 years of graduate school. Like, how, you know, am I going to find, find work? You know, because ultimately, I'm going to, the question I'm going to ask in a job interview is, am I allowed to say I could be wrong? Or, no, it could be this way over here, even though our tradition looks at it this way. Do I have the freedom to do that? And I'll be honest with you, when you're, if you're looking to be a pastor or a professor somewhere, in many places, you're not allowed to do that. Yeah. Yeah. I've experienced that. Yeah, there's so many risks. I mean,

have people write me messages like, man, I love what you said on Twitter the other day. If I said anything like that, I would be afraid to lose my job. I mean, this extends from just people speaking their minds on social media all the way up to pastors of churches, mega-churches. The cancel culture is so much deeper and real than anyone even realizes. And I think, I kind of want to get back to the question of Jesus again, because, like, if you could put in a nutshell to people at UFO conference, what Christ does? What would you say? Like, what does he do? Where does he go after he's crucified. What ultimately does he do? Does he, because now that you plug in the giants and the watchers and Enoch and other things, there's not many people they can just encapsulate in a few

minutes. What is, what does Jesus do? What does he really do? If I were going to, if I were giving a talk like that, I don't know what I would title it to to fit with the UFO, you know, conference. But if I were, I would like to show them that if we, if we take this account here as legit, real. And not only just Genesis 6, but I would present to them why the world is such a mess. There's three reasons. Genesis 6 is a big part of this. I would want to show how Jesus and the way his work on the cross is presented and the resurrection and the ascension, the whole bit, how it systematically reverses all these things. I'd want to talk about where he goes and why and what conversations he has

and what the implications are in terms of reversal. So I would want to present, this is going to sound really weird or inappropriate, but it might make you laugh, but I would want to present the story of Jesus as spiritual warfare

because that's what it is. It's not just this historical event thing that happens, and now I can have forgiveness of sins, okay, we're done now. Like, the way we talk about it oftentimes actually strips the cosmic dimension out of it. Exactly. When all of that is actually an integral part, you know, to what the whole story is. So you got to have, it's like like a good movie. You got, you got to have, you can't miss the introduction because the introduction is going to,

going to create the tension. It's going to introduce the main things that are, that, you know, the film's going to deal with. It's going to, it's going to. It's going to. to give you sort of the plot trajectories, you know, where they begin. And then the ending is supposed to resolve this stuff. Well, that's how I would want to present it. Here's the prolog, Genesis 1 through 11. Why should we care? Well, it explains why the world is just, you know, the awful mess that it is.

It explains both human and supernatural evil. Here's what we're up against. You know, we're estranged from God. We've got all these other problems. And not only that, but we have spiritual powers who are opposed to. to God's interest in having us back. The rest of the Bible is the story of God not giving up on the original plan. But now he has rivals and enemies on both sides.

So this is the story. And then how Jesus walks all those things back and brings them to resolution. That's what I would want to do because I can guarantee that 99.9% of the people in the room have never heard the gospel presented that way. it's always about clean up your act you know get your sins forgiven it and you know the Lord does I mean the gospel does that it does that but but that needs to be situated in this bigger it's like the last five minutes of the movie yeah it just it's like they they yeah I say that all the times I think that's why we have 40,000 denominations of Christianity because everyone's watched a half over movie right and they don't know how to make sense of the story right they just

So we just keep re, oh, this is what we think happens. Go with your metaphor. They've either missed the prolog or they only know the first of three scenes in the prolog. It's the serpent in Eden. We're taught not to see anything supernatural in Genesis 6. And we never even get to where Daniel gets his theology, Prince of Persia, Prince of Greece. Like, did he just invent that? No, it's what happened to the Babylon, by virtue of Deuteronomy 32.

28 and 9. We never get that because our English translations are not following the Dead Sea Scrolls. We literally can't even see it if we went looking for it. So we've got one of three parts of the introduction and we have no appreciation for, again, how the story ends. You know, the whole, all these trajectories are lost. So when you talk about, I have to go back this real quick, Jesus doing the reversal, reversing those things that the Mount Herman put into motion. If you gave it like a cliff note, version of those things that he did. What were those things that he did that reversed those things that were in motion?

All right. Humanity has three problems. Okay, we're all familiar with the Eden story. Okay, the serpent and Eden on all that, the Nakash, who, you know, I think it's pretty clear as a supernatural being. So we've got supernatural opposition from the beginning. We've got the beginning of human rebellion and supernatural rebellion. So the end result of that is we have estrangement from God.

most Christians again are going to know that. We also now have a death problem, which is why the supernatural rebel is sent to the erets, which, yes, it does mean earth, but it's also a word for the underworld. Now we have an underworld all of a sudden, why? Because now we have death. And every human being is going to end up there. All, everything dies now. So that's problem number one.

Number two is we got the Genesis 6 thing, which really isn't so much about the Nephilim and all the stuff we like to gravitate toward. Again, I discussed this at length in my demons book in an unseen realm, but especially the demons book. The real problem there is depravity. So on the physical level with the Nephilim, the people of God now have a lethal threat to deal with. And they do. The Nephilim were wiped out by the time of David who, who wipes out the Nephilim? Moses, Joshua, and David.

What do all those three things have in common? They're all foreshadowing. They're types of the Messiah. the new Joshua, Jesus and Greek in the Septuagin, Moses and David. Okay? So we've got the physical problem taking care of, but the spiritual problem, which is a depravity problem. This goes back to what the watchers teach people and how to be more efficiently, self-destructive and depraved. That continues.

So that's something that has to be dealt with. And then number three, we have the fragmentation of humanity. God divorces humanity as in a judgment. he's going to start over with Abraham, who's a new Adam, and there's parallels between Adam and Abraham and all this stuff. So he assigns the nations to other sons of God. They're placeholders. He's still interested in them because we know that from the Abrahamic covenant.

It's through one of your seed that all these nations are going to come back to me. They're going to be blessed. But now we've got humanity totally fragmented and under supernatural beings that themselves enter into rebellion. and we learned that from Psalm 82 and some other passages. So this is the world as it is. It's a bad place. It's broken in lots of ways.

So when the Messiah, if you believe this, then you're thinking when the Messiah comes, he's supposed to deal with not just the fall, Genesis 3. He better deal with all this crap, okay? And so when Jesus comes, we see the resolution of Genesis 3 problem. We have the death barrel and resurrection. resurrection. And you can't have a resurrection without somebody dying. So the death is essential,

which takes us to 1 Corinthians 2 where Paul says, you know, had the rulers of this world known what the fallout would have been, they never would have killed this guy. Yeah. And to set that up, I wanted to ask you this. So they thought they had to kill him. They thought by killing him. End of the problem. Yeah. So what in the death? What is what in the death? What in the death? What does it do? Does it like? I think the death, the death is, it's substitutionary. And I think the atonement, the atonement actually is a variegated thing.

It means different things. I don't think we need to adopt one view of the atonement. I think all of the views of the atonement contribute something because it's not a, it's not a simple one-way. I like, I love that. I love that. So, you know, you have the Christus Victor thing, which factors into what I'll say here in a few minutes. But the death takes, takes your death. okay you the death that you would have died he dies for you but that there's no resolution there

unless he rises from the death you know you look at the temptation of satan jesus goes out into the wilderness you know he's compelled by the spirit to go out in the wilderness for this confrontation and you know we're familiar with the story you know satan starts you know quoting him stuff and promising him stuff you know to you know to jesus and one of the things he does is he quote psalm 91 to jesus this is the one about you know if you throw yourself down you know, the angels will, you know, essentially bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone. They're going to protect you and all this, the son of David. Psalm 91 is in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's grouped among exorcistic Psalms. Because there are five or six things in the passage that in a Jewish audience were actually names of Canaanite deities. Plus it has serpent imagery. So here you have Satan throwing this to Jesus. Okay, what are you going to do? You know, surely the verse means what it says, Jesus, go ahead. Throw yourself off here. Now, what I think he's doing is he's fishing for information.

If Jesus throws himself off and he is rescued, what does Satan learn? Well, I guess we can't kill him. That's exactly what needs to happen. So Jesus is like, no, we're not going to play that game. Okay, I'm not putting any card on the table. Quotes Deuteronomy back to him three times. the three things that he quotes in Deuteronomy mirror the corporate son of God, Israel's their journey through the wilderness. All this stuff's going on.

So, you know, you have this whole setup so that when Jesus dies, he visits the spirits in prison. Again, you're going to read Unseen Realm. I think that's a reference to the Watchers, basically reannouncing to them that you're not getting out of here. You didn't win, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, 1st Peter 3, you know, I have a whole section of that in Unseen Realm. It turns baptism into spiritual warfare, which is really cool because it's a redecloration that they're doomed. I'm not doomed. Guess what?

Yeah, I'm here with you guys right now, but I'm here to tell you, I ain't going to be here long. You know, you're going to be here a long time, but I'm out of here, you know. So he rises from the dead, which, of course, cures the death problem. But now we get into how we cure both of the other two. What happens to Jesus after he rises from the dead? He ascends to the father, and that's important for two reasons. One is, when I ascend to the Father, that is the catalytic moment to do what? To have the Spirit sent?

What does the Spirit do? The Spirit dwells within believers now, which is a way to retard or rebut or combat depravity. Now we have the Spirit living within us. So now we're going to start to roll back, okay, the whole depravity thing. and the Spirit sets you on a course of sanctification where you will become progressively more like Christ. It's ultimately the defeat of depravity, your glorification. It's not just you get to have eternal life,

it's also you become like Christ. And then the other thing it does is when he ascends to the right hand of God, he takes the seat that he formerly had as sovereign. How do we know this? Again, there are various verses in the New Testament where Paul talks about this, but one in Colossians, he does it in Ephesians, that when Christ ascends to the right hand of God, that is equated with the stripping away, the undoing of the authority of the powers, the principalities, the rulers, the powers of darkness. Who are they now? Well,

they're the ones who rule the nations. You know, why does Jesus say, you know, when he ascends to heaven to go do this, the last thing he says is the Great Commission. All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Okay? Well, who had authority up to that point? Well, it's the other gods of the nations because the most high appointed them to their position. They became corrupt.

But now their authority is nullified. This is why Paul can go into pagan places, pagan cities. He's the apostle of the Gentiles and say to them, I don't know if you guys have heard my little story about being on the pagan podcast. You know, with the guy who worships the gods of Greece and Rome. I heard it. I heard it.

Yeah. You know, this guy asked me to be on his podcast. He signed his e-mails, Hercules, so I thought I should read. Yeah. But he said to me, he goes, I just read your little book, Supernatural, which is the lighter version of Unseen Realm. And he goes, I worship the gods of Greece and Rome. And he goes, I can't believe that the same worldview is in the Bible.

He goes, I just don't have anybody I can have this conversation with when you come on my podcast. So I did. And for like five minutes, he's given me Greco-Roman texts that have the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. And then he says, I have one question. If the most high, if God, the God of the Bible, set this whole thing up, what does he want? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. You know, what he wants is he commands Paul. I use Paul as an example to go into a Gentile city, one of the nations surrounding Israel that's under dominion of these other authorities, the rulers and principalities and all this. And Paul says, look, I get it. I'm coming to you teaching, you're preaching Jesus, and I know what you're thinking.

You're freaked out and you're scared because if you turn from your gods and turn this way, you think you're just, you're going to get punished. You're in a heap, you know, big trouble. You're in a world of hurt. You're frightened. You're scared. I just want you to know that the most high

who set up this whole arrangement became a man. And that same most high died in a cross for you. and commissioned me to come and tell you it's okay to leave these gods. They have no authority over you at all. And you go back home. And not only is it okay, but the most high insists on it. This has been the plan. So, I mean, Paul has the same worldview, but the twist is who's in control of it.

Now, again, that doesn't mean that the gods are just going to, you know, take their ball and go home. they're fighting for their turf. And this is why we need to redefine what we think is spiritual warfare. The question is, is like, are they flying the UFOs? Are these things still in control? Like, what are we waiting for? When is the story over? Like, it sounds like Christ mostly ends the chapter, but it's still kind of barreling on.

Here's what I think, here's why I think the deceptive nature, not only of UFO stuff. And again, I know there's more than one bucket. to put UFO things in. There's five or six buckets. You know, they could be craft that we've been working on. They could be, you know, the result of supernatural intelligence to deceive us. You know, in my view, okay, they could be extraterrestrial. Maybe that they're just a total other thing to discuss that isn't, you know,

intrinsically related to this. All these things are, these are all buckets for me. But in regard to your specific question here, you have a situation where Paul, in the Testament actually links the return of Jesus to the fullness of the Gentiles. That is, bringing all the people that God wants from their nations that are under dominion, bringing them back into the fold. Because that is the catalyst to the redemption of Israel. You know, all Israel will be saved in Romans 11.

And then the end comes. You have the second coming, the day of the Lord, and all this stuff. So all of that is actually linked to the Great Commission. If you want to know what spiritual warfare is, all you got to do is ask yourself one question. It's not shouting at demons. It's not, you know, praying for, you know, different rooms of the house. I don't have a problem with any of that. I think those are good things if they, if they're faith affirming, go ahead and do them. Be blessed. Okay. But ultimately, what spiritual warfare really is, you can ask yourself this question, what are the powers of darkness

afraid of? What do they dread? They dread their own destruction. And their own destruction is on a timetable, and it's linked to the reclaiming of the nations, which is the task of the Great Commission. So if I were a cosmic intelligent evil power, my strategy is really simple. I mean, I get asked all the time, do they think they could win? Depends how you define win. No, I don't think they're idiots. Like, oh, we're going to beat God and kill him off. You know, they're not going to think that. But here's what they do think. You know, all we got to do to stick around is to distract the church. We corrupt it.

We make it worldly. We have Christians invalidate their own testimony to impede the Great Commission. We get Christians doing other stuff that doesn't factor into the Great Commission. We're going to be here a long time. Sounds like a good plan. Yeah. You're just delayed inevitable, right? And so the UFO, the UFO stuff, all the spiritual theological messaging that goes

with this, I think is part of that. It's to seduce people into the things that in their heart of hearts they want the most because God wired them that way. They want transcendence. They want a relationship with something bigger than themselves. They want to feel accepted and embraced, you know, and validated and loved. Everybody wants this stuff. And so this is, this is what fills the void for a lot of people. And you combine that. Like in contact tea literature, the messaging is very consistently redefining Christology, redefining the person of Christ. I don't know if I've ever heard a single contact tea episode where Muhammad is redefined or Islam or Buddha.

Okay, Jesus and the gospel, you know, who Jesus is and what he did is always the target for tweaking. I don't think that's an accident. So I think in some respects, what we think of as the UFO stuff, especially the contact team movement and all this kind of stuff, I think it is sinister and it is demonic. I don't think everything, you know, in the UFO orbit, pardon the pun, fits into that box. But I think it's a very significant element of this whole subject. It's really interesting, though, because you're right, they don't ever go after Krishna or Buddha. Yeah, they don't need redefining. They're not

They're not going to put you back into They're not going to send you home to the most time Right it's not the yeah That's not the threat You're still under dominion Yeah Even though even though you're even though the dominion's been invalidated We're going to lie to you

So that you stay right here I know you got to go We don't have a lot of time But it's funny how a podcast on Bigfoot Can go here right Oh that's what you want to do No no Like Bigfoot's the gateway drug, we say on our show.

I did have one last question. I've always wanted to ask you, why do you think God divides up the nations? I never really understood that. That just seems so different. I think it, well, it's obvious, this is pretty much everybody's view. The tower was a ziggurat. What's a ziggurat? It's part of a temple complex.

you know, so they're building this to have a relationship with God on their own terms. And the very act of doing that, I mean, it even says in Genesis 11, let's build a tower lest we be dispersed over, oh, in other words, lest we obey what we were just told to do. Let's make sure we don't do that. And so it's very clear that there's a rebellion here. And honestly, I think at this time, humanity has had enough chances. we're like even God is fed up. Like, look, I mean, I promised I wouldn't do the flood thing again. Right.

So I'll tell you what we're going to do this time. I'm going to give you what you're asking for. You don't want me to be your God. You want to cultivate some other spiritual relationships. You don't want to be part of my family. Let's try that. And I think he assigns them again to the sons of God, Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, Deuteronomy 419 and 20. You can trace this through Deuteronomy.

You know, and initially, I think he wants the people governed according to his own character. He wants them governed well. And why do I say that? How do I know that? Because in Psalm 82, the gods of the nations are condemned for doing the opposite. And God is not happy with that. They not only abuse their nations, dominate them really so chaos among humanity, and of course, accept worship of themselves and even lead Israel to worship them,

Deuteronomy 3217 in all these places. You know, they do that and God is unhappy because we're just going to do this for a while. I'm going to go call this guy Abraham. Okay, I'm just going to pick this dude. And he doesn't know it yet, but he's perfect because he and his wife are too old to have kids. So I'm going to start a new humanity. And they're perfect because I have to be the one who supernaturally does this. and all their descendants are going to remember this.

And no, the only reason they exist is because of an act of creative power, okay? So we're going to do this, and it's going to be through him that all the rest of you are going to come back home. But because of, you know, God, the abuse of God's good gift of free will, okay? I'm a free will theodicist. You know, it's intrinsic to imaging God. There's no getting out of it. Because of that, the whole thing just blows up because of the abuse of God's good gift, like it did in the beginning. God's not surprised by this.

The first time it happened, he already had a plan, before the foundations of the world. You know, God knew this. But, you know, I get asked about why there's evil and all this stuff, how God fits into it. If you understand evil this way, what it means is that, yeah, yeah, evil's here because of this decision God made to give us free will. And we have to have that gift so that we can image him. We can't say we're like God unless we have these attributes. shares with this. So yeah, that's true, but God already knew what the result would be from that. And isn't it interesting that God decided that he would rather have all the chaos and the pain

that he shares? You know, we think that, you know, God is immune from being affected by human evil. I got news for you. You think you know pain and evil better than God? God sees everybody all the time. So don't tell me like you've got a corner on this. God made God made that decision, which tells us that he would rather go through all that than to not have us at all. Oh, man, that's so good. That's so good. And when we hear about the golden age, the original time, when the megoliths are getting built and how depraved it really was, the fact that it goes on for as long as it did. And it's just like, man, this evil barrels on for a while.

And again, we ask why, why so long? It's because God doesn't cheat. Oh, God could get from point A to point B like that if he took away free well. But then God cheats. It's an admission that the original plan, the original way he made humans was a bad idea. I didn't know. And do you think that's why every human being wants someone to want them? Yes, I think that we are part, this is how we're wired.

We are wired for community with fellow imagers and to want a relationship with our creator. We're just wired that way. And when we don't have it or we persist in having it in ways that are either going to be self-destructive or that we are deceived or we willfully go off and look at another as God, that it's never satisfying. It's never what it should be and could be. I just think it's part of the way we are, how we're. made. I think, too, that loves a choice, right? And if God is love, then he couldn't violate his own rules of us choosing him. He is not going to cheat. His integrity is at stake. His love is at stake. His omniscience is at stake. So, yeah, yeah, because God commits himself to having a human family

on the same terms that he decided from the beginning. Yeah, that's going to take a while. But you know what? You know, he's big enough to do it. You know, I don't want to drift off into the whole sovereignty and free will thing. But like in an unseen realm, I talk about why foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination. And it's very easy to see in, you know, 1st Samuel 23 when David, you know, is hold up in Kyla and Saul finds out. He's like, David, you idiot. Kyla's a walled city.

I finally got you. I'm going to go down there and surround the city and you can't get out. So David here is that Saul knows and that he's he's going to come down. And so he says, hey, bring over the Ephot. I got to ask God a question. Hurry. Bring that thing over here. And David asks God two questions.

He says, will Saul come down and surround the city? Will he come down to get me? God says, yep, you bet you. Second question is, okay, will the men of Kyla, who I just saved from the Philistines. You would think they owe me a favor. But will the men of Kyla hand me over to Saul? God says, yeah, they'll do that.

They're going to do that. They sure will. Because what's the alternative? Saul's men surround the city and you starve them out. You cut off the water supplies. It's classic siege warfare. This is how it's done. So what does David do?

He does what you and I would do. See you. Okay? I'm out of here. But what it teaches us is that God foreknew two things that never happened. David is not handed over, and Saul hears that David has left, and he doesn't come down to the city. Okay, got away again. So the fact that God forenows things does not mean that they're predestined.

And in fact, the reformed creed, I mean, you reform people, this drives them nuts because of the high Calvinism. Look, your own creeds say this, okay, God knows all things, really. real and possible. If God knowing the possible makes them real, then there really are no, they're only realities. And if God knows alternative possibilities, now we've got conflicting realities. Like how does that work?

God knows both, but it doesn't require the predestination issue. Now, God can predestinate things if he wants to. He's allowed to do that. He's God, okay? But he doesn't need to. And so God is operating in this kind of world. And I always use the chess illustration. What's more impressive?

God sits down at the table with you to play chess. God looks at you and says, I'm going to play a game of chess today. And I just want you to know that I predestined every move you're going to make and you're going to live. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's really not as impressive as this conversation. God and you sit down for a game of chess and God looks at you and says,

we're going to play a game of chess today. And I just want you to know you can move anywhere you want. I haven't predestinated your moves. But he's the best chess player. I'm still going to win. Yeah, exactly. I'm still going to have my way. And sometimes in the chess game, you sacrifice your queen to win, right?

Yep. And there you go. Right? Nothing like dropping a mind grenade at the very end. Just at the very end. Here's a little something for everybody to, if predestination, I mean, I love it. Man, I have so many questions. My last thing is just real quick.

Like the hang up people have is that they think, you know, a lot of people walk away from all this whole story because they think, if I don't, I'm going to be burning in hell forever. Is hell designed for these entities that sinned? I mean, I know that's a whole other nutshell. Well, I mean, scripture uses that language, you know, as far as, you know, their punishment. But it's actually the language about the lake of fire being, you know, for the devil and his angels, which occurs in one passage. It's Matthew 25. That language really doesn't resolve the larger question of, is hell eternal torment or is it annihilation?

I mean, both of them are permanent, a permanent separation from God, you know, that kind of thing. So I think that that language is sort of, pardon the pun, is the fallout of the initial rebellion. You know, in other words, because of the initial rebellion, we get death and we get the realm of the dead, you know, all this stuff. And the original rebel is cast down there, but all humans now are essentially, this is why Satan is called the God of this world because everything dies. Ultimately, everything is going to go across his desk. Everything winds up there.

So in that sense, yeah, you have the initial creation of this prior to, you know, Adam and Eve's death, this place exists. So it is created for him, the Lord of the Dead, and anyone else who would follow him. The New Testament writer looks back and knows the rest of the story about these other rebels and Tartarus and the abyss and all this kind of thing. So I think you can say, you know, initially, yeah, this is where this is where the concept of an underworld, you know, separation from God in terms of death, this is where it originates out of supernatural rebellion. but humans are caught up in it immediately, you know, in sort of the story art, you know, from the New Testament. But God obviously didn't intend that from the beginning. There is no abyss. There is no shield.

There is no underworld in Eden. It is a post-Edenic thing. Yeah, it's the effect. Right. It's the, yeah, it's an effect. So, you know, you have to sort of, again, put it in its framework, you know, not only it's cosmological framework, but just its theological framework. Yeah. Man, well, you have to go back and watch the whole movie, and that's kind of what

we've been trying to do on our show is to get people to say, and you said yourself, you know, prologue, man, don't skip the introduction. Yeah. And you're going to, you said you could spend the rest of your days just in the first 15 chapters of Genesis. Dr. Heiser, thank you so much. I know you got to go. You got, you go on 100 podcasts a year. We appreciate you coming on to our show. And dropping a lot of great ones, a lot of just things that ponder. And I know that you can combine the fringe. And that's what we try to do on our show is just give people, you know, just the license to look into some weird things. And I appreciate it.

Those people really need to be welcomed, you know, to a theological discussion because their questions are inherently theological. Yeah. There's no escaping it. And they're ready to have a good discussion, whereas a lot of, you know, people who not in the fringe world or, you know, sort of stayed in their own tradition, they're not as ready. You know, it's as important for everybody,

but the fringe community is important because they're already thinking about this stuff. Yeah. We'll have to have you back on if you're up for it. Can you plug where people can get involved with what you're doing? Yeah. I mean, the nerve center is DR as in docks. MSH, my initials, DRMSH.com.

That pretty much has links through tabs to all the other stuff that I'm doing. The books, any of my books you can get on Amazon, please include my middle initial, Michael S. Heiser, believe it or not, there's a Michael Aheiser out there who has written one or two Bible study things. That's not me, okay? But if you see Unseen Realm, you know, you'll know that you got the right guy. So Amazon is good for that. But yeah, the homepage of a link to the podcast, Naked Bible Podcast. I have a YouTube channel, Fringe Pop 321, you know, that we discuss, you know, thinking about fringe things. So all that, paranormal is another podcast.

We've only got like 15 episodes of that, but we'll try to do another one or two of those. We discuss paranormal stuff from the perspective of peer-reviewed literature and science. because there are actually scholars who are into these topics. But, you know, we kind of do that, but we're not that smart. So we're not scholars. Well, we just build off some research or some experiments somebody did, you know. A lot of people don't realize that stuff's published. Like, it's for real.

Like, it made it into a journal, you know. Right. So we like to do that, too. But, you know, just create multiple entry points. I have fiction, the facade and the sequel is the portent where it's, it's paramount. where it's paranormal fiction, but it's also very theological. So any of those things. I love it.

And I love that you've found a way not to get canceled. You know what I mean? Like you can talk about the weird stuff and you've built a big following. And it's really encouraging. It helps a lot of people like myself who just kind of got into this progressive read of the Bible. And I was just so off. I'm thinking if I can get into the Illuminati, then that's, I'll be canceled proof. Hey, if that happens, just get us in, too.

We want to be molls. Yeah, we want to know what's going on. I can be a reference on your application. Perfect. He just the handshake on the slide, yeah. And if you had to say yes or no, is Bigfoot out there? Oh, gosh. Yeah, he's out there in some form.