Blurry Creatures - EP: 163 Territorial Spirits with Dr. Joel Muddamalle

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Dr. Joel Muddamalle makes his Blurry Creatures debut and we delve into Territorial Spirits and their ancient connections to the biblical and historical narrative. This was the topic of his dissertation and Ph.D., one he earned under Dr. Patrick Schreiner and the legendary Dr. Michael Heiser. Joel currently serves as the Director of Theology and Research for Proverbs 31 Ministries and Lysa TerKeurst and is passionate about teaching the brilliant truths in Scripture. What are territorial spirits? How do these relate to the Teraphim in Genesis and how do they connect to the sons of god? What is the connection between these entities and the divine council? How is this related to cosmic and geographical warfare, both ancient and modern day? Join us for a fascinating conversation about all things blurry that very much falls into the realm of the unseen. Guest: https://muddamalle.com Intro Song: Marvel 83 "Synthetic Nights"  Support the show! www.blurrycreatures.com/members Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com Aaron Green: https://www.instagram.com/aaronkgreen/ 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.

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What if Yahweh doesn't pull through? And so you actually have a war. a war that's essentially taking place behind the scenes in a family situation between these households. 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 it bust the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen chair.

chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they had 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. Let's just get started. Welcome to the show. Dr. Joel Matamale. Joel, you are the director of theology and research for Proverbs 31 Ministries and for Lisa Turkhurst. My wife's a big fan. So I think we talked about that at the conference. You're part of a preaching team at Transformation Church with Pastor Derwin Gray. You have a PhD in theology under Dr. Patrick Shriner and the legend, Dr. Michael Heiser for Old Testament with an emphasis on Paul's household language in Ephesians as it relates to the Old Testament. You actually pointed out over your shoulder.

I'm not sure if that'll make the cut earlier, but you pointed out the dissertation behind you. I thought was pretty cool. You've got a great social presence and you do a lot of teaching, biblical teaching, theological stuff. you work with with teams, ministry teams and churches. But we wanted to have you on for a lot of reasons. One, Joel and I got to become friends this year of all things. So we're new friends, but it felt like old friends. We were at a conference in Georgia.

And I happen to be talking a little bit about. Bigfoot conference, right? It turned into one. It turned into one. Wherever Luke is, it turns into a big foot content. It brings it with him. That's true. He does.

Yeah, but we were talking, I talked a little bit. the podcast on stage and and literally I come off and I'm in the back like looking for something to eat and are bumping to Joel and he's like yeah hey dude I heard talk about Heiser he's like I did my I studied under Mike and I was like dude no way this is yeah so we kind of had this cool moment where you know you know all it transpired in the last in this in this short year with with dr heiser I know we you had a relationship we got to have a relationship with Mike over the last couple years of his life and it was an unbelievable blessing and the work he's done he speaks for itself and for itself when it comes to just reading the scripture for what it says and delving into the original

meanings and context. And I love that's where your heart is. And so excited to have you on, talk about what we're going to talk about here. And Nate, start them off, man. I got to baptize them in the blurry verse, man. Yeah, that's right. That's right. We ask everybody. We've only had a few people that didn't have any thoughts, but Dr. Joel, what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? What are my thoughts on Bigfoot? No right or wrong answer. Okay, here's here's like a logical, a logical thought, right? Here's the question. How can so many people, groups, ancient societies, I mean, we're talking the span of history as we know it, all speak to a type of phenomena and personal experiences and where does it come from, right?

And so like for me, like as the academic part of me, I just am like, listen, there's got to be an origin story. There's got to be a freaking origin story to this thing. Otherwise, anything of substance does not test, does not survive the test of time. It just can't, right? And so that's kind of like when you say Bick, that's my, that's like my first thing is like, how in the world are we still talking about this and how is it not died out or how somebody not proven this thing so ridiculously false, you know? And so that's kind of my thought, dude, honestly.

I like it. Yeah. I think it's it's the dude honestly it's the Heiser approach right like if only one of these sidings and we're talking about thousands of years you make a great point if only one is is true then it breaks the paradigm you have you have to find a way to include this and you make a good point you know I don't think we talk a lot about this Nate because we haven't talked to had an episode specifically on Bigfoot in quite some time I think we always touch on him I'm not in a weird way but we you know we we go so many places with that so many places

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but listen, like, people are still having experiences. They'll have them this year. They had them last year. Yeah. They had them a thousand years ago. And it's strange. They don't pull a body, they haven't pulled a body out of the woods as far as we know.

So something's going on and something strange. I know we're at a journey podcast here, Joel. So we're 150 plus episodes in talking about all the weird stuff. And we talk about Bigfoot being the gateway drug. And it really, in some ways for a lot of people, it is. have an experience where they see something that doesn't make sense and maybe shouldn't be there and it causes them to have to maybe reevaluate their place in in the universe maybe reevaluate their belief systems yeah it sort of blows up their paradigm and they have to kind of rebuild it

yeah and i think that's a good point and when when something blows up your paradigm you have two options i think one is what kind of mental gymnastics are you willing to do and for how long in order to substantiate like your previous view or when it breaks, are you just willing to deal with honesty, man? Like, are you just willing to be honest with what's present in front of you and allow that to be the source of the new direction of questions that you ask, new framework that you're willing to consider? So it kind of serves as this pivot point of what I love that phrase,

like when that your paradigm breaks. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are afraid of the paradigm breaking and the consequences it's going to have for them. for their lives and the types of questions they're going to ask. And so it's just, they think it's easier to triple down on past ways of thinking when it's actually just much more work. And it's actually mentally exhausting. It's safe, though, right?

I think that's a problem a lot of times is that when you, when you allow it to open, there's a ton of unknown. And, you know, we're creatures of wanting control and knowing and when a point, we're going to make boxes and compartments and Tupperware, Tupperware is a multi-billion dollar company. You want Tupperware that everything can fit in and stack and we can store, right? Even just in our thinking. And that's why we're here, Nate, right? This is what we're doing.

I was having this conversation with a friend yesterday. I think a lot of people, they mentally, but they also physically get in debt to these ideas. So you're paying money on student loans. You are so ensnared and trapped. And sometimes it's not even just a mental, you know, block that you're, or a paradigm that you're stuck in. Sometimes it's like, you have to, well, I just spend $150,000 on education. that, you know, and a lot of it was bad. And I think so a lot of people, it's easier just to plow on down the road and continue to

set everything aside as a call it an Oopart or whatever they say and put it on the side and say, well, that doesn't fit into our narrative. So we're just going to keep trudging along. And it's really a bunch of brave individuals who will push back, exit the freeway and go back the other direction. But it's not very many people who will. So that's so, okay, I'm just going to go there. And this episode might just be a lot of throwbacks to, uh,

I mean, like, dude, I'm in that boat. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm written the Bible. I'm seeing the evidence of a supernatural cosmic framework that's everywhere in the scriptures. And yet I've taken, you know, at that point, I had an undergrad. I had done an MDiv. I was getting ready to start a T-HM program. I had done a side thing in psychology. And I had maybe, maybe, I was actually talking with another scholar this morning, Dr. Gary Breshears. who's another close friend of Dr. Heiser. And I think we both are like, yeah, I think in all of, and he's 76 of all of our time in academia and studying before I got to my PhD program, I think maybe an hour.

If I got lucky too in angelology, demonology, or anything that deals with the supernatural, right? And so then you have somebody like Heiser who's willing to literally put his entire career and life on the line of just asking this question, what the heck does Psalm 82 mean? Like what is the most natural, honest reading of Psalm 82 and allowing that to take him in a direction. And so like today, man, I get to stand on his shoulder.

He like what you just said, Nate, like he went before me. He was a brave individual that went before me so that we can just continue to ask some honest questions of the text and allow that to clear up some things that have been blurry for so long because we've been unwilling, unwilling to just, deal with the honesty of where the scriptures are leading to, you know? And yeah, they're going to pose more questions. But what in life doesn't pose more questions at the end of it, you know? So it's just a journey. I love it. And you see it everywhere. It's like once you start reading these things, I mean, you can't read a book like Job or, you know, some of these. It's mind-blowing that it's

controversial to read the Bible this way. At this point, I'm just like, look at all these weird books of the Bible. You have Ezekiel, you have Isaiah, you have. Genesis. Joe. Yeah. Well, Genesis, you can kind of, you know, they massage that one. But there's some really other books where it's, it's like narratives. You know, it's like Satan rolling in and like, well, this is my guy.

You can't, you can't take my guy. Okay, well, I think I can. No, you can't. You know, it's hard to rationalize this scenario that's being laid out in front of our faces. I don't know how the church is. I can see it being, okay, there's some people on this side and some people on this side, but it seems like a majority of people. They listen to our podcasts like ours and their mind's blown and you're like,

wow, nobody really is, for the most part, asking the weirder questions. I think part of it is a methodological approach. Part of that is, you know, I was reading a book by, I think she said, yeah, she'd be an old testament scholar, Sandra Richter. And she has this incredible line early on in this book, Epic of Eden, I think it's called, where she talks about canonizing culture. And so if there's ethnocentrism, you know, there's this other approach. that she has. And what she's basically saying is often what we're guilty of is taking our

cultural moment, our post-enlightenment understanding or technological awareness and trying to impute that into the biblical text and allowing that to be the framework. But in so doing, we literally are committing a horrific act against the text and the human authors of the text being led by a divine author, right? And so we have to really, like, I'm just asking these. questions like what are the first readers think about these things like for Samuel you know and you've got this shade that shows up this Elohim of Samuel like what the heck is going on there you've got baal you know and this massive showdown with Elijah and first king 17 like what the heck is taking place on mont carmel you know and we could easily kind of just wash it with our modern

understanding and in so doing totally miss cosmic warfare that's taking place that's connected to territorial deities that is the underlying backdrop of the entire Old Testament text that leads us to Paul's language of powers and principalities in the New Testament. You know, it's the question that Heiser always asks, where the heck does Paul get his language? Yeah. Like, where does he get his understanding of cosmic warfare? Do we really think that in Ephesians that the Temple of Artemis is a brand new novel idea that just showed up?

It's like, no, bro. Come on. Give me a break. They have been plagiarizing culture on top of culture from the very beginning, you know, and it takes us all the way back to Genesis chapters 1 through 12. And so it's really just a recapitulation of an ancient story that's pretty devious and brilliant all at the same time, you know? Do you think that's a strategy? Like early on, like, so we talk about the Golden Age a lot, and it was like all these realms interacting.

Do you think that that's more of a modern strategy? well, in the ancient times, there was really not an unbelief problem. It was just, you know, there was so much chaos going on. You kind of had to pick aside. And now modern day, people are so apathetic. You think that's like a strategy of Satan to kind of woo people into this age of unbelief and then drop a cosmic sort of return or some kind of crazy deceiving miracle on the people that are just so asleep that they're just like willing to, I don't know. Yeah, dude, absolutely. Absolutely. There's a great quote by C.S. Lewis, I use it in my introduction to my dissertation, and I'm going to summarize, I don't have them in front of me. Basically, Lewis is like there are two great approaches that the

malevolent evil spirits love. One is a total neglect of the spiritual realm. People walking around with their heads in the sand, just absolutely unaware and negligent and dismissive of it. And so that one's horrific. But the other one is equally, which is an over obsession, right, where there's this like massive compulsion to find something and then you start to entertain some things and get into some stuff where you're like, oh, I'm in deep waters right now. Like there's, I'm Indian. People are going to hear this. They're not going to see me.

I'm Indian from India. And there are, like, paganism is massive, massive there. There's Hindu gods. And there's one example I have of I walked into a, I think the Hindu god Yama, the god of death and had this temple there. And this is the wild. the story. I'm walking and every, the city around it is gorgeous, like beautiful trees, beautiful flowers. There are these monkeys, these animals that all are healthy. They're running around.

You walk in to the temple gates of Yama. I mean, if I didn't experience it, I'd be like, this is BS. This is not even true. I walked in to the temple and all of a sudden, everything is death. It's decrepit. It's like you can feel it being just off. Even the monkeys were all deformed inside of that lived inside of these temple gates, right? And so it's like there's a real malevolent world out there, cosmic world that's out there. And we see that it break through in different spaces that I think some people phrase it as thin. There are these thin spaces. Like if you have places where heaven meets earth, then there've got to be thin.

Like logic has to work both ways. We can't just be like, oh, everything is good on the heaven side. and not believe there's not malevolent dark spaces as well. And so for me, that was like a personal experience of walking. And it's territorial, right? Like there is a territory that is not marked and marred by this presence. And then there is a land and a space and a territory wild connected to a Elohim or a God that is territorial space that has a totally different look, feel and reality to it.

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Mobile. If you like your money, say where it is. Mintmobiles for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's mintmobile.com slash blurry. Up front payment of $45 for 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. Dude, this is you're a pro because we would, we talked about what we want to talk about. You steered us there, Joel, and I love it. But this is, this is your dissertation. I want other people don't know this, I know this because we talked about this over a cigar. You, under Heiser and under Dr. Patrick Shriner, you essentially went to the Old Testament

and you mind all this language of Paul and you brought this up. But I want people to understand. This is what you wrote a dissertation. This is how you got your PhD in. And this is what we wanted to talk about was territorial spirits. We talk about a divine counsel worldview. That's the Mike Heiser sort of way of reading the Bible, interpreting the Bible. The Psalm 82, you touched on it.

Connecting points to that too is Deuteronomy 32, which of course is dividing the nations and yowie and you have then you have paul as you pointed out talking about principalities and powers authorities dominions powers authority right and so you know we get into the weird stuff here and that is part of the bible that is weird to us i'm glad you said this that are 21st century westerners right that post you said post enlightenment we are in the academic era and the idea that there are there were even not even are that there were these things is hard for a lot of people to digest. But the idea this still happens. And I think you nailed it because I've also been places and I've talked about on the show, whether it be Afghanistan or in

Southeast Asia, some places that are, and even in the United States, you can go places. New Orleans comes in mind where you get off a plane or you get out of your car and it is a different atmosphere. And people can say that's just, you know, it's perception and doesn't have anything rooted in reality, but we listen, if you follow Christ, if you follow a biblical worldview, then we live in a supernatural paradigm. And I think the wondrous work of our friend, our common friend, the late Dr. Michael Heiser, was just to remind people what the scripture said and take them back to what it actually says and who wrote it and who and who the audience was. And I think that's something that we can't harp on enough, right? I mean, Nate, go ahead. What you say? Some of the harder parts is that, you know,

things that Paul says has been systematically edited and rewritten and reinterpreted over the centuries. You know, there was actually, when thinking about, you know, scholarly work in like 2000, you've ever heard of Dr. Bentley Hart? I think David. Yeah, for the name. He wrote an article about how Paul, like everything you know about Paul is wrong, and he's talking about this angelic war that Paul is trying to write. And over time, it's been changed. You know, his, his view of the cosmos is the most accurate. And our modern view of the cosmos is actually really off. And so when that was 2017, 2008, that was why mine started to turn that, man, we have

been changing the language for a long time. And it's more than just, oh, we'll read this verse this way. It's like, you know, all the weird stuff's edited out and massaged and changed. I don't know. That's a whole other podcast. Yeah, that goes into textual criticism. in early manuscript evidence. And was there an editor for Paul and his Ephesians actually written by Paul?

Or was it a pseudo? Paul, somebody else came in. So there's a lot of questions. But here's the, I want to take all of that. And we can have that discussion at a different time if you want for sure. Yeah, yeah, dude, 100%. Next Joe, Dr. Joel Matamale podcast. We'll do that one.

There we go. Let's stay on. Let's take it all down to its most common denominator, right? This is, again, you just brought it up, Nate. This is just fascinating to me. Let's just hypothetically say, and I'm, I'm not of this opinion. I'm going to hold to Pauline authorship. I think that there was some editorial work that was done. This is common in the Greco-Roman world. Paul probably hired some

scribes who actually did. They were like professional letter writers, you know, and so they would throw a little bit of their spin on it. Paul would read it just like an editor would do with a book and say, hey, I think I want to tweak this or tweak this. So there's all the stuff that's taking place. But here's the thing that you just described. Even if hypothetically, we say that all this stuff was edited out and all this stuff was was kind of washed clean of the supernatural. You still can't get away with the biblical texts as we have it now being rooted in a supernatural cosmic worldview. Like even the stuff that like if they were going to go through that work to edit it, then we would

literally not have a New Testament. There wouldn't be no Bible for us. Right. And so they were left even if hypothetically, this is true. What we're left with is still like, okay, Paul Nefucius. too, 18 through 22, there were once sojourners and strangers. And all of a sudden, there's this architectural language, Oikos terminology, that is a backdrop of the Temple of Artemis, clearly supernatural and cosmic. And there's this breaking of the dividing wall of hostility. Well, that brings

the temple in Jerusalem to mind and the supernatural place where the holiness of God would have resided at the very center of this. And so it's like, even if it was all washed out, we're still left asking this question, well, why is it even if, with our best intentions of trying to rid ourselves of this fanaticism, if you want to call it, we're still left today talking about it, right? Like our best efforts aren't even able to do that. Yeah, it's a great point. That the backdrop doesn't change and the context doesn't change, even if you try to change some of the overt sort of meaning or say it's allegory, whatever, right? Like, it is, we're still talking about it today. It's a phenomenal point. Well, I think there's two reactions you can have to that.

When I read that article, my reaction was, wow, everything is so much more like a Marvel movie, and that excited me. But some people, it freaks them out. Their little, sort of their black and white theology gets blown up, and then they kind of get paralyzed and they freak out, and they have the kind of retreat. But some people, it draws them into the majesty and the, just the magnitude of this story. And we're in a war. And there's a lot. going on and it excites people or it can freak you out. Yeah, I kind of have a philosophical response, I guess like practical pastoral response to that. I think the people that are freaked out are facing the limits of their understanding. And the problem of Genesis 3 ongoing is we want to know

everything and we want A plus B to always equal C. And the second somebody comes in from the outside and says actually B isn't even what you thought it was. It's not even a letter. It's something totally different and that breaks your paradigm like your guys's language well now you're like crap i'm out of control i don't know what this means anymore it's a position of humility that you have to subject yourself to and there's nobody in this world running around thinking like oh i want to take the humble life like i want to admit that i don't know what the heck is going going on over here you know and yet the biblical framework actually is that god uses the weak to make them strong god uses the the wisdom of this world and brings it to foolishness so that we can understand the mysteries of his of his ways and his work.

And so it's like, man, I just hope for those folks that get to that position, they just come to that place of admitting like, yeah, this isn't, this isn't black and white. You know, there is a supernatural realm and a supernatural world. And there are real life, malevolent, evil beings that are hell bent at the destruction of God. And these beings know that they can't destruct God. destroy God. So what's the very next best thing that they can do? Hijack his people, his image bearers that are, you know, a reflection of his image. So it's like if God's goal, and this is what I argue in my dissertation, if God's goal is he's a father of a household and he's determined to have his family back together, well, what is the enemy's primary means of upending that thing?

Keep the family divided, you know, keep them bickering, keep them in internal warfare essentially. So anyways, and that these are all the questions that got me into like knocking on Heiser's door and saying, hey, by the way, I've got this idea. I think there's something about the household. And I think there's something about these things that are happening in the Old Testament with these terrafem, which are these household gods. And I think that it's connected to the supernatural world. And that started a five and a half, six year journey of me being deeply rooted in Old Testament. The first three chapters of my dissertation is Old Testament, the last three are New Testament, and then I have a concluding chapter.

I'm bridging the gap between the two texts. Yeah, well, talk to us like we're dummies. Take us back. Take us back to that. Because, I mean, I've been, you know, territorial spirits, we talk a lot about how, you know, these creatures, because obviously our shows called blurry creatures, we talk about creatures, and that's how we, that's our gateway into all these topics. So if these, you know, there's places, and I was, I was lucky to have been, traveled a lot as a younger guy. and I know what it's like to be in a certain place and feel differently. You just feel like you walk into a cloud of darkness.

Right. And I never really understood that. I always thought, well, maybe I'm just a sensitive person and I can just, you know, you are. You are very sensitive. Just an emo ginger kid. But, you know, like I come from California. I visit there a lot.

And I tell you what, that state has changed immensely since I was a kid. And you feel it when you show up there. And when you leave. And I'm like, telling my friends, I'm like, there's something wrong with certain places. And I know you did a lot of work on territorial spirits. So I know we could talk a lot about that. So let's get into it. Talk to us like we don't know anything.

Take us back to the beginning. I know you said, because it's funny because you said the TerraFEM thing. And that's actually questions that I don't know if we talked about this or I asked you about this initially, but. Yeah. But I know that's where you want to start. And I want to just listen to you, just educate a couple of dummies. Yeah.

I'm going to start with the funny story. So like I'm a PhD student, right? And I got to do this outline. And I've got these two readers who Pat is going to be, I think his work is on the ascension of Christ. There's a lot of overlap between Psalm 82 and the ascension of Yahweh, of Elohim, you know, over the Benah, the sons of God and this judicial scene that's taking place. Well, I actually am making the argument in Ephesians 2, 18 through 22. It's the conclusion of Psalm 82. It's actually like, here you go. God, Jesus is elevated and he's put over all powers, authorities, principles, and they're subject underneath his feet. So anyways, I'm trying to wrap my brain around all of this. And I'm trying to find Old Testament connections to it. And I sent, I think I can't remember what happened first. It was a text message or a phone call to Mike. And I was just like, hey, I've got this idea.

I think there's a connection between the Teraphim, these household gods in the Old Testament and Paul. and then the Greco-Roman representation, the Panetson layers of these household, you know, like the famous scene in Gladiator, you know, Russell Crow is, you know. I was going to bring that up, Joel. I was like, dude, like when he has a little, little figurines. I was thinking that's a gladiator, yeah. Exactly, there you go. So that's Greco-Roman. You know, you've got this understanding of the ancestor deities.

And I was like, I think there's something here. And I actually think it's more than just the ancestor deities. I actually think this is a connection to the Shadim, the Witch and Duder Army 3217 is actually talking about. I've got to look at the reference. It's actually talking about how the Elohim Arshadeem, you know, these demons are these supernatural, spiritual, disembodied creatures. And so in a lot of that I texted or called Mike and Mike was like, yeah, I've not really heard about this. And which is like for Mike to say that should be like, hey, you know, like abort mission, abort mission. This is not the place that you want to go. And I and I just, I'm stubborn. I've got a little bit

stubbornness and I've got this like pride in me where I'm like I gotta show him I gotta show him you know and so I've got a couple messages that I'm gonna read to you that are that are kind of interesting this is going back and forth on my dissertation chapter as the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-11 people always call me loud and I'm like yeah I know I'm crispy did you expect me to whisper if you want quiet go eat some soup and reflect like I know I'm a handful I'm bold I'm juicy throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal and my and my whole meal and with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No.

Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. He goes, this is going to be interesting. I'm quoting directly from his comments to me. He's probably laughing right now. This will be interesting. I'm not aware of a connection between the terrafim and territorial gods of the nations.

Typically, terrafem are connected to ancestor remembrance. But this is intriguing. If you want to keep going, go for it, right? Which is his subtle way of being like, abort, abort. You don't want to go to this direction because you're going to waste time. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's a little bit of an endorsement.

Like, hey, you might find something, right? Okay, here's some more. And then he goes to my chapter where he goes, Joel, I don't think you need this connection to establish your thesis. And then he goes, which is good, because I'm not optimistic you can demonstrate this line of thinking. He's brutal, though. I love Mike. He was always really honest and a little bit snarky. A little bit straightforward.

So he's like, he gives me a different trajectory. And he's like, basically he's like, if you crash and burn, like there's a way out of this. Let me give you an escape hatch, you know. And then I get to the very end of that section. And dude, I actually have this framed and sitting on my desk. He goes, nice job. Very good source for this. And he's talking about this Hittite expert that I cited.

He goes, incredible connections. I did not know this helpful to me personally. And I'm just like, and in my dissertation defense, he made the same comments to me. And so why bring all of this up? I was looking through these moments in the Old Testament were these household gods. And the Hebrew phrase for this is the terra feme. And forever, for a long time, it was kind of understood that these were ancestors, dead, deceased, ancestors. And there wasn't much of a connection that could be made between these Teraphim and the sons of God of Job and Psalm 82 and Genesis 6.

And so it seemed like these were disparate kind of different deity type things. One is ancestors and the other are these patron gods of the nations. And then this is basically some research found that if you take a look at Duteronomy 3217, you know, I'm going to read the text. It says they, I'm going to give you who's the they is. Israel, sacrifice to demons, the Shadim, not to God Elohim, to God's Elohim. They had not known, new gods that had just arrived. Check, this is wild. That your ancestors did not fear. So in Deutorme 3217, you have the presence of demon Shadim that are correlated to Elohim. This is synonymous language now between the two and the Old Testament. And now there's a

reference to ancestors. So these, this ancestral kind of identity. So you've got the two connected. Now, this is where the research took me, and I'm going to simplify this. Anybody wants to, you can read my dissertation for 40,000 words on this. Yeah. Basically, a hit type expert finds a column where it's like words and definitions. And when they find this column, they actually find, I'm going to actually get exactly what it says here. So when you say column, is this like a carving?

Is it like a carving? Yeah, like a car. it's like, exactly. On stone, okay. It's an archaeological dig that they found that would have had words that correlated with other words. And so a lot of times what's happening with Hebrew is that the Hebrew language is using loan words from other Semitic languages in the area, Ugaritic, Hittite, different, you know,

words. We do the same thing. We take different words and we use loan words if we, you know, can't find the closest meaning. A lot of our words are loan words from Latin or from even Greek at times. And so it's a modern thing. But this is what was really, really interesting. I think his name was, yeah, A German Hittiteologist in 1966. He finds this Babylonian column. And in the column, they defined Shadu as Tarpus. Tarpus is the Hittite word. And so it's basically equivalent. So it's like tarpice is this other deity. And Tarpus equals Shadu. or Shadim is what we know as demons. Well, what are Tarpus?

Tarpus are territorial spirits that guarded households of the gods and the entryway for them. So basically what we have is that now with this being present, if you can say that Elohim are connected with the Shadim, so demons, Elohim connects us back to Genesis 6 and the Sons of God. And then you have a Babylonian column that equates Shadim or Shadu, same word, right? Root is the same there with Tarpus. And Tarpus is equivalent to a territorial guardian spirit that protected the household. What is the household of? The household of the gods.

Then you have a linguistic match that wraps all of these words into one usage, both in terms of etymology, in terms of its language, but also in terms of its language. but also in terms of its function of how these spirits would have behaved and been used. Now, you're probably wondering and people are listening like, okay, that's interesting, but how the heck do we find this in scripture? Like, where is this? All right, no problem. Let's turn, go to, you kid, I got you, I got you.

There's a story in the Old Testament of Rachel. You've got this, this is just a wild story. So basically what happens is Abram, he leaves Er of the Chaldeans, his brother, father's name's Tara. His brother's name is Nehor. Essentially, on their way out to the promised land, Tara is like, I'm freaking out. I am not going to follow this God that has called you. So I'm going to settle in this land. And so he and his son, Nehor, they settled there. Abram goes out. Well, Abrams looking for a wife. Abrams looking for a wife for his son. I don't want to have a wife from the nations around me. I've got to go back to the hometown. And so you've got Rachel. And so Rachel goes

and on her way out as she leaves, it says that she grabs the terrafim of Laban, right? So you've got... It's her dad, right? It's her father. Yeah, yeah. And so you've got this scenario where she grabs the household deity of Laban, and she takes it with her as they escape and as they run away. Well, now here's the really big question.

why in the world would she grab the terrafim? What is this object doing? Well, remember, when she leaves her homeland, it is space, it's territory, it's land. So for her, this makes all the sense in the world. She's like, I'm bought to leave everything I ever knew. While I'm in this land and in this location, this is going to be totally fine because I'm protected by potentially the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, you know, right, like I'm potentially there. But just in case, Yahweh is going to pull through, I still have

the terrafim. I still have the gods of the land that are here to protect me. Now she has to leave. And what does she do? She goes, just in case, Yahweh isn't going to pull through. And just in case, he's not going to protect me and my family, I'm going to go ahead and grab the terrafim. And I'm going to take this territorial deity and have this as protection for me as I walk out as I leave this land so that it can follow me in the land and kind of protect me along the way. And so you have the evidence of the terrafeem being a spirit that's associated with land and households. And then you have Rachel who grabs it because she's terrified. What if Yahweh doesn't pull through? And so you actually have a war that's essentially taking place behind the scenes in a family situation between these households.

Oh. And then you see, and then what's really interesting is Laban's reaction, right? It's like, it's not like, dude, you took my action figures, you know, and I want them back. It was like he ran them down to get the stuff, to get them back. Because think about it. Why? But why? Why would Laban run down Rachel to get him?

Why do that? Because in the way you're describing it would be your protection or you're covering, whatever it may be in that land or your conduit to the things that are protecting your land is now gone. It's gone. Right. It's gone. It's gone. It's interesting.

When you say that, you know what it makes me think of right away? This could be way off. And so you can just set those aside and say, we're not, we're not, we're not talk about that. But it makes you think about when, when God ejects Adam and Eve from the garden. Uh-huh. And then what does it do? He puts a cherubim with a flaming sword at the end, to guard the entrance.

It sounds almost exactly like what you're saying about when, in the, in the Greco-Roman sense, when they had these gods that were meant to. and what Paul would have addressed, right, to guard the spaces of, as you talked about in the temples, it's like, dude, this is the same thing. Like, same concept, obviously different teams. We're talking about, you know, this is the Bulls and the Pistons. We're not, we're not, and now you're a bulls fan, so I had to throw that to you.

Absolutely. Yeah. And this is when MJ's beating the bad boy pistons, right? That's right. He's like, sorry, Isaiah Thomas, like, you suck now. I got your card, and then he just destroys them. We could riff on that one for a while. I'm trying to lay out like, you know, I think people's initial thought is they just assume all these things are bad, right? That's just that that's the knee-jerk reaction. This is all bar. This is all bad. This is all dark. This is all evil. How do you make sense of that? Because, I mean, obviously people just get, it sort of spooks them when you talk about things like this. Yeah. So let me, so I gave that example with, with Laban and the Teraphim and Rachel and maybe what is the motivation for it and what it presents, right? So some people could say right now,

Well, that could be a proof text, is that the only place that this shows up. So this is one of the explicit places where you have the word terrafeme and you have a territorial situation and that is happening. Now, conceptually, this is happening everywhere. This is happening everywhere in scripture. So this is one of those things where it becomes a lens. Once you see it, you'll be able to see it clearly in other places of scripture that typically we overlook because it's not a normative way for us to think through. So let me give us a couple of these examples, right? I love this, Joel. I mean, this is, I love it, by the way. Continue. Yeah. This is awesome,

right? Because like, okay, it's like the Plex of Egypt. What's happening with the Plex of Egypt? Well, and so it's like, Nate, you're asking, is this bad? Is this, I want to put this in the paradigm of Yahweh is king of the cosmos. And he has this divine counsel. And he gave delegated a authority to the Elohim, to the Bene Elohim. And in Durham, 32, 8 through 9, it's the aftermath of the Babel event of Genesis chapter 11. And so he gives them to the nations as guardians to protect them. And I'm going to hold to the position that at some point in time, Yahweh's plan is to bring the nations back together. He keeps Jacob as his allotment, as his inheritance. And so these deities, these that are associated and connected to territories, nations, and lands become corrupt.

They accept human worship. It's full on rebellion, right? And now their territories are connected to these supernatural beings and to a people that are part of the land. So now we go to Egypt. Why is it that Yahweh decides that the means by which he's going to set the Israelites free is through 10 plagues. Take a look at Exodus 12, 12 through 13.

This is what the text says, for I will pass through the lands of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. Huh, that sounds a little familiar. Psalm 82, anybody, maybe?

I am the Lord. The blood shall be assigned for you on the house. Now this is house language, where you are. And when I see the blood, I'm going to pass over you and the plague will befall you, right? Numbers 33, 4, while the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had struck down among them, on their gods. Also, the Lord executed judgment. What's happening here? Each of these plagues is actually a cosmic and geographical warfare, where the territorial spirits or the gods that are connected to the nations are there. They pose some kind of supernatural power, but their supernatural power is a fraction compared to what

Yahweh can do. So in giving these plagues, in executing the plagues, in doing it systematically, you can even trace some of these plagues to the specific types of deities that were known to be gods of these things. Yahweh is showing his superiority and his supremacy over these territorial spirits. Now, some are you all like, Joel, that just sounds like, like, you know, a little bit far-fetched. How do we know that there's more? I got you. Don't worry about it. How about Ba'all and the storm God in Mount Carmel, right? It's an act of cosmic and geographical warfare. Baal is a thunder god. This is super interesting. First King 17-1. There's this three-year-long drought, right? The Elijah announces on the people

because of their idolatry. There are other passage of scripture, Deuteron 11, 16 through 17, to army 28, 23 through 24, where God gives as a potential punishment for the Israelites for idolatry, famine, a withholding of rain. Now, think of the irony about this one. You're worshipping Baal, the storm got, and there ain't no rain. Like, what in the world is taking place, right? And so the battle on Mont Carmel is a supernatural cosmic showdown between false prophets and the real prophets. between a false god, real, real being, deity, just not Yahweh, you know, the one true God. And then the last one, this one is my favorite, and it's super overlooked. But this is perfect example of territoriality in terms of cosmic warfare that's taking place. If you look at 1st Samuel 5, there's this odd story where the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines, right?

This is what 1st Samuel 5 too says. the Philsteens now remember the Ark of the Covenant is like the whole this holy ark God's presence would have resided there for Samuel 5 2 then the Philsteens took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon and when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day behold Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord so they took Dagon they're like well maybe he stumbled in the middle of night right that's my commentary and put him back up in his place He might have gotten drunk or something, who knows.

But when they rose early in the next morning, Behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. And then check this out. The head of Dagon and both his hands were laying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. Now, a little bit of Hebrew here, the Hebrew word for Dagon, one of the roots of it that compounds the word to make it together. It can mean fish.

So what does an object look like where the hands are gone and the head is gone? you just have a trunk and looks like a fish laying dead on the ground before what Yahweh now here's the interesting thing where is this taking place it's not on in Yahweh's land it's in the land of the Philistines this is territorial warfare and the territorial spirit is overcome and overpowered by Yahweh himself dude that's rad so oh man I have so many questions I don't even know where to start well it's funny because I was talking about this a little bit the day because California is having record snowfall, right? And it seems like there's a lot of narratives about weather and all the things going on.

And yet this state that's supposed to be dried and it's getting pummeled with snow. And you wonder if you wonder if some of these things are still going on today is kind of the thought I had. Is it all this supernatural stuff, these wars, these territories, these principalities, it all seems like it's still going on. But we're just not aware of it. We're just asleep to it all. I don't, I think when we read the Old Testament, we think, oh, there was a time when this is how it went. But now, you know, we're just hanging out and things are good. And I think that's, that's a, you know, the New Testament, the Old Testament, there's just a big difference there.

At least that's how when I grew up in the church and went to Christian school and they weren't, and the last few years, they're together now. They're finally like, if anything, now the Old Testament makes more sense than the New Testament even. And it used to be the opposite where I thought the New Testament makes sense. I don't understand the Old Testament. Now it's like I think I'm getting the Old Testament a lot more than the new. You know, and it's funny how things switch. But my question, so these spirits, right, they, you're saying that they were loyal to God at one point. Then they got corrupted.

Like any rich celebrity would get corrupted. Like starts out good. He's a, you know, he's a good homegrown boy. And then he gets in and he becomes the rock star. And then he's just. And then he drinks his own Kool-Aid and then he gets corrupt inside of his heart. And then he uses people as pawns and stepping stones in order to become more and more and more. And in the process, he finds or she finds themselves more lonely, more anxious, more distraught, more isolated, more frustrated.

And all the money in the freaking world isn't going to help them get out of that situation. But they kind of put themselves into. All right. That's a different story for a different time. No, but isn't it interesting though, like, Joel, like on that note that when you talk about it, the way that God set things up, that the wages of fame or adoration or worship are that, or just what you described. And it just is, it is a universal truth that, like, whether it be humans or whether it be the bin al-a-hame, the sons of God, the angelic race, whether it be any of those people that aren't Yahweh, aren't the king of kings that worship ultimately corrupts and destroys and literally rots to the core it is it's a fascinating truth of reality there there's i've said this for a long time but there's

i literally think there are there almost nobody makes it out saintry themselves there's very few people that are able to do that well and and i think it just when we see when you say that just translate across the board i mean literally across the board when it comes to these even to these these regents of Yahweh, these, you know, they were governors or, you know, whatever you want to, ambassadors of the kingdom more or less that were given charge over realms and nations. And, you know, we talked about this sort of language Nate with him a lot, but like there's this idea of how the way a kingdom works. This is how it worked, right? And then these entities take and they want what God has, right? They want to be worshipped and adored and pedestaled or whatever you want to

call it, but it's fascinating how that just ultimately doesn't matter who you are or what you are, I guess in this case, but it destroy it. It destroys you. Well, I think, I think a good way to think about this is that we always say on a show is like, okay, think about the diversity of species on planet Earth and then think about how heaven's probably no different. You know, we tend to think these things are, these worlds, these realms are so much different. So I think, if you think about human terms, do you think Satan's going around and just approaching these gods and saying, hey, look, and slowly corrupting them one by one, or, or, you know, having siops where he's trying, you know, like humans do. Like we, you know, we're fighting geopolitical

wars and this guy was on our side and then he's not on our side and it's just this chaotic. This is, nay, this is such a good question. So there's differing opinions among scholars about this. Walter Wink is a brilliant. I'm not sure if he's even still alive or not, but he wrote a lot in this area. He had this concept of the rehabilitation of the rehabilitation of the Elohim of these sons of God. I am going to land with Heiser on this one. I'm not going against him on this one. I think Psalm 82 is a judgment upon them on those beings. And I think that that's set the stage. So it's like the angels of God, they are set in place. And these fallen angels have made their bed and they're set in their place. And so I don't think that we've got this like

temptation that's actually happening for these other, you know, because think about it this way. like the angelic beings right now who stayed faithful to Yahweh are probably like, heck, no, I want nothing to do with Gehenna. Like, heck no, I want nothing to do with what. Did you all pay attention to what took place when Jesus hung on the cross? The evil spirits thought that they sent him to his own death. And actually, the cross was the means of their own death. Right. Like, they've observed the redemptive plan of God at work here. So I don't think we have to worry about this. I do want to make just a couple comments on this to one, Luke, your point. Humanity was always intended to be reflectors of God's glory, not absorbers of God's glory.

And yet being made in the image of God is a dangerous position to be in, because it's very easy to try to absorb glory that was intended only for him, rather than reflect glory onto humanity and to the creation to point worship and awe and majesty back. to the creator, right? And so I... There's a word right there, bro. That is a word. Yeah. I think what we're finding...

It's humility, right? I mean, that's... You know, like, kind of what you were saying earlier, it's like some of these musicians, they get to a place that they don't have any real friendships. They don't have... So what do they do? They just keep going out and they just...

They want all the admiration of their audience. They want to absorb it all. And it's like this addiction, right? It's never enough either. Yeah. Endless tours and people singing their songs and praising them, but they're almost emptier every time. It's like you have to have more and more and more to get that same high to feel normal.

Eventually, you just get lower and lower. It's actually disassociative. What it's actually doing is reinforcing a fabrication of your identity, not the reality of who you are. I'm a big fan of the late great Eugene Peterson, and he has this saying. He talks about the congruency of the heart that he longed for what was inside. of him to be true of what came out of him, you know, what came from him in his words and his thoughts and his actions. And I think what you're describing here in this discussion, and I'm going to connect it back to Nate, your first point about what's happening right now is that there's a

discongruity when you and I buy into the hype that we are more than God intended for us to be. This is the Nakash in Eden coming to Eve and seduce. suggesting that if you just eat of this fruit, that you will be like God. Think about the implicit lie of that statement. They were already more like God than any created being. They were made in his likeness and in his image. And in a total reversal, in a total tragedy, when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit, they actually lose what they already were in order to be something they were never intended to be.

Their humanity broke in that moment, right? And to your point, why is this? Let's look at Isaiah 14, one of the origin stories along with Ezekiel of Lucifer's fall. Look at what Isaiah says of the internal dialogue of Lucifer, right? This is the internal dialogue that he's having in his mind. Starting in Versailles says, oh, how you are fallen from heaven, O'Day Star, Son of Dawn, how you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nation's low. And then he said this,

You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly. This is Eden. This is Edenic mountain top language in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the height of the clouds,

and then catch this. I will make myself like the most high. I mean, this is absolutely the downfall of what took place and of that pride and of that idolatry and of wanting to be what you ought not to be. And then to your point of what's happening right now, this is the spirit. This is Lucifer, right? Look at Ephesians 2.1. It says that Paul says, we were dead in trespasses and sin in which we once walked. Now catch this. Following the course of this world, following the prince, the archon,

This is now Daniel language following the prince of the power of the air. We know this is Lucifer. And the way the Greek text is written here, we should not read this as the prince of the power of the air, who is the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. These are two separate beings, supernatural being. So you've got the prince of the power of the air, and then I would put a period. And now you've got this separate spirit that is at work now. This is present tense. This isn't an Old Testament reality.

This is a New Testament reality. That is at work now in the sons of disobedience. And then, you know, it goes on and on. And so, like, yeah, like all this stuff is happening today, you know. And it's just being rinsed, washed, rinsed and repeated with just innovative new marketing techniques. Right. The same being. It's like they're just changing masks, but all goes, you know, actually there's some at a

that says that Dagon was the father of Ball. But it very well could be that the same supernatural being is the same thing. That you've got Dagon, supernatural being behind, and then he changed his mask. Mask gets Ball. Well, then he goes to Moloch, and then he puts on a different mask, and he goes to Zeus. Then he puts on a different mask, and he goes to Jupiter, and then he puts on a different mask, and you can call him whatever you want now. But it's all the same same evil beings that are just changing marketing strategies. The brand changes, right? The being is the same.

The brand changes. It's making me think a little bit of this conversation about the temptation of Christ. Because growing up, you know, you think, I mean, we could get that, this could be another whole other rabbit trail. But I always thought the temptations that Satan gives to Christ weren't very, how do I say this? they didn't seem like temptations when I heard him for the first time.

But when you corporate this worldview, then the temptations become different. Because does that make sense? It's like if he's God, what does it matter? Like, you know, he's going to these locations and then Satan's trying to get him to defect from his father. It's like, oh, he's trying to lure him over to his side with all these other characters.

You know, there's so much more going on here And when you think about the temptation of Christ, you're like, oh, Satan is, Satan has his own thoughts and plans and what he's trying to pull off. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, I think it's a recapitulation of Eden. I think it's the Garden of Eden and Eve. And don't you want to be like God? And yet Eve and Adam are like already like God. And the same thing. And I do think it's actually a rejection of his innate authority, right? The ascension hasn't taken place yet. So it's like, here you go. You can have, you know, five grand right now, or you can wait till after the cross and you can have eternity. Like you could have eternal treasure. Well, what do you want? It's like, let's make a deal. Yeah. Yeah, right?

Like immediate gratification is like, well, I don't know if I'm going to make it past the cross. And I don't know if I want to go through the cross. And so, yeah, five grand could work could work right now. But even notice that the language of the temptations is all spatial, territorial. It deals with the temple. It deals with heights. he takes him to the top of the mountain. Well, what happens on top of mountains?

This is the place where God meets man, right? There's actually a retelling of multiple biblical narratives and stories of where the cosmic and the worldly meet. Here's another just kind of idea that I kind of argued in my dissertation that I think is really important. And I can't remember who asked if it was Luke or Nate who asked, but it's like, yeah, like now we have these two worlds, cosmic and earthly, in two separate spaces, right? But the biblical narrative all the way from Eden is actually the one influences the other,

that what is happening in a cosmic realm has ramifications in an earthly context. And what happens in an earthly context has supernatural ramifications as well. So you've got in Eden a supernatural rebellion with the Nakash, the serpent, and you have an earthly rebellion with Adam and Eve. Then you get to Noah, Genesis 6, you know, in the flood narrative. Well, you have a supernatural rebellion with a subconscious rebellion. of God and the daughters of man, but then you have an earthly rebellion with humanity that's taking place. We'll move forward to Genesis chapter 11. You have an earthly rebellion with the people

coming together trying to build a Ziggurat tower to try to force God to come down, which archaeological digs actually have seen, we've seen this, that at the very top of the Zigarette tower would have been a room for the deity to come down. And so what this is is a perversion of Eden. Adam and Eve were given a great commission to go out into the world and to spread the image of God out into the ends of the world. And what humanity does is in total rebellion, tries to force God to come down. This is the human plight. We want the shortcut. We want the good of God without doing the responsibility of what it means to be an image bearer of God. And that's what they do in Eden. Now, we have to, or in Babel. Now, we got to read Genesis 11

within the backdrop of Deut Army 32, 8 through 9, which gives us the cosmic rebellion. So you have human rebellion, you have cosmic rebellion. The thing goes on and on and on. And we could just, you know, spend all day talking about how the two impact, you know, you've got Neiman, right? And he's got this leprosy situation. And he has to take dirt from God's land, essentially, to bring it back to his homeland so that it's active spiritual cosmic warfare. So anyways, it's the earthly has cosmic ramifications and the cosmic ramifications have. earthly, and that has not changed. What happens at the cross? At the cross, you have the physical death of Jesus, but you have a supernatural liberation of all of humanity, right? It just kind of

goes on and on as a pattern. So good. So something I'm thinking about and something we've talked a lot about our show is it seems like they're building these empires that were under the gods, you know, the pre-flood world, similar structures, pyramids all over the world. Yeah, mountains. They have. Yeah. So they have, they have, they're different, but they have this thing in common. So can you speak to that a little bit? Like, is Satan, I mean, obviously it seems like he's the head honcho of all these, the rebellious ones here. And something else you said made me think about how earth and heaven sort of mirror each other. There's a lot of, there's a lot of accounts of UFOs disarming nuclear warheads. And you've got to think, what does a nuclear warhead do in this? realm and why are they turning them off and all this other weird stuff and it's like are they are angels flying around and disarming nuclear weapons i don't know it just makes you think behind the scenes how much to and fro they're you know a and b i don't know there's a lot there sorry just thoughts just getting it all out of my head i'm just i feel like

Because Arch was about to say something before I jump into it. No, no, no. I had one little clarification than don't want you jump in. So when God divides the nations, and this just made me maybe not understanding of being dumb in Deutormite 32, at the time those Elohim that take the nations as sort of governors, they are still on a team, right? They have not rebelled this point, or is he giving it over to rebellious?

No, yeah, that's a really good, that's a really good clarifying point. in my dissertation and Heiser and Unseen Realm says pretty clearly, we're not told when the rebellion takes place, only the rebellion takes place, right? And so what happens in Jeremy 32, 8, through 9, I call it delegated authority that God has a divine counsel, that these council members ought to live honorably in response to what Yahweh has for them to do. He keeps Jacob as his allotted inheritance, and then he's got the nation. Now, this is, again, earthly cosmic. Notice the function of Israel in the Old Testament. What is Israel doing? Israel is an outpost of the present kingdom of God and Israel, and even in the way the law was written, even in the nature of how the Israelites conducted their relationships with sojourners and strangers, they provided inlets for the nations to come and be a part of Israel. This is the grand scheme of God to have his family back together. Now, what we find evident and just specific is God warns the people of Israel not to worship

the stars of the sky. We know this is poetic language for the host of heaven. These are supernatural beings. And what happened with the Sons of God in Duteronomy 32, 8 through 9, is at some point, we're not told when, only that it did happen, that they accepted human worship and they tempted the Israelites to worship them as well. And so you have these two acts of rebellion. The time frame, we don't have all the details of, only the fact that it did take place and it did happen. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, too, in the context of the New Testament, right? I know you write about this, and I don't want to get back to Nate's question, but it's interesting that, like, what Jesus did is brought the Gentiles back into the fold.

And to your comment, right, of Israel being the outposts and having inlets to the restoration of the family of God, that it's always been the plan. Even though the Jews would say they're set apart and they're chosen, which they were chosen, God's plan was always, even then, was to bring his family, the entire family back together. And then it was really completed in the work of Jesus, which I think is the most beautiful story that you, the way these things all connect. And I love the lens that you gave us here with the territorial spirits. Because I think it does make so much sense. So one more thing you said, Joel, and I want to clarify as well. So at the point of the cross, do you believe there's not any more rebellion now? No, they're still rebellion. So here's that. Yeah, yeah, that's another really good. So here's what I think, here's what I think happens at the cross. At the cross, Jesus deals a death blow to the supernatural. cosmic malevolent spirits. He deals a death blow. They're still active. They're still working. So the idea in theological terms is inaugurated eschatology. The idea is that God's kingdom is here and now,

and yet it is not yet consummated in finality. There's this interesting thing I read about lions in the wild in Africa and how a male lion that is in a transition period, a young buck has come in and beat it, you know, and it's on its kind of deathbed, that this line is the most dangerous in these moments. Because at this point, this line has got nothing to lose. So it's going to go like all out to destroy anything and everyone around it, right? And so at the cross, what Jesus does is he deals the death blow to the, to the Benealohem, to the fallen sons of God, to the entire supernatural realm that has set up a false kingdom, an alternate kingdom to Yahweh. And in so doing, they're in their final stages.

And so I actually would say they're more dangerous now in this way that they ain't got nothing to lose. They know what the end is going to look like. And yet they're stripped of their most important tool and tactic that they had, which was the ability to blind the nations from Yahweh. So if you look at Ephesians 3, this is what Paul says in verse 3, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed

to His Holy Apostles, prophets by the Spirit. And then he says, this is the mystery. The Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So if the Gentiles were territorially ruled by malevolent supernatural beings, but at the cross they were dealt a death blow. Now the church has every opportunity to show the manifold wisdom of God and bring in the Gentiles. That's earlier in Ephesians 2, 18 through 22, that we are no longer strangers and aliens, but we're actually the Oikas Tauteo, we're the household of God. Before you ever get to the temple, you get the house.

So the house is built, the house is growing and forming into the temple. And what is the temple? The building box of the temple are the nations of the world. Yeah, I mean, I... Well, it kind of, it helps me kind of think about sort of my previous question, because it does seem like after Christ, there's sort of these deserted, it's almost like there's these ghost towns around the world of these ancient empires. And who knows when they went deserted and became ghost towns.

Some people say pre-flood, some people say after the, you know, that they were just remnants of these sort of dynasties. that were all, were in full rebellion against God. But they had these things in common, a lot of snake imagery and, you know, iconography. Worship. Temples and they're building mounds all over the Philippines,

and they're all over America, and they're all over China, and they're everywhere, right? And there's South America. But there is little differences here and there. Some of the architecture is different. The stonemason work is different. And you're just like,

okay, there's similarities and there's differences. and it's really confusing when you get into sort of the megalithic construction and like why they were building what they were building, where they were building it, but they were connected. They knew sort of the Earth's grid and they were building them in certain locations even. So I just wonder the similarities and differences. Like a lot of this is astral, right? This is a lot of this astrological because they're making connections between the temple and astral deities.

And so even in its geographical orientation, part of migration, I think, has to do with the fact that space and time is moving and geography is moving. And so there was these mythological kind of beliefs that the temple had to be oriented in a certain way in order to make connections with the astral kind of astrology or cosmology. And so, you know, over decades and generations and times, the stars are moving. So your buildings that you had built now are kind of like, oh, crap, they're not oriented in the same way. So now we've got to make changes and adjustments. Here's the other thing that I think is really important in demonology, is sometimes we conflate what is true about Yahweh, and we assume or presume that is also true of the supernatural malevolent beings as well.

And so we almost have this ying yang kind of idea of equal and opposite, and there's this, you know, kind of battle. And that's not the case. Yawai is king. He is king of the cosmos. And he is, you know, like Yahweh is Elohim, but no other Elohim is Yahweh. That's a Heiser quote. And so in that he is a species unique. That's one of the things I loved about what Mike used to say about Yahweh.

And in saying that, we also have to know that these beings are not omniscient. They're not omnipresent. And they're limited in time and space. And so there is, Daniel is cosmic warfare and geopolitical realities on display. It's very clear that at some point in time, just like in any military situation, if land loses value, you withdraw. you move to different places where there's more opportunity. As civilizations are changing and as there's new opportunity to grow. And I think you have the presence of supernatural beings.

They're like, well, screw it. I'm out of here. You know, the land of the Philistines is not like they're dead people. And so I'm going to now move to a different geographical, spatial territorial location to cause havoc in these spaces. And so in that type of supernatural territorial migration, it makes sense to me, at least, theoretically to say, huh, that's where you have some similarities but unique distinctions of a new society and new ways that these beings could work. And what we know about egos is that sometimes they get along, sometimes they help each other, and sometimes they don't. So do these spirits war with each other and war with Yahweh? and is there evidence, any evidence for that?

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think they do. There's probably a whole different discussion for a different day, and we can get into some examples of that. But I think that there's absolutely infighting amongst the supernatural realm, and yet there is good evidence that there is a competing head of a household, and Lucifer is in terms of organization and rank higher than all these other supernatural beings, you know?

but again, the enemy can only be in so many places that, you know, in one place and in one time, and all these other malevolent supernatural beings have got their own agendas that they're, that they're dealing with. And so I think he's got his hands full in dealing, in dealing with very difficult personalities, I'm sure, and how that works out. Clint Arnold is an incredible New Testament scholar. I did a lot of work. He does a lot of work in supernatural warfare. And I think Clint gives us a good, just approach to this. We're told, of differences of rank, we're told that there are, there's differences in angels and archangels and all of that. And yet, at least from the biblical text, there's a silence in terms of how those

ranks are played out and what, like, maybe the military scenario looks like. And so that's where me as an evangelical, kind of orthodox biblical scholar, I'm going to try to go to where the text takes me to. And beyond that, it's going to be some speculation on my part. And I'm happy to speculate there. But I'll just be clear. speculation apart. Do you think that there are, that some of the geopolitical conflicts that we see now, like today?

Absolutely. Are related to these, to the influence of these, of these territorial spirits at. Absolutely. War. Yeah. Absolutely.

Listen, this might get me into a lot of trouble. I may get canceled out of, out of the stuff over here, right? Not on our show, bro. Listen, I just cannot, I wrote a paper. I'm a co-host for a series called Therapy and Theology. It's myself, my boss, Lisa Turkhurst, and a licensed counselor, Jim Kress, and we did a whole section on pornography.

You know, Jim calls it the Pornemic. Listen, y'all, I'm just telling you right now, there is no other explanation in my mind, theologically, biblically and as a scholar, a New Testament scholar, other than malevolent supernatural beings that have cultivated a culture, of Pornayo, right? Pornaya, like that system that has invaded into different systems and structures inside of our world. Geographically, locationally, there are hot spots of sexual perversion, ancient Rome. We think Rome was horrible. Like some of the stuff that's happening now makes Rome look like no big deal at all, you know, which is just mind-blowing to consider. And think about what pornography, all this stuff is doing. It's an affront against image bearers of God. It's an

front against their image, the disgracing of the dignity and the value. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and so you have that. And I think the same is true. Like, again, this might get me in trouble. I don't, you know, whatever. But like, I think the rise of psychedelics right now and then fatuation with shrooms and all this other stuff, I think I'm watching sitting back, looking, I'm like, listen, I've had some friends talk about some experiences that they had. I'm just like, listen, y'all are talking to real supernatural beings. Like, this is opening doors. and gateways into realms of reality that you have no business being in and you're being deceived. Like you're being deceived until a false sense of security, which is actually taking you down a road of like total destruction. I think the same is true of alcoholism. Like I think these beings have learned now that the greatest way for them to get like, you know, Rome is dead.

Persia is gone. Babylon is gone. But you know what still is around? Alcoholism. Pornography. You know? drug abuse you know

like and these are ancient vices that are powered by ancient enemies and we need an ancient solution and that solution is the gospel Jesus himself let's go there's nothing controversial about that honestly dude like I mean these are you nailed it on the nose these things are

it's controversial to the world in the way the world thinks and I believe that right it's the whole the whole crowly thing do as the whilst you know like do what you want right And that is the mantra of the enemy in the darkness.

So fascinating, man. There's so much so much I got more I want to talk about, you know? Yeah, I do want to say about the talk about the death blow, right? We talked to Heiser on our episode with him about Mount Herman and the transfiguration. And sort of the transfiguration was sort of the alerting them all. Like, oh, wait a minute. He's about to do something, you know? Yeah. And the dudes that we murdered in the past are here now all the sudden. Right. Like, oh, crap, it's the, it's the Avengers on top of the mound that just showed up. It's like Avengers unite. Yeah. Well, you can't, I mean, these stories, you grow up with them. And how do we make sense of these stories in sort of a non-supernatural divine counsel worldview? I mean, these are some really strange. I mean, he goes up there, brings a couple of the guys. He shows. He shows.

shines on the mountaintop and then God appears and says, you know, this is my son. Yeah. So what happens, though? Like, what do you think really happens at the moment that Christ is crucified? Does he go down? Does he reclaim the, does he do some? There's some sort of exchange that happens under the, in the earth. There's are down in the prisons.

Yeah. So, I mean, this gets into shield and the depths of Hades and what's happening on when he's talking about he, he comes, he's down there for three days. He's proclaiming the gospel. You know, I kind of hold to the view that what he's doing is he's taking the righteous dead of the time. So the Hebrew conception of the underworld is you've got Shiole, but you had these two compartments. This is present in Luke where you've got the story of Abraham or you've got the Lazarus story

in Abraham's bosom. And there seems to be a gap in between a chasm that separates those that are the wicked dead versus the righteous dead. what I think is happening is that Jesus is coming down and as the mark of that final blow, he's actually gathering the righteous debt from their place of residence essentially in Chiol and taking them with him to Paradise, which is why he tells that thief, like, hey, today, you're going to be with me in paradise. And he marches them in front in triumph, you know, in front of these vanquished in chains,

beings that are in Tartarus, which are the Genesis 6 sons of God, different group of people that had sex with the human women and they have, they birthed the Nephilim and the Nephilim or disembodied spirits. Those are the spirits that we're talking about that are demons in the New Testament, not the Shadu that we're talking about of Dermu 32, 8 through 9. So I think that's what's happening on the day that Jesus goes to the cross. There's a passage in 1st Corinthians that says that if the evil powers, if the powers and principalities knew what they were doing to Jesus, they would have never sent him to the cross. They would have never sent him to the cross. they would have never sent him to the cross.

So by sending him to the cross, and again, notice the correlation, cosmic and earthly. So earthly, who do you have? The Pharisees and Sadducese in Rome that execute Jesus. Cosmic, what do you have? Powers and principalities working within systems and structures in order to manipulate a situation in order to get the release of Barabbas. I mean, we just celebrated Palm Sunday, right? The release of Barabbis, and instead you get Jesus who goes to the cross.

they're chanting, they're thinking they had one. And then in those three days, they're like, oh, shoot, we just, we just screwed ourselves royally and witness of that. Because then you have this crazy example, right? All these spirits show up on earth for this period of time, like where people see their deceased, you know, kind of like, what's happening? They're walking around. What's happening?

Well, I think that literally, you've got this moment where Jesus released them. And they are like, hey, let me stop by real quick. Say what's up to my family, make sure they're good on my way to paradise. Yeah. That's kind of like as layman's terms as I can put it. Because I'm like, what would I want to do? Right? Like, I hope Mike would, like, hey.

Yeah. And bro, we're looking down to Easter and it's like that part of the Easter story, you're probably not going to get on Sunday. Like, well, there's dead zombies walking around more or less. They came out of their tombs and walked around. Right. Well, right. Exactly.

Is this why there is sort of an intellectual divide between old and New Testament, you think? because maybe Christ does something to these territorial spirits, these gods, these fallen, so it looks different. You have just a different way that they rebel. They're still in rebellion, but it's not as overt maybe as it was before. Does that play into? Yeah, no, I think what this has to do with today is just a very smart enemy. Like, for instance, why is that I can go to India and they're way more open to the supernatural

to paganism, to Hindu, you know, and we go here in the Western Enlightenment kind of area, and all this stuff feels very odd, and there is this intellectual superiority to explain away everything, right? Well, I think we have a smart enemy. He was like, I'm going to play within the terms and within the guidelines that is in front of me in order to be the most successful that I possibly can. So why go upstream? Why run upstream? I'm just going to go downstream. So I think, again, here in the U.S., we've got issues of pornography, we've got issues of of addictions. I mean, y'all, the opioid epidemic. I mean, this is just unbelievable, right? What's taking place? And do we really think that this is just human innovation? No. I think

there are territorial spirits and beings behind the scenes that are promoting a lot of this, you know, racial injustice and disunity and division. And then I think we're very, again, this could get me in trouble, but I think we are very naive to think that the church, the local church is immune from the tactics of the enemy, right? Like, no, we can absolutely get caught up in a lot of these schemes. And in the process of fighting for righteousness and saying that we're advancing the kingdom of God, we're actually unknowingly doing the work of the enemy, which is a terrifying thought, a terrifying thought to have.

And it's interesting, too, that, like you just said, that within the territory, the schemes are modified, right? Things that do in India and things are doing sub-Saharan Africa, things are doing Haiti, things they do in Mexico across the border are different than what they'll do here or in Canada. It's very interesting. I mean, I think it just, it's a nail on the head when you talk about territorial spirits and we look backward, but then we can say that the same thing is we're seeing the same influence has happened. Now it just perhaps it looks a little differently. Like you said, the marketing's changed. Yeah.

That's a very, a very spot-on point to this, you know, to this whole conversation. I mean, think about it this way. It's like when you got to rebrand somebody, right? Yeah. Like, it's like the rebrand moment. And bands have to do this. Artists have to do this all the time. Athletes have to do it.

When you have to rebrand, it's the same person. It's the same being. You're just giving a different spin on it, right? And so you go to India and you have one of the most horrific systems, the cast system. And I think that's a supernatural. system and structure that's put in place. And so that territorial spirit in that area is going to work within that system and work within that structure. And it's so embedded. It is so embedded in that space. You want to know how you get spiritual warfare in India. You go there and you suggest that

there is no caste system. You suggest that there is no longer Jew or Gentile, but they were all made in the image of God. Watch how like all hell will break loose over there. Why? Because it's a spiritual act of warfare against a stronghold in a territorial space that has used that tactic as a tool to keep humanity divided. And now you're threatening that evil spirits, actual power and stranglehold in that system or in that society, in that territory. And do you think a human being is necessary? Like a human being has to make a decision or has to give themselves over to these spirits in order for them to then take possession of that area? Or do you think that they can sort of manipulate human beings to do their well? Like who's in control here? Because a lot of

people say it requires a human being first to give up their sort of their right, their image. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's, again, theories on this one. My thought on this is that if you're a believer, if you have the indwelling Holy Spirit, then I'm going to hold the position that you cannot be possessed by an evil spirit. You can, however, be oppressed and you can be manipulated, you know, so you can feel oppressive systems on it. I think it's very scary for people that are neutral, you know, because if you're neutral on the chessboard, you're fair game for everybody. So it's like, listen, if you're neutral and now you got yourself in addictions and alcoholism or whatever else. And even these psychedelic things, like, I really think that these are gateways,

supernatural gateways into possession, into possession. You know, it can really, really mess people up. I don't think it is, how do I say this? I don't think that it's random that we're finding more and more celebrities being way more open to psychedelics, right? I think there's actual exchanges that are potentially taking place that now talk about paradigm and paradigm breaking situations where you're like, whoa, what is actually happening? And so, but I don't think you just wake up one day and go there. I think it is a frog in the kettle where you turn the water on and over time, the environment heats up into a place, which is the scariest thing that we allow our environment to get to a place

where we just are like, yeah, this is normal. This is normal. And as believers, as a Christian, I'm like, no, this ain't. normal. This is not normal. This is not how we ought to be. Yeah. It's great. We just talked to Derek Gilbert a couple days ago or a couple episodes ago just about how the Valley of the Shadow of Death and where Jesus baptized is very specific place that he believes. And it was spiritual warfare. And it's, and it's, and it's cool. Is that the valley on his way to the cross? The Valley of the Shadow of Death was the, there were all the 10,000 dolmens there. And it was, he was baptized and it was

essentially on the shores of Bashan. Yeah. So I think... This is wild, but I think I was in Israel a couple years ago, and we went to the place. We followed the path that Jesus would have walked in order to get to the cross. He would have literally walked an area that was known as the Valley of Death, the Valley of Shadow of Death. And as he was walking, there would have been tombstones and actual, I mean, a graveyard of places. this is the exact same escape route that David would have used in order to get away from

Absalom when he comes in and takes over Israel. But interestingly, the path that Jesus takes isn't to safety. It's to the cross. So David bounces, right, and he goes to safety. Jesus, and so as David leaves, he sees the valley of death as an image of like, oh, crap, I could die. So he's like, I'm going to get to freedom. Jesus walks the valley of death.

And he actually is like, oh, no, I am going to die. I'm committed to death. Then he actually walks to the cross, which I think is there's absolutely terrible. And think about dark spaces. I mean, I think as he's walking there, this is just me personally. I don't have textual proof. I'm speculating here. But I have a belief that Jesus is able to see every evil supernatural being that is in that

valley that is just mocking the hell out of him. Right. If humans are mocking him, then you have, again, cosmic and earthly. I think they're mocking him as well. And really, he's walking towards their own. defeat. But yeah, I love that. I love that. It reminds me when I was a kid and I watched the Chronicles of Narnia and you see Aslan getting, you know, and they're all the weird creatures around them. There's just, and I think that's what Jesus was seeing on the cross. He's seeing

human beings mocking him, but then all the weird dark stuff. That's what I thought as a kid, like, oh, it made, it made that scene just, it made that sacrifice and that, that raw motion, just so much more intense. about this and now think about Jesus's last words, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Who is the them in the day? I think it's earthly. I think he's like, forgive humanity for they know not what they do. Well, why would Jesus say they know not what they do?

It's to your point in it, because I think he's looking out and he sees the full chestboard of supernatural warfare, and he can see every way that this supernatural enemy has manipulated humanity into sending him to the cross. And Jesus is like, listen, there's so much more at stake here. There's so much more at play. And so he's like, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do because he sees just like that scene in Aslan, all these dudes coming in to make the kill shot. In fact, they're like assassinating themselves. Yeah. Isn't it just the irony?

Well, there's so many verses too. Like, you know, I didn't come to condemn the world but save the world. And, you know, you grow up the hardest part about growing up in the church. is you get you get sort of little snippets of the supernatural and you interpret some of the other events so poorly because you don't have the full you know all the colors of what's going on and so a lot of people get real hung up on all the cataclysms and other all the other things that they don't like about scripture and I love this episode Dr. Joel because it's kind of like every time a first time guest comes on sort of shotgun blasts with like we kind of go all over

the place, but this is great introduction. I really enjoyed your energy and your thoughts and you're studying and it's cool. I was fascinating. This is fun because a lot of times, you're really personal, too. A lot of times we get doctors on the show and it's like it feels like I'm talking to someone who's way smarter in a different world than I'm at. You know, I'm just a dude hanging out, chasing my kids. You're just way smarter, but you just, you get a good personality. Yeah. Well, you can just talk to normal people. Yeah. And again, this is, We started with Heiser. Maybe we can end with them.

I would just say he modeled this to me. He modeled this to me. I mean, we would be talking Shadeem, would be talking to Dormi 3 or 2. It would, ascension language, all this stuff.

And then he'd be like, how's your fancy football team doing this year? Because mine's trash. Mine's trash. You know, I'm like, I'm like this dude. And he modeled for me.

You know, he was so famous. He would say he was this, he never had an original idea. You know, he was just a synthesizer of ideas. And I'm just trying to follow. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

And he's one of the shoulders of giants. and he's one of them. And so he modeled it for me. So hopefully any of the good that you see in me, it's a discipleship part of what he has instilled in my life. And yeah, man, these need to be conversations that the everyday average person, you know, and like people were like, what heck is happening with UFOs and Bigfoot and extraterrestrial kind of like thoughts? And it's like, well, yeah, all that is super scary if you don't have a supernatural worldview. Correct. But if you do have a supernatural world, like think about, think about John on the island to Patmos and he's like having to figure out what the heck, how do I write the, this,

how do I write revelation, right? He's using the only language and words that he has at his arsenal in the time to describe things that are probably like thousands of years later, hundreds of years later. And so put yourself in that position. Imagine you were, you know, 200 years born earlier and you had to describe our conversation right now. Like the dude's speaking into. a torch that was not on fire and it crossed the the sound waves crossed hundreds of thousands of

miles like it's it's crazy to think about that and and so if you don't have a supernatural world view it's it's mind-breaking honestly so i'm grateful for you guys for having these conversations and opening up the world to a discussion that's so vital and necessary and hopefully like it can still be weird but not be weird where you're like i don't want to do this Yeah. Well, I was trying to say I want you to come back on the show. Yeah, I thought we could have gone like five different ways. I know. Yeah. This is sometimes sometimes you get everyone like you get somebody's work and it's just sort of all wrapped up in one episode. And you're like, okay, that was good. But I just feel like we just kind of scratched the surface of all kinds of weird conversations we could have.

And if you, hopefully you enjoyed it too. And you had, you had fun with our weird questioning and our sort of creature, sort of creature. sort of creature framework that we operate inside of. And thanks, man. I'm glad you guys met at that conference. That's cool. Me too. Yeah. Dude, no, grateful for this.

Grateful for you, like you said, like Mike's been in the big influence on our worldview and why we're in the space, too. So it's cool to have a fitting tribute at the end. Joel, one of the things we do at the end is just allow you to tell our listeners where they can, where they can engage with your work and engage with what you're doing. I know you're doing a lot of things. And you've got a lot of different projects, a lot of irons in the fire.

so we're grateful for your time in the evening because you've got kids like we do. And so we understand that there's a small sacrifice in there. But let everybody know where they can find, keep up what you're doing and your work. Yeah. So a lot of, like what Lucas said earlier, a lot of my work you'll find on Instagram. So just at Mutamali, M-U-D-D-A, M-A-L-L-E. I do a fun thing on Tuesdays. It's going to be tomorrow from the recording date where we do Theology Talk Tuesday.

So kind of the idea is to answer your theology questions and an accessible. way. And then my website is just moodamali.com. The big project I'm working on is a book that comes out March of next year. And so if you jump on to my website, you can sign up to my newsletter. You can follow me on Instagram and you can get more information on that book and some more details. I'm excited to share a little bit more about it in the coming days. But yeah, and then just Google Mutal Molly, I guess. There's not many of us out there. So you'll... I love that. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. You got a lot of energy and fire and passion. I love that. And that's what we need because there's a lot of, there's a lot of the, unfortunately, a lot of the guys come on our show. They've moved on. They've passed on.

And so we needed like another fresh batch of young people who want to get into the weird stuff, especially in the theology world. So thanks so much. And it's good to have you in the space, man. You bet. Good to see you, man. We got to get it. Good luck on the book, too.

We got to get a hang in one of these days. Yeah. We'll get it in there. Good to see you, dude. Yeah, man. That will connect. Yep. All right, Luke.

Nate, so good to meet you, brother. Good to meet you, too. Love it. All right. Thanks, Joel. Bros. See you later. Yep.

Bye. Hey, man.