Blurry Creatures - EP: 272 Michael, Melchizedek, and Metatron with Doug Van Dorn

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Who is Melchizedek? In this special episode, we welcome back a friend of the show and fan-favorite, Doug Van Dorn—a gifted author and pastor known for his insightful biblical studies. Together, we explore the intriguing figure of Melchizedek mentioned in Genesis, Psalms, and Hebrews and unpack the theological significance of this enigmatic priest-king. Doug sheds light on how the Order of Melchizedek connects to Christ, offering fresh perspectives on its role in biblical prophecy and spiritual authority. Whether you're a seasoned theologian or simply curious about biblical mysteries, this conversation will deepen your understanding of one of the Bible's most fascinating figures. COSTA RICA TICKETS! https://www.eventcreate.com/e/costarica2025 You can get our book of Enoch here: https://amzn.to/3xriiUB Support the show! www.blurrycreatures.com/members Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com & Parker Mogensen Outro Song: On the Run by TimeCop1983 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Luke 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 the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs.

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I mean, they were talking 12 and 13 years old. And Rough Green's really made a difference in their energy levels and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to Rough Greens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF Greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. At Trump or Longman, Old Testament scholar, said a popular understanding of the relationship

is that Mokizadek is an Old Testament, Christophony. In other words, he is the angel of the Lord. This was the main understanding of who Mokizek was. It wasn't that he was some normal guy. There's something very weird about him. And Hebrews seems to be writing into that idea. Starting in 620 all the way through 717, it says all these things.

His name, the king of righteousness, and the king of Salem. It says that he's Abraham's superior, and Abraham is the father of the entire Jewish nation, probably the most important person in the entire Old Testament. And somehow this guy who gets three verses is his superior. Hebrews talks about how tithes are received by mortal men, which implies that Melchizedek is not a mortal. And then Jesus is somehow in the likeness of Melchizedek.

And he says, you are a priest forever after Melchizedek. The Apostolic Constitutions was an early Christian, a manual for Orthodox belief. And it says, you, O God, are the one who appointed Melchizedek as your high priest in your service. And even the Targum says in Melchizedek, the king of Jerusalem was a priest serving in the high priesthood before God most high. So this is what Jesus is doing in Hebrews, right? When he ascends, he goes into the heavenly places and serves as our high priest interceding for us. Well, this is what the constitutions in the Targum are saying. That's what Melchizedek was doing. Jesus and Mokizek have the same titles.

So the king of righteousness, the king of Salem, the king of peace. It's the same thing. Jesus is the only other one that has that title. It's not like this happens with every other person in the Old Testament either. I mean, it's like one or two figures. That's it. Mokizek just happens to be one of them.

The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian, and 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.

And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Welcome back to blurry creatures.

We're going to go back to one of the friends of the show, Van Dorn, we're going to talk about because of this mysterious character that pops up only a few times in the Old Testament and kind of talk about some of these names and these characters. Who are they? Where are they come from? And I think it's relevant to blurry creatures because, you know, we're always trying to figure out strange characters that people report seeing. And the weird stuff in the Bible, right? This is a big part of our show. Like, do not shy away from the things that are kind of odd, right? And kind of weird. And most of that, honestly, it has to do with the supernatural. And this is something we banged this drum from stay one. We talk a lot about Dr. Michael Heiser and his work on St. Realm and Doug's become a great friend of the show. We started in the early in the teens of our show. I'm talking about his book on Giants. And Doug is a, he's been at Blurie Conn. He's an amazing friend and irregular on our show.

And one of the things that we'll talk about today is just this shadowy character, right, who is McKeseldeck? And why does he mention more in the New Testament than the Old Testament? And how does this fit into the supernatural worldview of the Bible and how we're to think about potentially who this character is. And I love these episodes because it's looking at the scriptures, it's taking a hard look at some of the things that are easily explained away when there's not really an explain-away answer for this character.

Well, I think we make a lot of bold claims on the show. And, you know, I think a lot of times people have a very sort of narrow view of how things got messed up, how these creatures came to be, where they come from. And I think the more you understand the characters, more you can understand that, oh, yeah, you know, a big part of our,

our show started in the beginning of Genesis 6 talking about giants and things and where do all where does all that come from right and uh people still running into these things today and they go oh this is all impossible this didn't happen so i think if you get the beginning wrong you get the rest of it either wrong or very confused you're slowing up stream making a lot harder than you need to be it's it's our it's our same it's our talk about Genesis 6 right you have to do a lot more scriptural and mental gymnastics to make it something it isn't then just to read to read the hebrew for what it is. This is one of those things. We're going to talk about sort of the history of this and some of the translations and now some of the info on this character was expunged intentionally

and there's a little bit of ancient millennial controversy. This has got all the elements. If you want to enjoy our podcast like the old school days, obviously, you know, we have ads on the show now, but if you want to, you know, experience an ad-free, blurry creatures like the old days, like back in 1980s, you know, just become a member, blurrycreatures.com slash members, all members. get an ad-free experience. They get early tickets. People get to see Doug this fall at BlurieCon. And those members got the first chance

to buy tickets to BlurieCon. And you get access to exclusive channels. So head on over, blurrycreatures.com slash members become the member. And support the show. Each episode takes 15, 20 hours to produce. So you guys make it happen. You make it go around.

And also, you know, half of how our show gets spread around is text messages. So keep texting our episodes to friends. keep supporting the Bloyverse and help get some of these complicated conversations into people's ears who wouldn't probably show up on a Sunday morning to talk about these things. But hey, maybe they'll sit in their car and go back to the Old Testament because a friend shot him a text. Harvard and Delorean. There's plenty of room.

We're going to 88 miles an hour. We're going all the way back to the time of Abraham to figure out who is Kessel Day. Let's get Doug on the show. Let's get Doug on this one. All right, welcome back to Blurry Creatures. We've got author, pastor, and good friend of ours, Doug Van Dorn. back on the show today, talk about McKizzledek and sort of the weird stuff

surrounding this character and it's hotly debated. People don't agree on some of these things in the Old Testament. Who this person is? Is it a group of people? Is it an individual? Is it an angel? Who is this person? Doug, welcome back to the show. Thank you for coming

on. I think for being a friend of the show. We're going to hang out at BlurieCon. We're going to do this live on stage. But you can launch into this or you can tell us your updated thoughts on Bigfoot. Well, I was going to say something first. Nate, let me get in here, huh? All right. I love this topic because, you know, we went through in my Bible study. I have a Bible study on Friday, I'm born with a bunch of guys from my church, and we went through Genesis, and this is one of the ones that's really weird. And actually

on a recent episode, Nate and I, we were talking pre-roll about this, Doug. Somebody in that episode actually mentioned this character, and their explanation was, I think what most, maybe most seminaries kind of land on that somehow it's Shem, which is interesting, but not interesting. Yeah, we'll talk about that, though. It is interesting. I think what's, was fascinated about McCaseldeck, there's something very fascinating about this character, because he kind of shows up, and that's it. But then he's talked about it in the New Testament. I know you're going to get to this stuff, but it's just just like a really interesting character that doesn't seem to necessarily fit in the cultural context of the time of Abram before he's Abraham,

but yet it does really fit when it comes to the person of Jesus. And I know that's a little bit of a preview here. But when we were talking, you said you did some really interesting ideas around the Kessel Deck and perhaps, you know, who this shadowy figure who makes an appearance, it really is. And these are my favorite ones, right? Because Doug, we get into all kinds of crazy things with you. From the very beginning, we started talking about giants. And then we've done the angel of the Lord episode 100, which is one of our most popular episodes and continues to be is about the bluriest creature evolves. Our 100th episode is about Jesus. And you're a beloved figure in the blurry verse in our spaces. and you become a good friend, as Nate said.

So excited to kind of go down this because I love when we get into the sort of the blurriness of the Bible, the things that people either give a very definite answer for an indefinite, answerable question and say, move on, or skip over. And I think this is one of those things. Yeah. Man, I'm excited about this one. I'll give a few preliminary things, I guess. We haven't even mentioned Michael, and I don't know, maybe you want to have a, we call it M&Ms or something like that. Um, because it's, he's another one of these mysterious figures.

And what we'll find out is that they're interconnected in ways that people have not really understood. You mentioned the Angel Show. And, man, I'm still, I still can't believe that you guys have me do that for that hundred episodes. That was like major cool. Dude, you've been here from the beginning, Doug. You're like one of you, I think Judd Burton, Nate was our first like, Dr. Jed was our first foray out of Bigfoot into the biblical giants. And then shortly after we had you, Doug. I can't remember that.

I mean, it's been, we're 200 plus episodes in, and so it was right away. And then, of course, you were at BlurrayCon, our original original one. So, yeah, it's been fun. It continues to be fun. You know, that, that angel episode is actually kind of important background, that if people haven't listened to that one, they might want to go back and listen to that one first before they hear this, because it kind of builds a little bit on that. You can still understand what we're going to talk about here without having heard it,

but I just think it might be helpful for people to get that extra bit of background. and you'll see why as we kind of get into it. You know, people, you guys are kind of brought up, people always want to know who Melchizedek is, who Michael is, and there's been all kinds of different opinions about them with the course of the centuries and millennia, and that includes both Christians and Jews.

So it makes it really an interesting study to look into. And then I also wanted to mention this because I kind of forgot to say this, and I kind of kicked myself when we were in that 100th episode. It's blurry creatures. That's the name of the show. But when we're talking about Jesus, he's both creature but not creature. And not like saying that he was not creature, that he's actually the creator.

You know, I don't want people go away thinking I'm some sort of a heretic or something like that. Jesus is the creator of all things. And so he, but yet he also took on human nature. and like I argued in that one, he took on an angelic nature. And those are created natures that were not part of his eternal essence. And so in that sense, it's right to talk about him as a creature. And so I think that this certainly fits with what we'll say with Ocizadec and Michael, and even Metatron, if you guys want to go there.

Metatron, the transformer that's not a transformer, right? Right. So the last thing I'll say is that I'm not going to die on any of these hills that I'm going to talk about today, but I'm just going to present kind of the arguments in favor of the different views. And we'll talk about the different views why people have taken them. But I do think that this matters, and I think that it's very interesting. And what I'm going to argue for is that Mokizadec is really a proper name for the angel of the Lord. And that one of the reasons why that's important to listen to the previous episode, besides just understanding that the angel, I very, very strongly, I wrote a book with it, a pastor of friend of mine on the angel of the Lord, that he is the second person in the Trinity in the Old Testament, is that he also goes by many other names. So it's not just the angel. And people don't get that. They think that if they're reading the angel of the Lord, that's it. Like, that's the only time he shows up. But that's not true. You know, John 1-1, the beginning was the word.

the word is with God, the word was God, the word there, Lagos in the Greek, like this is one of the terms that the angel goes by. I first started reading about that specifically in Mike Kaiser's unseen realm. It just blew me away. And he went into some other titles for him too, like the name or the arm of God, the glory, these kinds of things. He has all kinds of titles. He's there a lot more than people understand. He's actually just simply called the Lord. And he's also called a man. in some places. And so that's where I think that this kind of overlaps into these interesting, blurry fellows that we're going to talk about. So why don't we start with Melchizedek? It's, like you said, Luke, he's not found in very many places. There's really only three texts

in all of scripture that we find him. You find him in Genesis 14, just three verses. So I'll read the little section there, 18 through 20. Malkisidac king of Salem brought out bread and wine. That's interesting by itself, bread and wine. I mean, anybody who's a Christian ought to, that ought to, you know, have bells flying through your ears. He was the priest of God Most High. That's L. Elion. And he blessed him and said, blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of Heaven and Earth, and Blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. And then that's all it says. And then you don't read about them until Psalm 110. That's pretty weird. I mean, you'd think, like, why is that? And then Psalm 110 comes out of nowhere. I'm going to read from

mostly the Hebrew version until we get to verse three. And then I'll read both the Hebrew and the Greek, because it's very different. Then we'll talk about it later. So the Lord said to my Lord. And this is one of the most quoted verses in the New Testament and always talking about Jesus. The two lords there are not the same Hebrew word. The first one is Yahweh. The second one is Adonai. So the Lord said to my Lord, and this is a Psalm of David, who is the king. So David has two lords.

Pretty wild. Right there in the Old Testament, you don't need the New Testament to see it. So he says, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, your footstool. and then Yahweh, the Lord, shall send out a rod of power for you out of Zion, rule in the midst of your enemies. Then the Hebrew says, verse three, your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. Very weird verse. Septuagint translates it even more bizarre. It says, with you as dominion in the day of your power and the splendors of your saints, I have begotten you from the womb.

before the morning. And we'll talk about that later. And then verse four, Yahweh swore I will not change, and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. And so there becomes a question here is the you here, you know, is it talking about Adonai? Is it talking about Melchizedek? Or could Adonai and Melchizedek be the same person? And then you don't find any more about him in the Old Testament. And you don't read about him anywhere in the New Testament until Hebrews. And then Hebrews, has almost two full chapters dedicated to him, just out of the clear blue sky. And so it kind of starts in Hebrews 5, 6, which quotes Psalm 110, verse 4, you're a priest forever after the order of

Mokisadek. And then again in verse 10, it quotes it again. You're designated by God, a high priest after the order of Mokisadek, that's talking about Jesus. And then starting in 620, all the way through 717, it says all these things. So it says, for example, Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. His name, it talks about his name being the king of righteousness and the king of Salem. Now, these are two titles, or even three titles, righteousness king and Salem that are related to Jesus. It says he's without father and mother and genealogy has neither beginning of days nor end of life. That's pretty weird. It says, Mokizek resembles the son of God as priest forever.

It says that he's Abraham's superior. And Abraham is the father of the entire Jewish nation, probably the most important, famous person in the entire Old Testament. And somehow this guy who gets three verses is his superior. With the Levites, Hebrews talks about how tithes are received by mortal men, which implies that Melchizedek is not a mortal. And then Mokisadek's priest is superior to the imperfect priesthood of Levi, which implies that Mokizadec's priesthood is perfect. And then Jesus is somehow in the

likeness of Mokizadec. And then both Jesus and him have an indestructible life. And he says, you are a priest forever after Mokizadec. And then again, the Lord swore and will not change his mind. You're a priest forever, quoting it a third time. And so you're just like, that's it. I mean, that's all that the Bible has to say about him. Now, Hebrews obviously has the most to say, but when you come to that, it just raises all kinds of questions. And it's questions that a lot of Christians just don't want to deal with, honestly. You know, like the language, they just find ways to talk about how it doesn't mean what it obviously says that it means. And I think that one of the main reasons why this is has to do with a very early Jewish interpretation that we find that

doesn't really arise, by the way, until the second century AD. So this is a, a century after Jesus has been a race in the dead and is gone. And we can talk about why this was because it involves a conspiracy. But basically the idea was that the rabbis started teaching is that a very ordinary interpretation of Melchizedek, and that is that he is Shem, the son of Noah. Now, so if you go back and you look at your Genesis genealogy, and you look at the genealogy of Shem. It gives ages. This is found in, I think, the second half of Genesis 10 or 11, something like that. And it gives the ages for all these sons. And when you add up those ages in your Hebrew Bible,

what you find is that Shem is living during the time of Abram. And so that works perfectly fine. But there's a really weird problem, which is that when you go back and read the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was translated in the third and second century BC. And then you go and read the Dead Sea Scrolls and you read Josephus. You find that they'll have a totally different numbering for the genealogy, which essentially adds six to seven hundred years of lifespan between Shem and Abram, which when you then put the death of Shem according to it, he dies like 500 years before Abraham is born. And so what happened was that it's actually the number 100 that's most of the

textual variance that happens in each of those verses that will say he lived 32 years versus sub 200 and he lived 132 years or he lived 35 years, 135 years, and they dropped out the number 100 in about five or six of those verses. And it happens in every one of them. And so the question is why? How can you account for that? So textual criticism is a discipline that a lot of scholars, love and like to get into trying to try to understand textual differences and how they came about. It's really a pretty interesting science. And what you usually do is you take kind of the harder way of understanding something instead of the easier way. And what they'll say is that there's really no way to account for this of adding 100 years.

Like it doesn't make any sense. but dropping out 100 years, that can make some sense on all kinds of different levels. And the main one has to do with something that the church fathers were very aware of. And I'll just give you three quotes here that when I came across these preaching through, I think it was Hebrews a few years ago, it might have been Timothy when he's talking about genealogies and myths and how you don't follow Jewish genealogies and myths and so like that. It's like, what is he talking about?

Well, listen to this. Here's Justin Martyr, second century, one of our earliest church fathers. He says, this is a quote, your rabbis have absolutely expunged many passages out of the subterigent version, as I would have you to know. He's talking to a Jew named Trifo. Still, I would argue with you, even from those received passages which you still allow, which if your rabbis had understood, be assured they would have expunged them too. And then Ironaeus, who's contemporary, says, if the Jews had known that we would have expunged them, too.

says if the Jews had known that we should have made use of those testimonies that would be drawn from the scriptures, they never would have hesitated themselves to burn their own scriptures. So any time that the Christians came along and used a scripture in the Old Testament, this made these second century rabbis. It's absolutely furious. All you have to do is read the account of Jesus and then in Acts with the early church to know why they were so furious. They had crucified their Messiah. They hated him. He didn't meet their expectations. So they started changing things. There's a translation into Greek from the Hebrew that came about in the late second century from a,

he was a Samaritan who had converted to Christianity and then he got kicked out of the Christian church because he was a heretic and he was like super mystical. And he became a Jew was circumcised. And his whole purpose for doing this was to translate the Old Testament into Greek in a way that would fit with what the rabbis were saying and destroy the Christians' arguments. His name was Aquila. And apaphanus, the church father says this. He was not moved by the right motive, but by the desire to distort certain of the words occurring in the translation of the 72, that he might proclaim the things testified about Christ in the divine scriptures to be filled in some other way on account of a certain shame that he felt a sense of excuse for himself. In other words, what is,

he's saying what all these church fathers are saying is that the Jews tampered with their text in very specific places that had to do with Jesus. And one of those places is the genealogy of Shem where they took out the number 100 so that it would compress the timeline so that Shem could now overlap Mokizadec so that Shem could be Malkisadik. And this actually ends up overthrowing the interpretation that we find before this period of time, which was very different. about who Mokazadek was. Interesting. It's like ancient, it's like really, really near ancient gas lighting.

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Totally. I mean, think about it. Yeah, we're just like, we're now we're going to just craft this narrative. So the text, so if it's our narrative. Doug, a lot of people have been arguing in our channels about the Book of Enoch. And these are the kind of topics that are coming up lately. It's like, you know, was there some sort of, you know,

People say, oh, you're adding and that's, you know, using those verses or some people are saying that, you know, there is no conspiracy to have removed any parts of Enoch or I don't know. It just seems like that's a hot topic kind of in our channels right now. I wonder why that is. You guys didn't just publish a book on, you know? Yeah, right, right. I mean, the problem with all this is that we have the actual text, right? So you can do all you want, but there's, you know, the original text still still lives on. It's really fascinating. It makes a ton of sense that the Messiah, Jesus being the Messiah, and fulfilling all the prophecies of the Old Testament, there was a concerted effort. And the Book of Enoch is very prophetic. You know what I mean? It's got a lot of prophecy of Christ. And so you're saying there was tampering kind of after the fact of anything that's sort of prophesied who Christ was, who he was going to become.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't anything, but it was very specific things. We could talk about another one. the sons of God, the thing that actually first got me down this whole entire bunny trail was Mike's paper on a textual variant in Deuteronomy 328. The textual variant says the number of the sons of God or the number of the sons of Israel. We've talked about that before on the show. And, you know, he argues that the original was the sons of God and that it was changed to sons of Israel by the rabbis because that gets rid of this idea of a son of God that could be a divine figure. So what we'll see here with Mokizadec is that there was a textual variant in Psalm 82-1

that you can still read kind of to this day when you go read like your NAS that says that something like God has taken his place in the midst of the judges and he divides in the congregation of his people, something like that. Well, that can be traced to the second century, to the rabbis who changed the way that that was interpreted. It's not a lot. It's not like there's a ton of these. And I would never tell people that you can't trust your Bible. And there's plenty of places where they didn't do this.

That's what Justin or Ironais was saying is that if they would have known that we would use those text, they wouldn't have hesitated to change those or burn the whole thing. So it's not like they did it everywhere. And the Bible's extremely trustworthy book that we have from the ancient world. but nevertheless they still did this. Yeah, we did an episode, Doug, recently with a new friend of ours, Wes Huff, who's part of Canada apologetics, who his whole thing is, can you trust the Bible?

Yeah. And he was talking about some of the things that make it so trustworthy. He was not only just the Dead Sea Scrolls where you have everything that predates this and you have the exactly, almost to an exact, the, you know, an exact translation, but he argues, which I think is fascinating, hadn't heard, that because the gospel spreads and Christianity spread so quickly, that it had to be translated into a number of 90 plus different languages. And when this is happening, you have all these different variants that you can actually

hold up to each other. Yeah. And yes, which actually proves. It actually proves what the original actually said. And the inerrancy. Inerency, that's right. Yeah, it's a very ironic thing. And so I love that point because I want to drive that home, that like we can trust what we

have. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But what's interesting, though, is that in a particular conversation, as we talk about McKesledek, it's intentionally, they massage the genealogy to make... Yeah, they would give it like interpretations. So what does the sons of God actually mean? Well, it means sons of Israel. And so, you know, we do that in our translations today. We will make it interpretation. So instead of translating, instead of putting Nephilim in Genesis 6'4, some but will say giant or something like that. Well, that's a trans, that's an interpretation of what it is.

So, you know, they find ways to justify it. But the very fact that we can go back and say that this wasn't what it originally said, it kind of proves your point, Luke, that we know what it's originally said. This is not a, this isn't a problem. So as we go on and we go earlier than the second century with the rabbis, we can read things from places like Second Enoch. Now, this isn't First Enoch, it's second Enoch. It's a different book.

But nevertheless, it says that Malkisadek is born of a woman. who had no sexual relations. Now, I'm not trying to justify or say it's right or wrong. I'm just telling you this is what Second Enoch says about Mokizadeq. It's interesting. And then the context of this is that evil is growing terribly in the world and the flood is coming and there's no mediator to help with mankind. And so this angelic figure alone is going to be able to mediate for us.

His name is Mokizek. And it calls him the word and the power of God, which is the very language that the New Testament uses of Jesus. Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher, also calls Malkisidic the Word of God. And he's contemporary with Paul, so first century. Second Enoch is probably first century. You go to the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are definitely written in BC sometime.

And this is some of the stuff that they say. So this is found in the cave 11. They call this the Melchizedek scroll. It says on the heights, God will declare in their favor according to the lots for it is the time of the year of grace for Melchizedek. Now, that's actually quoting Isaiah 61, which in the Bible says the year of the Lord's favor. But in the scroll, it says the year of Melchizedek's favor. So Melchizedek has taken over for the Lord there. and then it continues and says to exalt in the trial of the holy ones of God through the rule of judgment, as it is written about him in the songs of David.

And then it quotes Psalm 82-1, who said, God will stand in the assembly of L in the midst of the gods he judges. And about him, that is Mochizedek, he said, above it, returned to the heights, God will judge the peoples, quoting Psalm 7. As for what he said, how long will you judge unjustly and she'll partiality to the wicked, Psalm 82 again. And then it tells you what this means. It says, its interpretation concerns Belial or the devil and the spirits of his lot, who were rebels, all of them turning aside for the commandments of God to commit evil. But Melchizedek will carry out the vengeance on God's judgments on this day, and they shall be freed from the hands of Belial and from the hands of all the spirits of his lot. So in other words, it's saying that

Isaiah 61, the Lord's favor is Mokisade. favor and that the Psalm 82 is God pronouncing to Melchizedek that you need to carry out the sentence on the watchers for the evil that they did. So good, Doug. Nate, we talked with Joe, remember this conversation made with Joel, Dr. Joel Matamale about the end of Psalm 82, which is stuck with me, Doug, is verse 8. Yeah. This is rise up, oh, Elohim, judge the earth for all the nations are your inheritance and that there too is god Elohim God God the Father judging these Deuteronomy 32 Elohim for their wickedness right because what wouldn't be the watchers that doesn't make sense and then the aside is saying oh and rise up Elohim it's like

and the Lord Jesus for pre-incorinent Jesus whose inheritance is the nations it's Christ right I love that is going that whole thing is really stuck with me because of course Of course, we've ad nauseum talked about Mike Heiser and his work and how his impetus. The seminal moment for him was Psalm 82 in reading in Hebrew. And then you get this whole divine counsel scene, right, where you have both the father and the son, right? He's the pre-incarnate son. So, Doug, are you sort of convinced that this is an individual? Like, it's not a, when it's talking about Mikizeldeck, you're saying it's an individual.

It's not. What I'm saying is that the early interpretation said that he's essentially the angel of the Lord. It's kind of a, it's a title for him. He's the king of Salem. Let me help you see this. Piggy back on what you just said, Luke, because there's three verses that I like to go to to help people see this. And one is the Deuteronomy 32, 8, and 9 verse. Nine is always left out of this.

So verse 8 is talking about God dividing up the nations according to the, the number of the sons of God. That's the original wording, sons of God. But then verse nine is so important. But the Lord's portion, Yahweh's portion is his people. Jacob is his allotted inheritance. What does that mean? Well, that can't possibly be talking about God in his essence or the father or something. It has to be the son of God, because sons inherit things. And it's the most high giving things to sons here. So it says that Israel becomes the Lord's inheritance, the son of God's inheritance. Okay? And so that becomes the storyline from Abraham onward that Israel is the one nation that he gets.

And in fact, he actually creates it out of nothing, right? They didn't exist at the Tower of Babel. There was no Israel that came out of the 70 sons of, of Noah in Genesis 10 in the Table of Nations. He created them out of nothing. Oh, Abraham. Abraham. Calling him out of or of Mesopotamian coming into the promised land. But then when you come to Psalm 2, there's a promise. And Psalm 2, this is the other most famous, an often quoted line in the Old Testament that's in the New about Jesus. I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begun.

you, we'll come back to that in a bit, I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. So this is kind of a covenantal promise that God is giving to the sun. If you ask me, I will give them all to you. And so when you come to Psalm 82, this is the carrying out of the sentence of the watchers that have failed to rule over the nations properly. And so Psalm 82 now says, yes, indeed, you will inherit all the nations. It's all about the sun. And so when the scrolls are interpreting this as Melchizedek, I mean, that's exactly the kind of idea that you would find Jesus fulfilling in the New Testament. And then Salem, right? Doug, Salem is.

Jerusalem, just to put your name for it. Yeah, so then he's the high priest of the capital city of the nation that is his. I mean, who else? If it, if, I mean, I don't know how this works, you guys in the heavenly realms. Like, I, don't know if the watchers have some sort of seat of power in some actual city. I don't know. I don't know how that works. Maybe they do. But that certainly fits this idea that if Israel belongs to the angel of the Lord, it's

his place, that he would have a seat of power. And where would it be? It would be in the very place where he ends up having the temple later on. It's the capital city. The same things now. Doug, why do you think a majority of Christians have a problem with more characters in the story, like ideas that there are like, ranks and there's a hierarchy. If you think about how human beings rule themselves,

there's a, there's a whole hierarchy of people who are in charge. Yeah. I think it's because we just have this simplistic view of the supernatural realm that kind of it's Satan and demons. And that's it. We don't know what to do with it. We don't have, we don't know how to parse it. We don't, we don't think about it as a bureaucracy or other entities that might be under him or, you know, even other creatures that are his equal, other principalities or sons of God or whatever, just kind of like we're New Testament only Christians, frankly. And Satan is who's talked about. So that's all we think about.

We don't know how very safe. Well, could McKisseldick be like the presidential cabinet, like a group of, you know, could it be something like that? I don't. Well, I think it's an individual. I don't know if that's what you're asking because he comes out and Abraham gives him a tenth, and then they have bread and wine together. Okay. And his name means the king.

So he's some sort of a king of Salem. Beginning. There's this tide and there's this very interesting bread and wine thing, which of course we see this again in the New Testament with Christ. Well, and the tithing, you see that throughout the law. And who does Israel tithe to? Yeah. They tithe to Yahweh. They don't tithe to anybody else.

Right. And, yeah, and Israel was without a king, right? Remember, this is the whole thing, too. This is it without a king until they demanded one. Because Yahweh was their king. Right, he sat in their midst, right? And within the tabernacle, the mercy seat was his throne. Like, there was no physical king until Israel was like all of our enemies and all of our neighbors have kings. We want one, right? There's just paraphrased really roughly. But yeah, this is so interesting. So where does the controversy come in? Well, the controversy, I think it really stems from this idea that Melchizedek has to be a human being. And that just comes because the popular way of understanding who Melchizedek is today really comes from this second century Jewish naturalizing of the more ancient view, which was supernatural. A Trimper Longman, an Old Testament scholar, said a popular understanding of the relationship is that Mokizadec is an Old Testament, Christophany. In other words, he is the angel of the Lord. This is, and the earlier understanding, this was the main understanding of whom O'Cesedek was. It wasn't that he was some normal guy, just some king that Abraham went out to that happened

to be living there. There's something very weird about him. And Hebrews seems to be writing into that kind of an idea. But we're not familiar with our history. That's another problem. We just don't know what people thought about this. And so we just kind of say, well, it's always been sham or something like that. just move along.

Do you think, Doug, that there was a plan to redeem humanity, that even the plan and the characters involved weren't, you know, the plan wasn't known amongst the heavenly host. If Christ was going to redeem humanity, you think some people were not people. Do you think that that was mostly a father, son conversation? That's a great question. You know? Yeah, that it was kind of a secret that they kind of embedded in the prophecies and stuff, but nobody really, really got it.

I mean, that's not what Colossian says that if they would have understood, they never would have put him to death. Right. And you don't, yeah, and you're not gonna tell you, if you know these folks are gonna rebel, and you're sitting among them, and you know this as the omniscient creator,

who knows being in the end, you're not gonna let them know your game plan, right? And then we know, because they walk right into it in the New Testament. And we know that there's a lot of clues too that Satan doesn't know if they can kill Jesus, right? There's all the temptation of Christ is really fascinating. I wonder what quick question though.

As I'm thinking about this, you make a really interesting point. Like, if we were to look at Psalm, or sorry, Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, and then this encounter of Abram with McEzzledek, it does kind of make it seem like these sons of God who are given these nations, sort of, they would seem they kind of physically do sit in rule. It kind of does seem like that, yeah. Because there he is, right? He's the king of Salem and he comes out. Yeah. So it's an assumption. I mean, there's a physicality to these creatures.

You know, I was just reading, there's a strange, we were talking about maybe doing a show on trees or something like that. Yeah. I was looking at who was sitting under trees in the Old Testament. And sure enough, the angel of the Lord is sitting under a tree when Gideon comes up to him. I mean, that's bizarre language. What do you mean? An angel of the Lord is sitting under a tree. Well, that's physicality.

And somehow, I guess he went from where he was and he went over to tree and sat down. You know, it's like, they're there. They're localized in that place. And, yeah. It's neat. And they wrestles with Jacob. And that's why I said earlier, they're called men. They're called men.

They're not Adam men, but they are men. Eish. So interesting. So interesting. I mean, give you some of the reasons why I think that we can take this view of Malkisod. The first one is that Hebrews talks about the language that he's eternal. Why in the world would you do that? Why would you say that Melchizedek is eternal?

And it does that in several ways that we mentioned earlier. Well, and that's the same idea of what Jesus is, is that he has no beginning or ending, which will become really important when we come to the cults and how they interpret these guys. Jesus and Mokizek have the same titles. So the king of righteousness, the king of Salem, the king of peace. All those kinds of ideas are it's the same thing. And Jesus is the only other one that has that title. I said we come back to Psalm 110.3, and I mentioned Psalm 2-7 for a reason. Again, here's that verse.

I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. I think this is where John and others get the idea that Jesus is eternally begotten and where the creeds get in. He's the only begotten son. Places like Psalm 2-7, but also Psalm 110-3 in the Septuagint. with you is dominion in the day of your power and the splendor of your of your saints i have begotten you from the womb before the morning it's the same kind of weird language of begetting you

before i begot you i mean like i don't even know how to make sense of that nobody does because it's it's unique in all of all the universe but it's very unique the fact that this is a psalm about melchizedek and then the other psalm is about the son of god and it's using the same language how can you make sense of all this kind of stuff how could you make sense of the angel being there. Well, I would just simply say that this is a proper name for the angel of the Lord. Like, the angel of the Lord, his name is an angel. He's got a name, and he might have many names. You know, you're going to read the story of Marduk and the Enuma Elish. You see that he has something like 50 names. So why can't the angel have many names? And Melchizedek would be one of them. A couple of texts that are

interesting in this regard. The apostolic constitution. was an early Christian kind of manual for Orthodox belief. And it says, you, O God, are the one who appointed Mokizadec as your high priest in your service. He's the high priest of, you know, and the king. Who's the priest king? That's Jesus. And even the Targum says in Mokizadec, the king of Jerusalem was a priest serving in the high priesthood before God Most High.

So this is what Jesus is doing in Hebrew. right? When he ascends, he goes into the heavenly places and serves as our high priest in the heavenly places interceding for us. Well, this is what the constitutions in the Targum are saying, that's what Mokizadeq was doing. So there's all kinds of, all kinds of reasons why I think that, I mean, it's not like this happens with every other person in the Old Testament either. I mean, it's like one or two figures. That's it. Mokizek just happens to be one of them. it seems like what they're, you know, one of the harder parts of, is like the origin story, like when you're talking about begot.

Right. Some of these characters have a different origin stories. Some of these angels have mother and father or some sort of non-miraculous start. I don't know. You know what I mean? It's funny. It makes me think of Greek mythology. When you go on and you look at a family tree of the mythology, you'll see that you have the Olympians

and then they come from the Titans. And you start looking at the names of the Titans. And then the gods who come before them, they all have father and mother. But like, what is their father and mother? One is heaven and one is earth. Like, what does that even mean? You know?

Yeah. Sounds a lot like Gen 6. Yeah. So, I mean, to me, I think that both Jews and the Christians were saying, there's this one figure that just seems to be utterly unique in the Old Testament. And he's come to us in human form. And so whether it's an Enoch as a Jewish,

a second Enoch as a Jewish, thing trying to figure that out and say that Enoch had was kind of virgin born or something like that Christians never said that because they just said now he doesn't need to be that because he's Jesus it's that's the explanation for it he's the one that is utterly unique in terms of the way that he's begotten before all things no I meant I mean in Enoch it's oh in Enoch second Enoch that's talking about Mokizek being born of a virgin or whatever that was when we've talked about this idea and we're kicking around and what I love is this kind of connects right because what Nate just asked, we did this thought experiment with you and Judd about are there

female angels. And it was just this idea of walking through some of the pragmatic aspects of the he just mentioned, like, how does it work? Right. And so we kind of talked about female deities in the ancient Near East, et cetera. It's an interesting thought experiment at the very least because we don't know, right? One of the things we talked about with this was also not just connecting McKessledek to angel of the Lord, but the angel of the Lord also to Michael.

Michael, yeah. This was a very interesting thing because these are not anything that I had heard before. And then Michael also is one of the angels's name. And there's not very many. Yeah. Tradition has usually four of them, you know, the teenage mutant ninja turtle guys. But walk us there because you've laid a really good case that this, we're not talking about Shem. In fact, all of the genealogy has been massage. It doesn't make sense. And actually the aspects of this priest's king don't actually behoove themselves to a, you know, to a person in the sense of a human as if we would talk about much more a divine being and that divine being because of the way that they talked about in Hebrews Septuagint Psalm 2, Psalm 110, Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32, 89, we can go through all these different places

and even in the actual passage in Genesis that this appears to be angel of the Lord one and the same because of the titles, the actions, etc. And then we've already talked about the angel Lord being free incarnate Christ. We did this in episode 100,

but this is not a, this is not a way out there idea. This is actually something that I've drawn the same conclusions based upon. Yeah, yeah. Descriptions of the angel of Lord. Yeah, so let me start with us off with a quote from a fellow named Charles Gieschen, who wrote an Old Testament scholar, has written a bunch on kind of these topics. And he's talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and how basically why it is that

Melchizedek doesn't appear very often. often in the scrolls if he's such an important figure. He says, this exalted status of Melchizedek leads you to wonder why there's not more references to him in the in the Qumran literature. This question can be answered by the evidence that suggests Melchizedek should be identified with Michael, who is also known as the angel or prince of light. So he's trying to argue that Mokisadek and Michael are the same person in the scrolls, that the scrolls understood them to be the same thing. So you don't have to always say Melchizedek. You can say Michael sometimes. So Michael's just like Melchizedek. There's really only three passages in the whole Bible that talks about it. I mean,

that's pretty weird. So you've got Daniel 10, two verses in Daniel 12.1. So I consider that kind of one passage. Here's what they say. This is actually talking about the sons of God stuff. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me, Gabriel, 21 days. But Michael, and this might get to one of your questions, Nate, about why people naturalize Michael. Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me, where I was left there with the king, the kings of Persia. And then it says a few verses later, but I tell you what was inscribed in the book of truth, there is none who contends by my side against these, except Michael, your prince. So now all of a sudden he's not one of the chief princes. He's called your prince. He's talking to Daniel. And what does that mean your prince? Well,

that's explained to Daniel 12.1. At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince, who has charge of your people. In other words, Michael is the prince of Israel, just like there's a prince of Persia and there's a prince of Greece. Now, if you go back to Deuteronomy 32-9, and what I said was that the angel of the Lord is the one who inherits Israel as their God, well, all Daniel 121 and 1021 are saying is that his name is Michael. That's all it's doing. But people don't connect those dots, and especially when they don't understand the divine counsel worldview, they don't have the foggiest idea whether you've been looking at. But that's all that the Old Testament says about Michael. Not wild. That's crazy. So then you go to Jude 9 has one verse about him,

but when the Archangel Michael contending with the devil was disputing about the body, of Moses. He did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you. And then that's all he says. We'll come back to that one for sure, because it's interesting. And then the one that talks about him the most, which I think is the one that actually really solidifies who Michael is, is Revelation 12, 7 through 10. Now war rose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who's called the devil and Satan,

the deceiver of the whole world, who was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and power and kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. So we'll come back to why I think that's so important in a little bit. But those are the three passages in the Bible that mention him, and that's all you have in terms of this name Michael. But that doesn't mean that Jews and Christians didn't talk about him all the time. So Jews talked about him a lot. So First Enoch, this is the First Enoch that you guys just recently published the book with Tim.

First Enoch in that book, he binds the fallen watchers. That's his job in First Enoch 10. Now you have Raphael who binds Azazel. and Gabriel binds the demons, but Michael's the one who presides over the entire thing. I think that's interesting. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, he's the one who gives the believers as to catalogical victory, and this is a role that's identical to Melchizedek, and it's exactly what Daniel 12 says, and that's exactly what Jesus does in the New Testament.

But we're still talking Jews, so they wouldn't have seen the Jesus. part. He was identified, this is an interesting one, by the Jews as the divine name angel of Exodus 23, 20, and 21. It says, behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared, pay careful attention to him, and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not part in your transgression, for my name is in him. My name is in him. He will not part in your transgression. I mean, who can forgive sins, but God alone, the Pharisees ask Jesus, who's the one who's going around telling people that he forgives people's sins? Well, if they would have known their Old Testament or if they would have believed it, they knew it. They would have

known that the angel of the Lord can forgive sins. Well, guess what? The Jews identified that angel as Michael. First Enoch 69. He possesses the divine name, which is the same thing that we'll talk about if you guys want to with Meditron and 30 en on. And again, Philo calls Michael the Word of God. Flament calls him Christ. So a lot of stuff going on there. He was identified also as the commander of the armies of Joshua 511. He says, take up your sandals, the place you're standing's holy ground. Well, that's what he tells Joshua, and Joshua worships him. That's exactly what the language was that the angel of the Lord told Moses of the burning bush. But the Jews were calling him Michael. in the Targum, Michael's the one who wrestles with Jacob.

But Jacob's the one who, you know, the angel changes Jacob's name to Israel and saying, you know, basically I'm the God who has the power to change your name. I'm going to create you into an whole nation. But he becomes Michael. He's one of the three men who come to Abraham, even in the rabbinic literature. So they didn't even expunge that. They just had Michael as one of the three, who is that Abraham's talking to? He's talking to the Lord and two other angels.

and I presume that the one that they think he was was the main one. Most interesting one of all to me is that in Deuteronomy 32-9, the Targum identifies the Lord as Michael, who inherits Israel. It says, and when the holy people fell by the lot of the master of the world, Michael opened his mouth and said, thus the portion of the good of the name of the memor of the Lord, the word of the Lord, is his people. Gabriel opened his mouth in praise and said,

those of the house of Jacob are the lot of his Michael's inheritance. And he was the intercessory angel and some prayed to Michael even. And the rabbis would actually later denounce that practice. Surprise, surprise, right? So this is all Jewish interpretation. Like this isn't even Christians. The acceptance of worship is the key here too, right? Because we can go to Revelation 22 and John falls down in worships angel and says,

don't do this. This doesn't worship me, right? So I think the acceptance of worship and of itself too in not a rebellious state, right? Because we know that the state of the rebellious and fallen angels was what they accepted the worship of man.

But then we know Michael's a good guy. This is like building the case, right? These are all in worship, and he has the same titles, and he's being called by the same thing. And in these translations, it's synonymous. You're going, well, really, really interesting. I mean, I think it's pretty powerful stuff.

And the fact that the Jews wrestling with this before the New Testament's even written is even more interesting to me than anything. You know, some people have a lot of problem with this because they'll say things like, well, the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Michael is Jesus. Okay, so what? Their problem isn't necessarily that they believe Michael's Jesus. Their problem is that they believe Jesus is a created being. That's their problem. Right. There's been tons of Christians over the centuries that have believed that Michael is Jesus. Shepherd of Hermes is one of the earliest documents we have. may be written in the first century, Michael's Jesus.

Calvin says Michael's Jesus. Malankton says Michael's Jesus. Matthew, Henry, Spurgeon. All believe Matthew believe that Michael is Jesus. So this is something that Christians have believed since the very beginning. So angel of the Lord, pre-incarnate Jesus, the beginning was the Word. As you talked about somewhere in the beginning of the show, like there's a lot of names, you know, the Word, and you have Angel of the Lord, and then you can have Michael, and these all can be the same. uncreated being, right?

Yeah, there's nothing about the name Michael that tells you that he's created. I think that this interpretation of it, I actually take the supernatural view of both of these. I think Mokizek and Michael are Jesus, and I think that the evidence is pretty overwhelming. I mean, here's a few reasons why I think that this makes the most sense. And actually, I said I'm not going to die on this hill. And in our book that I wrote with Matt on the Angel, we actually have an appendix on this. And we kind of wanted to present both sides. And at that point in time, he really believed that Michael wasn't the angel of the Lord.

And I did. Same with Mokizadeq. He's since basically changed his mind on the Michael thing, but I think he's still holding out with me on the Mokizek thing. But I think these are pretty powerful arguments. So the first one, the Prince of Israel argument to me is super hugely strong. Michael is the Prince of Israel. Daniel says it. Deuteronomy 32-9 says that the Lord is the one who inherits as the son of God.

Israel. So unless Israel has two princes, it seems to me that it's unavoidable that Michael has to be the Lord. He has to be the angel of the Lord. He has to be the son of God. I don't know how you get past that, honestly. That by itself, all by itself to me would be enough to convince me, Michael, is Christ in the Old Testament. But there's more. So you know how Jude 9's Michael says to Satan, the Lord, rebuk you? And so a lot of people actually look at that and go, well, that proves he's not the Lord because he says the Lord will rebuke you. Well, what I want to say to that is, I thought you were a Trinitarian. I thought you believed that the son and the father are the Lord. Because when you go back and read Zechariah 3, verses 1 and 2, it actually says that the angel of the Lord is contending

with Satan and the angel of the Lord says, the Lord rebuk you. In other words, Jude is getting that very language from Zechariah 3. And instead of it being the angel of the Lord, he just simply substitutes the name Michael in its place. But it's the exact same thing. We go read that story. That's the story of Joshua the high priest who has got these filthy rags and garments on and Satan is trying to put him down and whatever until the angel the Lord comes and says the Lord rebuke you. And then he reclothes him in these beautiful garments, priestly garment. you know, a great picture of what our salvation is in Christ by faith. Same idea. Another one is the voice of the archangel argument. So when you go and you look at the Jude verse,

it's the only place we actually have an archangel named in the Bible. Now, this is going to be just a New Testament-only argument. I'm not getting into other archangels, you know, Raphael, that kind of stuff, because the Bible doesn't talk about them. That's more Catholic angiology. The New Testament only calls Michael the archangel. But it also talks about the archangel in another place. So it talks about in First Thessalonians how Christ, the Lord himself, descends with the voice of the archangel. So Christ has the voice of the archangel with the sound of the trumpet and the dead in Christ will rise first. But in John 525, John says the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

So it's connecting the archangel who there's only one in the New Testament, his name is Michael, directly to Jesus as the son of God. Doug, I think what you're doing is so important. We talk about interpreting scripture. It's exegesis should be scripture interpreting scripture. Yeah, scripture interprets scripture. That's right. And so what you're doing is just finding, hey, this says this, and this says this are the same and related.

And so how do we make, you know, so we can assume then because scripture says A and this scripture says, says B, that these two things are related and or the same. And I think, I think that's where people can get themselves into trouble, is when they try to interpret scripture, not with scripture, but outside of scripture, right? And this is exercise in exegesis as far as understanding what scripture says who Michael is. And that's what I love about this, right? Because people can say, oh, this is crazy. You're interpreting A, B, and Michael can't be this for that. But it's like, well, what does the word say? And what does the, what does the scripture have to say? I could show you plenty of Christians that believe.

and have believed for a long time that Michael is not Christ. And I could do the same thing with Mochizeda. It's good to know that Christians believe that he was or that he wasn't, but that's not what you base your theology on. Like you said, it should be based on the scripture. And that's why I'm trying to do this for folks to help them do that and learn to do that. And what you're doing is kind of breaking tradition, right? Because tradition is a strong thing to break.

It is. And it's an important thing, but it's not the most important thing. Well, regardless, we can all agree, whoever the character is, very important character. I was putting together some things for Enoch and it says, you know, in First Enoch, it says, Michael, go buying the angels that sin. You know, the Lord says to Michael directly. So whoever Michael is, you know, and it seems to suggest that he's not just low on the totem pole power here. Yeah. You know, there are characters who have a lot of power and there, some of them are higher up on the list. You know, you have Gabriel in the mix there too.

Who's clearly not as powerful as Michael since Michael's the one who has to come and rescue him, right? That is quite a command for the Lord to say to Michael, go grab all these angels, all these ones of sin. Yeah. All of them. All of them. By yourself, exactly. And he's also the commander of the hosts of heaven.

So he's like the, he's the guy. He's the Eisenhower, the Patton, right? Even those two guys are in the same theaters. Maybe that's the best example. But Jesus leads the armies of heaven in Revelation. I'm not skipping ahead for you, but that's also, these are the same job. Yeah. This is the same job.

Yeah. Let me give you two more. I think I like the first one here. Exodus 15. This is Moses's song. And it starts off and says, The Lord is a man of war. What?

The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Then a few verses later, in verse 11, it says, Who is like you, old Lord, among the gods? Now that language, Who is like you?

Very close to Michael. So Michael is three components in the Hebrew. Me, Kyle, who is like you? It can either be a question or it can be a statement. Who is like you, Michael? Or who's like you, Michael? Nobody. And either case, the answer is nobody's like you.

Well, in Moses's song, he's calling God kind of a predecessor word, Michael, in that song. Who is like you, oh, Lord, among the gods, which is very interesting because he's one of the sons of God. Nobody's like you. So I think it's a good one. The most important one, though, I said earlier was Revelation 12. And this kind of comes to my, the new book I just put out on Revelation. It comes from some of my sermon stuff that I did about three or four years ago. And we talked about this a little bit, I think, one of the earlier shows where we were looking at the parallels in Revelation, which I find so interesting.

If you go and you compare Revelation 12, 7 through 10, to Revelation 10. to Revelation 20, you find that the language of the Satan is exactly the same. It's the only two places where you find the dragon, the ancient serpent, who's called the devil and Satan, and he's deceiving the whole world. Well, in Revelation 20, it's this angel who's the Lord who binds him. But in Revelation 12, it's Michael who's doing it. And then when you understand that, kind of the last thing, and this is, you know, we have, I have talked whole shows about this, but when you understand that Revelation and John are written together as pieces of literature that match each other. And they match each other linguistically and thematically. They do it from chapter one to chapter one, chapter two to chapter two, all the way

the end. They go inverse. So the end of Revelation, the beginning of John and the end of John and the beginning of Revelation, they all match up with words. And you find that it creates a center for both of these. books. This passage with Michael happens to be the very structural center of the entire book of Revelation. John has a center, and it's exactly the same, except for instead of Michael overthrowing the devil, it's Jesus overthrowing Satan at the cross identical. And so to me, that becomes probably

the most powerful argument of all that Michael has to be Jesus, because John literally woke. those two books together in such a way that Satan is the devil and Michael is Jesus. I'm kind of giving everybody a real inside look at two at your new book, which is Rings of Revelation. I know that because we are reading it in one of my small groups. And we did an episode on it. So I have a double. I got double. But no, I think that's such a fascinating point, right, that you have the center of both books. And as you say, they are very much woven together being this same scene. And these two. characters doing the same thing and it and it being Michael and Jesus which I just

it's just such a cool thing I mean I the what I love about this Nate and in in and Doug is just that the more that we sort of parse out and and and get into the Bible it's like the more you the more you read the less you know in some ways you know what I mean it's like there's it's a never ending maybe I should say better it's a never ending well of just richness and I think that there's 66 books that we that we call the Bible now that they all across time are all interwebbing and there's a single thread, et cetera. It's just, it's beyond coincidental, right? You have, and that's what I love about this show too, is that they're just

looking at these parts in scripture that match up. And also bringing in some of the extra biblical stuff that actually supports a lot of what we see in scripture, right? Whether it be the early church fathers and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a couple other, you know, first inoc, et cetera, these things that also actually compliment and would have been read by the authors of the time. And I just, it's so very interesting, like the, like kind of picking apart these, this shadow figure like McHazeldeck and who is this and why is it just a blip. And it seems inserted in this, in the, in the story. But then having it matched and then relayed that to Michael and what my, what does Michael do? What does Angel of Lord do? And it's like they do the same stuff.

I mean, to me, it's, what it does for me is it adds, um, the, component that like the name, the glory, the word, the arm of God, the shepherd, all these Old Testament titles that you don't understand that they're talking about Jesus, but once you do, oh my goodness, it's like suddenly Jesus is literally everywhere in the scripture. And all this is doing is showing you a couple more instances of where he's at. And I mean, I just think that that's super interesting. Yeah, people could come and they could go, look, here's a whole bunch of different interpretations that don't say that he's like that, the Jews had, that Christians had, fine. That's fine. But Christians have had these views. Many, many of them have. And I think that

the scriptural evidence really does lend itself to both of these being him. And for millennia, this is not a new idea. No, this is not a new idea. I'm not talking about Doug Van Dorn in 2024. We're talking about, and you've cited this, millennia. Going back BC. I'm always trying to just put together the list of characters here. There is Prince. they are loyal to Christ. So there are beings that have power, limited power. Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah, I think that I think these archangels that Enoch and the Catholic's church talk about. I think they're real, real entities. But Christ is described in the New Testament as being the prince of princess, king of kings, the Lord of Lords. And, you know, I always thought, what kings, what lords, what princes, when I was a kid, just like a human king?

Like, it doesn't seem very like, it seems like they're talking about some other people that have some power, not just like, you know, a human being that's, that can be overthrown by other humans, right? It always seemed like there was something, there was a bigger kingdom being described than a human throne, if that makes sense. Exactly. I'm with you, Nate. I mean, I can't remember how many times I would read Paul talking about the powers and the thrones and new minions. And it just glaze right over them. I had no idea what he was in talking about. And I think, you know, episodes like this expands just your understanding of the Trinity, too.

And I think a lot of Christians debate about these things since day one is they don't want to understand the characters, the father-son relationship, the different names for Christ, you know, the titles that are given. Let's say the order of McKislynec, right? That could be, he has like a group of princes that he is in charge of. That would be under him, something like, yeah, yeah, mm-hmm. And they all have tasks. and he sends them out to do things, but they report to him. You know, he's in charge,

and he has this crew. He's got his best men. Like Gabriel would probably be one of them. So he has, you know, has his entourage of people that go out and do it, as he says,

to do it. So perhaps Michael is another name for him, right? You guys have heard of Metatron, right? Oh, yeah. We did Inok. So we did Inok, one, two, and three.

Of course, we make sure we tell people that first enoch is the one that is most reliable yeah yeah yeah third enoch is where metatron really appears and he he's very cabala very esoteric it's fun to read it and it's interesting to read the cabala but it's very bizarre yeah but they talk about this guy named metatron and some people want to know who he is and my opinion is that it's probably jewish mystical people that never wanted to believe that Jesus was God, but nevertheless still see some of the things that the Jews prior to Jesus coming saw about Michael, Mokizadec.

And so they came up with this name Metatron. That's definitely the coolest name in all of Jewish literature. It's not even close. Nobody really knows what it means, but. It feels like an 80s transformer. He does, man. I know what he transforms into. Yeah.

So you know that his. His name has different meanings. It can mean the keeper of the watch, which is really interesting. In other words, he's a watcher. So maybe that's what he transforms into. His name can mean one who serves behind the throne. He's often called lesser Yahweh. Philo called him like not Metatron, but he referred to a second God.

But yet he only believed in one God. he was a monotheist. His name can mean in Gamatria Shaddai, as in El Shadai. A lot of people think that his name may come from the tetragrammaton from the word tetra, which means four letters, YH-W-H-W-H or Yahweh. And so there's a lot of weird things about his name. Nobody is quite sure where it comes from. But he has some of the same characteristics as these other people. So he's called the great prince of God's throne, the great prince of the whole world, the one who serves before the curtain. It says in the Babylonian Talmud that His name, God's name is in him, referring to Exodus 23, that we've already talked about. Again, talking about how he will not part in your transgression.

They assign that to Metatron. It said that, why are you called by the name of your creator with 70 names in 30 inoc. There's your multiple names idea. He's called the Prince of the Divine Presence and all of these kinds of weird things. So he's a very, very mysterious figure that I don't know a whole lot about, but I speculate that, like I said, that this is later Jewish mysticism that has somehow come up with this name that really it's their way of not ascribing the things to Jesus that the New Testament does. But nevertheless, he ends up taking on the exact. same characteristics that Jesus did and that Michael

and the Mokizadec do. It's a Jewish mystical shell game. They're just, bait and switch. They're just like, not Jesus, but we'll let this guy do all the same things. Yeah, it's interesting that it's always like a little pieces of truth,

kind of rebranded and repackaged. It's never something that's totally out of left field. It's always got a little bit of, that's confuse them. Nobody would believe it if it was completely. completely out of left field grant yeah but i think that's always the case it's just that you know you have a twisting um and you're trying to find context i think the thing that i think about with with with blurry creatures and why i think it it helps is that you when you understand the hierarchy and

more the order and the power and the long story and the character and you realize why jesus had to come who he is and what he does um i think a lot of us accept christ and we don't really know exactly why it's him. Why is it Christ? Why not any of these other characters? And what is species unique about this character particular? And I think that when you start to read in the context of the story, it becomes more and more powerful over time. Like, oh, this is a longstanding story.

And then this is the one. you know like in the matrix story you know every story that human beings like that is it's it's modeling the christ's story you know that there is one there is one that's going to come and save you know and i think that that that's the power of the context behind the stories and the characters that a lot of times christians are afraid to sort of you know someone says someone asks you like why jesus you know well you know we have some things to say but the more you have to say and the more you outline the Marvel movie, the Lord of the Rings, whatever you want to, you know, the more we're like, okay, now I get it.

But it can expand your, like I said, your understanding of the Trinity, your understanding of what angels are supposed to do and not be able to do and where they come from. What's their origin story? How did Jesus roll under the scene? What's his origin story? But I think that on our show, we try to say, look, these beings mixed, with humans and they created a whole bunch of problems and there is a point in a lot of Christians' minds

that's not possible and you still have big names in Christianity that say that didn't happen angels don't have these abilities angels don't have an origin story they just popped onto the scene magically they don't do anything they don't actually have any free will you know they're just sort of these servants of God and they don't do anything else it's like

okay who told you all that, right? And it's a never-ending debate on our show, so it's always good to go back, Doug, get more context, to help people go, no, you can trust Genesis 6th the way it says. Sons of God and the daughters of men were two different characters. No, Doug, I love this. I think this is the, these are some of the things I really,

I really love about the show and having you on and, you know, and getting to sort of dive into your work and your research and your knowledge, right? It's Nate and I get to talk to people that have spent all the time and are really the experts. And then we get to have these fun conversations about how do we put these pieces together? How are we to think about this? And we're not new. We're not new to think about this. That's what I love about this.

This isn't like a novel idea, a Doug Van Dorn and a, you know, and Nate and Luke kind of collaborating on this new idea. This is a really ancient, multiple millennia old idea and belief and understanding of, as Nate, say, some of the characters and the character. of characters, right? And it's just cool. For me, it just unlocks a lot. It unlocks and makes sense of a lot of things. You know, when there's two passages that I love to tell. Because if I had to kind of wrap up my ministry and why I do what I do in two verses,

it would really be in John 5, where Jesus chastised the Pharisees for saying that you go to the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life and you refuse to come to scriptures that testify about me. He's teaching them how to read the Bible. And then in Luke 24, it's the same idea. You know, he's been telling these guys all about himself, what he's going to do. None of them believe him. They all kill him.

And then he shows up on this road outside of Jerusalem. And it says that he opens their minds so that he understands all the scriptures, you know, whether Moses, the law, the prophets, the Psalms. The whole thing is about him. And then it says that weren't their hearts burning within them when he taught them these things? And, and, you know, whether it's Nephalim, And like, I don't look at Nephilim as an into itself. I look at it as a way to tell the story of the seed and Christ coming to defeat this horrible thing that took place. Same thing with Michael and Malkisadec. They just happen to be, I think, Christ himself in the Old Testament. But I want people to see and to know that their whole scripture, not just the New Testament, but the whole thing testifies to the son of God. He is the God of Israel. He's the one that. they bowed down to and worship. They knew him personally. And it wasn't something that I'm making up. I mean,

David calls him his Lord. And the New Testament doesn't just make that up. It's getting it from the scripture itself. And, you know, for too long, we have had a massive separation between the Old and New Testament's that has created so many problems in our theology. And this was not the way that it was in the early church. It's the New Testament is being written to people who are steeped in their Old Testament. And they're using their Old Testament to prove to them that Jesus is exactly who he said that he was. And to that end, that's what I hope that I'm talking about, Eucydek and Michael will help people to do just in a little bit, you know, a little bit more expansive way. I love it.

You have a new book out, Doug. You want to tell listeners? Yeah, I actually have two new books out, but they're, they have the same cover, but they're different colors. So I don't want people to be confused by that. One is just called The Rings of Revelation, and it's kind of a literary study of Revelation. It kind of sounds boring, but I promise you, it's not boring. It teaches you how to read the book, which is a lot of Revelation books don't do that. And then the second half of the book really focuses on the supernatural weird things in most of Revelation.

I don't deal with all of them. I tried to keep it to a size that people wouldn't just be completely intimidated by. So it's, you know, it's not super long. And then, and then I was going to put all my charts and outlines and stuff in that book. And I decided that really kind of takes away from what I was trying to do in it. So I put together a reference guide that's got 25 years of notes from Revelation. That gives you an overview of books on the different views of it. You know, I try not to, I mean, I have my view of Revelation, but I try to keep it open. You know, I think all the views are are worthy of study and they all contributed something to it. So I give outlines and references and

lots and lots of Old Testament quotes in the New Testament in Revelation that come from it. So you can see how much Revelation's drawing on your Old Testament, charts, pictures, all kinds of stuff. So that's what the reference guide is. It's not the same book. Awesome. And then you've got, of course, you've got Iron and Myth. Iron and Myth with Derek and Brian and Judd. I think we've done 30 episodes of that and my giant steps podcast i think we're coming up on hopefully we'll get to that magic number 20 one of these days so that it will be break the break the rule right of how many and and you'll be at blurry con too blurry con too oh yeah with your entire family so bring more books this time because you didn't have enough last time they all they all went they all make sure make sure you pack you pack up

that camper with enough books for everybody but dog we love you man this has been such a fun ride in last four years. You were, you were year one. You were someone, as we always say at the end of pockets, took a chance on Nate and I. And what we were, you know, just a couple guys that wanted to have conversations like this. I don't even know how you guys found me. I do. I remember it. Well, you used your book. No. I called your church phone and left a message on the answering machine. I remember the original text that I got from Nate, but. And Nate was hunting you down, bro. I probably never answered that because it was in a you didn't. My home landline that's just basically spam.

I want to say you called back or emailed back, but we did it old school. We did an 80 style here. We just left a message on an answering machine. And who knew what was happening? Well, Doug, thanks so much, and I appreciate you coming on and kind of put in some context of some of these characters like we're always trying to do on the show. It's make more sense of the weird blurry stuff that people experience today or ancient times. And sometimes it gets very biblical and sometimes it's very biblical. and sometimes this gets very weird.

You never know. But I like the mix, and I hope people out there listening like the mix, because they're one and the same. They're all part of it. And they can all be explained and make sense with inside the Bible, which a lot of people don't want to.

Sometimes they're afraid of making sense of the strange stuff with their Bibles. And it's good that they're pastors out there that will get weird and get into it and appreciate you being one of them. Like you. You can actually go to Doug's church if you want to.

You happen to be in Colorado. It's a real church. It's a real church. We're by Boulder. It can be there. It's a real place. It actually exists in the world. Don't get weird on them.

Go say hi. No, get weird on them. And we've had a lot of visitors who've come from blurry creatures. We actually, I'll tell you guys this, we had a woman showed up maybe six months ago. And she had come out of the new age movement and asked her how she found out about us. And she said, well, blurry creatures. Well, she had become a Christian through this show, through your podcast. Come on.

Oh, man. I say. And she's now a regular attender of our church. I baptized her. That's cool, very, very cool. I haven't heard that. This is actually like a real reaction.

I haven't heard that at all. I mean, gosh, there's anything that you put the juice back in the tank? It's somehow in all this weirdness and... In Boulder, Colorado that happened, and Boulder, Colorado, and having fun and tongue-in-cheek and having serious discussions,

but not being overly serious that somehow people find the gospel is like the most incredible... What you're doing is, I mean, you're doing great kingdom work. I really believe that. I wouldn't keep coming on the show

if I didn't think that that was true. I'm really honored to be part of what you're doing. I would take that sound bite. It's going to go everywhere. I appreciate it. It makes it. Yeah, thanks, Doug. Yeah, appreciate that. And I feel like the gospel's powerful when you just talk about it. You don't have to do anything crazy. I mean, that's what it is. It's the power of God by itself. That's all it is. And I think, you know, just talking about it. Plus nothing. Yeah. Just talking about it with it without any fear. It's like, hey, this is the strange things in here. Let's talk about it. Doesn't matter. You know, and normalizing the strange. And I guess, I, you know, I think that reality is more real than ours. So I think we're kind of coming into

this age where people are starting to wake up and go, man, things are crazy, things are strange. And whatever we've been sort of taught to fall asleep to, this ancient history that, you know, we just evolved over billions of years. You know, you have more and more people coming out, talking about ancient aliens and things like that, coming up with their own supernatural theory. So if we don't talk about it. People are going to develop some wild ideas, you know, and those ideas are catching wildfire. You know, you see them on main, these guys coming on main shows with some bizarre theories. 100%. And people are drinking it down. And so, you know, you can, they don't have anywhere else to go. Yeah, but they know. And they want to find out answers. And so that's all

there is to hear. Yeah, they know they're part of a spiritual story, but they just don't have, like we said, the characters in the context and who made all this? What's all this for? Who is all this for? These powers that you talked about, Nate, they don't want this information to get out there. And so they twist it, they eliminate it, they change the text, whatever the case might be. And yeah, so it really is important work. Thanks, Doug. Until the next time.

Douglas van dorn.com. Douglas van d'Oren.com. All right, Doug. Until next time. I love you, bro. Thanks, guys. Glad to know you, man. Thank you, bro.

This is Doug Van Dorn. Stay blurry.